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  A Dead Nephew

  Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery #6

  Anna Celeste Burke

  A Dead Nephew

  Copyright © 2020 Anna Celeste Burke

  https://desertcitiesmystery.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced without written permission of the publisher except brief quotations for review purposes.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. The use of any real company and/or product names is for literary effect only. All other trademarks and copyrights are the property of the respective owners. The author derives no compensation or other benefits from the mention of any company or product.

  Cover design by Keri Knutson https://www.alchemybookcovers.com/

  Books by USA Today and Wall Street Journal Bestselling

  Author Anna Celeste Burke

  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

  A Dead Mother Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery #4

  A Dead Cousin Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery #5

  A Dead Nephew Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery #6

  A Dead Surgeon Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery #7 [2020]

  Love A Foot Above the Ground Prequel to the Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery Series

  Cowabunga Christmas! Corsario Cove Cozy Mystery #1

  Gnarly New Year! Corsario Cove Cozy Mystery #2

  Heinous Habits! Corsario Cove Cozy Mystery #3

  Radical Regatta! Corsario Cove Cozy Mystery #4

  Bogus Bones! Corsario Cove Cozy Mystery #5 [2020]

  Murder at Catmmando Mountain Georgie Shaw Cozy Mystery #1

  Love Notes in the Key of Sea Georgie Shaw Cozy Mystery #2

  All Hallows’ Eve Heist Georgie Shaw Cozy Mystery #3

  A Merry Christmas Wedding Mystery Georgie Shaw Cozy Mystery #4

  Murder at Sea of Passenger X Georgie Shaw Cozy Mystery #5

  Murder of the Maestro Georgie Shaw Cozy Mystery #6

  A Tango Before Dying Georgie Shaw Cozy Mystery #7

  A Canary in the Canal Georgie Shaw Cozy Mystery #8 [2020]

  A Body on Fitzgerald’s Bluff Seaview Cottages Cozy Mystery #1

  The Murder of Shakespeare’s Ghost Seaview Cottages Cozy Mystery #2

  Grave Expectations on Dickens’ Dune Seaview Cottages Cozy Mystery #3

  A Fairway to Arms in Hemingway Hills Seaview Cottages Cozy Mystery #4 [2020]

  Lily’s Homecoming Under Fire Calla Lily Mystery #1

  A Tangle in the Vines Calla Lily Mystery #2

  Fall’s Killer Vintage Calla Lily Mystery #3

  The Vintner’s Other Daughter Calla Lily Mystery #4 [2020]

  Kitchen Magic Witches Academy Series [2020]

  Dedication

  To my husband for fifty years of love and friendship—in deserts and oases.

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgements

  1 A Desert Killer

  2 The Wrong Man

  3 Calipatria Bound

  4 Not the Wrong Man

  5 Louie’s Place

  6 Revels and Revelations

  7 Calamity Magnetism

  8 Pandora’s Box

  9 The Quarantine Calamity

  10 A Ton of Men

  11 Surprising Secrets

  12 A Boy’s Room

  13 Errand Boys

  14 A Little Progress

  15 Sammy’s Place

  16 A Growing List of Oddities

  17 Mr. Lugo’s Appointment

  18 Donkey Games

  19 The Troll

  20 The Messenger

  21 New Chapters to an Old Story

  22 One Weird Case

  23 Thor and Amazonia

  24 Officer Ridgeway, I Presume

  25 Angry Women

  26 Blame it on Anastasia

  27 Ground Zero

  28 The Blow

  29 A Place Called Home

  Epilogue

  RECIPES

  Italian Beans and Green

  Tangy, Spicy Chicken Margherita

  Easy Homemade Pesto

  Simple Garlic and Olive Oil Linguine

  Italian Cream Cake

  Vegan Brownies

  Italian Lemon Drop Cookies (Anginetti)

  Chocolate Amaretti Cookies

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to my husband, who has been my best friend for over fifty years. It’s been an amazing journey. He always has great feedback for me about my books.

  I’m grateful for Peggy Hyndman, who has once again tackled the task of editing one of my books. I appreciate her help finding typos, missing words, and all those they’re, there, their problems. She’s also adept at suggesting rewrites for awkward sentences. In this book, she also let me borrow her name for a character. Thanks, Peggy!

  Donna Wolz, who doubles as a PA for me, also edited this book. She’s quick and has a keen eye for all the mistakes I make along with those created by the oh-s0-helpful autocorrect.

  Last, but not least, thank you to Ying Cooper who also tackled editing this book. She did so while hunkering down near “ground zero” when the global pandemic reached the U.S. I can never thank her enough for taking this on with all the other stressors in her life.

  A shout out to Keri Knutson at Alchemy Book Covers & Design, for the amazing book cover. It’s an inspiration—this one truly captures the look and feel of the Mojave Desert where part of the action in this book takes place. It’s also called the “high desert” because it’s located at a higher elevation than the Sonoran Desert in which Jessica lives.

  As always, I want to acknowledge my ARC Angels—a very special group of readers—some of whom have been with me since I published my first book in 2013. I never have the right words to thank them for the friendship, support, and encouragement they offer as they read book after book! I am a fortunate author! A special thanks to Denise Austin, who let me borrow her name for one of the characters in this book.

  1 A Desert Killer

  If screenwriter Harry Essex is right, there are “A thousand ways the desert can kill.” According to Auntie Agnes, a local tribal elder, an elusive killer is working hard to make it a thousand and one. The twist in my gut keeps telling me there’s truth to Agnes Lugo’s claim that the young man convicted of her nephew’s murder didn’t do it. That’s why I agreed to work on Louie Jacobs’ case. He was arrested and quickly convicted of murdering his friend, Sacramento Lugo. The rush to judgment bothered me, but worse was the fear that Lugo’s real killer was still at large, had killed before, and would do it again.

  Beneath all the trappings of wealth in the Playground of Presidents, the shopping mecca that’s known as “The Rodeo Drive of the Desert,” and the red carpets rolled out for Hollywood royalty, we live in a desert. The seven desert cities from Palm Springs to Indio are tiny oases set amid a vast sweep of sand and scrub bounded by the San Bernardino Mountains to the north and the Santa Rosa Mountains to the south.

  You don’t have to venture far from the glitz and glamour of Palm Springs to find wild, untamed places. That’s where Sacramento Lugo’s body was found, in a secluded spot on a tribal reservation not far from Indio, the easternmost of the seven desert cities. As inhospitable as the wild places may seem, some people seek them out. For Sacramento Lugo, Louie Jacobs’ hideaway in the desert was part campsite and part teen clubhouse—
a place to get away from adults.

  Lost souls and recluses are also drawn to the wilderness, but in search of solitude for other reasons. Occasionally, that includes human predators that dwell side by side with mountain lions, coyotes, bobcats, and small things like scorpions and rattlesnakes. The wild creatures that prowl on four legs, or slither and scurry, generally leave you alone if you stay out of their way. That’s not always true about the predators who walk on two legs.

  I’d never worried much about “stranger danger.” Despite a fear of strangers, most people are murdered by someone they know, including the person with whom they’re most intimate. That’s why members of law enforcement start by investigating those closest to the victim—partners, family, and friends.

  Louie Jacobs had made it easy for them to zero in on him. He’d been found, passed out with a bloody knife in his hand, not far from the body of his friend. Witnesses had observed Louie and Sacramento arguing earlier in the evening. Nothing in the police report said anyone else had been at the crime scene that night. Betsy Stark interrupted my reverie about the murder of Sacramento Lugo with more to say about the dangerous man she believed was roaming the desert, killing at will.

  “If he’s targeting the homeless, we may never know how many lives he’s taken,” Betsy said as she sat in a chair opposite my desk. “The community makes efforts to transport them to shelters during the hottest and coldest nights in the desert, but we can’t find them all. Some refuse to go with us, while others take off from the shelters soon after they get there and disappear back into the desert. When they die, if their bodies are found, the desert gets the blame.”

  “What makes you believe he’s targeting the homeless?”

  “I’ll tell you what happened this morning, and you can draw your own conclusion, Jessica.”

  “If you don’t calm down, Mr. Oliver, I’m going to call security. Our interview will be over. Is that clear?” The wreck of a man looked at me, shooting daggers from his eyes through the dull sheen created by whatever drug he’d taken before coming to the welfare office. It’s not the imagined sharp objects that worry me, it’s the real ones.

  “Don’t tell me what to do. You got no right. I want help now! Ain’t that clear?” He took a hammer from a pocket under the poncho he wore. Gripping it, he stood in front of the chair in the waiting room where he’d been sitting. I’d already taken away a nasty looking shiv, a Bowie knife, and a gun this week, and it was only Tuesday. At least the latest gun I’d confiscated wasn’t loaded.

  “If you want me to help you, you’ve got to give me the hammer, Mr. Oliver,” I spoke firmly, but calmly, to the wisp of a human blown in by the desert breeze. Short, dry, and withered like a tumbleweed, he was bent and nearly mummified by what was probably some combination of desert heat, booze, and methamphetamine addiction. Mr. Oliver wasn’t long for this world; his body was already nearly embalmed and ready for the next. I could take him if I had to.

  “You can’t have it. It ain’t safe out there, lady. You’d know that if you weren’t so high and mighty sitting around behind a desk all day.” He raised the hammer a bit as he said that.

  “The name’s Betsy Stark, Mr. Oliver. You can call me Ms. Stark. Trust me, I ain’t no lady.” I stepped toward him slowly, but deliberately. He looked me up and down, as all six feet two inches and one hundred eighty pounds of me towered over him. As he gawked, I reached out. The hammer was mine.

  “Follow me,” I took him with me to my office. “With or without your hammer, if you come after me or anyone else in this office, it won’t be safe for you in here either.” As I said that, I picked up “Bitsy Betsy.” I’ve never had to use the shiny baseball bat that leans against my desk, except to make a point as I was now.

  “Speak loudly, and carry a big stick,” was inscribed on the bat along with the name, “Bitsy Betsy.” The bat was a gift from my coworkers, celebrating my second decade of service as a social worker. Not something I’d ever imagined I’d possess as a tool of my profession.

  “Okay, so let’s get down to business, Mr. Oliver. Where do you want to go? Why do you want a bus ticket out of paradise?” I sat down and put Bitsy Betsy back in its place. Maybe it’s time to install metal detectors or screening devices at the door.

  I waited for Mr. Oliver to collect his thoughts as his eyes darted from one corner of my desk to another. I imagined his thoughts skittering like spiders. Each sported Mr. Oliver’s head like Jeff Goldblum in a scene from the remake of The Fly.

  “The Cleaner Man’s at work again, Ms. Stark. He don’t like guys like me. I gotta go. I don’t care where. Send me to San Berdu, LA, over the state line into Arizona, it don’t matter! Give me a bus ticket, and I’m outta here. This time it’s for good, deal?”

  “I’m sorry. Did you say the Cleaner Man, Mr. Oliver?”

  “Yes! We thought he was gone, killed, or somethin’. But that demon is back.”

  “He could hardly be a demon if you thought he was dead.”

  “He’s the devil, I tell you.” The man was becoming agitated again. I quickly glanced to make sure Bitsy Betsy was still within easy reach before I asked him to explain.

  “A silver-tongued devil, with a bit of the hellfire and brimstone preacher in him,” Betsy added, apparently done narrating the events involving Mr. Oliver as they’d happened. “To hear Mr. Oliver tell it, the Cleaner Man’s wily. He befriends you and sympathizes with you because you have no friends or family to help you. Then he makes a pitch for you to turn to the god he supposedly represents—and away from whatever it is he says you ought to turn away from like stealing, alcohol, or drugs.”

  “You and the people you work with must be saying about the same thing to all the Mr. Olivers in the desert.”

  “Yes, but we don’t exact the same punishment if they don’t meet our expectations. According to Mr. Oliver, ‘The Cleaner Man looks like an angel—dressed all in white. He’s fooling you, though, ’cause he’s a devil in disguise. If you don’t get cleansed, you’re dead.’” As Betsy spoke, I could hear the cadence in her voice that Mr. Oliver must have used when he begged her to help him to get out of town.

  “Geez! That sounds like a strange new twist on an ‘Angel of Death’ killer, doesn’t it?” I asked. “Maybe the Cleaner Man has a background in health care.”

  “That’s possible,” Betsy responded. “The Cleaner Man’s religious bent also fits the profile. Although if Mr. Oliver’s right, it’s more vengeance than mercy he seems intent on delivering. Mercy killers or Angels of Death usually use a less visible means of sending their victims to meet their maker than the knife that killed Sacramento Lugo.”

  “Obviously, Mr. Oliver isn’t speaking from experience, or he’d no longer be alive,” I said. “How does he know so much about the Cleaner Man?”

  “He wasn’t clear about that, but he’s in a shelter in Cathedral City if George Hernandez wants to have a chat with him. He needs to go easy, though. Mr. Oliver is truly terrified. The more he spoke, the more frantic he became, and the less sense he made,” Betsy replied.

  “To be that scared, he must have had a personal encounter with the guy. Let’s hope he can give us more details about the Cleaner Man’s appearance or his real name. I wish I could meet with him, but I’ve finally jumped through the hoops and have a meeting scheduled with Louie Jacobs. I’ll call George and see if he can send someone to the shelter right away. Let’s hope Mr. Oliver is still there.”

  “I drove him there, personally, checked him in, and told him I’d be back soon with a ticket out of here.” I must have reacted with surprise because Betsy paused and cocked her head to one side. “What’s that look about? I didn’t lie to Mr. Oliver. George can stash him in San Bernardino if there’s any value in what he has to say. In fact, I thought transporting him in a police cruiser might be safer than sending him off on a bus if he really does need to be protected from a man he’s describing as a serial killer.”

  “Let me call George and see what he says.” Detective
George Hernandez is no fan of my investigations into murder and mayhem, but this is different since my snooping is related to a case.

  “What can I do for you, Jessica?”

  “I hope we can do something for you, Detective,” I replied, and briefly explained what was going on with Mr. Oliver. “Hang on a second.”

  “What’s Mr. Oliver’s first name, Betsy?”

  “Xavier,” she whispered.

  “If you want to run a background check on him, his name is Xavier Oliver,” I said.

  “I don’t mind telling you that when you agreed to help Louie Jacobs, I was sure you were off on a wild goose chase,” George responded. “I haven’t said anything to you because it’s a perfect way to keep you and your ‘Cat Pack’ busy. Mr. Oliver’s tale about the Cleaner Man doesn’t change my mind. What else would you expect from a homeless, meth-addled desert rat who’s decided it’s time to move on to greener pastures? If he’s not just yanking your chain to get a free ride, the Cleaner Man is a mirage from a combination of heat and drugs or booze. Are you sure this isn’t some guy Sacramento’s aunt sent to speak to you?”

  “I guess I wasn’t clear that he didn’t come to see me. Betsy Stark, who’s sitting in my office with me, says Xavier Oliver showed up looking for help from Public Services.”

  “Betsy’s even more tied into the local tribes than you are. Why not send Mr. Oliver to Betsy with a story that adds credibility to Agnes Lugo’s effort to get Louie Jacobs’ conviction overturned?” I rolled my eyes, and Betsy folded her arms.

  “Why would Agnes want a new trial for the young man convicted of murdering her nephew unless she’s convinced the real killer is still out there? Can’t we have this discussion after you’ve spoken to Xavier?” The stubborn grunt on the other end of the phone irked me. I sighed and then continued to counter his objections. “First of all, Auntie Agnes didn’t need to send Xavier to me or Betsy. I’ve already taken Louie Jacobs’ case. Second, there was no need for deception. Auntie Agnes would have just told Betsy or me to speak to him if she’d discovered that Xavier Oliver had a story to tell about the Cleaner Man. Third, he couldn’t have known he’d be speaking to Betsy today when he showed up at Public Services. Normally, she’s not on the front lines. You know that as well as I do.”