Wicked Game (35 page)

“So you wanna watch a movie? There’s a
Star Wars
marathon running all night,” Mac said to his son. Levi sat on the edge of a plaid couch, his bare feet propped on the edge of a metal and glass coffee table, his head bent over a handheld computer game. “We missed the first one, but the second comes on in twenty minutes.”

“Okay.” Levi’s lack of enthusiasm was palpable.

“I picked up some microwave popcorn and red licorice.”

Levi winced, but it was from missing something on his game system. He hadn’t heard a word Mac uttered. The kid was placating him. They were stuck together in a small cabin in a coastal town in the middle of nowhere, and Sam McNally realized for the first time how little he knew his son.

“I’ll put in a pizza.”

“Yeah.” Levi stopped and for once Mac thought he’d caught the kid’s attention until his boy picked up his cell phone, read the display, and began texting like crazy. Mac hadn’t even heard the damned thing ring.

“Someone callin’ ya?” Mac turned on the oven, preheating the ancient thing.

“No.”

“But you saw a message.”

“I texted Seth. No big deal.” The phone either vibrated or made some inaudible noise and Levi snapped his head into the direction of the tiny screen. Once again his fingers flew over the keypad.

“Seth must’ve had something pretty important to say.”

“It wasn’t Seth. Someone else.”

“You can do two at once?” he asked and smelled old crud burning off the inside of the oven. This fleabag was the first place he’d tried when he called for a place to stay, and now he was second-guessing himself. He’d known as soon as he’d driven up and seen the rates for daily, weekly, or monthly that the units wouldn’t be five-star. But he’d thought a fireplace and a cabin feel would be roomier and a little more relaxing than a sterile motel room with two matching beds, TV in an armoire, coffeepot, and maid service rapping on the door in the morning.

Now, looking at the sagging, scratched furniture and ancient paneling, he wasn’t so sure. Even the plumbing at the Coastal Cove Cabins seemed suspect.

“It’s easy to text a bunch of people,” Levi told him disparagingly.

“If you say so.” Mac slid the frozen meaty pizza out of the box. Hell, he could count the pieces of pepperoni and sausage on the thing on the fingers of one hand. He figured it didn’t much matter. The oven reached the temperature and he placed the pie inside.

Levi had abandoned his game completely and now was texting faster than the best typist in the department.

“How many people are you talking to?”

“I dunno. Why? Oh. Don’t worry, I’ve got unlimited texting. It’s not costing you…er, Mom or Tom anything.”

“Tom? Who’s Tom?” he asked before he realized what he was saying.

“Mom’s latest.” For the first time Levi met his gaze.

“You don’t like him.”

A shrug. “He’s okay.”

“And he’s paying your cell phone bill?” This was news to Mac, but then Connie only told him what she wanted to, when she wanted to.

“He added me to his plan. It doesn’t cost much.”

“But—”

“Mom’s on it, too. Tom’s moving in.”

“How do you feel about that?”

Levi’s phone zinged again and he looked away. “It’s all right.” He began texting again and Mac sensed the conversation was over. He’d known Connie was “involved” with someone, but he’d never heard his name and figured it would pass. In the years since they were separated and divorced, she’d dated a number of men. One guy, Laddie, had moved in with her twice, and twice she’d kicked the bum out. Now, it seemed, she was onto a new one.

Mac didn’t begrudge her the new men in her life. He just hated that Levi had to be dragged along for the ride.

“You could move in with me,” he suggested and Levi’s head bobbed up as if it had been pulled by an invisible string.

“You’re serious.”

“Thinking about retiring.”

Levi’s eyebrows drew together. “You sure?”

“Yeah, why not?”

“I don’t know…” He shook his head. “Mom wouldn’t like it.”

“We’d work something out.”

“I don’t think so. Mom, she says she and Tom are gonna move in together and get married. He’s got a couple of daughters. They’ll need a place to stay, so the den, that’ll be their room when they come.”

“How old are they?”

“Dunno.” He thought. Scratched at his chin and Mac saw the first evidence of a beard, a few stray hairs on his chin.

At twelve? The kid was growing up. Fast.

“I guess they’re five and eight maybe. Little kids.”

“How do you feel about that?”

Levi was about to equivocate, to lie, and say it was “all right” or “not too bad.” Instead, he scowled and yanked off his stocking cap. “It sucks. Big time.”

“Then we should talk about you moving in with me.” He hesitated, then said, “Mom and I already talked about it.”

“You did?” The first he’d heard anything like this.

“Mom told me to give it a chance, that Tom would make things…better. We would eventually get a bigger house, and, you know, I could go to a better school. Get ready for college.” He forced a smile he didn’t feel and in a falsetto mocked his mother’s voice. “We’ll be this one big happy family and everything will be just perfect.”

“That what you want?” Mac asked, surprised that his kid was opening up. Connie hadn’t said a word about the new guy, just that she was seeing someone and that Levi had a girlfriend. Mac couldn’t remember the girl’s name, but he’d bet his badge she was texting Levi up one side and down the other.

“I just want everyone to leave me alone,” he muttered and picked up his phone again.

It ain’t gonna happen
, Mac thought, then waited as the pizza finished baking. When the timer dinged Mac found an old towel to drag the bubbling, half-burnt thin crust from the oven. He cut the pizza into pieces and Levi ate with him, only to slip into game mode again. Rather than bug the kid, he turned his attention back to the case. He was going to check in with the sheriff’s department in the morning, see what, if anything, had developed on Renee’s accident, then do a little reconnaissance around the cabin the Brentwoods had owned.

Afterward, weather permitting, he’d take Levi crabbing on the bay and talk some more.

He might just learn something about his own damned kid.

“Hey, Sleeping Beauty.”

Becca opened a groggy eye. She’d slept like a rock after making love to Hudson, and sometime during that time, the storm had passed. Struggling to sit up, she found him at the foot of the bed dressed only in jeans, his hair dark from a shower, his torso as bare as his feet.

“Weather’s better,” she observed as sunlight streamed through the now unshuttered window.

“Don’t count on it lasting. Supposed to get colder again. Maybe snow in the passes.”

Becca groaned. “What time is it?”

“Nearly ten.”

“Really?” She couldn’t remember when she’d slept so late. She blinked and stretched as Hudson walked to the coffeepot and poured some into a cup.

“Here, this is all that’s left, but there’s breakfast until eleven, so…”

“I’m up!” She rolled out of bed and padded to the bathroom where she got a glimpse of herself and cringed. Her hair was a tangle, her face still heavy with sleep, her makeup long gone. What had Hudson called her? Sleeping Beauty? A bad joke at best.

She showered, slicked her hair into a ponytail, applied minimal lipstick and mascara, then pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. Hudson had already walked Ringo, so they, along with one other couple who looked to be in their seventies, ate a breakfast of a spinach quiche, fruit cup, and cinnamon rolls that, the owner of the establishment confided, were baked at the local bakery.

“You own this place long?” Hudson asked as the tall, lanky man brought them a new pot of coffee.

“Nearly twenty-five years. Will be this September. My wife and I decided to give up the rat race and move here from Chicago. This old house was for sale and we converted it to a B and B. We’ve never looked back.”

At the next table, the woman waved her hand. “Is there any more orange juice?” she asked, and the owner/waiter hurried off to the kitchen. Becca looked out the window toward the ocean, now calm, beams of sunlight bouncing off the restless gray water.

The beach far below was littered with debris, driftwood, seaweed, the shells of dead clams and crabs. Seagulls wheeled and cawed above the small strip of sand. Waves came and went, lapping the shore and leaving bits of thick foam as they receded.

They finished their meal and then Hudson opened a thick sliding door and he and Becca stepped onto a deck that ran the length of the building. Despite the sun, the air was crisp and cold, and though there was no wind, the surf continued to echo against the cliffs. To the south was the bay, a few brave fishing vessels having already slipped over the bar and into the sea, and to the north was a curving peninsula of rocks and trees, a narrow cape stretching clawlike into the ocean. A few black rocks, islands unto themselves, protected the cape’s shoreline. Farther out, atop a rocky mound, was a lighthouse, a tall spire rising into the heavens. Farther still, an island sat on the horizon, mist shrouded and about a half mile out.

Becca stared at the lighthouse and shivered against a sudden rush of cold air. She turned back inside.

They checked out of the bed and breakfast, packed up the car, then walked into town. It was nearly noon, a few people on the streets. Hudson had the address and knew where the key to the cabin where Renee had stayed was located. The yard was overgrown, the carport sagging a bit, but inside the cottage was cozy, though it seemed to Becca as if she’d stepped back in time at least twenty years. The futon had to have been built in the seventies, and the television was similar to one her parents had bought while she was in grade school.

She noticed the desk, imagined Renee working here, her near-black hair shiny under the tension lamp.

Unexpectedly, her throat thickened and tears burned the back of her eyes. She couldn’t believe Renee was gone. Gone forever. She thought of Hudson’s twin and wondered what Renee might have been doing.

“Feels odd,” he said, his mood matching hers as he walked through the few rooms, his footsteps creaking on the old floorboards.

“Yeah.” Becca noted the faded pictures on a wall of a family decked out in yellow windbreakers while standing on the deck of a fishing vessel, the open sea swelling behind them.

“Okay, I think I’ve seen enough,” Hudson said and they locked up the cabin and walked into the center of town, where, unlikely as it was, Becca felt that same chill deep in her soul, the one that had been with her since driving into the town. A few pedestrians littered the streets, a man walking his dog, a woman jogging behind a stroller, skateboarders weaving along the sidewalk, the hoods of their sweatshirts nearly hiding their faces as they flew past.

The Sands of Thyme bakery was filled with customers, a line for cinnamon bread that had just come out of the oven, the shop filled with the warm scents of spices. The pizza parlor had a sign that said it was closed for the winter and a kite shop, too, was locked up tight.

They bought coffee and walked along the waterfront where beachcombers searched the strand for treasures washed up by the storm.

On their way back to the car, while Hudson tied Ringo to a post outside, Becca wandered through the open door of a shop that smelled of soap and candles, where antique dressers, tables, and armoires displayed smaller items. Everything, including the hanging lights, had price tags attached.

The clerk, a prim woman in her sixties with straight white chin-length hair and a wary expression, sat on a stool near an antique cash register, a half-finished knitting project on a ledge near the window where a calico cat sat, tail curved under its body, as it basked in the sunlight streaming through the windowpanes.

There was one other customer in the shop, a stooped woman with iron-gray hair and gnarled hands who was interested in a case of antique buttons.

Her knitting forgotten, the tight-lipped clerk eyed the woman like a hawk, as if she suspected her of pocketing some of the merchandise.

The old woman was oblivious. “Aren’t they pretty?” she said, looking up at Becca with flat eyes. She was fingering a mother-of-pearl button that glittered under the overhead lights.

Becca eyed the luminescent button. “Yes. Very.”

“But only one…I need two.”

“Can I help you with something, Madeline?” The clerk, obviously displeased, let out a put-upon sigh as she reluctantly slid off her stool, its legs scratching against the wood floor. The cat, disturbed, leapt onto a highboy from where it peered down imperiously.

Madeline? Becca stared at the old woman, who stared back. “You look like one of them,” the old woman whispered.

“Madeline,” the clerk reproved.

“One of who?” Hudson was just stepping through the front door.

Madeline’s head snapped up and she viewed Hudson with a furtive glare as he wove his way between the displays to stand next to Becca.

“Siren Song,” she whispered.

“Are you Madame Madeline?” Becca asked.

“Maddie!” The clerk was heading their way.

Instead of answering, Madeline placed her twisted fingers on Becca’s abdomen, then shrank away, quickly sketching a sign of the cross over her chest, then shuffling to the door.

“Did she take that button? Damn it!” The clerk stamped a small booted foot. “She always does that!” She started for the door, but Madeline was gone, through the door and hurrying off. “I should call the police, but for the most part she’s harmless.”

Becca was unnerved that she’d touched her abdomen. “Who is she?”

“Oh, yeah, she calls herself Madame Madeline. She pretends to be a psychic. She’s a town fixture, lived here all her life.”

“And what did she mean by Siren Song?” Hudson asked.

“It’s a tract of land run by…well, some locals. They mostly keep to themselves. The property is valuable, it stretches from the mountains on the east side of 101 and across the highway to the ocean. They’re this clannish group, like a colony, some even say cultish. Different, you know. All related.”