Laura Caldwell - Red Blooded Murder

“I’m sorry,” I said, gently interrupting Duffy. “We were just finishing dinner, and-”

“My gosh, I’m sorry. We’ll let you go. It was so nice to meet you.” She pumped my hand one more time and moved away.

I turned back to Sam, laughing a little. “Wow, that was funny.”

“Yeah.” That stiff smile hadn’t budged.

“What’s up?”

“What do you mean?”

“You look miserable.”

He shook his head, as if shaking off a mood he hadn’t realized he had. “Sorry.”

We fell into a weird silence. We went back to our desserts.

“So have you been playing a lot?” I asked, meaning his guitar.

At the same time, Sam was speaking. “Do you think you’re going to be in that business for a while?”

We both stopped. Laughed awkwardly. “You go,” I said.

He made a face I didn’t recognize. “I guess I was just wondering how long you’re planning on doing this TV thing.”

I sat back. “I’m not sure. I took the job because I couldn’t find anything else, but I have to say I like it. The news is exciting. It’s always minute to minute, and it makes you forget everything else except what you’re doing.”

Sam nodded, frowned. “That’s great. It really is. Sometimes I wish my job was more like that.”

More silence. He was in some kind of mood, but I seemed to have lost the ability to read him at any second, a realization which sent a hollow pang of dread through me.

“So…” Sam said, his brow creasing the way it did when he was thinking hard. “If you stay in the news business, then that kind of thing-” he nodded in the direction of Duffy Carey’s table, “-is going to happen all the time. You know, people coming up to you, telling you how much they like you.”

I shrugged. “Or more likely they’ll come up to me and tell me what a fool I look like, and how I should try harder to control the flop sweating.”

We both laughed, a natural laugh at last.

But Sam’s frown returned.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Nothing. Let’s enjoy the night.”

“Sam, you can’t say nothing. Clearly there’s something.”

A shake of his head. “It really is nothing. And there’s enough going on in your world.”

“Yeah, but you are my world.” It was what I used to say. Saying it now, reflexively, felt a little bit off. “Tell me,” I said. “Please. Even if it’s nothing.”

He sighed, looked at me. “I’m just not sure how I like all that.” He gestured again toward Duffy Carey’s table. “People coming up to us, to you.”

This surprised me. Sam was one of the most laid-back, friendly people I knew. He could meet anyone, talk to anyone. “Did you not like her?”

“No, no. She seems cool. Sounds like she’s got an interesting job, and I like that she thinks you’re fantastic. Because you are, by the way. Have I told you that?”

“No.”

He grabbed my hand again. Squeezed it. “Well, you are.” He let my hand go. “But I’m not sure I like the public-eye thing.”

I nodded, slowly, trying to process what he was saying. “I’m not even sure I do, either. I mean, even though I’ve been on TV for a few days, I don’t feel like I’m in the public eye yet.” I waved at Duffy’s table. “That’s the first time something like that has happened.”

“But it won’t be the last.”

“It might.”

“No, it won’t.”

“What if it’s not? What are you saying?”

“I’m not sure. It’s just occurring to me, but I guess…”

I waited for what he had to say, and it felt like waiting for a guillotine to drop.

“I guess,” he said, “that I just don’t like it.”

“But you’ll get used to it?”

He shrugged. “Could you ever get used to that?”

“I think so. Are you saying you couldn’t?”

“No.” A pause. “Maybe.” Another stop. “I guess we’ll have to see.”

Those words pulled me into something resembling despair. “Sam, you and I have been waiting to see for a while now.”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice irritated, “we’ve been waiting to see if you can get over what happened six months ago.”

I said nothing. “And so now there’s something else we have to wait on, this public-eye thing?”

“I guess there is.”

“And that’s because of me, too.”

His lips pressed firmly together. The quiet wound its way around us, feeling like a stalemate. The night of Sam and I snapping back into place had snapped us apart again.

We paid the bill, walked past the pond and under the fieldstone bridge. The city was dark now, with only the low hum of electricity, the random passing car.

“My place?” Sam said.

“I have to be on set at six. Let’s go to my place.” I looked for a cab. I stopped when I realized Sam hadn’t answered. “You can go home before work in the morning, right?”

“Or we can go to my place now and get my stuff for tomorrow, and then go to your place.”

My temples started to ache. But this time it wasn’t just from being hit on the head, it was from too many layers of emotions-the fear of losing Sam; despondency at losing Jane; anger that Zac had turned the cops on me in his misplaced rage.

“Yeah, okay,” I said to Sam. There was defeat in my voice.

We looked at our watches, started figuring out how long it would take. Meanwhile, it grew chillier on the street, and my headache throbbed. “Sam, what if we just do it tomorrow night? I’ll come to your place or you come to mine, whatever you want.”

I expected him to protest. I guess I hoped he would. But he just craned his neck to look for a cab. “Yeah, tomorrow,” he said. Then, “Shit, I’ve got rugby practice.”

“Well, after that. Or Friday.” We used to feel an urgency to be together. Where had it gone?

We both seemed to sense the change. He looked at me with a face suddenly torn, anguished, surprised. He reached out his arms and pulled me close. I put my head on his chest, smelling a hint of the tea tree aftershave he wore, smelling something deeper, something pure Sam.

“This is stupid,” he said. “I’m coming home with you now.”

“No, it’s okay. I know it’s difficult, and you have to be at work early, too. If not tomorrow, we’ll get together soon.”

“Okay.” I hated that he had given in so easily. That we both had.

Still we clung to each other. Still I breathed him in. That scent brought tears to my eyes, pain to my belly.

“What’s happening?” I said, my words muffled.

He squeezed me tighter. “Nothing,” he murmured. “Nothing.”

That was exactly what I feared.

T he city was a blur outside my cab window. I couldn’t focus on anything, couldn’t see past the haze in my brain, the ache of Sam and me skidding to some new form of us, or maybe no form at all, or some form that would exist on a plane we’d never even known was out there. How fast it had changed, twisted, turned.

The same could be said of Jane’s murder investigation, with how quickly I’d gone from friend and coworker to a person of interest. None of it made any sense to me, and the longer I thought about it, the angrier it made me. The city outside the cab window became a violent composite of hazy smudges, of dark and then of glaring electric light.

Who did Zac Ellis think he was, accusing me? I understood that his suspicion of me had started Saturday morning when I was spouting off possible explanations for her absence, when I really suspected that she’d gone home with Mick. I was trying so hard not to get her in trouble, and trying so hard to contain the fact that I had gone home with someone myself, that I probably sounded as if I had something much bigger to hide. But still. Still, it was Zac’s crazy suspicions that had gotten caught in the lens of the cops’ radar. As far as I could tell, it was because of him that everything was spinning so quickly out of control right now.