Wicked Game (5 page)

Between Christopher Delacroix Junior’s threats, lack of evidence, and a missing body, the case had gone stone cold.

“I’ll see you Thursday,” Hudson said, breaking into Becca’s reverie.

“Will Tamara be there?”

“Think so.”

“Good. Hey, before you hang up, what was that cop’s name? The one who wouldn’t believe Jessie ran away?”

“Sam McNally,” Hudson said, a distinct chill to his voice.

“Mac,” Becca said, remembering. Though the cop, only about ten years older than the kids he was interrogating, had mostly left her alone, he’d haunted their days and nights long after Jessie disappeared. “So now do you think he was right? About Jessie being murdered?”

“I don’t know.” He was terse. Suddenly distant again. “I sure as hell hope not.”

“But if she’s still alive…where’s she been all this time?”

“Somewhere else.”

“Yeah…”

“I’ve got to call a few more people, see if they’ll join us.”

“Okay.”

He hesitated a second, then said, “Good talking to you, Becca,” and hung up.

Becca carefully replaced the phone. “Good talking to you, too,” she said softly to the empty room.

Hudson glanced around the stable, checking the horses one last time. They were all in their stalls, settling in for the night, nothing disturbed, nothing as it shouldn’t be. He snapped out the overhead light, shut the door, and dashed, head bent, across the expanse of gravel that separated the barn, stable, and machine shed from the house. The security lights gave a bluish tint to the night and overhead, through the rain, he thought he spied an owl soar into the higher branches of the old willow tree that he and his sister used to climb.

“Come on, Renee, don’t be a chicken,” he’d called to her and she, never one to turn down a dare, had struggled up the interlaced branches that he’d scaled with ease. It had pissed her off that her brother, her
younger
brother by nearly four minutes, was stronger and more athletic than she could hope to be.

But she’d been smart.

Had sailed through school while he’d been uninterested in classroom assignments, at least until college. She’d proudly waited for each report card to arrive in the mail and had beamed as their mother had seen the row of As next to the subject matter. Hudson had done all right, though he hadn’t really given a crap, except for the comments by the teachers. “Doesn’t work to his potential” or “Tests well, but doesn’t apply himself in the classroom” or his favorite, “Isn’t a team player.” Yeah, well. That much was as true today as it had been when his mother had read the remarks aloud in the old kitchen, some twenty-five years earlier.

Tonight, as he ran past, the willow was devoid of leaves and the owl moved to better shelter, flying through the open hay loft window to his perch high in the rafters of the barn, a structure that had been in the Walker family for over a hundred years. Hudson passed the tree and another memory sizzled through his brain, one filled with heat and passion and only the slightest worry that he and Becca would get caught making love beneath the lush, drooping branches and canopy of fluttering leaves. God, he’d had it bad for her.

Maybe worse than you had it for Jessie?

He hurried up the back walk and onto the porch, shaking drops from his hair, as a cloudburst released more slanting rain that battered the old shingles of the roof and gurgled down the gutters. He didn’t want to think about Jessie and hoped to hell that those bones found at the school weren’t hers, that she was living somewhere far away and was still as intriguing and mysterious as she’d always been.

But his gut told him differently.

He stepped into the house and it felt oddly empty tonight, more so than it had before.

“All in your head,” he told himself as he hung his jacket on a peg in the mudroom, kicked off his boots, and in stocking feet, stepped onto the worn linoleum he swore he’d replace this summer, along with the roof and changes to the bathrooms and this old kitchen. The house was starting to look worn. Tired-looking. The same as it had been for the past thirty years. His parents had “updated” it in the early seventies, and now it needed a full remodel.

Spying the phone, he remembered his short call with Becca, how the sound of her voice had taken him back in time to that summer after his first year at Oregon State. Man, he’d been horny and she, well…his groin tightened at the thought of their affair. “Too hot to handle,” he said aloud and reached into the refrigerator for a beer.

Funny, when Renee had insisted “the old gang” get together and had finally convinced Hudson that she was going to arrange a meeting whether he liked it or not, he’d offered to call Becca. Not Zeke, nor Mitch, nor Glenn, just Becca. And Renee had known that Becca would be the lure. Her eyes had actually lit with smug satisfaction when he’d reluctantly agreed and offered to call her.

“I bet Tamara has her number,” Renee said, tossing him her cell phone, Tamara Pitts’s name and number listed on her display. “Give her a call.”

She hadn’t added
I dare you
, but it had been there just the same. They both knew it, and no, it wasn’t a twin thing. Renee just knew how to manipulate people. “She’s not married, you know, her husband died last year and get this, he left not only a widow, but a girlfriend to boot, a pregnant girlfriend. Becca didn’t even have time to divorce the bastard before he kicked off. A real gem, that Ben Sutcliff.”

He didn’t ask how she’d known all the dirt on Becca’s husband. Renee didn’t explain. It was part of her nature, what she liked to call “reporter’s instincts,” but Hudson thought it had more to do with being a snoop and a busybody.

“So, call her. See if the widow can make it,” Renee said, her lips curling knowingly. “You know what, you never really got over her. Or Jessie. I’d call that pathetic, but considering my current marital state, that would be a little hypocritical.” She hadn’t elaborated and Hudson knew better than to prod. As far as he was concerned, Renee’s husband, Tim, was useless. But then he’d always thought so.

“I just wonder, if that skeleton does happen to be Jessie’s, what the hell happened to her?”

Hudson hadn’t let his mind travel down that dark and twisted road. He’d always assumed Jessie was alive; that she’d just taken off. Again.

He hoped he was right.

“I’ll call her later,” he’d said, writing down Tamara’s number. He wasn’t about to have Renee listen in to a conversation between him and Rebecca Ryan.

Now, in the kitchen his parents had once owned, Hudson twisted off the cap on his bottle of Budweiser and tried not to think about either Becca or Jessie.

Two women he’d thought he’d loved.

Two women who had altered the course of his life.

Two women he might have been better off never meeting.

There was no sleeping. Not with the rain peppering the windows and tree limbs swaying like frantic beckoning arms outside Becca’s window. She watched, eyes open in the darkness, Ringo curled up beside her, snoring softly. She’d been uncertain about the dog when Ben suggested they get a pet, then had fallen in love with the mutt, rescuing him from a pet store where lots of puppies tumbled around, noses pressed to the cages. Even though the dog had been Ben’s idea, he’d been lukewarm on Ringo. He’d wanted to pick out the dog. Becca hadn’t realized it at the time, but she now knew it wasn’t about the pet, it was about Ben being able to pick out what he wanted, whether it worked for Becca or not. He’d done the same thing with the furniture, and her car, and this condo. The only choice that had been totally hers was Ringo. And Ben hadn’t liked it.

She hugged Ringo now and he let out a long doggy sigh. She tried not to think about the phone call from Hudson, but his cool voice played like a tape in her mind, looping over and over again.

Becca? Rebecca…Sutcliff? Rebecca Ryan, in high school?

Squeezing her eyes closed even tighter, Becca fought back traitorous thoughts. She was too old for romantic ideas about Hudson Walker. That was all part of a long-ago past. And even though she would be reconnecting with some of her old friends—even though she was about to physically see Hudson again, now…now that she was a widow and therefore free—it didn’t mean she should have even one romantic notion about Hudson. That affair had been all about high school. She was over it, and yet there it was, streaming into her consciousness, taking hold and not letting go.

Even now, in her darkened bedroom, with the dog snoring beside her, Becca remembered the months after she’d graduated from St. Elizabeth’s as being a turning point in her life. That blasted hot summer with Hudson had been one of those magical times when everything was working right. Becca had Hudson, and though he might not be proclaiming his undying love for her, he truly liked her and she was head over heels about him. From a few stolen moments, their relationship quickly exploded into a daily/nightly routine where as soon as they were off work they would find each other, ending up in each other’s arms, making hot love on a blanket underneath bright stars on the Walker ranch, or in his bedroom, sneakily, after his parents were asleep, or anywhere they could find to be alone.

In September Hudson prepared to go back to OSU, which was located in Corvallis, about an hour and a half down I-5 from Portland. Becca didn’t see his returning to college as a problem, but Hudson started growing more distant as the summer wound to a close. Where once he’d been as enthusiastic as she, calling her day and night, he’d started to cool as the shimmering heat of August had slipped into a cooler September.

And then there was the pregnancy.

A skipped period she’d barely thought about, and then another that had worried her. She’d always been irregular, but she felt different, and when she finally worked up the courage to buy one of the home pregnancy tests, she’d sat on the edge of the bathtub at her parents’ house and prayed she was wrong—only to see the evidence of the child growing within her, a child she’d always wanted.

But Hudson?

Oh, God. Her throat had turned to sand and tears slid from the corners of her eyes before she could take control again, wrapping all the evidence of the test kit in a brown paper bag and burning it in the wood stove before her parents arrived home from work. Neither Jim nor Barbara Ryan would welcome an unplanned grandchild from an unmarried daughter.

Becca had sniffed back her tears and only told her old cat, Fritter, a tortoise-shelled skinny stray that had attached itself to her, about the pregnancy.

Afraid, desperate, sensing something had changed with Hudson, Becca tried hard not to cling to him. She’d practiced telling him about the baby. Over and over again in the car, when she was alone, or whispering to the cat in her bedroom, but she wanted to wait for just the right moment, didn’t want to spring it on him. After all, he’d been the one who had the condoms…well, most of the time.

Finally, as a harvest moon hung low in the night sky, she’d told herself it was now or never, she had to tell him. He
deserved
to know. It was his right. But before she could force the words over her tongue, he mentioned that he’d known he’d been a little aloof, that it hadn’t been her fault, but he’d been plagued with thoughts about Jessie.

Once again…Jessie.

He told her when she was seated next to him on a porch swing at his parents’ ranch. He was in jeans, a work shirt, and boots, and there were bits of straw in his hair. He’d been drinking a lemonade when Becca pulled into the drive, and his mother, a tall woman with dark hair shot with gray, asked if she wanted a lemonade, too. Becca politely declined and sat down beside Hudson on the swing. Beneath her skin anxiety ran like an electric current. Something was wrong. She didn’t know if she had the courage to tell him. She
had
to tell him about the baby. But she couldn’t bear for him to think she’d deliberately trapped him. Couldn’t bear to think that maybe she had, a little…to have his baby.

Though she was near him, they didn’t touch. She sensed there was an invisible barrier between them. Maybe he knew she was pregnant and didn’t want to be saddled with a child? But she’d told no one,
no
one, and she’d even purchased the pregnancy kit from a huge store in Portland, not the local pharmacy where someone might recognize her.

Hudson finished his lemonade. There was a heavy pause as they swayed gently on the swing and the sun slanted late-afternoon heat waves at them. A breeze ruffled her hair and pushed a few dry leaves across the walkway. Hudson was silent. Not moody, just not really there, his mind somewhere far away. He stared into the middle distance and Becca had the feeling he’d forgotten she was sitting next to him, just a hairsbreadth from his body. How, when she was so aware of him, wanted to kiss him and hold him and tell him she loved him, could he act as if she were invisible?

It hurt and, in truth, it bugged her.

They were having a child together!

“What’s wrong?” she asked him, when she finally found her courage.

Before he could answer a car bounced down the long lane, its engine thrumming, his sister behind the wheel. Renee slammed on the brakes and the sedan, screeching, jerked to a stop a few feet away, dust from its tires wafting in a cloud their way. Renee stepped out of the car and tossed her short, dark hair. A small notebook stuck out of her purse and Becca remembered she was taking some kind of journalism classes. Probably acing them. She flew up the walk and scarcely looked at Becca as she hurried up the porch steps. But then she’d acted as if she’d barely noticed Becca all summer. They hadn’t been great friends in high school, but when they were classmates at St. Lizzie’s, Becca hadn’t felt quite the resentment she now sensed.

Or was this feeling of dismissal, of invisibility, just her overactive imagination?

A product of her crumbling relationship with Hudson?

“Goddamned brakes,” she muttered, almost to herself. “Hey,” she said, spying Hudson. “You think you could fix them?”

He shook his head. “You’d better call Mitch.”

“Bellotti? That moron?”

“He’s pretty good with cars.”

“Yeah, he’d probably think I’d go out with him or make out with him or—” She gave a mock shiver.

“He’s engaged.”

“Send the girl my condolences. No, I’m not talking to Mitch. Great idea, Hud. Real helpful.”

“You asked.”

“Well, forget it. I’m not owing that fat-ass, has-been jock any favors. I heard he already flunked out of OSU. Big surprise.” She opened the screen door and nodded toward Hudson’s glass and the few remaining drops of lemonade settling near the bottom. “Any more of that left?”

“I think so.”

She brushed inside, never once acknowledging Becca. But then Renee always had been a bitch. An ambitious bitch.

Hudson set his empty glass on a table beside the swing. He gazed at her through the shadows but she couldn’t read his expression. Finally, he said, “You know, you remind me a little of Jessie.”

Becca stared. “What?” she demanded, her voice shaking. The comparison stung, and it hurt far more than Becca wanted it to. Obviously she’d been kidding herself about her affair with Hudson, wrapping it up in love and romance when he’d been harboring feelings for Jessie all along. She understood instinctively that there was no way to fight Jessie’s memory. Jessie Brentwood had been missing for over three years, but she was still very much here.