‘I’m quite sure I’d be a disappointment on film.’
‘You got a good jawline. That’s important. The camera likes you better.’
‘So why? I just would like to know.’
‘There’s no soap opera answer. My folks didn’t beat me, my dad didn’t abuse me, none of that tabloid talk- show shit.’ She set her fork down. ‘I’m the worst-case scenario of a preacher’s kid. My dad was a Methodist minister in Omaha. I wouldn’t mind going back there one day, live life a little slower.’
‘Your mom?’
‘Died when I was four. Lupus.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I don’t remember much about her, except she made the best lemon pie you ever ate. I’d sit on the kitchen floor while she baked, waiting to lick the spoon. And she liked gardenias. The house always smelled of them before she died.’ She leaned back against the booth’s seat. ‘My dad married his church secretary just to give me a mama. She was a mean old cow who’d gone to the Hitler Secretarial School, and when I turned sixteen Dad was dying of cancer. He told me they’d slept together exactly one time. That was it. She cut him off right after because she had all the sensuality of a stale raisin. That’s what’s wrong with this world: there’s not nearly enough love or happiness or orgasms.’
‘About your mom… my mother took off when I was two. Never saw her again,’ Whit said. ‘And my dad was a drunk until I was seventeen.’
‘Geez, you should’ve ended up on the other side of the camera with me,’ Velvet said. ‘Since nothing is our own fault and everything is the fault of our family’s, right? Wrong. I don’t blame my mom or my dad for any of my choices, Whit. I wanted to make a lot of money, I wanted to make movies, and I liked the sex.’
Whit pictured a little girl, sitting in a kitchen smelling of lemon peel and gardenias, the soft camouflage for a sickbed.
‘I wanted to go to film school. Be the female Coppola. But that costs money, Whit, and I wasn’t filling the bank waiting tables or mopping up spilled beer or tutoring kids in algebra. I met a guy. He said I could make a lot of fast cash, use a fake name, no one would ever know.’ She paused. ‘So I stayed in it. We build these little worlds for ourselves and then we never get to move out.’
‘Meaning no one was gonna hire you for legit film work once you went down Porn Street?’
‘The judge’s robe does a nice job of covering your vicious streak.’
‘It’s vicious of me to point out the obvious?’
She said nothing.
‘What you gonna do after Pete is buried?’ Whit asked softly.
‘Go back to California. Find the next guy who can supersize his boner when there’s a camera three inches away and a crew of five standing around picking their noses.’
‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘Don’t do that.’
She smiled but not the kind of smile that said aren’t you sweet. ‘Gee willikers, Whit, you gonna sweep me off my feet and save me from myself?’
‘I just think you could… not do these movies anymore.’
‘Why are you a judge?’ she asked suddenly. ‘You don’t fit the type at all. Too free-spirited to be comfortable judging other people.’
‘My dad got me the job,’ he said, and she laughed.
‘But you’re sticking with it, right? You want to be elected. You’re like a small-town Gerald Ford, wanting everyone to vote for you and really give you the job you got handed. Why?’
‘I never wanted to be a politician. I hate that part of the job. But I think truth matters, even the little truths of small-claims and traffic court.’
‘And death inquests.’
‘Yes.’
‘Bull,’ she said. ‘You like the power, Whit. I can see it in your eyes, that quick flash of yes, I’m the judge, don’t mess with me, I like the power, too. When some lonely, horny guy slides one of my tapes into his machine, I have power over his pleasure. I can make him tingle all over or I can make him as limp as string. Never had much power as a kid, I bet.’ She smiled, a cat warming up for a good purr. ‘Littlest of six boys, you probably didn’t get to pick when you took a pee. I’m not inclined to surrender my power any more than you are, Whit.’
Their bitokes arrived, and Irina plopped in the booth, chatting up Velvet, asking her if she’d walked through the shopping district and seen the Arts Center and the Maritime Museum. Velvet, steeped in sudden courtesy, spoke with complete assurance and sounded like an aspirant to the Junior League. Irina left them, patting Velvet on the hand, telling her how nice it was to meet her.
Velvet toyed with the prescription-pad-size dessert menu clamped above the salt and pepper. ‘What if… you decide suicide, and more evidence comes later that says not suicide?’
‘I can reopen the case, conduct a new inquest. But considering Pete tried to kill himself before, if the autopsy remotely suggests suicide…’
‘I knew you’d cop out. You’re not going to risk your own political neck to help me.’
‘Give me something, then. Do you know anything he knew that could have gotten him killed? Anything specific?’
She shook her head. ‘You don’t think that’s keeping me up at night? That maybe whoever shot him thinks I know what Pete knew? I don’t. I don’t.’
And he saw fear, a naked cancer, in her eyes.
22
It had been a bad afternoon for Claudia.
She got confirmation that Pete Hubble had once attempted – albeit clumsily – suicide. She hated that Faith Hubble was right. About anything.
There was a Judy Cameron in the Port Leo phone book, at the Paris Street address mentioned by Heather. Ms Cameron was a math teacher at Port Leo High School, but she had never heard of Heather Farrell and had no transients lounging at her house.
So Claudia gobbled a messy lunch of barbecue shrimp and coleslaw downtown, then headed for Little Mischief Beach. No Heather Farrell. The two scruffy girls on the beach she’d seen yesterday claimed not to know Heather or to have seen her.
She’d then stopped by the Hubbles, an exercise in futility. Lucinda, Faith, and Sam all stuck by their statements. Lucinda gave yes and no answers. Faith Hubble was polite but clearly irked at going through her statement again. Claudia remained friendly, crisp, and polite with them but feeling out of sorts and frustrated.
You don’t like Faith Hubble, fine. Look at every suspect. Don’t be blindsided, she told herself.
So she tromped back to the station to engage in a Deloache hunt. She spoke with the Houston and Galveston police departments and did simple queries against a statewide criminal database. Thomas Deloache Sr., age fifty, had a quilted history: twice dragged before a grand jury, but never indicted. He had started most likely as an enforcer for the Montoya crime ring and took over when Montoya and his son both died, ignobly, crushed by a beer- laden semitrailer on the Houston stretch of I-10. Thomas Deloache Sr. kept a low profile, but he was suspected of handling about five percent of the drugs funneled through the Houston-Galveston area.
Five percent was worth millions.
The successive generation of Deloaches offered mixed hope for a criminal dynasty. Two sons. Tommy Jr and Joe. Joe was the bright one, attended a Catholic prep school in Miami, went to college at Texas but didn’t finish, opting to enter the family business early. Galveston police suspected him in two murders, but the lack of bodies and evidence stymied investigations. Junior marched to a different, perhaps palsied drummer. He had been arrested a few times on very minor charges, never anything worth more than a slap on the wrist. One hot check, swimming in very public Mecom Fountain in Houston when drunk, attending an illegal dogfight in Galveston. Barely finished high school, never attempted college. She went to go find her boss.
To her surprise Delford seemed more willing to listen to the potentials of a Junior Deloache being involved in
