Luggage By Kroger: A True Crime Memoir Page 25

  "Yeah," I said. "Let's go on and find it so I can get out of town tonight."

  The 609 Fannin Building was just as I had pictured in my mind—dark and foreboding. I had placed my psyche on full-scale red alert, using every bit of peripheral vision to check the doorways and side rooms as we walked down the hall to the offices she shared with Lloyd Oliver. I drew blueprints in my head of plans for action should I be attacked by Kenneth, or that Tommy Bell guy, or anyone else she might have had waiting. But nothing happened. We went into her office, and she took a seat behind her desk. She rummaged around in a drawer and pulled out my key.

  "How about that?" she said. "Just like I thought. I'm sorry. I forgot I put that in there for safekeeping. See, you threw that ridiculous fit for nothing."

  What is the point of this? I thought. But I just said nothing, continued to look around the room, and held out my palm for the key. She gave it to me and then leaned back in her chair. She pointed at the couch where we had enjoyed that afternoon sex romp and laughed. Then she said, "Hey, why don't we have a drink. One last drink for old times, huh? Will you do that one thing for me? I don't want to leave things like this. I really didn't hide your key as a trick to get you up here. What am I going to do to you, anyway?"

  Before I could resist, she got up and took a bottle of scotch from a cabinet behind her, filled two tumblers, and handed one to me. I took a sip.

  "I need your help," she said. "I am losing my mind because of the murder of George Tedesco."

  "Has something new happened on that? My ears are tired of listening to you. And this day has worn me out."

  "You don't want to hear the real story—what actually happened to George?"

  "I'm listening," I said, taking a drink of the scotch.

  "You aren't wearing a wire, are you? Do I need to search you? Sometimes I think you might have been working for Special Crimes from the start."

  "What, as an undercover agent of love? You aren't searching me. Say what's bothering you, or I can go. I'm not that curious any more."

  "Sure you are," she said. "I need your advice."

  She paused to sip her drink and then continued with her story.

  "A week after the murder I got a call from an old boyfriend who wanted to have coffee. He was a younger man, someone I had known right before George swept me off my feet."

  I grunted at that description, but she just waved me off.

  "Anyway, this boy took me out for coffee. He asked me, 'Are you my attorney?' I said, 'Sure.' He said, 'So anything I say is confidential?' I said, 'Of course.' Then he said, 'I killed George.' He said he had let his anger build while we had been together until he just couldn't stand the way George had treated me. He went to George's condo to confront him, lost his temper, and beat him to death. He said George had pulled a gun on him, but this boy said he was able to grab the leg of a bar stool from above and smack George in the head with it. He said, 'I killed George for you and now you have to help me out.'"

  "What did you say?"

  "I asked him what he planned to do. He told me he wanted money to leave town. He needed help. So I gave him two hundred dollars. I told him to leave the state of Texas and never come back."

  "Where do I come into this? What is your question for me?"

  "You know a lot about the law from an outsider perspective," she said, pushing a copy of the legal code of ethics across her desk to me. "Look in there and tell me what you think my obligations are. Now I wish I had never told you about this."

  "If this is true, you need a lawyer."

  "I've discussed it with a couple of them. They tell me I have no choice but to keep it confidential. But I have to get the investigators and Special Crimes off my back. I have to figure out a way to tell this. Can you help me?"

  With that story she now had served up a third version of the Tedesco murder. Initially, she had said she knew nothing about it. Then, that night out at Mike's, she had described the murder in vivid detail, teasing she had done it herself. Now, this night, she had pinned it on some old lover young enough to call a boy. I still wasn't sure which version to believe and certainly didn't know how to advise her on this latest tale. So I improvised.

  "Here's an idea. Take a lie detector test. When they get to the question of what you know about Tedesco's death, you claim attorney-client privilege and tell them you can't answer it. That way, they get the test, you don't have to lie, and they know they need to look for somebody else."

  She buried her head in her hands and started to cry again. She started shaking her head and muttering, "I can't do that. It won't work. I'm so afraid."

  I sat there watching her for a few minutes and reconsidered my idea. It was pretty silly. But it was all I could offer, if indeed that was what she really wanted. I started considering an exit strategy from the building, wondering if she would want to walk out with me.

  "I'm really scared," she said. "I can't be alone. These last two nights have been unbearable. Please come with me to my apartment, and this is the last thing I will ever ask of you. Just get me inside, and I'll make us a dinner. Let me make a drink and calm down. Then you can leave, and that will be the last of me for you. I promise."

  She was offering yet another chance for a final, peaceful solution. I didn't believe it. But it sounded like the best exit strategy for the moment. I thought to myself: Go over and tuck her in. Do her this favor and then see what happens. You have to get out of the building anyway, and it's probably safer to leave with her at your side rather than somewhere back behind in a dark hallway.

  So I drove over to her place. I went inside. She fixed a couple of hamburgers. We ate them and had a drink. I wished her goodnight. And, I'm sure she was more surprised than me when I declined her invitation for one last night in her bed. I walked out the door hoping we had finally placed a peaceful seal on our story as a couple.

  Sure. And those monkeys were just then taking wing from heaven to deliver bags of gold for everyone on earth.

  FORTY-SIX

  January 10, 1980

  How had I forgotten Barbara?

  I still ask myself that question decades after my entanglement with Mehaffey. Things likely would have been quite different had I only remembered Barbara sooner. She was a smoldering blonde a couple years younger than me. She worked in the advertising sales department of the rival Houston Chronicle and ranked as one of the paper's top producers. That did not surprise me. I had a hard time imagining any local businessman refusing her solicitations for a sale. We had met by chance in late 1978, about a year before my break-up with Cindy and my introduction to Catherine. At that time, I had been mired in coverage of that marathon trial of the Fort Worth billionaire, T. Cullen Davis. One night after a lengthy session in court, I had wandered into a downtown bar where Barbara was shooting pool. Unlike a lot of the newspaper sales staffers, she enjoyed the company of the reporters and liked to hang out with us. Someone introduced us, and I experienced another moment similar to what I would experience later with Catherine. I felt that natural magnetic connection that happens only so often in a person's life. I knew that Barbara and I were destined somehow to get together. Since then I had filed her away in my mind as someone more important than a one-night stand. I had seen her as an option for a serious relationship. Still married to Cindy and too busy at work to want more than a detached romp, I let our night in 1978 over beers and a pool game slide with only a little flirting and a promise to give her a call.

  Somehow then, a year had passed. Distracted by the turmoil of my break-up with Cindy and its link to Catherine, I had forgotten about Barbara being at the top of my list of options. Then I had just happened to bump into her at another downtown bar during December on one of those rare nights when Catherine was elsewhere for a couple of hours. I was walking in as she was headed out. I was surprised when she recognized me and stopped to chat.

  "Barbara, right?" I asked, playing coy as if I had forgotten the name of option number one. I almost slapped myself in the head as my mind
screamed: You dumb fuck! What are you doing with that crazy Catherine when you had this chick in the card file from a year ago? You should have called this Barbara the day after Uncle Al ran you off!

  "Gary? You never called," Barbara said with a wink and a grin. She didn't strike me as the type to sit by the phone, and I wouldn't have been interested if she were. With a hint of sarcasm, she said, "Been busy, I guess, huh?"

  "You wouldn't believe it. I've been wrestling with a divorce."

  Eager to gauge her response to revelation of my newfound availability, I was rewarded immediately with a quick smile she could not hide, a wonderful green light that indicated full speed ahead. Just then I realized we had blocked the doorway to this bar. I recalled my holiday obligation to Catherine and the importance of shedding her from my life before I invited anyone new into it. I pulled Barbara out on the sidewalk and held her hands.

  "We should get together," I said. "You interested?"

  "I'd ask you to give me a call, but we both know how that works with you," she said with a giggle.

  "I will call you this time, you can count on it," I promised. "I'm really glad I ran into you. First of the year. January. I'll call you at the Chron, we'll have some drinks and get acquainted."

  "I expect it to happen this time," she said and turned to walk away.

  So, after I had achieved what I considered a final split from Catherine on Sunday and with my Wednesday divorce hearing on the front burner, I had called Barb that Monday and made a date to meet her after work on Thursday, January 10, at a bar called Corky's. I hoped this would be the first step toward a new beginning. And I was thinking about the possibilities that afternoon in the courthouse press room, finishing up a story, when Catherine stormed in unannounced. Our experiment with locking that door had been a dismal failure as soon as we had tried it back around Thanksgiving when Strong played the Exorcist Tape for our press room colleagues. It had just proved too much of a hassle to go unlock it repeatedly for all the traffic coming through that room. Of course, every lawyer or reporter had demanded an explanation for the heightened level of security, and I had realized quickly it was more embarrassing to explain than to just take my chances with an unlocked door. Catherine hadn't even visited the press room during our Christmas reconciliation. But now, just a few hours before my date with Barbara, she suddenly felt the urge. When she demanded we leave for a private talk, I refused and then asked her to leave the room.

  "It's important," she pleaded. I realized her demeanor had changed from the night before, when we had parted company at her place after her invasion of my divorce hearing. Her tone had grown desperate. I had become so immersed in her moods I believed we had reached a crossroads. I thought her dangerous and considered it my responsibility to evict her from our work area. So I picked up the telephone and started to dial.

  "I'm calling the sheriff's department, Catherine, and I'm going to tell them to send deputies up here to remove an unwanted guest from the press room," I said, wondering if anything like this had ever happened before. She glared and slammed her fist down on the phone, breaking the connection. I ignored her and started dialing again, but she leaned across my desk and killed the phone again. When I tried dialing a third time, Catherine reached down and jerked the phone cord from the wall.

  "OK," I said, trying to stay calm. I had decided after our physical confrontation at Thanksgiving that I could never again touch her in anger, recalling her regret over failing to tell those cops about "the beating." She would exaggerate any touch as a "beating" and, as the male, I knew I always would appear the aggressor. So I pulled on my jacket and scooted around my desk, where she blocked my path. "Since I can't use the phone, I'm leaving here and going to the sheriff's department to tell them in person to come here and get you out."

  She responded by grabbing me around the waist as I walked toward the door. She dug her toes into the floor, forcing me to drag her across it. The other reporters did not know whether to react with anger, laughter, or assistance so they all just sat there watching the show. Realizing I had to loosen her grip somehow, I stopped just short of the door as if I had given up. Catherine took that as a sign of surrender and relaxed for a second while coming to her feet. I seized that opportunity and broke for the door, leaving her in my wake. I opened it and raced through, heading down a hallway toward a staircase. Relentless as always, Catherine came crashing behind, and I heard her on the steps above as I reached the third floor on my way down. So I stopped.

  "Please, Gary, if you will just listen to me I will stop chasing you. It is important."

  "OK," I said, turning as she came down the steps. "What is it?"

  "I know what you are getting ready to do, and I don't want you to do it."

  "Huh?"

  "I know who you are taking out tonight. You can't do that. We have to be celibate for a while until we get things straightened out."

  Celibate? I thought. Did she just say celibate? She's lost her mind.

  I did not know any way Catherine could know about my pending rendezvous with Barbara unless Catherine truly had supernatural powers. In that case, I concluded, I would just surrender and let her keep me in her apartment for the rest of my life. So, I figured she had just made a wild guess that I would be flexing my independence. She had let her paranoia bubble to the top and was testing me out. I decided against saying anything that might confirm my plans. Instead, I wanted to be as forceful as possible at this moment because I saw it as the true breaking point of no return. If the mere thought of a rival for my affections makes her anxious enough to babble about celibacy, I thought, a peaceful split would be out of the question.

  "Catherine," I said firmly, "you have to accept the fact that I am going to be seeing other women. There will be no celibacy. I'm tired of letting you bully me around. The holidays are over and so is our relationship. Didn't we talk about this on Sunday?"

  She looked stunned and bit her lip, so I continued my lecture.

  "I am going to live my life from now on the way I want to live it."

  "I am begging you," she said. "Don't do this. There will be trouble if you cheat on me."

  "Cheat on you?" I asked, dumbfounded. "I don't know what you are talking about. But I do know whatever I'm doing is no longer your business. I have a right to live my life without you in it, if that's what I want. I did not cheat on you during Christmas. I kept my word. And now we are separate individuals. I don't want this to be ugly, but if you make it that way, then that's how it will be."

  Then I turned and went down the stairs. I left the courthouse early and headed to Corky's where Barbara arrived right on time after I had loosened up with a couple of drinks while waiting for her. She smiled when she spotted me, then came over to my table and sat down. She ordered a drink, and we made small talk for a few minutes. Then she placed her drink on the table and looked into my eyes.

  "Do you know someone named Catherine Mehaffey?"

  I couldn't believe my ears. I leaned my head back and twisted the muscles in my neck to keep them from getting stiff with stress. I wondered if she had heard about my relationship with Catherine and just wanted to know more. I nodded, took a sip of my drink, and asked, "Why?"

  Barbara took a deep breath and said, "She came to see me today."

  "You're kidding me."

  "She came to my office at the Chronicle and introduced herself as your girlfriend."

  I started shaking my head and groaning. Trying to contain my anger, I just said, "She's not. Don't listen to her."