Red Blooded Murder

by Laura Caldwell

  Q peered at my face. “TV makeup?”

  “Yeah.” I told him about anchoring the morning show. And the flop sweat attack. As a result, they’d powdered me in a massive way again that day.

  “Wow.” Q peered at me some more. “It’s going to take an industrial squeegee to get that off.”

  “And a blowtorch.”

  Neither of us laughed.

  “I can’t believe this.” Q adjusted his black tie, which he wore with a gray-and-black houndstooth jacket. His new boyfriend had lots of cash, and since they’d gotten together, Q had become a true fashionista. “You okay?”

  “No.”

  He grabbed me around the waist, and we hugged tight.

  “Drink?” he said.

  “Definitely.”

  We made our way through the crowd to the bar, said hello to a few people and ordered two glasses of wine.

  As we waited for our drinks, I looked around the place. “Oh!” I said, when my eyes landed at the far corner.

  A table had been set up there, and on top of it, leaning against the wall, was a blown-up head shot of Jane. In it, she wore a crisp white blouse and a gold braided necklace. She was laughing in the photo, her eyes sparkling. I thought of her, just a few nights ago, outside on the patio, saying, When someone tells you you’re beautiful, you act like it’s the first time you’ve heard that. Because you never know when it’ll be the last.

  Tears flooded my eyes.

  Q handed me a glass of wine. “Sip this.”

  I gulped it instead, wanting something to tamp down the emotion that coursed through me as I looked at that photo.

  On the table beside the picture were two scrapbooks, filled with what looked to be pictures of Jane. Many, I guessed, taken by Zac.

  Q looked from me to the scrapbooks and back. “Let’s talk about something else for a second. How’s the twenty-one-year-old?”

  “In Mexico.”

  “Oh, honey, is that what he told you? That’s the oldest excuse in the book for not calling.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Train wreck. Told you.”

  I gave him a withering look.

  I kept glancing at the table with the scrapbooks, debating whether I could handle looking at them, when I noticed that Zac, grim-faced, hands in his pockets, was standing near the table. He was speaking to a short woman with dark hair who was flipping through the books, dabbing her eyes with a Kleenex.

  Zac wore his slim black suit with a white shirt and thin black tie. I could tell the suit was expensive, even from far away. He looked around the crowd, and then his eyes landed on me. For a second, he didn’t seem to recognize me, but then he nodded and started walking toward me.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said to Q.

  I pushed my way through the crowd until I met up with Zac. Up close I could see his face was ragged, the skin around his eyes more heavily lined than when I had seen him a few days before.

  “Zac,” I said, “I’m Izzy McNeil. I met you at your house on Saturday when-” I faltered for a second “-when Jane found that stuff. And we talked that morning. And I-”

  “I know who you are,” Zac interrupted me. He didn’t say anything then, he just looked at me with those anguished eyes. “You found her.”

  I nodded. I saw Jane again-the white suit spattered red, the pool of blood behind her head. “Yeah, it was…” How to describe? “It was horrible.”

  He started to say something but his words caught on tears, it sounded like. He shook his head a little and closed his eyes momentarily.

  “I’m really sorry for your loss.” I hated saying stuff like that at a funeral. Such words always sounded cliché.

  Zac shook his head. We were silent for a beat. Then he spoke. “I need to ask you something. When you were out with Jane last week…”

  “Yes?” I prompted him to finish.

  He shook his head again, as if he’d changed his mind. His eyes narrowed, and I thought I saw his emotion sway from anguish to anger in that one instant.

  “What? Please ask me. Say whatever you were going to say, please, because…” My glance drifted over Zac’s shoulder and landed on the photo of Jane. I felt those tears leaping into my eyes again.

  Zac saw them. “Let’s move over here.”

  We stepped aside into a corner.

  “You were out with her Friday night,” Zac said. “And when I called you the next day, I mentioned her…” His laugh was harsh. “What did she call them? Her dalliances,” he said bitterly. “You know what I mean.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Jane said that she told Zac everything, that he knew everything about her, but what was everything? Should I admit I knew what he was talking about?

  I simply nodded. I thought about Jane telling me how Zac was sick of her affairs, that he wasn’t so understanding anymore. Suddenly, I wanted to ask Zac, Were you so angry you couldn’t take it anymore? Did you kill your wife?

  Within the last six months, I’d developed a suspicious nature, which had settled inside me and taken up residence. I’d gone from being someone who thought the best of everyone to someone with a wariness that sometimes leapt up and surprised me. I didn’t like that about myself. It made me feel much older than my twenty-nine (okay, nearly thirty) years.

  “She didn’t talk to many people about what she did,” Zac said. “Her dalliances. Why you?”

  “I’m not sure. Jane and I had always liked each other. And we became closer when she asked me to work for Trial TV.”

  His eyes moved back and forth, as if they were mining my face for some other meaning behind my words. “Closer. Yeah.” He chuckled, but there was no mirth behind it. “You worked for Forester Pickett.”

  I nodded, surprised at the topic shift. “I did,” I said with pride. “Forester was a friend of mine.”

  “And your fiancé disappeared about the time Forester died, right?” It sounded accusatory somehow.

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re a lawyer.”

  “Yeah.” And I feel like you’re taking my deposition.

  “So you know how to evade them?”

  “Evade who?”

  “The cops. You know how to talk to them, how a murder investigation works.” The tone of Zac’s words was severe, and again he sounded as if he was accusing me of something.

  “I don’t do criminal law,” I said, as if that explained everything. But really, I had no idea what he was getting at.

  He was staring at me so intently now it was disconcerting. “What happened Friday night?”

  I felt my grief shift to anxiety. Zac was standing in front of me, my back to the corner of the room, and I suddenly had the feeling of being trapped there. “What do you mean?”

  “Where did Jane stay that night?”

  I raised my glass and swallowed another gulp of wine. What to tell him? Zac obviously knew about Jane’s affairs, but to tell him specifically about Friday, about Jane going home with the writer seemed wrong. A friend’s secrets are always a secret. Even if that friend was no longer alive.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Why were you so evasive when I called Saturday morning?”

  He was making this hard. How to tell him that I was trying to cover up for his wife, and I was dealing with my first one-night stand, with a guy who was still in my house when he called? I thought of Theo then, and despite the setting, I felt my insides twist with passion. Never had a guy been able to cause such an intense reaction in me. Not even Sam.

  “I…I…” I looked over his shoulder at the bar. There was Q. I gave him a look I knew he would read as Help.

  “I know where Jane stayed,” Zac said when I looked back at him.

  “You do?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “She stayed with you.”

  32

  “J ane didn’t stay with me that night.”

  Zac crossed his arms, looking self-satisfied. “Don’t play with me.”

  “I’m not playing. Why would you say t
hat?”

  He scoffed. “No, let me ask you a question. Why were you and Jane hanging out so much lately?”

  “Because we were becoming friends. Because she asked me to be on Trial TV.”

  “Friends.” Another bitter laugh. “I bet you were good friends.”

  “What are you implying?”

  “That you and Jane were more than friends.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Then why were you being so evasive when I called Saturday morning?”

  I paused. Fine, I would come out with it. “If I sounded evasive, it was because I thought your wife had probably gone home with a man she was talking to Friday night.” I wasn’t sure how much to say. I had promised Jane I wouldn’t say anything about the scarfing, given her my word as an attorney, too. But I could say anything I wanted about myself. “And also…” This was embarrassing. “I went home with a man, a kid really. I went home with this guy, and he was with me when you called, and the whole situation was making me nervous, and…” I held my free hand up in a shrug. “And that’s why I probably sounded evasive, but Jane was not with me.”

  Zac looked unimpressed. “She wouldn’t tell me who she was with that night. She usually did, but not on that night.”

  “She was with some writer.”

  “Some writer?” His question was laced with sarcasm.

  “Yes, Mick is his name.”

  “Mick what?”

  “Mick…uh…actually I never did learn it.” Again, I experienced that feeling I’d had the night before at the police station-a feeling of guilt. It was irrational. There was no reason to feel guilty about anything. And if anyone should feel guilt, shouldn’t it be Zac? His anger was palpable now but contained. What had he been like in the private moments with Jane, who he knew cheated on him, and frequently? Had he been so contained with her?

  Zac shook his head, his mouth tightening. “It was the same thing with you that it was with all the guys she was with-all of a sudden she’s out one night, and it’s just business or it’s just friends, and then I can’t find her. It was the same shit with you.” His voice was getting louder. “The exact same shit!”

  I looked around, embarrassed. People were starting to stare. This was bizarre. Six months ago I’d been at Forester’s funeral and had been pulled into a confrontation. The same thing was happening here.

  I leaned toward him and dropped my voice. “Zac, it was just business. We were just friends.”

  Q arrived at my side then. He put a hand on my elbow. “Everything okay here?”

  I took a breath, inhaling air that seemed foul, tinged with accusations. “Q, this is Zac, Jane’s husband.”

  They shook hands, Q murmuring words of condolence. Those kind, soft-spoken words made me remember that we were at a funeral, and the man in front of me had lost his wife, and that man had probably not slept last night and was most likely just shooting his mouth off out of exhaustion.

  “Look, Zac,” I said calmly. “Not that it matters, but Jane really wasn’t with me Friday night.”

  “Not that it matters?” Zac’s tone was mocking now. “The way I see it, you were with Jane a lot this weekend-she stayed at your place Friday night, she ran back to meet you for coffee the next morning so you could get your stories straight, you came over when she found that shit in the house. And now that I think about it, maybe you left those flowers and that noose. You probably knew where she kept the key.”

  My mouth opened. Wide. But no sounds came from it. I looked at Q, whose face was surprised and confused. As my assistant, Q had always known what to do to get me out of trouble, but neither of us knew what to do here.

  Two men came up to Zac then. “We’re so sorry,” one said. Zac shook their hands. He patted one on the shoulder with his left hand.

  And I saw then that on Zac’s left hand was a massive bruise. It covered the base of his thumb, the knuckles of his first two fingers. Its blue-black color seeped toward the center of his hand.

  I felt my eyebrows knit together as I stared at it.

  Zac must have seen my look. When the men left, he glanced down at his hand. “I had an accident at our house in Long Beach,” he said. “I was cutting up the dead wood that fell during the winter. The whole stack fell on my hand.”

  I wanted to say, The dog ate my homework once, too. He just happened to get a bruised hand at the same time his wife was beaten and killed?

  “Look,” he said, his voice laced with undisguised frustration. “The cops have already seen this, all right?” He lifted his hand then, holding it, clenched, in front of my face.

  I drew back instinctively.

  “Jesus, you’re scared of me?” he said, his voice raised. Over his shoulder I saw a couple of people turn and stare.

  “I’m not scared, Zac.” I made my tone soothing. But truthfully, I was scared. This whole situation was spiraling out of control, and seeing Zac’s raised fist made me think how terrified Jane must have felt on the night of her death. I was sick at the thought, sick with the realization that Jane had died, not in a bed surrounded by relatives, but facedown on the floor of her house, her skull bashed and bleeding. Someone raising a fist, or some other object, over and over. Someone wrapping that scarf around her neck.

  Zac dropped his fist and breathed out hard. The anger disappeared from his features, and for a moment anguish returned, like a bird landing on a familiar branch. I wondered if he would cry. “I loved Jane. More than anyone. More than anything.”

  “I’m sure you did.” That was the truth. I didn’t doubt for a second that Zac had loved Jane. Probably immensely. But had he loved her so much that he could no longer tolerate her stepping-out behavior? Had it made him a little crazy?

  I looked around to see if anyone had been watching our conversation. A few people nearby turned away. Elsewhere, people talked in muted voices and drank fast.

  A tall man came up behind Zac then. His silver hair was coifed, and he had a strong body that looked like something you’d see on a thirty-five-year-old, rather than the sixty-five years he probably had seen. Jackson Prince.

  Prince gave me a sad smile, clearly not recognizing me from the station, then touched Zac lightly on the arm. “I have to leave,” he said in his signature melodic voice. I’d heard he could woo a jury in two sentences.

  “I just wanted to say how much I adored Jane,” Prince said. “I respected her work immensely. She was one of the best.”

  She was one of the best who was about to bust you for something big.

  Zac shook his hand. “Thanks, Jack. That means a lot.”

  Prince murmured a few more words about Jane and promised to check in with Zac to see if he needed anything, then he turned and made his way through the multitude of mourners, moving lightly on his feet, nodding hello to people at every turn.

  Zac stared at Prince’s retreating back, then at one of the windows overlooking Chicago Avenue, as if he was looking for his wife, who might any minute be running, late, up the street.

  He turned back to me, his eyes lasering onto mine. “You should know, I told the cops I thought you were with Jane Friday night.”

  Again, that irrational guilt rippled through me. I felt my throat tightening. “Zac, that’s not true. Even if it were, what are you trying to imply? That I was the one who hurt Jane? That’s ludicrous.”

  “Is it? Guys were always getting intense about Jane. I’ve seen it more than once. So why should you be any different? And Jane was always up-front about how she didn’t want to leave her marriage. I wondered when someone would get too intense and not be able to take it. As far as I know, you’ve been seeing her for a while. As far as I know, she was breaking up with you.”

  I groaned with frustration. “Zac, I told you I was with someone Friday night.” I looked at Q. “Please tell him.”

  Q grinned. “Her first one-night stand,” he said to Zac. “I’m so proud.”

  He turned to Q. “You meet this one-night stand?”

  “No, but
I got all the gory details.”

  Right then, I saw him standing near the front door. Mick. The writer. His gray hair and tanned youthful face made him stand out from the crowd.

  “That’s him!” I said.

  I looked back and saw that Zac’s eyes hadn’t left mine.

  “Zac,” I said, insistently, “that is the writer who Jane was with the other night.”

  I pointed. We all looked in the direction of the door.

  But Mick had disappeared.

  33

  I dodged mourners as I hurried toward the door, trying to catch up with Mick.

  C.J. was suddenly in front of me. “Iz, you were great today. Really.”

  “Thanks, C.J.” I stood on my toes to see over her shoulder. I couldn’t see Mick.

  C.J. kept talking. “You do need to adjust a lot of things. Tomorrow let’s get you in the editing bay to watch the tape. You’ll be able to see issues that need working out.”

  “Great. I’ll come in early and stay late. Look, I’ve got to run.”

  “Don’t forget to look over your scripts tonight.”

  “Got it.” I didn’t tell her that I also had to work at the Fig Leaf tonight.

  I dashed around her, heading fast toward the entrance. I came out into a marbled foyer. A hostess stood behind a podium, a vacant smile on her face.

  “Did you see a guy with a tan and gray hair come out here?” I asked her.

  “A guy…? Um, now who were you looking for?”

  He must have left. The elevator to the lobby was right there. I hit the button, then looked at the display. The elevator was stopping in the lobby now.

  “Are there stairs to the street?” I asked the hostess.

  I wanted to catch up to Mick. I wanted to find out his last name so I could give it to Zac and prove to him I wasn’t the one with Jane that night. I wanted to ask Mick why in the hell he’d been following her, whether it was really for a story or something more sinister. I wanted to give his answers to the police and let them decide if he was telling the truth.

  The hostess gestured with a game-show wave toward the elevator. “This will take you right downstairs.”