Authors: Jeff Abbott
The elderly women reminded her of David, begging her to attend his Poppy’s party. David was looping a hook back into her flesh,
securing it into her jaw, making sure she could not dash from whatever shadow he might cast across the water of her life.
She saw Heather Farrell easing herself down the mangy slope of grass to the flat of the hard-packed beach, a notebook under
her arm, a sandwich in her hand, the girl chewing and tossing a scrap of crust to a hovering gull. Other gulls swooped near,
pleading with cries, waiting for the generosity to be extended. Heather popped another two morsels upwards and then ran, leaving
the gulls to sort out the buffet. She sat, kicked off her shoes and ate, keeping her feet just beyond the encroaching tide.
Claudia sat down next to her.
‘You wolfed that down,’ Claudia said. ‘You hungry? I’ll buy you dinner.’
Heather dusted the crumbs from her fingers with a quick slap. She tucked a fleck of mayonnaise from the corner of her mouth
onto her thumb, then wiped her thumb on her jeans. ‘Do you always criticize other people’s table manners?’
‘We’re not at a table.’
‘Slap me. You really are a detective.’ Heather watched the Gulf inch toward her feet, then retreat. She kept the notebook
close to her, on the other side from Claudia.
‘Brought this for you to sign.’ Claudia produced a statement. ‘Read it first and make sure it’s correct.’
Heather scanned the document and signed her name at the bottom. ‘There. Perfect. Satisfied?’
‘You sleep okay last night?’
‘Sure.’
‘Amazingly unrattled by finding a dead body.’
Heather dragged a hand through her hair. ‘What am I gonna do, run home to Lubbock?’
‘I can help you find a real place to stay.’
‘Aren’t you out of your jurisdiction, officer?’ Heather asked. No insolence laced her voice. ‘Little Mischief’s not in Port
Leo proper.’
‘The sheriff’s department might consider you a vagrant. Heather. Camping out here.’ She could call David, ask him to check
on this beach later this evening.
Heather shrugged. ‘I moved.’
‘Where to?’
‘A friend’s house.’ She wiggled toes at the froth of the surf as it kissed her heels. ‘Since you’re gonna ask me for all the
details, her name’s Judy Cameron. She lives on the west side of Port Leo. I’m crashing there. So you don’t need to follow
me around. I’m perfectly safe.’
‘Judy have a phone number?’
‘She didn’t pay the bill and got disconnected, but her address is still in the phone book. 414 Paris Street. Beige brick house
with a motorcycle out front.’
‘Why don’t I give you a ride back there now?’
‘Why don’t you quit hassling me?’ Heather asked. ‘Look, I’m all warm and gooey inside from your concern, but I’m fine. I’m
a grown woman.’
‘If there’s anything you haven’t told us about Pete’s
death, you’re going to be hip-deep in trouble. I won’t be able to protect you then.’
‘Shouldn’t you have another cop here to play bad, if you’re good?’ Heather laughed. ‘You ought to watch more TV and get your
shtick down.’
‘Why’d you buy Greyhound tickets this week? Two of them?’ Claudia asked.
Heather turned her gaze back out across the bay to the hump of Santa Margarita Island. ‘You’re a busy bee.’
‘It was easy to check.’
‘Judy and I thought we’d go to see friends in Houston. That okay with the local Nazi regime?’
‘I don’t want you leaving town before this inquest.’
‘You can’t expect me to wait around forever.’
Claudia fished a card out of her pocket. ‘In case Judy kicks you out.’ She jotted numbers on the card and handed it to Heather.
‘That’s got my home and my office number. And my ex-husband’s number – he’s a deputy with the sheriff’s department.’
‘He cute?’ Heather asked.
‘Very,’ Claudia said. ‘Call. I’m around twenty-four/ seven.’
‘I’ll program you on my speed dial. Thanks.’
Claudia dusted the sand from her rump and walked away. When she reached her car, she watched Heather sitting, notebook open,
sketching with a pencil, the sunset painting the low clouds orange and purple, the light beginning to fade.
Two pelicans glided across St Leo Bay with graceful swoops, the tips of their wings barely brushing the water. Claudia watched
them fly, and then she drove back to town.
The two old women lumbered inside the nursing home, their cackles of laughter drifting down the beach to Heather. A Caspian
tern, squeaking its nasally call, dove
down into the darkening water, its bill bloodred but not from prey. The tern shot back into the sky, wet, dinner-less. Heather
watched it.
You don’t always get what you want, babycakes.
The tern tried again, farther out into the bay. Heather watched the surf-walking boy and the two chatting girls leave the
beach. When she looked back out, the tern was gone. Shame. She opened to a blank page and began to sketch out the muscled
wings, the probing beak, the egg-shaped head.
She stopped as the sun set behind her. She wished Sam were here, to drink red wine, cuddle up close to her, run his tongue
along the backside of her ear. But he wasn’t coming. No escape from the Hubble guardians. No escape at all –
A hand grabbed her shoulder.
Whit Mosley and Faith Hubble had first made love – an altogether too kind term, considering the bourbon and muscle cramps involved
– in July. They met at a wind-down party after three days of ShellFest, Port Leo’s annual salute to all things crustacean
and culinary. Over ten thousand fairgoers, both locals and tourists, jammed the St Leo Bay area to guzzle beer, buy crafts,
stomp to forgettable jazz and blues and country-western acts, and to deplete the shrimp and oyster populations through structured
gluttony. Lucinda judged a shrimp recipe cook-off, glad-handed voters, and raced back to her Austin condo with Sam in tow
to hear a classical piano concert at UT.
Faith didn’t. She lingered in town, hanging out at the Shell Inn, drinking bourbon in a back booth with a clutch of old high
school girlfriends. The women’s group slowly merged with two more groups, which is what happens in a small bar where nearly
everyone knows everyone else and has been drinking for three days. Tables were pushed together, drinks ordered again, and
Faith sat next to Judge Whit Mosley. She vaguely remembered his brothers from her school days, knew he was the youngest of
the wild and handsome pack of Mosley boys. Even though now a judge he dressed like a townie bum without two dimes, in his
frayed, sun-faded orange polo shirt and weathered khaki shorts and Birkenstock sandals. But the legs leading to the sandals
were nicely formed, and she liked his odd gray eyes and the direct and knowing way he smiled, not at all put off by her height
or weight. She grinned at the quiet way he indulged the drunken boasts
of his friends when the topic turned to fishing, not joining in but not deflating his buddies’ hackneyed tales, and although
his polo shirt was old and the neon orange a color out of style, the chest and arms beneath the fabric were tanned and firm.
He didn’t look like any judge she ever knew.
She had been lonely for a long time, plowing all her time into Lucinda’s career, and no one had given her jokes a sincere
laugh in a long while. He offered her a ride home; she was drunk. She asked him to come inside and have a cup of coffee and
a couple of aspirin to help sober themselves up (although she had watched him nurse a single Corona for two hours and knew
the only drunk one was herself), and while they stood chatting in the kitchen and the coffee brewed, she surprised herself
by reaching out for him and saying, ‘Is that a gavel or you just happy to see me?’ Her jokes got worse with more bourbon.
It wasn’t a gavel and he amply liked her, too. They spent the next several hours in bed, half of the time sleeping, the other
half making strenuous love. She was left gasping but energized, freeing some long-buried shadow of herself to face the world.
She watched Whit nap and traced his lips with a fingernail while he softly snored. Since Pete had left her, the few men she’d
allowed intimacy with her tended to be older and snagged in the intricate web of state politics. They talked of little else.
Here was a man lying beside her who was younger with a flat stomach and long legs and probably not overly bright but he knew
how to make her feel my-God shivery good. She brushed his light fuzz of whiskers grown in the course of the day, wondering
how quickly he would bolt in the morning.
He didn’t. He made love to her again, and she almost wept with pleasure and an odd relief. She didn’t want a
romance, but she did want him, warm and kissing her throat and giving his halfway smile as he filled her. They began to see
each other discreetly. She didn’t want Sam or Lucinda to know – he was the only private part of her life – and Whit didn’t
argue.
They saw each other perhaps twice a month. Faith and Whit learned about the constellation of small motels along the Coastal
Bend, little way stations in Rockport and Aransas Pass and Laurel Point and Copano. They would meet, share a bottle of Shiner
Bock while kissing and slowly unburdening each other of their clothes, soap their skin in the shower, make love on the bed,
and then talk – about her work, about his struggle to learn enough law to be an effective JP, about books they’d both read.
He was smarter than she thought. A love of reading was, other than sex, the only thing they had in common. All perfectly friendly.
But now he had failed her, and the memory of the taste of his skin soured in her mouth. Faith backed her BMW out of the Hubble
driveway and gunned the engine toward Whit’s house.
Faith rocketed over to the Mosleys’, ready to carve Whit’s guts into ribbons of flesh, but instead the storm turned to shower.
She cried as soon as she saw him.
Babe and Irina were dining with friends in Rockport and would not be back for quite a while.
Faith and Whit sat in the cramped living room in the guest house, the Corpus Christi news turned on but muted. Pete’s death
– as the son of a prominent state senator, not as a porn star, which had not yet been mentioned by any news source – had been
the second story, after the gunshot war that had slowed down the Nueces County coroner’s office.
Faith’s hard, heavy weeping slowly eased. Whit handed
her a wad of tissues to replace the ones she’d rendered sopping, and he poured them each a hefty glass of an inexpensive
merlot. She gulped down a third of the glass in a long swallow.
‘You don’t think you can cry for someone you ceased to love a long while back.’ Faith sniffed, tamped her nostrils with the
tissues. ‘I keep thinking of the boy I knew and married, not the sleaze he turned out to be … but he came home, and all I
saw was the sleaze. Nothing more.’ She drank again. ‘This is good, Whit. Thanks. You know how he proposed to me? On Port Leo
Beach, at midnight. The beach was closed, but we snuck in and sat on the sand and counted stars. He told me I had missed one,
and then he dangled this beautiful diamond on a string before my eyes.’ She studied the red depths of the wineglass. ‘I loved
him then – sure I did. But he married me only because his mother wanted it. I found out later she’d bought the ring for him
and told him just how to propose. She knew what would light my fire.’ She set the wineglass down, folded her fingers together
in her lap. ‘Whit, you’ve got to believe me … We didn’t have anything to do with Pete’s death. Nothing. And Lucinda, she shouldn’t
have come across so hard-assed with you.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me Pete was back in town?’ Whit kept his voice gentle, quiet, and unaccusing.
‘Because … God, we didn’t want anyone to know he even existed anymore. But he cooperated with us. He kept a very low profile.
I mean, I guess a couple of people commented to me he was back, but no production was made of it.’ Her mouth twisted. ‘Did
you want to waste away our motel time chatting about my ex?’
‘You didn’t want people – or me – to know he was back because he had starred in blue movies?’
‘Yes.’ She took another bolstering slug of wine and shuddered.
‘Not because he could derail Lucinda’s campaign. And your career. Not because he was going to sue you for custody of Sam.’
‘Look, as far as I’m concerned, Whit, this custody crap is a complete fiction Velvet dreamed up in her screwed-stupid little
mind.’
‘You asked me to help y’all get through this, to not make a big production of the inquest. But I’m not doing you any such
favors until I know what’s going on here.’
‘I clearly don’t mean diddly squat to you, do I?’
‘This has nothing to do with us. Faith. But I don’t believe a man who wants to get his child back just kills himself.’
‘I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you the source of his depression was he knew he’d never, ever get Sam.’
‘Yes, it occurred to me. It also occurred to me to wonder exactly why he’d even think he had a chance in court. Did he have
something on you. Faith?’
‘There’s nothing that could trump porn!’ she barked at him. ‘For God’s sakes!’
‘There are worse crimes than dirty movies.’
‘Not to a family court.’ She stood. ‘I came over here to talk, not to be grilled by you.’
‘You came over to presume on our relationship,’ Whit said. ‘You’re asking me to not make a public spectacle of the inquest
for Sam’s sake. But I’m asking you for an explanation of what was going on with Pete. This cuts both ways, sweetie.’
‘I told you what I know.’ She sat again.
‘Perhaps I should excuse myself from the case.’
‘No. Don’t.’ Panic flashed in her eyes. ‘You do that, you’ll have to explain why, and I don’t want Sam to know about us.’
‘Don’t lock Sam in a glass bubble forever.’
‘Look, it hasn’t been easy for him … no father … his
grandmother and I so busy. And now, with Pete dead, I can’t rub salt in his wounds, please, Whit. Not now.’ She covered her
face with her hands.
‘The boat Pete was staying on. It’s owned by a family suspected of heavy drug activity up the coast.’
‘Lucinda mentioned that.’ She leaned back against the thick pillows of the couch and dropped her hands. ‘Good God, he chose
well, didn’t he? One little explosive charge after another to sink his mother’s ship.’
‘He’s the one who’s dead, not Lucinda.’ He sat next to her. ‘Where were you last night?’
‘Am I not supposed to be insulted at the question?’
‘That’s up to you, Faith.’
‘I was at home last night, with Sam. I haven’t spent enough time with him lately. We had dinner, watched TV, went to sleep
early. It’s all in my bland little police statement.’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’
She took his hand. ‘I’ve been nothing but honest with you. I’m sure he killed himself, okay? All these other diversions –
this Corey movie, this custody idea, him staying on a drug hound’s boat – I’m begging, Whit. Keep it all out of the inquest,
can’t you? It has no place. If you don’t you’re letting a nobody like Pete win. Over me. Over us.’
‘I can’t promise that, Faith. I can’t.’
She rose, her face contorting as though slapped. ‘The problem with you, Whit, is that everyone has low expectations of you
and you never fucking disappoint.’
A rap sounded at the door. Faith fell silent. Whit stood, wondering if she might go hide in the bathroom or closet, but she
stayed put and he went to his door.
It was Claudia. ‘Hi,’ she said, and she glanced past his shoulder to see Faith Hubble standing by the couch, the empty wineglass
on the coffee table, the half full one next to it.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t realize you had company.’
‘Come in,’ Whit said. ‘Mrs Hubble and I were just discussing her ex-husband. You want something to drink?’
‘I’d love a Coke.’ Claudia sat down while Whit busied himself dumping ice cubes in a glass and cracking open a liter bottle
of cola. He brought Claudia her soda. The silence between the two women hung thick as fog on a cool winter morning.
Claudia broke the quiet. ‘I’m glad you’re here, Mrs Hubble. I just confirmed with Anders Sorenson that he was hired to represent
Pete in suing for custody of your son. I thought you might be able to help us understand why.’
‘As I was just telling the judge,’ Faith said slowly, ‘Pete’s legal concerns were his own matter. He’d ignored Sam for most
of fifteen years, and he was no parent. He had zero grounds for a serious bid for custody.’
‘So why hire Sorenson?’ Whit asked. Anders Sorenson was from an old Port Leo family, one of the best-regarded attorneys in
the area, almost seventy, a scrappy, dapper little man feared in the courtroom.
‘Because Sorenson’s a big-money Republican who’d love to see Lucinda lose?’ Faith flared. ‘Shit,
I don’t know what Pete was doing.
I can’t repeat that too many more times without thinking the two of you are brain-damaged.’
Neither Whit nor Claudia spoke.
‘I have to go, unless you have further questions,’ Faith said. ‘Sam is expecting me for dinner.’
‘I would like to speak with Sam,’ Whit said. ‘Briefly.’
‘Call me tomorrow and we’ll set up a time.’ She picked up her purse and didn’t give Claudia another glance as she walked out
the door. Whit followed her out of the
guest house, past the pool. She didn’t break stride and she didn’t look back, and he didn’t call out to her. He went back
to the guest house.
Claudia stared at him. ‘I heard her yelling at you before I knocked on the door.’
‘I’ve known her for a while. She’s upset.’
‘And?’
‘Her kid’s the most important thing in the world to her,’ Whit said. ‘But she’s right. Pete wouldn’t have a prayer in family
court.’
‘Unless she’s done something far worse than adult films,’ Claudia said.
Whit sipped his wine.
‘I thought you and I could talk to Jabez Jones together tomorrow morning,’ she said. ‘Your clerk said it’d work with your
schedule.’
‘That’s fine,’ he said.
She touched his arm. ‘Anything else you want to tell me. Honorable?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Nothing else at all.’