A Dead Sister (Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery) Page 8
“The legend continues,” Jessica said wryly. “I hope they let it go soon, although I do like the ‘classy’ part.”
“Well, they have that part right. You are a class act, Jessica Huntington-Harper.” Frank raised his glass of lemonade in a toast.
“Let’s make that to Jessica Huntington-no-hyphen. How about to divorced women and men everywhere, struggling to do the classy thing?”
“Here, here,” Frank said, as they clinked glasses. “So, I take it, then, that it’s official. You and Jim are through?”
“Yeah, we’re through. As soon as the State of California says so, that is, by Labor Day, for sure.”
“Mom mentioned you were back in the desert without Jim. Are you here for good or do you plan to take off and start over somewhere new?”
“I’m just sort of drifting, taking things one day at a time. I don’t trust myself to make good, long-term decisions right now. There are still times when I think it might be worth it to let some nice police officer like you arrest me for the pleasure of wringing Jim’s neck with one of his two hundred dollar silk bespoke ties.” Frank let out a whistle. Had she gone too far by revealing such a graphic fantasy of revenge?
“A two hundred dollar tie, are you kidding me? What a waste of money to strangle him with that, Jessica.” Jessica laughed, then, bounded out of her chair.
“I don’t normally do this, but how about another act of indulgence? Want to chance a pot of coffee this late in the day, or will the caffeine keep you awake?”
“Are you kidding? I live on caffeine, round the clock sometimes. It never keeps me from sleeping any time I get a chance. Coffee sounds wonderful.” Jessica picked up their dirty plates and hauled them to the kitchen.
“Jessica, another thing,” Frank said.
Jessica looked up from where she was filling the burr grinder with black oily coffee beans.
“Yes?” she asked.
“I’m sorry, Jessica, about the divorce. Divorce is a hard thing to do with class or grace. Mary and I have been divorced for three years now, and I am mostly civil when we have to deal with each other for the sake of the kids. That first year was the worst. You have to go through a whole year remembering all the things you did together and figure out how to do them by yourself, you know? I had the kids to take care of, but I was still a single guy instead of a married guy, and that just felt wrong.”
“But it does get better, right?” Jessica asked, hoping the answer would be yes.
“Yes. Yes it does.”
Jessica used the sound of the grinder to give her time to think. She trusted he was being honest with her, but she hadn’t told him the whole story. Maybe at some point, she’d tell him about Jim and the strumpet and the baby on the way, but not today. Dumping the ground coffee into the coffee press, Jessica poured water over it and set the timer on the stove for 10 minutes.
“How do you like your coffee Frank?” she asked. She wanted to add, “And what went wrong with your marriage?” but didn’t.
“Milk would be great.”
Jessica went to the fridge and found a small carton of half-and-half. Jessica didn’t quite understand why Bernadette preferred half-and-half in her morning coffee but 2% milk in her beloved lattes.
“How about half-and-half, is that okay?”
“That sounds great.”
Jessica loaded a tray with the French press full of steeping coffee, two mugs, and a small pot of half-and-half. She carried it all to the table where Frank was sitting. They had a few more minutes before the coffee had steeped long enough to pour it. Jessica decided it was time to hear what Frank had come to talk about.
“So, Frank, what did you want to tell me about Kelly?”
“Well, Jessica, this is sort of a strange situation. Did you know we have a Cold Case team at the County Sherriff’s department?”
“No, I didn’t know that. I’ve heard that there’s new interest in cold cases because of better DNA testing and better databases that track DNA profiles from convicted offenders like they track fingerprints. Of course, there’s been some controversy among lawyers about their use like what constitutes probable cause, reasonable search, when using computers to match evidence to stored profiles. But I don’t know much more than that.”
“A lot of jurisdictions have added units like ours, if there are enough resources in the department to run a team. Our team works cases for the whole county. And it’s not just DNA evidence and information from databases that can reactivate a cold case. Sometimes it’s good old fashioned police work that gets a case going again like when a cop takes a new look at the case and gets a new angle. Or sometimes someone in the community comes forward and decides to confess or turns in an old friend for a past crime because they’ve had a row. Maybe a guy dumps his girlfriend and she gets even by calling the cops and telling them where the money or the drugs or the body is stashed. You know?”
“Yeah, I’ve got it.” Jessica thought about Margarit Tilik and what she had been willing to do to her boyfriends and anyone else who got caught in her tangled web, for that matter. Poor Roger Stone.
“A couple days ago, I’m having a beer after work. I’m sitting with Art Greenwald, one of the guys in the Cold Case unit. He’s going on about the kind of thing they have to sort out when they’re reviewing a cold case. Like some lowlife who gets nabbed by the cops, caught red-handed doing something he shouldn’t do. What does he want to do? Play ‘let’s make a deal’ by claiming he’s got information about an old crime. They never know what to make of it. Does he have something legit, or is he just bullshitting or maybe recycling old news about a case?”
“Okay,” Jessica said. “I’m following you. What has this got to do with Kelly?”
“Well, Art goes on and on about the latest bozo sitting in jail who claims he knows something about a girl who was murdered. The guy’s a third striker. You know a guy who’s going away for a long time unless he can make that deal? They caught him with a bunch of drugs and drug paraphernalia, and the clincher, a gun. It wasn’t loaded, but it adds to the trouble he’s already in.” Jessica nodded, encouraging him to get on with the story.
“So, the public defender assigned to the case goes to the county prosecutor’s office about his client’s claims. The prosecutor asks Art to check it out. He pays the guy a visit but doesn’t get very far because the old ‘tweaker’ is being cagey. Art figures he’s pushing fifty, maybe. It’s pretty rare for a serious meth addict to live as long as he has. It’s no wonder he doesn’t want to spend what little life he has left locked up. Art is sort of mimicking the guy who says something about: ‘It weren’t no accident. It was on purpose.’ I’m only half listening to all this until Art says something about this all happening so long ago near the casino in Palm Springs. Now he’s got my attention. I ask him to repeat what he just said. The girl he witnessed being murdered was run down in a hotel parking lot at the casino in downtown Palm Springs.”
A jolt of recognition hit. “When?”
“I’m not even sure, Jessica. Art says he was about ready to let it go, but he can look into it a little more if I want him to. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. This guy’s claiming she was murdered, Jessica. If it was Kelly, does it make any difference how she died? It won’t bring her back if they reopen the investigation. It will reopen old wounds. And there’s no guarantee that this half-wasted human being can give the police enough information to find her killer. Or that they can make charges stick, even if they dig up a suspect. Uncle Sammy and Aunt Monica have been through so much, I don’t know what to do. Did it make a difference to Laura that you found out who killed Roger?”
Jessica’s mind was in a whirl hearing the questions he asked and distress in Frank’s voice. The alarm for the coffee went off. They both jumped! Frank must have been concentrating as hard as she was, or his nerves were as shot as hers. They looked at each other and burst out laughing, releasing the tension that gripped them both.
“You think we need caffei
ne? Maybe I should be pouring a couple scotches!”
“If I didn’t have to go home and face Mom, I’d ask you to add a little something to the coffee. She won’t like it if I have a drink and then drive home, and if I stick around long enough to let the buzz wear off, I’ll be late for dinner. So, there you go!” Jessica was back at the table after running to turn off the alarm. Frank had already pressed the coffee and was pouring it into mugs.
“Boy! Does that smell wonderful! The stuff I have to drink a lot of the time is strong enough to strip paint, and the taste is hard to take. There is a Starbucks nearby, so if I have time, I’ll make a coffee run to get a decent cup. I have to watch it, though, or I can go through a lot of money in a month on coffee. I just found out Evie is going to need braces.” He took a sip of coffee after stirring in some half-and-half.
“Ah! Fantastic! Maybe I should get into the habit of making a pot at home and taking it with me.”
“This is Peet’s. It’s not cheap, but you would save money if you fixed it yourself, and brought it with you. Another thing for you to do with all that spare time you have on your hands.”
Jessica sipped her own coffee, savoring the dark roasted Sumatran beans, flown in monthly. There weren’t any Peet’s stores in the Coachella Valley. In a pinch, she could buy a bag at one of the local grocery stores, but the selection wasn’t always great. Sometimes all they carried was ground coffee, a taboo for her inner coffee snob. Soothed by the warmth of the delectable brew, Jessica ventured back to the topic of what to do about Kelly.
“Frank, it mattered to Laura that Roger’s killer was brought to justice. In her case, though, she was on the list of possible suspects. Laura got closure on some pretty important issues. It’s also a matter of justice, in the larger scheme of things. There’s also the fact that, if Kelly was murdered, that person is still out there and could do it again. I also get it that you don’t want to stir things up unless there’s a damn good reason. That’s a judgment call, and it sounds to me like we don’t have enough information right now to make that call.”
“That brings me to the second reason I wanted to talk to you, Jessica. You’re a lawyer. You could talk to whoever’s representing this guy in the public defender’s office and get a better read on how far gone he is. Or maybe they’d let you interview the perp. If it is Kelly, I’m going to have to keep my distance, given that she’s family. I don’t want to create even the hint of impropriety. Or do anything that could be used later to claim that the investigation was tainted because a family member was involved. Uncle Don is in the same boat in Palm Springs. So, how about it?” He paused, watching Jessica intently as he went back to drinking his coffee.
Jessica wasn’t certain. She picked up her coffee and sipped it, buying time. If she could do anything that would, belatedly, help her friend Kelly, then she should. Like Frank, she also wanted to protect Tommy and his parents from reliving that dreadful event. Or from false hope that someone might be held accountable for Kelly’s death, whether an accident or on purpose. Jessica looked at Frank and knew she had made her decision. She had to try to find out the truth.
“Okay, Frank. How about this? Let’s do what we can without bringing the rest of the Fontana family into it, for the time being. I’ll check it out, as you ask, while you get Art to go another round on his end. We’ll take this a step at a time, and if it looks like we’re getting somewhere, we’ll break the news to the rest of the Fontanas. Does that make sense?” Jessica offered Frank more coffee.
“It does,” he said, sliding his empty mug closer to her so she could refill it. Then she poured herself another cup. “Thanks Jessica. This just sort of dropped into my lap, so I feel compelled to follow up. How bizarre is that?”
Jessica’s skin prickled, recalling that earlier conversation with Bernadette. “This is odd, I’ll give you that. Not just the way you found out about it. But why on earth would anyone have wanted to kill Kelly?”
“I have no idea. We may find out some things about Kelly we’d prefer not to know. She was pretty high-strung and gave her parents plenty of grief. I just presumed that was teenage stuff and she’d grow out of it.”
“My last encounter with Kelly was not a very pleasant one either. I feel bad about that, but it’s also left me wondering what on earth was going on with her. I owe it to her as a friend to try to face the truth, even if it turns out to be unsettling.”
“I had a similar reaction to her death. I had this uneasy feeling that something was not quite right with Kelly, but by then it was too late to do anything about it. I was so preoccupied with my own studies, and my relationship with Mary, that I didn’t have a lot of time for other family members. She was hard to figure out: sweet and charming a lot of the time, but distant, and even hostile, at other times. She was so talented, and plenty smart, but never interested in my suggestions for how to use that talent or put her smarts to work. I chalked it up to immaturity, even though I was only two years older. You were closer to her than I was and probably knew her better.”
“I wish I could say that was true. We loved each other, but we also fought like cats and dogs. I had so many of my own issues then, too, it’s still hard to sort out my problems from hers. I get what you’re saying about her moodiness. Sometimes it was like this switch flipped and Kelly went from sweet to wild in a flash. Even that wild side was fun and kind of exciting at times. It was also scary depending on the kind of risks she was hell-bent on taking. I was a way bigger chicken than she was, and she just cut me loose at times. Why bring me along if I was just going to be a drag? Laura and I both got left behind, at times, usually when she had a new boyfriend.”
Jessica paused and peered at the coffee in her cup. What she saw, instead of coffee, was an image of Kelly. Her auburn hair set in motion by the ripples in the coffee, a dreamy smile on her face, but a wicked glint in her eye. “She could turn mean, too. The last time I saw her on New Year’s Eve, we went at it. She was drunk, so maybe it was the booze talking. There was so much anger toward me, mostly about things I thought we had settled. All our lives had changed so much. Making the transition from high school was stressful, and we were all flailing about, but Kelly most of all. I figured we had time to work it out later…and then, we didn’t.”
“So, let’s say we’re going this first mile for us, as well as for Kelly. We’ll do what we can, even if it’s too late to save her life. If she was murdered, she must have been in more trouble than any of us could have known, Jessica. She hid that from her parents and from Tommy, too, or they would have done something. Tommy would have gone to you or to me, even if he didn’t want to get his parents involved.” Jessica nodded in agreement.
“Yes, that’s true. Would your friend Art get me a copy of Kelly’s file? Maybe something in the file will corroborate or disavow what this guy claims went on that night. Also, if it does turn out there’s a reason to move forward, we’ll be ready. We’ll need to go back and talk to at least some of the people the police interviewed at the time. If I review the file, we’ll know who to put on that list.”
“Or, as you say, maybe there will be something in the file that can shut this down. If this is meth mania, or he’s a lying son of a bitch, I’d like to bring this new chapter to a close as soon as possible.”
“I agree. Does Art have the file?”
“You’d think so, but I’ll ask. If he doesn’t already have it, he can get it. Dad’s in a different division at the Palm Springs Police Department, so Art should be able to get the file from the detectives without contacting Dad, directly. That’s no guarantee Dad won’t find out about it. His co-workers haven’t forgotten how tough Kelly’s death was on him, though. I’m sure they’ll make efforts to keep this under wraps if Art is discrete. Back then, Dad wasn’t a sergeant yet. He was the lead investigator with the traffic bureau, and got called to the scene by the patrol officers who found Kelly.”
“Oh, my God, Frank. I didn’t hear anything about that. He must have been horrified.”
“I guess that depends on what you find out from Art. Once he gets his hands on it, if he doesn’t already have it, he’ll have to make copies for me.”
Frank nodded. “Some of the stuff will have been saved electronically, but the file itself will contain things like the detectives’ notes, which may be handwritten. I can get him to expedite things by picking up the file himself. He may need a day or so to do that and put a copy together for us.”
“Okay, so let’s say I’ll swing by and pick it up on Tuesday or Wednesday at the Sherriff’s department. Which day depends on what sort of arrangements I can make with the Public Defender’s office and the attorney assigned to this guy. There’s another thing, Frank.”
“What?”
“You do know that criminal defense work isn’t my area of practice, right? So, I’m going to do a consult with a colleague about this. Paul Worthington’s a big-time defense attorney in LA, and he’ll be a great help in cutting to the chase about what we’re up against. I planned to give Paul a call tomorrow, anyway. His firm is opening an office in Palm Desert and he’s waiting for me to tell him if I’m ready to be a lawyer again, or not. He doesn’t know it yet, but I’ve decided to say yes, and take on a few clients. How do you feel about involving him?”