Wicked Game

  Glenn felt Mr. Ready twitch at the thought. His sleeping penis could rise from the dead with the right incentive. Like a lusty waitress or two. Glenn wouldn’t mind slamming one up against the wall and screwing her brains out, but he couldn’t afford to. That was just crying for a lawsuit. Sexual harassment, and then Gia would divorce him and take everything that the lawsuit didn’t eat up.

  He was stuck with Gia, the wallowing termite queen, he thought for the thousandth time. No matter which way you cut it. He thought about the meeting they had here. Becca, Tamara, and Renee had all looked hot. Trim. Fit. Beautiful. And interesting. Jesus, any of them would be better than Gia.

  Inside, the dark rooms buzzed with conversation and the clink of glassware. People were laughing, eating…drinking. He passed by several curtained alcoves where diners were deep into their meals. Blue Note was surprisingly busy, and everyone seemed to be in their right places as Glenn took in the place with practiced ease. Except for the people by the far window. They looked as if they hadn’t been served in a while, and their entrees and their appetizers were long over. Glenn was about to rectify the situation himself when he saw the footsie they were playing beneath the table and realized the staff was simply giving them a little extra time as they really weren’t interested in food.

  Probably having an affair, Glenn thought with a hint of jealousy. But he was proud of his wait staff. Discernment. That’s what Blue Note needed. The ability to read the customers and discern their needs, whether those needs be drink, food, or something else.

  He strolled through the kitchen. Luis and crew were getting out the meals like a well-oiled machine. They’d lost their top chef a month earlier, but then Patrick had been more of a head case than a head chef. Luis, with little experience, was pinch-hitting. He was a quick learner, but Blue Note had no signature dishes, no standouts, nothing to make it rise above the hundreds of other restaurants in and around the city.

  And if they didn’t find that special uniqueness that would make Blue Note the name on everyone’s lips, it would be in serious trouble. It already was.

  Glenn grabbed a short glass at the bar, filled it with ice, and poured in a couple of ounces of bourbon. He took a sip, felt instantly better, then headed to the back office where he sat on a worn leather chair. His domain. Old pictures lined the wall. Photos of him. Scott. Even a few from about a million years ago—the friends from St. Elizabeth’s. He saw one, the color faded, of the smiling faces of Zeke, Garrett, Hudson, The Third, Scott, and himself…no girls. No Jessie.

  He wondered about her and really hoped it wasn’t her body that had been located at the old school. Glenn liked to think that she’d escaped, gotten away from whatever demons had been chasing her. Hudson’s girl.

  Yeah, right.

  A chick like Jessie…so mysterious and damned sexy, she didn’t belong to anyone. Shit, she’d been hot. Hot!

  So what had happened to her? Glenn thought again about missed opportunities as he clicked on his computer to pore over the books. Man, they owed a lot of accounts payable.

  His stomach nose-dived as he glanced at the total.

  It was shocking, how many places had offered them supplies on credit, but then Scott could be a silver-tongued devil when he needed to. Pascal was a closer. He could charm, cajole, and squeeze vendors like a virtuoso. Sometimes Glenn wondered where and how it was all going to end. If things didn’t improve, not only the lease wouldn’t be paid, but payroll was going to be a problem. And shouldn’t there be more funds available? Sure, the restaurant had off days, but when they were on, they were on, man.

  Look at tonight.

  Determined to get to the bottom of their cash-flow problems, Glenn examined the accounts as best as he could. He’d had no formal training in business and finance, but he knew when something was owed and whether the restaurant had enough money to pay it.

  A couple of hours later after juggling figures and making minimal payments on overdue bills, Glenn remembered the card. He pulled it from his pocket and examined the light blue envelope with the typed address. It was postmarked Portland. Almost looked like an invitation of some kind.

  He sliced it open with a letter opener, and pulled out a piece of plain white card stock:

  What are little boys made of?

  Frogs and snails and puppy dogs’ tails.

  That’s what little boys are made of.

  Glenn dropped the note as if it had scorched him. His heart pounded hard and painful in his chest. The spit dried in his mouth.

  Jessie!

  What the hell?

  Panicked, Glenn could hear Jessie’s singsonging voice. Could see her saying those very words. “What are little boys made of…”

  He tried to calm down, but once the image was loose in his mind, there was no holding it back. As if high school were yesterday, he could remember how much his fingers had wanted to caress her curves. He’d wanted Jessie with a fiery desire that had plagued him like a curse. Sure, she’d only wanted Hudson. Sure, she’d never looked his way. But she’d teased. How she’d teased. With that sexy lilt and twitch of her hips and a knowing look and something about the way she talked that was way more adult than the rest of them. She knew things. Hadn’t Vangie said it the other night? That Jessie knew things?

  A shudder ripped through him as her image came to mind.

  God in heaven, he’d wanted to wrap her legs around his waist and pound himself inside her. Just stick it to her, man, for all he was worth. He could imagine her head thrown back, her mouth open and slack, her hazel eyes like glittering agates.

  Mr. Ready jumped to flagpole attention and Glenn reached a hand to take care of things, but then the import of the card wilted his desire like a bucket of cold water never could.

  Was Jessie alive?

  She had to be!

  “Mr. Stafford?” A light knock on the office door. Glenn instantly adjusted himself, stuffed the card back in his pocket, then pulled open the door. Amy, one of the newest employees who wasn’t yet eighteen, regarded him with her usual deer in the headlights look. “Mr. Pascal’s here but he’s talking to a policeman? He told me to come get you.”

  “I’ll be right there,” Glenn told her. Policeman…? McNally! Had to be. Damn the man. Did he have to come to their place of work?

  Glenn checked his appearance in the mirror by the door, sucked in his gut, promised himself he would cut down on the pasta intake. He headed out the door, walking steadily and with confidence toward the front of the restaurant even though he felt a quivering worry growing inside his gut.

  Sure enough, there was that cop. Older now. But Jesus, really better looking than before, the bastard. How was that possible? He’d been in his mid-twenties before, now he was in his mid-forties, and it looked like he hadn’t lost one goddamned hair off his head. And the hair was still dark brown, the temples only faintly silver. McNally gazed at Glenn through light hazel eyes that pierced like steel. He looked fit and hard and just as mean as he had twenty years earlier.

  Scott was smoothing his bald pate with one hand in a gesture that could mean anything between nervousness and amusement. He lifted an eyebrow at Glenn. In a gently mocking tone, he said, “Detective Sam McNally’s paying us a call.”

  “Probably not a social one,” Glenn said shortly, trying to temper his tension with a smile. He hoped he wasn’t gritting his teeth. “Let’s all go back to my office.”

  Amy and some of the other employees watched them head down the hall, wide-eyed. Glenn wanted to smack each of their avid little faces.

  Repositioning himself behind the desk, Glenn noticed his hands were shaking ever so slightly. Damn it all. He placed one over the other on his desk as Scott propped himself against the wall and McNally accepted one of the club chairs, sinking into it as if he were there for a very long stay.

  “I called you,” he said, looking at Glenn.

  “Yeah—I—I’ve kinda been buried.” Crap, what was the guy asking? “I couldn’t find time to meet with you.” br />
  Scott broke in, “We’ve both been busy. I just got back in town not half an hour ago. Glenn and I have another restaurant just outside of Lincoln City—Blue Ocean—which we’re just getting going.”

  “I’m not planning to waste your time,” McNally said. “You know about the remains found at St. Elizabeth’s, I’m sure. I believe they’re Jezebel Brentwood’s, and I want to run over your statements at the time of her disappearance once more.”

  “But you’re not sure they’re Jessie’s,” Scott stressed gently. “No corroborating DNA evidence yet.”

  Glenn felt his anxiety notch up. No corroborating DNA evidence yet. The card in his pocket felt as if it were on fire, burning up. Should he mention it? Let them know Jessie could very well be alive? And what did it mean? What did she want from him?

  True to his word, McNally didn’t waste time. He went over the sequence of events prior to Jessie’s disappearance, and Glenn was kind of surprised at how detailed his notes were. But then, McNally had put them through the wringer twenty years ago. The man knew more about what had happened than Glenn could ever remember.

  “I knew Jessie, we all did because of St. Elizabeth’s, but I was really into sports, didn’t much pay attention if it wasn’t anything to do with jocks,” Scott said when McNally finished and looked from one to the other of them, waiting for someone to speak up. “Jessie, she was good-lookin’, yeah, but really, she was just a girl who dated one of my friends. I didn’t really know her, and neither did Glenn. We said the same thing then, and nothing’s changed.”

  “That’s right,” Glenn said, suddenly glad for Pascal’s glib tongue.

  “Have you seen any of your group since?” McNally asked.

  Glenn’s heart clutched and he looked to Scott for guidance. There was no crime in it, for God’s sake, but he didn’t want to fall into some kind of trap by shooting off his mouth when he shouldn’t.

  “Mitch is a good friend,” Glenn blurted out.

  Scott threw him a dark look. He’d always objected to Glenn’s friendship with Mitch and sometimes, just because he could get a reaction, Glenn liked to remind Scott that he wasn’t the end-all be-all of good friends. Sometimes Scott Pascal wasn’t a friend at all.

  “We all met here at the restaurant a couple weeks ago,” Scott told the detective, and Glenn relaxed slightly. Of course. No reason to worry. Just tell the truth. Let his partner do the talking. But leave out the nursery rhyme…“We heard about the bones being discovered, so we got together.” Scott glossed over the meeting—just a bunch of concerned friends worried that tragedy had befallen one of their own.

  Glenn ignored his drink, the ice cubes melting, the aroma of bourbon in the air of the closed room.

  McNally was noncommittal. Did he buy it? Glenn couldn’t tell and it made him nervous. He eyed his drink, caught the slight shake of Scott’s head from the corner of his eye, and let the bourbon sit.

  McNally ran over a few more questions about Jessie and her relationship to all their friends. From Glenn’s point of view, it was all very banal and he had the suspicion that Mac was simply getting a feel of them. He couldn’t wait for the detective to leave so he could talk to Scott.

  Eventually Mac did just that. He’d written down some notes, chicken scratchings from what Glenn could tell, then flipped the small notebook shut and placed it in a pocket of his black leather jacket. Seeing that, Glenn wondered if the card in his own pocket was visible, outlined like some kind of scarlet letter. It was all he could do not to reach up and touch it.

  As Mac got up to leave Scott said, “You’ve mellowed out over the years.”

  McNally paused, giving Scott a long look. “Have I?”

  Scott met his gaze. “Maybe not.”

  A moment passed between them. Glenn’s pulse began a slow, hard beat through his veins. He managed to walk with Scott to show the detective out, but as soon as they were alone, they headed back to the office and Scott closed the door behind him.

  “What is it?” Scott asked tautly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re white as a ghost. McNally scared you. What the hell’s going on?”

  “He didn’t scare me.”

  “If I saw it, he saw it,” Scott assured him. “Come on. Give.” He beckoned his fingers in an impatient c’mere gesture.

  “We’ve got goddamned problems, okay? The money’s just pouring out of this place. I don’t know where it’s going. Maybe someone’s stealing from us? One of the wait staff? Or they’re embezzling somehow?”

  “You keep everything locked up, don’t you?”

  “Of course. I’m not an idiot.” Glenn’s teeth ground together. Scott had a way of pissing him off and the cop…Oh, shit, he’d never been comfortable around cops, always thought they were after him.

  “Then we’re just short,” Scott was saying. “Income isn’t what it should be, and expenses are out of control.”

  “I’ve got ’em under control,” Glenn snapped, miffed. Scott was always so quick to blame him.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  The two partners stared hard at each other. Scott seemed to be thinking very, very hard, and Glenn realized reluctantly that he wasn’t as immune as he would have liked the detective to believe. He was tense, too, and kind of spooked. So Glenn decided to come clean. “All right, look. Something happened,” he said.

  He could see Scott brace himself.

  “Nothing about the restaurant,” Glenn assured him. “It was this.” He pulled out the card and handed it to Scott, who seemed reluctant to accept it. Reading it over, Scott drew his brows together and seemed lost in a world of his own.

  “How’d you get this? Where’d it come from?” he asked after a long moment where Glenn’s nerves were stretched tight as guy wires.

  “It came in the mail, to my house, addressed to me.”

  “What the hell does it mean?”

  “I don’t know, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell McNally.”

  “Christ, we have to call The Third. What kind of game is that bitch playing?” Scott said, shaking his head. “She’s alive. God. She’s alive…so who’s in the grave?”

  Glenn lifted his hands to ward off that thought. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  Whipping out his cell phone, Scott suddenly stopped himself in the middle of punching out a number. “What if it’s not Jessie who sent this? What if it’s someone trying to freak us out?”

  “Who the fuck would do that?”

  “I don’t know, but…oh, shit. Someone who’s just messin’ with us.”

  Glenn nodded rapidly. He liked that idea better. “But why?”

  Scott drew a breath. “Hell if I know.” He flopped into the chair so recently vacated by the detective. “It’s dumb. It’s a dumb joke.”

  “It’s no joke,” Glenn assured him. “God, I could use a drink.” He picked up his watery bourbon and drank it down.

  Scott was still tossing things over in his mind. “Why would she contact you? Jessie? If she were alive?” His face was a knot of confusion. “She wouldn’t, so it’s a joke.”

  Glenn ground his teeth together. In the back of his mind he’d been asking himself the same question. Jessie had scarcely noticed him. That singsong nursery rhyme had been something she’d teased The Third with, or Zeke, maybe even Jarrett. It wasn’t something she’d used on him. He’d been wallpaper to her, nothing more.

  Scott snorted, following Glenn’s thoughts. “Stop thinking about it,” he said dismissively. “That damn detective rattled me, too, but it’s all just routine stuff. Whoever sent this thing?” He tossed the card across the desk. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s Jarrett or The Third, actually. Would be just like them. Trying to get your goat. We got more important things to worry about.”

  “Like the business,” Glenn said, his eyes on the white square of paper.

  “Like this fucking business,” Scott agreed. “I’ll bring you and me both a drink. Throw that t
hing in the trash.”

  Glenn could have told him he had a bottle of Bushmills stashed in his desk drawer, could have offered him a drink, but he didn’t.

  As Scott stalked out of the room, Glenn picked up the card. After a moment he grabbed a pair of scissors and shredded it and the blue envelope into slivers of paper, dusting them off his hands into the trash can. He closed his eyes then, consciously trying to put it behind him.

  For a moment he thought he heard a girl’s giggling. Someone laughing at him. His eyes flew open and he glanced sharply around the room.

  But he was alone.

  Becca was working at her computer when the phone shrilled. She jumped like she’d been goosed, scrabbling to pick up the receiver of her land line.

  Hudson, she thought, a smile crossing her lips. She instantly had a mental picture of him lying in the darkness of his bedroom, his arms reaching out as she tried to slide from the bed. “You’re not leaving.”

  “I have to. I have a dog at home.” His hand had grabbed hers and he’d pulled her back atop him. It had taken her another hour before she’d disentangled and made her way home.

  “Hello,” she said now as she answered the phone, not recognizing the number from Caller ID. She glanced at the clock. Late afternoon and almost dark as pitch outside already. As if aware she’d noticed, the heavens suddenly opened up and spewed rain, then hail, a storm of precipitation blasting outside her window. It was awesome in its power but it just meant that the dog wasn’t going to want to go for a walk.