A Dead Sister (Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery) (19 page)

Energized, Jessica moved into the bath, and splashed water on her face. The tiled walkway outside her room beckoned. A clerk at the front desk encouraged her to explore. Overlooking the Spanish patio, there was a clock tower with rotating figures and a glockenspiel, something akin to a carillon, when it worked! From behind her, at check-in, Jessica had heard the squawk of parrots. Definitely one of the more unusual places she had spent the night.

There was also an onsite spa that she might have time to use in the morning, if she could bring herself to do it. By some strange twist of fate, it was called “Kelly’s Spa,” named for the co-owner of the hotel. What she
should
do, now or first thing in the morning, was carefully review the file Art Greenwald had given her. Depending on what all was in that file, she might badly need a massage or a facial, or more likely a head-to-toe scrub to rid her of the taint.

Jessica pulled on the Max Mara tunic and cropped pants she had purchased on Monday. The deep red gave her skin a rosy glow. She hoped she could conjure up a mood to match that would carry her through dinner. Before she could sink back into wallowing, she refreshed her makeup, ran a comb through her hair, and set out to walk off some nervous energy before it was time to meet Frank Fontana for dinner.

CHAPTER
14

At six, Jessica was sitting in the bar area outside Duane’s, sipping a glass of chardonnay. When Frank walked in, he was carrying a single red rose, his face brightening when he spotted her. Jessica was touched by the sweet, slightly romantic gesture. It also made her nervous. Was she going to have the second I-need-a-year talk with a man this week?

“Hey, cuz,” he said, handing her the rose and brushing her cheek with a shy kiss. “You look great!”

“So do you,
cuz
,” Jessica said, trying to match his light tone. He did look great dressed in a dark jacket, with a deep burgundy shirt. A narrow tie, in the same dark color as the jacket, was held in place with a silver tie clip. His trousers were also dark, cut lean. In the scant lighting of the lounge, she couldn’t quite tell if he wore a suit or a sports jacket and slacks. His Italian heritage was evident, the colors accentuating the near-black of his hair and adding depth to his dark eyes. It felt as though he could read her thoughts. Not all of them, she hoped, as she shifted her eyes abruptly, focusing on the rose he had handed her.

“Hey, don’t sound too surprised. I’m Italian
and
I have a mother, an Irish Catholic one! I’d never hear the end of it if I showed up for dinner with Jessica Huntington looking like a slob. She and Dad are watching the kids tonight. I got inspected by both of them before I left the house.” He beamed at her, his mother’s ironic Irish grin animating his pleasant features.

Jessica laughed and hopped down from the bar stool where she had been sitting.

“Let’s go eat. I’m starving!”

“I am too. Steak, I want steak!” He offered his arm as he escorted her the ten feet or so from the bar stool to the door of the restaurant.

“You clean up well
an
d you’re a gentleman!”

“I told you...”

“Yeah, I know, Italian and you have a mother.” She added in her mind, “and you’re a good Catholic boy.”

Dinner seemed to fly by, even though the meal was a leisurely one by most standards. The decision about what wine to order provoked a bit of discussion. At Jessica’s insistence, they settled on an Italian red that Frank regarded as obscenely expensive. Frank was quite knowledgeable about wine, but not inclined to gratify his palate often.

“At my house, I drink ‘two buck Chuck’ a lot of the time and feel lucky to have that!” Frank said, referring to a Trader Joe favorite that many cost-minded Californians swore by. A tradition among aficionados was to go to the local Trader Joe store and buy a bottle. Then they take it out in the parking lot to sample, and if it’s decent, go back in and buy a case.

Jessica had tried the wine more than once, since it was an affordable item that turned up at college parties. It was passable,
as she recalled. A wave of sad sentimentality hit her, suddenly. She and Jim had once shared such delight, exploring and collecting wines.

When the wine arrived, they toasted the Italian vintage and Frank offered that perhaps he had been too hasty in characterizing the price as obscene. Jessica agreed with him that it was an outstanding wine. “But, I have to confess an almost patriotic allegiance to California reds. I swear, Officer Fontana, that I have more than one bottle at home as good, and at half the price.” Jessica raised her right hand as though taking an oath.

“Well, I’m afraid you’re going to have to prove it to me, because this wine is amazing!”

“Prove it to yourself. Tommy, Laura and a few other friends are coming over for dinner. Join us, Friday night, and I’ll break out a bottle.”

“Now that’s an offer too good to refuse. Besides, what choice do I have? It’s my sworn duty to serve and protect. Far be it from me to miss a chance to investigate your outrageous claims about a better bottle at half the price.” He raised his class and gave hers a little clink. Jessica gulped the wine in her glass. Seeing each other three nights in a row was likely to put them both to the test in a lot of ways. Would they run out of conversation? A silly question, really, given that they weren’t going to be alone Thursday
or
Friday night. Getting a word in edgewise might be the bigger challenge.

Frank was being modest on Sunday when he told Jessica he could take care of himself and his kids in the kitchen. He was actually quite well-versed on the subject of cuisine. He had worked his way through college cooking in hotel kitchens and even considered a career as a chef rather than a cop, for about five minutes. The working conditions were about as bad, although you didn’t have to worry about getting shot. Stabbed maybe, where, in mostly-male kitchens, a favorite insult was to say loudly: “You do that like a housewife!” often punctuated by stabbing the air with an enormous French knife.

Not surprisingly, his favorite dishes were Italian classics with recipes passed down from his grandmother and aunts to him. He had been way more successful at finagling secrets from them than Jessica had been with Bernadette. Tomorrow night, he acknowledged, dinner would be in his mother’s hands. Comfort food was her specialty, having grown up in a large Irish family where meals were designed around stretching a dollar. Of course, she had done her best to be the dutiful daughter-in-law, and at least some of what Frank had picked up came from helping out at home when his mother was being tutored by his Italian grandmother and aunts. His longsuffering mother had endured a lot at the hands of a well-meaning but overbearing mother-in-law. Both women could be caught crossing themselves and asking for divine intervention, calling on God and a litany of saints to get them through whatever was going on in the kitchen at that moment.

That had
not
been one of the problems Jessica had to face in her marriage. She and her mother-in-law were never close. Jim’s parents had retired to Portofino soon after he and Jessica were married. They spent about as much time with them as they did with Jessica’s mother and father, Jim’s parents being as peripatetic as her own.

“I could probably count on one hand the number of times Jim and I visited his family, and I doubt we visited either of my parents much more often than that.” A sigh escaped her lips as she took a sip of wine. Why did that matter, now? Her marriage was over. The profound sense of disconnect she felt at being newly divorced was somehow amplified by the loss of things that might have been.

Frank pulled her back to the present. “Families work in all sorts of ways, Jessica. There’s a price to pay for being part of a big, close-knit family. Mom can tell you more than I can about that, I promise. While we’re on the subject of promises, you have to promise to give me a chance to prove what I can do in the kitchen. I’ll fix dinner and you bring the wine, deal?”

“Deal,” Jessica said, sealing the deal with another little clink of their glasses.

Food and wine was not all they had in common. They hardly spoke at all about family and friends, perhaps unconsciously avoiding the subject that had brought them together for dinner. Instead, they covered a range of other topics as they ate their meals of steaks with grilled asparagus. A twice-baked potato with gorgonzola cheese for Frank and garlic mashed potatoes for Jessica. Finally, they were sipping decaf cappuccinos and finishing the last bites of a chocolate soufflé. Frank had ordered the soufflé but insisted that Jessica try it. She didn’t take much convincing, since the operative word in chocolate soufflé
is
chocolate.

“It’s been a terrific dinner, Jessica, a real treat. Thanks for picking up the tab.”

“My pleasure, Frank, it was great to catch up a bit.”

“I wish I didn’t have to do this, but I would like to hear what you learned from talking to Chester Davis today.”

“I wish we could put it off too. I need to tell you so you can help me figure out what to do next. The first thing I have to do is apologize. I was so freaked out after my lunch with Dick Tatum and Detective Greenwald that I didn’t do my homework. He passed along the file from the prior investigation of Kelly’s accident, but I haven’t looked at it yet. Before I get to your house tomorrow night, I will have gone through it, cover to cover.”

“Geez, Jessica, you don’t have to apologize to me. This is all above and beyond, you know? You—we have to take care of ourselves if we’re going to do this. Whatever, “
this”,
turns out to be.”

“There’s a damn good chance that
this
is a murder investigation. Chester Davis isn’t all there. His thinking is jumbled at times, and he’s a physical wreck from way too many drugs for way too long. He has plenty of reason to make up something that can counter the third strike he’s earned, but...I believe he saw Kelly that night. His description of the awful way in which her body was contorted fits with crime scene photos, according to Art Greenwald who
has
reviewed that file. Whether it happened the way Chet says it happened is another matter. Kelly’s file might shed some further light on that. If somebody
accidentally
killed Kelly, there should have been skid marks or some indication they tried to stop rather than plowing into her the way Chet Davis describes.”

“Does he say anything about who did that to Kelly or why?”

“Yes, Frank, although that’s a little vague, too. He says Kelly came running out of a back exit of the hotel, chased by a couple of men pretty intent on catching her. She was sort of ‘out of it,’ according to Chet, dazed or confused. A large, dark colored sedan, already in the parking lot turned on its headlights, roared to life, and ran her down. Somehow, he got the impression that the car was new and expensive, but he couldn’t tell us how he knew that.” Jessica paused to sip her decaf coffee. She had only begun and her throat was already getting that dry, closed off feeling.

“We had him go through what happened that night several times, and his story changed very little. A few new details emerged or he left out a couple things when he told the story again. He was dodgy, at first, about what he was doing there, but soon admitted he was making a drug delivery to hotel guests. What he described each time, Frank, is a car at a standstill, turning on its headlights
, then, deliberately hitting her, almost head on.” Jessica paused again, taking a breath this time before going on.

“The impact sent her flying, up into the air. She hit the windshield, then the curb. Chester Davis says he eventually left the place where he was hiding behind a row of dumpsters and went to check on her. She was dead, her head and neck bent in such a way that there was no doubt about that in his mind. I couldn’t bring myself to look at the photos from the crime scene, yet. Art Greenwald assures me they’re pretty awful, and consistent with what Chet’s description.” Jessica gulped, trying not to think about it—
about her, the way she must look in those photos. She suddenly felt tired. It had been a long, emotionally draining day and that was reflected in her voice as she continued.

“Chet caught a glimpse of the driver. He says the guy had long hair and seemed to be giving orders. He was screaming and cursing at the two men who had been chasing Kelly. One of the slugs he was berating called him Mr. P or Mr. B, or something like that. He wasn’t sure, but it sounded like an initial of some kind. Eventually the driver ordered the two guys who had chased Kelly to go back into the hotel and get somebody referred to as the doc. When they returned they were hauling a tall man between them. They took him to the car, and stuffed him into the back seat of the sedan. One of the lowlifes hollered that he was hurt and that ‘the bitch got him’ or something like that. I’m guessing Kelly’s the bitch he was referring to. She must have been so scared, Frank, to hurt the guy like that. So glad to get away but then...” Jessica couldn’t go on. She and Frank just sat for a few minutes in silence.

“He hit her so hard, Frank. Bits and pieces of the car must have been left at the scene. The fragments must still be in evidence somewhere. The log should say what was found at the scene or on Kelly’s body, I’ll let you know for sure when I’ve gone through that file. Trace material and fragments left behind might help us identify a particular make or model of a car. I mean automakers archive that kind of information so owners, or more likely, so body shops can match the paint on cars they repair. Surely, the police ran anything they got against those archives. I’m not sure what we would do with that information, anyway, but it’s a connection of sorts to the bastard who ran her down.” Jessica looked up to see Frank staring at her with a quizzical puppy-dog tilt to his head.

“What?”

“Well, I know that that about an accident scene. My dad’s a traffic cop and has been for years. How do
you
know that, about paint color archives and the like?”

“You’d be surprised how much discussion there is about the use and disposal of paint and other more or less toxic substances in environmental law, especially for real estate developers aspiring to ‘go green’. Only one of the issues that kept me employed, for a while, anyway. The bottom line, Frank, is that if Kelly was murdered, why?”

She made eye contact with him, his dark eyes set in a sad, grim face making it hard to deliver more bad news. “There’s another horrible aspect to this sad story, Frank. Art believes it may be one answer to why she was killed. Did you ever hear Kelly was using drugs?”