Laura Caldwell - Red Blooded Murder

“Is she a doctor?”

“No, an accountant. She works as an overnight bookkeeper at O’Hare for one of the airlines.”

“Weird that Jane would have her name on the list with the doctors.”

“Maybe not. You know who she used to work for?”

“One of the docs?”

“Prince & Associates.”

“Jackson Prince’s firm.”

“Yeah. Here’s her home phone number.” He rattled off some digits.

“This is great. Thanks.” But my words were quickly followed by a sense of deflation. Really, what had I learned? That Jane was doing research on Jackson Prince? I already had that information. That Jane had questioned some doctors about the Ladera case? That maybe she’d called some people at Prince’s law firm? Didn’t add up to anything. Certainly nothing I’d learned would give Prince a reason to kill Jane.

Plus, there was the scarf. The way Jane had been strangled with it. That seemed to suggest that whoever had done that to her had known about Jane’s predilection for erotic asphyxiation.

Was it possible that Jane and Prince had had an affair? He was easily twenty years older than her, and he didn’t seem like Jane’s type. But then wasn’t that Jane’s main point? Her affairs brought her into another world, another life, one that she would otherwise have little access to.

But then again, maybe Prince and Jane hadn’t had an affair. Maybe Jane had been killed with the scarf because it was her signature, her way of highlighting a big story. She’d been wearing it on the day she questioned Prince on Trial TV. And if the story about Prince had been big, and he’d known about it, then maybe strangling her with it was his way of truly shutting her up.

“Iz, I’ve to run,” Mayburn said on the phone. “I told Lucy I’d pick up dinner for the kids.”

“Dinner for the kids? You did not just say that.”

“Shut it. I’ll talk to you later.” C.J. came up to my desk. In her jeans and blazer, she took a wide stance and gave me a sour face. “I’ve been looking for you. You need to take a call in my office.”

“Sorry. I had to talk to someone outside.”

“Whatever. The police have been calling the station.”

“On a case we’re covering?”

“On Jane’s case. They’re looking for you.” She jerked a thumb. “Let’s go.”

C.J. had taken over Tommy Daley’s office. It was a real office with a door that closed, but the only things in it now were a desk and a bunch of boxes C.J. had brought from her old station. Most were open and overflowing with what looked like office stuff-old scripts, reference books and manuals, broadcast plaques and awards, notebooks, coffee mugs.

C.J. nodded tersely at the phone. I stared at it a moment, with its three rows of lights, many solid and bright, others dark, one lone light blinking at the top.

I lifted the receiver with trepidation. My arm seemed to tingle with the movement. I gulped hard at something bitter that rose in my throat. “Hello?”

“Isabel McNeil.” It was a statement, not a question. And I knew that voice. Detective Vaughn.

I glanced up at C.J., who stood in the doorway, her arms still crossed. I put my hand over the receiver. “Can I get a minute on my own?”

She pursed her lips, nodded reluctantly, then left.

I gripped the phone. “Can I help you?”

“You’ve been named a person of interest,” he said in a somber voice.

“I know that.” I raised my other hand to my mouth. For a second, I felt as if I might throw up. My fingers were icy cold as they touched my lips. Sometimes my hands went cold like that when I hadn’t eaten (and I hadn’t since early this morning), but somehow I knew it was more than that. It was fear.

“And I hear you’ve got yourself a lawyer,” Vaughn said, “and that she’ll bring you in if we don’t announce this to the public.”

“Yes.”

“Good, because we need to see you at the station. We need an alibi for Monday night before you found Jane. And for late Friday night after you two were out.”

I knew I should welcome the opportunity to speak to them, to clear this up, because I wasn’t guilty of anything. But still my stomach curled into a tight fist.

“Tomorrow work for you?” Vaughn said, like we were meeting up for coffee.

“In the afternoon.” After Trial TV. I named a time.

And then, despite the fact that I knew it was stupid to piss off the cops, even if this cop in particular was a complete jerk, no, a complete asshole, I hung up.

L incoln Park is a massive garden in the middle of the city, a great place to stroll, to lose yourself. Or maybe to find yourself.

When I’d gotten home after my talk with Vaughn, I hadn’t known what to do. I called Theo a few times, silently begging him to be home already, so he could tell the cops I was with him on Friday night, not Jane. But over and over and over I only got his voice mail. And it was starting to mess with my mind. Was he really in Mexico? Was he really who he said he was? I became anxious, suspicious and generally freaked out by the way everything seemed to be spiraling, and in a direction I hadn’t charted for myself.

And so I worked myself into something resembling a panic attack. I stood in my kitchen, hand on the counter as if to hold myself there, my breath coming in ragged gulps. I’d heard about people having anxiety attacks. Q, for example, had always claimed to have them when he stepped on the scale at the gym. But was this what he was talking about? Did he feel as if he might choke, might faint? Breathe, I ordered myself. It seemed so simple-breathe. But I couldn’t get my lungs to cooperate.

I called Maggie. “I’m going to the Belmont station tomorrow.”

“Remember, you don’t have to talk to them,” she said. “I told them you would talk if they kept quiet about the ‘person of interest’ thing, but we can always pull the plug.”

“But then they’ll tell everyone I’m a person of interest.”

“Maybe.”

“Probably, right? I mean, if I don’t talk to them.”

A pause. “Yeah, probably.”

I thought about Jane’s affairs and the “scarfing.” I’d promised Jane I wouldn’t mention the scarfing, but I was going to have to talk about her affairs, at least her night with the writer, in order to show Vaughn I wasn’t with her late that night. I told Maggie about Theo then.

“Mmm, he sounds hot.”

“You have no idea.” Then I told her about Jane’s writer, and after reminding her of our own attorney-client privilege, about Jane’s affairs. “I need to tell the cops all this, right?”

“On the one hand, if it could help find who did this to her, yes. But on the other hand, it doesn’t mean they’ll stop looking at you…”

“But it will explain that she wasn’t with me Friday night. She was with the writer.”

“The problem is you don’t even know that writer’s name.”

“Mick.”

“Mick what? Is that short for Michael?”

I started panting again. “I don’t know! But if I can just explain who Jane was with that night and who I was with…”

She exhaled loud. “Iz, just because you tell the cops X and Y doesn’t mean they get to Z.”

Pant, pant, pant. “I…have…to do something.”

“Okay, okay. We’re going to the station tomorrow, and we’re going to figure this out,” she said. “I’ll pick you up and take you there.”

My breathing slowed. A bit of fresh air seeped its way into my lungs. “Thank you. Thank you.”

“No problem.” She was quiet for a minute. “When was the last time you worked out?”

My mind knotted. “Can’t remember.”

“Put on your running shoes and take a walk along the lake. That’s an order from your attorney and your best friend. It’s gorgeous out.”