A Dead Sister (Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery)

by Anna Burke

  “Cruella De Vil, in person,” Jessica sputtered to herself as the vamp ambled toward her. “I know, I know, right bitch, wrong dog,” she muttered nonsensically as she searched for an escape route before the creature could reach her. She wasn’t worried about a soap-opera style confrontation of the cuckolded wife by the victorious younger woman. The Hollywood hussy might not even recognize her. What worried Jessica was how strong an urge she had to knock the silly skank off her tacky heels and onto her surgically enhanced derriere.

  “Sprinkles, I need cupcakes.” There was a Sprinkles cupcake store on Santa Monica Boulevard. Not more than a couple blocks from where she stood, in the midst of the so-called “Golden Triangle” shopping district. Jessica was trying to remember exactly where the treasure trove of sugary delights was located when the bimbo-show began in earnest.

  An officious older woman suddenly appeared, swooping down upon the photographer as though to shoo him away. Another blond, she had the teased hairspray-encrusted coiffure and taut, overly-done face all too common among SoCal realtors or agents. Or, as in this case, personal assistants who used to be realtors or agents before the Great Recession. Of course, the photographer was not dissuaded from taking photos. Her actions drew even more attention to the top-heavy, red-lipped sex-pot.

  As a crowd of tourists gathered to gawk, the dog became agitated and began to whimper. At the same time, a small gust of wind threatened to claim the Panama hat perched atop the starlet’s head. When she reached up to grab her hat, the bags on her arm swung wide. She clocked the guy behind her who dropped a stack of packages he was carrying. That spooked the dog, which lunged forward, pulling his mistress with him. She collided with the personal assistant, and down they went, the stunned older woman cushioning the fall of the royally pissed-off younger one. Dumping her shopping bags, the now furious actress reached up with long red fingernails. She swatted at the photographer who was still snapping pictures a few inches away from her angry face. He dodged her, took a step back and continued to shoot. Still hanging onto the dog’s leash, she was hurling epithets that would make a sailor blush. The guy she had whacked stopped trying to pick up his packages and hurried over to try to untangle the two blonds, the dog, and the shopping bags. A moment of gut-wrenching revulsion overtook Jessica. It was her ex, Jim Harper.

  “Cassie, are you okay?” he asked, sounding genuinely concerned. “Do you want me to call 911? Do you need a doctor?” He was practically dragging her to her feet as he spoke.

  “Shut the fuck up, Jim! I don’t need a doctor! I need a lawyer to sue that fat bastard who’s still taking pictures of me. Sandra, you clumsy cow, get up off the ground, now! Jim, you’re a lawyer. Do something!” she ordered, stamping her foot. Sandra, still on the ground, moved but did not get up.

  Jim looked around, perhaps tempted to just get the hell out of there. As he did that, he spotted Jessica and froze. Even though they were both wearing dark glasses, the mutual recognition was instant as their lens-clad eyes met. Jim blanched, turning almost the same shade as his beloved’s platinum hair. Jessica gave him the tiniest salute as she turned on her heel and headed away from the scene, remembering exactly where that bakery was located.

  “Oh, the tangled web we weave,” she said to herself, as she floated down the street toward cupcake heaven. “It would be wrong to skip,” she babbled, a little maniacally. Having slipped out of those Jimmy Choo pumps and back into her Super Ga tennis shoes, she could have done it. But it would be wrong.

  Behind her, the dog started to bark. The enraged diva was ranting again at the top of her lungs. “I want that camera! Give me that camera, you asshole!” Then someone shouted.

  “Look out! You’re going to step on that lady on the ground.” That was followed by a shrill cry of pain.

  And a reply, “Sandra, you syphilitic whore, get the fuck out of my way. If nobody else is going to get the camera from that son-of-a-bitch, I will!”

  “Cassy, no, please, not in your condition!” Jessica recognized Jim’s voice, even with the plaintive tone it had taken on. There was more, but Jessica’s phone chose that moment to ring.

  CHAPTER 9

  “Hello, Jessica Huntington speaking.”

  “Ms. Huntington, Dick Tatum here. You left a message about my client, Chester Davis, right? How can I help you?”

  Jessica had completely forgotten about leaving that message. In fact, in the rush of shopping, the call of cupcakes, and the fracas on Rodeo Drive, she had put Chester Davis and Kelly Fontana out of her mind completely. “Some friend,” she thought, as she hustled on down the street to get further away from the blond bombshell in mid-explosion. A number of people were shouting, and she could still make out the strident cadence of the starlet’s rant even as she increased her distance from the scene. The sound of police sirens could now be heard in the distance.

  “Mr. Tatum, thank you so much for returning my call.” Jessica spent the next several minutes explaining who she was and why she had called. “I’d like to meet Chester Davis and speak to him, in person. Preferably Wednesday morning if that’s possible.” Dick Tatum, an affable sort of guy, had no problem with the idea of her speaking to his client if Chester Davis was willing to do so.

  “In fact, I welcome your input. His drug habit is taking a toll. He’s like a light bulb that flickers on and off, so it’s hard to know how seriously to take him. I’ve known him for years now, but this is the first time he’s ever made such a claim. Of course, he’s in more trouble now than he’s been in before, so I suppose he could have been saving this information for just such an occasion.”

  “Detective Greenwald mentioned that this is his third strike, and that there was a gun at the scene. Sounds like his situation is rather dire, Mr. Tatum.”

  “It is. Desperation can lead a man to do desperate things, but Chet’s never really tried to pull the wool over my eyes. As far as I know, he’s an honest low level hustler, petty thief and addict, if you know what I mean. He’s always owned up to the fact that he’s got problems, most of them, drug-related. His previous attempts at rehab were legit, as far as I could tell. They helped get him clean and sober for a while, a year or two. He knows he’s in trouble and he’s scared. What I can’t make out for sure is if he’s scared because of the current trouble he’s in, or because he’s spilling his guts about a murder. Fear could be the reason he kept his mouth shut for so long, if what he says is true. He could be just as terrified at the prospect of being locked up for good, so I don’t know. Anyway, if you meet me at the County Jail Wednesday morning, say 10:30, and he wants to talk to you, fine. If not, that’s his choice, too.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Tatum. I’ll see you on Wednesday.”

  Just as Jessica hung up the phone, she reached the end of a line of people waiting to get into Sprinkles. Brooding while she waited, she went over the conversation with Dick Tatum. She didn’t like the fact that Chester Davis was scared. Not a good sign.

  The line moved forward and Jessica stepped into the store. The scent of sugar and spice, the happy chirping of Angelinos getting a sugar fix, pushed the conversation with Dick Tatum to the back of her mind. Her eyes reveled in the sight of the scrumptious-looking cupcakes. She was glad she wasn’t yet next in line. It took her a couple minutes to narrow down her choices, then, decide between the vanilla milk chocolate and red velvet bundles of bliss. She needed chocolate.

  Savoring the rich, silky chocolate icing, laced with a hint of bourbon, Jessica strolled back down Santa Monica to Rodeo Drive. She tried to make the little confection last as long as she could, but finally polished it off. Doing the mental calculation of how many minutes she might have to swim or cycle to work it off did not lead to a moment of buyer’s remorse.

  Claiming her purchases from Max Mara was another matter. If she hadn’t needed clothes for the very next day, she would have called and had them ship everything to her. Jessica strained her eyes for any remnant of the spectacle she had witnessed. Her anger had morphed into sadness. This a
fternoon’s encounter was too reminiscent of the last time she had stumbled upon Jim and the she-devil going at it. She felt ashamed of Jim. The Jim she had fallen in love with would never have allowed himself to be humiliated like he had been today. She also felt like a fool realizing now that he was, as her father had said, so much less than she had imagined.

  The street ahead seemed quiet, although a police car was parked at the curb across the street. Straining to peer into the back of the police car and seeing it was empty, Jessica picked up the pace and closed the distance to Max Mara’s in no time flat. Angela rushed to greet her. Jessica’s purchases were ready, and shop staff loaded them into the trunk of Jessica’s car quickly. The relief she felt pulling away from the curb was enormous, as if she were fleeing the scene of a crime.

  By six Jessica had arrived at the Brentwood house, making a stop on the way for take-out sushi. She unloaded the car and hung up the new clothes, carefully, so there wouldn’t be a wrinkle in them. Running her hands over the luxurious fabrics and smoothing the elegant lines soothed her, as images from the day bounced around in her head. That look on Jim’s face today was haunting. How had this man, her husband, become a beast of burden for a screeching banshee? In all their years of marriage, she had never asked Jim to carry packages for her or even considered shouting at him in public. She almost felt sorry for him…the two-timing, unprincipled, dirtball.

  She knew she should hop on one of the fitness contraptions her dad owned. Not only would it be penance for the cupcake. It might also stop the ping pong match going on in her head between pity and rage at Jim. It was such a nice evening in LA. Clear skies, a perfect temperature, and the sun would be setting within the hour. She could just sit on the patio, eat sushi, and watch the distant lights come on as the city began to sparkle. A breeze beckoned. Sushi and city views won out!

  In the kitchen, Jessica picked up the stack of mail she had brought in from the box near the front gate. The team caring for her dad’s house had some rule they used about forwarding mail to her dad at selective intervals, tracking him wherever he was. A tray in the butler’s pantry was used to hold the mail until it was sent to her father. As she carried the stack to the tray, several pieces slid out and fluttered to the ground. Jessica bent to retrieve them and stopped short. One of the items was a post card, written in her mother’s hand. On the front was an idyllic scene of blue-domed, white stucco structures overlooking azure waters, with a golden sun hung low over the horizon. A little blurb on the back identified the scene: “Santorini, jewel of the Aegean.” Her mother must have talked Giovanni into a yachting foray, or perhaps she had set out on her own. Far more stunning than the scene on the post card was the brief message from her mother.

  “Hank, thanks so much. See you soon. Ciao! Lexi”

  For the second time today, you could have knocked Jessica over with a feather! That her parents were communicating was a bit of a surprise. More surprising was the casually intimate tone. In particular, the use by her mother of the pet name “Lexi.” Jessica had not heard her dad call her mother that in years. What did it mean that she was going to see him soon? Who was visiting whom, and where?

  Jessica, her head spinning, found a good chardonnay chilling in the large Subzero stainless steel refrigerator. The concierge service must have had a record somewhere of her wine preferences, perhaps courtesy of her father. An intriguing Argentine Malbec was sitting on the counter, but the chilled chardonnay seemed lighter and more appealing as an accompaniment to sushi. Jessica opened the bottle and poured a glass, taking that and her dinner to the back patio.

  Images of the day’s first moments, cast so early in the morning by the landscape in Mission Hills, formed one side of a set of parentheses now closed by the LA cityscape before her. She could never have imagined all that had occurred in between. Father Martin’s words, spoken in such an offhand manner several weeks before, drifted back to her as though carried aloft by an offshore breeze. “God is a God of surprises, Jessica.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” she said, tipping her glass to the sun setting before her. Questions poured out along the arc cast by her raised arm. What had possessed Jim to take up with such a repulsive woman? Would Jessica and the Van der Woerts hit it off tomorrow? Where was her mother, and why would she see her father soon? Had someone murdered Kelly Fontana?

  CHAPTER 10

  The offices of Canady, Holmes, Winston and Klein were everything you might expect of a Vault-ranked top-100 law firm. Located in a mega-city, they managed big deals and solved problems for members of the power elite. Given the firm’s location, there was an entertainment industry bent to their work although what garnered most of the publicity was their high profile criminal cases. Many of those cases were honchoed by Paul Worthington who had achieved junior partner status in near-record time after joining the firm right out of Stanford Law school.

  Occupying a dozen floors of an historic building in downtown LA, the firm employed over two hundred lawyers plus many more staff members. They had a presence statewide, with offices in San Diego, San Francisco, and, of course Sacramento, the state capitol. They also operated smaller offices in wealthy enclaves like the one they were opening in the desert.

  The LA “shop” had all of the glitz and glamour portrayed in TV shows like “The Good Wife.” Gleaming brass, expensive wood polished to show off gorgeous grains, fine art prints, and richly upholstered fabrics. Richly detailed conference rooms featured leather chairs and gleaming wood tables. Expanses of windows offered views of the city.

  Even the elevators were stunning, Jessica noted, as she rode with Paul from one floor to another. The floors she visited with him housed the more senior members of the firm along with the waiting rooms, offices and conference rooms where they brought clients. Things were likely to be considerably less glamorous behind the scenes, where staff and newly minted lawyers hung out. Many would occupy cubicles with standard-issue desks and file cabinets, not meriting an office with four walls or a window. Those who supervised the work of others no doubt had private space, at least. Their offices were probably furnished with wood desks and leather chairs. But it would not be an “exotic” wood, nor would the leather be as fine-grained as that on the chair she occupied in Paul Worthington’s office. The view behind Paul was stunning, with windows on two sides of the elegantly contrived space.

  He looked at ease. Jessica wondered, once again, about the amount of time and attention he was devoting to her. The practice of big law was always in a state of flux, but maybe more now than ever. The Great Recession had taken its toll on all sorts of firms at all levels of practice, and in most every area of the law. Only about half the graduates from law school last year had landed any kind of law job. Big law firms drew from the top ten or twenty percent of students in their class, at the top ten or twenty law schools in the country. Even those firms had begun to recruit fewer students. Some deferred hiring or even cut loose students to whom they had already made offers.

  Law school graduates hired by major firms were rewarded with high starting salaries and the promise of making a ton more as their careers took off. A heady sense of having arrived was common among newcomers to big law. Mega-deals, though, meant mega-mounds of documents and data to review. Tens of thousands, even on occasion, a million pages, according to Jim, who reveled in the challenges of the mega-deal.

  Jessica had a good idea of what that meant. Even at a smaller, more specialized firm, she had done her time in “document review hell.” Given her obsessive nature, and eye for detail, she had excelled at the task. She also had a talent for being able to scan documents, sifting through volumes of data to find the few facts that mattered. In particular, those that might make or break a project or win a case.

  Despite the allure of the high life, fear or a close cousin dread, was commonplace in big law. Mega-deals were risky and mega-failure was a terrifying prospect. Keeping up with expectations to achieve 2000 billable hours a year, on top of all the other demands in big law firms, r
equired a lot of sacrifice. Often referred to as the “misery index,” it was the dark side of the high life. The mega-firm, and even a lot of smaller, boutique firms were 24/7 operations, thanks to modern technology. Clients who paid as much as a $1000 per hour to elite lawyers expected to get attention from someone whenever they wanted it. Harried junior associates often fielded those late night calls, shielding higher-ups from meltdowns by clients facing make-or-break legal outcomes.

  Expectations of round-the-clock availability had begun to “trickle down” to smaller firms, and even solo practitioners could pay dearly if they didn’t pick up their phone when a client called, or worse, didn’t call back at an agreed upon time. In the legal profession, there was no room for a “slacker” mentality. That was true, at least, for anyone wanting a practice not run out of the trunk of their car or a Starbucks coffee shop. Though lawyers generally held themselves and their chosen profession in high regard, day-to-day life for many was more on par with a sweat shop.

  Canady, Holmes, Winston and Klein churned like a perpetual motion machine. Everywhere she went with Paul that day, there was incessant activity. No slacker in sight with everyone hustling and bustling, phones ringing and being answered on the first or second ring. The misery index must be relatively low at Canady et al. She spotted no hint of the existential angst that gripped many inhabitants in such rarified environments. The faces Jessica had encountered fairly glowed, lit from within by that can-do spirit, as bright as the California sunshine.

  Jessica found herself emulating them, smiling back confidently, swept up by the almost pathological optimism of the place. She shook hands and exchanged niceties with a sizeable cast of characters, mostly at or below the same rank as Paul Worthington. They were deferential to Paul without being sycophants. They also showed an appropriate level of curiosity about Jessica with no expression of fear or loathing about the intrusion of this new competitor onto their hard-won turf.