Red Blooded Murder

by Laura Caldwell

  “How do you do that?” I asked when they left.

  “Do what?”

  “Act like you’re so flattered? I know you’ve heard that stuff before.”

  Jane studied me. “How old are you, Izzy?”

  “Thirty this summer.” I shook my head. “I can’t believe I’m going to be thirty.”

  “Well, I’m two years away from forty, and let me tell you something-when someone tells you you’re beautiful, you act like it’s the first time you’ve heard that.” She looked at me pointedly. “Because you never know when it’ll be the last.”

  I sipped my wine. It was French, kind of floral and lemony. “How’s your new agent?”

  “Fantastic. He got me a great contract with Trial TV.”

  “I’ve seen the billboards.”

  Trial TV was a new legal network based in Chicago that was tapping into the old Court TV audience. The billboards, with Jane’s smiling face, had been plastered up and down the Kennedy for months.

  “It’s amazing to be on the ground floor,” Jane said. “They’ve got a reality show on prosecutors that’s wild. It’s gotten great advance reviews. And we’re juicing up trial coverage and making it more exciting. You know, more background on the lawyers and judges, more aggressive commentary on their moves.”

  “And you’ll be anchoring the flagship broadcast each morning.” I raised my glass. “It’s perfect for you.”

  Jane had always had a penchant for the legal stories. When she was a reporter, she was known for courting judges and attorneys, so that she was the one they came to whenever there was news. She got her spot as an anchor after she broke a big story about a U.S. Senator from Illinois who was funneling millions of dollars of work to one particular law firm in Chicago. It was Jane who figured out that the head partner at the firm was the senator’s mistress.

  Jane clinked my glass. “Thanks, Iz.” She looked heaven-ward for a second, her eyes big and excited. “It’s like a dream come true, because if I was going to keep climbing the nightly news ladder, I’d have to try and go to New York and land the national news. But Zac and I want to stay here. I love this city so much.”

  Jane looked around, as if taking in the whole town with her gaze. This particular part of Chicago-the Gold Coast and the Mag Mile-had grown like a weed lately as a plethora of luxury hotel-condo buildings sprang into the skyline.

  “Plus, aside from getting up early, it’s going to be great hours,” Jane continued. “I don’t have to work nights anymore, and trials stop for the weekends. They even stop for holidays.”

  “Is C.J. going with you?” Jane’s current producer was a talented, no-nonsense woman who had worked closely with Jane for years.

  She shook her head. “She’s staying at Chicagoland TV. That station has been so good to me I didn’t want to steal all their top people. Plus, I wanted to step out on my own, start writing more of my own stuff.” She gave a chagrined shake of her head. “You know how I got all this?”

  “Your new agent?”

  “Nope. He only negotiated the contract. It was Forester.”

  Just like that, my heart sagged. I missed him. Forester had not only been a client, he’d been a mentor, the person who’d given me my start in entertainment law, the person who’d trusted me to represent his beloved company. Eventually, Forester became like a father to me, and his death was still on my mind.

  “I miss him, too,” Jane said, seeing the look on my face. “Remember how generous he was? He actually introduced me to Ari Adler.”

  “Wow, and so Ari brought you in.” Ari Adler was a media mogul, like Forester, but instead of owning TV and radio stations, newspapers and publishing companies all over the Midwest, as Forester did, Ari Adler was global. His company was the one behind Trial TV.

  “Forester knew I loved the law,” she said, “so he brought me to dinner with the two of them when Ari was in town.”

  “Even though he knew it meant he might lose you.”

  “Exactly.” Jane put her glass down and leaned forward on her elbows. “And now I’m bringing you to dinner because I want you.”

  I blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “The launch is Monday. We’ve been in rehearsals for the last few weeks.” She paused, leaned forward some more. “And I want you to start on Monday, too.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I want you to be a legal analyst.”

  “Like a reporter?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you kidding? I’ve never worked in the news business. Just on the periphery.” And yet as logical as my words sounded, I got a spark of excitement for something new, something totally different.

  “We had someone quit today,” Jane said. “A female reporter who used to be a lawyer.”

  “And?”

  “Well, let me backtrack. Trial TV has tried to put together a staff that has legal backgrounds in some way, including many of the reporters and producers. We have reporters in each major city to keep their eye on the local trial scenes. You know, interview the lawyers and witnesses, prepare short stories to run on the broadcasts. But one of our Chicago reporters hit the road today.”

  “Why?”

  Jane waved her perfectly manicured hand. “Oh, she’s a prima donna who wants everything PC. She couldn’t handle our dinosaur deputy news director.” Her eyes zeroed in on mine. “But you could. After working with Forester and his crew, you know how to hang with the old-boys network.”

  “Are you talking an on-air position?”

  “Not right away. We’ll give you a contributor’s contract, and you’ll do a little of everything. You’ll assist in writing the stories and help with questions when we have guests. But eventually, yeah, I see you on-air.”

  “Jane, I don’t have any media experience.”

  “You used to give statements on behalf of Pickett Enterprises, and you were good. Either way, the trend in the news is real people with real experience in the areas they’re reporting on. Think Nancy Grace-she was a prosecutor before she started at CNN. Or Greta Van Susteren. She practiced law, too.”

  The spark of excitement I’d felt earlier now flamed into something bigger, brighter. If you’d asked me six months ago what the spring held for me, I would have told you I’d be finishing my thank-you notes after my holiday wedding, and I’d be settling into contented downtime with my husband, Sam. But now Sam wasn’t my husband, and things with him-things with my future-were decidedly unclear.

  “What would it pay?”

  She told me.

  “A month?” I blurted.

  She laughed. “No, sweetheart, that’s a year. TV pays crap. You should know that. You’ve negotiated the contracts.”

  “But I’m a lawyer,” I said.

  “You’d be an analyst and a reporter now.”

  Just out of principle, I considered saying no. I was a lawyer; I was worth more than that. But the fact was, unless I could find entertainment law work, I was worth almost nothing. I knew nothing else, understood no other legal specialties. I’d been job hunting for months, and trying to make the best of the downtime-visiting the Art Institute, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Science and Industry and just about every other museum or landmark Chicago had to offer. But, depressingly, there was no entertainment work up for grabs in the city. Though most Chicago actors and artists started with local lawyers, when they hit it big, they often took their legal work to the coasts. The lawyers who’d had it for years wisely hoarded the business that remained. And, months ago, after the dust had settled after the scandal with Sam, Forester’s company had decided to use attorneys from another firm, saying they needed a fresh start and a chance to work with someone new. I couldn’t blame them, but it had left me in the cold. My bank statement had an ever-decreasing balance, teetering toward nothing. I hadn’t minded the lack of funds so badly when I couldn’t buy new spring clothes, but soon I wouldn’t be able to pay my mortgage, and that would be something else altogether.

  For the f
irst time in my adult life I was flying without a net. Fear nibbled at my insides, crept its way into my brain. I was buzzing with apprehension. But the job offer from Jane was a ray of calm, clean sunshine breaking through the murky depths of my nerves.

  I knew, as the negotiator I used to be, that I should ask Jane a lot of other questions-What would the hours be? What was the insurance like? But in addition to needing the money, I needed-desperately needed-something new in my life.

  So I leaned forward, meeting Jane’s gaze and those mauve-blue eyes, and said, “I’ll do it.”

  2

  W hen we left the Park Hyatt, Jane told the waiter where to meet us, and three hours later, when he walked in the club, Jane and I were surrounded by five other guys.

  I was talking to one in particular, a tattooed twenty-one-year-old with shiny, light brown hair that fell halfway to his shoulders. He knew Jane-they’d met at a party a year ago-and he strolled up to us within moments of arriving. But it was me he was talking to, and although he was way too young for me, he was so pretty in such a big, strong kind of way, I couldn’t tell him to beat it.

  “Theo Jameson,” he said, when we first met. He reached for my hand, shook it, squeezed it, then held it…and held it. He smiled at me as if he had been waiting to see me for a long, long time. “Great hair.” His chin-strong and tanned-jutted toward the top of my head. But his eyes didn’t move from mine.

  “Thanks.” I pulled my hand away, patted my head idiotically. My hair had a life of its own. When the gods smiled, which was infrequent, it corkscrewed into perfect spirals. Most of the time, like now, it twisted prettily in some places and frizzed about in others, and the result was a long tangle of orange-red curls.

  The club was on Damen-lounge-ish and made to look like a French salon. Apparently Jane went there frequently and knew the manager, and even though we’d had too many celebratory glasses of wine earlier, she’d convinced me to stop in with her and “say hello.” She needed to cut loose, she said. She’d been working for a month straight, and she’d be in rehearsals all weekend. In days of yore, I would have declined, and then I would have skidded over to Sam’s place and crawled in bed with him. I would have woken him up with a few select kisses up his thighs-I loved those thighs, dusted with gold-blond hair. Back when I was with Sam, I would never have known such lounge-ish salons existed. But now was a different time, and there was something about Jane that made it very, very hard to say no.

  Theo and I started talking. When he told me his favorite meal was champagne and mussels, I was mildly interested. When he told me he ran a company that made Web design software, and that his clients included a bunch of Fortune 500 companies, I was intrigued, but not sure I bought it.

  Two of his friends were standing nearby at the time. From the very few words they spoke, they seemed younger than Theo. One wore a T-shirt that read Objects Are SMALLER Than They Appear. I stared at that shirt. Being a decade older than him, was I somehow missing the joke? Or was the slogan what I thought it was-an odd, thinly veiled reference to the kid’s small penis?

  “Come sit,” Jane said, herding Theo and me to a large, round powder-blue booth. Two guys were already sitting there. Jane gestured at them. “Writers,” she said. “They write books.” She mentioned their names, but with the jazzy, club music pumping loud, I couldn’t make them out.

  We all shook hands. One of the writers was an attractive guy with thick, prematurely gray hair that contrasted with his youthful, tanned face.

  “How are you?” he asked me, after all the hand shaking. He had the kind of eyes that looked right into yours, not necessarily in a romantic way, just a way that was truly interested, that was keen to other people.

  “I’m great. Jane just offered me a job at Trial TV.”

  “Really?” His eyebrows rose. “Congrats.”

  “Yeah, congrats,” the other writer said. He had blond hair and a shy smile.

  Theo slid into the booth and began talking to the writers, but Jane held me back. “Theo is the real deal,” she said. “Started this software company while he was in high school. Went to Stanford on a full-ride scholarship but he dropped out after a year. Making millions upon millions now.”

  I looked over my shoulder at him. “He’s so young.”

  “Who cares?”

  I changed the topic. “How do you know the writers?”

  Jane shrugged. “I’ve met the one with the tan once before. Something about him intrigues me.” She playfully shoved me into the booth. “Someone needs to buy me a drink,” she said loudly to the group.

  Ten minutes after we sat down, Theo’s buddies joined us, and ten minutes after that, the waiter walked in, looking unsure in his black jeans, his hair newly wet and combed back. He saw Jane and me packed into that leather banquette with five men and shook his head as if to say, Nooooooo.

  “Jane!” I called toward the end of the banquette, gesturing at the waiter as he began to walk away, but she was engrossed in a conversation with the two writers.

  I tried to move around Theo, but he glanced from me to the waiter and then put his arms on the table, blocking me. “If you think I’m letting you get up to talk to some other guy, you’re wrong.” He leaned closer, his sleek hair brushing my cheek. “Sorry. I don’t want to be pushy, but I’m into you.” His last few words hushed themselves into my ear. And just like that, I forgot about the waiter.

  Vodka bottles came and left the table, wine bottles disappeared even faster. I went to check my watch at one point. I thought I caught a glimpse of well past midnight, but Theo covered the watch with his hand. “It’s Friday, remember? There’s all sorts of time on Friday night.”

  “You’re right. I have lots of time,” I said, quite tipsy by then and thinking I might be philosophical. “And I used to have no time. I mean, I used to be inundated. Work and billable hours and an assistant and clients and a wedding and-” I thought of Sam “-and people. But now, I have all sorts of time. My time is empty, my time is…” I died away, trying to come up with something profound and falling short. I closed my mouth. If there was one thing I’d learned as a lawyer it was when to shut up.

  But then I remembered my time wasn’t empty anymore. Monday morning, I’d start as an analyst for Jane. Even sooner, tomorrow afternoon, I’d meet with John Mayburn to consider working another case with him.

  Mayburn was a private investigator who had helped me out when Sam disappeared. In return for the huge fee I couldn’t pay, I’d worked for him on a case where he needed a North Side Chicago female type to blend in and conduct surveillance. He’d practically gotten me killed, and I vowed never to take another job with him, but I needed the cash in a fierce way. With luck, he could get me something that could minimally bridge the cavernous salary gap between my profitable days of yesteryear and my intriguing, but nonetheless impoverished, future in TV.

  I tried to catch Jane’s eye to thank her for that opportunity. Despite the miserable salary she’d told me I’d be making, I was thrilled in a way I hadn’t been in a long time. There was nothing like a wedge of opportunity to make the whole sky open up.

  But Jane was leaning in close to the writer. His gray hair looked whiter than it really was because of the smooth tan of his skin. His brown eyes were decorated with lashes longer than normally seen on a man. He had one of those overly handsome indents in the center of his chin, but that, combined with the gray hair, somehow gave him the look of an intellectual. The other guy had disappeared. Neither Jane nor the writer seemed to care. They were completely intent on their conversation. And clearly flirting.

  Right then, Jane unbuttoned her suit coat and slipped it off. It seemed that all the men in the bar paused to look at her at that moment. The black blouse she wore underneath was held by only a thin velvet band around her neck. The fabric was gauzy and fell in soft folds around her breasts. Jane seemed too entranced by her conversation with the writer to notice the attention, but then she glanced up and swept the room with her eyes, drinking in all tho
se gazes. She looked at me, and she winked.

  I laughed, tossing my head back. It was as if I could feel the laughter burbling up inside me, and by releasing it I was letting go of all the tension of the last six months-all the deep, troubled talks with Sam about why he hadn’t trusted me to tell me what he’d done, why he’d taken off from the city, leaving me blinking like a newborn, unattached and unsure.

  When I looked back at Jane, she and the writer were talking low, staring at each other’s mouths.

  As I watched them, Theo bent toward me and kissed my neck. Just like that.

  Instead of pulling back and saying, Hey, excuse me, what are you doing? I tilted my head to let him do it again. His tongue flicked gently against my skin. I let my head fall back farther. It didn’t occur to me to care that a strange man (a child, really) was kissing me in public. Nothing mattered but that moment. I turned my head to him and met his mouth with mine. I expected rough; I expected insistent; I expected demanding. But Theo was nothing like that. He kissed patiently, like someone with lots of time to get where he wants, and very sure he’s going to get there.

  My cell phone vibrated in my purse, but I ignored it. I shifted my body in the booth, touched Theo’s silky hair. It fell on my cheeks as he leaned over me.

  A minute later, the phone vibrated again. Our bodies were so close by that time, the sensation traveled from me to him.

  “Want to get that?” he said into my mouth.

  “No.”

  His tongue flicked against my lips and he put his arms around me, scooping me, as if I were a small and tiny creature, even closer into him.

  Once again, that phone.

  “Hold on,” I mumbled. I extricated myself and opened my bag. Sam, cell, the display read. I clicked Ignore, then looked at the caller ID list. He’d called three times.

  Despite the fact that Sam and I were just dating now and it was legal for me to be kissing a total stranger, a little guilt sparked inside me. Then paranoia hit. Was Sam here? Had he seen me somehow? Was that why he was calling?