A Dead Husband (Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery) by Anna Burke Read Free Book Online Page B

as a party house.  But it wasn’t that steady and it didn’t pay nearly as well as the upgrades and remodels he’d been doing when the real estate market was so hot.”
    Laura looked at J essica for a moment and said, “we really were straining to hold it together, financially, you know?  We fought all the time.  The neighbors called the cops on us once or twice.” Then she looked down again, wringing a tissue in her hands
    “Laura, I know this is a little embarrassing , but we’ve all taken our lumps from this housing debacle. That’s taken a toll on a lot of relationships, too.  Did the fighting get physical?” Jessica asked, speaking softly.
    “No, no , it was nothing like that. A lot of shouting and I threw a few things, but never hit him with anything.  And he’d never dream of hitting me. He never would have done that,” her voice trailed off so Jessica could barely hear the last couple words. 
    “The thing is, I didn’t go straight home last night. In fact, I didn’t get home until this morning.  I called Roger and left a message.  I told him you were in bad shape and I was going to stay with you at your place.”  She looked directly at Jessica and the blush started to return to her face.
    “Okay so why’d you tell him that?” Jessica asked puzzled by the story she was hearing.
    “You remember that waiter, Eric?  The cute one we were sort of flirting with all through dinner?” She asked.
    “Yeah ,” Jessica said nodding her head.
    “I sort of ended up at his place,” she said, the words tumbling out in a rush.
    Jessica paused for a minute to take in what she was saying.
    “So how did that happen?”
    “I’m not sure how it happened, Jessica.  It just happened.  We were all having such a good time. When we got to Costa’s I was feeling pretty good, it could have been the booze but I felt better than I had in weeks. Then Eric showed up at Costa’s. Remember, I brought him over and said, look who’s here?  You said you were glad to see him again so soon or something like that. But you didn’t seem like you were, happy to see him, I mean.”
    Jessica struggled to recall events at Costa’s but that was the point at which things had started to come apart for her .  She loved to dance but the whole bar scene had never appealed to her very much even before she was married.  Last night she had tired almost immediately of worn out “pickup” lines being used on her and other women around her. 
    Even more aggravating were the squealing young women , some probably not even of legal drinking age. Those piercing sounds slashed their way into her brain if there was even the slightest pause in the throbbing pulse of the high volume dance party music. The guffawing and braggadocio of the twenty-something men was no better.  From what she could tell, most had learned their social skills from “Jackass the Movie”. 
    Jessica got plenty of attention, but she felt a million years older and way more jaded than the crowd gyrating on the dance floor .  She just didn’t have the hormonal drive to put up with all the frog-kissing she’d have to do to find a frigging prince among that rabble.  That must have been the point at which Brien and Tommy decided to intervene. She could not remember much of the conversation with Laura and Eric or anything after that, really. Nothing more until she woke up this morning.
    “Laura I was pretty much out of it by then so I don’t remember .  I don’t think I stayed around longer, did I?” Jessica asked, almost as embarrassed as Laura at this point.
    “No, you left a few minutes later .  Tommy asked if I wanted to go. He said he and Brien were taking you home and they’d drop off the rest of us along the way.  Eric offered to give me a ride, so I stayed.  We hung around for a little while, had another drink, then Eric asked if I wanted to get out of there.  The minute I got into the car with him, that was it.  We were all over each other,