Lisa Jackson - Wicked Game

“At the coast?” Mac reiterated, thinking of the oyster shell, the fact that Jessie Brentwood had been hitchhiking along the road leading from the coast soon before she disappeared.

“Yeah, Lincoln City.”

Quite a bit south from where the Brentwoods had once owned a cabin.

Pascal said, “It’s been a problem getting it going, sure, but it’s a great location, and we lucked out with this chef who doesn’t know how damn good he is, which is absolutely unheard of. Glenn, damn him…” He swallowed hard. “He never really knew what we had. He just used it as a place to escape from his wife.” He barked out a bitter laugh. “Guess he finally achieved his goal.”

“Their marriage in trouble?”

“Everything was trouble for Glenn.”

“Yeah.”

Pascal ran his hands through what was left of his hair and sighed. “Man, he was a pain in the ass.”

Mac smiled faintly. This was as honest as Scott Pascal had ever been with him. All the barriers were down. He almost hated to send them flying upward again, but that was his job.

But Pascal beat him to the punch. Throwing a look at Mac, he said, “You probably think this has something to do with Jessie. That’s kind of your M.O. Everything that involves my friends has to do with Jessie.”

Mac lifted his palms.

“Go ahead. Ask me all kinds of questions about Jessie. Here I am…I’ve damn near lost everything…maybe the insurance company’ll pull me through, but Glenn’s gone and God knows what’s next…but you…You want to know about Jessie. So ask, Detective McNally. Ask away.”

“I don’t really see how this fire, and Stafford’s apparent death, have anything to do with Jessie,” Mac admitted.

“Well, he got a note from her.”

“Glenn got a note from Jessie?” Mac’s pulse leapt but he frowned at Pascal, not wanting to give too much away. “When?”

“Don’t know, a couple of days ago, I guess. It was that nursery rhyme Jessie used to say.” Scott singsonged the message to Mac in a high, girlish voice that sent icy fingers sliding down his spine. That was the second imaginative thought he’d had this evening and he wondered if he was losing it, just a little.

“Where is this note?”

“Maybe his office. Maybe it’s burned up with him.”

“Don’t suppose it had a return address on it? Postmark?”

“Portland. I caught a glimpse of it. The zip code was somewhere near Sellwood-yeah, I checked.”

This was making no sense whatsoever and Sellwood was across the Willamette River, in southeast Portland.

“Why did Glenn get it?”

“You tell me. He always kind of lusted after Jessie, but he was kinda like that anyway. His tongue hanging out over every pretty girl. It never changed over the years. Jessie had nothing to do with him, though. She wanted Hudson. She’d use a guy to get to Hudson, but that was all it was.”

“You’re talking from experience?”

Scott sighed and looked toward the sky. The rain had ceased completely but the wind was picking up, shaking water from the soot-laden leaves of a nearby tree. “She liked the dark, mysterious ones.”

“Like Jarrett Erikson or maybe Zeke St. John?”

“Zeke was Hudson’s best friend,” he said, as if the thought had just come to him again. “That might have appealed to her. Jessie was”-he looked away, as if searching for the right word-“a little twisted, I guess.”

“Why Glenn, then?” Mac repeated. And how would a dead girl send a note? He was damned near certain Jessie had been dead for twenty years, and no way could she have sent anyone a note.

“She was a tease. It’s what she did.”

“Who else did she sing the rhyme to?”

“Every one of us.” He got to his feet and dusted off the seat of his pants, which were wet and looked cold. As if reading his mind, Pascal shuddered and turned away, toward his vehicle.

“You know, the body we found. We’re pretty sure it’s Jessie Brentwood, so unless she’s a ghost with her own stationery, I don’t think she’s sending anyone any mail, not from Sellwood or anywhere else.”

“I’m just saying Glenn got a note, anonymously, okay? And inside were Jessie’s words.” His gaze was steady. “Maybe someone played a sick prank on him.”

“Someone who knew about the nursery rhyme.”

“We all knew.”

“You think anyone else got notes?” Mac asked, wondering if the jerk was bullshitting him. It wouldn’t be the first time.

“Ask ’em,” Scott said, then jogged away through the trees to a parking lot in a strip mall. Once there, he climbed into a dark gray truck and drove off.

“I will,” he said to himself. “I’ll ask every damned one of you.”

“Let’s start over,” Hudson said to Becca. “You saw an image of this note burning and you think it was sent to Glenn.” He was still holding the damning piece of paper in his fist and he was confused as all get-out. So far, it had been one helluva night. First the fire, then Glenn’s death, and now Becca’s visions or whatever you want to call them about a note he’d received just today.

“No, Hudson,” she said, her voice taking on an edge. “I don’t think it. I know it.”

“Fine. Then there were two of them.”

“At least.”

“Yeah, at least.” He wanted to know what this meant. Needed to know.

She’d examined the message and then placed it on her coffee table, shrinking away from it as if it were poisonous. He felt a little repelled himself. Who had sent the note? Jessie? He couldn’t believe that. Wouldn’t.

“Why?” he asked.

She shook her head and walked into the kitchen.

He followed her as she heated some water for decaf herbal tea or something equally innocuous in her microwave. Her dog had decided Hudson wasn’t worth the fuss and had settled into a round little bed in the living room. Ringo was now snoring softly.

“There has to be a reason I got one and…Glenn got one.”

“Maybe Jessie wants some of us to know she’s alive,” Becca said.

“You don’t believe that any more than I do.”

“I know, but-” The microwave dinged and she retrieved her cup, then dunked the bag of aromatic non-tea into it. “There has to be a reason. This isn’t just happening all of a sudden, after twenty years. Everything has to hinge on Jessie and those bones at St. Elizabeth’s.”

“So, why me? Why Glenn?”

“Maybe there are more,” she said and stared at him.

He felt it, too. That they were being manipulated. “Someone’s got a sick sense of humor.”

She tossed her tea bag into the trash. “Who?”

He thought of everyone connected even vaguely to Jessie and couldn’t think of a soul. “And why? I’m just not buying that someone’s getting his rocks off by trying to freak us out.”

“Maybe we should go to the police,” she said, testing the hot brew in her cup.

“And tell them what? I got a note and you ‘saw’ one that was meant for Glenn? If the police get involved, they’re not going to accept that you just ‘saw it.’”

“They’ll think I wrote the note,” Becca concluded. She walked back to the couch and sank into the cushions.

Hudson shook his head. “I don’t know what they’ll conclude, but calling McNally now might create more problems than it’s worth. Becca…” He trailed off, sounding uncomfortable.

She glanced up at him.

“Could you have seen that note to Glenn? Somehow. And then just recalled it?”

There it was. His disbelief. She felt a flicker of anger and frustration even though she knew he would feel this way. What did he know of her really? How could he just go on trust? “No.”

“Then you need to make up a story before we go to the police, if we decide to go to the police. Say you saw it on his desk or something.”