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

  Jessica was nervous. She had been in a jail, but only once. The summer before she started law school, she had signed on for a prelaw community service course. It was intended to expose her to law practice as a generalist by shadowing lawyers and their legal assistants. What she remembered most about the jailhouse visit was the hooting and hollering of inmates. The smirking guard she followed eventually deposited them at the visitation room where the lawyer met with his client. She discovered later that he had taken them the long way around. The second thing she remembered was the odor. Sweat and urine combined with the smell of peppermint from the gum the guard was chewing.

  Jessica took another nervous look around. Before she could decide what to do next, a gentleman in a suit emerged from a door marked by a “staff only” sign. He smiled broadly as he strode quickly across the lobby toward her. Of average height, fiftyish, he had just a hint of middle-aged spread around his waist. His face was round, with a slightly ruddy tone to his complexion, set off by a tangle of dark hair that needed to be combed. His round, wire-rimmed spectacles accentuated the roundness of his face. Something about him reminded her just a tiny bit of Columbo. Perhaps it was the air of disheveled amiability that induced Jessica to smile as she reached for his outstretched hand.

  The suit he wore was clean but wrinkled. In a medium brown color, it looked like it was made of a lightweight fabric, a practical choice for summer in Riverside. It was probably high 80s already this morning, and would top out somewhere in the mid-90s by late afternoon. His tie was a tad crooked, but it had a blue and tan stripe that went well with the light blue buttoned-down shirt he wore. The contrast was striking in comparison to the bespoke attire she had seen yesterday at the big law firm, but a far more reasonable reflection of what a typical lawyer could afford.

  “Ms. Huntington, I presume,” he said as they shook hands.

  “Yes, Mr. Tatum. It’s good to meet you.”

  “I’ve spoken to Chet and he’s willing to meet with you as you requested. I explained that you want to hear what he has to say about this woman he saw murdered in Palm Springs. I also explained the woman may have been someone you knew years ago, a friend and you want to find out what happened to her.”

  “Okay, that’s right. I’m glad he’s agreed to meet with me. Thanks for setting this up.”

  “Well, let’s go. I’ve moved him to the old jail for now, where the inmates in protective custody are held. I thought we’d have more privacy, and he might be more comfortable telling you what he knows where it’s more secluded. There’s a tunnel in the basement that we use to move detainees from here to the courthouse. It will also take us to the old building. Follow me!”

  On that note, he moved to the elevator, signaling to the guards responsible for securing its use where they wanted to go. Together, they rode the elevator down to the basement and made the brief walk down a well-lit corridor lined with security cameras. Another well-guarded elevator in the old jail building took them to the second floor where, after another round of security checks, they were ushered into a room with no windows, a small table and several chairs.

  “We might as well sit down, Ms. Huntington. This might take a few minutes.”

  “Sure, but please, call me Jessica.” She sat down on a metal folding chair. The chair sat, facing the door, on the far side of the faux wood-grain, collapsible table. Dick Tatum pulled up another chair next to her and sat down.

  “So, Jessica, you drove in from LA this morning. Is that where you live?”

  “No, I’m sort of in transition right now. I grew up in the desert, Mission Hills in Rancho Mirage. That’s not far from Palm Springs. I’m back there for the time being.”

  “That’ll be quite a drive if you’re going to be working in LA, won’t it?” His head was cocked to one side, his arms folded over his chest looking at her with unabashed curiosity.

  “Actually, the firm I’m working with is opening an office in Palm Desert. That’s where I expect to do most of what they’ve hired me to do and it’s where you can find me if you need to speak to me. Or you can just call me on my cell.” As she spoke, Jessica reached in to her purse, a little sheepish at the thought that the bag she carried probably cost more than Dick Tatum’s entire outfit. She pulled out one of the business cards Paul Worthington had given her the day before, removing it from a lovely, silver-clad business card holder engraved with the firm’s logo. “My cell number is on here along with the contact information for my office.”

  Dick Tatum took the card and slid it into one sleeve of an inexpensive leatherette card holder. From the other sleeve, he pulled out a card of his own and handed it to Jessica.

  “Here, now you’ll know how to reach me, too, Jessica.”

  “Thank you Mr. Tatum. I...”

  “Dick, please. We’re on a first name basis now.”

  “So, how is it you happen to be in Riverside, Dick? Is this home for you?”

  “As a matter of fact, it is. I’ve lived here all my life...went to undergrad school here in town at UC Riverside. That’s where I met my wife. I thought about going to LA or San Diego for law school, but then my wife got pregnant and wanted to be near her family. So I got my law degree here in town, too, at California Southern.” He had folded his arms over his chest again and that quizzical look had returned to his face. No, it was more intense than that. Sort of like Atticus Finch doing the Vulcan mind probe. Jessica found it mildly disconcerting, and was about to revise her view of the man as amiable.

  “How many children do you have, Dick?” she asked, continuing their polite conversation. Before he could answer, there was a commotion at the door. Jessica looked up as a tall, heavy-set guard in the short-sleeved version of the Sherriff’s department uniform escorted Chester Davis into the room.

  Jessica tried not to display the shock she felt at the sight of Chester Davis. The guy was probably only a few inches taller than she was and, possibly, weighed less. He swam in the bright orange jailhouse jumpsuit he wore. His arms, which extruded from the suit, were nothing but skin and bone. He gave a nod of recognition to his attorney, Dick Tatum, then, stared point blank at Jessica.

  “Is this the lady lawyer what wants to talk to me?” he asked Dick Tatum, without taking his eyes off of Jessica.

  “Yes, Chet, this is Jessica Huntington.” As he spoke, Dick Tatum stood and walked around the table and stopped beside Chester Davis. A much smaller man than the guard, he still dwarfed the frail-looking inmate. “Thanks, Officer Burke, we can take it from here.”

  “Sure thing, Tatum. I’ll be just outside if you need me. Ma’am,” he said, acknowledging Jessica as he backed out of the room and shut the door behind him. Dick Tatum pulled out the chair on the opposite side of the table from Jessica.

  “Take a load off, Chet. Shake hands with Attorney Huntington, why don’t you.”

  Chester Davis bent over the table to shake hands with Jessica before sitting down. For the first time, he smiled, and Jessica could see he was missing teeth. The ones he had left didn’t look so good. There was no way to tell if the missing teeth had been knocked out, or lost through the ravages of drug use. Given his state of emaciation, he was lucky to have any teeth. A lot of drugs, but methamphetamine especially, could have done this to the man sitting across from her. Or maybe barbiturates, they did a number on your teeth, too. Even though Art had told Frank he was in his fifties Jessica had learned that Chet Davis was about her own age. The same age Kelly would have been if she had lived, about 34 or 35. She could understand Art’s mistake, though, since Chester Davis looked older than the 50-something Tatum standing next to him.

  Davis’s hair, the color of wheat, was sparse and patchy. His bloodshot blue eyes were watering, and he was sniffling like he had a cold. Dick Tatum handed him a tissue. He was sick or in withdrawal from whatever he had been using along with the meth. He gazed at Jessica, anxiety on his face. One eye twitched.

  “You gonna help me get out of here?” He asked Jessica, shifting nervously in his s
eat. He folded and unfolded his hands, wiped his nose with the tissue, then wrapped it around his fingers.

  “I don’t know, Mr. Davis. That’s up to your attorney and the prosecutor.”

  “I thought you said she was going to help us. You said she was going to be on our team, Tatum. What’s she saying?” His eyes were wide, and both blinked furiously as he spoke to Dick Tatum.

  “It’s okay, Chet. Ms. Huntington just wants to hear what you have to say. She’s not going to repeat anything you tell her. She can’t do that.”

  “What do you mean, it’s okay? I’m not talkin’ to no one who’s not my lawyer.”

  “Mr. Davis, what Mr. Tatum is trying to say is that anything you say, with your lawyer present, will be a privileged communication. You know, private? That means it can’t be shared, outside this room, without your permission.”

  “I know what privileged communication means.” His eyes narrowed as he looked at Jessica, hard and stubborn. “He said if I talked to you, told you what I know, you was goin’ to help make a valuation of what I said. That you mighta known who this girl was I saw get murdered and that could make me have more credibility. That’s right, ain’t it, Tatum?”

  “Yes, that’s right. But she doesn’t have to be your lawyer to do that. She still has to go by the rules because she’s sitting here in this room with us.”

  “Well, that ain’t good enough. She’s not my lawyer. I ain’t sayin’ nothin’.” Chester Davis turned toward the door. He was getting ready to call the guard.

  “Wait, Mr. Davis. I can fix this, if it’s okay with Mr. Tatum.” Jessica turned slightly toward Dick Tatum. “Have you got a dollar you can loan Mr. Davis?” she asked the attorney, who was already pulling out his wallet.

  “If it’s okay with you, Mr. Tatum, it sounds like Mr. Davis here wants to add me to the team. If you give him that dollar and he gives it to me, we’ll call it a deal. What do you say?”

  “That works for me. Chet is that okay with you?” Dick Tatum took the dollar bill from his wallet and handed it to the jumpy, wiry shell of a human sitting across from them. He slowly reached for the dollar, took it and turned it over. He waited a moment longer, then, handed it to Jessica.

  “Works for me,” he said as he handed the dollar to Jessica. On a piece of paper, she wrote out a receipt, speaking aloud as she wrote: “Received, this the 3rd day of July, 2013, from Mr. Chester Davis, the amount of $1.00 for legal services to be rendered on his behalf in partnership with Richard Tatum.” She signed it and created a space for him to sign it too. He scrawled his name unevenly with hands that shook.

  “Do you want to keep that, or shall I?” She asked.

  “You keep it.” He handed the makeshift receipt back to Jessica, who folded it and placed it carefully into a pouch of the leather portfolio, open in front of her.

  “Okay, will do. Now, how about you tell me about this girl you say was murdered. This is very important to me, since it could have been a friend of mine. Can you tell me what happened?”

  “I bet she coulda’ been your friend. She was real pretty like you. Only she had reddish hair, an’ it was a lot longer, and the most beautiful eyes I ever seen.” Jessica tried not to flinch. She was so glad it had been several hours since she had anything to eat. What she heard after that made her ill.

  CHAPTER 12

  “Can I buy you a cup of coffee, Jessica? You look like you could use one. If it was later in the day, I’d suggest something stronger.” They stood in front of the Riverside County Courthouse, across the street from the detention center building, near Jessica’s car. She was shaken by what she had just heard.

  “I could use some coffee, but you should let me buy it. I’ll spend that dollar I just earned in there. I need to go to the Sherriff’s department next. A Detective Greenwald, in the cold case unit, went to Palm Springs and got Kelly Fontana’s file out of storage or wherever it was in the police department. He left a copy for me to pick up this morning. I know it’s nearby but I’m sort of turned around now. Can we get coffee near there?”

  A glimpse at her watch revealed it was still morning, but not by much. It was already after 11:30. They had taken their time with Chester Davis, letting him tell his story in his own furtive, halting way. It spilled out in fits and starts, with long pauses in which he seemed to be zoned out or ready to bolt. Tatum was right that he was scared, terrified, in fact. At times, it was as if Chester Davis was 20 again, and witnessing the event. The twitching and trembling in his drug-addled body amplified so that he shook like a leaf, and his tremulous voice was barely audible at times. He was not going to make the most credible witness if they ever got far enough along in an investigation to go to trial. Elements of his story were frightfully compelling, and mostly consistent, even when they got him to tell them the story a second and then a third time. The thought of eating made her stomach do a flip-flop, but it was probably bumping up against Dick Tatum’s lunch hour.

  “Actually, if there’s someplace that serves lunch, I’d like to buy that for you. You shouldn’t have to give up lunch to babysit your co-counsel. I admit I’m shaken. Chester Davis tells a gruesome story about what sounds like the murder of a close friend.”

  He gazed at Jessica, thoughtfully. “The office you’re looking for is right there on Lemon Street.” He pointed just past the detention center building. “If you don’t mind walking a couple more blocks in those shoes, we can have lunch at the Salted Pig.”

  “Hang on a second, will you?” Before he could answer, Jessica stepped off the curb and to the driver side of her car. She unlocked and opened the car door, tossed her scarf onto the back seat. Then she fished out a pair of black ballet flats. With one hand on the car door for balance, she switched from the pumps to the flats.

  The whole thing took a couple minutes, max, and she felt lighter. The act of changing her external appearance discharged some of the contaminating stress she had picked up listening over and over again to the horror that Kelly had endured. It probably took longer for Chester Davis to tell his story than for Kelly to have lived through it, or, more accurately, to have died from it. If he was to be believed, Kelly was running for her life, with two men in pursuit, as she fled into the parking lot where she was hit and killed.

  “Okay, now I’m ready. Lead the way, if you don’t mind,” she said to Tatum, who waited on the sidewalk near her car. Without another word, he stepped out and dashed back across the street, and past the detention center building. The Sherriff’s department building was more or less wedged in between Orange and Lemon streets. The entrance was in the middle of the block, facing away from either street. Once inside the building, while saying hello to acquaintances, Tatum hustled Jessica to the information desk in the Central Homicide Unit. She asked for Detective Greenwald. In less than a minute, out walked a tall, thin man in civilian clothes. He wore a long-sleeved shirt with slacks, and no tie or jacket. Art Greenwald was bald except for a fringe of dark hair that ringed his head. Heavy brows hovered above his brown eyes, giving his unsmiling face a stern quality. He examined them both carefully, letting his eyes linger on Jessica.

  Still looking at Jessica, he spoke. “Hey Tatum, how’s it going?” Without waiting for a response, Art Greenwald addressed Jessica. “Nice to meet you, Ms. Huntington. How did it go with Chester Davis?”

  Before Jessica could reply, Dick Tatum spoke up. “It went very well. Chet spilled the beans. As far as I’m concerned, we have ample reason to reopen that case. Jessica can tell you more.”

  “Yes, Detective Greenwald, I guess you could say things went well. I would like to talk to you about what we learned. We were going to go have lunch. Dick suggested The Salted Pig. Did I get that right?” Dick nodded. “Can you join us? My treat, if you have the time, and there’s no rule against my picking up the check.”

  “Sure, just as long as you’re not trying to apply any undue influence with the offer of a free lunch.” He stared at her for another few seconds, deadpan.

  “
No, no. Of course not, I wouldn’t expect...” The detective broke into a smile for the first time, cutting her off. Was he trying to be irritating on purpose? Was this his usual manner or was he singling her out for some sort of special treatment? The crooked little smile that remained on his face could easily have been a smirk.

  “Cut it out, Arty. Jessica’s had a rough morning. She doesn’t need you razzing her. I’m hungry as a horse. Let’s go eat before she changes her mind and we miss out on a free lunch!” Jessica breathed a sigh of relief as the detective chuckled, with the brows moving up and down a bit as he shook his head.

  “Don’t call me Arty, Dick-y! So Jessica, is it? Let me get that file for you, Jessica, and we’ll go to lunch. It’s Art to you, too, not Arty or lunch is off, deal?”

  “Deal,” she muttered, not sure if he was still kidding or he meant that. He moved toward the back of the work area in which he was standing and pulled a large brown envelope out of a bin.

  Dick leaned over and spoke to Jessica in a confidential tone, “Art’s not as funny as he thinks he is, nor as smooth with the ladies as he imagines. You’re bound to get some hazing as the new kid on the block around here. He’s a dependable guy, though, and a good detective. We can count on him if he decides there’s a reason to take another look at what happened to your friend.”

  Jessica thought about the difficult relationship she had developed with Cathedral City’s cantankerous Detective Hernandez, who honchoed the homicide investigation into Roger Stone’s death. He had done more than just rib her. He was down-right derisive at times, and threatened repeatedly to file charges against her for butting into the investigation. It was not too surprising that there was antagonism between police who apprehended bad guys and the lawyers who tried them. Especially lawyers charged with defending guys the police wanted to keep off the streets. Even a conviction didn’t guarantee they’d be off the streets for long, though, at least not until they got to the end of their rope, like Chet Davis.