Red Blooded Murder

by Laura Caldwell

  “Hell, yes. Let me know.”

  I thanked him and kept walking down the hallway, passing the sets. Eventually I came to the newsroom. There weren’t as many people as there were during the week, and the reception I got wasn’t as warm as the one from Ted. There were a few half waves. A couple of surprised looks. One or two people said hello but didn’t stop to talk. Maybe no one knew exactly how to react. For that matter, I hardly knew what to do myself.

  I found C.J. in the green room, talking to a man in a pin-stripe suit who looked like a lawyer, probably a guest in an upcoming segment.

  C.J. stepped out of the green room when she saw me, closing the door behind her. “How are you doing, Izzy?” She frowned, and without waiting for an answer, said, “What’s the story?”

  I told her about the list of names, what Carina Fariello had told us, what Dr. Hamilton had confessed to me. I told her about confronting Jackson Prince.

  She pushed her glasses up on the top of her head. “So it’s Prince’s word against this doctor?”

  “Maybe Prince’s word against a lot of doctors.” I told her how I’d called Dr. Ritson, and then Dr. Hay and Dr. Dexter and a few others. I had gotten through half of Jane’s list. Mayburn promised to tackle the rest for me. “At first I hit the same wall Jane did with the doctors. No one would talk. Some of them had heard about Jane’s death, a few hadn’t, but when I told them that her death might have been linked to this story, a few started talking. Most were vague, not exactly giving me as much as Dr. Hamilton did, and some said they would only talk off the record.”

  C.J.’s brown eyes were entirely focused on me now. “Will any of these doctors give an interview?”

  “I know Dr. Hamilton will. She feels terrible about Jane. I’m pretty sure that Carina Fariello, the accountant for Prince, will speak about it, too.”

  C.J. took the glasses off her head and chewed on one of the ends. She kept looking at me, slightly nodding, clearly thinking over everything I’d told her. “Let’s do it,” she said finally. “I’ll be the producer for you.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. We’ve got to do it for Jane. And this story has to be told. It’s the kind of thing that could win an Emmy.”

  “Are you serious?”

  She smiled. “I am.”

  I smiled a little, too, but it felt wistful. “Jane had an Emmy.”

  “Yeah. She won it for a great story about a vice cop who was dealing heroin. I worked that story with her. Did you ever see it?”

  I shook my head.

  “Jane was amazing. Absolutely at the top of her form.” She sighed, stared over my shoulder for a moment, her eyes full of grief for Jane. But then her expression shifted, and she looked back at me with something that seemed like pleasure. “Jane would be proud of you,” she said.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. And I’m proud of you, too.”

  “That’s one of the best compliments you could give me.”

  For the first time I felt a kinship with C.J. My cell phone rang then. I took it from my purse and looked at it. Theo Jameson.

  67

  “I can’t believe Jane is dead,” Theo said.

  “I can’t believe you’re just calling me back now.” I put my hand over the phone and gestured to C.J. that I had to take the call. Thank you, I mouthed to her.

  She gave me a thumbs-up. “Go get ’em.”

  “I’m really sorry,” Theo was saying. “I didn’t check messages at all while I was gone. Really no way to do it. Anyway, I just got back. I’m still on our plane.”

  I walked through the studio, back down the main hallway. “Our plane, like your own private plane?” Despite my fear, who was cracking her knuckles now, ready to get back into high gear, I was impressed.

  “It’s just a corporate share. Anyway, we’re just pulling into Midway. Man, I’m in shock about Jane. What happened?”

  I went outside, got in Grady’s car and poured out the whole story to Theo, my words tripping over themselves. Finally I got to the end.

  “I feel sick,” he said. “I can’t believe someone would do that to her.”

  “I know. The thing that’s nuts is that the cops seem to think I might have done that to her.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I don’t really understand it, but part of it has to do with the fact that the cops think I’m lying about where I was last Friday night. That guy Mick that we met admitted yesterday that he was with Jane Friday night, and I thought that would put me in the clear, but the detective on the case seems to be saying it didn’t matter and that I’m still a possible suspect.”

  “That’s intense, Izzy.”

  “I know.”

  “You could be in some serious trouble.” He didn’t say it in a threatening way, or even in a holy-cow-get-away-from-this-girl kind of way. He said it matter-of-factly, and my whole body welcomed it. Nearly everyone-Sam, Q, my mom, Spence-had been trying to tell me not to worry. They believed in me so much, which was amazing. But their utter belief led them to think that the situation was going to go away. And it wasn’t. To hear someone say the real truth-that I could be in deep trouble-was refreshing. Almost as if I could stop hoping that it was going to go away and just deal with the fact that it was here.

  “I know,” I said again. “Want to hear something else?”

  “Yeah.” And I could tell he did.

  I told him how the day after Jane died, I’d gone on-air as the host of Trial TV. “And then they fired me,” I said.

  “Because you might be a suspect in Jane’s murder?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Damn, girl. I can’t get over this. Where are you?”

  “I’m about to go home. The press might be there, but I don’t care anymore. I have nothing to hide. And I need to be in my own house and think about what I should do next. And I really need you to tell people that we were together that night.”

  “I’ll meet you there in half an hour.”

  68

  T he press must have thought I would never return. A few news trucks were still parked in front of my place, but the masses were gone. Luckily, my garage was behind the building. I drove around the block and down the alley. I got out, moved my scooter and then parked Grady’s car. The problem with the garage, however, was that it was detached. The only way to enter the main building was to walk around the garage to the front door. I knew the minute the people in the news vans saw me, they would be out of their vehicles. Fast.

  My heart racing a little, I left the garage and crept along the side wall of the building. It made me remember the other night in Bucktown, when I was creeping along the alley, looking for that van. I could feel those hands shoving me, could feel myself going down onto the cobblestones. The thought made my heart pound faster.

  When I got to the corner of my building I paused. I would have to step out into the open and walk the twenty or so feet to the front door.

  Or run.

  “Hey!” I heard a shout. The doors of a news van opened, then another and another. Cameramen leapt out of each. They were running even faster than me, and by the time I reached the door they were right behind me. A reporter must have been in one of the vans, too. “Izzy,” he yelled.

  “Did you kill Jane Augustine? How do you feel about being fired from Trial TV?”

  My hands fumbled with my keys.

  “Where were you Monday afternoon when Jane Augustine was killed?”

  It was so hard not to answer. It was so hard not to turn and yell, “Of course I didn’t kill Jane!” But I could hear Maggie repeating in my brain-Say nothing!

  Finally I got my key in the door. The cameramen jostled themselves on either side of me, practically pushing their lenses into my face. They felt like big snouts sniffing for a story. I opened the door, pushed it open and fell inside.

  The cameramen tried to stick the lenses in the door, but I managed to shove it closed. I was panting so hard that I had to stop and catch my breath before I could clim
b the three flights.

  When I got upstairs, I had never been so happy to see my little condo, my old marble fireplace, my favorite yellow-and-white chair. I opened every blind and curtain in my house, wanting as much light as possible, except for those that might allow the news guys to see in from the street.

  I pulled out my phone and texted Theo-Just a warning. The press is outside my house.

  Not a problem, he wrote back.

  And apparently it wasn’t. By the time I could change into jeans and a T-shirt, he was buzzing from downstairs, and then there he was, unfazed, taking up all the space in the frame of my door.

  “Girl, how are you?” Without waiting for an answer, he stepped into my house and he pulled me into his arms. He was so tall that I could lay my face on his chest, against the soft cotton of his black T-shirt, pushing aside the army jacket he wore over it. He wrapped his arms around me and stroked my hair. Then he led me to the couch and sat me down. He pushed up the sleeves of his jacket, and I stared at the ribbons of the red tattoo that trailed down one forearm, the black pointed serpent’s tail that snaked down the other. They made me think of the other tattoos he had-the one on his left hip, the one on his collarbone.

  “This thing that happened to Jane,” he said, “it’s got me rattled.” His eyes were sad, and for the first time, he looked older than his twenty-one years, like someone who had seen something haunting. “What can I do to help?”

  “I want you to talk to the detective and tell him we were together Friday night.”

  “Sure.”

  I called the Belmont police station. Again, Vaughn wasn’t there. Again, I left a message. “Maybe he’ll call back,” I said hopefully. I couldn’t believe I actually wanted to talk to Vaughn.

  We waited, making chitchat about Theo’s trip, ignoring the sexual tension that, even now, was ripe.

  Theo took my hand and, very simply, stroked it. It was an old-fashioned gesture, and coming from someone like him, it touched me more than I would have imagined.

  “So how was the surfing?” I asked.

  “Forget the surfing,” he said. “This is about you. What else can I do?”

  “I don’t know.” I was overwhelmed suddenly by a sense of helplessness.

  Theo seemed to sense it. “Anything,” he said. “I’ll do anything.”

  I thought for a moment. “You know, as far as I can tell, I got pulled into this initially because Zac, Jane’s husband, thought I was involved with his wife, especially on Friday night. I kept telling him that you were with me that night, not Jane, but he doesn’t believe me. I’m still not sure he does. Would you talk to him?” I thought of what Mayburn had told me. “If I can finally get Zac off my back, it might help with the police.”

  Theo looked into my eyes, not saying anything for a second. “If that’s what you need.”

  I picked up my cell phone and called Zac. Voice mail. I left a message saying I had something to talk to him about.

  When he didn’t call back, I called again. Then I texted him-Zac, I need to talk to you urgently. It will just take a minute.

  The phone rang. Zac. “What?” he said, when I answered.

  “Hi. Listen, Zac, I have someone who wants to talk to you.” I handed the phone to Theo.

  “Hi, this is Theo,” he said, “I just wanted to tell you that I spent the night with Izzy on Friday and-” He looked at the phone then handed it back to me. “He hung up.”

  I called Zac again.

  “I don’t think I want to hear anything from you,” he said, “or from anyone you’re involved with.”

  “Zac, c’mon! This is about Jane.”

  “I am well aware of that.”

  “And I didn’t kill her. No matter what you think or what the cops are saying.” I left off, And I think there’s a chance you did. “And I was not with Jane Friday night. You heard him say that.”

  “You could have any guy call me and say that.”

  “Then meet us in person. We’ll come to you.”

  “I’m at our house in Indiana.”

  I still had Grady’s car. I remembered Jane telling me their lake house was only a sixty-five mile drive.

  “How about this?” I said. “Tell me a coffee shop, someplace public, someplace near your house, and we’ll meet you there.” I looked at Theo, whose brow was creased with concern.

  “It takes more than an hour to get here,” Zac said.

  “That’s fine. When we get there, we just need five minutes. That’s all.”

  Another pause.

  “Please,” I said simply.

  Another pause, then, “There’s a place called Lakeshore Coffee. It’s in Michigan City.”

  I hunted for a pen and wrote down the address and directions.

  “Call me when you get close,” he said, “and I’ll meet you there.”

  I turned and gave Theo a thumbs-up.

  69

  W e took the Dan Ryan to the Skyway, flying past the steel mills that hulked in front of Lake Michigan, which was choppy today, an icy denim-blue. In Indiana, we got off on a rural highway. At first it was all truck stops and car washes, but soon the road began to bend and curve, skimming by golden grass as high as my thighs and outcroppings of trees just starting to bloom with spring’s new green. Every so often there was a burst of yellow daffodils on the side of the road.

  Theo looked at the directions. “It’s only a couple more miles.”

  I dialed Zac’s phone. He answered right away.

  “Hi, Zac. We’re only a few miles away.”

  “Already? I’m up on Mount Baldy.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A state park in the dunes. It’s where Jane and I used to come a lot.” He coughed, and I wondered for a second if he might cry. I felt a war of emotions for him-sympathy for the fact that he’d lost his wife and yet also distrust, wondering if he had caused that loss.

  Zac cleared his throat. “Where are you guys now?”

  I peered at the street and told him the name of the gas station we had just passed.

  “You’re actually almost here. Do you see a brown sign that says Mount Baldy?”

  We went around a bend in the road. “Yeah, I see it.”

  “You might as well just come here,” Zac said. “Follow the signs to the summit. You’ll see us.”

  “Us?”

  “Zoey and me.”

  I opened my mouth to say something about how fast he’d moved on from Jane, but I didn’t want to make him angry. “See you soon.”

  I turned up a sharply angled driveway for Mount Baldy, wooded on both sides, and drove into a parking lot. Through the not-quite blooming trees you could see massive sand dunes and hear the crashing of the waves of Lake Michigan beyond.

  There was only one other car in the parking lot, a black Jeep. Theo and I looked around and then back at each other.

  “Does it seem weird that we’re meeting him in a forest preserve or whatever this is?” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  We were both silent. My nerves started to zing a little.

  “But then again,” Theo said, “you’re the one that called him. It’s not like he lured you here.”

  “I know, but he’s here with his new girlfriend. Or old girlfriend. Whatever. And I’ve been wondering about this woman. I mean, it sounds like she’s always been in love with Zac. He broke up with her and then moved on to Jane. Then she and Jane were friends, or so Zac claims.”

  “You think she was jealous enough to do something to Jane?”

  I shrugged. “I have no idea. Maybe Zac and Zoey worked together to get rid of Jane?”

  More silence. “Why don’t we just leave?” Theo said. “You don’t need any more trouble.”

  “I know.”

  I tried to breathe deep, tried to think. Then I remembered, again, how I told Sam that I was going to save myself. “I have to do something. Anything. I want to take you to see Zac, and I want him to hear that we were together, that I wasn’t with Jane.�
�

  Theo nodded, but he seemed a little reluctant.

  “I know this is a weird situation,” I said. “Are you okay?”

  “I guess. If you think this is the right thing, we’ll do it.”

  I looked around, saw signs with arrows pointing the way to the summit. “He said to follow those signs.”

  Theo and I got out of the car. He grabbed my hand as we walked. “Are you okay?”

  I nodded and squeezed his hand. He was as sweet as he was smoking hot.

  He stopped and pulled me tight to him. He even smelled sexy.

  “Izzy,” he said. “I just want you to know…I’m into you.”

  I laughed. “You’re into me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Even with all this crap going on?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then I feel bad for you. You’re just a kid, and you should be doing kid things.”

  “I’m not a kid.”

  “You’re twenty-one.”

  He pulled back and looked at me, raised his eyebrows. “I won’t deny my age. All I can do is tell you what I feel. That’s how I operate-I say what I feel. And what I feel is…” He shook his head a little. “I’m into you.”

  “I’m a mess,” I said.

  “You’re a mess I want to get dirty in.”

  How was it possible that he made every utterance sexy?

  In that moment, I forgot that Detective Vaughn was after me. I forgot that Jane had died. I forgot that I had found her. I forgot the fact that my life, at that moment, was nothing like what I thought it would be.

  Because what my life was like at that moment was…oddly…exquisite. I stood in a wooded lot with Theo; with his square jaw and his soft lips framed by his chin-length hair. And beyond him I could see a forest of barely blooming trees, the pale blue sky shimmering between the branches.

  Lately, I felt like someone scarred. My fiancé had disappeared a few months before our wedding; my client had been killed and I’d lost most of my work. And now this thing with Jane-to be questioned by the police, to be, apparently, a suspect in a murder investigation. It just scarred me more, and somewhere a largely unconscious thought had crept into my brain, and it was this-You’re different now.