A Dead Sister (Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery)

by Anna Burke

  “Scumbags and screwballs, the lot of them, I’m so sorry that ex-husband of yours has joined their ranks. I thought he was okay. Then again, I never thought my ex-daughter-in-law would be talking to my grandkids about getting married to her girlfriend. So, what do I know?”

  Uncle Don began to layer the toasted buns onto the platter, too, stacking them haphazardly next to the cheeseburger patties. Once the grill was empty, he handed the platter to Jessica and looked her directly in the eye.

  “Speaking of screwballs and scumbags, when are you and Frank going to tell me what’s up with this guy they got in lockup over in Riverside?”

  CHAPTER 17

  The next day, Jessica replayed events from the night before as she made the ninety-minute drive from Riverside to Rancho Mirage. Dinner had been delicious. She could not have imagined a more perfect Fourth of July barbeque: burgers and all the fixings; corn-on-the-cob; potato salad; red, white and blue tortilla chips; and, as Frank had promised, Aunt Evelyn’s 7-layer dip. The kids, having spent two hours churning around in the pool, were more than ready to tank up again. They must have come close to putting away the 10,000 calories Frank estimated they consumed daily.

  Double desserts had helped. Aunt Evelyn had made a brownie flag cake. Brownies topped with white cream cheese frosting and decorated with blueberries as the dark background, with bits of white frosting showing as the stars, and red raspberry stripes. It was delicious, but so were the cupcakes. They went over well with the kids, who thanked her, more than once, for bringing the sweet treats to the feast. Evie oohed and aahed over how cute they were, while Frankie just wolfed them down. Jessica would have been convinced they were going to be sick eating so much, except that she had seen Brien do the same thing, while washing it all down with several beers.

  After dinner, Jessica would have been content to sit in the back yard for the rest of the evening. The kids were wired, mostly from sugar but also from anticipation of the fireworks. Frank had bought tickets for all of them to watch the fireworks from a cemetery in Riverside. “Best seats in the house,” according to the locals. She would drive her own car to the fireworks display so she could return to the Mission Inn, directly.

  The more pressing issue after dinner was the talk she and Frank had agreed to have with Don Fontana. It was a relief to have the matter out in the open, ending the debate about whether or not to tell Frank’s dad they were taking a new look at Kelly’s accident. It felt so much better, too, not to delude Uncle Don about why she and Frank were suddenly seeing each other.

  Her initial reaction had not been relief, however. Shock had shot through her, causing the platter of burgers and buns she was holding to wobble precariously. Fortunately, Frank had just walked up behind her and was able to whisk the tray out of her hands before disaster could strike.

  “How did you know, Uncle Don?”

  “I may not be a detective, like Frank, but I am a cop and a good one. I saw Art Greenwald come in and then leave the building in Palm Springs, all hush-hush, no shootin’ the-breeze with me or anybody else. That’s not like him at all. Not everybody knows enough to hide his business from me, so I asked around. That’s when I heard they’ve got some loser in the RPDC who says he knows something about a cold case, and Art wants the old file with all the case notes. If Art and his team are taking another look, it must be something worthwhile. I don’t have to be Einstein to figure out it has to do with Kelly. Otherwise, why would there be all this dodgy, under-the-table stuff going on to keep me out of the loop?”

  “Sorry, Dad, we were trying to handle this without stirring up the past before we had to. I’m the one who got Jessica in on this, so I hope you won’t blame her.”

  “I don’t blame either one of you. I just want to know what’s going on.”

  “Well, it would really help to talk this over with you, Uncle Don. I’d like to get your take on the investigation and what you think happened the night she was killed. Then, maybe you can help Frank and me sort out what to do next.”

  “How about we talk about this after dinner, Dad? We’ll all help Mom clear up and put the food away, then, maybe she’ll supervise the kids so we can talk. They have to get out of those swimsuits, shower and dress before we can leave for the fireworks.”

  “Your mom can handle that, no problem,” He said with a cat-that-swallowed-the-canary grin.

  “Can handle what?” Jessica and Frank both jumped. Evelyn had walked up behind them. His grin broadened as he spoke to his wife. How long had she been standing there?

  “The three of us need to talk after dinner about something that’s come up at work. I was just telling them you could hustle the kids into showering and changing their clothes while we talk, so we won’t be late for the fireworks.”

  “Of course I can. You’ll catch me up later, right dear? If there’s something new about what happened to Kelly, I’d prefer to hear it from you.” The three of them were staring at her, dumbfounded, as she took the platter of cheeseburgers and buns from Frank.

  “What? I’m the wife of a cop—a good one. Let’s eat before Don or the kids pass out from hunger.” Evie and Frankie came bursting from the house where she had sent them to wash up. They were stuffing chips into their mouths, leaving a trail of crumbs on the ground like Hansel and Gretel.

  So, after dinner, instead of taking a nap, which is what she felt like doing, Jessica sat with Frank and Uncle Don at the patio table sipping coffee. As she and Frank did their best to spell out what Chester Davis had to say, Don Fontana had a troubled look on his face, but remained quiet. Then Jessica lowered her voice a little trying to soften the words that followed, as though it would make a difference.

  “Uncle Don, I didn’t know that you had been called to the scene that night. It must have been awful to find your brother’s daughter like that. I am so sorry.”

  “It was awful, hard on me, but so much worse for Sammy and Monica. At least I was able to I.D. the body so they didn’t have to see her like that.”

  “This is hard for me, too. I looked at the photos taken of Kelly that morning when you found her. I’m convinced Chet Davis was there. His description of the way she looked was too horrifically similar to what’s documented in those photos. Of course, that doesn’t mean the rest of what he claims is true.

  As I recall, Jessica, whoever hit her was going 35 or 40 miles per hour, given the distance her body was thrown from the point of impact. That kind of speed makes no sense, considering the accident happened in a parking lot and not out on a street somewhere. And there was no indication that the driver made any effort to stop before impact. So maybe someone did hit her on purpose.”

  “When you went back to the scene that night, there was good lighting, no road defects someone might have swerved to avoid, and no obvious obstructions that might have blocked the driver’s view of a pedestrian. Is that right?”

  “Yes, that’s true. I was so upset when I realized the dead girl was Kelly that I had my guys take over at the scene, as any professional should do. I was afraid I might mishandle things or draw the wrong conclusion, since I was rattled. But I stayed there, made my own drawings, took my own measurements. I watched them take photos, bag and tag everything. I had them block it off and leave all the little markers in place. I wanted to go back later when the lighting was closer to what it must have been at the time she was killed. We did that, trying to make sure we didn’t miss anything. I wrote up that report myself.”

  “So what did you think had happened?”

  “My thought was some bastard was stupidly drunk, stoned or both. And maybe really pissed off about flushing a lot of money down the toilet at the casino, so he went tearing out of there and ran her down. The coward made no effort to help Kelly or call for help. Not that anybody could have helped her at that point, according to the coroner. Damn it!” He slapped the table making the stone top rattle, shaking the whole table, in fact.

  “I checked all the DUIs that night, hoping someone had been pulled over in a c
ar that fit the description. All we had to go on at that point was the debris left at the scene. We put out an APB for a dark-colored car of some kind, with damage to the paint and the chrome on the front end. We found nothing from that night in Riverside, San Bernardino, or any other of the counties nearby. Half a dozen dark-colored cars were being driven by drunks that night, but none with the kind of damage we were looking for. I checked accident reports as well as traffic reports just in case the loser got into more trouble somewhere else after running Kelly down. No luck there, either. It was all a long shot, anyway. It was probably some local dirt bag who just drove home that night and parked his car in his garage after killing a sweet lovely girl like that.” Don was choked up and stopped. Frank reached out and patted him on the back.

  “It’s okay, Dad. You want to take a break? We can talk more about this later, if you want.”

  “No, let’s go on. What I’m telling you, Jessica, is that it never occurred to me that someone might have hit her on purpose. Why? Why would a nineteen year-old girl have that kind of an enemy? Not that I necessarily believe what that lowlife, Chester Davis, has to say. He’d sell his own grandmother for a gram or two of meth. But given all the evidence, it makes as much sense as anything else about what happened that night.”

  “Okay, so you didn’t get any lead searching the records for DUI citations made that night, or early the next morning, and nothing from the traffic stops or accident reports. The records say the paint chips were later identified as belonging to a midnight blue 1999 Mercedes S class. Did anybody go back and take another look at the DMV records to see how many cars of that make and model were registered in Riverside County? I know Mercedes is practically the state car here in California, but that model was brand new, and one of the pricier sedans you can purchase. Another long shot, I know, but how many could there have been on the road in Riverside County or even in LA or San Diego counties, for that matter?”

  “I don’t remember if we ran a check like that or not, Jessica. By the time we got the report back from the PDQ, it wasn’t likely we’d find a damaged vehicle anyway. Somebody deranged enough to kill Kelly and then just take off like that would have cleaned it up and repaired it right away. Even if we had tracked down a car fitting that description, you couldn’t place it at the scene without a damaged front end to match with the bits and pieces we collected. I assume you’re asking me about it because there’s nothing in the case file, so maybe nobody did that.” Don Fontana paused a moment and stared off into space before speaking again.

  “Mostly, we concentrated on trying to find someone in the hotel or casino that saw or heard something the night she was killed. We put out alerts to the public. Sammy and Monica made an appeal on TV for anyone with any information to come forward. Meanwhile, we also did the best we could to backtrack and figure out what she was doing at the hotel. We tried to find out when she was last seen or heard from, who had contact with her before she died and what she said to them. As you can tell from reading the reports in the file, we talked to a lot of people. Nobody had much to say that was any use, and the trail goes completely cold after she called in sick Tuesday morning. Sammy and Monica didn’t suspect anything was wrong, since they felt lucky to hear from her every couple weeks or so. They expected to see her again on the 16th for Tommy’s birthday, but not before that.” He took a sip of coffee. His hand trembled.

  “Most of the people in her life didn’t even notice, or care, that she was missing for days. The boyfriend says they were fighting. As I recall, he told us he was waiting for her to cool off or something like that. To her supervisors and coworkers, she was just one more immature, half-assed employee, acting like an irresponsible jerk. It’s been such a long time, now, Jessica. I’m sure I’ve forgotten a lot of the details about what went on. What I do remember, very well, is that I rode everybody about as hard as I could to get as much information as quickly as we could. Folks felt bad for me and my family, so I know they went the extra mile...” He peered into the dark cup of coffee in his hands, as if some secret were lurking at the bottom.

  “Well, I know it was a long time ago, but I have a couple more questions for you, Uncle Don.”

  “Shoot.”

  “What about a cell phone. I didn’t see anything about her phone being found. I know she had one. I still have a mobile number for her in my contacts. I couldn’t dump it...I...” Jessica’s resolve to get to the bottom of things was floundering. She was on the verge of getting choked up herself and still hadn’t raised the most distressing issue.

  “I just don’t remember about the phone, Jessica. I presume it would have come up during the conversation with the boyfriend, or that we would have tried to run down phone records for her even if no phone was found. Her supervisor must have had some way to reach her. I don’t recall where Kelly made that call from on Tuesday morning. Somebody might have checked. We didn’t think we were investigating a homicide. I doubt we would have pulled phone records for a hit-and-run accident, but we might have done it if Chester Davis had come forward back then. That probably would have required some sort of warrant, right Frank?”

  “Yeah, that’s true, if you had some reason to suspect she was murdered. That call to her supervisor might have led back to her carrier even if there weren’t any phone bills or other records in her apartment. Sammy and Monica or Tommy might have a better idea about the phone, Jessica. On that front, Dad, we’re back to the problem we were grappling with. That’s whether we should dredge up all these sad old memories on the basis of allegations by a meth addict up against a third strike.”

  “If I were you, I’d try to get more to go on before taking this to Sammy and Monica. I probably sound like a hypocrite, since I was sort of wagging my finger at you two for holding out on me. But Jessica, you see Tommy all the time. Why not ask him about the cell phone?”

  “Okay, Uncle Don. That’s another reason I’m glad to review all of this with you. I’m going to have Tommy and Jerry Reynolds at my house tomorrow night and I’d like to put Jerry to work trying to follow up on a few things. You know, he’s the P.I. who helped with the investigation into Roger’s death? It would make things easier to tell Tommy, too, since he and Jerry are close. I know we need to get moving pretty soon, but I have a couple other things. One is pretty simple. The boyfriend and a neighbor who saw Kelly Monday evening on her way back to work both said she was wearing a black vest. In the photos she’s not wearing it. I didn’t see anything in the record that says a vest was found anywhere near her. There’s nothing about it being logged in as evidence. Does the matter of a missing vest ring a bell?”

  “I don’t recall. I was surprised by that fact that she was still wearing the same clothes after nearly a week. Hard to imagine that since she was always such a glamor girl. We used to tease her about that. Sammy complained she went through more clothes in a week than he did in a month, sometimes changing two or three times a day! She was in that bathroom of hers for hours, showering and primping. He says she was always asking for money for some new product for that gorgeous hair of hers. Sammy called her bathroom a shampoo museum with bottles lined up all over the bathroom. He never understood it, but it was one of the little things he missed after she moved out on her own. I’m guessing she left that vest wherever she was holed up for the last few days of her life. Maybe that’s where she left her phone, too.”

  “Okay, I just wanted to be sure I hadn’t missed something. One last thing, and that’s the issue of drugs. Was she an addict? I thought I knew her pretty well. She hated needles. Those pictures are hard to deny, but for her to mess her body up like that it just seems impossible. Did Sammy and Monica say she was having problems with drugs like that?”

  “They were as shocked as you are, Jessica. Angry and hurt, embarrassed for Kelly, so we were careful not to go too far down that road. It didn’t seem relevant to the investigation of a hit-and-skip. Sammy told me Kelly had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and had started taking prescription medications. T
hey weren’t sure what she had told the shrink that led to her diagnosis, and planned to talk to her shrink after the funeral. Then Monica began having her own problems, and Sammy got sick. Both were seeing a lot of docs of their own. I don’t know if they ever got around to talking with Kelly’s shrink or not. I’m not sure what they could have learned by doing that, anyway. They were having such a hard time, I just let it go.” He looked from Jessica to Frank and back again.

  “What good would it do to look into Kelly’s drug use or her mental problems when, as far as we could tell, she had been the victim of a terrible accident? Maybe she was so stoned or so crazy out of her mind she contributed to the accident in some way. But what difference did that make? That was no excuse for the bastard that ran her down to just leave like that. It didn’t seem right to make a dead girl look bad, or to put her parents through more by investigating that aspect of her life. Like I said, we weren’t thinking about foul play beyond the fact that she was the victim of a hit-and-run accident at the hands of some douche bag. I suppose she could have stiffed some dealer. The son-of-a-bitch might have been angry enough to run her down in his expensive Mercedes sedan paid for by selling drugs to young women like Kelly. Maybe we dropped the ball...I don’t know...”