Wicked Game (9 page)

“Oh, yeah, she was Satan,” The Third said in a bored tone.

“I’m not kidding, okay! There were things about her that were just plain…” Evangeline swallowed hard and looked out the window where rain was still running down the panes.

“Plain what?” Zeke demanded.

“Scary. Dark. I don’t know. Vicious or evil or whatever you want to call it.” She glanced around at the table and shrugged. “We all know it. We’re afraid to say it because she went missing and something horrible might have happened to her, but we all know deep inside that there was something very, very wrong with Jessie Brentwood.”

Becca couldn’t stand it a second longer. Her vision hovered and she needed air. She scraped her chair back, startling Jarrett. “Excuse me.” Quickly, she shoved open the frosted doors and headed through the maze of curtained rooms. It was all too close. Too confining. Too…malicious. She walked toward the restrooms, then changed her mind and headed for the front doors, where she stepped out into the cool of the night. The rain had slowed to a thin drizzle and the wind had died, but the air was thick, mist rising off the parking lot. She glanced to a line of parked cars where fir and oak trees defined the edge of the lot. Rain beaded on the hoods, and windshields reflected light from the security lamps blazing overhead. Traffic hummed past and the sound of jazz, muted though it was, filtered into the night.

Becca walked along the front of the building, letting the cold February air clear her head, telling herself that she couldn’t admit to anyone that she’d seen Jessie in a vision; they’d all think she’d gone around the bend. But the vibes she’d picked up in that room had all but stifled her. And the body, found at St. Elizabeth’s. Had Jessie really been killed and buried, right there? Laid to rest in a shallow, horrid grave at the base of the statue? But who would kill her? And why? She rubbed her arms and glanced around the parking lot again. A woman in a long raincoat was walking quickly through the sparse cars, skirting puddles. A slim woman with light brown hair falling from her face, just the way Jessie’s had in the vision.

Becca’s breath stopped in her lungs. Her pulse quickened. It couldn’t be. And yet…

Jessie?

At that moment, the woman turned to face her, and even in the poorly lit lot, it was evident she was not the girl Becca had witnessed in her vision. There was some resemblance, yes, but this woman, now clicking the remote to unlock her car, definitely was
not
Jezebel Brentwood.

You’re cracking up, Becca.

Seeing ghosts.

If Jessie’s really dead, if the body in the maze is, in fact, Jessie’s…

The door behind her opened and she turned, half expecting Hudson to step outside, but she was disappointed when Mitch Bellotti, unlit cigarette crammed into the corner of his mouth, lighter in hand, walked up to her. “Freaky in there, isn’t it?” he said, flicking his lighter and bending into the flame. He drew deeply on his filter tip.

“Yep.” The door swung shut.

He shot a stream of smoke out of the side of his mouth and reached into the inner pocket of his jacket to withdraw a slightly crumpled pack of Marlboros. “Want one?”

“No, thanks.” She shook her head and the pack disappeared. “I just needed a break.”

“You and me both.” He hitched his chin toward one wing of the restaurant. “I gotta say, all this talk about Jessie and if she’s alive or dead. Buried up at the school, rotting…oh, hell…It’s kinda sick.” He took another long drag and shook his head as he looked at the road where traffic, now thinning, was moving slowly. “I don’t need this.”

Becca made a sound of agreement.

The door opened again, conversation and music flowing into the night. Becca glanced over her shoulder and this time it was Hudson, his expression grim, walking outside. “You okay?” he asked her.

“Yeah. Well…sort of.” She shook her head. “This whole thing is so bizarre. It just kind of got to me.”

Mitch was nodding as he squinted through the smoke curling from his cigarette. On the arterial, an impatient driver of a sports car honked at a minivan still idling at the intersection though the light had turned green. “So, Renee’s bent on getting her story, huh.”

Hudson nodded. “I’d like to know if those bones are Jessie’s.”

“Yeah. Well. I guess.” Mitch shrugged.

Hudson’s gaze found Becca’s. “Coming?”

She nodded and walked through the door he held open.

“I’ll be there in a sec,” Mitch said, but was cut off by the door closing with a soft thud.

And then Becca and Hudson were alone in the foyer. No customers were crowded, waiting in line, and even the hostess had left the podium. From behind the curtains there were a few whispers of conversation underscored by the ever-present canned music wafting through the darkened restaurant.

“Helluva way to meet again,” he offered and his smile had an edge to it, a sarcasm deeper than she remembered. “You want to leave?”

“Now?”

“Mmm.”

“With you?”

He lifted a shoulder.

It sounded interesting, but she knew better. Had been burned before. Hudson Walker was one man she couldn’t trust. And then there was the matter of Jessie. “I thought you said we should get through this.”

He grinned faintly, some of the darkness fading from his expression. “Maybe I was just trying to ditch Mitch.”

“Yeah?”
Do not be charmed by him. Do
NOT!
Remember how he left you. Remember that he never quit loving Jessie. Remember that even now, Jessie exists. Will always be there.

“I think I should stay and hear Renee out,” she said, refusing to be tempted by Hudson. “It is weird…those bones…”

Hudson inclined his head and she started walking toward the doors to the private dining room. Time to step back into the fray. As she reached the door, she called over her shoulder, “Come on, Walker. Let’s just get this over with.”

But he was already on her heels and grabbed the door handle, his big hand covering hers, strong fingers curling around the lever. “Let’s hope Renee isn’t going to be as long-winded as I think she is,” he said, opening the door for them both.

First Becca
, Renee thought.

Then Mitch
.

And finally, so predictably, Hudson
.

Three people had left the room. Didn’t want to hear anything about Jessie.

Renee had been watching. Making mental notes. Something was up with Becca, and in Renee’s opinion, the girl had always been odd, just a little out of step. Even twenty years ago, Rebecca Ryan had hung out with their crowd when she’d been a year younger, the only freshman allowed to run with the sophomores. There hadn’t been any rules, of course, just an unwritten code. Renee had thought it was because the goose had been hopelessly in love with Hudson and had manipulated her way into the group, a prediction that had panned out a year out of high school when Hudson had returned from college and Jessie Brentwood was long gone.

Becca and Hudson had hooked up, been joined at the hip for a while. Renee had seen them from her bedroom window, rolling around naked and groping, flashes of their lovemaking visible through the long, shifting branches of the willow tree.

It had been strange, even desperate, Renee had thought, because her brother, whether he admitted it or not, had never gotten over Jessie Brentwood.

Jessie. Renee glanced over her shoulder uncomfortably. She couldn’t help herself. The secrets she’d learned recently had made her realize she was onto a hell of a story, but she was also plagued by bad feelings that had no substance.

Now Renee wasn’t as sure as she’d once been that Jessie Brentwood had just run away. Maybe she had met with tragedy. Wasn’t that what the strange old lady at the coast had suggested? That Jessie had been marked for death, and that just following her trail marked Renee as well?

Renee had thought the woman was just another nutcase until the bones at St. Lizzie’s had suddenly surfaced. Now she wasn’t sure what was going on. And though it was weird to say, she wanted the help of her friends, those closest to Jessie, to keep her on track and resistant to these strange feelings of…well…fear. A part of her even wanted to give up the story entirely, which was ridiculous. She wasn’t going to let anything scare her off.

But…she was spooked. No question about it. And if she was “marked for death” by God, she was going to find out who and why and wherefore. And her friends were going to help her.

Renee was about to go after the missing trio herself when Hudson and Becca came in together. Figured. And then Mitch flew in behind them, smelling of cigarettes. She opened her mouth to continue but Tamara spoke first.

“Maybe we should go around the table, tell something we remember about Jessie,” Tamara suggested. Zeke groaned, but she ignored him. “Renee can write her piece and we can all put in a little something. Renee’s right. We’ve all been carrying this around way too long. I’m all about closure. Becca, you go first.”

Becca, taking her chair next to Jarrett, half choked. “I didn’t even know her that well.”

“Didn’t you?” Renee asked.

Evangeline cut her off. “I’ll start. Since you all think Jessie was supposed to be my best friend.”

“Your evil best friend,” The Third reminded her.

“Jessie had a lot of problems,” she said tartly.

The Third snorted. “Aside from the dark-side thing, what kind of problems?”

“Enough,” Zeke said, catching The Third’s eyes. “Let her talk.”

Evangeline linked her fingers more tightly through Zeke’s. “There were problems at home. Big problems that she wouldn’t really talk about, and she…she lived a weird fantasy life, too.”

“It wasn’t that weird,” Renee disagreed.

“She thought all the guys wanted to screw her, okay?” Evangeline’s gaze skated to each of the men at the table. “She was obsessed with it. Flirting and playing up to the guys, teasing them. You all know.”

“That was a long time ago,” Mitch said somewhat uncomfortably.

Evangeline glared at Mitch. “It was all a long time ago, but that’s why we’re here, isn’t it? Anyway, that’s what I remember about Jessie. You can make it all hearts and flowers and gee, poor Jessie if you want to, but the truth of the matter was, Jessie wasn’t very nice.”

Becca gazed thoughtfully at Vangie. She remembered a whisper of a rumor that Zeke had been fascinated with Jessie and had been seeing her behind his best friend Hudson’s back. Becca had dismissed the rumor then, as she did now, as the product of Evangeline’s own obsession with Zeke.

“What do you think, Walker?” The Third needled. “Your girlfriend want all of us?”

“Shut up,” Hudson said, irritated.

“She was Walker’s girl, we all know that.” Zeke was positive.

Tamara twisted one of her bracelets. “High school was so long ago. A lifetime, but I remember thinking that you, Hudson…” She looked into Hudson’s eyes. “You and Jessie were the perfect couple. I’d see you hanging out at the lockers, so into each other.”

“Well…no…we were high school kids, like you said. What did we know about anything?”

She flashed a bit of a smile, touched with nostalgia, and Becca realized that Tamara had gone through the pains of a high school crush on Hudson. Well, join the club. Half the girls in the class had admitted to a “thing” for him, and hadn’t he been voted the boy with whom most girls would want to be stranded on a deserted isle? The same had been true of Jessie. All the boys had wanted her, and she’d played right into it. Only Evangeline had been true to Zeke; the rest of the girls had been hot for Hudson. Renee knew it, too. She’d been at the top of the class academically and a lot of her friends were girls who’d wanted to be close to her, to Hudson’s twin, just so they could get close to him. Renee had been onto them, though, and had never really played along.

“You know what I remember?” Mitch said suddenly. “How Jessie was always saying those things. Those little quotes, or something. Remember? Always had a piece of a song, or something.”

“She always pointed out your faults, one way or another,” Evangeline agreed.

“Glad you weren’t my best friend,” Glenn muttered with a grimace.

“Yeah, what did she do to you?” Mitch asked.

Evangeline tossed her blond bob. “None of you really knew her, so don’t judge me. Jessie was popular. And she kind of liked to make me feel bad, just to make herself feel better. High school, you know…you get older and you realize how godawful it was.”

“They weren’t quotes. They were nursery rhymes,” Glenn said with a nod, as the tumblers clicked.

Mitch nodded eagerly. “That’s right! She was always kind of singing them. Singsonging. She said ’em to us guys. Her little joke or something. One of her favorites was about boys.”

“Oh, God…” Evangeline rolled her eyes.

“I forgot about that,” The Third said with a frown.

“Nursery rhymes?” Renee repeated, clearly skeptical. “I don’t remember that about her.”

“Me neither,” Becca said.

“It was all flirty Jessie bullshit, anyway.” Jarrett looked impatient. “That naughty boy stuff. We just said she came on to every guy at this table.”

Evangeline’s jaw set and her fingers clasped Zeke’s in a death grip.

Hudson exhaled and looked as if he’d rather be anywhere than in this room with his so-called friends. “The way I remember it, a lot of you guys came on to her. Perception. Hard to know who’s scamming who sometimes.”

“Oh, come on, Walker.” The Third was pissed, his face flushed, his eyes bright with challenge. “It had to be killing you, the way she acted. That the reason you had that fight? Because of us?”

“Yeah,” Hudson said with a cynical smile. “It’s all about you, Delacroix.”

“What the fuck was it about, then?”

Hudson grimaced. “I don’t know. She picked the fight with me. I told the cops—McNally—the same thing then. Jessie was edgy and distracted, and she wanted to fight. You all heard most of it. When we went to my place, it was more of the same.”

“She thought there was another girl in your life,” Tamara guessed.

“She was sixteen,” Hudson said. “She thought a lot of things.”

“Maybe there was someone else?” Evangeline suggested.

“McNally thought you might have killed her,” Scott reminded Hudson. He grabbed a bottle of red wine and Becca watched the liquid fill his glass, glinting bloodlike under the hanging lights. “Wasn’t his theory that you killed her after you found out she was sleeping with…someone else?”

“McNally was obsessed, grasping at straws, trying to make a homicide out of a missing persons case, trying to pin it on one of us,” Hudson said, sounding sick to the back teeth of the whole thing. “God knows. Maybe it was a homicide.”

“And you think one of us did it?” Scott gazed at him belligerently.

“No.”

“But he thought you
murdered
her?” Renee asked her brother. “Now that I really don’t remember.”

“It wasn’t ruled a homicide,” Becca interjected. “They had no body.”

“But McNally had a hard-on about it,” Glenn interjected. “Hell, that guy was a head case.”

“And they’ve got a body now. Whether it’s Jessie’s or not, we’re going back through it again…” The Third said on a sigh.

“Well, I don’t think that’s Jessie. I think she just ran away. She said she was unhappy,” Evangeline reminded them. “And that she had to leave.”

“She said she had to leave?” Becca asked.

“Yeah, like she knew something.” Vangie swept back blond strands from her face. “She was like that, y’know? Like Tamara said. She knew things. She had some kind of ESP or whatever you want to call it. But it was weird. Creepy. When she said she had to leave, I believed her.”

“What exactly did she say?” Renee asked.

“She said ‘I’ve got to get out of here before something bad happens,’ or something like that.”

“You never told us that,” The Third said with mild reproof. “When we were all being grilled.”

“Well, it was something like that,” Evangeline declared, flushing. “She and Hudson weren’t getting along. Maybe that was it.”

All eyes turned to Hudson and he agreed, “Jessie had things on her mind.”

“Like what?” Scott asked.

“I don’t know. There was definitely something driving her.”

Renee looked at her brother and Becca got the sense she was calculating something, like whether to reveal some kind of information or keep it to herself. In the end, she said, “I’ve got some leads to follow. I’m heading to the beach. Maybe we should meet up again in a couple of weeks…”

“Let’s wait on that for a while,” The Third said. He was about to say something more but hesitated as a waiter slid through the door and picked up some of the dirty dishes, then slipped out again. Then he said, “You know McNally’s going to be back, hounding us.”

“No way. He’s gotta be retired by now.” Scott shook his head. “It’ll be someone else.”

“Guys like him never retire. And he can’t be that old. But the point is: so what? He can’t do anything to us now. We just need to all keep cool. McNally, or somebody like him, is going to start asking questions again. Any inconsistency—any—will just make it worse. But, hey…here we are again.” He lifted his glass in a toast and everyone followed suit, albeit slowly, as no one knew where this was going. “We’re friends. We need to see more of each other and put this Jessie Brentwood thing to bed. There’s nothing to worry about.”

“So much for all of us saying something about Jessie,” Tamara said, disgusted.

That much was true. The meeting and Renee’s idea that they should all disclose something personal about Jessie was falling apart. Becca tasted some of the hors d’oeuvres and sipped at a glass of white wine while listening to several different conversations buzzing around her. Scott was bragging up Blue Ocean, his new restaurant at the beach, though, it seemed, Glenn wasn’t as excited about the venture as his partner. Glenn groused that the restaurant in Lincoln City was still a work in progress while Scott waved off his concerns, stating only that the menu had to be adjusted; it was too “sophisticated” for the beach crowd. Mitch complained that he was overworked and Jarrett, a commercial real estate salesman, wasn’t happy with the economy. Underneath all the idle chitchat there was something more, a restless uneasiness, and Becca knew it was Jessie—her memories, her ghost—haunting each of them.

The Third kept up his mantra that they should all keep seeing each other, though they all knew that it wouldn’t happen. Without a class reunion or a funeral, or the discovery of bones in the maze at St. Elizabeth’s, members of their high school clique wouldn’t search each other out.

Tamara worked at keeping up a conversation with a more and more taciturn Hudson. Becca felt Renee’s eyes on her once or twice and wondered if and when she would tell everyone about her brief affair with Hudson after high school. Maybe they already knew, though they sure didn’t act like it.

Zeke moved toward Hudson for some conversation as they all got up from the table, but Becca couldn’t overhear as Mitch engaged her while they walked toward the door.

“Kind of a weird way for all of us to finally get together again,” he said, holding open the door of the private room.

“I guess we’ll know more after the bones are tested.”

“How long have you been a widow?”

“Oh…a while…not that long…” She didn’t want to go into
that
right now. The last thing she wanted to think about was Ben.

“My divorce from Sherri was finalized two years ago.”

The Third and Jarrett caught up to them and Becca saw the amusement in their eyes at Mitch’s less than sophisticated attempts to get to know her. She was bugged at all of them—and herself, too.

She didn’t want to talk to any of them, well, except for Hudson, but she wasn’t going to linger around and try to catch his attention. If he’d wanted to see her in the past sixteen years, he damned well could have picked up the phone. Which he hadn’t. She made her way through the foyer and pushed her way outside where the air was heavy and moist, the parking lot dim, with even fewer cars than before. As she stepped off the curb, she sank a shoe into a mud puddle.

Perfect.

“Becca!” Renee’s voice caught up with her as she reached her Jetta. She glanced behind her where Renee had disengaged herself from the group and Hudson’s tall, unmistakable form was backlit by one of the large windows of the restaurant.

“I’d like to talk sometime,” Renee said, her briefcase swinging from one hand as she approached.

This was unusual. “About Jessie?” Using her remote, Becca unlocked the car.

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t really know her.” The vision seemed to shimmer in her brain, daring her to tell Renee about it, but Becca kept her mouth firmly shut.

“You knew her as well as most of us. Probably more than her parents did.”

Becca saw Evangeline sliding into the front seat of Zeke’s vintage Mustang. “Fine. You want to meet this weekend?”

“I’m going to the beach tomorrow, for a couple of days,” Renee said, glancing nervously back at the front of the building where Jarrett, The Third, and Mitch had gathered. The Third was already on his cell phone, Mitch was lighting up, and Jarrett looked across the lot, his gaze zeroing in on Becca and Renee. There was something in his intent look that brought goose bumps to her skin, a hardness that she hadn’t remembered from St. Elizabeth’s. “Listen,” Renee was saying, “I didn’t bring it up with all of them, but my husband Tim and I are having some problems…”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. And I’m lying. It’s not just problems. We’re separated, and I’ve been spending quite a bit of time at the coast. Alone. You know, trying to put things in perspective.” She looked away from the men gathered under the portico. “Maybe that’s why I started thinking about Jessie again. Unresolved issues. Anyway, I wanted to talk to you about some ideas I had.”

“Just me, or all of us?”

“Everyone, I guess. I just thought we could kick this off.”

There was something more going on that Becca didn’t understand, but it hardly mattered since she’d already agreed to meet with Renee.

“Why don’t I call you after the weekend?” Renee suggested. “Maybe we can get together. I’ve just got…some theories…kind of odd information…”

“Odd? How?”

Renee glanced back toward the group. Mitch, keys in hand, was walking toward an SUV parked not far from Becca’s Jetta. “I’ll call you,” Renee whispered, then hurried to a black Toyota as Mitch tossed his cigarette into the parking lot and climbed into his Tahoe.

Becca opened her car door and started to slide inside as Hudson, head bent against the rain, headed her way. Hesitating, warring with herself, Becca told herself to let it go. Whatever had happened between them, why he’d never called her again, didn’t matter. It was over. Ancient history.