False Impressions

by Laura Caldwell

  Nope, I couldn’t do it. I needed some help.

  I turned away and headed toward the entrance of the station.

  Then, I stopped again and texted Mayburn to let him know where I was—just in case Vaughn decided to randomly arrest me again.

  But this time, I was the one coming to find Vaughn. When I’d called from my car, I’d been told by the front desk that Vaughn was in the office and would see me. But ten minutes later I was still tapping my fingernails on the counter.

  The uniformed officer glanced at my hand, then at me.

  “Sorry,” I said, taking a step back.

  Finally, Vaughn sauntered into the lobby. He wore a blue buttoned-down shirt, pressed brown pants and a shoulder holster. I looked down and noticed surprisingly attractive brown boots.

  He gestured across the hallway, where there was a small conference/interview room. “In here okay?” He sounded surprisingly nice.

  When we were in the room, he nodded toward a small desk. I sat. A closed laptop was bolted to the top. I leaned my elbows next to it. “Thanks for seeing me. I need you to answer a hypothetical. That’s the main reason I’m here.”

  “And the other reason?”

  “Figuring out what in the hell happened the other night.”

  I stopped, sat back, so he could jump in and apologize.

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Okay, let’s start there. With the other night,” I said. “On one hand I get it—you Chicago cops are always looking out for your own, and you have buddies who are bar owners. And they had some girl who didn’t pay the cover. Fine. Why did you have to handle it? I don’t know.”

  He coughed, seemed like he was going to say something, but stopped.

  “What?” I prompted.

  He sighed.

  “What?”

  “I do have a lot of buddies who are bar owners, and they have been calling me more frequently.”

  “Why?”

  He shook his head; he wouldn’t meet my eyes. “You know, since the breakup.”

  “Oh, I see. Are they trying to get you in the bars so you can pick up chicks?”

  He glared at me. But he didn’t correct me.

  “So you could meet women,” I said, revising.

  This time he nodded.

  “Ah,” I said. “How’s that going?”

  He shook his head again.

  “Okay, fine,” I said. “So they call with the excuse that a blonde didn’t pay the cover. They get you away from your beat where you can maybe meet some girls, and then…”

  He didn’t explain.

  “What were you thinking?”

  “Initially? That the blonde was hot.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s nice.” I shifted on the chair. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “But then you realized it was me.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you got this disgusted look on your face. What was that about?”

  He sighed. “I was thinking that you get to have all the fun.”

  “I get to have all the fun? Like last year when you were accusing me of murder? That was a big bowl of fun cherries.”

  He paused. Glared. “I guess it’s just that everything works out for you.”

  “Oh, that’s rich. Did you notice I’m not engaged like I was when I met you last year? That the boyfriend I had after that relationship is now out of the country? Did you notice that I’m not employed by that huge law firm anymore?” Truthfully, I was glad I wasn’t at Baltimore & Brown, but I wasn’t about to tell Vaughn that.

  He said nothing.

  “So, why arrest me, when you realized it was me?”

  His head was hanging low now. “It’s so fucked up. I’m embarrassed.”

  I was about to say, You should be embarrassed.

  “It’s like I don’t know how to date anymore,” he said, speaking faster than I’d heard. “I don’t…” He looked around the room as if searching the walls for words. “Okay, here it is…” He exhaled, didn’t look at me, but he kept going. “It’s like I don’t know how to talk to women without the shield of my badge and my marriage.”

  My eyebrows drew together, thinking of something. “Oh. You said you thought I looked hot that night. You arrested me, when you knew it was me…so we could spend time together?”

  A mere nod.

  “Dude, that is so flubbed up.” The swear word replacement wasn’t working. “So fucked up,” I corrected.

  Nothing from Vaughn.

  “Look,” I said, feeling bad for him. “I have a buddy, Grady, from my old law firm. He’s got a girlfriend now, but he’s always been quite the ladies’ man. Maybe I can put you two together for a beer, and he can give you some tips.”

  More glaring, more head hanging. Why, why, had I said that?

  “Why don’t we table this part of the discussion?” I suggested.

  “Please.”

  “Great. So let’s get to the hypothetical I want you to answer.” I sat up straighter. “What do you do—as a police officer—when you have a victim of a crime, but the victim doesn’t want to press charges?”

  Vaughn looked at me for the longest time. “This isn’t about me?”

  “No.”

  “In any way?”

  I thought about it. “No.”

  His body relaxed. He leaned back in the chair across from me and pointed. “Well, as a lawyer, you know that it’s not up to the victim if he wants to press charges.”

  I nodded. “So what’s the protocol? How do you handle it?” Vaughn seemed to be mulling over the situation, so I kept talking. “Do you just move forward?” I asked. “Do you just process the charges, start the ball rolling?”

  “No.” Vaughn shook his head in ponderous arcs. “No.”

  “What then?”

  “The first, and only, thing I’d do right now?”

  I nodded.

  “Make damn sure you have the right guy.”

  Or right girl, I thought.

  I debated whether or not to tell Vaughn about Madeline’s case. But Madeline had seemed insistent this morning that the authorities not be contacted yet. She was my client, via Mayburn. I had to listen, at least for now, to what she wanted me to do.

  But then something else occurred. I stopped thinking about Madeline, and about Madeline and Syd. And suddenly, I wondered— Why does Madeline Saga not want to turn in Jacqueline Stoddard?

  61

  “No,” Jacqueline Stoddard said, interrupting my introductory spiel. “I will not talk to you. I’ve hired one of the best lawyers in the city.”

  I couldn’t help but wonder whom she’d retained.

  “I’ve been instructed,” she continued, “not to talk to you or Ms. Saga.”

  No more Lina, I noticed.

  “Or to the police.” She hugged her arms around herself.

  “May I sit?” I asked gently, pointing to the office couch where Madeline and I had sat yesterday. I needed more time. Despite her words, I could tell she had something to say. And I really, really wanted to hear it. She paused, her lips pursing. Finally, she nodded.

  When I’d sat, she said, “I did not write that email you referred to. I did not.”

  “And the sculpture?”

  “What sculpture?” Her brows, perfectly waxed and arched, raised.

  I got out my phone and showed her a photo of the knife in the flesh.

  She looked at me. “That? You think that’s me? God, no.” Her words were adamant. She wanted me to believe her. And that was helpful, because I needed her to talk to me. I needed her help figuring some things out.

  I leaned forward and put my elbows on my knees, letting my hair hang toward my face, giving what I hoped was a calm, kind smile. “You were the one who was keeping an eye on her, right?” I asked her. “It started out as a good thing. You really wanted to help her.”

  “God, yes.” She covered her eyes with her hands as she had last time, but her voice sounded strangled. “I am mortifi
ed at my behavior, and how…out of control it’s gotten. The comments, the constant watching her gallery—it really did start as an altruistic endeavor.” Her hand dropped away from her eyes. She looked into mine. “I swear.”

  Sitting in front of Jacqueline Stoddard then, following my discussion with Vaughn, I thought I knew right then how it felt to be a Chicago police detective—one whose true desire was to find the people who were doing the wrong, at least part of the wrong. I wanted to pin her down to the truth. That was why the police had procedure.

  Since I wasn’t on the police force, I had no duty to explain anything to Jacqueline Stoddard before I asked her any more questions. But it struck me as wrong to hold the detectives, and Vaughn, to a different standard than myself in the same situation.

  So I sat up straighter on the maroon couch. I asked Jacqueline Stoddard a couple of questions— You realize I am not your lawyer? You realize you don’t have to talk to me? You’re going into this conversation to tell me your side of the story?

  To all, she answered yes.

  62

  “So, you started keeping an eye on her?” I settled back in the couch to make Jacqueline feel more comfortable.

  I put on my figurative deposition hat. I was happy to be able to practice the skills, since there were few or no deps in criminal work. I pulled a notepad out of my bag. “Do you mind?” I asked Jacqueline. “I can show you everything I write.”

  “That’s fine,” she said quickly, softly, as if to say, Let’s just get this over with.

  “When you first started to ‘keep an eye out for’ Madeline, when exactly was that?”

  Jacqueline Stoddard leaned back in her chair, as well. She wore a soft blue scarf around her neck. It struck me as the same as the faint color under her eyes today. If I were an artist, that’s how I’d have painted Jacqueline Stoddard—with the scarf and all around the eyes as the primary color, blue. The rest would be dove gray, like Jacqueline’s outfit, her mood.

  “I really did want to make sure she was okay.” Jacqueline let her chair swivel and she looked out the window. Across the street was the Wrigley Building, where Madeline’s gallery was on the first floor. Now, our view was the gray and sculpted stone surrounding the higher windows of the building. In that light, everything inside those windows looked black, soulless.

  “I don’t know how to describe this,” Jacqueline said with a mirthless laugh. “It’s absurd, but I truly wanted to be friends with her. I started calling her Lina, because I felt like that was a girlfriend’s thing to do.” She looked away from window, at the side wall of her office, as if telling her sins to a priest in a confessional, preferring not to see the listener. “I’ll correct something. I didn’t necessarily want to be her friend. I wanted to be her mentor. And I thought…” A pause, the heavy scent of pain in the air. “I actually thought she would want to be my protégé.”

  She paused, and I let the silence stay there, sensing she would fill it.

  “I constantly get requests from art and design schools. Become a mentor! they say. Give back to the art community! But to be honest…” She took a breath. “I felt like I needed a mentor. No one had helped me in this business. I taught myself, then I went to art school, then I did studio work for a few years. When I realized I wanted to be on the other side of the business—the business side—I went back to school, and I had to learn a whole other scene, a whole other network of people. And it was exhausting.”

  At this, she turned to me. Her eyes were open wide, pleading for understanding.

  “I know what you mean. I do,” I said honestly. “You’re so scared you’re failing that it’s hard to imagine what wisdom you could impart to someone else. You’re not sure yet that you’re doing anything right.”

  “Exactly.” She looked at me. “You fear that you might, in fact, give the wrong advice to a mentee.”

  I nodded.

  “I’d followed Madeline’s career from afar since she got to Chicago,” she said. “I thought she was brazen, really smart, fascinating. I really was, career-wise, ahead of her at the time. As I grew more successful, I thought, Now I feel ready. Now I feel ready and contented enough to share what I have.” Her eyes dipped.

  “She rejected you?” I said.

  Jacqueline returned her eyes to me. “Madeline was friendly with my overtures, but yes, she rejected me. And I took it personally.”

  Jacqueline clasped her hands, as if praying, and put them in her lap. The confession continued. “To make it worse, it seemed like Madeline hogged the PR spotlight, always being featured in one magazine or another, even national magazines, even when she didn’t have an exhibition or an opening to publicize,” she said. “Every magazine covered her. Her, not just her gallery—Michigan Avenue, CS, Chicago Magazine, the Trib, the Sun-Times, Architectural Digest, Vogue, New York Times. The list went on and on.”

  “Wow,” I said. I didn’t know Madeline had garnered such professional respect for herself. But I understood why.

  “Wow,” Jacqueline repeated. “Exactly. She represented something to me. In her love and appreciation for art? I saw that she was on an entirely different level than me. Professionally and personally. I knew enough to see that much. But I also knew…” Jacqueline’s body seemed to shrink and hunch over all at the same time. “I knew,” she said, “that I would never reach the state that Madeline was at. Not in my lifetime.”

  “That’s what you meant by ‘she obliterates,’” I said, keeping any judgment out of my voice. The truth was, I really didn’t have any judgment.

  “Yes.” A beat went by. “She showed me what could be, and at the same she time obliterated any hope that I could be that way myself.”

  “I don’t think you’re analyzing this correctly,” I said. “Madeline is simply a different person than you are.” I leaned forward again, wanting to give Jacqueline Stoddard, who looked so very defeated right now, some kind of comfort. “Isn’t that all you recognized in that situation? Aren’t we all different?”

  She shook her head. “I distinctly saw her as above me. That’s how I viewed it—she showed me what could be, and at the same time, she showed me that I would never be that. I could not get those impressions out of my head, and I starting resenting her.” Jacqueline was talking louder and faster. “And then I started disdaining her, and meanwhile, I’m acting so…inauthentic. I’m acting like all is fine, because why would a professional and accomplished and creative person like me be envious, jealous, of anyone? Hadn’t I accomplished enough not to have to deal with that kind of burden?” Her words just stopped for a while. Finally, she continued, but in a softer voice. “And that made me hate Madeline.”

  “Sounds like a vicious circle,” I said.

  Her eyes met mine. They were exhausted again, defeated.

  I hated to do it, but I had to ask. “The knife,” I said. “The sculpture in that picture. Was that yours? Was that a threat, reminding Madeline that you could return the ‘obliteration’?”

  Jacqueline shook her head. “No.” She appeared definitive and I was inclined to believe her, given the statements that had been pouring from her mouth. I put aside the knife sculpture for the moment.

  “You said you did studio work,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “So you had the skills to forge the Dudlin. And the other piece.”

  “Ha. No. I left studio work because I didn’t have the chops. I wasn’t a great artist by any stretch.”

  “You don’t have to be a good artist to copy, do you?”

  “On the contrary, you have to be gifted. And I was definitely not gifted. Or even good.”

  She shook her head again. But this time her look was different. This time, if I was correct, she was scared.

  I looked a little inside myself. And what I saw was that I was scared, too.

  Because if Jacqueline was telling the truth, and she hadn’t been responsible for the knife sculpture, if she hadn’t sent that email and stolen the artwork, then who had?

&
nbsp; 63

  I got back to my condo and I was frustrated.

  I paced around. I made a fire and sat in my yellow-and-white chair. I gazed into the fire, searching for stillness and clarity. But my thoughts bounced from Jaqueline Stoddard to Syd, to Jeremy and the Fex, to Amaya and everyone else I’d met while working on this case. And to add to the list, tomorrow morning, I had a meeting with Margie Scott, the art-moving specialist.

  I was getting nowhere, so I decided to put the case out of my mind for a while. Instead, I got up and cleaned out some closets. I found all sorts of Theo’s adventure gear. Currently, I possessed a wind-surfing vest, a bike pump, a tent and a lot of nylon straps.

  Would Theo ever want these things in the future? Had he discarded them, in his mind at least? Would he ever be back for them? I left those ideas to sift around as I unloaded the closet, discovering more of Theo’s stuff.

  When that was done, I paced some more. I left a message for my dad. Maybe I would talk to him about…what? The case? But he hadn’t worked on it since its inception. Dating? I would tell him that I had gone out a few times with a guy named Jeremy? That I hadn’t heard from him since his wife was in the gallery? Or the fact that I really didn’t mind that much. Jeremy was charming. Beyond. But I didn’t miss him when he wasn’t around.

  I looked longingly at Theo’s gear. I was struck with the feeling that I hadn’t appreciated him enough when I had him. Was that right? Or was I simply missing someone around the house to talk to?

  Who else could I call? Maggie had told me that she and Bernard were having a date night, introducing him to more of Chicago.

  I tried Charlie. No answer. I tried my mom and Spence. Same thing. My dad preferred texts, so instead on calling again, I sent him one, which was quickly answered with Love to see you. Tomorrow? I stared at the word—love. My father hadn’t said he loved me since he returned. He wasn’t the type. But that word meant a lot to me.

  I sighed, sat down in the yellow chair again.

  I thought of another person to call.