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

“Or two or three,” Jessica thought
.  If Bedrossian had gotten to Roger instead of Margarit, Roger would have ended up dead anyway. Serj didn’t know the nature of Roger’s involvement with Margarit. She was equally talented as vamp or victim and that wouldn’t have mattered to Bedrossian anyway. If Laura had been with Roger, when his boss came to claim what was his, she most likely would have met her maker that day too. Once he got his hands on that SD card, he would have had no further use for Margarit either. All three, Roger, Laura, and Margarit, would likely have disappeared into the desert, like Carlos.

Margarit’s time was
already about up when Jessica stepped into the fray.  Not only did Jessica preempt Carlos’ inept search of Roger’s house on Sunday, but then she turned up asking a bunch of questions at the resort the next day.  Margarit’s apparent distress at that first meeting with Jessica was no doubt genuine.  Jessica knew Roger was dead and, if she had made a connection between Roger and Margarit, the police would soon be able to place her at the house too. A bigger concern was the fact that if the police knew Roger was dead, so did Alan. 

As Margarit told Jessica
at the spa on Wednesday, she had indeed had a confrontation with Alan Bedrossian after that brief encounter at the Adobe Grill on Monday.  Margarit told him who Jessica really was, and that she had asked about Roger Stone’s murder. Alan admitted that he already knew what Margarit had done.

“But how
did you know he was keelled? How did you know it was me?”  That’s when he hit her. Her head snapped back, propelling her backwards, onto a sofa in her bungalow.  Bedrossian did not answer her, but Serj said it was Aiden who had brought Alan up to speed. He told Alan that Roger was dead and at the hands of Margarit. 

“She was real lucky he didn’t kill her sla
pping her that hard,” the weasel informant had sniggered as he continued to tell his story.  Bedrossian asked her how she could have been so stupid. By that he did not mean stupid because she killed Roger but stupid because she killed him
before
making sure she had the money
and
the SD card. 

Margarit became hysterical, claiming she hadn’t gone there intending to commit murder but Roger was, as she had already told Alan, a double-crosser
.  He wouldn’t give her back the satchel so she got mad.  She only meant to threaten him but the gun went off.  Later that night when she had the money and figured out he was still alive she panicked and shot him again, trying to protect Alan from Roger telling the police as he had threatened to do.  Imitating Margarit, Serj went on about it.

“I had to do it or he would tell the poleece and that would lead them right back to you, Alan
.  Pleeze understand, Alan, I had no choice.  I didn’t want that to happen, I only wanted my freedom, what everyone wants.”  He hit her again.

By that point, Alan had also found out from Aiden about the aborted search attempt
. Alan was the one who made the connection for Margarit between Jessica and Carlos. That Carlos’ face looked worse than Jessica’s was information Margarit obtained second hand, since she never saw Carlos alive again. Serj could not help remarking that what Jessica did to him was nothing compared to what Bedrossian had them do. 

Bedrossian hit Margarit a few more times
.  She cried and screamed and, to save her own neck, told him Jessica must have it. Why else would she have introduced herself to them at the resort? She must be planning to “shake them down.” Serj sniggered once again imitating the accent of the late Margarit Tilik as he spoke those last words. 

It sounded like Bedrossian would have stopped at nothing to get that SD card back
.  He seemed ready to work his way systematically through Roger’s family and friends until he found someone who knew something about where that SD card had gone.

It was at Alan Bedrossian’s be
hest that Aiden went after Jessica in the El Paseo parking garage, with more in mind than stealing her purse.  He had been instructed to get the bag, but to bring her along as well to the bungalow at the La Quinta Resort. Given his double-agent role it wasn’t clear what Aiden would have done if he had snatched Jessica because  Margarit had not given up yet. She continued to pursue that SD card with Aiden’s help.  The fact that he was later found with Margarit at the Santa Rosa Cove said to Serj that ‘the dumbass’ was playing Al and his crew.  Aiden was in league with the diabolical Margarit all along. 

With no luck getting to Jessica on Tuesday they went after Laura on Wednesday
. Not at the funeral Wednesday morning, but later that afternoon while Jessica was meeting with Margarit at the spa. That meeting was most likely a clandestine one set up by Margarit since Serj seemed not to know anything about it. 

Aiden and another of Bedrossian’s men were otherwise occupied, making the
grab for Laura at Jessica’s house in Mission Hills. Bedrossian, no doubt, would have put Laura through some sort of interrogation process like that used with Eric. Laura, too, would likely have met the same end.

If Bedrossian had succeeded in snatching
Jessica or Laura the SD card might never have been found. Instead, Laura and Jessica had found the damned thing. Still monitoring Laura’s cell phone, and watching the house in Mission Hills, too, the tenacious Margarit knew immediately that they had located the SD card. Bedrossian's own persistence in continuing to track Margarit kept him only a half-step behind.  

With Aiden at her side
, it had been a simple thing to snatch Sara. Sara left work in a flash when Margarit told her Laura had been in an accident and needed her to come to Eisenhower Medical Center right away. She didn’t even stop to ask who the hell Margarit was, but knew she had made a terrible error when she saw Aiden waiting for them out front. A quick shot of Ketamine stopped Sara in her tracks and kept her from getting away. 

In the final analysis, Bedrossian’s real mistake was
underestimating
Margarit’s relentless conniving and maniacal resourcefulness. While he believed he had brought her back under his control, she kept working every angle she could, right under his nose.  Aiden may have
overestimated
Margarit, perhaps too willing to believe she could prevail in her attempt to outwit and get away from Alan Bedrossian. 

The informant wasn’t sure what Margarit had planned for Jessica and Sara
, but he had a very good idea what Alan Bedrossian had in mind. When Margarit left the Santa Rosa condo, Bedrossian was nearby. He ordered his men to hang back, watching from a short distance away as Margarit drove to the spa. They continued to hang back as Jessica got into the Mercedes with Margarit and followed them back to the condo. 

Jessica tried to imagine what it might have looked like as Detective Hernandez described what went
on that afternoon.  Peter March and the police, got there first, lying in wait for Margarit who showed up next, lying in wait for Jessica. The police must have been well-hidden or Margarit surely would have bolted. Bedrossian didn’t detect a police presence either, but they noticed him right away.  Jessica, the last to arrive to the party as it turned out, saw no sign of anybody until Margarit pulled up and ordered her to get into the back seat of the Mercedes.

Serj said that when Bedrossian
spotted Jessica at the spa they figured she had been a co-conspirator with Roger after all, and that she and Margarit had come to some sort of agreement about the return of the SD card.  They let Margarit leave, tracking her with their GPS, and giving her a few minutes alone with Jessica to get that card back.

“Of course,” Serj said, “Margarit was not going to have it for long, and she would never get the jump on Alan Bedrossian again.” Alan Bedrossian had planned to kill Margarit and everyone else at the condo that day
.

Margarit and Alan may have underestimated each other but neither of them gave Jessica any credit at all
.  Not even after she eluded two bad guys and, with Laura’s help, actually found the SD card.  Having revisited the whole sordid week in one night, during that debriefing with Detective Hernandez and the cat pack Jessica just felt lucky to be alive.

Laura had gone home from the hospital with Sara
. This time to watch over Sara for a few days as she continued to recover from kidnapping and Ketamine. Sara had been given close to a lethal dose of Ketamine. She was so out of it that she actually remembered little of what went on at the condo. Jessica and Laura agreed that was in fact a blessing.

Laura and the rest of the cat pack were coming over tonight for dinner to mark the occasion of their surviv
al.  Now that the police had cleared up Roger’s murder, Laura was no longer implicated in any way in Roger’s death.  It was pretty clear, from that phone call he tried to make to the police, that he was more Boy Scout than bad guy.  He was not suspected of any wrongdoing. If he had only placed that call to the police before his Friday night meeting with Margarit he might still be alive.  Why he hadn’t done so was still something of a mystery. There were so many what-ifs to consider in an exorbitant number of permutations and possibilities. They were all part of the relentless ruminating Jessica was trying to curtail. 

She intended to get the insurance company to pay out o
n Roger’s life insurance and that AD&D rider.  As soon as she could get her hands on a copy of the final report from Detective Hernandez, she would get that money for Laura.  She had already started working her networks to figure out who could lean on the CEO of the insurance company to expedite matters. Laura had been through way too much to get dragged over the coals by some officious, albeit, well-meaning insurance investigator.

Another reason they had called a meeting of the cat pack was that Jessica had insisted they all take a well-deserved vacation
, on her.  They were coming over not just for dinner but to plan and organize their next adventure. When Jessica made her suggestion Tommy had immediately decided that Brien was going to get that surf safari to the “north shore.”  Brien and the rest of the guys, Tommy, Jerry and Peter, the newest cat pack member, were headed to Oahu. 

The women
had settled quickly on the idea of going to Hawai’i too. They had decided on Maui once Jessica told them about the Grande Spa at the Grand Wailea. They had a lot of details to work out in order to coordinate their schedules and book their getaway. Jessica was looking forward to the prospect of doing a whole lot of nothing, relaxing with friends without being accosted by scoundrels. 

“
Aah! What a blessing that would be,” Jessica thought as she let the heat beat down on her. 

“Jessica, Jim’s here to see you.” Bernadette hollered from inside the house.

“What?  Who?” Jessica asked. She was sprawled on the chaise in a bathing suit and coffee-stained robe. Her hair wasn’t even combed. She wore no makeup to hide the bruising on her face. Besides the sling on her arm she still had two skinned knees and an assortment of bruises on her legs, some new, some old.  Bernadette was chattering about iced tea as she opened the screen door and let Jim step out onto the patio, like it was the most natural thing in the world. 

“Have a seat Jim
. I’ll be back in a second with iced tea. Jessica, I’m bringing you a hair brush. I’ll brush your hair for you if you can’t do it before everybody gets here.  You should have a hat. You’re going to get too much sun. I’ll bring a hat too.” 

Thanks for reading
A DEAD HUSBAND
!

W
hat’s up with Jessica and Jim Harper? To find out read
A DEAD SISTER
,  available in kindle and paperback from Amazon. Stop by and visit  me at
http://www.desertcitiesmystery.com
to read the Prologue
to
A DEAD SISTER
free, then buy the book. Cheers!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anna Celeste Burke lives with her husband in one of the seven desert cities in the Palm Springs area.  Retired from her role as a professor and research scientist in social work and behavioral science, she has now picked up a long-time interest in writing fiction.  In her professional career she wrote and published widely as a scholar, with more than forty manuscripts of varying lengths to her credit.  In addition to reading and writing mysteries she enjoys painting and hiking and tending to her Siamese cats while basking in the beauty of the Sonoran Desert, the surrounding mountains, and the bountiful delights of the resort communities. So what on earth does a research scientist have in common with a mystery writer?  As avid fans of the mystery genre will tell you at the core of any good mystery is a passionate search for the truth.  Most often, discovering the truth involves finding and assembling pieces of complex puzzles in order to solve seemingly intractable problems. Scientist and sleuth are cut from the same cloth!

A DEAD HUSBAND
, Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery #1 

A DEAD SISTER
, Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery #2

A DEAD DAUGHTER
, Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery #3 out late 2014

Also coming soon: Betsy Stark Desert Cities Mystery #1,
THE CLEANSING

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