A Dead Sister (Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery) by Anna Burke

Jessica laughed, then, bounded out of her chair.
    “I don’t normally do this, but how about another act of indulgence? Want to chance a pot of coffee this late in the day, or will the caffeine keep you awake?”
    “Are you kidding? I live on caffeine, round the clock sometimes. It never keeps me from sleeping any time I get a chance. Coffee sounds wonderful.” Jessica picked up their dirty plates and hauled them to the kitchen.
    “Jessica, another thing,” Frank said.
    Jessica looked up from where she was filling the burr grinder with black oily coffee beans.
    “Yes?” she asked.
    “I’m sorry, Jessica, about the divorce. Divorce is a hard thing to do with class or grace. Mary and I have been divorced for three years now, and I am mostly civil when we have to deal with each other for the sake of the kids. That first year was the worst. You have to go through a whole year remembering all the things you did together and figure out how to do them by yourself, you know? I had the kids to take care of, but I was still a single guy instead of a married guy, and that just felt wrong.”
    “But it does get better, right?” Jessica asked, hoping the answer would be yes.
    “Yes. Yes it does.”
    Jessica used the sound of the grinder to give her time to think. She trusted he was being honest with her, but she hadn’t told him the whole story. Maybe at some point, she’d tell him about Jim and the strumpet and the baby on the way, but not today. Dumping the ground coffee into the coffee press, Jessica poured water over it and set the timer on the stove for 10 minutes.
    “How do you like your coffee Frank?” she asked. She wanted to add, “And what went wrong with your marriage?” but didn’t.
    “Milk would be great.”
    Jessica went to the fridge and found a small carton of half-and-half. Jessica didn’t quite understand why Bernadette preferred half-and-half in her morning coffee but 2% milk in her beloved lattes.
    “How about half-and-half, is that okay?”
    “That sounds great.”
    Jessica loaded a tray with the French press full of steeping coffe e, two mugs, and a small pot of half-and-half. She carried it all to the table where Frank was sitting. They had a few more minutes before the coffee had steeped long enough to pour it. Jessica decided it was time to hear what Frank had come to talk about.
    “So, Frank, what did you want to tell me about Kelly?”
    “Well, Jessica, this is sort of a strange situation. Did you know we have a Cold Case team at the County Sherriff’s department?”
    “No, I didn’t know that. I’ve heard that there’s new interest in cold cases because of better DNA testing and better databases that track DNA profiles from convicted offenders like they track fingerprints. Of course, there’s been some controversy among lawyers about their use like what constitutes probable cause, reasonable search, when using computers to match evidence to stored profiles. But I don’t know much more than that.”
    “A lot of jurisdictions have added units like ours, if there are enough resources in the department to run a team. Our team works cases for the whole county. And it’s not just DNA evidence and information from databases that can reactivate a cold case. Sometimes it’s good old fashioned police work that gets a case going again like when a cop takes a new look at the case and gets a new angle. Or sometimes someone in the community comes forward and decides to confess or turns in an old friend for a past crime because they’ve had a row. Maybe a guy dumps his girlfriend and she gets even by calling the cops and telling them where the money or the drugs or the body is stashed. You know?”
    “Yeah, I’ve got it.” Jessica thought about Margarit Tilik and what she had been willing to do to her boyfriends and anyone else who got caught in her tangled web, for that matter. Poor Roger Stone.
    “A couple days ago, I’m having a beer after work. I’m sitting with Art Greenwald, one