LITMIR.BIZ

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gleaming beneath the parking lot sodium vapor lights as drifting smoke hovered thick in the air.

      The place had an almost vacant feel to it, even though the firefighters were still wrapping up their hoses and the trucks stood by, engines thrumming. Any looky-loos had left and Gia Stafford had been driven home by someone, thank God. The only person Mac still recognized was Scott Pascal, who sat on a wet curb and stared through red-rimmed eyes to the black, sodden hulk of Blue Note. Mac, who was rarely known for flights of fancy, had a sudden, sharp vision of a trumpet player squealing out some impossibly high note that ended in an echo of sadness. Blue note, indeed.

      Pascal half turned. “Did you talk to Gia?”

      He gazed at Pascal’s profile, noting the deep weariness etched in his face. One thing Mac had discovered from his years of interviewing people was that you never knew what they might say in times of deep stress. He’d found it beneficial to keep his mouth shut. Ask a few tight questions, but just wait for it, something Gretchen had yet to learn, if she ever would.

      “Accident or arson?” Mac posed.

      Pascal went quite still. “Who’s saying arson?”

      “Maybe no one. It’s always a question, though, in a case like this.”

      “A case like what? They’re not telling me anything.” He shot a vituperative glare at the departing firemen. Belligerence uglied his face.

      “Come on, Pascal. You were bleeding money.”

      “You went through my financials?” He half rose from the curb.

      “More like a guess. Your employees weren’t exactly shy about saying how long they felt the restaurant would hang on.”

      He thought about that and sat back down. “Nice,” he said sourly, then lifted an eyebrow. “How much time did they give us?” he asked with a touch of irony.

      “A week or two. Maybe a month.”

      “You know Blue Ocean is taking off. Everyone said we’d never make it at the beach, but you’d be surprised.”

      “At the coast?” Mac reiterated, thinking of the oyster shell, the fact that Jessie Brentwood had been hitchhiking along the road leading from the coast soon before she disappeared.

      “Yeah, Lincoln City.”

      Quite a bit south from where the Brentwoods had once owned a cabin.

      Pascal said, “It’s been a problem getting it going, sure, but it’s a great location, and we lucked out with this chef who doesn’t know how damn good he is, which is absolutely unheard of. Glenn, damn him…” He swallowed hard. “He never really knew what we had. He just used it as a place to escape from his wife.” He barked out a bitter laugh. “Guess he finally achieved his goal.”

      “Their marriage in trouble?”

      “Everything was trouble for Glenn.”

      “Yeah.”

      Pascal ran his hands through what was left of his hair and sighed. “Man, he was a pain in the ass.”

      Mac smiled faintly. This was as honest as Scott Pascal had ever been with him. All the barriers were down. He almost hated to send them flying upward again, but that was his job.

      But Pascal beat him to the punch. Throwing a look at Mac, he said, “You probably think this has something to do with Jessie. That’s kind of your M.O. Everything that involves my friends has to do with Jessie.”

      Mac lifted his palms.

      “Go ahead. Ask me all kinds of questions about Jessie. Here I am…I’ve damn near lost everything…maybe the insurance company’ll pull me through, but Glenn’s gone and God knows what’s next…but you…You want to know about Jessie. So ask, Detective McNally. Ask away.”

      “I don’t really see how this fire, and Stafford’s apparent death, have anything to do with Jessie,” Mac admitted.

      “Well, he got a note from her.”

      “Glenn got a note from Jessie?” Mac’s pulse leapt but he frowned at Pascal, not wanting to give too much away. “When?”

      “Don’t know, a couple of days ago, I guess. It was that nursery rhyme Jessie used to say.” Scott singsonged the message to Mac in a high, girlish voice that sent icy fingers sliding down his spine. That was the second imaginative thought he’d had this evening and he wondered if he was losing it, just a little.

      “Where is this note?”

      “Maybe his office. Maybe it’s burned up with him.”

      “Don’t suppose it had a return address on it? Postmark?”

      “Portland. I caught a glimpse of it. The zip code was somewhere near Sellwood—yeah, I checked.”

      This was making no sense whatsoever and Sellwood was across the Willamette River, in southeast Portland.

      “Why did Glenn get it?”

      “You tell me. He always kind of lusted after Jessie, but he was kinda like that anyway. His tongue hanging out over every pretty girl. It never changed over the years. Jessie had nothing to do with him, though. She wanted Hudson. She’d use a guy to get to Hudson, but that was all it was.”

      “You’re talking from experience?”

      Scott sighed and looked toward the sky. The rain had ceased completely but the wind was picking up, shaking water from the soot-laden leaves of a nearby tree. “She liked the dark, mysterious ones.”

      “Like Jarrett Erikson or maybe Zeke St. John?”

      “Zeke was Hudson’s best friend,” he said, as if the thought had just come to him again. “That might have appealed to her. Jessie was”—he looked away, as if searching for the right word—“a little twisted, I guess.”

      “Why Glenn, then?” Mac repeated. And how would a dead girl send a note? He was damned near certain Jessie had been dead for twenty years, and no way could she have sent anyone a note.

      “She was a tease. It’s what she did.”

      “Who else did she sing the rhyme to?”

      “Every one of us.” He got to his feet and dusted off the seat of his pants, which were wet and looked cold. As if reading his mind, Pascal shuddered and turned away, toward his vehicle.

      “You know, the body we found. We’re pretty sure it’s Jessie Brentwood, so unless she’s a ghost with her own stationery, I don’t think she’s sending anyone any mail, not from Sellwood or anywhere else.”

      “I’m just saying Glenn got a note, anonymously, okay? And inside were Jessie’s words.” His gaze was steady. “Maybe someone played a sick prank on him.”

      “Someone who knew about the nursery rhyme.”

      “We all knew.”

      “You think anyone else got notes?” Mac asked, wondering if the jerk was bullshitting him. It wouldn’t be the first time.

      “Ask ’em,” Scott said, then jogged away through the trees to a parking lot in a strip mall. Once there, he climbed into a dark gray truck and drove off.

      “I will,” he said to himself. “I’ll ask every damned one of you.”

      “Let’s start over,” Hudson said to Becca. “You saw an image of this note burning and you think it was sent to Glenn.” He was still holding the damning piece of paper in his fist and he was confused as all get-out. So far, it had been one helluva night. First the fire, then Glenn’s death, and now Becca’s visions or whatever you want to call them about a note he’d received just today.

      “No, Hudson,” she said, her voice taking on an edge. “I don’t think it. I know it.”

      “Fine. Then

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