Red Blooded Murder

by Laura Caldwell

  I dialed Maggie’s cell phone but got a message. She might be in a late meeting with a client. Or maybe with Wyatt.

  “I gotta get going,” the cabbie said. “I’ve got a pickup at O’Hare.”

  A pickup at O’Hare-the Holy Grail of Chicago cabbies. They’ll throw you in front of a bus going fifty on Lake Shore if they get a call for a pickup at O’Hare.

  I tried to remember what my mom was doing today. I didn’t have a key to her place on me.

  Just then one of the reporters saw me in the cab. He pointed, and they all started surging toward me.

  “Whoa,” the cabbie said. “I’m out of here. You have to go.”

  “Wait, wait, please. I have to figure out…” My mind raced about. I could get out and run for the Sedgwick El train. I could get out and run for my front door, but they’d never leave. All night they would be out there.

  “Damn it,” I said.

  “Seriously,” the driver said. “You have to get going.”

  Just then I saw someone else move toward the cab, even faster than the reporters or cameramen.

  Grady.

  He yanked the cab door open, his face worried. “My car is right here.” He pointed to the curb.

  “Thank God.”

  Grady threw a twenty at the driver, pulled me from the cab and hustled me to the car. Cameras whirred and clicked. Reporters pushed toward me and shouted questions. One question I heard over and over again-Did you kill Jane Augustine?-and it terrified me.

  I knew what Maggie would tell me to say, and I finally listened to her.

  “No comment!”

  57

  G rady’s place was a haven, although you wouldn’t know it from the outside. He lived in a nondescript condo building off State Street, where a lot of the late-twenties and early-thirties crowd lived until they could afford better. Grady couldn’t yet, not on what an associate made. But inside, Grady’s condo was decorated with care.

  “I forgot how great your apartment is.” I looked around the front room with its chocolate walls, white-framed photos, leather couches and golden drum lamps.

  “Yeah, well, don’t forget I got help from my sister. Hey, I’m going to change out of this suit. You want something to wear?” He glanced at my own suit.

  “Maybe just a sweatshirt or something.”

  He gestured at me to follow him into the bedroom. The walls there were charcoal, the bedding stark white.

  “You’re so neat,” I said.

  “My cleaning woman is neat. She came today.” He opened his closet, pulled out a red hooded sweatshirt that read Galena Fire Department.

  I pointed at the sweatshirt. “Have you been home lately?”

  “Nah. Too busy. Just like you.”

  There was a subtle edge to his words. I ignored it. I slipped out of my suit jacket. “Well, now that I’ve been fired I won’t be so busy.” I pulled the sweatshirt over the silk camisole I wore underneath. “Man, that feels better.”

  I tugged my hair from the collar, pushed the sleeves up. I realized Grady hadn’t said anything.

  He stood in front of his closet. He took off his suit coat. “So what does that mean? You’re going to have more time for me now?”

  I shrugged. “Yeah.” Once I get the cops off my back; once I find out who killed Jane.

  Grady unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt. He had strong forearms, long fingers. “You sure?”

  “Sure, I’m sure.” I wanted to be sure. I wanted my life to be as simplistic as this.

  His eyes weren’t moving from mine. The condo seemed quiet suddenly, the buzz of the city, of the last week, disappearing.

  He took a step toward me. Then another. He lifted one of the strings from the hood on the sweatshirt I wore, twirled it in his hand. “You look good in this.” Then he was closer, within inches. He had a faint freckle on the right side of his bottom lip. I stared at it. He leaned in. He nudged my cheekbone with his lips, then bent and put his face in my neck and inhaled.

  “God,” he said. “You smell good.”

  So did he-more earthy than Sam, more familiar than Theo.

  He pulled his face back, looked at me again, brushed a lock of hair from my forehead.

  And then he kissed me. I pushed back into his lips. Both of his hands went to my face. We kept kissing. Fifteen seconds went by, maybe twenty.

  Then suddenly he stopped and moved his face away, his eyes searching mine. “You’re not into it, are you?”

  “Into what?”

  “Me and you.”

  “Sure I am.” I wanted to be. I wanted to think-to feel-anything except reality.

  He took a step back. My face felt cold without his hands there.

  “I shouldn’t be asking questions now,” he said. “You have too much going on already.”

  My brain was a scramble. There was too much inside it-too many questions, too many worries, maybe too many men. I opened my mouth, tried to put into words the jumble of thoughts. I started and stopped a few times.

  And then suddenly there was one thing that seemed clear, one thing that I wasn’t questioning. “I’m into us as friends.”

  His face was impassive. A beat went by. Then another. “So you’re into us as friends, huh? Nothing more.”

  “Yeah.” Saying it out loud made me realize how true it was. But I felt awful at the resigned look on Grady’s face. “Maybe it’s just what’s going on right now. All this stuff with Jane.”

  “It’s not that stuff.” His face was hard now. “You’ve been trying to see us differently, but…”

  He was right. And he deserved to know it. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Grady. You’re amazing. And adorable.” I looked at those forearms. “And sexy.”

  “But not to you. Not really.”

  I said nothing.

  “Is it you and Sam? Are you guys back together?”

  “It’s not that.”

  My cell phone rang from my purse, sitting on Grady’s bed. I didn’t answer it. Grady and I just stared at each other, some kind of understanding settling between us.

  “It’s okay, Iz,” he said. “We’re friends.”

  The phone rang again. It stopped. Then started again.

  I finally broke our gaze and found my cell phone. Sam, cell. He’d called three times.

  “Sorry,” I said to Grady. I raised the phone to my ear. “Hello?”

  “Jesus, Izzy, I can’t believe you,” he said. “I can’t believe you’re with Grady.”

  Out on Grady’s balcony, the sky was gray and misty. Clutching the phone to my ear, I shivered. But it didn’t matter. The conversation was short.

  “Jesus.” Sam’s voice was full of irritation. “My flight got delayed, I went to the bar, and there you are on CNN, getting in Grady’s goddamned car!”

  “I didn’t know there was going to be media crawling around my house. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “So you called Grady.”

  “No! I didn’t call him. He was there, and he helped me.”

  “Yeah, he’s been really fucking helpful for a while now.”

  “Grady is a friend of mine.”

  “He’s more than that, and you know it.”

  I thought of what had just gone on between Grady and me. “We’re friends.”

  “Some friend. You waved me off, Iz. Me. When I wanted to help you. You let him rescue you.”

  My mouth fell open. Wordless for a moment, I looked down at the street, fifteen floors below, the cars zipping by. “He did not rescue me.”

  “Yeah, he did. And if it’s not him, it’ll be someone else. You’ll always be one of those people who’s got someone.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about the fact that when everything happened six months ago, I wasn’t even gone for more than a week before you moved on to Grady.”

  “You disappeared. You were gone. And I didn’t move on!”

  “You did. You let him save you.”

&nbs
p; Sam’s harsh words somehow disintegrated the confusion in my head. “You know what, Sam? No one is going to save me. No one except myself.”

  This time I hung up on him.

  I yanked open the balcony door. Grady stood in his kitchen, leaning against a counter, his arms crossed over his chest.

  “Grady, I’m sorry. I’ve got to go.”

  “To Sam’s?”

  “No. To find Dr. Hamilton-Wood.”

  58

  I drove south on Lake Shore Drive in Grady’s car, heading toward Hyde Park. Rush hour was over now, and I zipped past the Loop, the Shedd Aquarium and the Field Museum. I got off at 42nd Street. I pulled over to the side of the road and glanced at the MapQuest directions. A minute later, I was in an older, stately neighborhood, some houses brick, others stone, all majestic. A few were in need of repair, but generally the street was impressive. According to the newspapers, this South Side neighborhood had undergone a resurgence lately, and it wasn’t hard to see why-it was close to the lake, near the University of Chicago and the Museum of Science & Industry, and it retained an architectural flavor that spoke of Chicago in days gone by.

  I glanced at the directions again, searching for Dr. Hamilton-Wood’s place. The fact that Grady had lent me his car and looked up these directions made me love him. But that love was, I saw now, springing from the earth of our friendship. It wasn’t a bloom of romance.

  Sam, of course, was a different story. Sam and I had the friendship and definitely the romance, but something was off and now wasn’t the time to figure it out. Now was the time for action.

  I put both Sam and Grady from my mind and turned down Blackstone Avenue. I drove around the block a few times until I found Dr. Hamilton-Wood’s house. Kids played in the front yard as dusk settled over the city. A woman sat on the front steps. I drove past, parked a few houses down and watched her. She was African-American, her hair straightened and curled up gently at the ends. She wore a white blouse and jeans. Her legs were crossed, her expression blank as she watched the kids kicking two balls-one huge and yellow, one pink.

  I got out of the car and walked toward the house. It was older, like the rest of the block, but Dr. Hamilton-Wood’s house was lovely, made of white stone with a turret at the upper left and stained glass in the front door. That stained glass sparkled as the streetlights replaced the last remnants of daylight.

  The kids stopped as I walked up the front sidewalk. I must have looked harmless because they picked up their game just as quickly.

  The woman uncrossed her legs, sat up straighter and put a pleasant smile on her face.

  “Hi, I’m Izzy McNeil.” I extended my hand.

  She stood and shook it. “Angela Hamilton. Are you new in the neighborhood?”

  “No. I’m here because of Jane Augustine.”

  The smile swept away. “It’s so sad what happened to her. I admired Jane immensely.”

  “How did you know her?”

  She walked down the few stairs to ground level. She could have been anywhere in age from twenty-five to forty-five, although her medical degree probably put her toward the latter.

  “My brother was shot seven years ago,” she said. “They didn’t catch who did it for the longest time, and only then because of Jane. She was the only one who kept asking questions and digging around. The cops had long stopped caring.”

  “Yeah, that sounds like Jane. She liked the tough stories.”

  “Are you collecting for some kind of charity in her name?” The doctor gestured toward the house. “I can get my checkbook.”

  “No, I’m here to ask some questions. I’m trying to figure out how Jane died.”

  “I heard she was beaten.”

  “And strangled.” I saw Jane’s eyes, permanently open, the pinpricks of blood dotting the whites of those eyes. “I’m trying to find out who did that to her. I understand you spoke to Jane recently about a story she was working on?”

  A flicker of something-caution, perhaps?-registered on her face, then disappeared. “Yes. She was working on a story about class actions. I gave her some information.”

  “What kind of information?”

  Something closed in the doctor’s face. “It’s fairly technical.”

  “Did it have anything to do with Jackson Prince?”

  She blinked a few times. “Possibly. We talked about a lot of things. But look, I should go. I have to get the kids to bed.” She glanced at her children, still tearing around the lawn. “Brady! Thomas! In the house and get ready for a bath.”

  The children grumbled but pattered up the front stone steps.

  “Good night.” She gave me a polite smile, similar to the one she’d had when I first walked up. She started to turn away.

  “Dr. Hamilton-Wood,” I said. “I just have a few questions.”

  She grimaced. “It’s Dr. Hamilton now. My husband and I split. I’m using my maiden name.” She shook her head. “Anyway…”

  “Dr. Hamilton-”

  “Look, I spoke to Jane only because I knew her from my brother’s shooting, and to be honest, I felt like I owed her, but really I don’t have any interest in discussing this any further. Okay?” Her face was determined. She started to turn again.

  “Dr. Hamilton, what if Jane died because of that story?”

  She froze, cocked her head. “How is that possible?”

  “I need to know if the story had to do with Jackson Prince in particular. He was angry with Jane. I saw that myself at Trial TV on the day she died, and he-”

  “Wait, what did you say your name was?”

  I swallowed hard. Never had I felt so hesitant to say my own name. Finally, I did.

  “Izzy,” she said. “Isabel. You’re the person the police were talking about.”

  “I’m a person of interest, yes,” I said through a clenched jaw. “I’m not a suspect. I’m the one who found Jane, and now I need to find out who hurt her.”

  “Shouldn’t the cops be doing that?”

  “They should. I think they’re looking in the wrong places.”

  She held up a hand. “Look, I really need to go.”

  “Dr. Hamilton, please.”

  “No, really.” She started to walk away.

  I followed. “Dr. Hamilton, I saw Jackson Prince on the day she died.” I was talking fast now, afraid to lose her. “He was a guest at the network, and she interviewed him and asked some very pointed questions about class actions and how members of the class were located. He was angry at her. Obviously very angry. She told me that she was about to break a story that could rock him. That night she was dead.”

  Dr. Hamilton stopped, her body half turned back toward mine. She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again.

  I kept talking. “Was the story big enough that Prince might have harmed Jane to prevent it from coming out? Or maybe he hired someone to do it?”

  She opened her mouth but said nothing.

  “Mom!” one of her kids yelled from the house.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve really got to go. I can’t talk to you. Good luck.”

  I fished an old business card from my purse and ran after her. “If you’d like, you can call me later. Anytime, really.” She stopped, and I found a pen. Scribbled down my cell phone. As I handed the card to her, I looked into her eyes. “Jane was a friend of mine. She didn’t deserve to die the way she did. If there’s any chance Jackson Prince had anything to do with it, you need to say so. Please.”

  The sun had finally slipped away, hooding the neighborhood in a blue-black darkness. But in the light of the street lamps I could see Dr. Hamilton clearly. We said nothing for a moment, just two women, eyes meeting.

  “Mom!” one of her kids yelled again.

  She turned and walked toward the house, the crisp white of her shirt contrasting against the new night.

  I walked back to the car, drove in silence. Fifteen minutes later, as I got off on North Avenue, she called.

  59

  T he
exterior of Dr. Hamilton’s house might have been old Chicago, but the inside had been gutted and redone to perfection.

  Dr. Hamilton looked as if she had been crying since I turned around and drove back to her house. She had put the kids to bed. The two of us sat at her kitchen table-big, made of a deep maple that shone luminously.

  “Do you see all this?” She gestured at the delicate lights dangling over the island. They looked like hand-blown Italian glass. She pointed at the large, shiny appliances. “See that stove? That’s Le Corneau. It cost twenty-five thousand dollars. And my whole house is like that. Everyone thinks doctors make so much money. Are you kidding me? That’s what I thought too when I was in medical school and then in residency and then in my fellowship, and the whole time I’m just taking on loans and loans and loans. My husband and I have kids, and he stops working because I’m the doctor, right? I’m making so much money.” She stopped and put her head in her hands. Then she raised her face and looked at me, eyes tormented. “Do you really think Jackson Prince had anything to do with Jane’s murder?”

  “I don’t know. I just know that I didn’t do it.” I took a breath. “Look, here’s the thing. I’m a lawyer.” I laughed. “Or I was. And I know you doctors don’t love lawyers, but it was…it is…a great profession. And I was a part of that until it went away last year, and I thought I had it bad then. But now I’m about to lose a hell of a lot more than my profession. I could lose my life here.” I hadn’t said that out loud before, hadn’t even really thought it. But it was true. And it was terrifying.

  Dr. Hamilton must have seen the panic in my face. She dropped her head in her hands again. “I never should have told Jane anything. I should have kept my mouth shut.” She sat up and crossed her arms, then tugged at the collar of her white blouse. “I’m putting my license at risk if I talk about what I did. I mean, I didn’t kill anyone or anything, but…” She shook her head. “The thing is my husband is gone. And I don’t really want to practice medicine anymore. I really don’t.”

  I said nothing. I wasn’t sure what she was talking about. But then the whole story poured out.