Wicked Game

Chapter Seven

“Detective…”

Mac, who’d had a telephone pressed to his ear waiting for the county prosecutor to answer, looked up to see Lieutenant Aubrey D’Annibal give him the high sign from his office, a glass-walled cubicle at the end of the squad room. Dropping the phone, Mac headed into the lieutenant’s office without a word, and D’Annibal closed the door behind him.

D’Annibal had smooth, silvery white hair, piercing blue eyes, and a love for Armani suits that was paid for by his wealthy wife’s substantial trust fund. He was also damn good at his job, and he expected excellence from all members of his staff. Mac watched as he hooked a leg over the corner of his desk and folded his hands together.

Lecture time. Not a good sign.

“Just got off the phone from the lab,” he said with only a trace of his West Texas drawl audible. “They’re sending PDFs on a couple of pictures of those bones you’re so interested in.”

“Yeah?” At long last. It had been nearly a week since the body had been located, but the lab had been “backed up.” Which was nothing new. In the meantime, Mac had been forcing himself to be patient.

D’Annibal rubbed his jaw slowly, a gesture that meant he was deliberating on how to deliver his next news. Mac braced himself, and after a moment, the lieutenant said, “You know, I wasn’t here when that girl disappeared. I hadn’t moved to the great state of Oregon from Texas yet. I was making my way through the ranks, proving myself, following the path, keeping my aim in sight. Meanwhile, you were out here stirring up a heap of trouble for yourself. Claiming murder without a body. Accusing the students at a private school, some of whom were quite well heeled and whose families were well respected, of killing a young girl-a runaway. From what I understand, you were a regular town crier about it all. That about right?”

“There’s some truth in there,” Mac admitted, though he could feel how rigid the cords in his neck had become.

“You really tore up the turf. Lots of people didn’t like your ways. High-handed. Bullish. Misconceived. Obsessive. Lots of words were bandied about. None of them too complimentary.”

Mac nodded, wondering how long this was going to take. He, above anyone else, remembered what had come down. And yes, he’d been too gung-ho, too convinced on too little evidence, he thought now, in this glassed-in office that suddenly felt stuffy. “Has the lab nailed down the girl’s age from the bones?”

“Give me a moment,” D’Annibal said. “I’ve got to get some things straight. I’ve got to hear a few things from you.”

Mac held back his frustration as best he could but was having a helluva time with it. Mentally counting to ten, he asked, “What do you want to hear?”

“I want to hear that you won’t go off half-cocked. I want to hear that you won’t act like you want to pistol-whip innocent people. I want to hear that you’ll conduct a proper investigation.”

“I’ve never pistol-whipped anyone, sir.” Mac was having difficulty reining in his temper.

“Only with accusations,” his boss agreed.

“Oh, hell, what do you want me to say?”

“That if I turn this investigation over to you, Detective, you’ll treat it, and everyone you interview, with respect. I don’t want some indignant ass-wipe whining to me about police brutality. And I know”-he lifted a palm against Mac’s protests-“that you aren’t physical. But you’re a badger, and I don’t want you badgering.”

Mac’s pulse began a slow pounding and he was vaguely aware of a phone ringing on the other side of the closed door. “You’re giving me the investigation?”

The lieutenant hesitated and Mac waited. He couldn’t believe it. Could-not-believe-it. After all the sideways looks, hidden sneers, and snickering, the case was coming back his way. Maybe they didn’t believe the remains were Jessie’s, but Mac felt it in his marrow.

“It’s yours if you want it.” He didn’t wait for a response. “I think we both know your answer.”

Jesus! About time. “Is that all?” Mac asked, anxious to get to work. Anxious to pick up where he’d been forced to leave off, so many years ago.

“Not quite. I’ve been reminding you about all this for a reason. There was some…resistance to putting you on the case again, and information was deliberately withheld until a decision was made.”

It wasn’t like D’Annibal to tiptoe, but then Mac could imagine what kind of meetings went on behind closed doors concerning putting him in charge of this case. He decided to push the issue a bit.

“How old was the deceased when she died? Do we know that yet?” he asked.

“About sixteen.”

“Those remains are Jezebel Brentwood’s,” Mac said. I’ll eat a kangaroo if they’re not.

“No corroborating evidence.” But D’Annibal didn’t sound like he disagreed. This was the first time the lieutenant had acknowledged that Mac might be right. Since he’d come to the Laurelton PD, like everyone else in the department, D’Annibal had been interested first in keeping Mac’s hopes in line, second in entertaining the myth that sixteen-year-old Jezebel Brentwood had simply run away. But these remains had revealed another, more obvious answer-the same one Mac had expounded for years: Jessie Brentwood had been killed.

“How long have those bones been in the ground?” Mac asked.

“More than ten years, probably closer to twenty.”

“Then they’re Jessie’s until I hear differently,” Mac told him flatly.

“All you have to do is prove it.”

“Piece of cake.” He expected another lecture about running on assumptions rather than facts, but the lieutenant surprised him by keeping his own counsel. But D’Annibal had more to say, apparently, because his chin rubbing had turned into a vigorous buff and polish.

“There’s something else…” More rubbing. Mac wondered if the man was going to wear off his top epidermal layer. He waited, watching D’Annibal go through his own mental decision-making, weighing the pros and cons of telling Mac whatever piece of news this was. Must be a doozy, Mac decided, just as the lieutenant drew a deep breath and said, “Nobody wanted to tell you as you were so convinced this was your old case, so we kept it under wraps till we could determine if these bones really belonged to the missing Brentwood girl. We still don’t know, but with the dates and the location of the remains…well…”

“You think my obsession might have some credence now,” Mac hurried him along. Enough with the disclaimers. “What is it?”

“There was a second, smaller skeleton mixed with the bones of the first.”

“Smaller…” Mac grew sober. “A baby?”

The lieutenant nodded. “She was pregnant when she was killed. If it’s your girl, Jessie, she probably knew. ME says she was about four months along.”

Becca didn’t sleep for nearly a week.

Her dreams were peppered with visions of Jessie and Hudson and some dark shape that loomed above them all.

“Nuts,” she told her dog one afternoon. “That’s what’s happening, you know. I’m going damned nuts.” It was after five by the time she finished working on new contracts for the law firm, making the changes where indicated and sending them via e-mail to the administrator at Bennett, Bretherton, and Pfeiffer, checking her e-mail one last time before glancing outside where a few slanting rays of sunshine were actually permeating the clouds. “A good sign,” she said to Ringo as she made her way to the kitchen and checked his water bowl.

She punched Renee’s number into her cell phone and listened to the series of rings, then Renee’s voice saying to leave a number and she’d get back to her. “Renee, hi, it’s Becca. You said you were going to call me, after you got back from your weekend at the beach? Since I haven’t heard from you, I thought maybe I should call you instead. Anyway, give me a call when you can. Bye.”

She clicked off and tossed her phone onto the table. “Dumb message,” she said to Ringo. “I sound like I’m desperate for friendship. And now I’m explaining myself to you. I really have to get a life.”

It wasn’t like she really wanted to connect with Renee, especially as she was Hudson’s sister, but Becca didn’t like this sense of being in limbo, either.

She clipped Ringo’s leash onto his collar and took him outside for a walk. For once the rain and wind were on hold and the pavement was dry. They walked to the park, only a few blocks away. The oak and maple trees were still bare, only a few other pedestrians on the cement pathways intersecting the thick grass and shrubs. A bicycle passed by, the rider balancing a cup of coffee from the local Starbucks, wires running from his ears to the iPod located in his jacket pocket. Ringo took care of business, tangled leashes with two pugs being walked by a teenaged girl, then barked at squirrels who had the audacity to run in front of him.

But they didn’t encounter any dark figures in trench coats, no looming, indistinct embodiments of evil as they returned to the condo.

It was dark and threatening rain again by the time Becca unlocked the door to the condo and stepped inside. Ringo danced wildly to be fed while Becca checked all her doors, windows, and locks before measuring out a half cup of dog food. Then she double-checked the front door and slider to her small patio area. She was not only desperate, she was becoming obsessive/compulsive, she thought. Ever since the discovery of the bones, and the meeting with the old gang, and seeing Hudson again, then later feeling spooked at St. Elizabeth’s, she seemed trapped in this loop that kept circling back to high school and whatever had happened to Jessie Brentwood.

Her cell phone buzzed on the table, moving itself across the hard surface. Becca snatched it up and saw that it was Renee’s number. “Hello?”

“Oh, hey, Becca. I got your message. I’ve just been so busy since I got back from the beach. Swamped at work and…well, dealing with some personal stuff. Sorry I didn’t call.”

“Not a problem. You just gave me the feeling there was something you wanted to talk about.”

“Yeah…” Renee hesitated and Becca sensed she was in a serious debate with herself. She braced herself for something about Hudson, but when Renee let the silence grow to an uncomfortable level, Becca finally had to speak first, “I went to St. Elizabeth’s, to the maze the other night.”

“Really?” Renee sounded flabbergasted. “Why?”

“Good question. I can’t really explain it.” So why try? And why to Renee?

“So…was it still taped off?”

Becca nodded, flipped on the switch to the fireplace. Within seconds flames began licking the ceramic logs. “Yeah, I went around the tape. There was no one there, not at the maze or anywhere near the old school. It was almost dark. Well, it was dark by the time I got there.”

“You wanted to see the…grave?” Renee asked.

“I guess I went up there to check things out, see for myself…maybe even to, I don’t know, commune with Jessie.” The minute the words were out, she regretted them.

“And did you? Commune with her?” There was less sarcasm in Renee’s tone than she expected.

Becca thought of the malevolent presence she’d encountered and seen. Had it been real? Or a product of her visions? “I don’t know.”

“You want to meet for coffee?” Renee asked suddenly. “Or a glass of wine? I’d really like to talk to you, in person, and I’m heading back to the beach this evening.”

Becca considered. “I could meet you.”

“Say in about an hour? At Java Man?”

“I’ll be there.”

Java Man was a coffee shop-cum-wine bar not far from Blue Note. Becca changed into jeans, boots, and a heavy jacket with a hood and was on her way to the meeting spot within the half hour. She beat Renee by a good fifteen minutes, checking in her rearview mirror often, just in case.

Just in case, what? Some unknown demon predator is stalking you? Some evil person or beast, the presence you felt in the maze? Get real, Rebecca. Pull yourself together. Just because you had a damned vision…

“Stop it,” she warned herself aloud. She could not fall apart; not now. Not when she was meeting Hudson’s sister, a woman she wasn’t even sure she liked. Snapping on the radio, she listened to songs from the eighties, which was a bad idea. High school. Jessie. Hudson. Old emotions came flooding back in a rush. Angrily, she switched to NPR and some talk radio about the environment.

Safe.

Becca ordered a glass of merlot and a small plate of fruit, cheese, and crackers, then seated herself at a table with a view of the hand-painted dishware, candles, and assorted knickknacks. She wasn’t a person who collected things. Her place was remarkably bare as, without fully realizing it, she’d systematically removed almost all traces of Ben. There were a few items still around: a photograph he’d taken of her on a weekend jaunt, the needlepoint footstool from his grandmother he’d forgotten to grab when he left, a gray parka hung in the laundry room she sometimes threw on to battle the elements.

She glanced around to find the barista cleaning the countertop of the bar. Several couples sat over coffee, and a group of three women in their thirties huddled around a small table sipping wine. Jazz floated from speakers mounted over the wine rack, and a few glasses clinked.

Renee came bustling inside under the protection of an umbrella that the wind seemed determined to snatch away. But her grip was hard and she snapped the umbrella shut and looked around, briefly running a hand through her wind-tossed hair. When her eyes met Becca’s she lifted her chin in acknowledgment, then went to the counter and ordered herself a cup of black coffee.

“Back to the beach, huh?” Becca greeted her as Renee brought her cup to her table.

She gave Becca a look as she scooted in her chair. “Tim and I keep telling ourselves that we want to work things out, but I don’t know. I’ve been staying at a beach house almost every weekend, trying to put things into perspective. Jessie’s not the only story I’ve been working on. I started on this small-town story-you know about the largest Sitka spruce tree in the world? The one outside of Seaside that recently broke apart in a storm?”

Becca nodded. Sipped her wine. “I remember seeing it on the news.”

“People have been sending me pictures from their lives, their parents’ lives, their grandparents…all of them around the tree. Really great photos. Anyway, it’s a piece for the local paper but it could get picked up as a human interest piece in national papers. You never know.” She twirled her coffee cup slowly, spinning it by its handle with one finger. Becca sensed that Renee was prattling on as a means to build up some courage to talk about what she really wanted to discuss, so she just let her go on.

Eventually, Renee wound down with, “The whole area has a kind of small-town mentality, which has been great. It’s hell staying at the house with Tim now, so I do it as little as possible. I wish he’d just move out.” She rubbed her temple with two fingers as if just talking about her husband gave her a headache.

“This isn’t why you wanted to talk to me,” Becca said into the sudden silence. She pushed her cheese and fruit plate toward Renee. “Have some.”

She waved off the offering. “Got a weird stomach thing going on. I know, I know, coffee’s not good, either, but I want to stay awake; I’ve been having a little trouble sleeping at night. All this stuff with Tim. I have to be sharp to drive to the coast. There’s been snow in the pass and I don’t do chains. Period.”

“Uh-huh.”

Renee took a breath, held it a moment, then released it slowly. “You know…it’s…kind of surprising…what you can stumble across. Like fate’s intervened. I’m not trying to sound like Tamara,” she added quickly. “It’s just, working on Jessie’s story and then having that skeleton appear at St. Lizzie’s.” She hesitated. “It would be nice to have a source in the police department to find out, y’know?”

Becca nodded.

Renee made a face. “Sometimes…well, this is going to sound strange because I really do want to write that story, but sometimes I wonder if we should really open Pandora’s box. Maybe we should let bad things lie. Go with the Sitka spruce nostalgia and leave digging into graves alone.”

“You were the one who called the meeting at Blue Note,” Becca reminded her in surprise.

“I know. I’m not giving up.” She ran her hands through her short, dark hair. “I don’t know why I’m going back and forth on this.” She switched gears and, frowning at herself, picked up a small wedge of Edam cheese. “I guess I can try this.” She took an experimental bite. “So tell me more about your trip to the maze.”

In for a penny, in for a pound.

Becca dutifully described her trip to St. Elizabeth’s, including the moment when she felt there was something there, something…if not evil, certainly not good. Renee listened attentively and Becca finished with, “I don’t want to sound crazy or anything. It was raining and hailing and windy, and I was probably more susceptible than usual. But it was more than that. I really felt like I wasn’t alone.”

“Did you think Jessie was there?”

Becca shot her a look to determine whether she was patronizing her, but Renee appeared totally serious as she blew across her cup, then took a swallow of coffee. “No. Not Jessie.”

“Who, then?”

“No one, I guess. No one I saw, anyway. It was just a feeling, and maybe I was just too susceptible. The atmosphere: the dark, the maze, the Madonna. It spooked me.”

“You don’t have to make excuses,” Renee said. “I believe you. I’ve had some experiences that weren’t…explainable.” She glanced to her side, to make certain the trio of women on their second glasses of wine weren’t eavesdropping. They were too caught up in their own conversation to give a second glance Becca and Renee’s way.

“Like what?” Becca asked, prodding.

Renee hesitated. “I know we’ve never been the closest of friends. Maybe that’s more my fault than yours, but…this should be all in the past now.” She narrowed her gaze, seemed to want to say something again, then thought better of it. Finally, she added, “Sometimes I have a feeling of persecution. Like someone’s after me. But then, I’ve written a few articles that have really pissed some people off, so maybe they are!”

She laughed and Becca saw the resemblance between Renee and Hudson’s humor for the first time. “Do you think, like Tamara, that Jessie might still be alive?” Becca asked.

“Oh, no. Those are Jessie’s bones,” she stated positively, her demeanor instantly sobering as she polished off the cheese. “I’m sure she’s dead. Long dead.” She peered at Becca. “I was told she was.”

“By who?”

“A crazy old woman who believes she can read the future.” She smiled faintly.

“Oh.” Becca watched her slowly spin her cup again. “You think it could have been just an accident?”

As if suddenly remembering what her cup was for, Renee brought it to her lips and took a long swallow. “Maybe Evangeline was right. Maybe Jessie was planning to run away. She said bad things were coming her way. Trouble. She wasn’t kidding around, you know, like she sometimes did. Well, like she did a lot, actually. But this time I don’t think she was joking. She meant it. She said, ‘Trouble’s going to find me.’”

“She said that to you?”

Renee nodded and Becca realized she was revealing one of her last, if not her very last, conversations with Jessie. “You told that cop what she said?”

“McNally? Are you kidding? I wasn’t going to tell him anything.” Renee shook her head at the memory. “I was too freaked. I did say she probably ran away again, because that’s what I really thought. I wasn’t going to tell them what our last conversation was. I kind of thought it was sacred, at the time. I was sixteen,” she reminded Becca with faint irony. “Jessie was my friend and I wanted to protect her, I guess. Her parents were kind of weird. Do you remember?”

Becca shook her head. “Jessie and I were more like acquaintances.”

Renee cocked an eyebrow. “You were connected to Tamara the most, right? You were in the class below us…?” She left it as a question because at St. Elizabeth’s, like high schools everywhere, students tended to stick with their own classmates as if there were invisible fences between the grades.

“Tamara and I had a class together,” Becca said. “We worked on a couple of projects as a team and got to know each other.” This was practically a lie, but Becca didn’t know whether she could admit that she’d worked hard on that friendship. All so she could be part of their group, so she could be nearer to Hudson. It was all so juvenile and downright embarrassing now! She could even feel her face heating and she took a swig of her water, hoping to hide her reaction.

“Did you like my brother even then?”

Becca opened her mouth to respond, thought better of it, then gave Renee a sideways look. All she saw on Hudson’s sister’s face was mild interest, so Becca gave her a jerky nod. “Yeah. High school crush.” She picked up a small orange slice and bit into it.

“I thought so. Jessie certainly thought so, too, and she believed Hudson returned your feelings. Maybe he did.”

“Nothing ever happened between us.”

“Not until after high school,” Renee agreed. “What about now?”

“What?”

“You still interested?”

“In Hudson?”

“Oh, come on. Don’t play dumb.”

“I’m really not looking to get involved with anyone right now,” she answered carefully. “My experience with men has been…less than stellar.”

“Kind of a nonanswer,” Renee observed, then waved the air as if dismissing the entire subject. “All I’m saying is that I’m not sure Jessie believed that you and Hudson didn’t have a thing going in high school. I think she might have retaliated. She certainly tried to stir up Hudson’s jealousy, but he doesn’t work that way.”

“We definitely didn’t have ‘a thing’ going. Hudson never even looked at me.”

Renee lifted a disbelieving eyebrow, but let the subject go. “You know, Jessie’s parents acted…really worried…I mean, before she disappeared. I’d just been to their house the week before and had dinner and Jessie was acting oddly then, too. More oddly than normal, that is. She must have known she was getting ready to run again, and I think it bothered her, how much it hurt her parents. But she just couldn’t help herself. If I have a feeling of persecution now, she really had it then. Like something was at her heels and she was trying to keep one step ahead of it.”

Becca thought about the feeling that someone was after her at the maze and about the vision of Jessie on the cliff trying to warn her of…of what? “Have any idea what it was that was chasing her?”

“God knows. Jessie sure didn’t. And her parents didn’t. They were in a state over her disappearance, almost as if they knew this time was different. Like they were scared. I saw them when Mac, the detective, was talking to them, and yeah, they were worried sick, but more than that, they were terrified.” She shook her head. “And the only thing Jessie said to me-I mean before she disappeared, when she was talking all weird-was that it was about justice, like maybe it was payback for something? I wished I’d quizzed her on it more, but what did I know? She kept saying she had to keep on the move and I thought it was a ruse, like it had been before, a play for attention. That’s what Jessie was all about, being the center of the universe. More than most teenagers. Anyway, that’s what I’ve concluded, after thinking about it all these years.”

“You think whatever she was running from caught up to her, before she could leave?”

Renee half laughed. “I don’t really know what I’m talking about. But I do think those are Jessie’s remains. It just makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“I guess we’ll know soon enough.”

“Will we? So maybe they get some DNA. Can they match it to Jessie’s?”

“Well, or dental impressions, I suppose. Those are bound to be on record, aren’t they?” Becca asked.

Renee shrugged. “And when the police learn, are they going to tell us? Or are we all suspects again? I hate to agree with The Third, but if the case opens up we’re all going to be under scrutiny, especially Hudson.”

Becca didn’t like thinking about that.

Renee drained the rest of her coffee, then shot an assessing look at Becca, as if she were debating on something.

“What?” Becca asked.

“I’ve been remembering a lot of little things lately. Forcing myself, I guess, at first because of the story, and now, I don’t know…” She drew a deep breath and expelled it slowly. “I really want that story, but…I’ve gotten these warnings.”

“Warnings?”

“From the old woman I mentioned earlier.”

“A Tarot reader?”

“Sort of.” She seemed about to add something else, then hesitated. “This wasn’t Tamara’s friend.”

“I got that.”

“I went to the beach and I was asking about Jessie around Deception Bay. Do you know it?” When Becca shook her head, she said, “It’s this little town. Quaint. Kind of…tired feeling.”

“Why did you go there?”

“The Brentwoods have a house there. I thought maybe that’s where Jessie was from? Originally? I was staying around the area anyway, so I started asking questions and I got connected to this psychic lady. But when I met with her, all she did was make me feel like I was angering the gods or something. Seeing her was a mistake. She just played on my fears-fears I didn’t know I had.”

Becca nodded, waiting for her to go on.

Renee didn’t seem to quite know how to proceed, then said, “I know you and Jessie weren’t the closest of friends. Maybe because of Hudson, maybe something else, but how well do you remember her? I mean really remember her?”

I saw her in a vision. “She had blond-brown hair-long-and was pretty.” Becca finished her wine. “I remember that she dated Hudson and that she was kinda hard to pin down.”

“Like you.”

“Not like me,” Becca said quickly.

“Maybe not exactly. But sort of, don’t you think?”

Where is this coming from? “Jessie was secretive and remote. I hope I’m not like that. Do you think I’m like that?”

“No…I can’t quite put my finger on it.” Shrugging, she said, “Jessie always had a blithe remark. A throwaway comment. You couldn’t get close to her. Yeah, she was full of secrets, but then she could be so blunt, too. And Vangie was right that Jessie just knew things. She was precognitive. She had feelings about things and they came true. A number of times.”

“Like a feeling of persecution?”

“Well, maybe…and you had those visions, didn’t you?” Renee reminded her and Becca felt her face grow hot.

“I’d hoped people had forgotten.”

“Maybe they have. But at the time it was the kind of thing that ran like wildfire through the school. A rumor with a life of its own. I never knew just how much was fact or fiction.”

“I used to have them,” Becca answered slowly. The vision of Jessie practically burned behind her eyeballs, but she couldn’t bring it up. Not now. Not yet. Not until she understood Renee’s interest.

“Not anymore?”

“No.”

She inclined her head. “Well, anyway, sound like a nut job, don’t I? I hear myself talking like there’s some-evil out to get me, and can’t believe I just said that. Forget it. This whole thing with finding Jessie’s bones is making me jump at shadows and find meaning in things that aren’t there. Dumb. Oh, screw this. I need a glass of wine.” Scooting out her chair, she looked disgusted with herself, then walked to the counter and paid for a glass of Chardonnay. Taking a sip as she returned, Renee said, “That’s more like it.”

“Was this the ‘odd’ something you wanted to talk about?”

“Yeah.” She drank half her glass and shook her head. “I can’t tell you how all of this…whatever the hell it is has taken its toll. I’m jumping at shadows, second-guessing everything. And looking over my shoulder, like someone’s following me.”

“That’s how I felt in the maze,” Becca said.

“Oh, right.” She paused. “Maybe we’re both just letting atmosphere take over reason.”

Becca thought about that and was about to confess that she’d had a vision of Jessie on the very day that she’d learned about the grisly discovery at St. Elizabeth’s, but she didn’t get the chance. Renee tossed back another gulp of wine, glanced at her watch, and scowled. “Oh, God, it’ll be almost ten when I get there if I don’t leave now.” She swept up her purse and got to her feet in one swift motion. “Keep in touch,” she said brightly, but there was something about the way she hurried through the door that made Becca think Renee had no intention of following her own words.

What the hell was it about Rebecca Ryan Sutcliff? Renee asked herself as she punched the accelerator of her Camry and slid through an amber light just before it turned red. She was headed west, ever west, merging onto Sunset Highway, a section of Highway 26.

You’re running away, her mind insisted over the pain of a headache that was pounding at the base of her skull. “No,” she answered herself aloud as she flipped on her blinker and passed a yokel in an ancient truck that refused to go over forty, a truck not too many years newer than the pickup her father used to drive. She wasn’t running away from anything, she was running to what promised to be a new life; one that didn’t include her husband Tim and the Valley Star.

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.