Luggage By Kroger: A True Crime Memoir (18 page)

"That was before my boyfriends all
left me. Why don't we have a drink tonight?"

"I'll tell you what. I have to
drive down to Galveston tonight and collect the rent on a beach
house I own. Why don't you ride along, and we'll have something to
eat somewhere?"

"That sounds perfect. That's just
what I need, to get out of this city for a while."

So, about seven that night I was
parking my two-hundred-dollar, 1973 Chevy Vega in front of a
relatively new, ranch-style house on Houston's far west side for my
first date with Catherine Mehaffey. She was renting a bedroom there
from a long-time friend who owned it. She assured me their
relationship was strictly business. The arrangement did sound a bit
strange, but I figured I'd learn more when she wanted to share. As
we started walking toward my car she broke out laughing.

"What is that? Is that your
car?"

"I know it needs some work, but
there is a story here."

She stopped and pointed to a 1979,
burgundy-colored Cougar parked in the driveway and asked, "Would
you be offended if I want to take my car? You can still
drive."

Her invitation came as a relief. I feared the
Vega would not even make it to Galveston, and her new Cougar looked
pretty comfortable. I would have bet it even had air conditioning.
I nodded and went to my car, taking the grocery bag of laundry from
the back seat.

"I need to store these somewhere,"
I explained. "I was going to do laundry later, and the car has no
locks."

"Your clothes? In a grocery bag?"
Her laughter had the tone of a woman who had just caught her puppy
trying to climb onto a table. She took the sack, placed it inside
the front door, and said playfully, "Maybe we can run a load when
we get back. We can't have you wearing scruffy clothes. How will
you ever find any new girlfriends?"

Of course, this all had been part of the
courting strategy designed for her. I had hoped to generate pity,
wash a load of clothes, and maybe even get laid while the washer
ran. So far, I thought, she was falling into all my traps. While I
started her car and backed out of the driveway, Catherine popped a
new Billy Joel tape into the dashboard. She caught me peaking at
one of her breasts, exposed behind her red blouse as she leaned
forward to work the controls.

"Don't wreck my car," she teased
with a grin. "You can take a closer look later when you're not
behind the wheel. It's still pretty new and about all I have left
now. This probate case cost me plenty and kept me from working for
a long time."

We stopped for gas, and I filled her tank.
Then we hit the freeway for the sixty-minute drive south to the
island. The ride gave us plenty of time to get acquainted. She said
she wanted to talk about me, but, somehow, the topic always shifted
back to Tedesco and the terrible things people were saying about
her. She was convinced the Tedesco family private eyes were
following us down the highway and kept turning to look.

"Now tell me," she said, "where did
you get that car? You said there was a story."

"It's just temporary. I bought it
from another reporter for two hundred dollars after my wife burned
up my other car."

"She burned up your car? I'd like
to meet her. Sounds like your divorce is more out of control than
you say."

"No, not like that. She drove it
with a radiator leaking and ignored the red warning light. It
warped the engine."

"So that's why you left
her?"

My turn to chuckle.

"The picture on you is becoming
clearer by the minute," she purred. "Here you are, racing through
the streets in a two-hundred-dollar car with your clothes in a
paper bag, after confessing to eight affairs in fours years, and
you're just trying to find out: 'What happened to my
life?'"

"It's actually an amicable split.
We're even using the same lawyer."

"Ah, yes, and don't a lot of them
start that way? But the amicable divorces usually lose their charm.
My advice is to get your own lawyer."

"I already have one. She's using
mine."

"That will change."

She sounded rude, but she had only
voiced a thought I had harbored anyway. I was drawn to her dark
sense of humor and the mystery of her questionable reputation.
After working as a reporter for ten years, I had stopped judging
people by their reputations. I always wanted to keep them in mind,
of course, but I also wanted the facts and tried to approach
everyone with an open mind. Aware that I knew more about her than
most new acquaintances, she worked hard on the drive down to plead
her case. Six feet tall and 200 pounds with dark hair and a full
beard, I considered myself an attractive enough guy to merit some
of her self-serving pitch. I figured she craved a physical
relationship for the short term and didn't want to scare me off.
From what I knew of her past, however, I also expected some secret
agenda might unfold at any time and reminded myself to remain on
guard. I wasn't foolish enough to believe an attractive,
intelligent blonde would view me as merely a sex object or trophy
material.

I found her engaging and
charming—in a brutally dark sort of way. I had trouble believing
many of her comments were on the level. As she joked about the
Tedesco matter, I kept thinking, She must be kidding! She's testing
my limits. I developed a quick fascination for her sick brand of
humor and realized it only reflected my own. I wondered, It's so
bad I enjoy this, something must be wrong with me. Then I reminded
myself, That's right. Something is wrong with me. I better just
face the fact that maybe we were meant for each other. Ironically,
I didn't really find her all that physically gorgeous as some
others had said and under other circumstances might have passed on
a fling. By then, however, the game had begun. Besides, I was
horny.

She confronted the Tedesco issues
head on, voluntarily denying any involvement in his murder without
even being asked. She portrayed herself as an isolated victim of a
male-dominated, bullying legal system—presenting an image
guaranteed to attract a crusading reporter dedicated to afflicting
the comfortable while comforting the afflicted. Her theory had some
merit. Back then, lady lawyers were still fairly rare and female
criminal practitioners almost nonexistent. Yet there she worked,
banging around the courthouse like one of the guys, seeking court
appointments, and getting her hands dirty in the very bowels of the
machine. I knew she had been working the lower level county court
circuit, paying her dues in the trenches, and I respected that. She
made a passionate case for being a turf-war target of the district
attorney's office, as a woman doing battle in an arena reserved for
men.

I also found her professional attitude
appealing. Regardless of what anyone might say about her, she
convinced me immediately she was serious about becoming a top
criminal lawyer. In the back of her mind, she already had begun to
formulate a plan for us, and my mental alarm signal began to ring
as she hinted about it then.

"I think we've both stumbled across
each other at the lowest points in our lives," she said, looking
over her shoulder to check again for Tedesco detectives. "We should
help each other out."

For someone who should have been
guarding her comments, Catherine gushed revelations. She blamed her
Irish temper for most of her problems and vowed to keep it under
control. She said one of her grandfathers had come to America after
killing a cop. She bragged about her role as the defender of her
brothers, claiming as a child to have beaten up a boy who had
bullied one of them. She told me about her marriage to a Navy man
and life in Japan. I noticed a theme. In Catherine's relationships,
she had always seen herself as both the provider and
protector.

When Billy
Joel's
Only the Good Die Young
began to play, she raised the volume and told me
that song could be her anthem. I listened to some of the words in
that ballad about the liberation of a secluded Catholic girl. He
sang: "You heard I run with a dangerous crowd, we're not too pretty
and not too proud. We might be laughing a bit too loud, but that
never hurt no one. Because only the good die young." And, "I'd
rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints." I noted my
age of thirty-two and wondered if I still had time to die
young.

As if it were something very
important, she declared red as her favorite color, citing her
blouse and the car we drove. She said she had wanted to wear red to
the probate trial but her lawyer stopped her. Just as I
sarcastically wondered why, she returned to Tedesco and unleashed a
torrent of complaints about him and the Special Crimes division of
the district attorney's office, investigating the case with a focus
on her. She mimicked one of her lawyer friends who had called the
family's crime stoppers hotline claiming to be a Greek sea captain
with inside information on the murder and demanding a reward. She
laughed about the scene at his townhome when she scaled a fence to
get at his pre-Columbian art from South America—artwork she
believed belonged rightfully to her. Tedesco had been involved in
all sorts of criminal activity, she said, from smuggling art to
running drugs. He had hundreds of enemies who wanted him dead. So,
why did the cops focus on her? she asked.

"And who are these special guys
from special crimes?" she asked rhetorically. "I guess that's the
gang that goes after lawyers. They broke up my relationship with
Officer Joe, snatched him up from the middle of the street where he
was directing traffic, and told him to forget about me. They'll be
talking to you, too, when they find out about this."

I laughed at that. I told her what I knew
about the unit. I covered their activities and talked to the
prosecutors there on a daily basis. I had no fear of Special
Crimes. It had been formed a few years before as part of a trend
sweeping the legal law enforcement landscape. It worked closely
with the police to help them investigate complicated cases that
ranged from public corruption to embezzlement. Only the top
prosecutors could join the squad, and they controlled their own
team of police detectives assigned specifically to Special
Crimes.

"Hey," I said, "you should feel
honored to be a target."

She growled a little and then
laughed.

"This is a nice ride," she said,
checking the rear window one more time. "I'm really starting to
relax. But promise me one thing. Believe me when I tell you I had
nothing to do with the murder of George Tedesco. Give me a
chance."

"Catherine," I said, as we drove
over the causeway above Galveston Bay and onto the island,
"everybody starts with a clean slate from me."

TWENTY-FIVE

October 15, 1979

Catherine needed less than thirty
minutes to start scribbling furiously across that clean slate I had
just handed her. That's how long it took to drive to the crummy
joint where my tenant worked tending bar, walk inside, get a beer,
and begin a discussion about paying the rent. I had long before
given up any hopes of ever getting those rent payments by mail.
Every time Cindy or I had called, he'd said he just dropped it in
the box. After a week with no arrival he'd complain it was lost and
send it again. Finally, I realized the only way to collect would be
to just show up and confront him.

"Wow," said Catherine as we walked
into that dive, which was little more than an old house trailer
with a hand painted sign that read Pirates Cove, a couple of
tables, and a makeshift bar. "If your tenant works in this place,
your beach house must be one of the bargain estates down here. We
need to hang out here for a couple of hours. I bet I can find some
clients in the Pirates Cove."

"Yeah, the beach house is quite a
shithole," I told her. "It's so bad, Cindy just told me to take it.
She didn't want to fuck with it any more."

My tenant feigned a welcoming smile, set a
couple of beers on the counter, and assured me there had been no
need for my trip all the way to Galveston.

"I could have just put a money
order in the mail."

"No problem," I said. "I enjoyed
the drive. Say hello to my friend, Catherine."

She took a sip of Miller Lite and watched him
begin to wiggle.

"So," I said. "That must mean you
have the money ready, eh?"

"Well, I have it. But I really need
to keep half and pay you later. I have a little cash flow problem
right now…"

"You know, I came all the way down
here and I'd rather not make the trip again. Is there some way you
can pay it now? It was overdue on the 10th."

"I know. But if you'd just waited
and given me another week you could get it all. I'm really going to
need some of this…"

"All right, give me a couple
hundred, and we'll figure the rest of it later."

When he laid two one-hundred-dollar
bills on the bar and turned to walk away, Catherine couldn't stand
it any longer. She slammed her bottle down on the counter and
yelled at him.

"Hey," she screamed. "What are you
doing? You have the money, you owe the money, you need to pay him
now."