was Walker’s girl, we all know that.” Zeke was positive.
Tamara twisted one of her bracelets. “High school was so long ago. A lifetime, but I remember thinking that you, Hudson…” She looked into Hudson’s eyes. “You and Jessie were the perfect couple. I’d see you hanging out at the lockers, so into each other.”
“Well…no…we were high school kids, like you said. What did we know about anything?”
She flashed a bit of a smile, touched with nostalgia, and Becca realized that Tamara had gone through the pains of a high school crush on Hudson. Well, join the club. Half the girls in the class had admitted to a “thing” for him, and hadn’t he been voted the boy with whom most girls would want to be stranded on a deserted isle? The same had been true of Jessie. All the boys had wanted her, and she’d played right into it. Only Evangeline had been true to Zeke; the rest of the girls had been hot for Hudson. Renee knew it, too. She’d been at the top of the class academically and a lot of her friends were girls who’d wanted to be close to her, to Hudson’s twin, just so they could get close to him. Renee had been onto them, though, and had never really played along.
“You know what I remember?” Mitch said suddenly. “How Jessie was always saying those things. Those little quotes, or something. Remember? Always had a piece of a song, or something.”
“She always pointed out your faults, one way or another,” Evangeline agreed.
“Glad you weren’t my best friend,” Glenn muttered with a grimace.
“Yeah, what did she do to you?” Mitch asked.
Evangeline tossed her blond bob. “None of you really knew her, so don’t judge me. Jessie was popular. And she kind of liked to make me feel bad, just to make herself feel better. High school, you know…you get older and you realize how godawful it was.”
“They weren’t quotes. They were nursery rhymes,” Glenn said with a nod, as the tumblers clicked.
Mitch nodded eagerly. “That’s right! She was always kind of singing them. Singsonging. She said ’em to us guys. Her little joke or something. One of her favorites was about boys.”
“Oh, God…” Evangeline rolled her eyes.
“I forgot about that,” The Third said with a frown.
“Nursery rhymes?” Renee repeated, clearly skeptical. “I don’t remember that about her.”
“Me neither,” Becca said.
“It was all flirty Jessie bullshit, anyway.” Jarrett looked impatient. “That naughty boy stuff. We just said she came on to every guy at this table.”
Evangeline’s jaw set and her fingers clasped Zeke’s in a death grip.
Hudson exhaled and looked as if he’d rather be anywhere than in this room with his so-called friends. “The way I remember it, a lot of you guys came on to her. Perception. Hard to know who’s scamming who sometimes.”
“Oh, come on, Walker.” The Third was pissed, his face flushed, his eyes bright with challenge. “It had to be killing you, the way she acted. That the reason you had that fight? Because of us?”
“Yeah,” Hudson said with a cynical smile. “It’s all about you, Delacroix.”
“What the fuck was it about, then?”
Hudson grimaced. “I don’t know. She picked the fight with me. I told the cops—McNally—the same thing then. Jessie was edgy and distracted, and she wanted to fight. You all heard most of it. When we went to my place, it was more of the same.”
“She thought there was another girl in your life,” Tamara guessed.
“She was sixteen,” Hudson said. “She thought a lot of things.”
“Maybe there was someone else?” Evangeline suggested.
“McNally thought you might have killed her,” Scott reminded Hudson. He grabbed a bottle of red wine and Becca watched the liquid fill his glass, glinting bloodlike under the hanging lights. “Wasn’t his 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
