Laura Caldwell - Red Hot Lies

“Nice to meet you.” I pumped his hand, squeezing it. “Really…nice.”

Sam winced a little and looked down when I finally let go. There, on the tender pad of skin below his thumb was a small bead of blood.

“Oh my gosh.” I opened my own hand and saw the bottle cap I’d forgotten I was holding, one of its sharp edges tinged red. “I’m so sorry…”

“No problem.” Sam brushed away the dot of red with his other hand. “I’ll live.”

“He’ll live,” echoed Forester. “He’s a tough one. He plays rugby, did you know that?”

Sam smiled. “She just met me, Forester, how is she supposed to know that?”

“I would have thought everyone knew about the great Sam Hollings.” Forester patted Sam’s shoulder. “Now if you two will excuse me…”

When he was gone, I gestured at Sam’s hand. “I’m really sorry.”

His eyes were fixed on mine. “I’m not.”

Sam and I began our “forever” that moment, in the sun, on Forester’s green lawn. Later, it became a ritual of ours-I would ask him if he loved me, and he would say, “Of course. I love you so much it makes me bleed.”

After the phone call from Sam’s boss, I had to get out of my office, away from the sad, sympathetic way Tanner was looking at me. I realized I liked his snarling criticism much better than his pity. And I also realized that the one place I hadn’t looked for Sam was one of the most obvious-his apartment. I bolted out of the office, jumped on my scooter and headed to Roscoe Village.

Sam’s apartment was next to a bar called the Village Tap. It was a cozy bachelor pad where we’d spent our early dating days.

I parked the Vespa and stood outside Sam’s apartment building, shivering. The sky was a moody mix of white clouds broken up by occasional shots of sunlight that disappeared just as fast.

“Izzy!” I heard.

Maggie came trotting down the street, her tiny feet pounding on the sidewalk, her little arms swinging determinedly back and forth. Her light-brown hair with its natural streaks of gold hung in waves to her chin. She pushed it out of her face with an annoyed hand.

“What is going on?” she said when she reached me.

I’d left her a message, telling her that Sam was gone and that Forester had died, and that I needed to look around Sam’s apartment but that I couldn’t go alone. His place, which had once held me like a hug, scared me.

Maggie and I embraced. She was shorter than me by five inches, so I had to lean down. She was so delicate that she made me feel downright ungainly by comparison.

I pulled away and looked at her. “You cut your bangs again. You know you’re not supposed to cut your own bangs.”

Maggie had a habit of getting so irritated with her curly hair that she often took matters into her own hands and chopped away. It usually left erratic results causing Mario, her stylist, to throw a snit and swear he would stop cutting her hair if she didn’t halt the self-mutilation.

“Yes, Mario will disown me. Now, what is going on?” She gave me that intent Maggie look-head bent down while her eyes looked up intently, her bottom lip dropping slightly away from the top.

I filled her in about Forester’s death, about Sam not showing up last night, about the letters and threats Forester had received over the last couple months, about Mark Carrington’s phone call and the missing Panamanian bearer shares.

“Holy cow.” Maggie’s eyes narrowed. “What’s the deal with these Panamanian shares?”

“Mark Carrington told me Panama is big with retirees and people who want cheaper vacation homes. Apparently, Forester thought the country would be as popular as Costa Rica, so he was buying a lot of property there. Mark said that a common way to buy real estate in Panama is to have a corporation own the real estate. They issue shares of stock for the corporation, but the ownership of the corporation isn’t recorded in any registry or database.”

Maggie nodded. “The owners are anonymous.”

“Right. And they don’t have to report the transfer of ownership either. Panama is supposedly the last place you can get a truly anonymous corporation with no loopholes and no financial statements to file. Within the last few months, Forester put a lot of money into real estate there. With Sam’s help.”

“Did you know about this?”

“No. Mark said Sam came to him recently and asked to put those shares in the company safe. He said Forester wanted them moved from his safe-deposit box.”

“And you’re telling me that Sam now has those shares.”

“Apparently.”

We exchanged a look. I knew we were both thinking, Why, Sam? Why, why, why?

“Yesterday, Sam seemed worried about something,” I told her. “He said it had to do with Pickett Enterprises, but I assumed it was the usual work stuff.”

Was it possible he had felt the pressure of the wedding, too? He had said he was ready. He seemed a hundred percent about it. But maybe he was just trying to convince himself. Maybe the pressure had driven him to do something crazy. Maybe. But it simply didn’t seem like Sam.

“Any chance Sam was the one sending those anonymous letters to Forester?” Maggie asked.

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure. Sam worshipped the man. Forester was the father he never had. Plus, what would Sam possibly gain from Forester stepping down from the company? He was one of Sam’s biggest clients.”

“What happened when Mark Carrington called the police?”

“They came to the office. He’s talking to them right now.”

“So, look,” Maggie said, waving an arm in the direction of Sam’s apartment, “maybe it’s simple. He could be dead up there.”

“That’s helpful. Thank you. I’m glad I asked you to be here.”

“You know what I mean. Maybe he came home and he fell or something.”

“If he stole from Forester, I’ll kill him myself.”

“Maybe he was abducted.”

“What?”

Maggie shrugged. “Who knows? I’ve heard of it happening.”

“Yeah, to one of your drug clients. In Colombia.” Maggie represented a host of drug runners. Alleged drug runners, as Maggie would say.

“I’m just throwing some possibilities out there.”

“Let’s not guess, okay?”

“Did he update his Facebook page or his MySpace?”

“You know neither of us have those.” It was one of the things Sam and I had bonded over, our aversion to putting the tiniest details of our life on the Web.

“That’s right. You guys are freaks.”

“Really, you’re so helpful.”

“Okay.” Maggie grabbed my arm and propelled me to the front door. “Open it.”

Inside the front door, three metal mailboxes were attached to the wall. I stared at the second box-Sam Hollings.

We walked up the stairs and let ourselves into the second-floor apartment. It looked the way it always did. His leather couch was slouchy and slightly dusty. The blue afghan with the Cubs logo, which Sam’s grandmother had knitted for him, was tossed over the side.

Maggie scoffed at the sight of the afghan. She was a Sox fan, a true-blue South Sider.

Sam’s kitchen was typically unused looking, the refrigerator empty save for half a six pack of Blue Moon beer and a withered orange with a few slices cut out of it.

“Iz!” I heard Maggie yell from the bedroom. “Will you come here?”

Sam always made his bed in the morning and hung up his clothes at night, a trait he’d gotten from his mother. But Maggie was standing at the side of the bed, pointing at a blue suit that had been tossed there. “New or old?”

I walked to the bed and lifted it. I held it to my face and breathed in a faint smell-a little of the tea-tree aftershave he used and a little of something deeper, something pure Sam. “He wore this yesterday. He had it on at the wedding planner’s.”