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

her
watching.

    "And you would be…?" she asked,
waiting for me to fill the blank.

    I offered my right
hand in a professional greeting, took the drink with my left, and
said, "Gary Taylor. I cover courts for The
Houston Post ."

    Immediately she jerked back with a sneer, as
if someone had thrown a dead skunk on the floor. She sipped her
drink and peeked over the edge of the glass. I stared her down
until she spoke.

    "I used to like that paper. It used
to be the start of every day for me. Now it just makes me sad. I
still read it, but not my mother. She can't stand it anymore just
because of Fred King."

    "So Fred wrote a story you didn't
like? Those police stories can be gruesome," I said, realizing
that, as our police beat reporter, Fred had written the story about
Tedesco getting his head caved in. I recalled how Fred had managed
to work Mehaffey into that story, noting police had questioned her
about the common-law marriage lawsuit and suggesting to even a
casual reader: "gold digger" or, worse, "femme fatale."

    "If this ends with Faye Dunaway
playing you in the movie, you'll feel better about Fred," I
said.

    That made her giggle because, as I
would learn later, she was a sucker for old crime movies,
particularly those with bushwhacking babes, dangerous darlings or
murderous muffs."I can't apologize for Fred, he's one of our best
reporters," I continued in a professional vein. "I only control my
own stories, and I don't think you've made any of those yet. But I
do remember that Tedesco story was buried on the inside with no
pictures. Maybe nobody read it but you and your mother."

    "It was read by everyone I know,"
she said, swishing a mouthful of scotch as she spoke. "Now I have
the estate trial starting Monday. We'll see who gets the last laugh
on this. Are you covering that?"

    "Nope. I'm strictly criminal
courts. I don't even know if we're going to cover it. We're in one
of those periods where editors see stories like that as detracting
from more serious stuff like the mayor's race."

    "That would suit me just fine if no
one is there to hear me tell about the merciless beatings and abuse
I took from that man."

    We were starting
to click. Two or three times in everyone's life they find another
person playing their tune. This was happening then to us. As we
talked, I knew both of us were thinking in the back of our
minds: I'm going to fuck you, sooner or
later. That's where this conversation is headed .

    If you say you've never had such a
Norman Rockwell moment yourself with a potential sex partner, I'm
sorry. But our roadmap to the bedroom was marked in scarlet letters
from the moment we met. I can't explain how. But it happens. It's
happened to me maybe four times in life. And this was one of
them.

    "So, where is Mrs. Taylor tonight?"
Catherine finally asked, not so subtly digging for a crucial piece
of information.

    I sipped my scotch and took the
bait: "Which one? You might say I'm estranged at the moment from
wife number two. So I hope she's home with the girls."

    "Ah, Mr. Taylor, that's too bad.
Just when we were getting along so well. But I have such bad luck
with the estranged. You know, they always take what they want then
run back to wife number two or one or whatever. Then I get the
broken heart."

    "I don't think that's an option on
this one. You can trust me on that."

    "Trust you, huh? You'd like that,
wouldn't you? You'd be panting like a dog and begging for more if
you could get some of this. Then you'd go off and run back to that
wife number two the minute she says: 'Oh, Gary, I think we've made
a terrible mistake. The girls need their father.' And you'd have
this big, shit-eating grin on your face like you just scratched the
seven-year itch with a steel sheep's comb and got away with
it."

    She finished off her scotch, then
continued: "I've been there. But it is fun to flirt with you a
little. Once that divorce is final, you give me a call, and I'll
buy you a decent scotch and maybe, uh, a new