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“Scott Pascal and Glenn Stafford own a restaurant together?” she asked, thinking of two of the boys she’d known at St. Elizabeth’s. She hadn’t heard that they’d gone into business together and she didn’t recall them being particularly good friends in school, but that had been a long time ago. Things change. And business partners didn’t necessarily make the best friends or bedfellows.
“Not just Blue Note. They have another restaurant in Lincoln City, I think.”
“I wouldn’t have guessed,” she said. But then I wouldn’t have guessed that you would call me after all this time, or that a body that could be Jessie’s would be discovered at the school…
“Renee wants everyone to meet Thursday after work, around seven, if they can make it.” Becca heard a bit of hesitation in his voice, as if he was second-guessing his sister’s plan.
“I can be there.”
“Good.”
“Is it?”
Again a bit of hesitation, then he said, “Who knows? Renee seems to think none of us have gotten over it.”
“‘It’ being Jessie’s disappearance.”
“Yeah.”
Have you? Becca wondered and doubted it.
Hudson added, “She thinks there’s maybe some course of action we should take to find out if it’s Jessie.”
“Like going to the police?” Becca said dryly.
“The police weren’t exactly our friends,” Hudson agreed.
Becca leaned back against the couch and glanced out the living room window. The night was dark. Thick. Rain still ran down the windowpanes. Absently she rubbed Ringo’s furry head and thought back. The police had subjected them all to hours of interrogation in the wake of Jessie’s disappearance. The guys had suffered the brunt of the authorities’ scrutiny, but the girls had been interviewed as well. Though the general consensus at the school and police department had been that Jessie had run away again, there’d been one cop who’d insisted she was murdered and he put Hudson and the guys in their group through the wringer, interrogating them over and over again until The Third’s father, a Portland lawyer who owned several buildings near the waterfront, had threatened to sue the department for harassment. The cop had backed off a little, or so it had seemed, but Becca had felt that he’d had a personal vendetta to fulfill.
Between Christopher Delacroix Junior’s threats, lack of evidence, and a missing body, the case had gone stone cold.
“I’ll see you Thursday,” Hudson said, breaking into Becca’s reverie.
“Will Tamara be there?”
“Think so.”
“Good. Hey, before you hang up, what was that cop’s name? The one who wouldn’t believe Jessie ran away?”
“Sam McNally,” Hudson said,
a distinct chill to his voice.
“Mac,” Becca said, remembering. Though the cop, only about ten years older than the kids he was interrogating, had mostly left her alone, he’d haunted their days and nights long after Jessie disappeared. “So now do you think he was right? About Jessie being murdered?”
“I don’t know.” He was terse. Suddenly distant again. “I sure as hell hope not.”
“But if she’s still alive…where’s she been all this time?”
“Somewhere else.”
“Yeah…”
“I’ve got to call a few more people, see if they’ll join us.”
“Okay.”
He hesitated a second, then said, “Good talking to you, Becca,” and hung up.
