“Did you tell them you were stalking her?” I asked.
He turned. He was wearing dark jeans and a brown shirt that matched his eyes. If he was startled by my presence, he didn’t say so. In fact, he grinned. “Isabel McNeil,” he said, ignoring my question. “How are you? I only met you that once on Friday night, but I’ve seen a lot of your face on the news today.”
“Yeah, you, too. Why did you call a press conference to announce you were the one the police were looking for? Why not just go to the cops with it?”
He shrugged. “You know the saying. There’s no such thing as bad PR. Plus, I’m a writer. I learned a long time ago to never trust the police. And part of my next book is about Jane.” He looked me up and down. “And maybe about you.”
“Who are you kidding about this ‘book’? You’d been following her. Were you the one who killed her?”
He laughed. “I didn’t do anything to Jane.”
“You slept with her, right?”
“Good point.”
“She told me you had a collection of articles about her and pictures of her.”
“I do.”
“You were stalking her.”
He didn’t react defensively. He didn’t respond at all. He just cocked his head. Only a tiny fraction. And if I’d been in a nightclub, talking to a guy like Mick, I would have seen that as a playful move, something inviting discussion. But now, his freakish calm chilled me.
“Ever been a writer?” he said.
“I’m a lawyer.” I bit my lip. “Was. I was a lawyer.”
“And a newscaster.”
“They fired me.”
“Whoa, are you serious? God, this story keeps getting better.” He bent toward a brass-topped table and grabbed a notebook, scribbling something inside.
He looked back at me, giving me a peculiar stare. I wondered, for a weird second, if he’d done research on me, too, if perhaps there was a picture of Izzy McNeil somewhere in his desk, mixed in with the photos of Jane Augustine, who was no longer alive, who hadn’t realized on Friday night that her time was tick, tick, ticking away.
I glanced behind me at the door. I was only a foot from it. It was still a crack open.
“I wasn’t stalking her,” Mick said. “I was writing about her.”
“What were you writing?”
A pause. “Do you want to sit down?” He gestured at a brocaded sofa under the front window.
“No.” I took a step toward the door.
“Well, I’m going to sit.” He sank onto the sofa. “Look, I don’t usually talk about what I’m working on with anyone but my agent and my editor, but I’m going to talk to you. So let me ask you something. Have you read Norman Mailer?”
I stopped for a second, surprised by the shift in topic, disconcerted by the intensity in those eyes. I thought about the question. “I prefer less misogynistic writers.”
“You’ve heard that, right?”
“Heard what?”
“That he hated women.”
“I read one of his books.”
“But mostly you’ve heard that he was a misogynist?”
“I don’t want to talk about Norman Mailer!” I couldn’t help but raise my voice. But then I tried to swallow down the anger. Emotions had never helped me before when I was questioning people-in a deposition or on the stand. They certainly wouldn’t help now. “I want to know why you were stalking Jane.”
“You know what Norman Mailer believed?”
I wanted to scream in frustration. I said nothing.
“Mailer told me once that writing was a heroic enterprise, and writers were heroic figures.”
“Wait, Mailer told you once? I know you’ve got the gray hair, but aren’t you a little young to have been buddies with Mailer?”
“He was buddies with people I knew.”
“Who? Oh, wait…” Suddenly, his last name made sense. “Are you related to Beaumont Grenier?” Beaumont Grenier was a contemporary of Mailer’s, considered one of the best of his generation. My client, Forester, had loved his work.
“Something like that.” For the first time, Mick looked uncomfortable.
I thought about what I knew of Beaumont Grenier. After a few bestselling books, he’d left the literary limelight in New York and moved to Maine, where he had a summer house. He stayed there all year-round, even during the most frozen winter days, with only his wife and his son for company, because it was the only place he could write.
“Are you Beaumont Grenier’s kid?” I asked.
“Something like that,” he said again in a dry tone. “Look, what I was saying about Mailer was-”
“You were saying something about heroism. Are you sitting here telling me you’re heroic?” The anger of my earlier tone had been replaced by incredulity.
He shrugged minimally, as if to say he couldn’t change the things that were true. “Mailer also said that every woman was a culture unto herself, with all the roots and tendrils that make up a culture.”
“And?”
“He didn’t hate women. He just thought that being with a woman was like being in a new country.”
“I can’t even imagine why you’re telling me this. Is it because you thought Jane was a culture? A country?”
He smiled. “I think of it in broader terms than Mailer did. I think of all the subjects I write about as being their own enigmas, their own cultures. And as a writer covering those puzzling cultures, I have to find out everything I can about them.”
It reminded me of something Jane had said-that she stepped outside her marriage because every person she was with brought her something new.
But Mick was still talking. “When I get the chance,” he said, “I like to live in their skin.”
I recoiled. “‘Live in their skin,’” I repeated. “Live in their skin? Is that a reference to sex with Jane? You’re sick.”
“Why am I sick? She’s a beautiful woman.” His head dipped to one side. “She was a beautiful woman. And I was writing about her. I wanted to see any side of her I could. I wanted to be inside her, sure. I’ve always said that every writer would fuck some of his characters if he got a chance.”
I couldn’t hide my distaste. “You saw her as a character? And that’s how you justify stalking her and sleeping with her?”
“It wasn’t stalking. It was research.”
“So let’s see if I’m getting this straight-first, you were following her.”
Another bob of his head in a silent acknowledgement. No remorse on his face.
“And you’ve been scouring the Web for any references to her.”
Another nod.
“You cut out pictures and articles from magazines about her.”
“Right.”
“Did you get into her house somehow and leave those flowers and that noose?”
His eyes went a little wide. “No, but that’s brilliant. Did that happen?” He grabbed the notebook. More scribbling.
“You’re psychotic. You were at Trial TV on that Monday, the day she died.”
“Absolutely. I was doing background research on her. That network wants PR so bad, the president of Trial TV himself invited me right in.”
“Jane said she found notes you kept about what grocery stores she went to and where she got her hair cut.”
He was nodding. Still he looked unperturbed. In fact, he seemed quite proud of himself. “Let me save you a little time. I also hung out wherever I thought she would be. When she was shooting a promo for Trial TV in front of the courthouse, I was in that crowd. And I’ve been paying bouncers and bar workers to let me know when she was out in the city. And when a bouncer called on Friday saying you guys were at that place on Damen, I called my buddy and I was there in ten minutes. And yes, I slept with her, in part for research, and in part because what man wouldn’t?”
“She was married.”
“Not my problem.” Again, he looked so undisturbed by all this.
“What are you writing?”
&nb
sp; He thought about it. He shrugged.
He sat back and crossed his legs. He looked over me for a second. “I’m writing about the news media, and in particular what happens when broadcasters become the news or when they become celebrities in their own right.”
“Jane wasn’t ‘the news’ until she was killed.”
“That’s not exactly true. She was a celebrity who people gossiped about. People in the biz have been talking about her affairs for the last few years. And recently, word got to the streets, and trust me, it was going to hit the public’s attention sooner rather than later. She was about to become news because of her personal life. I pride myself on being able to see those stories before they happen. She isn’t the only broadcaster I’m covering for this book.” A little smile, almost wistful, played over his mouth. “But she sure was the most entertaining.” The eyes shot back to mine. “So that’s it, counselor.” That maddening shrug again.
“If all this is true, why aren’t you more upset about Jane being dead?”
“Are you kidding me? With her dead, she’s even a bigger story.”
Again, I felt myself recoil. I crossed my arms over my chest, my mother’s thin cashmere sweater in that delicate pink making me feel even more vulnerable. “You’re a socio-path.”
“No. I just want to write the best stories, and now with Jane gone and everything I’ve already put into place for this story, I’ll come out on top. That’s all I care about. My publisher is pushing up the release of the book. I’ll work on it around the clock, and they’ll put it out.” He shrugged. “I’ll probably make a bestseller list.”
“Nice. And then maybe you can get over your complex about your famous father.”
Zing. I’d hit a sore spot. I could see the muscles in Mick’s neck tighten.
While I had him off-kilter, I kept going. “Have you heard about something called scarfing?”
He didn’t look confused at the term. Or surprised. “I’ve heard of it.”
“Did you do it with Jane?”
A little shrug. “She asked. And I like to give a girl what she wants.”
“Where were you Monday? After you left Trial TV?”
“You mean when Jane died? You want to know if I have an alibi?”
I nodded.
“You’re learning a lot from the police, huh? God, if you did kill her, it would be great for my book.”
“I didn’t kill her! Where were you that day?”
“What time did she die?”
“Sometime between three and six.”
“I was writing.”
“Here?”
“No. A place called Uncommon Ground. It’s up near Wrigley. I’m there all the time, and yes, I’m sure someone there will tell you they saw me that afternoon.”
There was a banging on the front door.
It opened with a slow creak.
And there was Vaughn.
He looked from Mick to me and back again, and I could see his eyes jumping, his mind leaping to connections even more absurd than the ones he already had.
“I came over when I saw his press conference,” I said before he could even open his mouth. “This is the guy who Jane was with on Friday night.”
Two uniformed cops stepped inside, behind Vaughn. Mick looked amused by the police inhabiting his place. He stood up and offered his hand to Vaughn. “Mick Grenier. Nice to meet you.”
“We need to take you in for questioning.”
A wave of relief fell over me. This would all get straightened out now.
“Sure,” Mick said. “Just let me get a jacket.”
He left the room.
Vaughn gestured at one of the uniformed cops. “Go with him.” He turned back to me.
“So you’ll ask him where he was on Friday night?” I demanded. “And you’re going to confirm that he was with Jane?”
“I’ll ask him, Izzy.”
I hated the sound of my name coming from his lips. “You should confirm that he was stalking her, too.”
“Don’t worry, Izzy.” He said it in such a tone that it sounded like Don’t worry your pretty little head.
“And when you finally realize I wasn’t with Jane that night, then this…this calling me a person of interest, it’s over, right?”
“For you?” He actually laughed. “For you, this whole thing is a long way from over.”
63
T he minute I woke up in my mother’s guest room the next morning, fear was waiting-sitting calmly in a corner of my mind, legs crossed, filing her nails. She was waiting, like someone who officially lived in my brain now, who didn’t intend to leave anytime soon. I realized then that I’d seen her before. Fear had been with me for a while, long before Jane died.
I tried to remember when fear hadn’t been a resident. I dialed my mind back and back, reviewing clip reels of my life, searching and searching, and I finally landed on last autumn, a time when Sam and I were still Sam and Izzy, when our wedding was only a few months away. I thought I was busy then. I thought life was crazy. I thought that I had been pushed to my limits with work and wedding plans. And yet, every morning when I woke up back then, I was, I realized now, content.
I found the phone in the room and took it back to bed with me, curling myself tight under the covers. In the dim morning light seeping through the ivory curtains, I called Sam. He would just be waking up in Cincinnati, I figured. “It’s me. I’m calling from my mom’s.”
“Hey, Red Hot,” he said.
“Didn’t sleep last night, huh?” I could tell. Sam had problems sleeping when he was upset, and his voice was always different in the morning after he tossed and turned.
“No.”
I waited for him to say he was sorry about last night, about blowing up at me about Grady, but neither of us said anything.
Finally, I broke the silence. “Remember the song you were going to sing for me on our wedding night?”
Silence for a minute, then, “Of course.”
“I was just thinking that I never heard it. What did it say?”
“I can’t sing it now.”
“No, don’t sing, but tell me a couple of lines. Maybe the refrain?”
He exhaled, as though it hurt to remember the song. “It was called ‘We’ve Come to It.’ The song was about how everything was culminating on that night, how everything that we’d done led us there, but the song was also about how we would keep coming to it every day, even after that night.”
I pulled the covers tighter around me, missing him, missing Us. “What did you think of when you wrote ‘come to it.’ I mean, what was It?”
“It. You know. It was us. Settled. Happy.”
“No secrets.” I couldn’t help it.
“I don’t have any secrets, Izzy! Jesus, we’re back to this again.”
I threw off the covers and sat up. “You’re right. I do keep bringing it up, and I’m sorry, but I guess the thing is…” What was the thing? “This thing is…” I felt on the edge of some revelation, some small, quiet, truthful revelation. “The thing is, I don’t know. I don’t know why it’s not right. I just feel it in my bones. Something keeps telling me it’s not right between us.”
“I don’t know what else I can do.” He said this simply. Not annoyed. Just resigned.
“I don’t, either. I think it needs time.”
“We’ve given it a lot of time.”
“Maybe we need more.”
“I don’t know if I have more.”
The fear sitting in the corner of my mind leapt to her feet, danced around. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. But I know this isn’t the time to make any decisions.” A pause. “What’s going on with Jane’s case?”
I sat up and looked around the room at the tasteful furniture, the impressionistic painting, trying to ground myself, but everything seemed to swing around crazily. “What does that mean? For you and me?”
“It doesn’t mean anything. Not right now. I shouldn’t have said that
about not having time. I do. I’ll always have time for you. C’mon. Let’s not go over this again. Tell me what’s happening with Jane’s case.”
I felt short of breath.
Sam seemed to know. “Izzy. We’ll be okay. One way or another. I promise you that. Let’s get you through this right now, this thing with Jane.”
I sucked in air. I liked the take-control tone of his voice. “Okay, here’s what happened last night.” I gave him all the details. I told him that I was going to try and check out Mick’s alibi.
“You’re going to be fine, Izzy. Really. This will all work out the way it’s supposed to. And you can rely on me, okay? You can. Whatever you need. Just let me know.”
I said, okay. I said, I love you. And we got off the phone.
I sat there in the silence of the guest room, thinking that what I really needed was to somehow return myself to the place I’d been last fall. If I could go back, I would appreciate it more. I would be more cautious with life.
But then fear started filing her nails again in the corner of my mind, reminding me there was no going back.
And so I made myself get out of bed; I opened the window and looked down onto a sun-dappled State Street, and made myself register the warmth, the fact that it would probably be a sunny spring day in the sixties; I made myself leave the room, made myself read the note my mother left outside the door, saying she’d chosen a few dresses for me in her closet, that she would be back in a few hours; I made myself get dressed in a linen spring dress that wasn’t as tight as I thought and cinched it with the wide black belt my mother had laid out; I made myself walk down the street to find Grady’s car, and I pointed it in the direction of Wrigleyville.
64
I called information and got the address for Uncommon Ground, the place where Mick said he’d been writing when Jane was killed.
I drove north on Lincoln Avenue, the traffic was surprisingly slow for midmorning on a Saturday. And the sidewalks were crowded with people, mostly my age and younger, all of them strolling, all looking really, really happy. I saw a bunch of Cubs hats and realized there was a game today. In Chicago, when there’s a Cubs game at 1:20 in the afternoon, you don’t get there at 1:00 p.m., you get there as early as your liver will allow you to start drinking. I couldn’t have been more jealous of those fans at that minute.
Red Blooded Murder Page 29