A Dead Husband (Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery)

by Anna Burke

  “I’m sorry to worry you Bernadette,” Jessica said softly. She meant it too. Sitting across from her diminutive companion, Bernadette’s shoulders seemed so much more frail than she remembered.

  “I’m praying for you, chica.” Bernadette replied. There might have been a note of sarcasm in her tone but Jessica knew she was dead serious. Bernadette was born and raised a Catholic. She made sure Jessica showed appropriate respect for all things Catholic once she started school at St. Theresa’s. That was after being kicked out of Palm Valley and St. Margaret’s Episcopal school.

  It wasn’t just the spitting incident with Ms. Crutchfield that got her expelled from Palm Valley. She had already been warned about making off-hand comments under her breath in class. Her running commentary invariably made her classmates snicker but ticked off her teachers. They had learned right away not to ask her to repeat what she’d said more loudly since that only instigated more chortling and disruption in the classroom. Jessica made a number of visits to the principal’s office that year before the “final blow” so to speak.

  Jessica was invited never to come back to Palm Valley after bitch-slapping a snooty girl who lived in one of the other country clubs in the area. A couple years older than Jessica, she had asked how Jessica could stand living in Mission Hills where they hosted the Dinah Shore event given the sort of crowd that event drew. Jessica couldn’t remember now exactly what the snot-nosed girl said when Jessica asked her what sort of crowd she was referring to. It included a derogatory substitute for the “L” word.

  At thirteen Jessica still wasn’t too sure what it meant to be a lesbian, but she did recognize meanness. The slur was intended to be an insult to Jessica, with whom this girl was only barely acquainted, and aimed to hurt a bunch of people she hadn’t even met. That seemed wrong to Jessica and it enraged her.

  Given all that was going on at home at the time, Jessica had just had enough. She hauled off and slapped the girl so hard it left a red hand print on her face. In hindsight, Jessica was lucky she didn’t get charged with assault. The incident was jarring though, a wake-up call about how out of control she really was. That was nearly twenty years ago but here she was again, letting divorce send her over the edge.

  “Look, Bernadette I know I’m behaving badly. It’s a hard time for me right now. I’m really at loose ends. It’s like starting all over again, but I’m 33 not 23 or 13 and I’m less clear now than ever about what I want to be when I grow up.”

  “Who wouldn’t be having a hard time when she leaves her husband after eight years of marriage and then has to see him in the news all the time with some young Hollywood star?” Bernadette turned the magazine around. Right there in front of her was a picture of the happy couple at some red carpet event. Jim, as handsome as ever and dressed to the nines, with a gorgeous blond starlet on his arm. What hurt the most was how genuinely happy they looked together.

  Jessica rolled her eyes. This was not going well. She had not gone into all the gory details about what had gone wrong with her marriage. Mainly, because she hadn’t sorted it all out for herself. She felt deeply aggrieved but knew she was no victim. Jessica could be stubborn and determined, and held on to the marriage, long after it was clear she and Jim were headed in different directions. She resented the cliché she had become as their marriage deteriorated. Thirty-something desperate housewife strives to have a child to save her marriage before discovering her husband seeking solace in the arms of a younger, blonder version of herself. It was something straight out of a tabloid alright.

  What made it so hard to let go was that they really seemed to have so much going for them. Jessica fell madly in love with James Harper while they were both in law school. They were kindred spirits, or so she thought. They both came from money so weren’t going to law school to get rich.

  Both could afford to take chances and do something meaningful with their careers, make a difference and change the world. Jim was going to do that by working at a law firm focused on helping designers of innovative technologies launch new enterprises in the choppy waters facing start-ups. Jessica was enamored with the “new urbanism” and wanted to bring environmental law and fair housing practices to bear on the booming real estate market in California.

  In 2004 they walked right out of Stanford Law into the sort of jobs both had in mind. They married soon after graduation. Using cash from their trust funds to buy a million dollar “fixer-upper” in Cupertino, they set about renovating it. They poured another quarter million dollars into improvements, along with a lot of energy and enthusiasm. Early in 2005 they figured the house was worth nearly twice what they’d paid for it, even while they were still finishing the renovations.

  Jim’s career took off almost immediately as the Silicon Valley continued to rebound from the hit taken with the tech wreck in 2000. Jessica was busy too, working on legal issues for a number of public-private housing partnerships. The more ambitious partnerships aimed to bring mixed-use residential and commercial master planned communities to the San Francisco bay area. These communities included a range of more or less affordable housing options, although affordable was often in the eye of the beholder. Some offered live/work arrangements in an attempt to integrate residential and commercial space. All aimed at preserving green space and creating more opportunities for community interaction. Before she knew it, Jessica was up to her eyeballs in zoning laws, environmental impact studies, and community hearings. She loved every minute of it but with their careers taking off, along with the renovations, they were under a lot of pressure. They seemed to be thriving even though they had to work harder that year to spend as much time together as they had before they were married.

  Suddenly at the end of 2005 the housing bubble burst. It was like someone had pulled a big plug somewhere. Things came to a screeching halt for Jessica shortly after that. Projects were scaled back, put on hold, or abandoned altogether. The firm she worked for started talking about “downsizing” and by the middle of 2007 Jessica got her walking papers. She sort of half-heartedly searched for another job but couldn’t look too far afield since Jim still had his position. Things got crazy in the private equity markets when the big banks started to go belly up and the financial markets froze up. There were some seriously terrifying moments during that period when it looked like the Silicon Valley might be faced with another version of the tech wreck.

  To keep busy, Jessica started doing pro bono work for some of the smaller, nonprofit community groups in neighborhoods where hopes had been so high. Mostly she tried to help projects keep going whenever they could find the money to keep them going. She tried to help people keep their homes and businesses as variable rate mortgages increased on property of rapidly diminishing value. It was heart-breaking to watch. Jim grew more and more impatient with Jessica as she sank into a funk about the set back to her career and to the work she had been doing.

  As things became more desperate in the financial markets the “high rollers” Jim dealt with routinely seemed to dig in. More anxious about displaying their success as if to convince each other they were in less precarious positions than they actually were. Behind the facade was a lot of fear but also a fierce determination to hang on to what they had at all costs. A lot of folks in their circle of friends and acquaintances didn’t make it. They simply disappeared from their lives.

  Jessica became annoyed at what she regarded as insensitivity on the part of those who survived the debacle. They seemed to be flaunting the fact that they still had their pricey toys or spoke in hushed tones about scoring new ones at deep discounts from folks who had to raise cash in a hurry. At some point, Jessica concluded that Jim and the members of his firm had lost their way, moving from venture to vulture capital in the carnage of the Great Recession.

  Needless to say, Jim disagreed, sometimes hurt by Jessica’s claims and at other times royally ticked off by them. For a time they agreed to disagree and decided to focus less on work and more on family by trying to have a child. Jessica felt
cursed as that path seemed not to be an easy one either. Adding hormonally induced mood swings into the mix did nothing to improve their relationship.

  “She’s not a star,” Jessica said. “You’ve got it all wrong about me and my marriage Bernadette.”

  “So sue me.”

  “I’m not that kind of lawyer. You want more coffee?” Bernadette shook her head no. Jessica emptied the rest of the pot into her cup and drank it down. Her head was definitely clearer and the toast had settled her stomach. It was also clearer than ever how much her life stank. One of the few good things still going for her was Bernadette’s concern. The closest thing she was ever going to get to unconditional love. Jessica picked up her cup and saucer and headed to the kitchen. As she passed Bernadette’s chair, she stopped, leaned over and kissed her on the top of the head. Bernadette was about to say something when Jessica’s cell phone rang.

  “Go on answer,” Bernadette said. “I’m glad it’s still working since I found it in the freezer this morning, right next to your divorce papers.” Jessica hurried over to the massive granite center island in the kitchen, set down her dirty dishes, and grabbed for the phone. The divorce papers were there alright, under her smartphone. They were splotched with little brown drops and smears. Given the location in which they were found Jessica’s bet was on ice cream. The phone was a little sticky too and smelled sweet and chocolaty when she held it to her ear. Yeah, definitely ice cream, rocky road no doubt.

  “Hello, Jessica Huntington-Harper speaking.”

  “Jessica, this is Laura.”

  “Hi Laura, I’m so glad you called. Tommy and Brien claimed you got home okay last night, but I owe you an apology. I flaked out on you all at some point. I am so sorry.”

  “Jessica, I’m in trouble.”

  “You and me both,” Jessica thought.

  “Trouble? What kind of trouble Laura?” Jessica asked. She could see Bernadette look up then go back to her reading, quietly shaking her head.

  “Hang on a second, Laura. I need to take this to my room, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “Bernadette I’m going to go get a shower.”

  “I’ll alert the local news,” Bernadette said.

  CHAPTER 3

  Back in her room Jessica closed the door and plopped down on her bed. She could have drifted off so easily.

  “Okay, Laura, what are you talking about? What kind of trouble?”

  “Jessica, Roger’s dead, murdered, and I’m pretty sure the cops think I did it.”

  “Oh my God, Laura, what happened?” Jessica gasped as heart skipped a beat.

  “I don’t know what happened. I came home and Roger was lying in the hallway. There was blood everywhere, like a horror movie. I...I...I couldn’t think. I just ran to see if I could help him. I tried to find a pulse. Jessica, he wasn’t breathing and there was so much blood. He’d been shot. I got the blood all over me.” She paused and Jessica heard her take a deep breath. As she went on she started to sob, making little sniffling sounds between sentences.

  “I knew he was dead but I called 911 anyway. The EMTs got there in minutes. They took one look at him, then at me, and called the police. When the police got there they started asking all sorts of questions. I tried to tell them I just found him like that when I got home this morning. It was all too much and I passed out, hit my head pretty hard. When I woke up, the EMTs had taken me to the hospital. The police were there too. They asked me to go through the whole thing again about how I found him. They took my clothes, Jessica, and they asked me if Roger and I owned a gun. I was so out of it. I know at some point they asked me to go down to the police department on Monday and give them a formal statement. I told them I would. What does that mean? I’m scared. You’re a lawyer, Jessica. What should I do?”

  “I’m not that kind of lawyer,” Jessica said, out loud but almost to herself. Truth is she wasn’t any kind of lawyer at the moment. She had taken the requisite courses in criminal law and did well. But she had little experience dealing with offenses involving violence, and almost no experience as a trial lawyer of any kind.

  “I don’t care what kind of lawyer you are. You’re my friend and I need you,” Laura said, choking back her sobs as fear and anger beat back her grief.

  “Look, okay Laura, I don’t know how much help I can be. I’m not really qualified given my experience at the bar. But we can figure that out later. Tell me where you are and I’ll come over. Let’s talk this through and we’ll decide what you need to do. Where are you now?”

  “I’m at my sister Sara’s house. I, I can’t go back there, Jessica. I don’t have a home anymore.” Her anguish ended in renewed sobbing.

  “I understand, Laura. Can you give me Sara’s address? I know she lives close to you, but it’s been a while.” Laura gave her the address. Jessica quickly entered the info on her smartphone and pulled up a map of the route to Sara’s house.

  “Got it. I’ve got to shower and dress but I’ll be over as soon as I can. Hang on, I’m on my way. We’ll figure something out, I promise.” Jessica tried to sound confident, even though she had no clue about where to begin.

  “Okay, Jessica, thanks. Please hurry.” Laura sniffed as she hung up.

  Jessica stripped off her robe and the blasted body shaper. She climbed into the shower, turned on all the shower heads and let it rip. The pulsing water beat back the last remnants of fogginess in her brain, though that didn’t mean her life made more sense. Her career and marriage were in ruins, friends were slipping her roofies, and now this. Laura’s husband dead, not just dead, but murdered. What was she supposed to do about any of it? The tabloid-worthy life she was leading had taken a new turn, from soap opera to whodunit.

  “Shades of V.I. Warshawski,” she muttered, stepping from the shower. She tried out a steely-eyed gaze. “More like Scooby-Doo,” she said aloud to the woman in the mirror.

  Jessica dried her hair that was precision cut to chin length, a light brown with blond highlights. She had typically worn it longer but opted for something easier to deal with when she had it cut last week. Given the extent of her current lethargy she just didn’t want to deal with hair. It actually turned out better than she expected, created the illusion of perkiness or efficiency even though she possessed neither. It’s not that she didn’t want to look decent, she just didn’t have the motivation to work at it.

  Jessica put on a tinted moisturizer with good SPF protection and took what she meant to be a last quick look in the mirror. She was still carrying a few additional pounds of baby weight from all those failed attempts at beat-the-clock with whacked out hormones, racing against the expiration date on a decaying marriage. The extra pounds were nicely distributed, though. She had never been one of those women who freaked out if she wasn’t a size two. Like that platinum blond on Jim’s arm in the Hollywood rag Bernadette was reading.

  What about those little crow’s feet around her eyes? Not to mention the dark circles under them and her furrowed brow that had not yet been touched by Botox. Maybe it was time to do something. She wasn’t ready to replace all those hours at the fertility clinic with hours at a dermatology clinic. Or was she? Before she could get into a full-blown argument with herself she left the bathroom.

  Stepping out of the bathroom and into the dressing room and walk-in closet nearby, Jessica just stood there for a moment. What was supposed to be a dream room for a clothes horse like her looked more like something you’d find after a serious quake. There had been a quake in her life, alright. But not one she could pin on the perpetually active fault lines that run throughout much of California and the Coachella Valley. An 8.0 on the “life’s a bitch” Richter scale. No, make that a 6 or 7 rather than an 8. Finding your husband murdered, in your own home, was even more life shattering than finding your husband, in your own bed, with a twenty-something Hollywood diva.

  She felt the anger rising at that memory of Jim and that floozy as she surveyed the room. The disaster before her was not the fault of the
room’s design. The outer walls of the room had plenty of places to hang clothes, with storage above for things like the suitcases and garment bags that should have been emptied. Stacks of things she had pulled out of boxes or luggage were piled, willy-nilly, on top of back-to-back rows of dresser drawers in the middle of the room. The room was well-lit with a full length mirror in one corner, and little upholstered benches at either end of the center “island” of drawers.

  Right now the room was crammed with boxes and suitcases. Some were open with articles of clothing hanging out of them. Shopping bags, filled with the spoils of afternoon divorce tantrums on El Paseo, added to the clutter. A few of the things she had purchased were hung up because she bought them that way. Most of the hangers in the room were empty.

  Jessica dug through one of the nearest shopping bags. She pulled out a pair of baggy boyfriend jeans and wiggled into them after making sure there weren’t any tags on them. With a second plunge into the bag she grabbed a white tee. She topped it off with a lightweight Balmain navy blazer that was hanging from the corner of a half-open drawer. It was hot as hell outside. You never knew when the air conditioning in somebody’s house would make you glad you had another layer. The blazer had been purchased during a late-night, online shopping binge. She could do even more damage, in a shorter period of time online. All the while, raging at the rat-bastard who had betrayed her, knowing half the tab was still his. Not much solace, but it had, at least, filled the hours until dawn on sleepless nights.

  Digging around in a corner, Jessica found the pair of navy Superga sneakers she needed to complete her outfit. Shoving a couple things out of the way, she sat on the little bench nearest the door and put the shoes on. She stood up and took a last look in the full length mirror and approved of what she saw.

  “Jim you’re crazy to choose that skank over me,” she said aloud.