Laura Caldwell - Red Blooded Murder

But now Wyatt was back. They’d reconnected on Face-book. He was older but still gorgeous-a full head of black hair, big shoulders cloaked with only the most expensive designer clothes.

I shook his hand. “Good to see you.” I tried hard to sound genuine.

Maggie swore that she wasn’t being stupid. She swore Wyatt had changed his dastardly ways. And as they took a seat on my mother’s silk couch, with the streetlights through the front window making halos around their heads, I had to admit that Wyatt seemed more devoted, more calm. He helped Maggie off with her coat; he stroked her arm; he smiled while looking deeply into her eyes.

I was dying to ask Maggie what I was supposed to do now that I was a person of interest, but my mother believed strongly in small talk before anything else. “Where are you two going to dinner?” she asked, settling onto an ivory-colored chair.

“Les Nomades,” Wyatt said.

“Les Nomades on a Tuesday?” My mother was clearly impressed.

“I’m friends with the head chef.”

Maggie and I exchanged looks. Her eyes said, Please shut up. Please don’t even think it.

What I was thinking was what I’d told Maggie once-that Wyatt was allegedly friends with everyone. If you said you were going to a bar, it was likely Wyatt would tell you he was tight with the manager. If you mentioned a Cubs game, he was buddies with the first baseman.

Les Nomades was a French restaurant, one of the fanciest in the city. The fact that Wyatt and Maggie were headed there reminded me of the Wyatt of old-all the snazzy restaurants and the glitzy nights out-and yet the fact that he was here, that he’d veered away from his evening plans to bring his girlfriend to see her train-wreck best friend and her family, was promising.

My mother told a brief story about the last time she had been at Les Nomades. Q described a disastrous date he’d had there once, and then my mom segued into the topic at hand. “We need your help, Maggie. Spence just had a disturbing phone conference with the chief of police.”

Spence, his brow furrowed, related his conversation. After being on the anchor desk all morning, I found it a balm to let someone else do the talking. Spence finished with, “He says Izzy has been named as a person of interest.”

Maggie made a disapproving tsk.

“What do you think?” I said.

“I think that “person of interest” is bullshit. On one hand, it doesn’t mean anything except that the cops have some Law and Order-style hunch about you, but they don’t want to call you a suspect and risk a lawsuit. The term has no legal significance.”

“Seriously?” I felt optimism trickle into the room. “That’s good, right?”

“In a sense, yes. It doesn’t even mean you’re a witness. All it means is that you’re someone the police want to talk to again. The problem is that if it leaks out, the media will pick it up and splash it everywhere. Your reputation could be damaged forever. Think about Richard Jewell, the guy who was a person of interest in the Olympic bombings in the ’90s. They dragged that guy through the mud.”

“The Chicago police haven’t announced this yet,” Spence said.

“That just means they don’t think they need help from the community right now.”

“There must be a way to stop the police from mentioning it in the future,” my mom said.

Maggie shrugged. “They do what they want to do.”

My mother leaned forward. “Certainly, we can do something. Izzy has been through enough. This person of interest thing is ridiculous, and I won’t have her go through hell for the whims of the cops. I won’t have her name tarnished by this.”

I blinked, looking at my mom. Her protective, den-mother attitude was not something she showed often. Even though she was a restrained person, she was someone who exuded energy, who made everyone want to be close to her. But her depression had led her to spend most of my childhood in pajamas, silently wandering the house, her thin frame like a mannequin I’d seen in the windows of Marshall Field’s.

“All right, let’s think of something…” Maggie glanced around the room. “Let’s really think about this…” You could tell she was excited by the way her eyes darted past all of our faces and then back again. This was the same way Maggie looked at a jury when a closing argument really started to roll-as if she was letting every one of them in on a secret.

“The cops don’t usually make deals,” Maggie said, “and I wouldn’t normally suggest you talk to them, because we have a little history with forced confessions in this town. But I’m thinking that I can call in some favors. We could tell them you’ll agree to be questioned, as long as they keep it quiet.”

“Izzy is a lawyer,” my mom said. “She can handle being questioned. And you would be with her, right, Maggie?”

“Of course.” Maggie nodded. “Let’s just think about this some more, and see what happens. I’ll put in some calls tomorrow and see if I can find out anything.”

My mother gave a small exhale of relief. “Thank you, Maggie. Thank you.”

When I walked Maggie and Wyatt to the door, Maggie pulled me aside. “How are you doing with all this? I mean losing Jane, finding her.”

“I’m messed up.”

“I can’t imagine.” She shook her head.

I gestured at Wyatt. “How’s it going?”

A sweet grin turned up her mouth. “It’s great. It’s sexy.”

“It was always sexy, right?”

She made a sound of exasperation. “Please, don’t judge him because of last time. We’re good. I’m good.”

“Okay. No judging.” It was the least I could do. “And hey,” I said, “if you need any lingerie, let me know. I have to work at the store tonight.”

She scoffed. “You’re the lingerie girl, not me. I can barely muster up something other than my cotton undies to go out with him.”

“I’ve got something to get you out of those old cotton scraps.” I whispered to her about the pearl thong.

When I pulled away, her eyes were wide, her mouth O-shaped. “Where can I get it?”

“I’ll get you one tonight.”

A half hour later I was off to peddle some panties.

I took a cab to my place to get my Vespa, the only thing I could think of that might clear my head. But as I drove down Sedgwick toward the Fig Leaf, the cool air, instead of being invigorating, only made me shiver. Or maybe it was the phrase that kept circling my mind. Person of interest. Person of interest. I tried to focus on tonight. On the job that I had to do-pretending I was someone named Lexi Hammond, a law student who worked part-time in a lingerie store.

In the last year alone, I’d been a lawyer, a fiancée, a jilted lover, a mourner, a broadcaster, a moonlighting P.I., a witness. And now a person of interest. It made me feel fragmented, all parts entirely separate, almost ephemeral.

But then I remembered Forester. He had given me a mountain of legal work for reasons no one understood at first. And even though I now understood more why he’d done it, none of it changed the fact that he had believed utterly in me. Sometimes remembering that was just the kick in the ass I needed. It made me pull hard on the gas. It got me there with five minutes to spare.

But I pulled over a block away and called Mayburn. “What if the manager, Josie, has seen me on Trial TV?”

“She seem like the type to watch a legal channel?”

“No.”

“Any PR on you yet?”

“No.”

“Then I’d say it’s fine. Just watch her in case she’s looking at you suspiciously.”

“She looks at everyone suspiciously.”

“You know what I mean. And hopefully I just need you for a week or two more.”