Practice to Deceive

authorities who had the power to detain violators who were in the country illegally. Then he was turned over to Deputy U.S. Marshal Raymond Fleck, a fifteen-year veteran who specialized in the capture of fugitives. Fleck had retrieved offenders from Canada, Ireland, Costa Rica, and Belize, as well as Mexico.
    Vera Cruz is a thriving port city on the Gulf of Mexico with more than a half million population. It had been a wise location for Huden to hide. There were many expatriates living quiet lives out of the mainstream there.
    Jim waived extradition and the marshal handcuffed him and escorted him across the border into the United States.
    Jim was extremely tan, he had grown a mustache, and his long hair was bleached blond by the sun. It was just as thick as it had been in high school so many years earlier. He was lean and well muscled and seemed to be in good health.
    He was transported to the Island County Jail. On July 9, 2011, Jim Huden pleaded not guilty to the charge of first-degree murder. His bail was set at ten million dollars. There was no way he could come up with 10 percent of that. He had no property and he surely hadn’t made a fortune as an Anglo guitar teacher in Vera Cruz.
    Although Peggy had always said that Jim was the one who left Dick Deposit’s house to buy “smokes” on December 26 almost eight years earlier, and she had kept the receipt, the investigators and Prosecuting Attorney Greg Banks felt that it was Peggy Sue who had bought the Swisher Sweets cigars and saved the receipt. He believed that Jim was on his way to shoot Russ at the time.
    She needed that small proof to establish where she and Jim Huden were while she was buying them. Banks felt that that might have the opposite effect on jurors.
    Who saves a receipt for a pack of smokes for a year?
    No one saw the couple at Dick Deposit’s house on December 26 and Deposit himself couldn’t be sure if the beds had been made when he visited his property. The couple hadn’t turned in the house key to him, and Dean and Cathy Hatt were sure Peggy hadn’t stopped by to give them the key.
    A warrant was issued for the arrest of Peggy Sue Stackhouse Harris Thomas Allen.
    * * *
    P EGGY SUE WAS UNAWARE of what was about to come down. After almost eight years, she probably felt her connection to Russ Douglas’s murder was a thing of the past. Now, on July 9, 2011—exactly a month after Jim Huden’s arrest—Peggy Sue was spending some time away from her limo driving, and relaxing on her houseboat, Off the Hook, that was anchored on Navajo Lake in New Mexico.
    The San Juan County Sheriff’s Office in New Mexico had had her under surveillance since they traced her to the half-million-dollar houseboat. She didn’t know that the sheriff’s detectives were watching her from a neighbor’s boat.
    Fearing that she might resist arrest or run if she had forewarning, the San Juan County sheriff’s men asked the Pine River Visitor’s Center to notify Peggy Sue Thomas that there was a package waiting for her there.
    It was a trick, of course. There was no package. How ironic. Russel Douglas had gone to meet his killer, expecting to find a package—a gift for his wife, Brenna. And he had been shot between the eyes.
    And now Peggy Sue walked blithely into an ambush, too, expecting to find a present someone had sent her. Instead, when she showed up at the Pine River center, Peggy Sue was surprised to be surrounded by officers. Told she was under arrest for first-degree murder, she was obviously shocked—but she remained calm as she was handcuffed and taken to jail.
    Her glory days seemed to have come to a sudden, bone-jolting stop. Peggy had continued to drive limos in Las Vegas after her divorce from Mark Allen, and earned a healthy living, interspersing her work schedule with vacations on her plush houseboat. She may have felt that she’d gotten away free. She may have been planning the next move she would make to re-create herself.
    She knew Jim was in jail, charged with first-degree murder, but she had been confident he would never do anything to hurt her. Now she wasn’t so sure.
    After a few weeks in the San Juan County Jail in New Mexico, Peggy Thomas waived extradition and, dressed in baggy orange jail coveralls, she rode a prison bus for four days on her way back to Whidbey Island.
    Peggy’s bail was, like Jim Huden’s, set in the millions, although hers was half his: five million dollars at her arraignment in Island County. That was