A Dead Husband (Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery)

by Anna Burke

  “It sure does,” Jessica added. “Do you want to join us, Bernadette?”

  “No, no, I already ate. Besides, you two have business to discuss. I’m going to go take care of a few personal things. Enjoy!” With that she was gone, down the hall and out of sight in a flash.

  After making a sandwich with all the fixings, Jessica dug into the salads. She poured a glass of iced tea and took a long refreshing sip. Jessica let Jerry make some headway eating his lunch before getting down to business, then took the opportunity to find out a little more about him and his background.

  He had grown up in Glendale, kind of an average, middle class kid, living in suburbia. A half-hearted student, he did enough to get by but had little ambition to go on to college. When he left high school he did what a lot of young people do in LA, took a shot at going into show business. He waited tables while trying to get a toe-hold in tinsel town.

  For several years he worked as an extra on a lot of television shows and movies, dabbled in modeling, and got a few bit parts, but nothing substantial. At some point he took a job in security at one of the big studios, hoping that might help him insinuate himself into the right networks. Those networks propelled him toward a career in investigative work. He took courses at Cal State Fullerton and went to work first doing insurance investigations.

  A year or so later, he met Paul Worthington who was defending a client charged with a hit-and-run. The client’s insurance company was being sued by the victim and Jerry’s investigative work was important not only to keeping the insurance company from making a big payout, but also to help get Paul’s client out of legal trouble. Paul’s firm hired Jerry, who acquired the additional hours he needed to apply for a license as a private investigator.

  Between mouthfuls of food, Jessica filled him in a little about her own story. She glossed over the most sensitive issues, saying only that she was in the middle of a divorce and had come back to the Coachella Valley to sort out her personal and professional life. As it turned out, they liked a lot of the same things about the LA area where she had spent a considerable amount of time, despite the Coachella Valley being home. His life was, in some ways, the mirror image of hers, geographically speaking, at least.

  He had grown up in the LA area spending a lot of weekends and vacations in the Coachella valley. He hoped someday to trade the insanely fast pace of life in LA for the more laid back lifestyle in the desert. That explained how it was that he was able to follow up so quickly on Paul’s offer to have him to assist with Roger’s murder investigation. He was out here already.

  By the time they finished lunch, Jessica was impressed. Not only was he gorgeous but he seemed like a genuinely nice guy. Bernadette had good instincts. It was too bad Jessica was in such a tenuous state, emotionally. She couldn’t even say she was on the rebound yet since a little part of her was still clinging to the hope of reconciliation with Jim. That was the part that imagined seeing him again without shredding him to bits for betraying her with that blond bimbo. She didn’t want that Jim back, but the man she had married, or thought she had married. It was that part of her that hadn’t signed those divorce papers yet. Where were they anyway? She tried to remember where she had put them, but no luck. Sighing deeply, she refilled her iced tea glass and took a stab at playing hostess.

  “Can I get you anything else to eat or drink?” Jessica asked.

  “No, this was great. Why don’t you tell me what’s up with your friend?”

  It was actually a relief to change the subject and think about how to get somebody else’s life out of the muck and mire. She was clearly stuck. Jessica started from the beginning, not knowing what Paul had already told him. Jerry had taken a little notepad and pencil from his shirt pocket. She couldn’t completely suppress a smile at this low tech choice. He caught her looking and responded with a broad grin.

  “Hey, it works when you’re on the go as much as I am, and relatively unobtrusive. As long as I can read my own writing I can incorporate my notes into a more formal record on my laptop for reporting later. I typically provide written reports to the firm on a weekly basis, but you can ask for updates along the way. My going rate is $150 an hour, or $500 per day. That means if you need me for 4 hours or more you’ll get billed at the daily rate. I also get expenses on top of that. I’ll just run a tab with the firm and you and Paul can figure out how to settle accounts. I have a couple other ongoing investigations but Paul was clear that, given the circumstances, this is going to be my first priority for the next few days at least.”

  Jessica spoke a little more about her “to do” list and Jerry agreed to go with her this afternoon to take a look at Laura’s house where Roger was killed. He would also help make the rounds speaking to any neighbors they could find at home. He could also lend a hand tracking down Eric, the waiter with whom Laura had spent the night.

  “Okay, so let’s go take a look at the crime scene. Are you ready for that? Jerry asked. “It’s not the easiest part of an investigation like this.”

  “As ready as I’m going to be, I guess.” Jessica tried to sound emphatic, ore for herself than for Jerry.

  CHAPTER 9

  Jerry stood up and stretched his tall frame. “Bernadette, lunch was delicious. Thanks for going to so much trouble.” Bernadette had reappeared out of nowhere once lunch was done, whisking away dirty plates and putting away leftovers.

  “Jerry, it was no trouble at all. You’re going to be helping Jessica and Laura find out who hurt Roger. That means you’re welcome any time.”

  “I’ll do my best,” he said. “Let’s take my truck, Jessica. That way if you feel a little squeamish at least you won’t have to worry about driving home. I have plenty of room for whatever you end up hauling away from Roger’s office.”

  A few quick strides and Jerry was already at the front door. Jessica mouthed a quick “thanks” to Bernadette, blowing her a kiss. “That’s probably a good idea, Jerry. I promise I’ll try not to hurl all over your truck.” It was just as well, too, since she had not gotten around to calling Tommy and didn’t have her own car to drive.

  “You’d better not. I spend a lot of hours in that truck, not just driving, but doing surveillance. It’s my home away from home.” He looked back over his shoulder and flashed that dazzling smile at her and she could not stop herself from beaming back at him.

  Jerry opened the front door and Jessica followed him outside. With a couple chirps of his electronic key, he started the truck and the air conditioning. She tried to imagine this guy doing surveillance. No way could he blend in. Most of his work was done in LA where there are more pretty people per square mile than anywhere else on earth. So maybe he could blend in, at least as long as he remained seated and didn’t tower over everyone else.

  Jerry’s dark blue Ford F-150 looked brand new despite the claim that this was his home away from home. By the time she got to the passenger side of the truck and opened the door the air conditioner was doing a good job tackling the desert heat. The vehicle was huge. Climbing into the cab of the truck, Jessica flashed on Lilly Tomlin dangling her feet in an enormous rocking chair. It seemed just the right size for Jerry, though, who probably bumped his head in smaller vehicles.

  The interior was not only cool and comfortable, but as pristine as the exterior. It was also tricked out with every extra you could imagine. No new car smell but a faint odor of leather, wood and sage or maybe creosote from time spent in the desert. If she lived in the thing, like Jerry did, it would look more like her closet. There’d at least be an errant Starbucks cup or two.

  It didn’t take any more time than it had the day before to drive the eight miles or so to Laura’s house, a couple streets away from Sara’s place. They pulled up in front of the house and sat at the curb for a couple minutes. Police tape was still up around the door, but there was no apparent police presence. Jessica tried to calm the telltale flutter in her gut that signaled her anxiety level was climbing. Jerry looked over at her with worry creasing his brow.r />
  “You want me to go in there first and scope things out?”

  She couldn’t stand the thought of contributing to any wrinkles on that flawless forehead. Jessica shook her head and made a move for the door. Jerry reached out and caught her arm.

  “Look Jessica, it’s normal to feel uneasy when you face death this way. It’s even harder when it’s someone you knew who met with a bad end. There’s no shame in doing whatever you need to do to get through it. If you need to leave, you leave, okay?”

  A wave of warmth rushed over Jessica, only partly out of gratitude for his compassion and support. In that unguarded moment, the firmness of his grip on her arm triggered a longing that embarrassed her. The flush of heat deepened as her thoughts shifted abruptly to the last time she and Jim had made love with the passion, intimacy, and abandon of a committed couple. In that moment, she realized how desperately she wanted that back. She felt so vulnerable knowing that a stranger’s touch could provoke that wish.

  “Okay, Jerry, I hear you. Thanks.” She did not make eye contact as she spoke. What if something of the longing she felt was in her eyes?

  “Let’s go,” Jessica said, popping the door open and practically leaping out of the truck. Jerry slid out and was at her side in a flash, locking the truck as the doors slammed behind him. Together, they headed to the front door. The police tape had started to pull away in places, hanging loosely. The house was typical of those built recently in the desert. A single story home, the exterior was stucco in a sandy color. It was trimmed with a dark-stained wood and had a terra cotta tile roof giving it a vaguely Mediterranean character.

  Jessica bent to retrieve the key from the fake rock near the entrance as Laura had instructed. She opened the front door and, thankfully, as they stepped into the foyer a rush of cool air greeted them. The air was laden, though, with a sweet, slightly rank smell. It wasn’t overpowering but enough to roil Jessica’s gut. She should have skipped lunch. Jerry pulled a tube of Vic’s Vapo Rub from his pocket.

  “This’ll help, see, like this,” he said as he put a little under his nose. Jessica took the tube from him and did the same. The blast of camphor and eucalyptus and whatever else was in the goop was like a mild slap in the face—a welcome one.

  Jessica moved into the house and stood at the point where the foyer became a crossroads of sorts. Jessica had been in the house enough times that the layout was familiar. The great room was straight ahead, eat-in kitchen to the right, and on the left a short hallway that ended at the doorway to the guest room. A second hallway, set at a right angle, led to Roger’s office and, beyond that, the master suite.

  The large great room with vaulted ceilings created a sense of expansiveness that belied the modest square footage of the house. A wall of sliding glass doors, directly in front of them, offered a glimpse of the pool and patio in the backyard. Vertical blinds were drawn across most of the sliders so the room was cast in shadow. Wanting to retrace Laura’s steps, Jessica headed to the kitchen. Jerry followed, taking a peek in the coat closet in as he passed it in the foyer. As she headed into the kitchen Jessica noticed footprints and streaks on the tile floor in the foyer where they had just walked.

  “We didn’t do that did we?”

  “No, but it’s hard to say what’s what, given the traffic that’s been through here at this point. Hopefully the CSIs are using photos and evidence they collected to sort out what was here before the scene was trampled too much. Sounds like the EMTs backed off pretty quick. I’m sure the scene was secured as soon as the uniformed officers arrived. One of them may have been equipped to take photos but we can figure that out once you talk to the detective assigned to the case. At some point, though, there’s no doubt a lot of traffic went through here. Hard to avoid that when the body has to be bagged and transported to the coroner’s office.” Jessica nodded in understanding as she continued into the kitchen. Her stomach did another little flip-flop.

  In the kitchen Jessica made her way to the door leading to the garage. She unlocked the door and stepped out into the garage for a moment, then back into the kitchen. Nothing seemed disturbed. The garage was jammed with stored items and two cars. Back inside the kitchen a granite-tiled counter with cupboards above, kind of a mini-butler’s pantry, was to the left of the. An answering machine sat on the counter, the light was on but the tape was missing from the machine. The police must have taken it to check for messages.

  “Remind me to ask if there were any messages, other than the one Laura left for Roger.” Off to the right was the laundry room. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary in there, either. A utility sink with cabinets above and below sat across from a washer and dryer. A half-filled laundry basket sat on the dryer, and a skinny little rack, squeezed in between the washer and dryer, held laundry supplies. Cleaning equipment, supplies and a few tools were arranged neatly on hooks or shelves.

  Straight ahead, the kitchen was laid out with a large angled bar area on the left, topped in the same brown tone granite on the counter near the door to the garage. A stainless steel sink and a dishwasher were built into it, with prep stations on either side of the sink. The right hand side of the kitchen contained a small pantry for storage, a stainless fridge, and a slide-in range with a microwave above it. Dark stained cabinets ran the length of the wall that stopped at the opposite edge of the room with a semicircular seating area containing a dining table and chairs. Light streamed in through the windows, illuminating the cozy seating area just off the kitchen.

  Jessica imagined Laura entering this space early Saturday morning. She related the story Laura had told so she and Jerry could put it in context. Nothing had seemed out of the ordinary. Except, perhaps that faint odor. She said it was a hint of smoke or something more exotic like incense. Jerry wondered if it might have been a metallic smell associated with blood, very possible given the amount of blood Laura claimed Roger had lost. Jessica gulped at that idea, then moved as Laura had, heading into the great room from the kitchen and down the hall. She stopped for a moment to collect her thoughts.

  “You okay?” Jerry asked a few steps behind her. At the sound of his voice Jessica jumped out of her skin. She nodded her head and answered “yes,” but that wasn’t really true.

  Jerry scooted around her and went to take a look at the sliders to the patio. Squaring her shoulders, Jessica moved down the hall to the open door of the guest room. She tried to step over and around footprint and other streaks on the floor.

  When she got to the turn in the hallway, she took a step around the corner and looked down the hall. In the next instant, she dove for the bathroom on her right. Fortunately, she made it to the toilet before she lost her lunch. Little spatters of vomit settled on her brand new blouse and white slacks. Jerry, who was right behind her by then, grabbed a towel from the rack, dampened it with water from the tap, and handed it to her.

  Using the towel to wash her face Jessica wished she could wash away the memory of what she had just seen in the hallway. The smell that hit here when she first came into the house was stronger here but what got to her was the sight of so much blood. A lot of it massed in the hall opposite the entrance to Jerry’s office, but there were also streaks. Some in the direction of the master suite and others heading toward the bathroom where she still stood in the doorway. There were more footprints too and something that looked like tracks made by wheels of some kind.

  “Those are probably from the gurney they used to remove Roger’s body,” Jerry commented as she gazed at the streaks.

  There was blood splattered on the wall across from Roger’s office, as well as a bloody, smeared handprint on the wall nearby. She remembered Laura said she sort of slid as she reached Roger then, crawled back through the blood to retrieve her phone from her purse where it had fallen, near the corner where the two hallways intersected. That would explain some of the streaks, but smears headed the other way too, toward the door to the master bedroom. It was near those streaks that the handprint was planted on the wall. Jessica’s
eyes widened as she looked anxiously at Jerry.

  “Do you think that’s Roger’s hand print? Could he have tried to get away after he was shot?”

  “Like I said earlier, it’s hard to sort out what went on here without good photos of the way things looked before they hauled the body out. Nobody called to the scene would have been careless enough to leave a handprint, though. Some of the streaks heading toward the master suite could have been Roger’s. Maybe he tried to crawl away, to escape or to call for help. The forensic reports will say more about how he was actually killed. From what Laura told you he was shot several times, but that doesn’t mean all the shots were fired at once. If he was shot and started to bleed out, that could explain why there’s so much blood. Usually, shots to the chest kill you pretty quickly, so there’s not this much blood. That means somebody was here long enough to shoot him and then come back and finish him off.”

  “How could they even consider Laura capable of doing something like that?” Jessica asked. And how can Laura ever come back here? How could anyone ever live here again?

  “People can do almost anything under the right circumstances, Jessica. We just don’t know enough yet to even hazard a guess at what went on here. If somebody did hang around that long, they must have had a good reason. Perhaps, waiting for Laura to get home, to take her out too, or looking for something. Just because the place wasn’t ransacked doesn’t mean that it wasn’t searched. Let’s take a look in the office so you can get whatever you want to take with you. I’ll come back tomorrow and do a systematic search of the rest of the house. Hang on a second.” Jerry ducked back into the bathroom and came out with the bath rug and a stack of towels. Moving ahead of Jessica a couple feet he spread them out, end to end, kind of “Sir Walter Raleigh” style, so they could get to the office entrance and master bedroom without stepping into the sticky morass.