Wicked Game (14 page)

What a two-bit rag. It kinda matched with her two-bit husband and her two-bit life. Well, it wasn’t good enough. None of it. Not now, not when she knew the brass ring was finally within her reach.

She’d always been looking for a story, no, make that
the
story that would propel her to the big time, and thanks to Jessie Brentwood, Renee was about to make that leap. No one was going to stop her. Not a whining husband who had lost most of her inheritance in the stock market, nor an editor who couldn’t see her talents.

And she wasn’t going to let strange mumbo-jumbo predictions and a feeling of persecution stop her, either. And what had she been thinking when, outside Blue Note, she asked Becca if they could get together sometime and talk things over? What had she expected from Hudson’s ex-girlfriend? Just because she kind of reminded Renee of Jessie—probably because of Hudson—didn’t mean she had any answers. Worse, Becca seemed to have her own problems dealing with Jessie’s disappearance.

She slowed to sixty because of the drizzle and the fact that she really couldn’t afford another speeding ticket. That was the trouble, Renee thought, the rest of the world was cruising along at fifty-five and she was revved up to ninety. Sometimes it seemed that she was dragging everyone through life with her and they were all limp, dead weight.

The rain poured down in earnest and she cranked up the speed of her squeaking wipers. They slapped away the drops and Renee wondered again about Becca. Hudson, it seemed, was taken with her all over again. Oh, yeah. Renee had witnessed it the other night at Blue Note. No big surprise that they were hooking up again, though Renee didn’t understand it.

Becca was pretty enough. Streaked hair, light brown with pale highlights, large hazel eyes that hovered between green and gray, and a smile that showed off teeth that weren’t quite straight, probably even a little sexy. Her cheekbones were prominent, her eyebrows arched, and she had one of those long Audrey Hepburn necks. She was definitely his type. He always went for the blondish, mysterious-looking chicks.

A flaw, in Renee’s opinion. But then her twin had many.

The needle of her speedometer hit seventy-five, her tires hydroplaning on the slick asphalt before she noticed and slowed again. It was as if she couldn’t get to the damned beach fast enough. She checked her rearview mirror, afraid she might have blown past a cop and sure enough, another car was bearing down on her, one with bright headlights.

Great.

She slowed, not by braking, but by taking her foot off the gas until she was going a lawful fifty-three miles an hour and the car behind her slowed. Probably to run her plates.

This was just getting better and better, as the Camry belonged to Tim. She steeled herself, practiced her smile and “Oh, dear me, Officer” routine, had her excuses all in a row, but no red and blue lights began to streak the night, no siren screamed at her to pull over. If anything, the vehicle behind her just hung back. Maybe he hadn’t clocked her and was waiting for her to speed up.

Screw that!

She pulled into the right-hand lane and sure enough, the guy following her did, too, tucking in behind a compact.

Not a cop, then.

Or at least not a cop interested in her.

No lights. No siren.

Maybe just her imagination, her sense of persecution. She plugged an old Springsteen CD in and watched as the compact swung off the highway at Hillsboro. Another few miles, past North Plains and Laurelton, and the car behind her just kept coming. She sped up, he sped up, she slowed, he slowed.

Goose bumps raised along the back of her arms and she told herself she was being paranoid. No one was following her. No one knew what she was up to. No one could. She hadn’t told a soul.

And yet, she was almost certain she was being followed. She glanced to her purse. Pulled her cell phone out of the zipper pocket. If she was going to call someone, it had to be now, before her service cut out as it did in several spots along this stretch of road.

Call who? Say what? That you suspect someone is following you? Why? Because you’re digging into the Jezebel Brentwood mystery?

She snorted in disgust and tossed her cell into her purse.

The headache was getting to her. The impending divorce was getting to her. All the talk about Jessie was getting to her. And that strange prediction from the old lady at Deception Bay—that was
really
getting to her. The thought that someone was out to do her harm was her constant and worrisome companion.

“It’s bunk,” she told herself as the CD played and the wipers slapped away the rain. “Bullshit. Nothing more.”

But she knew better.

Her teeth sank into her lip and she swallowed hard.

Payback?

Justice?

For what?

What have I done?

“Mother Mary, help me.” Renee sketched the sign of the cross over her chest, a movement she hadn’t practiced since her senior year at St. Elizabeth’s, but the comfort she once had found in murmuring a quick prayer now eluded her, reminding her only of the bones that had been found at the base of the statue of the Madonna.

She glanced in her mirror again and the trailing vehicle’s headlights seemed brighter than before, more intense.

“It’s no one,” she muttered under her breath as another obscure Springsteen song drifted through the speakers. Renee barely noticed. Her gaze was split between the rain-spattered windshield and the rearview mirror that burned bright headlights back into her eyes. “Bastard,” she muttered.

She’d lose whoever it was in the mountains. Didn’t want anyone knowing where she was going, that she had screwed up her courage and planned to visit the old hag of a fortune teller again. That she intended to learn more about her fate and what the woman knew, if anything, about Jessie.

For the love of God, she was starting to think like Tamara, and that was scary. Damned scary.

She glanced at the headlights in the mirror again and set her jaw. She wasn’t going to spend the next two hours worrying about him. Or her. If they were following her, they were in for a race.

Renee stepped on it.

Her Camry shot forward to the foothills of the Coast Range, where anyone, even a reporter for a half-rate newspaper, could disappear in the twisting canyons, inky tunnels, and rising mist.

Motive,
Mac thought with dark satisfaction.
Motive.

It was late. There was no one in this part of the building but the janitor, who was down the hall singing a medley of Elvis hits off-key and with replacement words when he forgot the lyrics, which was every third line. Mac listened to a butchered version of “Can’t Help Falling in Love” while he sifted through the evidence found buried near the Madonna statue.

He knew it all by memory, practically by Braille, he’d passed the pieces between his fingers so often, but he kept feeling he’d learn something new if he just kept at it.

…Wise men say, only fools rush in…but I keep keeping myself away from you…

“But I can’t help falling in love with you,” Mac muttered, his satisfaction still in place. Jessie Brentwood had been pregnant. Okay, correction: the remains in the grave revealed the victim had been pregnant, and Mac fervently believed those remains belonged to Jessie Brentwood. If all that was true, then Mac finally had a motive for Jessie’s disappearance and murder: one of the Preppy Pricks didn’t want to be a daddy.

That’s what had been hard to come up with at the time of the girl’s disappearance. Motive. Mac had sensed so much more than what those young bastards were telling him, but he had no proof…and no motive. An argument with her teen boyfriend—the Walker kid—hadn’t been enough. Now, thinking back, he wondered why he’d been so sure, why he’d always been, when the evidence had been so slim.

He’d just known something had happened. Known it in the marrow of his bones. Felt it. Lived it. But couldn’t prove it.

Maybe now…maybe…now…

And the case was his.

Finally.

The small pile in front of him contained bits of leaves, several cigarette butts, disintegrating candy wrappers, an indistinguishable piece of white plastic, and a small jackknife. The knife appeared to be the murder weapon, as there was a nick along one of the vic’s ribs, indicating she was stabbed at least once. They were not able to lift prints from the knife; it had been in the ground too long. The lab was working on DNA from the bone marrow, but unless they got a match from someone in their database, there was no way of identifying the remains by that method. If these bones were adoptee Jezebel Brentwood’s, that would mean they were looking for her biological parents, who could be anywhere, or a sibling or other relative, and that they would also have to be in the system. Mac had made contact with the Brentwoods, who had assured him they knew nothing about Jessie’s biological parents. They’d been less than thrilled to talk to him after his bullish investigative tactics years earlier, and so for now, he was leaving them alone.

But the baby’s bones—if they weren’t too degraded—now, that was another matter. If DNA could be extracted, or even a blood type discovered and one of those damned Preppy Pricks turned out to be the father…He smiled to himself. What was it they said? Something about revenge being best when served up cold. Hell, this case was twenty years cold. Damned well freezing. And yes, revenge was already tasting sweet.

Twenty fucking years of taking crap.

And now, he was about to be vindicated.

Eat that, Sandler
, he thought, still hearing his latest partner’s taunts. He couldn’t wait to prove to her that he’d been right all along.

But there was something else that bothered him.

Mac picked up the note from the technician that stated there was an anomaly with the bone structure of both the adult and infant’s skeletons. A bone burr. “Anomaly,” he muttered for about the hundredth time. He’d called the tech, who’d been rushed and hard to pin down.

“Her bottom rib is extra, more like a partial rib, and it’s fused to the one above it. I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” the tech with a slight Mideastern accent had told him.

“Well, that might help us identify her if there’s an X-ray somewhere…?” Mac said somewhat hurriedly, sensing the tech was about to hang up. “Is it from an injury?”

“The baby’s, too?” The tech practically sneered. “More like the bottom rib is an extra. A spare.”

“So it’s genetic.”

“You’re a genius, you know that?”

Mac ignored the jibe. “Don’t women have extra ribs anyway? One more on either side than men?”

“Yes,” the tech said with extreme patience. “Call this an extra extra rib, then, and it’s only on one side. Some kind of birth defect.”
Click!

Looking at the picture now, it was hard to tell. The dental impressions hadn’t helped, either, because Mac had learned from Jessie’s adoptive parents that Jessie was one of those lucky people who never had any problem with her teeth. The parents admitted they never took her to the dentist. Mac thought that could be considered child abuse, in some circles, but the lab techs said the victim’s teeth were “cavity-less.” Which, in a roundabout route, gave more weight to the fact that the remains could be Jessie’s.

There were no personal items left at the scene. No purse. No wallet. But then a lot of years had transpired in between, and this, too, was actually consistent with proving the bones belonged to Jessie. At the time of her disappearance, her parents said that she hadn’t taken her purse from the house, which she had every other time she’d run away. This had fueled Mac’s belief that she’d been harmed or killed, that she hadn’t left of her own volition.

Something had happened to Jezebel Brentwood, and he was even more certain now than ever that that something was murder.

“One of the Preppy Pricks stabbed her to death,” Mac said. “That’s what happened.”

…we’re caught in a trap…I can’t walk out…because I’m all about you maybe…

“Because I love you too much, baby. Jesus.” Mac scowled down the hallway. Was it too much to ask to get the words right?
Was it?

Maybe he should just go home. There was nothing further to come up with tonight. He was tired and losing patience. The only reason he was staying was because there was nothing at home. His ex-wife had custody of their only son, Levi, and though Mac got the kid most weekends, now that he was at the preteen stage, he’d started making some of his own plans and even the weekends were iffy. In some ways that was fine, as Mac’s hours could be pretty unpredictable. But lately it had just left him with empty time he couldn’t fill outside of work. And the niggling feeling that he wasn’t doing as much as he could as a dad, that Levi might be headed down a wrong path, though none of his attempts at father-son talks had gotten anywhere. It was as if the kid were stonewalling him. Not a good sign. He’d brought it up to his ex, and Connie’s exact words had been: “So what d’ya expect, Super-Dad? It’s not as if you’ve been such a constant influence on him.” When Mac had started to argue, she’d cut him off with, “And don’t, I mean do
not
give me any BS about your job and long hours. Other cops have time for their kids and wives.”

This weekend already looked bad. Levi was waffling and had already mumbled about a sleepover at Zeno’s—was that a made-up name? Mac had never heard of the kid. But Connie had.

Lucky for him, he had a whole list of interviewees coming up. The Preppy Pricks and their girls.

Gathering up his things, he heard…
come on let’s rock…everybody let’s rock…everybody in the whole cell block, was dancin’ to the jailhouse rock…

As he pushed through the door Mac tried to find fault with the lyrics, but they seemed all right. Maybe because the guy was cleaning out a police station, a jailhouse of his own. Maybe that was the key.

…Jimmy Jannie Jerry and the slide trombone, da da da da da da on the xylophone…

“Good God.” Mac headed into another rain-soaked night.

The day after she’d chased ghosts at St. Elizabeth’s and had a drink with Renee, Becca quit work in the early afternoon. She’d gotten a call from Elton Pfeiffer, one of the senior partners at the law firm and a very real reason Becca was glad to be working from home. Elton, in his late sixties, still considered himself a ladies’ man. Thrice divorced with a red Porsche, condo on the coast, and unlimited supply of Viagra if his secretary could be believed, he’d asked Becca out several times and even tried to kiss her once outside when she’d brought some papers into his office to sign.

It had been late, the glassed-in office on the twenty-second floor offering a panoramic view of the city lights and dark Willamette River rolling slowly under the Morrison Bridge when Pfeiffer, smelling of scotch, had come up behind her, wrapped his arms around her torso, and dragged her to him, his lips grazing the back of her neck. She’d promptly turned around, pushed hard, and threatened to knee him if he didn’t back off. He had, and rather than attempt to sue him for sexual harassment, Becca had turned in her resignation. It had just been so demeaning and damned predictable.

Pfeiffer, rebuffed, had offered to allow her to work from home and she’d leapt at the chance, telling herself it was temporary and a way to have a little freedom, create her own work schedule. The only time she’d been to the office in the past few weeks was to drop off the mermaid baby gift for her pregnant coworker.

Today, Elton Pfeiffer, all business, had needed a real estate contract for a strip mall retyped with some changes. “I’ve already e-mailed it. Check with Colleen,” she said, then hung up.

Though she’d never been great at picking men, Becca had known from the get-go that “El,” as he liked to be called, was a person to avoid. She’d never been looking for a father figure and didn’t want to start now. In some ways her job was perfect.

But apart from work, she felt stressed and tense, and thought about Hudson. Considered calling him.

Again.

Despite what she’d told Renee.

“Liar,” she muttered to herself. Ever since seeing Hudson a week earlier at Blue Note, she’d had trouble keeping her mind off him.

So why not call him? Why not take the initiative? Don’t be an insecure schoolgirl. You were friends once. Lovers. You nearly had a child together.

Becca picked up the receiver and put it down three times before, exasperated with herself, she dialed Hudson’s number with such speed, it was as if the touch-tone pads were on fire. She was putting way too much energy and emphasis on this one phone call. So she was calling him. So what? She wanted to see him. She was a widow. There was nothing wrong with it.

It rang six times before his answering machine picked up and then the sound of his recorded voice made her breath catch in her lungs. Which was just damned stupid! As soon as the recorder buzzed, she said, “Hi, Hudson. It’s Becca Sutcliff. I was thinking…(
about you
)…about things…and I feel a bit unsettled, I guess…about the bones found at St. Elizabeth’s. I keep thinking…(
about you
)…about Jessie. If you have some time, maybe we could get together and talk? My number is…” She rattled it off quickly, almost breathlessly, then replaced the receiver with a hammering heart. Then she literally banged her forehead against the kitchen wall several times, feeling like an idiot.

“This can’t be healthy,” she muttered to Ringo, who cocked his head with interest.

Becca changed into her running shoes and threw on a lightweight jacket, then grabbed Ringo’s leash and bustled him outside, running her words through her mind again and again as she started jogging. Ringo wanted to stop and sniff every twig, leaf, and blade of grass, but Becca was having none of it. After stopping to allow him to relieve himself, she took off toward the park, the dog at her heels, running hard. Her feet slapped the pavement, water in standing puddles splashed, but she kept at it, feeling her heart begin to pump faster as she passed an apartment building and a few cottages on large lots, original houses built in the twenties or thirties that hadn’t yet fallen to the subdivider’s axe. She thought about the fact that she’d felt someone watching her, in her apartment, from the bushes, at the maze, someone evil, but she set her jaw. She wouldn’t be controlled by fear. Would
not
.

Ringo, sometimes nervous, wasn’t on edge. He was enjoying the exercise as much as she.

The air was cool, the afternoon clouds high and wispy as she rounded the far end of the park and cut through a copse of oaks, nearly running into a kid on a scooter. He swore at her with invectives she’d heard a million times before and she barely broke stride. Up the short hill and down the other side, across a footbridge spanning the creek, then back toward the condo. By now she could feel her muscles working, her rhythm established, the dog running effortlessly with her.

All in all, she ran nearly three miles, and by the time she walked through the front door, her face was flushed and sweat had broken out on her scalp and down her back despite the cool weather.

The first thing she did was check her messages. Zero.

What did you expect? That he’d hear your voice and hit his speed dial to connect with you? Idiot.

Muttering to herself, she showered, then, at a loss, headed for her computer again. She was glad to find that Colleen at Bennett, Bretherton, and Pfeiffer had sent another pile of paperwork. Good. She wanted to lose herself in busywork
forever.

It was early evening before she lifted her head and wondered when the last time she’d deigned to eat was. Climbing from her chair, she stretched her back, heard it make a disturbing pop, and tried to ignore the words that ran in a circle inside her head:
he hasn’t called…he hasn’t called…he hasn’t called…

When the phone rang, Becca jumped as if someone had goosed her. She snatched up her desk phone and said, “Hello?”

“Hey, Becca, it’s Tamara,” her friend greeted her cheerily.

Becca’s heart sank.

“Are you busy? I’m going to grab some dinner and wanted to know if you could join.”

“Sure,” Becca said, hoping she sounded more enthusiastic than she felt. She hadn’t forgotten the last time she’d seen Tamara climbing into Hudson’s truck.
Big deal. So what? It’s nothing.
She might as well get out of the house. Waiting for a phone to ring was too much like being thirteen all over again.