A Dead Husband (Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery) Read online

  A Dead Husband:

  Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery #1

  Anna Celeste Burke

  A DEAD HUSBAND

  Copyright © 2013 Anna Celeste Burke

  www.desertcitiesmystery.com

  Published by Create Space

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under the copyright reserved above, no part of this publications may be reproduced, stored, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without prior written permission except brief quotations for review purposes.

  For written permission please contact Anna Celeste Burke: [email protected]

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Thank you for downloading this ebook. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Samashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Cover Design by Anna Celeste Burke

  Photo by Ivan Mikhaylov From Dreamstime.com

  ISBN-10: 1494413515

  ISBN-13: 978-1494413514

  DEDICATION

  To my handsome husband: one of a kind and my best friend.

  .

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book could not have been written without the help of my husband who always thinks I can do anything I decide to do. And he puts his money where his mouth is, reading drafts and cheering me on.

  Thanks as well to my sister who went above and beyond reading, editing, coaxing and supporting me as she read and edited earlier drafts. Brenda Landy is a loving sister and a good friend.

  Thanks also to my lifelong friend Jane Rafferty for reading an earlier draft of the book, for her helpful feedback about this book and the series, and for keeping my spirits up with her love and support.

  Thanks as well to the enchanting Coachella Valley and the desert resort cities, each one a unique and vital part of what makes this area of the Sonoran Desert, cinctured by scraggy mountain ranges, Shangri-La.

  .

  CHAPTER 1

  Jessica bolted upright in bed. Not a good thing to do. The light of day pierced like a knife. Her world spun. Her head throbbed, and a wave of nausea flowed through her. The force of her body’s revolt knocked her back onto the pillow. She closed her eyes tightly to shut out the light, and waited for the spinning sensation to subside. From somewhere in the depths of stupor she heard again the sound that had startled her awake: a loud snort. She struggled to make sense of the fear and confusion that set in while holding very still to avoid another assault to her senses. Where the hell was she? Risking a peek, she glimpsed up and immediately recognized the vaulted ceiling and dramatic angles of the room in which she had grown up.

  For a moment she was comforted by the fact that she was, at least, in her own bed. The bed was plush and cradled her body, lulling her back toward oblivion. Then it all came rushing in on her, crushing her chest with an anvil of rage and regret.

  “My own bed alright,” she thought. In her mother’s house that is, not her adult, married-woman bed which was now occupied by her feckless, soon-to-be ex-husband, and the blond. Jessica’s breathing quickened and her heart started to flutter, then began to palpitate wildly. Her heart beat out a vicious dirge to match the pounding in her head.

  “Oh shit,” she muttered, as she spiraled toward a full blown panic attack. She gingerly rolled over and scooted toward the edge of the bed, hoping to dig out the paper bag she kept in the bedside table. She needed to breathe. To regain control of her mind and body that had betrayed her so often lately.

  As Jessica reached into the drawer, she heard it again. A snorting sound, only this time it was much louder. Without thinking she jumped out of bed and stumbled, almost head first, into a luxuriously upholstered club chair in the tasteful neutral tones of the Kreiss furnishings her mother adored. The room spun again as Jessica’s knees hit the floor. Her upper body landed on something hard in the chair. She pulled out an empty bottle, Cristal champagne, vintage 2004.

  “A decent year, at least,” she thought.

  A party, there had been a party. She set the bottle on the floor and pulled herself up into the comfort of the bedside chair. Holding her head in both hands she scanned the floor around her feet and spotted two more empty Cristal bottles. That helped explain her current state. Discarded take-out food containers and candy bar wrappers were strewn about, as were articles of clothing.

  The slinky little Dolce & Gabbana dress she had worn last night lay in a twisted heap on the floor, clearly not wearable ever again. A couple grand down the drain. It must have come off in a hurry. One red Alexa pump peeped out from beneath the bed, silk stockings nearby, and a pair of men’s jeans. Jessica’s scanning came to a dead stop. She raised her eyes to gaze on higher ground.

  A barely-clad man was sprawled on the far side of her super-sized bed, face down. Something about him was familiar, but in her addled condition she could not make out who he was. Nor could she remember how he, or for that matter, how she got there. Looking down as quickly as she dared, she noted she was still wearing her Spanx. Jessica let out a little sigh of relief. Things couldn’t have gone too far with the guy in her bed. She was barely able to get into the body shaper thing stone cold sober. She would have needed a lot of help to get out of it if she had done her share polishing off the contents of the bottles in her room.

  The guy on the bed looked like he could have given her the help she needed to get out of the Spanx. He must have been as wasted as she was. Jessica squelched a bout of shame about lingering so long on his well-muscled body, clad in nothing but a pair of boxers. It felt voyeuristic. Not to mention, that even if her life depended on it, she couldn’t say who he was. Besides, technically, she was still a married woman. She hadn’t signed the divorce papers yet.

  “Why isn’t he moving?” Jessica wondered. From where she sat, it didn’t even look like he was breathing. It must have been his snorting that had brought her back so abruptly from the edge of insensibility. But he was dead to the world now, not a sound, not a twitch in any of the bronzed body parts she could see.

  Lifting herself ever so carefully from the chair, Jessica leaned over to get a better look at his face. A shock of peroxided blond hair covered much of it. Jessica hiked one knee up onto the bed. Edging close she reached out to move the hair so she could see his face more clearly. She had barely touched him when he grabbed her hand, smiling at her. Jessica let out a loud whoop and struggled to break free.

  “Whoa,” he said, still dull with sleep.

  “Let go!” Jessica barked, loudly, pulling away from him. Startled, he let go of her hand and the momentum propelled her back off the bed. As her feet hit the floor she continued moving backwards. She tripped over the discarded Cristal bottle, and landed squarely on her butt on the floor, with a loud “shit!”

  Her shrieks evoked an even louder male response. Not from the buff, blond man-boy in her bed who couldn’t have been more than 23 or 24—25 tops. The sound came from the floor on the other side of the bed. Another male head popped up suddenly and Jessica could not stop another startled
yelp. Her heart was starting to rev up again.

  “What the hell, Jessica?” her friend Tommy said. “I’m going to take a technicolor yawn all over this fine Italian duvet you scored at Between the Sheets last week if you don’t stop screaming. I don’t want to ruin it,” he said caressing the silky cinnamon-colored duvet as though it were alive and needed soothing. He rested his head on the edge of the bed then looked up.

  “You will have wasted all that revenge shopping, the time, the energy, the focus. You only have so many divorce tantrums in you, you know?”

  Jessica blinked several times. Her eyes moved from the disgruntled Tommy, still only partly visible from his perch on the floor, to the sandy haired Adonis. Smiling broadly, he was now propped up in her bed. His arms were folded across a well-developed chest, washboard abs exposed above the waistband of his boxer shorts.

  “Not my usual type,” she mused, “if I have a type.” Her eyes lingered a moment longer, focusing more on his face. In horror and recognition, her eyes widened.

  “Ppppool boy!” she gasped loudly. Remembering how little she had on, a new wave of embarrassment worked its way through her body from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. Suddenly, the bedroom door flew open. All three of them wailed and shrank away from the door.

  “Dios mio, Jessica. Que te pasa? Are you okay? Esta bien?” Bernadette asked with a mix of fear and reproach in her voice and on her face. Reproach won out as she took in the scene.

  The woman who stood in the doorway was barely five feet tall. Her short-cropped black hair had started to grey and her face was worn beyond her 60-something years. Jessica knew, without a doubt, she had contributed to that wear and tear.

  Bernadette, whom Jessica sometimes referred to as St. Bernadette when she thought she could get away with it, had officially been hired as the family’s housekeeper before Jessica was born. But she had become much more than that over the years. A confidant when Jessica was at odds with her parents and her most formidable opponent in her teen years. Bernadette possessed an eerie sixth sense for when Jessica was up to no good and had caught her many times doing something she shouldn’t have been doing.

  Bernadette stayed on as manager of the Rancho Mirage estate even after Jessica and her family moved out, one by one. First, Jessica’s father, who, by the time she was 8 or 9 had started to spend less time in the desert and more in LA where his real estate development firm was headquartered. When Jessica was in 7th grade, he divorced her mother and moved to their Brentwood house full-time. Then Jessica went off to college at UC Irvine, on to law school at Stanford, and finally, to married life in Cupertino. Her jet-setting mother was granted ownership of the house as part of the divorce settlement. After Jessica left for College, her mother took off too, returning only when she was not with, or in pursuit of, yet another husband. She was with number four right now, somewhere in the Mediterranean. Her mother’s absence was the main reason Jessica had allowed the family home to become a place of refuge as her adult life collapsed around her. She loved her mother a whole lot more from a distance than when they were in the same room together.

  Bernadette put her hands on her hips. That was a bad sign.

  “What’s going on in here, Jessica?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” Jessica replied feeling like a 15-year-old again.

  “It doesn’t look like nothing to me.” Spreading her elbows out, like a mother eagle’s wings, Bernadette puffed herself up so she looked nearly twice her size. Her black eyes blazed; her nose beaklike. “You going to ‘splain it to me?”

  “It, it...it’s okay Mrs. B,” Tommy said, trying to sound reassuring in the midst of a terrified stutter. He’d known Bernadette almost as long as Jessica had.

  “Oh, it is definitely not okay,” she said shaking her head. As she continued to speak, she pointed at each one in the room. “Not for you, Tommy, or for you, Jessica, or for you, Brien Anthony Williams.”

  “Uh oh,” Jessica muttered. When she used all three names, you were in big trouble.

  “Hey, be cool, Mrs. B, please. I can explain. It’s not what you think, honest. I need this job. I’m saving for a surf safari to the north shore.” Brien looked even younger than Jessica originally thought as he pleaded his case. “Honest, nothing really happened. She’s not even my type, Mrs. B. No offense, Jess.”

  Jessica shot him a dirty look, not his type, huh? “Nobody calls me Jess, Brien.”

  “Uh, sorry, Jessica,” he said with emphasis on the “ca”.

  “He’s right, Bernadette,” Tommy interjected. “Jessica had a lot to drink at her divorce party last night. We all got carried away celebrating her, uh, liberation. We ran into Brien at Costa’s and he joined the party. When it was time to go, he helped me get Jessica back into the limo and home. We didn’t want to wake you up.” He shrank back a little farther away from the door under the pressure of Bernadette’s gaze.

  “Divorce party, bah! Dios dame paciencia! What about all this mess? And why don’t you have any clothes on?”

  “We were hungry so we brought food home, and then we had a little more to drink when we got here. Who could let chilled Cristal go to waste? We cleaned out the limo and came in here to finish it. Jessica tore her own clothes off, honest. That’s all that happened, I swear, Bernadette. I’m not Brien’s type either.” Tommy’s head slumped back down on the edge of the bed.

  “That’s totally the truth, Mrs. B,” Brien added with great sincerity. “Not that Jessica isn’t bangin’, I mean, for an older babe. I’m not denying I had some feelings when I saw her in that black dress, but she was doke, you know, whacked? She was really out of it by the time we got her home. I don’t take advantage, and I don’t mix business with pleasure.” He shook his head emphatically with that last remark, reaching up to push back the lock of blond hair that had fallen over his face.

  Bernadette still looked skeptical but let it go. She took another look around the room and asked, “Who do you think is going to clean this up? Me? Not me. I’m going to go finish my coffee. Go home Tommy. Go home Brien. Jessica you’re going to fix this, right?”

  Jessica nodded in agreement. Nodding her head reminded her that the world had not yet receded from spin mode.

  Bernadette stepped out of the room mumbling in both English and Spanish. Jessica could make out the words “Sodom and Gomorrah” but little else as Bernadette crossed herself and closed the door behind her. She didn’t slam it, but did shut it with enough force to make the three of them pay. They all winced, but once Bernadette was gone it was like the oxygen had returned to the room.

  Released from Bernadette’s grip, they all began to move simultaneously, although not hurriedly. Tommy pulled himself up off his knees. Like Brien, he too was wearing only his boxer shorts. Unlike Brien, Tommy’s shorts were printed with colorful firework patterns set against a navy background.

  “You have to love a guy like that,” Jessica thought. She did.

  Tommy was the younger brother of Jessica’s closest childhood friend, Kelly Fontana. During high school he was always around, doing all of the things younger brothers do to be annoying. Not too long after Jessica went off to college in the OC she learned that Kelly was killed in a hit-and-run accident. Tommy and his parents were devastated. He stayed on to care for them. He still lived in their casita, a tiny but nice guest house. At some point, during her visits to the desert and his visits to the OC, she and Tommy had sort of adopted each other. He became the little brother she never had, and she stepped in for Kelly. It wasn’t always clear who looked out for whom, but they had forged a strong bond.

  While the guys searched for missing articles of clothing and began dressing, Jessica pulled on a robe. Then, dutifully, she started picking up the garbage and straightening the room. She was still wobbly on her feet and those food containers brought on a new wave of nausea, but she kept going. Jessica wanted to be alone and get out of the frigging Spanx that were riding up her ass every time she bent over. She needed a shower and coffee.
Or, maybe she should just crawl back into bed and pull the covers up over her head for at least a week.

  Jessica knew better, of course. First, she had to set things right in the room or there would be hell to pay from Bernadette. Who was she kidding? There was going to be hell to pay no matter what. What else could you expect when you move back home and act like a delinquent?

  The “older babe” comment still stung, mostly because it was true. At thirty-three Jessica was no kid. On the other hand, it wasn’t like she had one foot in the grave, either. As if on cue, a stabbing pain shot up her spine and rattled her brain as she bent over to pick up her ripped dress. Jessica stood up, stretched her back, and stuffed the dress in the trash can she had retrieved from a corner of the bedroom.

  She definitely had to change her ways. No more bar hopping. It was time to get serious about swimming and working out. Her shrink in Cupertino assured her exercise would help with the panic attacks. She’d look better the next time she got caught in nothing but her Spanx. Not that such a thing was likely to happen again. In fact, she still wasn’t sure how it had happened this time.

  “Hey, how did we all end up with so few clothes on?” Jessica asked.

  Tommy looked up as he pulled on his t-shirt. “At first we were all sitting on the floor, stuffing our faces with nachos and downing the Cristal. We each had our own bottle.”

  “Yeah, it was pretty awesome,” Brien added.

  “You slopped something on the dress, Jessica. At first you giggled, then, you just went nuts. Saying all kinds of crazy stuff, like how disgusting it is to be a luxury slut. I wasn’t sure if you were talking about me or you. You were ranting about designer clothes and shoes being a rip off. You actually picked up one of those divine shoes and hurled it across the room,” Tommy explained.