A Dead Husband (Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery) (33 page)

Jessica dragged herself out of bed, took a quick shower and dressed in a fresh set of leggings and a t-shirt
.  When she got to the kitchen and poured herself a cup of coffee, she tried not to look at the back yard where the crime scene tape was flapping in the morning breeze. As she was about to sit down and drink her coffee, the doorbell rang. She jumped out of her skin. From the back wing in which Bernadette resided she heard her holler something about “security company...guard gate called...be there in a minute.”

“I’ll get it, Bernadette
. You stay put unless you want to meet our new babysitters.”

“Of course I do,” Bernadette said hustling down the hall toward Jessica.

Jessica went to the front door and looked through the peep hole.  A tall man, with broad shoulders, stood at the door.  He was wearing a polo shirt with the name of the company emblazoned on the shirt and a pair of khakis. Still being cautious, Jessica opened the door with the security chain in place.

“Can I see some I.D.?”

“Ms. Huntington-Harper, I presume?”

“I.D. please.”

He reached into a pocket of his khakis and pulled out an identification wallet. He passed it to Jessica who looked closely at it. The man standing before her matched the picture on the I.D. badge and the name was the same one she had been given when she called the firm the night before.  She breathed a little easier, closed the door to release the security chain and invited him in.

Peter March did just that
. He marched into the house. His bulky figure nearly filled the doorway as he crossed the threshold.

“You want some coffee?”
Bernadette asked as she slid easily into hostess mode.

“That would be great
. I understand there’s been some trouble.”  As he said that he peered at Jessica’s still blemished face. “Anyone else injured?” he asked.

“Brien the pool guy
, a friend of ours, who went home last night after the latest ruckus.” Jessica said in response to his question.

“Ruckus, huh
? By that do you mean the surreptitious entry into the gated community, breach of your property, and the attempted kidnapping of your house guest?”

“Yeah, that’s it
. Well, that’s part of the story.”

“Tell him about the guy I shot
. He’s injured too, in the trasero.”  She pointed to her own behind as she spoke.

“You can fill me in a little more
, then I’d like to take a look around, if that’s okay with you two. After that I can make a recommendation about how we can best be of service.” As he spoke he slid the dark glasses he wore to the top of his head.  His hair was clipped short, almost a buzz cut.  When his hand was raised to move his glasses Jessica noticed he was wearing an insignia ring.  He caught her looking at it.

“Annapolis grad
, class of ’82. I served 25 years with the Navy before I took on this job, a member of their special forces. Most of our staff members are ex-military or have law enforcement backgrounds. We provide armed response but avoid the use of more force than necessary.  We can talk about what else you can do to make the premises more secure after I do my walk through.”

“How do you take your coffee Mr. March?”
Bernadette asked smiling sweetly at the massive man trailing after her into the kitchen. Even the hulking Mr. March could not resist St. Bernadette’s enticing smile. He responded with a broad smile that revealed a perfect set of dazzling white teeth. The smile softened the rugged features of his face, etched with years of the kind of wear and tear Jessica cared not to learn more about.  He wasn’t an unpleasant man, just daunting.  A couple small scars, one on his jaw and another on his right cheek made Jessica reach up and touch the remnants of the scrape on her face.  The area around her eye was no longer tender but still discolored by a panoply of faded purple, red and yellow hues. She felt safer just walking behind the wall of a man.  Things would settle down now. They just had to.

CHAPTER 33

After a couple hours of going through Roger’s things again, Jessica and Laura were despondent
. Exhausted by the relentless combination of trauma and grief, their lives disrupted in ways neither had ever deemed possible, they didn’t have much in the way of reserves left. Jessica found herself wondering about how thin the layer of civility was that enshrouded her privileged life. The white collar thieves she rubbed shoulders with at business gatherings and charity galas were smooth operators compared to the thugs stalking Jessica and Laura. No less lethal, perhaps, but what they were dealing with now was so much more savagely personal and physically brutal. Even the polished and pampered Margarit was a new breed of cruel and lethal for Jessica.

It all just felt so sick
and evil. Evil had been an abstract, even somewhat archaic construct, for most of Jessica’s life. People in her life made mistakes, herself included. Family and friends suffered from neuroses and addictions, assorted psychological maladies that made them dysfunctional in so many ways, and with all that “baggage,” they sometimes injured one another. This felt different. What if wrongdoing in the world was, after all, a conscious and deliberate choice induced by lust, greed and envy, or another of the so-called deadly sins?

Jessica had been
swept up in a whirlwind of malice, starting with the betrayal by her husband. That she could feel something akin to enmity from and toward the man she once loved was startling.  Her sense of being face to face with evil was amplified several fold by the murder of Roger, and the blitz of attacks on herself and her friends. This was a vicious, bare knuckles brawl compared to the ritualized conflicts played out with legal briefs, writs and warrants, and all sorts of court ordered directives.

“Laura, let’s get some more coffee and then we’ll start over again.”

“Are you kidding,  again?  What good will it do? We’d have better luck at this point if they asked us to find life on Mars.”

“Come on, we can’t give up
. Roger was a smart guy. If he didn’t give that SD card back to Margarit he must have had a damn good reason to hang on to it. He’d want you to find it and would have put it someplace you’d look. We just haven’t thought this through completely yet.  Let’s get more caffeine and maybe Bernadette will feel sorry enough for us that she’ll fix us some lunch.”

“Okay, okay
. Let’s go get more coffee.”  Jessica scooped up the laundry basket of Roger’s items they had sifted through again. Roger’s laptop sat on the top of the stack. She lugged the basket to the kitchen where Bernadette was already drinking coffee or tea or something.

“Coffee, we need more coffee,” Jessica said as she set her stuff down on the table next to Bernadette.

“I think there’s plenty. I just made another pot since that big guy Peter March drinks a lot. He and his men need it to keep on the lookout now that they’re standing guard. What are you two up to?”

“We’ve been keeping our promise to Detective Hernandez
by going through everything we brought back from Roger’s office.”

“So you could find that STD card you’re missing?”

“
SD
card Bernadette. Not STD card.”

“Whatever, I don’t know what it is anyway.”

“It’s a little card you can save information on. It fits into a pocket on your computer like this, see? You just push this button and it pops out.”  With that, Laura pushed the button and gasped when a card appeared.

“Oh my God Jessica! Did you notice this was in
here? I didn’t even think about it!”

“Yeah, I saw it
. I took a quick look and it seemed like medical records and staff schedules, things like that.  I presumed it was yours.”

“It can’t be mine
. I keep mine in
my own
laptop, not Roger’s.”

Jessi
ca set the coffee cup down she was filling, a little too hard, and coffee slopped on her hand. She wiped the coffee up and moved quickly to stand next to Laura as she pushed the card back into the port on Roger’s laptop. Laura moved quickly to the drive on which the SD card files could be displayed. Laura stopped abruptly, and looked up at Jessica. 

“I don’t get it
. These
are
my files, Jessica. This is my SD card. The one I always keep in my laptop...” she paused as the puzzled look on her face suddenly gave way to clarity.  “Oh my God, Jessica, Roger must have switched them.  If there
is
one in my laptop, it has to be the one we’re looking for.”

“Where is your computer, Laura?”

“It’s in my desk at work.  I left it there on Friday. There was no reason to take it home for the weekend given the partying we had planned. I did have it home earlier in the week though. Roger would have had plenty of time to switch SD cards.”

“Let’s go get it.” Jessica was running toward her room to get her purse and keys
. Laura was a half-step behind.

“You better call Detective Hernandez,” Bernadette hollered after them.

CHAPTER 34

Jessica and Laura climbed into the Porsche, since Jessica had not yet retrieved her BMW from the parking lot at the La Quinta
Resort where she left it the day before.  She had called the resort and made arrangements to pay for parking so they’d keep an eye on it for her. Laura had her employee identification card in her wallet. She had her keys, too, so they could get into her locked desk at her workstation in the hospital. 

After they backed out of the garage they pulled up alongside a black SUV in which Peter March was sitting
, rather than at his post in front of the house. He and Jessica had decided the security service would take shifts providing surveillance, by armed men around the clock, at the house for the next week or so. That allowed the police to recall the uniformed officer who had spent the previous night in front of their house. Jessica had initially suggested he and the other members of his crew sit inside where it was air conditioned, or take up a post on the back patio where they could at least have the benefit of the misters. Peter preferred the vantage point that a post out front gave them, but did ask to put a chair in a shady corner of the circular drive out front. 

Bernadette suggested he take one from the patio, along with a little side table he could use for the coffee and tea she planned to bring him
. Already under her spell, he did not hesitate and picked up the chair like it was made from balsa wood rather than powder-coated steel.  Laying the little table on the seat cushion of the chair, he had hefted them both through the house to the front drive area. When he had set up his perch Jessica could see that while he had a pretty good view of the cul de sac on which they were located, he was shielded by a dwarf fan palm, as long as he remained seated anyway.

H
e’d see someone coming long before they saw him.  She hoped anyone coming to the house, with malicious intent,
would
see him. The sight of Peter March should dissuade any more attempts to invade the house or grounds. Of course, if they needed more persuading than that, he could handle that too. They had also added surveillance cameras in several spots around the house allowing him to monitor the entire perimeter on a laptop computer as he kept watch out front. 

It was probably wildly optimistic to think this would all be over in a week
or two.  This couldn’t go on much longer, though, given the way that Margarit was breathing down her neck. The “or else” mixed in with the ultimatum that Margarit had issued the day before at the spa was pointed. Jessica gulped wondering what a full court press by Bedrossian might look like if this past week had been Bedrossian in constraint mode as Margarit indicated. 

“Peter, we have to go to the Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage
, to the main hospital there. Can you get somebody to come with us or meet us there? I don’t want to leave Bernadette alone in the house, but we’d feel better having an escort.”

“Is everybody okay
? Nobody’s sick or hurt or anything?”

“Everybody’s fine for now
. Laura works at the hospital and left something important in her desk at work. We need to go get it.”

“Hang on
, I was going to take a lunch break.  My backup is on his way to relieve me in a few minutes. Let me see where he is, okay?”

“No problem Peter
. If you can put off lunch a little longer, we’ll buy it for you.  We haven’t eaten yet either.”

“Oh my God, Jessica
, you’re right. I completely forgot about lunch once we found what we were looking for or maybe found it, sort of...” Laura’s voice trailed off.  They didn’t really know yet if they had found anything. Jessica had put off calling Detective Hernandez until they were quite sure that they had found “it.”

As Peter spoke on the phone Jessica wondered idly how much it would take to feed a guy like him
. Like Brien, she imagined he could easily wolf down two or more of just about anything Carl’s Jr. or the other fast food joints could supersize. Her reverie was interrupted moments later by the sound of a car pulling up.

An almost identical SUV pulled into the driveway and a similarly clad, smaller and younger version of Peter March emerged
. They gave each other a couple quick signs and the new guy took up his post in the little shady alcove not too far from the front door.  As he sat down, Bernadette popped out of the house with a tray of sandwiches and iced tea. She did a double take at the man sitting in the patio chair, took in the scene and regained her composure in a flash. She set the tray down on the table, speaking to the young man and giving the rest of them a little wave good-bye.

“Okay you two,” said Peter
. “You head out and I’ll follow. I know where you’re going. Keep me in your rearview mirror, and call if you need anything.  We’ll go pick up this thing you need from your desk at the Medical Center, then you can take me to lunch at Native Foods. You know where that is in the Smoketree Village shopping center off of 111?”  It took Jessica a moment to make sense of this last bit.

“Isn’t that a health food place
with tofu and tempeh and that kind of stuff?” Jessica asked to make sure she understood. Her tone of voice must have betrayed the fact that she was not a fan.
Healthy
food, yes, but
health
food, no.

“That’s right
. I’m a vegan.” He seemed to become more amused as she continued to be puzzled. “I may be a predator on the job, when I have to be, but I’m no carnivore.”

“It’ll be alright, Jessica
. I’ve eaten there before and it’s actually good.  They have a place in Newport Beach and one in Westwood too. You’ll like it, trust me.”

“No problem
.  Let’s roll.” With that Jessica pulled around Peter March’s SUV, out of the driveway, and onto the lane in front of her house. The SUV followed as they made their way through the Mission Hills development, passed the guard gate, and took a right turn onto Dinah Shore. They turned onto Bob Hope Drive soon after, and arrived at the Medical Center in minutes. They found visitor parking quickly, too, and the three of them were soon inside the hospital. 

Laura spoke to a woman at an inf
ormation desk in the lobby who gave her passes for Jessica and Peter.  Laura motioned for the two of them to follow her to an elevator awaiting them at the end of a second hallway they traversed. After a short ride they were on the floor where Laura nurse’s station was located.  Laura bumped into one person after another who asked her how she was doing. She was stoic, telling them she was doing okay “under the circumstances.”  Jessica was grateful Laura had come along to guide them through the labyrinthine hospital, but sorry she had to face so many well-meaning coworkers.

Several had stopped by the day before to pay their respects to Roger but this was more real
. Laura was going to have to go back to work at some point and return to a life that was radically different from the one she led a week ago. Her coworkers said all the right things. There was just such uneasiness about it all. Maybe things were awkward because no one expected her to be there, or because death, even in a hospital was a topic no one knew how to handle well. The fact that Laura’s husband had been murdered probably made it more difficult.

Of course some of the aw
kwardness might also have had something to do with their hulking companion. Peter did not greet anyone or respond to greetings. He never changed his expression, remaining deadpan behind his dark glasses, and on alert. Keenly attentive to their surroundings, it was a reminder that he was with them for a reason.

In any case, Jessica watched Laura’s tension mount as she ran the gauntlet of well-wishers
. She picked up her pace, nearly dashing to her desk when they finally arrived at her workstation.  In a split second she had the drawer open and plucked her laptop, still in its case, from the drawer.

“Let’s check it out in the car, okay?” she asked in a whisper
.  Without waiting for a reply she strode at a fast clip back in the direction they had come, already a few feet out ahead of Jessica and Peter. She carried the laptop case clutched to her body rather than using the strap to sling it over her shoulder.

Jessica tried to match her pace even though she still experienced some discomfort if she steppe
d too carelessly on her sore foot. Peter noticed.  She wasn’t sure how he knew or how she knew he knew. But he did.  Fortunately they covered the distance to the elevator quickly.  Once inside, away from the gaze of sympathetic, but curious, hospital staff, they all breathed a sigh of relief. They rode down in silence, passed through the lobby and hustled back to the visitor parking where they had left their cars.

“Give us another minute then we’ll take you to lunch, Peter,” Jessica said as she and Laura climbed into the Porsche
. Jessica turned on the engine, cranking up the air conditioning as Laura pulled the laptop out of its case and flipped the lid open.  As the computer booted up, she hit the little button on the slot that accommodated SD cards. A card popped out.  She pushed it back into place and typed in her password.  With a couple more key strokes she began scanning a list of files.  She randomly selected one of the files, opened it and a spreadsheet appeared containing account information of some kind.

“This has to be it, Jessica
. I don’t recognize the names of any of these files.”  Jessica felt elated and terrified at the same time.  From the look on Laura’s face, she was feeling the same way.

“You go girl!” Jessica said, clapping her hands together
.  Peter, who had been standing near the driver side window bent down and peered inside.

“Find what you were looking for?” he asked
. Jessica could barely make out his words. She rolled the window down as Laura opened another file and the screen filled with an odd-looking array of characters.

“What’s this?” Laura asked turning the screen more toward Jessica.

“I’d say that’s an encrypted file,” Peter said looking at the screen. “We advise our clients on cyber security at times, too, and routinely suggest they encrypt important files to make it harder to steal what’s in them.”

“So now what do we do? Can we figure out what’s been encrypted?” Jessica asked a little breathlessly.

“Well, that can be done. Encryption slows down theft but doesn’t stop it. You’re going to need some technical help from professionals.  I can get that but it’ll cost you. Can we go eat first?”

“It’s a deal
.  Let’s go.” Jessica gunned the engine on the Porsche. As soon as Peter got into his car and started it up, she backed out of the parking space and took off.  “I presume he can catch up.”

She made a right turn out of the hospital complex onto Country Club Drive, hit the gas pedal and got to the light on Bob Hope in a split second
.  The Boxter wanted to run and so did she. By the time the light changed, Peter had pulled up behind her in the SUV. Making a left onto Bob Hope, she ignored the desire to turn the little car loose, settling in closer to the 50 mph speed limit as she made her way to Highway 111.  She felt as spirited and gutsy as that little silver Porsche. They had found the needle in a haystack!

Now what?  She’d get a copy to Peter and his security firm
.  Laura could send the files as email attachments at lunch while they were eating their earth bowls or whatever Peter said he liked so much at the health food place.  Then what?  Margarit wanted the card back and Jessica was perfectly willing to comply. How to do that safely seemed to be the major dilemma.  She didn’t trust Margarit.

She should call Detective Hernandez
. Maybe he’d have some idea about how to handle Margarit. Of course, he would probably advise her against having any further contact with the woman at all. That was, no doubt, good advice. She might even take it. Surely she and Laura and Bernadette and the rest of the “cat pack” had done more than their share already.  She made up her mind.  When they got to Native Foods she was going to call Detective Hernandez and turn the SD card over to him.  Of course, by she would have send a copy of everything to Peter’s firm. That just seemed like common sense to back up the original.  Curiosity motivated her to have his firm take a crack at decoding the encrypted files and reveal what had Bedrossian in such a state of panic.  She checked her rearview mirror and saw that Peter was still with her as they sped toward the restaurant, grateful for so little traffic and that this whole ordeal was coming to an end.