Luggage By Kroger: A True Crime Memoir Read Online Free PDF Page A

loaned her a van to
transport property from the home. She said: "It passed like a
dream."

    No one expected Catherine to
present the image of a grieving widow when she took center stage at
the deposition in July, barely six months after the brutal murder
of the man she claimed had been her husband. But none of the
lawyers either could have predicted the dark mix of sarcasm that
spouted from her mouth. They knew she had flaunted her role in
interviews with police investigators. And the way she handled
questions in the civil deposition just enhanced her image as
someone who felt untouchable in Tedesco's death.

    I never had a
chance to read her deposition until ten years later. By then, I was
able to smile about her cocky comments, shake my head with a laugh,
and whisper softly to myself: Yes, that's
my gal .

    FIVE
    September 28, 1979

    "That's her. She's here. That's the
bitch everybody is talking about."

    It would not have mattered if I'd
been at that deposition two months earlier, or if I had known in
September about the other things I learned later on. It would not
have changed what happened between Catherine and me. This was a
special, peculiar time for me—a period that left me vulnerable for
a dance down the dark side of the street with Catherine Mehaffey as
my escort. Freshly separated from my second wife, I was looking for
adventure. Although Tedesco had complained about the way she cooked
food, I thought she might make the perfect chef for serving plates
of action.

    Responding to my friend's whispered
alert—"That's her"—I turned to look out in the yard where he was
pointing his finger not so discreetly at Catherine as she strolled
toward the house looking for the bar. We had come after work on a
Friday afternoon to some lawyer's cocktail party organized to
celebrate nothing more than the end of the week and his purchase of
this upscale townhouse near Houston's bustling downtown. The
lawyer's name was James, and he had offered his verbal invitation a
few days earlier during a personal visit to our office in the
criminal courthouse press room.

    "There'll be lots of nasty crack,"
James had said, announcing his party.

    "Nasty crack, huh?" I had said.
"How can I refuse?"

    So it was that I came to be
standing in James's living room, staring through his French doors,
and watching the nastiest crack in the courthouse as she headed my
way. This widow, of course, wore red. But at least it wasn't a
flaming firehouse red that might have offended old-schoolers who
prefer their widows shrouded in black. Her dress had splotches of
yellow to complement the golden curls parked just above the
shoulders. At five-feet-three-inches and about a hundred pounds,
she really didn't look the menace that most would have us believe.
She was considered attractive but not necessarily a knockout. In
later years I would recall her as resembling the adult actress
Reese Witherspoon, who was only three years old at that time. But
she also had the hard look of a bad girl, and that played to my
weakness. A menace? She just looked like fun to me.

    "So this is the notorious Catherine
Mehaffey," I teased, approaching from behind as she ordered a
scotch from the bartender. I figured this might be the only time in
my life I'd be able to use that opening line.

    She turned and squinted from the corner of one
eye. I could tell she was not immediately impressed with my attire.
I stood out from the legal crowd in their pinstripe suits. My
khakis and herringbone jacket betrayed my station. But after all, I
did represent the working press, and I had a reputation to
maintain. I also offered a display of red and yellow with my tie: a
field of red decorated with yellow images of the three monkeys
warning observers to see, hear, or speak no evil. It was a
tradition at the courthouse for me to wear the thing when juries
deliberated big cases, and now it seemed fitting as I began to
flirt with Catherine Mehaffey. I asked for a scotch and saw