Practice to Deceive

in the yellow Tracker. Perhaps Jim was frightened that the Island County investigators would rapidly focus on both of them. It would be wiser for them to separate, at least until the homicide investigation slowed down.
    Jim Huden was never known to be cruel or violent; the close friends with whom he had grown up insisted, “That’s just not Jim Huden. He’s a good guy.”
    When Mark Plumberg and Mike Beech had come to his house in Florida seven months later at the end of summer in 2004, it was obvious that Jim knew why they were there.
    And he had seemed to be resigned to whatever fate had in store for him. He may have been in shock after the unannounced visit, and that was why he disappeared for a few days in September. But he had come back to Jean.
    Jean Huden recalled that near Christmas 2004, she and Jim were in a beachfront hotel in Florida when he told her he was leaving. He had learned that the murder gun had been found, and was traced to him. He was so depressed that Jean was afraid he was going to commit suicide. She begged him not to go, but she later admitted to Mark Plumberg that he’d walked off and simply disappeared into the dark night.
    “I’m so worried that his body may be out there someplace,” she said then—but she was lying.
    At that time, Jean didn’t say that Jim had confessed to her the shooting of Russel Douglas, or that she had overheard a phone conversation he had with Peggy Thomas.
    Now, Jean said that Jim had never told her what Peggy knew about the murder, but she did say, “I heard him tell Peggy on the phone that he had killed a guy but not to worry because she would never see him again.”
    Was he deliberately raising his voice in that phone conversation so that Jean would believe Peggy had no part in the death of Douglas?
    Jean finally admitted that she and Peggy Sue Thomas had indeed been in touch with one another, and that some time in 2004 Peggy had actually come to Punta Gorda where the threesome talked. Later, afraid to talk on the phone about Russ Douglas’s murder, Jean Huden had traveled to the Las Vegas area once or twice to meet with Peggy. And Peggy had joined with Jean to provide money for Jim to live in Mexico.
    At one point, Jean said that she and Peggy could have been “best friends” if they had met under other circumstances.
    She admitted that Jim had managed to cross the border into Mexico as Hurricane Charley roared into Florida.
    By avoiding telephone calls to her home or from the house where she lived in Punta Gorda, Jean had evaded phone records that might link her to Jim or to any messenger between them. Jean Huden said she had succeeded in getting money to Jim using a Mexican friend as an in-between emissary.
    Even though he had openly carried on an affair with Peggy Sue Thomas, Jean still loved him, and she confessed that she had visited him in Mexico several times over the past seven years while he was a fugitive. She believed that at some point, she could join him there.
    She knew what he had done the day after Christmas 2003 because he had confessed to her. He had told her that he planned to kill Russ with the help of Peggy Sue.
    The motive?
    “Jim told me that Russ Douglas was an abusive husband and father.”
    That wasn’t true, although either Peggy Sue or Brenna Douglas might have convinced Jim Huden of that.
    Still, Mark Plumberg and Mike Beech didn’t believe that Jim Huden had suddenly decided to shoot a man he didn’t even know. Nor was Jim familiar with the death site on Wahl Road, but they discovered that Peggy Thomas was. The estate right next door to the driveway where Russ died was owned by a woman named Cindy Francisco. And Cindy Francisco was a good friend of Peggy Sue’s. It was Cindy who had gone with Peggy Sue to China City where they heckled the comedians. In fact, Peggy had lived in the Francisco mansion for about six months at one time. She knew the properties along Wahl Road very well indeed.
    It almost seemed as if Peggy Thomas had played Jim Huden like a marionette, pulling just the right strings to get him to do whatever she wanted.
    Even so, Huden had free will and he could have refused to be involved in a deadly scenario. A warrant for Jim Huden’s arrest was prepared, along with a request for his extradition from Mexico. According to Jean, Huden could be found in Vera Cruz and she gave directions that were passed on to federal marshals.
    Jim Huden was arrested in Vera Cruz on June 9, 2011, by Mexican