Laura Caldwell - Red Hot Lies

Then it occurred to me-Sam’s e-mail. Why didn’t I think of it sooner? I knew his passwords.

I launched myself out of bed and scurried through the dark apartment to the second bedroom, the room I used as an office.

I clicked on the desk lamp and turned on the computer, impatient with how long it took to power up. Finally, I got on the Internet and typed in GoToMyPC, which Sam used to get onto his work e-mail.

At the site, I typed in Sam’s password-grubber 1228. “Grubber” was a type of kick used in rugby; 1228 was the address of the house his family lived in when he was a kid.

I drummed my fingers on the desk while it took an interminably long time to connect to Sam’s work computer. I’d seen Sam do this hundreds of times, and it had never seemed so long.

Finally, the site appeared to be connecting to Sam’s e-mail, but then a message popped up-Invalid e-mail address or password.

Had he changed the password? I tried again. Same message.

Then it dawned on me. Sam’s e-mail access had been shut down by Carrington & Associates. He probably no longer had a job there. Or maybe it had been done by the cops, the feds. I sat back hard, breathless by how swiftly everything had changed.

I remembered Sam had a Yahoo! account he used occasionally, usually for personal messages or things he didn’t want to send through his work e-mail.

I got onto Yahoo! and typed his grubber password again. And, voila, there was Sam’s in-box.

Nothing looked out of the ordinary. It seemed it hadn’t been checked since Monday, the day before he disappeared. I clicked on the Sent folder. Sam had sent a few e-mails from Yahoo! last week. I let my eyes roam the names there. I bristled when I came to one in particular-Alyssa Thornton.

Alyssa was Sam’s ex-girlfriend, a woman whom I’d met once at his ten-year high-school reunion. Before that, Sam hadn’t described her except to say that she’d wanted more out of their relationship than he did. They stayed together for a year or two in college then broke up. Until the reunion, I’d never given Alyssa much thought. I wasn’t the jealous type, and I knew how much Sam loved me. But then I met her. She was standing at the bar when we walked into the reunion, and she was looking directly at Sam, as if she’d been expecting him, as if she’d been standing there for years waiting for him to arrive.

She was ethereal, stunning and bony as a bag of doorknobs. With her white-blond hair, she almost looked like a miniature, female version of Sam. I could immediately picture them together as the golden couple. Alyssa was dressed in a silvery minidress. On me, the dress would have made me look like a cheap, life-size Christmas ornament, but on her it only made her look like a tiny silver light, shimmering amidst the commoners. And she was nice, too, which only made it tougher to stand there and talk to her and accept the fact that Alyssa still loved Sam. She glowed when she gazed at him. Just like I did.

I spent the rest of the reunion overcompensating. I worked that room as if I were running for homecoming queen. I wanted each and every person to tell Sam how fantastic his fiancée was. They did, and he barely seemed to notice Alyssa’s adoration. But I had.

Her name came up once or twice after that. Sam would tell me they e-mailed sometimes, usually as a group with the rest of their buddies from high school. Her name always sent an eruption of jealously through me, which I hated. I never wanted to be the envious girl who couldn’t handle past loves. I still thought fondly of Timmy, my college boyfriend, and Blake, a guy I dated during law school. But they were boys. Sam was a man.

Being the man he was, Sam chuckled when I made a jealous request that he not communicate with Alyssa, and he’d agreed. As far as I knew, he hadn’t had contact with Alyssa for over a year.

But now here was her name, sitting in his Sent folder.

I clicked on the e-mail, realizing I was holding my breath. Had he been corresponding with Alyssa all along? Had they made some plan to take off together? Was that why he’d stolen Forester’s shares? To fund some plan to run away together? My mind went crazy at the possibilities. I thought of every time I’d watched Inside Edition, fascinated by the stories of people who led double lives, never telling their family or friends.

Finally, Sam’s e-mail appeared.

Hey Alyssa, it read, Sorry I haven’t gotten back to you until now. Congrats on getting new funding for the research program. You might have heard that I’m engaged. I’ve been busy with the wedding coming up and with work. I won’t be able to join the crew over the holidays. Izzy and I will be on our honeymoon. Say hi to everyone for me, will you? And hello to your family, too. Tell your brother he still owes me fifty bucks from that poker game. Sam.

I sat back and relaxed my clenched shoulders. Sam was just responding to a few e-mails he had gotten from Alyssa. That was all. But why couldn’t I shake the feeling that there was more to it? I scrolled through his Sent box for the last year. There were no other e-mails to Alyssa; he’d honored my request to cut off contact with her. So why had he decided to e-mail her one week before he disappeared? Just a coincidence?

Suddenly, I felt the need for fresh air. I turned off the computer and put on running shoes and an old leather jacket of Sam’s. I grabbed my keys and headed outside. Taking walks around my neighborhood always cleared my head, even at night. I knew the area well and usually felt as at home outside on the streets of Old Town as I did inside my condo.

I walked east on Eugenie Street, passing a grade school and a row of houses with wide front stairs. I thought about the days after Sam and I started dating when he began to take these walks with me. We spied into living rooms as darkness fell. We talked about how the red living room in that one apartment was too much to deal with every day. We studied the front porch on a house a few doors over and decided that, although it was a touch suburban, it gave a homey feel, and it would be a nice place to sit on summer nights. We planned to install a wall of bookshelves, like the ones we saw in the place on Sedgwick, as soon as we got the chance.

I reached Menomenee Street and walked south, drawn to a spot that held a shiny memory, the place where Sam and I had sat at picnic tables during the Old Town art fair last summer. Right there was where we had talked about getting married for the first time. I remember how his face was a little pink, and I wasn’t sure if it was because of the sun or the topic.

I smiled, lost in the sun of that day, the thrilling nervousness of our conversation, the image of Sam blinking fast in the sunlight, saying how much he loved me, how he was shocked sometimes at how much he loved me. I could feel myself smiling at the thought, not pining to get married, but loving the fact that he wanted to marry me.

I heard a shuffle of feet behind me and the sunlit recollection of Sam disappeared. I jumped, startled. I spun around and saw a shadow stepping into a dim gangway between two tiny little houses.

I gulped. It was probably someone arriving home for the night. But I heard no door opening and closing, no other sounds at all

I shook my head. I would not get paranoid. I might have lost Forester, yes. And I might have to give up a massive wedding deposit at the Chicago History Museum, true. But I would not become paranoid. At least not on a consistent basis.

I stared at the gangway for another second. Still no sounds; no one appeared. Time to go home.

Snap!

I didn’t move, but I let my eyes run wildly. It was just another nice night in Old Town, yet abruptly I felt how truly alone I was, standing on a dead-end street amid homes lit from within but all locked and closed for the night.