Laura Caldwell - Red Blooded Murder

“Yes?” I prompted him to finish.

He shook his head again, as if he’d changed his mind. His eyes narrowed, and I thought I saw his emotion sway from anguish to anger in that one instant.

“What? Please ask me. Say whatever you were going to say, please, because…” My glance drifted over Zac’s shoulder and landed on the photo of Jane. I felt those tears leaping into my eyes again.

Zac saw them. “Let’s move over here.”

We stepped aside into a corner.

“You were out with her Friday night,” Zac said. “And when I called you the next day, I mentioned her…” His laugh was harsh. “What did she call them? Her dalliances,” he said bitterly. “You know what I mean.”

I didn’t know what to say. Jane said that she told Zac everything, that he knew everything about her, but what was everything? Should I admit I knew what he was talking about?

I simply nodded. I thought about Jane telling me how Zac was sick of her affairs, that he wasn’t so understanding anymore. Suddenly, I wanted to ask Zac, Were you so angry you couldn’t take it anymore? Did you kill your wife?

Within the last six months, I’d developed a suspicious nature, which had settled inside me and taken up residence. I’d gone from being someone who thought the best of everyone to someone with a wariness that sometimes leapt up and surprised me. I didn’t like that about myself. It made me feel much older than my twenty-nine (okay, nearly thirty) years.

“She didn’t talk to many people about what she did,” Zac said. “Her dalliances. Why you?”

“I’m not sure. Jane and I had always liked each other. And we became closer when she asked me to work for Trial TV.”

His eyes moved back and forth, as if they were mining my face for some other meaning behind my words. “Closer. Yeah.” He chuckled, but there was no mirth behind it. “You worked for Forester Pickett.”

I nodded, surprised at the topic shift. “I did,” I said with pride. “Forester was a friend of mine.”

“And your fiancé disappeared about the time Forester died, right?” It sounded accusatory somehow.

“Yes.”

“And you’re a lawyer.”

“Yeah.” And I feel like you’re taking my deposition.

“So you know how to evade them?”

“Evade who?”

“The cops. You know how to talk to them, how a murder investigation works.” The tone of Zac’s words was severe, and again he sounded as if he was accusing me of something.

“I don’t do criminal law,” I said, as if that explained everything. But really, I had no idea what he was getting at.

He was staring at me so intently now it was disconcerting. “What happened Friday night?”

I felt my grief shift to anxiety. Zac was standing in front of me, my back to the corner of the room, and I suddenly had the feeling of being trapped there. “What do you mean?”

“Where did Jane stay that night?”

I raised my glass and swallowed another gulp of wine. What to tell him? Zac obviously knew about Jane’s affairs, but to tell him specifically about Friday, about Jane going home with the writer seemed wrong. A friend’s secrets are always a secret. Even if that friend was no longer alive.

“I’m not sure.”

“Why were you so evasive when I called Saturday morning?”

He was making this hard. How to tell him that I was trying to cover up for his wife, and I was dealing with my first one-night stand, with a guy who was still in my house when he called? I thought of Theo then, and despite the setting, I felt my insides twist with passion. Never had a guy been able to cause such an intense reaction in me. Not even Sam.

“I…I…” I looked over his shoulder at the bar. There was Q. I gave him a look I knew he would read as Help.

“I know where Jane stayed,” Zac said when I looked back at him.

“You do?”

“Yeah,” he said. “She stayed with you.”

“J ane didn’t stay with me that night.”

Zac crossed his arms, looking self-satisfied. “Don’t play with me.”

“I’m not playing. Why would you say that?”

He scoffed. “No, let me ask you a question. Why were you and Jane hanging out so much lately?”

“Because we were becoming friends. Because she asked me to be on Trial TV.”

“Friends.” Another bitter laugh. “I bet you were good friends.”

“What are you implying?”

“That you and Jane were more than friends.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Then why were you being so evasive when I called Saturday morning?”

I paused. Fine, I would come out with it. “If I sounded evasive, it was because I thought your wife had probably gone home with a man she was talking to Friday night.” I wasn’t sure how much to say. I had promised Jane I wouldn’t say anything about the scarfing, given her my word as an attorney, too. But I could say anything I wanted about myself. “And also…” This was embarrassing. “I went home with a man, a kid really. I went home with this guy, and he was with me when you called, and the whole situation was making me nervous, and…” I held my free hand up in a shrug. “And that’s why I probably sounded evasive, but Jane was not with me.”

Zac looked unimpressed. “She wouldn’t tell me who she was with that night. She usually did, but not on that night.”

“She was with some writer.”

“Some writer?” His question was laced with sarcasm.

“Yes, Mick is his name.”

“Mick what?”

“Mick…uh…actually I never did learn it.” Again, I experienced that feeling I’d had the night before at the police station-a feeling of guilt. It was irrational. There was no reason to feel guilty about anything. And if anyone should feel guilt, shouldn’t it be Zac? His anger was palpable now but contained. What had he been like in the private moments with Jane, who he knew cheated on him, and frequently? Had he been so contained with her?

Zac shook his head, his mouth tightening. “It was the same thing with you that it was with all the guys she was with-all of a sudden she’s out one night, and it’s just business or it’s just friends, and then I can’t find her. It was the same shit with you.” His voice was getting louder. “The exact same shit!”

I looked around, embarrassed. People were starting to stare. This was bizarre. Six months ago I’d been at Forester’s funeral and had been pulled into a confrontation. The same thing was happening here.

I leaned toward him and dropped my voice. “Zac, it was just business. We were just friends.”

Q arrived at my side then. He put a hand on my elbow. “Everything okay here?”

I took a breath, inhaling air that seemed foul, tinged with accusations. “Q, this is Zac, Jane’s husband.”

They shook hands, Q murmuring words of condolence. Those kind, soft-spoken words made me remember that we were at a funeral, and the man in front of me had lost his wife, and that man had probably not slept last night and was most likely just shooting his mouth off out of exhaustion.

“Look, Zac,” I said calmly. “Not that it matters, but Jane really wasn’t with me Friday night.”

“Not that it matters?” Zac’s tone was mocking now. “The way I see it, you were with Jane a lot this weekend-she stayed at your place Friday night, she ran back to meet you for coffee the next morning so you could get your stories straight, you came over when she found that shit in the house. And now that I think about it, maybe you left those flowers and that noose. You probably knew where she kept the key.”

My mouth opened. Wide. But no sounds came from it. I looked at Q, whose face was surprised and confused. As my assistant, Q had always known what to do to get me out of trouble, but neither of us knew what to do here.