Laura Caldwell - Red Blooded Murder

Are you doing anything tonight? the first said. Would you be able to come over to my house?

Hi, Izzy, the next said, I’m so sorry to bother you but not sure who to call. I’m kind of freaking out here, and I wondered if you were out and could stop by.

Izzy, the last said. I need some help.

I looked at the call log and saw she’d called twice but hadn’t left a message.

I went into the front room of the bar, where it was quieter, and called Jane.

“Thank God,” she said, answering. “I’m so sorry to interrupt your night, but can you come over?”

“What’s going on?”

“Someone has been in my house.”

“What? Is Zac there?”

“No, he took off today for our weekend place.” She exhaled hard. “I came home, and I found some…well, some stuff in my house.” She was talking fast, her voice distressed. “Someone has been in here.”

“Have you called the cops?”

“No!” Her voice was alarmed now, anxious. She sounded as if she were bordering on tears. “Izzy, you know how it is. If I call the cops, then this is all over the news. The network is launching Monday. A legal network. This is not the kind of PR we need.”

“But are you safe?”

“I’ve been through the whole house. There’s no one here now.” She sighed. “I didn’t know who to call, and you were always the one we went to when there was any problem with work. I don’t know…Is there any way you could come over?”

“What’s your address?” I asked.

She told me.

“I’ll be right there.”

J ane’s place in River North was one of eight town houses, all clearly built at the same time, probably by the same developer, but hers was the nicest-an elegant graystone, nearly white. It was new construction but built to appear old with iron streetlamps with electrical flame that flickered like real fire and a black iron fence with twisted posts. French balconies surrounded the tall upstairs windows.

The house was lit up-all the lights must have been on-but the shades on the first floor, tasseled at the edges, were drawn, hiding whatever was happening there. I hurried up the front steps, trailed by Sam and Charlie.

The brass knocker was shaped like a lion’s head. I used it to pound on the door.

Jane answered right away, as if she’d been standing behind the door, waiting for us.

She wore workout clothes-black pants that hugged her long legs and a tight pink T-shirt that proclaimed the name of a local jewelry store and said, Simply the Best for 20 Years. Her hair was in a high, swinging ponytail. She seemed younger somehow, almost like a girl barely into her teens who looks like an adult from far away but seems so vulnerable and coltish up close.

Or maybe it was the scared look on Jane’s face.

“Izzy!” She launched herself into my arms with a fierce, tight hug. We’d never really embraced before, but I could tell she needed it, and I squeezed her back just as tight. “Thanks so much for coming.” She drew back. “You look cute,” she said, distractedly.

“Thanks.” I was wearing a red, patterned skirt and tall black heels for my date with Sam. “Jane, this is Sam, my…” I still didn’t know what to call him. My ex-fiancé wasn’t right, and boyfriend wasn’t, either. I decided to just skip it. “And my brother, Charlie.”

She shook their hands. “Hi, guys, c’mon in.” Jane looked nervously up and down the street before leading us into her house.

Inside was a wide living room with polished wood floors. The walls were a soothing fawn color; the moldings along the high ceilings were painted a creamy ivory. Jane, or her very talented decorator, had filled the place with plump, coconut-brown couches and overstuffed chairs on either side of the five-foot marble fireplace. There were colorful touches everywhere-still-life oil paintings that hung side by side, an Aztec vase which stood on a pedestal, throw pillows with an African print.

“Wow.” Charlie looked around in wonder. “Great place.” Charlie found everything fascinating. He would have been awed by an eight-by-eight prison cell. But he was right, Jane’s place was unique-somehow both chic and welcoming.

“Thanks.” Jane glanced around, as if suddenly seeing it through someone else’s eyes. “My husband and I have been here for almost ten years.”

“You won an Emmy?” Charlie pointed to a built-in bookshelf next to the fireplace. On it was a gold statue of a winged woman holding aloft a globe.

Jane smiled. “Yes. Last year.”

“Can I touch it?”

Jane laughed. “Sure. Pick it up.”

Charlie walked over to the shelf and lifted the statue. “Wow.” He curled it a few times as if it were a barbell. “This thing is heavy.”

“Charlie!” I said. “Be careful.”

“What? It’s cool.”

Jane laughed again. “Don’t worry about it.” She looked at me. “Izzy, can I show you something?”

“Of course.”

“We’ll be right back,” she said to Sam and Charlie.

“Take your time,” Sam said. He shot me a smile. If Sam was upset that our date had been interrupted, first by my brother and then by Jane’s SOS call, he didn’t show it. And that made me love him all the more.

If only, I thought for a second. If only we could base our decisions about who to love (and how to spend our lives) solely on a feeling we have at a given moment. If that was the case, I wouldn’t care what Sam had done months before or why he hadn’t confided in me about it.

Jane led me from the living room into a massive kitchen with a center granite island marbled in colors of sand and black. On the island sat a tall vase of flowers.

She pointed at them. “When I got home, they were here.”

“The flowers?” It was a mixed bouquet, clearly expensive, in orange and red-passionate colors.

“I have no idea who left them. Zac took off this morning for our other house.” A pained expression moved into her face. “He left after I got back from coffee with you. He said he couldn’t be around me. He went to our house in Long Beach on the other side of the lake. I went to rehearsals and then worked here in my office for a while-there’s so much to do to get ready for the launch on Monday-and Zac called me from the lake house when he got there. I finally took a break and went to the gym before it closed. I was gone for an hour and a half, and when I came home, this was here.” She crossed her arms and looked at the vase as if it were filled with rotting food.

“Is it possible Zac left it before he went to Long Beach, and you didn’t notice?”

“No, I’m telling you, the flowers weren’t here before I went to the gym. And there was no card. Someone came into the house while I was out and left them.”

“Any clue who that is?”

She shook her head again.

I stared at the flowers, the kitchen feeling cooler all of a sudden. “Who has keys to your house?”

“Zac and I. Our cleaning lady. Zac’s mom, but she’s still in London for the winter.”

“Was the house locked?”

She nodded. “I always lock it before I go anywhere, even if I’m just walking up the street for the paper. The thing is, we’ve got a key hidden outside, near the garage, just in case.”

“How many people know about that?”

She exhaled. “A fair number. I have this little problem of losing my keys, so all my friends know about it, and some of the…” She raised her eyes to me, asking me to understand.

“Some of the guys.” I said this plainly, with no judgment. And the truth was, I really didn’t judge Jane for having affairs. It wasn’t for me, but I had never believed that the rest of the world needed to conform to my ways. “So you bring people like that here?”