Free A Kiss Gone Bad by Jeff Abbott Page A

Eddie,’ she said.
    In Pete’s bedroom, Claudia carefully flicked on a light, using the edge of her hand. Black fingerprint dust marked the most
obvious spots: the light switch, the door handle, the metal nightstand table, where Gardner and the deputies helping out from
the sheriff’s office had dusted and lifted prints.
Thank God David wasn’t on duty.
She didn’t want to see him up close and personal quite yet, and it would be impossible to avoid with her in the police department
and him in the sheriff’s office.
    The body and the bedding were gone. She opened the closet door. She pulled some of the files out of the box. The minutiae
of everyday life: phone bills, store receipts, credit card slips, bank records, all haphazardly clumped together. Pete wasn’t
rich, but he wasn’t destitute. He had a balance slightly over ten thousand dollars in his Van Nuys, California, account according
to his most recent statement, and he’d opened a new account last week atthe Texas Coastal Bank, Port Leo branch, with an opening balance of four thousand. She jotted down the Van Nuys address;
she wanted to check with the police there about both Pete and Velvet. It bothered her that he was staying on a boat with ties
to a criminal family. Such affiliations did not appear overnight with a snap of the fingers.
    She was searching the main cabin when Gardner came back aboard.
    ‘Hey, Eddie, did you see a laptop computer?’ she asked.
    Gardner inspected a handwritten inventory pulled from his pocket. ‘There was a small portable printer in the other room, but
I didn’t see a computer.’
    ‘Help me look.’
    Nothing turned up except some dust bunnies beneath a couch and a box of shotgun ammunition hidden in a back drawer.
    ‘Two people have told us Pete had a laptop and now he doesn’t,’ Claudia said.
    They searched again, behind furniture, in closets, in cabinets, for another half hour.
    ‘I don’t think it’s here, Claudia.’
    Claudia crossed her arms. ‘So where the hell is it?’

11
    Early Tuesday morning Whit awoke to his father prodding at him with a thick finger.
    ‘Get up, little bit,’ Babe Mosley rumbled, and Whit was lost in a childhood moment, his father between wives, Whit being ordered
     to rise before dawn and fix Daddy a coffee with bourbon. Breakfast at the Mosleys’ had never been like in the cereal commercials.
    Whit blinked at his father’s frown. ‘Shit. Did my alarm not go off?’ Hopefully he was still dreaming, if he was going to suffer
     being referred to as ‘little bit.’
    ‘Why didn’t you tell us last night?’ Babe demanded. Despite his childish nickname he was a big barrel of a man, close to six-five
     and two hundred fifty pounds. He boasted a full head of grayish blond hair and clear blue eyes, but the cherubic face had
     softened like a souring cheese, moldered more by the dozen-plus years he’d spent drunk. The vodka aged him more than the weight
     of raising six boys and marrying four wives. Years of sobriety, combined with an addiction to various fitness programs, had
     restored his vitality, but no medicine had erased the drunkard’s veins.
    ‘My son’s the goddamned judge – a job I got you, thank you kindly – and I have to hear that Pete Hubble is dead on the radio.’
    Whit stumbled to the commode and luxuriated with a heavenly pee. Babe followed him to the doorway.
    ‘Daddy, I can’t talk about cases.’ Whit flushed the toilet and started the shower.
    ‘This is your golden opportunity, Whitman.’
    Whit doffed his boxers and stepped into the hot spray. ‘Say what?’
    ‘Lucinda Hubble rules this county like Queen Bee Victoria. This story’s gonna be huge. It’s your chance to show the voters
     what you can do, boy.’
    ‘I thought that’s what I was doing for the past six months.’ Whit squirted shampoo into his hand and soaped his hair.
    ‘Yes, but this gets your name in the papers. Front page. You got to milk this, son. When you gonna do the inquest?