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“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?”
