The afternoon light slanted through the tilted blinds. Bars of light and dark lay against Whit’s desk – for once, cleared of the usual fan of papers and the half-full coffee cup. Whit sat across from Claudia, still in his judge’s robe, an askew collar of yellow tropical-print shirt peeking out from the sober black. He had finished with traffic court by two, and she’d given him a quick synopsis of the developments with Jabez Jones.
‘I don’t care much about that suicide note,’ Claudia said. ‘But there’s no way I believe Pete put Rachel into Jabez’s camp as a spy, then decided to kill himself.’
Whit loosened a stray thread from the throat of his robe. ‘Did Rachel say she’d told Pete about the drugs she’d seen?’
‘Actually, no, she hadn’t talked to him since she arrived at the camp. It was too risky, they thought. So let’s say Pete found out another way Jabez was dealing.’
‘Dealing?’ Whit said.
‘He clearly had more than he could personally use. Gives Jabez a motive.’
‘I suppose.’ Whit shrugged.
Claudia cocked her head. ‘You sound like you’ve graduated from the Delford Spires School of Low-Key Investigation.’
‘So Delford’s finally made it to your hallowed shit list?’
‘I’ve made room for him. Gardner’s king.’ She told him about her confrontation with Eddie Gardner.
‘Be careful of him. Very careful,’ Whit said.
‘He’s a mouth. I can handle him.’
‘Seriously, Claudia,’ Whit said, and she saw he was dead serious. The sharp-eyed glare on his face was the one he usually reserved for magistrating repeat offenders and irksome litigants. His mouth twitched slightly. ‘He’s trouble.’
‘Why’s he on your shit list, Honorable?’
‘Just don’t cross him, okay? Trust me.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘Nothing. Tired. Inquest is tomorrow at one. I decided to call a full one in the courtroom instead of just issuing a ruling of death.’
She supposed the political capital of a high-profile death was too good for him to waste right before an election. ‘Sure, fine. I’ve got my notes ready to testify.’
He dug into his desk drawer and handed her a phone number. ‘This is a number Pete used in California with an answering service. It might be interesting to see who in Port Leo, or in Texas, called him,’
‘Haven’t you been the busy bee?’ Claudia said. ‘Thanks, I’ll have Fox check this.’
‘I’ve got to go. Promise me you’ll be careful.’
‘About what?’
‘Just be careful, all right?’
‘Sure.’ She walked back across the street to the police station, wondering who had wedged the coal lump in Whit’s ass.
Whit watched Claudia cross the street, a sudden whip of wind from the bay mussing her dark hair. She tucked the errant strands behind her ear and darted inside the police station.
He let the blinds fall. That morning he had called each of his five brothers. He heard updates on teething nieces and upcoming software releases and the casual cruelties of writer critique groups. But nothing of bullets, of shady characters lurking in darkened driveways, ready to make innocents pay for Whit being the wrong judge in the wrong place at the wrong time. He ended each conversation with a story about random violence he claimed to have seen on TV and begged them all to be extra careful.
He had trudged through the day’s duties of signing warrants, a brief truancy court, and a long and maddening traffic court session. Tomorrow was the inquest; he didn’t have much time. He picked up the phone.
‘Velvet? It’s Whit Mosley. I need a favor from you. Do you still have a key to Real Shame?’
‘I do.’ She sounded lazy, sleepy, as though just awakening for the day. If she was, he wondered what she’d been up to all night.
‘I’d like to stop by and borrow it, if I may.’
‘The cops have a key.’
‘I’d like to borrow yours.’
She was silent for a moment. ‘Well, yeah, that’s okay.’
‘I’ve got an errand to run first, but I’ll be over in an hour or so.’
‘I’ll see you then, Judgie.’
He hung up, doffed the robe, and in his beachwear shirt and khaki shorts and sandals headed over to the trashy west end of Port Leo.
The Blade watched the little waves surge up Little Mischief Beach, the sand flat, wet, and clean. The damp, fine air – the ocean exhaling – smelled of salt and freshness. No sign on the beach Heather Farrell had ever been there, no blood on the sands, not a gap-toed footprint to mark her passage.
He turned away from the water and the little voice, tinged with his mother, that whispered and berated in the curvy hollow of his ear roared: Do you think she only had the clothes on her worthless back?
He stopped. He turned toward the beach. Past the gentle crescent of sand, into the parkland, was a motte of live oaks, ringed with high grass. Hadn’t he watched her there once, stretching against the Tower-of-Pisa bent-trees, scratching her foot?
She had to have camped nearby.
He bolted along the stretch of sand, up through the bluestems and the grasses, panic drumming its rat-a-tat in his chest. Mama’s voice laughing at him, hiding in the wind.
He searched for a half hour among the askew oaks and the tall grasses. He found only a narrow rectangle of crushed bluestems, where a woman’s sleeping bag might have lain recently. A discarded peanut butter crackers wrapper fluttered, caught in the tall grass.
The trailer park was named Rainbow’s End. The pot of gold, however, was nowhere in sight.
He knocked on the wrong door, and a sleepy elderly woman told him Marian Duchamp made her home in trailer number six. The woman pointed over to an immaculately maintained trailer, a veritable palace among the weed-choked lots.
Whit wondered why anyone would voluntarily live on the Texas coast in a mobile home. One hurricane – one mild tropical storm – roaring ashore could move the trailer half a county inland. In small fragments.
Whit knocked once on the door. Inside, an afternoon talk show’s theme jazzily trilled. The door lurched open. A woman who should have looked younger than she did, wearing frayed cutoffs and a faded Corpus Christi Ice Rays T-shirt, tottered in the doorway.
‘Marian Duchamp?’
‘Maybe.’ She blinked against the bright afternoon light.
‘I’m Whit Mosley, the justice of the peace for Encina County. I’m conducting a death inquest, and I’d like to ask you a few questions.’
‘Um, okay. Um, what about?’ Lunch had apparently been of the liquid sort.
‘Corey Hubble.’
She stared.
‘A friend of yours who disappeared several years ago?’ Whit prompted.
Marian Duchamp digested this request. She was clearly drunk. A wine bottle rested against her hip: French Beaujolais, surprisingly, not your typical trailer-park fare.
Georgie, the walking she-database, had provided him with the local lore on Marian: a good-looking tomboy and jock up until the last year of junior high, when her father drowned in a boating accident. The dead father had reached from the grave to drag his daughter down; Marian Duchamp had raced into a self-destructive spiral of drugs, booze, and petty theft. Dropout from school, lived on her mother’s mercy, Georgie had said. Just a shame.
‘Corey. Yes.’ She spoke slowly.
‘Can we talk about him?’
‘Well, I’m drunk, but you know, I’m not out in public, Judge, so I don’t think that I’m in the wrong this time.’
‘I’m not here to arrest or bug you, okay? As long as you’re not planning on driving anywhere today, are you?’
‘Don’t have a car, so I guess not.’ She laughed, a rough, unpleasant guffaw, and the wine wafted on her breath. She contemplated him with a half smile. ‘I remember you. One of the Mosley boys.’
‘Yeah, the youngest.’ At once he almost regretted his words. Forever the baby of a certain notorious family. But when five older brothers had already speeded and fished and slept and drunk a path through the town’s consciousness, cutting your own distinctive way got progressively harder.
‘Yeah, I knew your brother Mark,’ she said. Her smile warmed, not quite sultry but at least friendlier. ‘Come on in.’
A sober feminine hand clearly maintained this space: gold-trimmed family photos, a small milk bottle holding fresh carnations on the dinner table, a sofa with neatly arranged pillows, embroidered with platitudes like BLOOM WHERE YOU’RE PLANTED and PRINCESS OF QUITE A BIT. Dust would not dare show its unsightly face; the home appeared as pristine as a freshly tended hotel suite. A stand of wine bottles, emptied, stood along the breakfast bar. Whit read the labels: Cakebread, La Crema, Cuvaison. Not a dollar vintage in the bunch.
‘You have a nice trailer,’ Whit said.
‘I found quality help,’ Marian smirked. ‘And you know, good help is really hard to find. I’m ever so lucky. Have a seat. You on duty? Do judges do duty? Want a glass of quality red?’ Her gaze drifted across his throat, his chest.
‘No, thank you.’ He sat on the couch, and she tumbled into the recliner. He knew she’d once been attractive in a lanky way, but now her skin looked sallow, her belly was a little wine barrel, and patchy shadow, new applied over old, caked her eyelids.
‘What’s Mark doing these days?’ she asked.
‘He’s living in Austin, still single, getting an MFA in creative writing at UT. He’s finished a novel and is working on a collection of poems.’
‘Well, la-di-da, fancy, fancy,” fancy. Po-ems.’ She paused. ‘I know some words that rhyme.’ She confessed this with a tinge of embarrassment, as though she had neglected a gift handed her by the gods.
Whit let silence sit between them for twenty seconds, and Marian fidgeted and half smiled at him. ‘I understand you knew Corey Hubble when you were kids,’ Whit said.
‘Ancient history now, like Vietnam and the Renaissance.’
‘His brother Pete died recently, and he was working on a film about Corey’s disappearance. We’re interested to know who he talked to about Corey.’
‘We being who? The police?’
‘We being me, really.’ He suspected she had no liking for the police. ‘The inquest determines if someone is responsible for the death of another. The voters are my boss. I work for the county.’
‘You don’t work for Delford Spires?’
‘He wouldn’t hire me to wipe his ass,’ Whit said. Marian, the wild teen, would have no love for a longtime police chief. ‘I’m not one of his favorite people.’
Marian abruptly got up from the recliner and refilled her glass with Beaujolais. Not the gentle arc of a pour – more of a rough slosh, spilling the wine. She licked wine from her hand, then drank half the glass down, then refilled again before she tottered back to the recliner.
‘So this is upsetting to you, or you’re just thirsty?’ Whit said.
‘There’s nothing to tell about Corey Hubble.’
‘Pete didn’t think so.’
‘Yeah, and now he’s gonna be crammed in a coffin for eternity.’ She shuddered. ‘No, thanks.’
Whit was silent, Marian Duchamp, in this state, could hardly be considered a credible witness. At least in court. But instead he got up, found a glass, poured in a small trickle, and sat again.
‘I remember Corey, you know,’ he said. ‘I knew him, but not well.’
Watching him sample the wine, she visibly relaxed. She traced the ring of the glass with a fingernail. ‘He… was jealous of you,’ she said with a soft laugh. ‘Does that surprise you?’
‘Sure does. I’m nothing special.’
‘Well, you had a mess of brothers. You always had family around. Corey didn’t have nobody after his daddy died. Pete was the pet, and his mama just wanted to go write laws and fuck around in Austin. Serving the people, my ass.’
‘Didn’t he have you as a friend?’
She laughed. ‘Friend. There’s a nice clean word. We fucked now and then.’ She watched him for a reaction to her crudity.
‘He ever hit now and then?’
She giggled. ‘Hey, I hit him back. He was a mean little shit when he got crossed.’
‘You ever hear of him roughing up other women?’
She tongued the rim of her glass. ‘I was the only one stupid enough to date him.’
‘So what do you think happened to him, Marian?’
‘I really don’t know.’ She sipped some wine, not looking at him. ‘Why should I tell you anything anyway?’
‘Well, I need your help, and you’re the only one who can help me. No one else will.’
‘That’s a lousy reason.’
‘You mentioned Delford Spires before.’
She shrugged.
‘You think Delford did a crappy job of investigating Corey’s disappearance?’
She laughed, not a funny or kind laugh. ‘That was the fox watching the freaking henhouse.’
‘Why?’
‘Corey hated Delford Spires’s guts.’
‘Didn’t every teenager in town?’ Whit cajoled, laughing, tasting a little more of his wine. ‘I was in the terrorist crew that painted his house pink. You remember that?’
She brayed laughter, recognizing the widely loved – or at least widely discussed – prank played long ago on the police chief.
‘So what was Corey’s beef with Delford?’
‘I think,’ she said slowly, ‘Corey took off because Delford caught wind of what he was planning.’
‘Which was?’
‘Well, Corey was probably kidding – you know loud-mouthed kids, but he told me he was gonna kill Delford Spires.’ She held her wineglass very still, in both hands.
Whit kept equally still. ‘How did he plan on doing this?’
She shrugged. ‘He had his daddy’s shotgun.’
Whit watched her; she stared at the hem of her cutoffs. ‘Why do you think he told you this, Marian?’
‘Just to impress me. He was ten pounds of shit in a Dixie cup.’
‘Why did he want to shoot Delford?’
‘I don’t know. He never told me why… so I never took him seriously. I mean, look, he couldn’t have been serious. Delford Spires is still alive.’
‘But Corey probably isn’t,’ he said, and she burst into tears.
‘You think Delford killed Corey?’
She cried, she shrugged. ‘Shit. I shouldn’t have said anything. Shit.’
Delford might be many things – political, pushy, too good-old-boy for a changing world, but Whit didn’t believe Delford was a cold-blooded killer. Especially a killer of children.
‘Why didn’t you tell anyone this?’
‘I did. Corey’s mama. I was afraid to talk to the police – afraid of Delford, I mean. I didn’t know what to think. So I told the senator, I phoned her, and she thanked me and nothing ever came of it. You know, I figured Corey would come home and she didn’t want him into trouble with Delford.’
Marian Duchamp got up with overdone precision, stumbled to the kitchen, and freshened her glass.
We build these little worlds for ourselves, Whit thought, remembering what Velvet had said, and then we never get to move out.
‘Do you remember two friends of Corey’s? From Houston. A boy named Eddie Gardner, another boy named Junior Deloache.’
‘Think so. They summered down here sometimes and fished in the fall on weekends. Junior always had lots of cash and dope to share.’ She remembered too late Whit was a judge and murmured, ‘Well, I don’t do anything illegal anymore, okay?’
‘What about Eddie?’
‘Just some lame-ass friend of Junior’s.’
And now he was a detective on the Port Leo police force. A very recent hire.
‘You seen either of them around lately?’
She shook her head. ‘Not in years, not since Corey took off.’
The door to the trailer opened, and a tall, fiftyish woman peeked her head inside. Her hair was pulled tight into a proper gray bun, and she wore a cleaning smock, festooned with a brightly colored, grinning cartoon chicken waving a spatula. She carried a grocery sack.
‘Oh, excuse me, hon. I didn’t know you were entertaining.’ The lady smiled with maternal grace at Whit, as though about to pat Whit’s head and offer him a sugar cookie.
‘Oh, come on in. Mama,’ Marian said. ‘This is Whit Mosley – he’s a judge.’
Whit helped Mama Duchamp tote grocery sacks. One bag clinked, full of bottles of wine: merlot, chardonnay, pinot noir, all of it the better stuff. He put the bags on the kitchen counter without comment, and Mama Duchamp murmured that she’d just brought some refreshments for her sweet baby girl and oh, she’d tend to getting those bottles put up.
‘Have some red. Mama,’ Marian called.
‘Perhaps later,’ Mama Duchamp said.
‘I was just going,’ Whit said. He thanked Marian for her time. She blinked, as if confused as to why she’d been crying, why he was here. With her mother in the room Marian seemed sunnier, as though reassured, like a puppy, that the milk dish brimmed full.
Mama Duchamp stepped outside with him, shutting the door on Marian’s hollered, slurred good-byes.
‘I know you’re a busy man, with a lot of doors to knock on,’ Mama Duchamp said. ‘Good luck in the election. I hope you win. I don’t trust people named Buddy. It’s like they want to be your friend before you even know them.’
‘Thanks. But I actually wasn’t here campaigning. I was asking Marian about Corey Hubble.’
He could smell the wry odor of throat lozenges on her breath. ‘Why?’
‘She says Corey was planning to commit a murder before he vanished.’
‘Oh, my lands. Marian doesn’t know what she says. She doesn’t think.’
‘It’s hard to think when you’re drinking all day.’
Mama Duchamp’s smile twitched. ‘She’s nervous. It soothes her.’
‘Do you do this all the time? Bring her what she needs to live?’
Her long, narrow hands smoothed the chicken apron. ‘Marian doesn’t fend well for herself. She messes up. It’s just easier if I… arrange things for her.’
‘My brothers and I used to do that for my father. He was a drunk.’
‘Don’t you presume to stand here and lecture me.’
‘For God’s sakes. Aren’t you tired of helping her along?’ Whit asked.
She brought a hand to her lipsticked mouth. ‘Tired of it? My God, Marian could be lying out in an alley, scrounging on a beach, selling herself for loose change. This way… I can keep an eye on her.’
In a cage nicely gilded by the glint from wine bottles. ‘I suppose it’s one way to be sure the kids stay in touch.’ He felt a sudden fury with this woman, letting her daughter drown by inches in scrubbed comfort, ‘I’ll bet her liver’s like wet tissue paper. Do you see the yellow tint in her eyes? That’s death creeping in. Jesus, Marian’s about my age. She won’t have long. Get her some help.’
‘Get off our property. I’m certainly not going to vote for you now, and I doubt that any member of the Garden Club will either once I make a few phone calls.’
‘I don’t want your vote, Mrs Duchamp,’ Whit said. Her face crimsoned, and she fled to the trailer. She shut the door quietly.
Whit roared out of the trailer park. His hands shook.
Get up, I’il bit, make me some bourb’coffee. Now. Move your ass. Babe’s voice, slurring from the past. And Whit crawled from bed, being extra quiet, and made the coffee, poured in the extra big dollop of whiskey to ease Daddy’s morning nerves. He was eight.
Whit pulled in at the next gas station and filled his tank.
Delford. Corey. What else to that story was there? Say Corey did come after Delford with a shotgun. If Delford killed Corey in self-defense, there was no reason to keep it secret. Marian’s testimony about Corey’s plans would have made a self-defense plea simple. If Delford or any of the authorities had heard of Corey’s threats, Corey would have promptly been arrested, charged, and dealt with in the judicial system. That was Delford’s way. He would never play judge and executioner. He had too much at stake to risk it over a punk kid like Corey Hubble.
But if Delford had killed Corey, then Delford could eliminate every iota of bothersome evidence. This theoretical killing might be impossible to prove.
He tried to imagine Corey stalking Delford, a grungy doper rich kid following around a respected officer. Corey would follow Delford, learn his routine, attempt to strike when Delford was most vulnerable – so when was that? What had the boy seen? What had he known? Why was he headed north?
He wondered where Delford was that fateful weekend.
Whit got out of his car, filled his tank, bought a fried apple pie and Dr Pepper at the convenience store, and ate a second lunch, all the while considering what would light the fuse of a pissy, self-centered fifteen-year-old.
He didn’t think of it until he thought about his own childhood, his own missing parent and what actions lit his own slow rage.
Jealousy. Resentment. The hungry need for a parent, even one who shows no interest.
Whit got on his cell phone and called Georgie.