The Killing Game

by Nancy Bush

  Her heartbeat quickened as she walked forward and picked up the envelope by its edge. Sliding a finger under the flap, which wasn’t glued down, she carefully pulled out the hard white notecard. More block letters:

  LITTLE BIRDS NEED TO FLY.

  She stared in confusion. What? She lost her grip and the card fluttered to the floor. Immediately she bent to pick it up, trying hard to be careful, but it took an effort to get it back in the envelope without smearing her own fingerprints on it. Her mouth was dry, spitless. She didn’t know what the words signified, but they sounded ominous. A play on her last name, she guessed, but what did they mean?

  And who’d left it for her?

  Gooseflesh rose on her arms and she scurried out to the safety of her car.

  Chapter Two

  I’ve made my first move. I want my opponent to get a first clue, a small inkling, nudge, worry, that the game’s afoot. I look around my special room and see the boxes of board games from my youth, dusty now from disuse. The old grinder, desktop computer where I once spent hours in play now sits idle. I don’t need any of them any longer.

  I dream and strategize and plot. My vision is far in the future.

  But there’s much to do.

  * * *

  The echoing sound of hammers greeted Andi as she drove along the chunky gravel that made up the temporary driveway to the lodge. The structure currently rose three stories, a skeleton of wood and steel that the framers were pounding at furiously. When the building was finished, the exterior would be shingles, the roof slate, similar in style to the lodge at Crater Lake National Park, though not nearly so grand in size. It had been Greg’s idea for the homage to the 1930s lodge in southern Oregon, and Andi had loved it. Carter had been less enthusiastic about the idea, though he’d acquiesced in the end. Emma hadn’t really cared one way or another, apart from how much it was costing them and when they would see some income.

  Carter was already at the site, leaning against his shiny black BMW, ankles crossed, wearing a green golf shirt and tan chinos, his expression unreadable. He turned on a smile when he saw Andi approach, but like always, she got the feeling it was an effort for him. Greg’s little brother could be charming, but he was a shade too impressed with his own good looks for its spell to last long, except maybe on the string of pretty and vacant girlfriends he had as a retinue. He was smart, though, and had kept the project on track since Greg’s death. Andi wasn’t really sure what Carter thought about the lodge and lake community as a whole. Meanwhile, his sister could offer well-thought-out insights, at least when she was sober and when she was interested, but that was less and less lately. Today she was nowhere in sight as Andi pulled to a stop and got out.

  “How’re you doing?” Carter asked.

  “Fine.”

  The note was fresh on her mind and she wanted to tell someone, anyone, about it. She opened her mouth to do just that, but then Carter asked lightly, “No recent blackouts?”

  The words shriveled on her tongue. “What?”

  “The blackouts. Since Greg’s death? Oh, come on. It’s the fucking elephant in the room.”

  Her heart started pounding painfully. “I’ve lost focus a few times. I didn’t realize it was such a problem.”

  “You don’t remember passing out in the conference room?”

  “Carter!” She almost laughed, but then realized he was deadly serious.

  “Andi, you were out for fifteen minutes. Emma thought you were drunk, but then, she thinks everyone’s drunk.”

  “It wasn’t fifteen minutes.” Andi recalled the strangeness, the dizziness . . . and yes, the disorientation in the conference room. “I was dehydrated . . . I lost time . . . I was . . .” Pregnant.

  “This is why, Andi. This is why you can’t run the company like I know you want to.”

  “I don’t want to run the company. Where do you get that? But I’m majority stockholder and yes, I want to be a part of it.”

  “It’s hard enough with Emma, and she’s family.”

  Andi felt her face grow hot. He was exaggerating, but she should have told her doctors about her lapses in focus. “I’ve been to a doctor,” she said.

  “Good. What’d he say?”

  “She said there’s nothing wrong.” A lie, but she wasn’t about to tell him the truth.

  “Your guru shrink tell you that? You need to go to a real doctor.”

  “Dr. Knapp is a psychiatrist,” Andi answered tightly, “and I didn’t see her anyway. Where’s Emma?” she asked, looking back toward the road.

  “Did you check Lacey’s parking lot as you drove by?”

  Lacey’s was a shitkicker bar about a half mile from the lodge on the north road. It had scarred wooden chairs and tables, a clientele with a taste for Jack Daniel’s and hot, oily fries, country and western music on the jukebox, and a tiny outside area for smokers that was always in high demand.

  “I didn’t come that way. I came from my cabin.” She’d rather eat larvae than say anything about the note now.

  “Ah, the cabin. It’s yours now?”

  “I’m moving in this weekend.”

  “You sure you’re all right?” he asked, peering at her in a penetrating way.

  “You’re the one in a bad mood.”

  “You noticed. Well, no shit. You’re late, Emma’s God knows where, and I’ve got a meeting with Harlow Ransom this afternoon.” When Andi didn’t immediately respond, he said, “The county planner?”

  “I know who he is.”

  “Somebody’s gotta knock some sense into his head. If Ransom has his way, we won’t be able to subdivide the larger lots and those North Shore cabins’ll remain the squatter palaces they are.”

  He was specifically referring to a series of cabins similar to the one Andi had just purchased that had been sold to Wren Development in a block. No one had done any upkeep on them since the 1940s and they were all still standing by the grace of God. The Carrera brothers had made an offer for them, but the cabins’ cantankerous ninety-year-old owner had bullishly resisted, selling out lock, stock, and barrel to the Wrens before suffering a fatal heart attack.

  “I thought we were clear on that property.”

  “Ransom’s always sided with the Carreras,” he said. “This is what I mean, Andi. You have no business in the business. For all kinds of reasons.”

  “So, is Emma coming?” Andi asked tightly.

  He shook his head and brushed imaginary dirt from his slacks as he straightened. “Doesn’t look like it, does it?”

  “Are you going to the office later?”

  “I doubt it. Ransom isn’t the only person I have to see. Why?”

  “Well, actually, I thought maybe we would meet Emma there later, then, but I guess not.”

  “Just go home and we’ll take this up tomorrow.”

  “Fine.”

  They both went silent. She expected him to take off, but instead Carter yanked his cell phone from his pocket and, tight-lipped, stabbed out a number. After a series of rings, he pressed the Off button, and muttered tightly, “Emma’s ‘not available.’” There was a good chance he was right about Emma. Her drinking was escalating.

  “I’ll see you, and damn well better see Emma, in the conference room tomorrow at ten,” Carter said, wrenching open his driver’s door. He drove away carefully, herding his baby over the rough gravel, before punching the accelerator once the BMW was safely on the blacktop two-lane county road that circled the lake.

  Andi stayed rooted to the spot for long moments. Carter pissed her off, but he’d shaken her with his comments about her loss of focus. She thought about the prescription Dr. Knapp, her “guru shrink,” as Carter had called her, had given to her, the antidepressants she’d taken for a while but had let slide. Maybe she’d reacted to them. Maybe that was the problem. Except the conference room episode had been recent.

  She yanked out her cell and called Dr. Knapp but learned she couldn’t get an appointment until the following week. Well, fine. She wa
s moving this weekend anyway. She would tell the doctor about her pregnancy when she saw her, and she’d also tell her about the note left at her cabin.

  You should tell the police.

  And what would she say? Someone broke into my cabin and left a message that said Little birds need to fly? They would probably tell her it was a prank.

  But by whom?

  She bit her lip, then called Edie at Sirocco Realty but learned the agent was out of the office. When Edie’s voice mail came up, Andi said, “Hey, this is Andi Wren and I went to my cabin this morning and the front door was open. It looks like the latch is broken. I don’t remember it being that way before, but maybe. Anyway, someone was in there and left a note on the bed in the master for me. Give me a call and let’s talk.”

  After that she got in the Tucson and took the north road on her return to her house in Laurelton. A whisper of apprehension slid down her spine as she drove along the hairpin turn where Greg had driven off the road. His Lexus hadn’t made the last bend and he’d broken through the guardrail and flown off the edge of the cliff that rimmed this, the highest point above Schultz Lake and one of the most dangerous spots on the road. The guardrail had been replaced, but Andi couldn’t help throwing a quick glance over the edge, the view of firs and pines blocking all but a scintilla of green water far below.

  Ten minutes later she cruised past Lacey’s, checking the parking lot for Emma’s car, but of course it wasn’t there. Lacey’s wouldn’t be the kind of place Emma would choose for her drinking. Too low class. Andi thought about stopping in for a burger and fries herself, a craving she’d developed in the last few weeks—one she understood better now—but with nutrition high on her mind, she turned off the lake road and onto Sunset Highway toward a place near the Wren Development offices simply called The Café. She ordered a chicken salad sandwich on thick-sliced wheat bread and ate half of it at the bistro, taking the second halfback with her to her house, where she spent the next three hours packing up the last of her boxes.

  She then whiled away the rest of the afternoon and evening reading her myriad of baby books, the ones she’d initially packed away but had now dragged from their boxes, dreaming about renovating the second bedroom of the cabin into a nursery. Edie texted her around four to say she’d sent someone to the cabin to check on the lock and that she would call her in the morning. Andi gingerly pulled the envelope with the note from her purse, then put it in the bag she used for her laptop. She ate the second half of her sandwich for dinner and then packed up the meager items left in her refrigerator, putting them in another empty cardboard box: ketchup, mustard, a small carton of half and half cream, and ajar of dill relish. The rest of the refrigerator detritus she tossed out, ready for the last collection of her garbage.

  Lying in bed that night, she pushed thoughts of the disturbing note aside and concentrated on the joy of her pregnancy. She would go over everything with Dr. Knapp soon enough. Her thoughts turned to her friends and family, her brother Jarrett, her mother, Diana, who lived across the country in Boston, and of course, her closest friend, Trini, whom she was seeing the next day. She wondered when she should tell them about the baby. She almost didn’t want to say anything at all, worried that it would break the spell somehow.

  With no clear answer in mind, she drifted off to sleep.

  * * *

  She was awakened by a summer storm and flung back the covers and crossed to the window, watching lightning streak across the sky before hearing the rumble of thunder. Electrical storms were rare in Oregon and thrilling. Fascinated, she eagerly waited for another flash.

  The storm reminded her of one evening vacationing at one of the cabins with her mother, father, and brother. Jarrett had shaken her awake to watch the lightning with him. Their parents were already on the back porch overlooking the lake, each with a glass of scotch. It was the summer before her parents split up, but she was blissfully ignorant of any familial disharmony as they all waited for the next brilliant flash.

  Jarrett had pointed to the black water. “If you were out there in the middle. you’d get zapped and you’d be dead.”

  “It’s a good thing we’re not out there, then,” her father rejoined, his voice slightly slurred.

  “Like in a boat,” Jarrett stressed, “all by yourself.”

  “I’d never do that,” Andi told her brother indignantly.

  “Of course you wouldn’t,” Mom responded.

  Jarrett had ignored them both. “If you wanted to get rid of somebody, that’s how you’d do it, and no one would ever know. Take ’em out in a boat in a lightning storm.”

  “Timing wise, that would be impractical,” her father said, though it came out impragdigal. “You want to kill somebody you’d need a better plan.”

  “Jim,” Mom warned.

  “Come on, Diana. We’re just talking. Your coddling knows no bounds.”

  And then he’d tossed the rest of his drink onto the ground, splashing Mom’s pant leg in the process before stomping off to bed.

  Now, Andi crawled back into her own bed and wondered at the vagaries of memory, how sharp that one was, though her father had been out of their lives for years, succumbing to liver cancer five years earlier. Her mother called sporadically from Boston, where she’d moved after the divorce from Andi’s father. Soon, thereafter—too soon, in Andi’s opinion—she’d married a man named Tom DeCarolis whom Andi barely knew. Her mother had given birth to two more children with him whom Andi knew mostly through dutiful Christmas cards. Diana Sellers DeCarolis had drifted out of Andi and Jarrett’s life and into a new one across the country. Jarrett had moved to California for a while, tried a few different colleges but had returned to Oregon several years earlier and now worked for a wealthy restauranteur. She didn’t see much of him either. He’d called her after Greg’s death, but the conversation had been stilted, more because he’d once dated Trini and, after their ragingly dysfunctional relationship’s blowup ending, he didn’t seem to know how to deal with his sister any longer.

  Now Andi stared up at the ceiling and listened to distant thunder, remembering uneasily that Jarrett had occasionally passed out unexpectedly when he was younger as well, although she was pretty sure his blackouts had been heat-related. A hot room with little or no air flow had contributed to the problem, which was common for lots of people. Nothing malignant about it. Still, she should probably ask him if he still experienced blackout periods.

  She finally drifted back to sleep and woke with a heavy feeling that dogged her while she was getting ready to go to the club. She pushed her worries aside, concentrating instead on her pregnancy, as she drove to SportClub Laurelton and headed for her favorite treadmill. Light exercise, Dr. Schuster had said, and Andi planned to follow her advice to a tee. In black sweats and a dark gray tank, she kept a steady pace just under a jog. With her gaze on the television news program overhead, she tamped down the questions that circled endlessly through her mind. The current broadcast was from a blond woman who was delivering a stern reminder of the fire hazard that still was in evidence; they’d had little to no rain throughout August and September.

  Sweat beaded on her forehead, but Andi doggedly pushed forward, internally monitoring her body’s vitals. Her heart rate was elevated some, but she was still breathing fairly easily, unlike the man who’d taken the treadmill to her left and was now running full tilt, each step accompanied by a huh of effort, so that she heard huh, huh, huh, huh, huh in counterpoint to the newscaster.

  She thought about her cabin, wondering how many boxes she could fit in her car. Most of the boxes were filled with Greg’s belongings; of the two of them, she’d had lesser “things” when they’d entered into their marriage, and she hadn’t amassed tons more since.

  The blond newscaster turned over the program to an earnest-looking, dark-haired male reporter who was standing in front of the Multnomah County Courthouse in downtown Portland. “. . . hearing is slated for nine a.m. for Ray Bolchoy, who’s been accused of allegedly crea
ting false evidence to prove twin brothers Blake and Brian Carrera used coercion to gain control of property around Schultz Lake . . .”

  Andi looked up sharply. She knew about the Portland homicide detective who believed the Carrera brothers were responsible for several mysterious deaths around the greater Portland area. However, she hadn’t known his hearing was today. She wondered if the DA had enough evidence to convince the judge to go to trial. She didn’t know if Bolchoy was guilty of falsifying evidence or not, but she knew the Carrera brothers’ tactics were just short of criminal . . . maybe flat-out criminal.

  There was a picture of the gray-haired Bolchoy with a much younger man whose rakish good looks Andi had seen before. Bolchoy’s ex-partner. “. . . Lucas Denton,” the reporter said, reminding Andi of his name, “who gave up his career as a homicide detective when Bolchoy was put on administrative leave . . .”

  Next a clip was shown of Denton talking to a different reporter outside a strip mall office beneath a sign that read “Denton Investigations.” “I’m not discussing Ray’s intentions with the media,” Lucas Denton said, clearly annoyed at being caught outside his place of business. “All I know is that I didn’t like how things came down, so I quit.”

  “But do you think Bolchoy’s guilty?”

  “We’re all guilty of something. I’m guilty of wanting the Carreras to go down for their crimes.”

  The reporter kept the microphone close to Denton’s mouth, though he tried to turn away. “Did Bolchoy falsify evidence?”

  “Now you’re not listenin’ close, are ya? I’m not discussing Ray’s intentions with the media.”

  “People say he’s hard to know, but that you, his homicide partner of several years, were as close to him as anyone.”

  “We weren’t dating, if that’s what you want to know,” Denton said dryly, unlocking his office and stepping inside.