A Dead Sister (Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery) (37 page)

CHAPTER 34

Jessica resumed pacing as she waited for Peter or Frank or someone to get back to her. She tried a couple more times to reach Kim Reed on her cell phone, but with no luck. When her phone rang,
a couple hours later, she hoped beyond hope that it was Kim.

“Jessica, this is Amy Klein. I’m sorry to bother you on a Sunday, but I need to see you right away at the office on El Paseo.”

“Now?”

“As soon as you can get here, yes.”

“Of course, Amy. Is Paul okay? What’s this about?”

“Paul’s fine. It’s not that. There’s been a break-in. Your office is a wreck and the police are here asking a lot of questions about what’s missing. It’ll be easier for you to a
nswer those questions.”

“Oh my God, Amy. I am so sorry. I have a pretty good idea who’s behind this. Tell the police I’ll be there in twenty minutes, okay?”

“Sure, Jessica. No problem.”

Jessica grabbed a pair of Tahari slacks and slipped them on. She added a sleeveless silk shell, topped off with a Michael Kors blazer in a lightweight fabric with three-quarter length sleeves. A pair of comfortable ballet flats completed the outfit
, hoping she’d be presentable at work on such short notice. She took a swipe at her hair, put on a little makeup, and checked her bag to make sure she had the essentials.

On Friday, Jessica had gone to pick up her BMW from the dealer, and it looked as good as new. As Jessica hustled out the kitchen door, she scrawled a note for Bernadette on a pad on the counter: “Gone to my office, back in a while, got news!”

Jessica waved at the security guy who was sitting in his spot out in front of the house. She stopped for a second, rolled down her window, and shouted out her destination. He nodded in acknowledgement, then, typed something on his tablet. Jessica wasn’t sure why she had left that note for Bernadette, or bothered to announce where she was going to the guy from Peter’s firm. She felt uneasy about the call. Amy sounded a little rattled, but who wouldn’t be when confronted by a mess like that on her day off? Talking to the police was no picnic either. She was not relishing the idea of another round with the officers assigned to duty on El Paseo.

She sped to I-10 and took the Monterey exit, anxious to get to her office as soon as possible, but without breaking the speed limit on Monterey. There had
also been a tone of urgency in Amy’s voice that caused Jessica to push the posted limits. Jessica pulled into one of the parking spaces that had recently been set aside for the Palm Desert branch of Canady, Holmes, Winston, and Klein, directly behind the building that housed their offices.

As she climbed up the stairs and reached the entrance to her office, she stopped for a minute to dig out her cell phone, which had started ringing. The summer heat was oppressive. It added to the stress-induced sweating that followed on the heels of the news delivered by Amy Klein. As she stepped through the doors into the cool air-conditioned space, she took the call from Peter.

“Jessica, we’ve located the cell phone you asked us to find. It’s nearby, as a matter of fact.”

“Nearby, as in here in the desert?” she asked, adjusting to the darker light in the office. Amy was not sitting at her desk in the reception area. She and the police officers must be in the back where Jessica’s office was located.

“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. And, in one of your favorite places actually, El Paseo.” Jessica sucked in her breath as Amy stepped out from the back, pushed toward the reception area by the doc. On the surface, Amy appeared calm. The woman, usually impeccably groomed, had not fixed her smudged makeup. Nor had she retrieved errant strands of hair that had pulled free from the chignon she wore. Next, Kim Reed appeared, followed by Mr. P, who had something between a grimace and a smile on his face. Jessica considered bolting out the door and down the steps, but they had Amy. It was Jessica, not Amy, who was responsible for the current predicament.

Without skipping a beat, Jessica picked up the phone conversation “Well, I can assure you, Mr. March, it is
not
okay. I understand you’re already in the area and feel it’s an emergency, but I cannot possibly drop everything here at my office right this minute. I have people waiting for me.” She paused as though listening to someone on the other end of the line. Peter got it right away.

“Jessica are you in trouble?”

“Yes, I know you are a good client. I would be happy to meet with you later. Come to my office in an hour or so, and dinner’s on me.” Jessica paused again briefly, hoping to maintain the charade.

“I’m on my way, hang on.”

“Great, Mr. March, that will be fine. I’ll see you soon.” With that, Jessica hung up the phone and slipped it back into her purse. She thanked God Peter March recognized that “not okay” meant she was in trouble. That had been the signal used, previously, when she was dealing with Roger Stone’s killer. She never imagined she would have to send it again.

The little parade marched toward Jessica, single file, until they were all in the waiting room where she stood. The diminutive Mr. P stepped out from behind Max Samman and Amy Kle
in. He had a hand on Kim Reed’s arm, his grip distorting that image of Saraswati. “You paid me a visit, Ms. Huntington. I thought it only fitting to reciprocate.” Jessica tried not to react as the two men glowered at her.

Max Samman steered Amy Klein back behind the reception desk and seated her in a chair, roughly. In a flash, the large, gangly man administered something from a hypodermic he must have had in one of his enormous hands. Amy Klein looked surprised and confused. Then she slumped forward over her desk, before sliding sideways from her chair onto the floor, with a thud. The doc bent down to check on her. When he stood up again, he spoke.

“I hear you’ve been asking around about me. What did you have in mind, Ms. Huntington? Your interest in me is likely to make Mr. P here jealous, or maybe you were hoping to arrange a threesome?” He smiled, revealing a wretched set of jagged teeth, more disturbing even than the grillwork worn by her assailant in Riverside. His voice had a harsh, deep sound, slightly raspy.

“What have you done to Amy, Dr. Samman?” She stared directly at him as she spoke. Jessica refused to yield to his efforts to intimidate.

“Put her out, Ms. Huntington. Only temporarily, I assure you. She’ll take a nap. When she wakes up, she won’t remember much of what’s happened here. It should help you relax to know your friend here is out of harm’s way.” He leered at Jessica and she could almost hear his unspoken words: “...unlike you, Ms. Huntington.”

“What is it you want?” She tried to
sound calm. Her heart beat wildly as her mind raced through possible answers to that question. None of them were good. The doc had taken up a post next to Kim Reed, as Mr. P stepped toward Jessica. Kim struggled to maintain her deadpan expression, but winced when the doc grabbed her arm.

“You’ve created quite a stink, Jessica. May I call you Jessica? I feel like I already know you so well. Our lives have become so intertwined.” Mr. P took a
nother step toward her and reached out as though he might touch her. She shrank back away from him. It took all the restraint she could muster to take that step back rather than strike out at him.

“Now, that’s not nice, almost as rude to me as you were to that client you just had on the phone. If you spoke to me like that, I wouldn’t have dinner with you later. Even though there is something alluring about you. Not like that delectable friend of yours, Kelly Fontana, of course. She was so young, so wild and innocent at the same time. You’re feisty enough, but not the least bit innocent, are you, Jessica? You’ve had plenty of experience in all sorts of endeavors, like rocking the boat. One too many times, I should add.
Thanks to you, I’m going to have to take a long vacation abroad while this all gets straightened out.”

She balled up her fist,
clenched and unclenched it, fighting the urge to punch the man. She could get in a couple quick jabs before he or the doc could stop her. That would accomplish little, however, and might accelerate their end game. Even if the doc was telling the truth and Amy was no longer in trouble, Kim Reed still was. Her only goal now was to buy time. Give Peter the chance to get to her and figure out how to help. Instead of punching the man, she spoke, calmly but defiantly.

“You still haven’t answ
ered my question, Mr. Pogswich. What is it that you want? Would you care to sit down and discuss it?”

T
he Pogswich thing got to him. He fought to regain composure. The face that won out was that of a man used to getting his way. For an instant, though, she had broken through, and glimpsed the scared husk of a human behind the mask.

“Please, call me Chris, now that we’re on a first name basis. What I want is to make you pay for the great inconvenience you have
caused me. You should have walked away from that defective human being Chester Davis. Running his mouth, talking to Arnold Dunne and his other cellmates, yapping to whoever would listen to him. Like that drab man in the cheap suit assigned as his lawyer. If you had stayed out of it, minded your own business, all of this would have blown over.”

He looked her up and down, running his tongue back and forth over his bottom lip.
That veil of composure seemed to slip a bit as he continued to start at her. An angry curl formed at the edge of his mouth.

“You’ve been quite busy,
haven’t you Jessica? Talking to the Sherriff’s department, and bothering those poor people at the casino, and that other two-bit junkie, Bobbie Simmons. That disgusting punk had the effrontery to demand money, Jessica. Can you believe that? After all I did for that no-good piece of shit over the years, he threatens me.”

He spat out those last words about Bobby Simmons’ betrayal.
Growing angrier, he rose up on the balls of his feet for a moment, then came back down. “Then, you walk into my office and do the same. Even after the favor I did for you. Warning you off, leaving that little note on your car. How dare you!”

The volume a
nd pitch of his voice had risen. He was working himself up into a snit like that day at his office. “Who do you think you are?” He bounced a little, transferring his weight from one foot to another and gesticulated with both hands. Jessica tried to think of something to say to stall him, keep him talking, without pushing him over the edge. The doc spoke instead.

“We should get going, Chri
s.” He spoke to him quietly, delicately, wanting to reach him through the agitation. “We can discuss all of this later. You’ll have plenty of time to lay it all out for Ms. Huntington once we’re in Cabo.”

That got Jessica’s attention.
They were leaving the country and taking her with them. How? Surely Frank had succeeded in getting Mr. P’s plane grounded. Jessica gulped. One of Mr. P’s specialties was, in fact, moving women across the border. Who knew what arrangements the duo had made, given their connections and experience?

They could drive, crossing the border at Calexico in less than an hour. But once in Mexico, it would take hours
and hours to get to Cabo by car She could not imagine Mr. P allowing her to inconvenience him further by forcing him to travel so uncomfortably, since he was going along, too. The most likely mode of travel befitting the spiteful, bantam-weight was his plane. Maybe his jet was stashed at some private airstrip nearby, or had been moved across the border before Frank had it grounded?

Jessica fe
lt trapped in one of those movies where the clear path for the bad guys was to wrap it up, kill whomever they intended to kill, and make a run for it. A bullet in the head, like that doled out to Bobby Simmons, would do it. In true revenge-addled, psychopathic fashion, however, Mr. P seemed bent on dragging this out. Clearly, he knew he was in trouble. Still, he seemed convinced he could leave the country
and
take Jessica with him. The doc apparently intended to indulge the little bastard, which meant no bullet in the brain, for the moment.

“You’re absolutely right, Max. Time to go, Jessica.” With that, he stepped out of the way
and the doc moved forward, dragging Kim with him. She did not put up a struggle.

“I know you have taken a liking to our fetching companion. We found your phone number on her cell. Perhaps we should make it a foursome, Max, my friend. Would you like that?” A lascivious grin spread across the doc’s face.

“Whatever you say, Chris, as long as we get going. What Chris means to say, Ms. Huntington, is that if you don’t want your new gal pal here to get hurt do exactly as you are told. I am most adept at adjusting the dose from one that offers temporary respite to one that’s permanent. Kim can be paying your old friend, Kelly, a visit in no time at all.” A hypodermic was cupped in his hand. Mr. P picked up where the doc left off.

“We have a car parked out
back, Jessica. Not that lovely S-class sedan with the midnight blue paint, but a sleek, new model. If we had more time, I’d be happy to show you what makes it such a great car. I might even convince you to abandon your penchant for those BMWs that have been giving you a bit of trouble, lately. The four of us are going to walk downstairs and around the back, like two companionable couples heading out for an evening of entertainment. A double-date,” he said, giggling, before going on.