Laura Caldwell - Red Blooded Murder

“I gotta get going,” the cabbie said. “I’ve got a pickup at O’Hare.”

A pickup at O’Hare-the Holy Grail of Chicago cabbies. They’ll throw you in front of a bus going fifty on Lake Shore if they get a call for a pickup at O’Hare.

I tried to remember what my mom was doing today. I didn’t have a key to her place on me.

Just then one of the reporters saw me in the cab. He pointed, and they all started surging toward me.

“Whoa,” the cabbie said. “I’m out of here. You have to go.”

“Wait, wait, please. I have to figure out…” My mind raced about. I could get out and run for the Sedgwick El train. I could get out and run for my front door, but they’d never leave. All night they would be out there.

“Damn it,” I said.

“Seriously,” the driver said. “You have to get going.”

Just then I saw someone else move toward the cab, even faster than the reporters or cameramen.

Grady.

He yanked the cab door open, his face worried. “My car is right here.” He pointed to the curb.

“Thank God.”

Grady threw a twenty at the driver, pulled me from the cab and hustled me to the car. Cameras whirred and clicked. Reporters pushed toward me and shouted questions. One question I heard over and over again-Did you kill Jane Augustine?-and it terrified me.

I knew what Maggie would tell me to say, and I finally listened to her.

“No comment!”

G rady’s place was a haven, although you wouldn’t know it from the outside. He lived in a nondescript condo building off State Street, where a lot of the late-twenties and early-thirties crowd lived until they could afford better. Grady couldn’t yet, not on what an associate made. But inside, Grady’s condo was decorated with care.

“I forgot how great your apartment is.” I looked around the front room with its chocolate walls, white-framed photos, leather couches and golden drum lamps.

“Yeah, well, don’t forget I got help from my sister. Hey, I’m going to change out of this suit. You want something to wear?” He glanced at my own suit.

“Maybe just a sweatshirt or something.”

He gestured at me to follow him into the bedroom. The walls there were charcoal, the bedding stark white.

“You’re so neat,” I said.

“My cleaning woman is neat. She came today.” He opened his closet, pulled out a red hooded sweatshirt that read Galena Fire Department.

I pointed at the sweatshirt. “Have you been home lately?”

“Nah. Too busy. Just like you.”

There was a subtle edge to his words. I ignored it. I slipped out of my suit jacket. “Well, now that I’ve been fired I won’t be so busy.” I pulled the sweatshirt over the silk camisole I wore underneath. “Man, that feels better.”

I tugged my hair from the collar, pushed the sleeves up. I realized Grady hadn’t said anything.

He stood in front of his closet. He took off his suit coat. “So what does that mean? You’re going to have more time for me now?”

I shrugged. “Yeah.” Once I get the cops off my back; once I find out who killed Jane.

Grady unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt. He had strong forearms, long fingers. “You sure?”

“Sure, I’m sure.” I wanted to be sure. I wanted my life to be as simplistic as this.

His eyes weren’t moving from mine. The condo seemed quiet suddenly, the buzz of the city, of the last week, disappearing.

He took a step toward me. Then another. He lifted one of the strings from the hood on the sweatshirt I wore, twirled it in his hand. “You look good in this.” Then he was closer, within inches. He had a faint freckle on the right side of his bottom lip. I stared at it. He leaned in. He nudged my cheekbone with his lips, then bent and put his face in my neck and inhaled.

“God,” he said. “You smell good.”

So did he-more earthy than Sam, more familiar than Theo.

He pulled his face back, looked at me again, brushed a lock of hair from my forehead.

And then he kissed me. I pushed back into his lips. Both of his hands went to my face. We kept kissing. Fifteen seconds went by, maybe twenty.

Then suddenly he stopped and moved his face away, his eyes searching mine. “You’re not into it, are you?”

“Into what?”

“Me and you.”

“Sure I am.” I wanted to be. I wanted to think-to feel-anything except reality.

He took a step back. My face felt cold without his hands there.

“I shouldn’t be asking questions now,” he said. “You have too much going on already.”

My brain was a scramble. There was too much inside it-too many questions, too many worries, maybe too many men. I opened my mouth, tried to put into words the jumble of thoughts. I started and stopped a few times.

And then suddenly there was one thing that seemed clear, one thing that I wasn’t questioning. “I’m into us as friends.”

His face was impassive. A beat went by. Then another. “So you’re into us as friends, huh? Nothing more.”

“Yeah.” Saying it out loud made me realize how true it was. But I felt awful at the resigned look on Grady’s face. “Maybe it’s just what’s going on right now. All this stuff with Jane.”

“It’s not that stuff.” His face was hard now. “You’ve been trying to see us differently, but…”

He was right. And he deserved to know it. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Grady. You’re amazing. And adorable.” I looked at those forearms. “And sexy.”

“But not to you. Not really.”

I said nothing.

“Is it you and Sam? Are you guys back together?”

“It’s not that.”

My cell phone rang from my purse, sitting on Grady’s bed. I didn’t answer it. Grady and I just stared at each other, some kind of understanding settling between us.

“It’s okay, Iz,” he said. “We’re friends.”

The phone rang again. It stopped. Then started again.

I finally broke our gaze and found my cell phone. Sam, cell. He’d called three times.

“Sorry,” I said to Grady. I raised the phone to my ear. “Hello?”

“Jesus, Izzy, I can’t believe you,” he said. “I can’t believe you’re with Grady.”

Out on Grady’s balcony, the sky was gray and misty. Clutching the phone to my ear, I shivered. But it didn’t matter. The conversation was short.

“Jesus.” Sam’s voice was full of irritation. “My flight got delayed, I went to the bar, and there you are on CNN, getting in Grady’s goddamned car!”

“I didn’t know there was going to be media crawling around my house. I didn’t know what to do.”

“So you called Grady.”

“No! I didn’t call him. He was there, and he helped me.”

“Yeah, he’s been really fucking helpful for a while now.”

“Grady is a friend of mine.”

“He’s more than that, and you know it.”

I thought of what had just gone on between Grady and me. “We’re friends.”

“Some friend. You waved me off, Iz. Me. When I wanted to help you. You let him rescue you.”

My mouth fell open. Wordless for a moment, I looked down at the street, fifteen floors below, the cars zipping by. “He did not rescue me.”

“Yeah, he did. And if it’s not him, it’ll be someone else. You’ll always be one of those people who’s got someone.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the fact that when everything happened six months ago, I wasn’t even gone for more than a week before you moved on to Grady.”

“You disappeared. You were gone. And I didn’t move on!”

“You did. You let him save you.”

Sam’s harsh words somehow disintegrated the confusion in my head. “You know what, Sam? No one is going to save me. No one except myself.”