A Dead Sister (Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery) (26 page)

“Well, Frank,” said Jessica, “I wasn’t trying to sound the alarm and set off the police-detective-warning system. I don’t want anybody to get hurt, but I don’t see how we can avoid asking a bunch of people a bunch of questions. Like Uncle Don said, it’s about asking the right question. Maybe
digging through the trash the rats will scurry, but it’s the only way we have a prayer of getting the right answer.”

“I’m just saying...we should be a little cautious, Jessica. That’s all.”

“Ooh, a lover’s quarrel.” Tommy was gloating at Jessica’s growing agitation. This little bit of comic relief was helping him cope better than Jessica had ever dreamed he would.

“We’re not lovers. I’m barely divorced. Actually, it’ll be another month before the state of California even makes
that
official. This is just a difference of opinion, a disagreement, for God’s sake.”

“Let’s not argue in front of the kids, Jessica. That’s one of the first things I learned when my marriage hit the rocks.” She tried to glare at him, but his ear-to-ear grin melted her resolve.
She couldn’t help smiling back at him as she tried to get back to the matter at hand.

“Okay
, Tommy, the last time you had any contact with Kelly was Monday night after she had a fight with the boyfriend. Any idea what time that was, and was she calling you on her cell phone?”

“I have a
very good
idea what time it was, because she was complaining that fighting with Bobby might make her too late for a chance to fill in for no shows on the dinner shift. That would have been sixish. She got off work at the spa at five, ran home to change and was on her way back. So maybe 6:30 at the latest. I presume she called me on
her
cell, since she was hoofing it back to work when she called. Can’t you tell by looking at the info on her cell phone? It should still be on the SIM card, even if the phone is dead, right Jerry?”

Jerry nodded in agreement. “The police would have checked that, and it should be in the case file, Tommy. That is, unless they didn’t find the phone.”

“You’ve got it, Jerry. No phone and no one who spoke to her after you did, Tommy, except for her supervisor in the spa. Kelly called in sick Tuesday morning, so, officially, that was the last time anyone heard from her. We don’t know what phone she used to make that call. The phone is missing, and so is the vest that a neighbor and the sleaze-ball boyfriend said she had on when she went off to work Monday night. There’s no record that she actually worked anywhere in the hotel, bars, restaurants or casino and no one remembers seeing or hearing from her that night at all. The phone call you got from Kelly jibes with what Bobby Simmons told the police about their fight and the time she left her apartment for work Monday.”

“
Tommy, there’s something else we have to ask you. It’s about drugs.”

“What do you want to know?
If I don’t already know, I can sure find out.” Tommy was in full-blown smart ass mode. No wonder, since he was nearly through that second glass of Macallan.

“What he wants to know, Tommy is how involved was Kelly with drugs?”

“Do you mean, like meth or cocaine or heroin? Hard drugs like that?”

“That’s exactly what we mean.”

“Uncle Don asked me if I ever saw Kelly using drugs back then, too, and I told him no. Why? What does that have to do with anything?”

“The police were trying to be discreet, since it didn’t seem to have any bearing on how she died, but Kelly had been using heroin, Tommy. There were needle marks on her arms, and police found a loaded hypodermic close to her body, with her fingerprints all over it. The coroner said
she had heroin and a bunch of other drugs in her system when she was killed that night.” Tommy sat bolt upright, all vestiges of the smart ass replaced by utter disbelief.

“No, that’s not right! That can’t be true, Jessica. You know what a freak she was about needles. When she caught me with a couple pills and a little baggie of pot once, she went ballistic. She threatened to turn me in to Uncle Don! We had a mega fight about it and I accused her of being a hypocrite, since I knew she smoked dope. She hit me. That’s the only time I can ever remember her hurting me like that.” Emotion overtook Tommy, and his eyes filled with tears. “She said s
he was sorry and begged me to forgive her. I did, of course, but she made me promise to stay away from that stuff. I kept my promise, too. For a while, even after she died.” Tommy had started to sob quietly. Jerry moved closer to comfort his anguished boyfriend.

Jessica felt like shit. This is how she imagined the whole scene
would play out. Frank had a crestfallen look on his face. The same one she wore, no doubt. Tommy, his face flushed and streaked with tears, sat up straight and gazed defiantly at Frank and Jessica.

“Y
ou’ve got to find out who killed her. You have to. I don’t believe Kelly was using drugs on her own account. You saw her on New Year’s Eve, Jessica. She wasn’t shooting up, right? It’s that creep Bobby Simmons. He must have gone after her that night and forced her to go off with him. It’s not like her to just disappear like that. She suddenly goes from working double shifts to ditching work, does that make sense? It’s not like she was totally nuts, not like she was a mental case or something.” Frank and Jessica looked at each other.

“What? Why are you to looking at each other like that?” He was dabbing at his eyes with a napkin from the bar. His eyes were red, his pale skin splotchy.

“There was something else we were wondering about, Tommy. Did Kelly say anything to you about seeing a psychiatrist, or taking prescribed medication for bipolar disorder? Apparently traces of those were found in her system too.” Tommy seemed like he was about to say no when he suddenly remembered something.

“Well this was way before she was killed, so I don’t know why it matters. She
did
see a doctor. He was a big guy with a huge forehead, bad skin, these nasty teeth and a scar of some kind. The way she described him, he looked like Boris Karloff. I asked her why in the world she was interested in seeing a doctor like that.” Tommy had all of them on the edge of their seats.

“And what did she tell you
?” Tommy bit his bottom lip, struggling to recall what Kelly had said.

“It was kind of weird, but it didn’t seem
all that important at the time. Kelly said she was talking to some old rich guy, one of her regulars at the spa. This guy tipped her
very well
whenever she worked at the spa or one of those extra shifts at a bar or restaurant. I guess he was some kind of promoter or producer from LA, too. Anyway, he gave her his version of that “you’re a beautiful girl...you ought to be in pictures, yada, yada, yada” line. She said something like she had way too many problems to handle all the crap in Hollywood. He said he had plenty of problems of his own, and what she needed was a good head doctor. Kelly got this business card from him with a number on the back for some shrink.”

“So, w
hat happened?” Frank asked.

“We
ll, at one point she had been having a bad day. I don’t remember if she said why. Maybe she was having one of those fights with Bobby. She decides to call and set up an appointment. When she went to that appointment, they talked for a few minutes. It turns out his solution to all her problems was pills. He handed her free samples of Xanax and offered to write her a prescription right there on the spot. If that didn’t make her feel better, he said, they could try some other things until they found what she needed to enjoy her life more. I suppose he could be the one who gave her the bipolar meds. I got the impression he would have written a prescription for whatever she wanted. Kelly never said anything to me about being bipolar.”

“Tommy, can you remember the name of the doctor? Do you know when she saw him or where—a local clinic maybe?” Frank asked.

“She said all the old guy wrote on the card was a telephone number, and the appointment was at the hotel of all places. He met her there for lunch. Sounds real professional, huh? Kelly never mentioned a name, just called him the doc.” Frank and Jessica both gasped and sat up straight.

“The doc, are you sure Tommy?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. What’s the big deal?”

“Tommy, that’s what Chester Davis claimed the
two guys chasing Kelly called the injured man they hauled to the Mercedes after Kelly was run down. Tommy, this is very important. Did Kelly tell you the name of the man who gave her that card?”

“What do you mean? Wh
o chased Kelly? What injured man, what card? What
is going on
?” They all looked at the archway that led into the great room. Laura Stone stood with her hands on her hips and a stressed-out look on her face. She was flanked on either side by Brien Williams and Peter March, the trio awash in Hawaiian fabric. The rest of the cat pack had arrived.

CHAPTER 20

Jessica got up to greet the three friends, Laura’s question hanging out there waiting to be answered. Bernadette came bustling up behind them. She wore a long red-ruffled mu
’umu’u, with a flower tucked behind her left ear. “The caterers are still setting things up. Dinner will be ready in a few minutes. It looks delicious. For goodness sakes, Jessica, invite your friends to sit down and offer them something to drink.”

Bernadette was carrying a couple bowls of nuts. As she stepped around him, Brien reached out and grabbed a handful from one of the bowls.

“Who’s Kelly?” he asked, tossing a nut up into the air and catching it in his mouth.

“Glad we weren’t counting on keeping this too hush-hush,” Jessica said to the guys seated at the bar. She walked over, hugged Laura and then led her to one of the oversized sofas dwarfed by the huge room. The great room lived up to its name. Sprawling and voluminous, it could better be described in cubic feet than square feet. The vaulted ceilings and massive wall of cathedral-like, two-story windows paid homage to the glory of the desert resort landscape. Pocket doors could be opened up, making the outdoor space available
, too, for large gatherings.

Bernadette placed one bowl of nuts on the dark wood coffee table in front of Laura. In a flash Brien was sitting beside Laura, reaching f
or another handful. Peter appeared to be a bit uncomfortable in the enormous, flashy aloha shirt he wore. Open, it revealed his usual tight dark t-shirt beneath, straining to cover his enormous pecs. He settled into a loveseat adjacent to Laura and Brien, taking up most of it by himself. His thighs bulged in the shorts he wore as he sat down. Perched near one another, Peter and Brien could have been before and after pictures for some protein powder commercial. Even though the well-muscled surfer was probably more used to being the “after” photo in rooms full of men, next to Peter he was the “before” shot.

“Tommy, are you up for sharing the news about Kelly with our friends, here? If you’d rather
, we can put this off until after dinner or another time altogether.”

“As long as I don’t have to do much talking
, Jessica, hearing it all again might make it seem more real. Right now it’s like I’ve slipped through a crack into some kind of parallel universe,” Tommy said.

Jessica took the other bowl of nuts from Bernadette, placing it next to the guys at the bar
, then stepped back behind the bar to fix drinks for the newcomers.

“Whoa, you mean like one of those places where everything’s
totally flat? Like a day at the beach when it’s all glass, no surf at all? Or someplace where everybody has special powers like Extra Sensitory Precipitation?” Everyone in the room was staring at Brien trying to figure out what on earth he was saying. “You know, ESP. Like how Bernadette just
knows
things?” He was nodding his head up and down solemnly, looking more like a bobble-head doll than a man in the know.

Jessica and Bernadette made eye contact. It didn’t take ESP to read her mind as Brien snapped another nut out of thin air. Clearly not all the nuts were in the bowl.

“The man knows his parallel universes,” Jessica said, speaking to no one in particular. She felt the urge to correct him about the whole ESP thing, but he was wearing that eager-to-please-golden-retriever look, made more doglike by the shock of bleach blond hair hanging in his eyes. She just couldn’t do it. Correction might trigger that “sorry I peed on the floor” look instead, and none of them needed to see that right now.

“Okay, so do you all want beer, wine or something stronger?”

Jessica poured cold beer for Brien and Peter, a glass of wine for Laura and another shot of the Macallan for herself. The men at the bar polished off the rest of the single malt between them, fortifying themselves against the retelling of the gruesome tale.

“Bernadette, you want something?”

“No thanks, Jessica. I’m going to check on the dinner. When you get to that part about Mr. P or Mr. B, call me if I’m not back. I just know I heard something like that before.”

“Sure,” Jessica said, as she sat back down in the swivel lounger that was still out in the middle of the floor. Once Bernadette left the room, Brien piped up again.

“Whoa, did you hear that? What’d I tell you?
That
woman knows things.” He was doing the nodding again. Just like one of those little surfer dolls you see on a dashboard, with one arm around a surfboard.

“Frank, can you start once again from the beginning? I’ll jump in when it comes to my conversation with Chester Davis. Tommy, Jerry, you’ve already heard a version of this, but if you have questions or comments on the second go round, you jump in too, okay?” Jessica tried to listen
as Frank told the story again.

Something
was
familiar about the man with a name that was just an initial. Elements of the story weren’t all that original. Especially the part about the whale. If he was indeed the same man who turned up in the Mercedes sedan later: aging producer on the make woos a beautiful, starry-eyed wannabe with hundred dollar bills, offers to help her career, and hooks her up with his own personal “doctor-feel-good”. That the doc happened to look like Boris Karloff was an odd twist to that old tale. It was a b-movie script for sure. One that resonated with a number of real-life Hollywood tales of woe, however. Like Lindsay Lohan meeting up with Michael Jackson’s doctor at Phil Spector’s house.

It only took Frank about ten minutes to get to the point where he had provided enough background about Kelly Fontana, and the new cast of characters, to suggest something other than a hit-and-run accident happened that night. I
t was Jessica’s turn to provide details about the horrible climax to that b-movie running in her head. The whole thing was narrated by the drug addicted, three time loser, Chet Davis. Bernadette had returned to the room and listened, deep in thought.

Wrapping up her account, Jessica said, “It sounds far-fetched, but the case file backs up aspects of his story. And now Tommy says that Kelly
had
gone to see someone she referred to as the doc. Tommy doesn’t remember Kelly mentioning a Mr. P or Mr. B, but some L.A. producer she met at the spa who was slipping her hundred dollar bills, gave her that phone number for the doc. So maybe he’s the long-haired mystery man behind the wheel of the Mercedes that night.”

“That’s it, Jessica! Now I remember where I heard about Mr. P with the long hair. It’s in one of my magazines—un momento.” Bernadette was out of the room, moving at a speed that was remarkable at any age, but all the more stunni
ng for a woman pushing seventy. In a flash, she was back among them, bearing a raggedy old issue of one of her favorite entertainment news magazines in hand.

“Wow, that was fast, Bernadette,” Peter said, a note of awe suggesting he was beginning to believe Brien’s assertions about her superpowers.

“I may be old, but I’m bold!” Bernadette flashed him a sassy smile as she handed the article to Jessica. “Mira, mira esto!”

The title read: “That’s
Mr. P
to You!” A thin, short man in his fifties, with shoulder length dark hair, streaked with gray, stood smiling broadly among several rock and rap luminaries. He pointed a bandaged finger at the camera. Like one of those vintage “Uncle Sam wants you” posters. Jessica scanned the article quickly, passing along snippets of what she was reading. It announced that “rap artists were not the only ones who used initials instead of their full names.” In this case, for the record producer at the center of attention, it was partly “a matter of expediency,” since his last name was difficult to spell and remember.

“There’s also the fact that Christopher Pogswich makes him sound like a character out of a Harry Potter story. Not good, since he kind of looks like one too,” Jessica commented, as she zipped through the article.

He also liked being referred to by the letter “P” because, “
p stands for pure platinum,
” like the work done at his studio and the name of his label:
Pure Platinum Music Group
. Acknowledged by many as one of the best producers in the business, he was notoriously difficult to work with at times. Given to fits of frustration in his pursuit of perfection, he sometimes indulged in the studio equivalent of road rage.

The rage was, perhaps, aggravated by his legendary capacity to go through fifths of expensive vodka between takes and still stand up in the control room. During one such tiff he had shouted the now infamous line, “that’s
Mr. P
to you,” while pointing his finger repeatedly in the artist’s face. The artist, being as temperamental and no doubt as looped as Mr. P, bit the finger—almost completely through. It took a number of stitches to reattach the offending digit. This was all deemed to be a hilarious mishap, and had since been forgiven. No criminal charges were filed, and all civil suits had been dropped. The producer and artist posed side-by-side. It had been written in 2003, so they would have to look into his whereabouts, before and since.

“Jerry, we need to figure out if we can place this guy at the spa or casino. Can you get us a clear photo, preferably one taken closer to the time of the hit-and-run in 1999?”

“I doubt that’ll be a problem. I’ll see if I can get a recent shot, too, so we have a better idea of what he looks like now.”

“That’s a great idea. Frank, I want to show the photo to Chester Davis, to see if it rings any bells.”

“It’s certainly worth a try. I’ll see if I can get Art Greenwald to put together a photo lineup with a picture of our Mr. P included. I’ll call and ask him when he gets in on Monday morning.”

“That’s great, Frank. I have to drive back to L.A. Tuesday, so if
Greenwald can put a lineup together, I’ll show it to Chet Wednesday morning.”

“
I’ll take him a photo to include, if he’s willing to go along  with this idea. How soon can you get us a photo, Jerry?” Frank asked.

“It sounds like Mr. P is a media mogul who likes the limelight, so my guess is there are plenty of images on the internet. We have to figure out what pictures were taken when, but that shouldn’t be too hard. Then we can print something off the web tonight. Is your laptop handy and do you have a photo quality printer, Jessica?”

“Yes and yes. My laptop is down the hall, and there’s a great printer in the study.”

“If you go get it, Tommy and I can do a search.”

“The other thing I want to do is visit the hotel, spa and casino. A lot has changed, and it’s not like we haven’t been there before, but I want to see where she was killed. I’m going to call Uncle Don, Jerry, and see if he’s okay meeting us there. I’d like him to do a walk through with us, recounting what he saw that morning when Kelly was found. Then, what it was like when he went back later, closer to the time of night she was killed. Can you go with me on Sunday if he’s willing to do it, Jerry?”

“No problem, Jessica. I left the weekend kind of open to recover from jet lag.”

“Sorry about that, Jerry, but I really want to get a jump on this. I’ve already spoken to Paul, so you’re back on the clock with the firm. That’ll be some compensation, at least.”

“Jerry won’t mind, Jessica. He knows this is important to me. I have scars from Kelly’s death, and he’s already met what’s left of my parents. I’ll not only help do the search for photos online, but I can help track down the people
to be interviewed. You don’t even have to pay me.”

“Tommy, if Jerry has work for you to do, you’ll get paid too. That’s the deal we worked out, and it still stands. In addition to the pictures, let’s find out what we can about where Mr. P lives and works. Let’s see what turns up by digging into Mr. P’s property and business holdings, okay? We’ll follow the money—and assets—and see where that takes us. That includes figuring out what kind of cars Mr. P owns. I’m sure he doesn’t still have
a 1999 midnight blue Mercedes S class sedan, but maybe he’s a loyal Mercedes customer with a newer model. If we figure out where he purchased his current car, someone at the dealership may have been around long enough to recall if there ever
was
such a car in Mr. P’s possession. I also want to know what kind of trouble he’s been in with the law. Vodka and a nasty temper are two things likely to get him attention, not just from the media but also from LAPD.” Jessica was speaking at a good clip. Her mind raced as she considered all they needed to do. Before she could say anything else, Tommy spoke up.

“Jessica, I vote we
all
pay a visit to the casino, hotel and spa. You shouldn’t have to go there alone. We’ll make it a field trip—a sleepover! That way, we can get the complete experience going undercover.” A round of groans rolled around the room at Tommy’s play on words. Tommy was back in imp mode. It was a familiar role, but couldn’t disguise the pain in his eyes.

“Two rooms, Jessica; one for the boys and one for the girls.” Those were the first words Laura had uttered since Frank started talking about Kelly’s death. Still in the throes of dealing with her husband
’s death, she hadn’t returned to work yet. She was overseeing repairs to the house where Roger was murdered, anxious to get rid of it. Not easy to do in the desert during the summer months, even if she could get it on the market.