Read A Dead Husband (Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery) for Free Online Page B

up, letting the Porsche do what it was built to do as she merged onto “the 10” and achieved highway speeds in a matter of seconds.  The Porsche growled approvingly as she headed to the Date Palm exit a few miles away.
    Laura’s sister Sara lived in the Panorama neighborhood where Laura and Roger Stone had also bought a home . Panorama, a newer, more upscale part of Cathedral City, is still modest by comparison to sister cities with more ritzy addresses.  “Cat City”, as it is sometimes called by locals, is sandwiched in between Palm Springs and Rancho Mirage. Not more than 10 or 15 minutes away from Mission Hills, depending on traffic.  Today it was ten, given her handling of the Porsche and the nearly empty roads.
    Cat City was historically regarded as a raunchier counterpoint to the more genteel Palm Springs community .  Unsavory but alluring activities, like illegal gambling and prohibition-era bars, had been nudged over the city line into the unincorporated area that didn’t become a city in its own right until 1981. 
    Now, one of the larger and more diverse of the seven desert cities in the Coachella Valley, about a third of the city is reservation land owned by the native Cahuilla .  Although not as large a segment of the population as in Palm Springs, many members of the LGBT community called Cat City home.  More than half of the city’s residents identify as Latino, and share the city with smaller cohorts of other ethnic groups: Armenians, Vietnamese, and Filipinos. Many are recent immigrants. They’re drawn to opportunities created by the influx of baby-boomer retirees into the Coachella Valley. Retirees are slowly transforming the entire area from a winter resort to a year-round community. 
    Cat City expanded rapidly while Jessica was living nearby in Rancho Mirage, and that growth continued during her absence .  That is, until the economy fell off a cliff.  Like the rest of the valley, Cat City was dealing with challenges left in the wake of both boom and bust.
    Sara’s house was on a street that had obviously taken a hit from the housing crash .  Well-kept homes and yards were interspersed with homes that were no longer occupied.  A few had for sale signs on the lawns, and several had the telltale notices posted on the garage doors or in windows, indicating they were in some stage of foreclosure. There was a lot of deferred maintenance even in some of the homes that were occupied.  People in these middle-class neighborhoods had been hit hard by the triple whammy of falling home prices, mortgages with screwy adjustable rates, and job losses in a local economy heavily dependent on homebuilding.
    Folks could only hang on for so long and it had been more than 5 years since the economy hit an iceberg. Jessica had watched it all happen up close in the areas surrounding Cupertino. That included Stockton and Modesto to the east; Oakland to the north; and Salinas to the south. It was agony watching the slow motion sinking of Titanic dreams. The housing market in California had only recently started to get off its knees as inventory shrank and prices slowly began to rise again.
    As Laura’s friend in high school, Jessica knew Sara, of course . For Sara, two years older and at that about-to-be-dumped-into-the-real-world developmental stage, a younger sibling and her friend barely registered on her radar.  Sara had gone off to college at a Cal State, somewhere, and returned to the valley with a teaching credential in early childhood or special education. Jessica couldn’t remember which. 
    Jessica vaguely remembered sending a wedding present when Sara got married and had seen her a couple years later when they were both part of the bridal party at Laura’s wedding .  Sara had married Dave Patterson, a high school coach and math teacher.  They had been married longer than Laura and Roger, maybe 10 years now. Dave and Sara had introduced Roger to Laura.
    Roger Stone was Dave’s friend in high