Wicked Game by Lisa Jackson, Nancy Bush Page B

theory that you killed her after you found out she was sleeping with…someone else?”
    “McNally was obsessed, grasping at straws, trying to make a homicide out of a missing persons case, trying to pin it on one of us,” Hudson said, sounding sick to the back teeth of the whole thing. “God knows. Maybe it was a homicide.”
    “And you think one of us did it?” Scott gazed at him belligerently.
    “No.”
    “But he thought you murdered her?” Renee asked her brother. “Now that I really don’t remember.”
    “It wasn’t ruled a homicide,” Becca interjected. “They had no body.”
    “But McNally had a hard-on about it,” Glenn interjected. “Hell, that guy was a head case.”
    “And they’ve got a body now. Whether it’s Jessie’s or not, we’re going back through it again…” The Third said on a sigh.
    “Well, I don’t think that’s Jessie. I think she just ran away. She said she was unhappy,” Evangeline reminded them. “And that she had to leave.”
    “She said she had to leave?” Becca asked.
    “Yeah, like she knew something.” Vangie swept back blond strands from her face. “She was like that, y’know? Like Tamara said. She knew things. She had some kind of ESP or whatever you want to call it. But it was weird. Creepy. When she said she had to leave, I believed her.”
    “What exactly did she say?” Renee asked.
    “She said ‘I’ve got to get out of here before something bad happens,’ or something like that.”
    “You never told us that,” The Third said with mild reproof. “When we were all being grilled.”
    “Well, it was something like that,” Evangeline declared, flushing. “She and Hudson weren’t getting along. Maybe that was it.”
    All eyes turned to Hudson and he agreed, “Jessie had things on her mind.”
    “Like what?” Scott asked.
    “I don’t know. There was definitely something driving her.”
    Renee looked at her brother and Becca got the sense she was calculating something, like whether to reveal some kind of information or keep it to herself. In the end, she said, “I’ve got some leads to follow. I’m heading to the beach. Maybe we should meet up again in a couple of weeks…”
    “Let’s wait on that for a while,” The Third said. He was about to say something more but hesitated as a waiter slid through the door and picked up some of the dirty dishes, then slipped out again. Then he said, “You know McNally’s going to be back, hounding us.”
    “No way. He’s gotta be retired by now.” Scott shook his head. “It’ll be someone else.”
    “Guys like him never retire. And he can’t be that old. But the point is: so what? He can’t do anything to us now. We just need to all keep cool. McNally, or somebody like him, is going to start asking questions again. Any inconsistency—any—will just make it worse. But, hey…here we are again.” He lifted his glass in a toast and everyone followed suit, albeit slowly, as no one knew where this was going. “We’re friends. We need to see more of each other and put this Jessie Brentwood thing to bed. There’s nothing to worry about.”
    “So much for all of us saying something about Jessie,” Tamara said, disgusted.
    That much was true. The meeting and Renee’s idea that they should all disclose something personal about Jessie was falling apart. Becca tasted some of the hors d’oeuvres and sipped at a glass of white wine while listening to several different conversations buzzing around her. Scott was bragging up Blue Ocean, his new restaurant at the beach, though, it seemed, Glenn wasn’t as excited about the venture as his partner. Glenn groused that the restaurant in Lincoln City was still a work in progress while Scott waved off his concerns, stating only that the menu had to be adjusted; it was too “sophisticated” for the beach crowd. Mitch complained that he was overworked and Jarrett, a commercial real estate salesman, wasn’t happy with the economy. Underneath all the idle