Red Blooded Murder

by Laura Caldwell

  But the tears were different now. They weren’t the soothing sobs to mourn the passing of a life lived well. These were angry sobs, full of despair. And mostly, full of fear.

  Because he had no idea how he would handle this grief. He had no idea how to move on from here.

  11

  “H ave you ever cheated?”

  Sam shot a sideways glance at me. His green eyes sparkled like olives in a martini. “Not on you.”

  “On anyone?”

  His eyes moved away, looking toward the empty stage. As he did so, the overhead lights glinted in his cropped blond hair, making him look like the California boy he was.

  We were no longer engaged or exclusive, but now, as we tried to figure out what to do with our lives and ourselves, Sam and I dated. Which meant that instead of spending our nights making dinner at home or watching the Cubs on TV, we went out for nights like this.

  We were at Wise Fools, a bar on Lincoln Avenue, where we often went when we first met. Like a lot of the other bars on Lincoln, it was wood-clad and beer-soaked, the kind of place that brought out the twenty-somethings searching for Bud Light specials. But Wise Fools booked great bands, too, and since Sam was a guitar player and an all-around music lover, we’d been finding ourselves there every few weeks.

  The band tonight was Mutha Goose, which I thought was just about the stupidest name I’d ever heard, but Sam’s friend R.T. was the lead guitarist. R.T. and Sam often played together, but Sam never had the time to be in a real band. He was always too busy with business school and then work. Sam, who had been Forester Pickett’s financial advisor at a wealth management firm, had lost his job, too, after taking off temporarily with Forester’s property, but unlike me, he’d landed on his feet. The fact that the whole mess had been in the news hadn’t helped me one bit. Lawyers don’t like even a whiff of a scandal associated with their law firm. The same was true with Sam’s business. None of the wealth management firms would take him on, but a friend gave him a job on the trading side of the business. He didn’t seem entirely happy, but I couldn’t tell if that was because of the new job or because we had broken up. Or maybe because he didn’t have the time to play much music lately, something which made him a little irritable.

  R.T. came on stage. By day, R.T. sold computer software, but his passion was his music, and nights like tonight, he looked like a musician-jeans that appeared not to have been washed for weeks, leather flip-flops, brown bangs that fell in his eyes instead of being gelled into submission.

  Sam waved hi to his friend, then turned back to me. I could see some kind of struggle in his eyes, but whether it was because he wished he were on that stage or he wished he didn’t have to answer my question, I didn’t know. I used to be able to read him so well.

  “I’ve cheated.” He said it simply, almost resignedly, as if it were something he’d wrestled and come to terms with.

  I felt a well of disappointment. Sam was a cheater. At that moment, I wanted to look at anything but him. I picked up my BlackBerry from the table and scrolled through the texts and e-mails. There was a time when my in-boxes would have been choked with cries for help, when someone always needed me or my opinion. Now they were fairly empty, save a text from my brother, Charlie, saying he might stop by the bar to say hello.

  I could feel Sam watching me, gauging my reaction to his statement.

  I put the phone back on the table and thought of his ex-girlfriend Alyssa, a woman who was beautiful and reed-thin. She and Sam had dated at the end of high school and into college. She was an angelic blonde who worked in geriatric research, making the world better for the elderly. In short, she made me feel like a shallow devil-the brassy, redheaded entertainment lawyer.

  I didn’t necessarily like Alyssa, but I felt pain for her now because she must have been the one Sam was talking about.

  Finally, I looked at him. “You cheated on Alyssa?”

  Sam shook his head. “Carrie.”

  “Carrie, your first girlfriend ever?”

  “Yeah.” He lifted his Blue Moon beer from the table and poked at the orange slice with his finger.

  “Sam, you were like a freshman in high school.”

  I thought of the monumentally idiotic things I’d done during high school. Once, when my mother was out of town and trusted me enough to babysit my brother, Charlie, I forced him to be the bartender for the monster bash I threw. He was twelve at the time. Charlie ended up drinking beer as he poured it from the keg and later threw up violently over our balcony and into the alley behind our apartment, one of the most scary and heartbreaking things I’d ever witnessed. Doing stupid things made you smarter, I figured. I’d certainly never treated my brother like that again. If anything, I had cherished and babied him after that. Oddly, he remembered the incident fondly.

  “Does that really count?” I asked Sam.

  “Hell, yeah. She was my first love.” He grimaced, as if what he’d done still tortured him. And that made my heart fill with love, like a balloon given a shot of air from an inflator.

  “You were so young,” I pointed out. “You didn’t know what you were doing.”

  “Yeah, I did.” He looked straight into my eyes. “You want to know why I did it?”

  I nodded, almost afraid to say anything. This was one of the things I liked about our breakup-despite the drama and the uncertainty, we were completely honest with each other now. Sure, we were honest before all this, too, but now it was different. Now, it was microscopic, as if we were both laying all our cards on the table and saying, If we’re going to do this, here’s the truth. The real, deep-down, not-so-tidy, sometimes-it-will-make-you-flinch truth.

  “You know what my dad is like?” Sam asked.

  “A drunken, selfish bastard.” I had never met Sam’s dad. Neither he nor his sisters had any consistent contact with him, but I’d heard the stories.

  R.T. and his band began playing. Their first number was a cover of a song by The Killers called, appropriately enough, “All These Things That I’ve Done.” The lights in the bar dimmed. The stage lights, orange and bold, grew stronger, while the music grew louder until it seemed the stage pulsed like a heart.

  Sam pulled his chair closer so I could hear him. “This was a few years before my mom finally got rid of him,” he said. “Then I kind of wanted to be like him. I thought the way he acted-tough and swaggering and hard-partying-was how guys were supposed to be. So I acted like that, you know? My mom was mortified, and she tried to stop me, but I didn’t care. I just…” His words died away for a second.

  “You wanted him to love you.” I watched his face for a reaction, hoping he wouldn’t close down the conversation because it was too uncomfortable, something that might have happened before our breakup.

  Sam blinked slowly a few times, his brown lashes hitting his cheeks, already tan from playing rugby outside. “Yeah. Exactly. I could tell he wasn’t going to be around for long, and even though I knew he was a jerk, I was terrified of having to take care of my sisters and my mom, even though no one ever said I had to. So I drank a lot and smoked pot and just kind of pretended I was like him. And then one day…man, I can remember it exactly…I came home from school early because I wasn’t feeling good or something. And he had this girl in the house. I knew her. She was a waitress at one of the pancake houses he owned, and she was the one I’d always had a crush on.” Sam shook his head. “They didn’t hear me come in. She was on the counter and they were…”

  “Going at it,” I finished for him, feeling the bewilderment and shock Sam must have experienced.

  “Yeah.” He laughed, a brittle sound. “Like, right there on my mom’s countertop. I just turned around and left. I went down the street to this park and I sat there for four hours. The next night, I went to a party and picked a fight with Carrie, and as soon as she left, I walked up to this girl by the pool. We ended up making out behind the pool house for an hour.”

  “And you think that’s cheating?”

  “Yes,” he s
aid without hesitation. “Don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said, relieved to be on the same page with Sam about this, about anything.

  Sam moved his chair even closer. He put his arm around my back and nuzzled my neck.

  “Red Hot.” Sam whispered my nickname in my ear. “I miss you.”

  I turned my head to nestle into him. But then I remembered Theo. Guilt ripped through me. I hadn’t cheated, I reminded myself. I hadn’t, I hadn’t.

  But I felt as if I had. Sam kissed me, and the room seemed to disappear. In the distance, I heard the band play a slow, hard version of “Tempted” by Squeeze. Tempted by the fruit of another…Alarmed by the seduction…I wish that it would stop.

  Except that I had no interest in stopping Sam now, or whatever would happen with us later that night. Suddenly, I didn’t care about the technicalities of dating two men, of whether that made me a bad girl, a temptress or a slut, when before I’d always been the pillar of fidelity, the poster child of monogamy.

  “Hey, what am I interrupting?”

  Sam and I pulled apart. I blinked at the figure that stood in front of our table, backlit by the stage lights. It took me a moment to make out my brother, Charlie, who wore a bemused expression on his face.

  “Hey, man!” Sam jumped up to give Charlie a hug. The two of them loved each other.

  Charlie returned the hug, thumping Sam on the back. Charlie had chestnut-brown hair but in the stage lights, you could see a tinge of red. He had spiral curls like mine, which he let grow a little longer than most men’s hair. He was one of the sweetest guys I knew. Also one of the laziest. Charlie had been living off a worker’s comp settlement for a few years now, and all his friends called him “Sheets” because he spent so much time in bed.

  I stood, and Charlie made his way around the table. He hugged me tight, lifting me off the floor. “How are you doing, sister?” He set me down, and we smiled at each other, saying nothing. “Good,” he said, reading in my eyes that I was just fine. At least at that moment.

  Sam found another chair for Charlie, and as he sat, my phone lit up. A new text message. I picked it up. Somehow I’d gotten three texts in the time Sam and I were kissing. All of them from Jane Augustine.

  Are you doing anything tonight? the first said. Would you be able to come over to my house?

  Hi, Izzy, the next said, I’m so sorry to bother you but not sure who to call. I’m kind of freaking out here, and I wondered if you were out and could stop by.

  Izzy, the last said. I need some help.

  I looked at the call log and saw she’d called twice but hadn’t left a message.

  I went into the front room of the bar, where it was quieter, and called Jane.

  “Thank God,” she said, answering. “I’m so sorry to interrupt your night, but can you come over?”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Someone has been in my house.”

  “What? Is Zac there?”

  “No, he took off today for our weekend place.” She exhaled hard. “I came home, and I found some…well, some stuff in my house.” She was talking fast, her voice distressed. “Someone has been in here.”

  “Have you called the cops?”

  “No!” Her voice was alarmed now, anxious. She sounded as if she were bordering on tears. “Izzy, you know how it is. If I call the cops, then this is all over the news. The network is launching Monday. A legal network. This is not the kind of PR we need.”

  “But are you safe?”

  “I’ve been through the whole house. There’s no one here now.” She sighed. “I didn’t know who to call, and you were always the one we went to when there was any problem with work. I don’t know…Is there any way you could come over?”

  “What’s your address?” I asked.

  She told me.

  “I’ll be right there.”

  12

  J ane’s place in River North was one of eight town houses, all clearly built at the same time, probably by the same developer, but hers was the nicest-an elegant graystone, nearly white. It was new construction but built to appear old with iron streetlamps with electrical flame that flickered like real fire and a black iron fence with twisted posts. French balconies surrounded the tall upstairs windows.

  The house was lit up-all the lights must have been on-but the shades on the first floor, tasseled at the edges, were drawn, hiding whatever was happening there. I hurried up the front steps, trailed by Sam and Charlie.

  The brass knocker was shaped like a lion’s head. I used it to pound on the door.

  Jane answered right away, as if she’d been standing behind the door, waiting for us.

  She wore workout clothes-black pants that hugged her long legs and a tight pink T-shirt that proclaimed the name of a local jewelry store and said, Simply the Best for 20 Years. Her hair was in a high, swinging ponytail. She seemed younger somehow, almost like a girl barely into her teens who looks like an adult from far away but seems so vulnerable and coltish up close.

  Or maybe it was the scared look on Jane’s face.

  “Izzy!” She launched herself into my arms with a fierce, tight hug. We’d never really embraced before, but I could tell she needed it, and I squeezed her back just as tight. “Thanks so much for coming.” She drew back. “You look cute,” she said, distractedly.

  “Thanks.” I was wearing a red, patterned skirt and tall black heels for my date with Sam. “Jane, this is Sam, my…” I still didn’t know what to call him. My ex-fiancé wasn’t right, and boyfriend wasn’t, either. I decided to just skip it. “And my brother, Charlie.”

  She shook their hands. “Hi, guys, c’mon in.” Jane looked nervously up and down the street before leading us into her house.

  Inside was a wide living room with polished wood floors. The walls were a soothing fawn color; the moldings along the high ceilings were painted a creamy ivory. Jane, or her very talented decorator, had filled the place with plump, coconut-brown couches and overstuffed chairs on either side of the five-foot marble fireplace. There were colorful touches everywhere-still-life oil paintings that hung side by side, an Aztec vase which stood on a pedestal, throw pillows with an African print.

  “Wow.” Charlie looked around in wonder. “Great place.” Charlie found everything fascinating. He would have been awed by an eight-by-eight prison cell. But he was right, Jane’s place was unique-somehow both chic and welcoming.

  “Thanks.” Jane glanced around, as if suddenly seeing it through someone else’s eyes. “My husband and I have been here for almost ten years.”

  “You won an Emmy?” Charlie pointed to a built-in bookshelf next to the fireplace. On it was a gold statue of a winged woman holding aloft a globe.

  Jane smiled. “Yes. Last year.”

  “Can I touch it?”

  Jane laughed. “Sure. Pick it up.”

  Charlie walked over to the shelf and lifted the statue. “Wow.” He curled it a few times as if it were a barbell. “This thing is heavy.”

  “Charlie!” I said. “Be careful.”

  “What? It’s cool.”

  Jane laughed again. “Don’t worry about it.” She looked at me. “Izzy, can I show you something?”

  “Of course.”

  “We’ll be right back,” she said to Sam and Charlie.

  “Take your time,” Sam said. He shot me a smile. If Sam was upset that our date had been interrupted, first by my brother and then by Jane’s SOS call, he didn’t show it. And that made me love him all the more.

  If only, I thought for a second. If only we could base our decisions about who to love (and how to spend our lives) solely on a feeling we have at a given moment. If that was the case, I wouldn’t care what Sam had done months before or why he hadn’t confided in me about it.

  Jane led me from the living room into a massive kitchen with a center granite island marbled in colors of sand and black. On the island sat a tall vase of flowers.

  She pointed at them. “When I got home, they were here.”


  “The flowers?” It was a mixed bouquet, clearly expensive, in orange and red-passionate colors.

  “I have no idea who left them. Zac took off this morning for our other house.” A pained expression moved into her face. “He left after I got back from coffee with you. He said he couldn’t be around me. He went to our house in Long Beach on the other side of the lake. I went to rehearsals and then worked here in my office for a while-there’s so much to do to get ready for the launch on Monday-and Zac called me from the lake house when he got there. I finally took a break and went to the gym before it closed. I was gone for an hour and a half, and when I came home, this was here.” She crossed her arms and looked at the vase as if it were filled with rotting food.

  “Is it possible Zac left it before he went to Long Beach, and you didn’t notice?”

  “No, I’m telling you, the flowers weren’t here before I went to the gym. And there was no card. Someone came into the house while I was out and left them.”

  “Any clue who that is?”

  She shook her head again.

  I stared at the flowers, the kitchen feeling cooler all of a sudden. “Who has keys to your house?”

  “Zac and I. Our cleaning lady. Zac’s mom, but she’s still in London for the winter.”

  “Was the house locked?”

  She nodded. “I always lock it before I go anywhere, even if I’m just walking up the street for the paper. The thing is, we’ve got a key hidden outside, near the garage, just in case.”

  “How many people know about that?”

  She exhaled. “A fair number. I have this little problem of losing my keys, so all my friends know about it, and some of the…” She raised her eyes to me, asking me to understand.

  “Some of the guys.” I said this plainly, with no judgment. And the truth was, I really didn’t judge Jane for having affairs. It wasn’t for me, but I had never believed that the rest of the world needed to conform to my ways. “So you bring people like that here?”