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

eschewing religion. Enlightenment turned out to be a difficult thing to achieve. She let that slide too.
    Barely into the second quarter of her first year in college, wham! Jessica was slammed by the news that Kelly Fontana was dead. That was the second terrible thing that had ever happened to Jessica as-yet-no-hyphen-Huntington. Uncle Don called her. It was the first time she had heard a grown man cry.
    In shock, Jessica dropped everything to get back to the desert for the funeral. A memorial service was held for Kelly at St. Theresa’s where the funeral Mass also took place. Jessica’s parents had shown up too, and for a brief moment in time, they were a family again, bound by the loss of su ch a young life in so deplorable a way.
    Kelly Fontana had been found in a do wntown Palm Springs hotel parking lot, the victim of a hit-and-run. Whoever hit her had not had the decency to stop and help her or call 911. Uncle Don had posted appeals for the driver to come forward, and the Fontana family had offered a reward to anyone with information about what happened that night. No one at the hotel had seen or heard anything, and no one came forward in response to the appeals. The investigation quickly drew to a close, and Kelly’s death was ruled an accident without ever identifying who had hit her.
    After Kelly’s death Jessica ditched religion and spirituality for therapy, hoping to talk her way out of the existential dilemmas that hounded her. Nostalgia morphed into melancholy as she pondered Kelly’s death and the prospect of talking about it with Frank. Jessica bowed her head in the shower and let the water run over her. The pain of that loss, mixed with the more recent losses including her divorce from Jim and Roger’s murder. She sobbed in the shower, remembering how she and Tommy had clung to one another at Kelly’s funeral.
    Tommy’s father, Sammy Fontana, was Uncle Don’s older brother. Sammy and his wife, Monica, were devastated by Kelly’s death. Tommy’s mother fell into a serious depression, and his father’s physical health began to suffer. Even though they were only in mid-life, the death of their daughter propelled them toward a premature old age.
    Tommy had always been a sweet-natured, free spirit who took an elfin delight in life. When Kelly died, it hit him hard, too, but he stepped in as best he could at sixteen to fill the void. There was only so much he could do to ease his parents’ suffering. He must have been a source of great strength to his grieving parents. His auburn hair and delicate bone structure, so much like Kelly’s, must also have made him a constant reminder of their loss.
    Tommy brought a smile to Jessica’s face, even as she wept. Tommy’s pale skin bore a spray of freckles on his nose and cheeks, something he had disliked fiercely as a teen. They added a bit of roguishness to his features, especially when he smiled and his brown eyes twinkled. Jessica found it adorable, but treaded lightly, knowing how sensitive he was about his “blotches.” He went through a phase when he tried to get rid of them, slathering all sorts of skin care products on his face to block the sun and fade the freckles. In his mid-twenties, he gave up and learned to live with them.
    By then, he had also come to grips with his sexual orientation, an issue he had begun to address at sixteen when Kelly was killed. It was just a few weeks before her death that Tommy found the courage to confide in her that he was gay. Retelling the story to Jessica later, he said Kelly had embraced him. She told him how much she loved him, and that her only hope was that he would grow up to be a happy man, gay or straight.
    Now, almost fifteen years later, Tommy was still tending to his parents, living in the detached casita at their Cathedral City home. His young life had been marked by a series of ill-conceived schemes, false starts, and misguided occupational choices. Not to mention a capricious and sometimes even