LITMIR.BIZ

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      But…she was spooked. No question about it. And if she was “marked for death” by God, she was going to find out who and why and wherefore. And her friends were going to help her.

      Chapter Five

      Renee was about to go after the missing trio herself when Hudson and Becca came in together. Figured. And then Mitch flew in behind them, smelling of cigarettes. She opened her mouth to continue but Tamara spoke first.

      “Maybe we should go around the table, tell something we remember about Jessie,” Tamara suggested. Zeke groaned, but she ignored him. “Renee can write her piece and we can all put in a little something. Renee’s right. We’ve all been carrying this around way too long. I’m all about closure. Becca, you go first.”

      Becca, taking her chair next to Jarrett, half choked. “I didn’t even know her that well.”

      “Didn’t you?” Renee asked.

      Evangeline cut her off. “I’ll start. Since you all think Jessie was supposed to be my best friend.”

      “Your evil best friend,” The Third reminded her.

      “Jessie had a lot of problems,” she said tartly.

      The Third snorted. “Aside from the dark-side thing, what kind of problems?”

      “Enough,” Zeke said, catching The Third’s eyes. “Let her talk.”

      Evangeline linked her fingers more tightly through Zeke’s. “There were problems at home. Big problems that she wouldn’t really talk about, and she…she lived a weird fantasy life, too.”

      “It wasn’t that weird,” Renee disagreed.

      “She thought all the guys wanted to screw her, okay?” Evangeline’s gaze skated to each of the men at the table. “She was obsessed with it. Flirting and playing up to the guys, teasing them. You all know.”

      “That was a long time ago,” Mitch said somewhat uncomfortably.

      Evangeline glared at Mitch. “It was all a long time ago, but that’s why we’re here, isn’t it? Anyway, that’s what I remember about Jessie. You can make it all hearts and flowers and gee, poor Jessie if you want to, but the truth of the matter was, Jessie wasn’t very nice.”

      Becca gazed thoughtfully at Vangie. She remembered a whisper of a rumor that Zeke had been fascinated with Jessie and had been seeing her behind his best friend Hudson’s back. Becca had dismissed the rumor then, as she did now, as the product of Evangeline’s own obsession with Zeke.

      “What do you think, Walker?” The Third needled. “Your girlfriend want all of us?”

      “Shut up,” Hudson said, irritated.

      “She 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.

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