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

  “Well, it must be good to get a break from cooking, anyway. You have to be running at top speed with your job and the kids and all. Aunt Evelyn said you and Mary have joint custody.”

  “Yeah, it’s supposed to be fifty-fifty, but since Mary went back to school last year, I’ve tried to pitch in a little more. This summer, the kids are with me full-time. I’m not sure what’s more challenging, keeping them busy while school’s out or juggling all the stuff they have to do when school’s in session. At least in the summer, there are fewer battles about homework. You’re right, any break is welcome at this point, for the kids too, I’m sure. Mom and Dad don’t spoil them, but they do indulge them. You know Dad, though. He’s a tough guy and expects them to play by his rules when they’re at his house, and they do. At home with me, they bitch and moan, and split hairs about every rule. I am not looking forward to spending the next few years with two teenagers. I’ve had a preview of coming attractions with preteen hormonal flashes out of both of them this year. Maybe they still blame me for the divorce.”

  Could Frank have kids on the verge of adolescence and only be a couple years older than she was? Jessica did the math. He had married his high school sweetheart even before he finished college, and they didn’t wait long to have kids. “Holy shit!” she thought. Frank’s kids could easily be on the precipice of adolescence. Here she sat, sidelined, the body clock ticking, not even close to starting a family.

  “Well, I know it’s not fair, but when my parents split, I wanted to make them both pay. It was like they had done me wrong, somehow. You must remember what a little bitch I was.”

  “Oh, I do remember. You were cute but you had a major chip on your shoulder. Hell, I wasn’t the easiest kid to deal with as a teenager either. I did my share to help my dad grow old. And, I’m lucky my mom still wants to take care of me! Like I said, I am not looking forward to what’s in store for me as a single parent. Then, I guess we’re both lucky just to be here, huh, considering poor Roger?”

  “Yeah, poor Roger,” Jessica echoed in agreement.

  “And poor Kelly, too, she’s the reason I want to talk to you.”

  “Kelly? You mean our Kelly? Kelly Fontana?” All of Jessica’s senses were immediately on high alert. Kelly Fontana was dead. Only nineteen years old at the time of her death, it had shaken them all. Why on earth would he want to talk about Kelly?

  “That’s right, our Kelly. Something’s come up, and I’d like to get your input. Sorry to be so cryptic about this, but we should talk about it in person rather than by phone, on the fly. How about two o’clock? Is that okay?”

  “Sure, Frank. I’ll see you then.” Jessica said goodbye and put down the phone.

  “Let the ruminating begin,” she announced to the empty patio as she dived back into the pool, letting the water envelop her in its silky embrace. Wondering: “cute,” huh...“major chip on her shoulder,” huh...“poor Kelly,” huh? Jessica finally settled down as she struck up the beat and put in more miles in the water.

  CHAPTER 3

  Jessica finally dragged herself from the pool and into the house, using the sliders that led directly from the patio into her bedroom. Her huge bed had not been made. A copper-colored duvet, in a slinky, expensive fabric imported from Italy, hung half off the bed. Beneath the duvet, buttery soft Egyptian cotton sheets were adorned with a delicate paisley print in a paler shade of copper. The colors on the bed played off the earth tones on the walls, set at intriguing angles. Clerestory windows allowed sunlight to stream in, highlighting particular surfaces and casting shadows on others.

  Jessica’s mother loved the look of “layered neutrals”, based on a palette of creamy whites, taupe and sandy beiges; browns that ranged from light toasty tans to dark espresso; and the blackest black. The neutral scheme was used throughout the house in Mission Hills. It was made more interesting by varying the textures in each room. Stone tile, some polished and some unpolished; wooly woven rugs, grass cloth and silk fabrics; shiny mirrors and grainy woods set off the neutrals. So did pops of color in the art and accessories.

  Jessica craved color. As a teen she had insisted that more be added to the walls in her room. Her mother accommodated her request, with enthusiasm, and the walls were painted a rich golden hue. The fireplace surround, created by two interlocking L-shaped blocks of stucco, was painted in contrasting shades of a deep auburn-brown and a dark coral. She and her mother loved the way it looked so much they had added color to accent walls elsewhere in the house.

  Pillows of various shapes and sizes were piled on a Kreiss bench at the foot of Jessica’s bed. The whole house had been furnished in the plush contemporary designs custom made by Kreiss. It was another sign of the times that the company had declared bankruptcy. Stopping to make the bed so she would be less tempted to climb back in it, Jessica wondered if her mother knew Kreiss had gone belly up.

  It had been several weeks since Jessica had spoken to her mother or her father. When she filed for divorce she felt obligated to let them know. Her mother, in Monaco at the time with her fourth husband, was casual about the news. Having been through the whole thing herself several times she was in a position to assure Jessica that she would be okay, and she did. Her mother was trying to be helpful. Nevertheless, Jessica was bothered by her blasé attitude, and told her so, moving the conversation in a bad direction.

  “What do you want me to say, Jessica? You’re not going to be okay? You can’t live without Jim and you’re never going to be happy again? It may feel like that right now but it’s just not true. You’re strong, baby girl, and you’ll get through this, trust me.”

  She didn’t trust her. Her way of “getting through this” was to find another man, and that had not worked out so well. In addition to four husbands Alexis Baldwin-Huntington-Cranston-something-Bortoletto had forged a number of less formal dalliances with men. How many wasn’t clear. Too many, as far as Jessica was concerned, growing more irritated by the minute. She hated being called baby girl. It was so infantilizing.

  “I hear you, Mom. It just doesn’t feel okay, you know?”

  “I do know, Jessica.” The tone in her voice more serious. The moment passed, though, as her mother gushed. “Why don’t you get out of California for a while? Don’t even pack. Just grab your passport and get on a plane. Join us here in Monaco. We can get Giovanni to let us take the yacht out island-hopping. You haven’t been to Greece in years, Jessica. Or we could just tool around the Côte d'Azur, shopping. Giovanni is so busy these days, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind, and I’d be glad for the company, baby girl.”

  ”There she goes again,” Jessica thought. The offer had begun to sound tempting until she hit her again with that baby girl thing. That’s how she felt around her mother, forever five years old. A force of nature, Alexis was like Sisyphus’ boulder, flattening anyone in her path. She would want Jessica to meet people, some of them handsome, young and not-so-young men. Before she could blink twice, her mother would have thrust her into the whirlwind that swirled around Alexis Baldwin-etc.-etc.-Bortoletto. Jessica just didn’t have the strength to hold her own right now, with her mother or her mother’s entourage. But could there be any doubt about where the shopping habit came from?

  “Mom, the offer is tempting, but I would be awful company right now. Maybe later in the summer, when the desert heat really sets in, I’ll take you up on the offer. Who knows, by then I might even be in a better mood.”

  “Okay, Jessica. Let Bernadette take care of you for a while. She’ll know what to do.” She had a wistful tone in her voice. “If you change your mind, the invitation is open. And, Jessica, you do know I love you, right?”

  “I know, Mom. I love you too.” With that, Jessica hung up the phone and called her dad. Unlike her mother, Hank Huntington had never remarried. As far as Jessica knew, there had not even been a close call. Every once in a while she would catch something in the news about a charity event or a groundbreaking ceremony involving her father or his development company. At
those events, there were sometimes women on his arm or hovering in the background, smiling with admiration or affection. But he had never introduced her to any of them. If there was somebody else in his life after Alexis Baldwin, he kept it to himself.

  Her father’s reaction to the news about the split from Jim was different from her mother’s. Not so much in the content but in the tone of his response. Rather than telling her she was going to be okay, he asked. In that moment, she knew she would be, but sought his reassurance anyway. He confirmed that she was a tough cookie and would, no doubt, be just fine.

  He also surprised her. “Jinx, can I tell you something?” He hadn’t called her that in years. Not since she had figured out what the term jinx meant. As a befuddled “tween,” she had come to regard it not as a term of endearment, but as one of the possible reasons her family fell apart. Jinx was derived from her first and middle names, short hand for Jessica Alexis Huntington. It was a name that her dad had come up with when Jessica, at four or five, demanded to be given a nickname. That was after her parents tried to explain why some folks called her dad Henry and others called him Hank. The young Jessica had found the whole thing rather troubling until she had a nickname of her own. She liked the way it sounded and introduced herself as Jinx for the next few weeks to anyone who would listen. It wasn’t until she hit the “terrible tweens” that she realized why so many adults had found it amusing when she had piped up with, “Hi, I’m Jinx, what’s your nickname?” At 11, she became convinced they heard “Hi, I’m a jinx”, which is what she felt like at that point, a jinx at home and school.

  “Of course, Dad, go ahead.”

  “I never liked Jim Harper. I am not disappointed or even surprised that you’ve cut him loose, quite frankly.” Jessica was shocked, since her father had always been amiable toward Jim.

  “What do you mean? What didn’t you like? Why didn’t you say something?” She asked, pummeling him with questions, curious and incredulous in the same moment. Jessica thought of her father as guileless, an open book. She could never remember him lying to her or anyone else. Unlike her mother, he never seemed affected, pretentious or out to impress. So, how had he kept his real feelings hidden, and why?

  “It’s hard to put into words, which is part of why I didn’t say anything. He just seemed less, less than you and less than you deserved, Jessica. Jim struck me as shallow, maybe superficial or phony. Honestly, I’m not sure. Besides, what father doesn’t think something like that about the guy marrying his daughter? So, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. You loved him. I thought you saw something in him that I didn’t. I can tell now that he’s hurt you, and I’m sorry, Jinx.” Jessica had not told anyone yet about Jim’s betrayal. Something in her voice must have revealed the depths of her sadness.

  “Thanks, for the support, Dad, and for letting me make my own mistakes.”

  “It’s one of the hardest things about being a parent, Jessica. Trust me on that.” She did. Then he surprised her again. “Your mother couldn’t stand him either, by the way. She was more adamant than I was about his not being right for you. More inclined to speak up about it too. You know how she is. I made her take an oath to keep her mouth shut. I didn’t think it would change your mind and I didn’t want to give you yet another reason to hate your parents.” Jessica was floored. Were they even on speaking terms at that point? Her mother had brought husband-to-be number three to Jessica’s wedding. That was the guy whose name Jessica couldn’t even remember. The marriage had come and gone in a flash.

  “I didn’t know you and Mom talked things over like that anymore,” Jessica said.

  “When it has to do with you, Jinx, we did. Still do. We made a pact to put our problems aside when it came to you. Even though we couldn’t get along, we never stopped loving you.” His voice trailed off. Jessica felt loved, and thanked him for that as she hung up the phone. She also let him know she’d be “hiding out” at the house in the desert, and he was quick to offer her use of the house in Brentwood. He wasn’t there much. Most of his post-Great Recession business was outside the U.S., in China and elsewhere in the Pacific Rim.

  Since then, she had spoken to each of them again, but only briefly. She called to tell them about Roger’s death. They knew who he was, of course, because he was married to her good friend, Laura. Neither could attend the funeral, but both sent flowers with notes paying their respects.

  Jessica was hit by a wave of nostalgia as she stacked the last pillow on the bed and headed into the bathroom to shower. The conversation with Frank about his parents had triggered an avalanche of memories about their childhood. They were pleasant memories about Uncle Don and Aunt Evelyn, and the time spent with them and her friends. By then, she had worked through the worst of her tantrums about her parents’ divorce, finding comfort and enjoyment in the friendships she made at St. Theresa’s. She had also become a Catholic, making her conversion in a teenage sort of way. Partly she did it to taunt her Anglican parents, and mostly to fit in with her peers. Maybe also to please Bernadette or to emulate her, hoping to garner the peace Bernadette found at Mass or when saying the Rosary.

  In college, where it was so uncool to be Catholic or a member of any other kind of religious sect, for that matter, she had let it slide. During a first quarter class on comparative religion, she dabbled in a variety of meditative practices, pursuing spirituality while eschewing religion. Enlightenment turned out to be a difficult thing to achieve. She let that slide too.

  Barely into the second quarter of her first year in college, wham! Jessica was slammed by the news that Kelly Fontana was dead. That was the second terrible thing that had ever happened to Jessica as-yet-no-hyphen-Huntington. Uncle Don called her. It was the first time she had heard a grown man cry.

  In shock, Jessica dropped everything to get back to the desert for the funeral. A memorial service was held for Kelly at St. Theresa’s where the funeral Mass also took place. Jessica’s parents had shown up too, and for a brief moment in time, they were a family again, bound by the loss of such a young life in so deplorable a way.

  Kelly Fontana had been found in a downtown Palm Springs hotel parking lot, the victim of a hit-and-run. Whoever hit her had not had the decency to stop and help her or call 911. Uncle Don had posted appeals for the driver to come forward, and the Fontana family had offered a reward to anyone with information about what happened that night. No one at the hotel had seen or heard anything, and no one came forward in response to the appeals. The investigation quickly drew to a close, and Kelly’s death was ruled an accident without ever identifying who had hit her.

  After Kelly’s death Jessica ditched religion and spirituality for therapy, hoping to talk her way out of the existential dilemmas that hounded her. Nostalgia morphed into melancholy as she pondered Kelly’s death and the prospect of talking about it with Frank. Jessica bowed her head in the shower and let the water run over her. The pain of that loss, mixed with the more recent losses including her divorce from Jim and Roger’s murder. She sobbed in the shower, remembering how she and Tommy had clung to one another at Kelly’s funeral.

  Tommy’s father, Sammy Fontana, was Uncle Don’s older brother. Sammy and his wife, Monica, were devastated by Kelly’s death. Tommy’s mother fell into a serious depression, and his father’s physical health began to suffer. Even though they were only in mid-life, the death of their daughter propelled them toward a premature old age.

  Tommy had always been a sweet-natured, free spirit who took an elfin delight in life. When Kelly died, it hit him hard, too, but he stepped in as best he could at sixteen to fill the void. There was only so much he could do to ease his parents’ suffering. He must have been a source of great strength to his grieving parents. His auburn hair and delicate bone structure, so much like Kelly’s, must also have made him a constant reminder of their loss.

  Tommy brought a smile to Jessica’s face, even as she wept. Tommy’s pale skin bore a spray of freckles on his nose and cheeks, something he had disliked fiercely
as a teen. They added a bit of roguishness to his features, especially when he smiled and his brown eyes twinkled. Jessica found it adorable, but treaded lightly, knowing how sensitive he was about his “blotches.” He went through a phase when he tried to get rid of them, slathering all sorts of skin care products on his face to block the sun and fade the freckles. In his mid-twenties, he gave up and learned to live with them.

  By then, he had also come to grips with his sexual orientation, an issue he had begun to address at sixteen when Kelly was killed. It was just a few weeks before her death that Tommy found the courage to confide in her that he was gay. Retelling the story to Jessica later, he said Kelly had embraced him. She told him how much she loved him, and that her only hope was that he would grow up to be a happy man, gay or straight.

  Now, almost fifteen years later, Tommy was still tending to his parents, living in the detached casita at their Cathedral City home. His young life had been marked by a series of ill-conceived schemes, false starts, and misguided occupational choices. Not to mention a capricious and sometimes even harrowing love life as a young gay man in the LGBT-friendly Palm Springs area. He had met his share of callous, self-centered and even predatory heels while looking for love. Over the years, Tommy had, on more than one occasion, suffered the embarrassment and disappointment of walking in on a lover in flagrante. He tried to be nonchalant about such things, denouncing monogamy as the heights of heterosexist tyranny. Yet, he was wounded by his encounters with the gay counterparts to James Harper, dirtball par excellence.