Red Blooded Murder
She shook their hands. “Hi, guys, c’mon in.” Jane looked nervously up and down the street before leading us into her house.
Inside was a wide living room with polished wood floors. The walls were a soothing fawn color; the moldings along the high ceilings were painted a creamy ivory. Jane, or her very talented decorator, had filled the place with plump, coconut-brown couches and overstuffed chairs on either side of the five-foot marble fireplace. There were colorful touches everywhere—still-life oil paintings that hung side by side, an Aztec vase which stood on a pedestal, throw pillows with an African print.
“Wow.” Charlie looked around in wonder. “Great place.” Charlie found everything fascinating. He would have been awed by an eight-by-eight prison cell. But he was right, Jane’s place was unique—somehow both chic and welcoming.
“Thanks.” Jane glanced around, as if suddenly seeing it through someone else’s eyes. “My husband and I have been here for almost ten years.”
“You won an Emmy?” Charlie pointed to a built-in bookshelf next to the fireplace. On it was a gold statue of a winged woman holding aloft a globe.
Jane smiled. “Yes. Last year.”
“Can I touch it?”
Jane laughed. “Sure. Pick it up.”
Charlie walked over to the shelf and lifted the statue. “Wow.” He curled it a few times as if it were a barbell. “This thing is heavy.”
“Charlie!” I said. “Be careful.”
“What? It’s cool.”
Jane laughed again. “Don’t worry about it.” She looked at me. “Izzy, can I show you something?”
“Of course.”
“We’ll be right back,” she said to Sam and Charlie.
“Take your time,” Sam said. He shot me a smile. If Sam was upset that our date had been interrupted, first by my brother and then by Jane’s SOS call, he didn’t show it. And that made me love him all the more.
If only, I thought for a second. If only we could base our decisions about who to love (and how to spend our lives) solely on a feeling we have at a given moment. If that was the case, I wouldn’t care what Sam had done months before or why he hadn’t confided in me about it.
Jane led me from the living room into a massive kitchen with a center granite island marbled in colors of sand and black. On the island sat a tall vase of flowers.
She pointed at them. “When I got home, they were here.”
“The flowers?” It was a mixed bouquet, clearly expensive, in orange and red—passionate colors.
“I have no idea who left them. Zac took off this morning for our other house.” A pained expression moved into her face. “He left after I got back from coffee with you. He said he couldn’t be around me. He went to our house in Long Beach on the other side of the lake. I went to rehearsals and then worked here in my office for a while—there’s so much to do to get ready for the launch on Monday—and Zac called me from the lake house when he got there. I finally took a break and went to the gym before it closed. I was gone for an hour and a half, and when I came home, this was here.” She crossed her arms and looked at the vase as if it were filled with rotting food.
“Is it possible Zac left it before he went to Long Beach, and you didn’t notice?”
“No, I’m telling you, the flowers weren’t here before I went to the gym. And there was no card. Someone came into the house while I was out and left them.”
“Any clue who that is?”
She shook her head again.
I stared at the flowers, the kitchen feeling cooler all of a sudden. “Who has keys to your house?”
“Zac and I. Our cleaning lady. Zac’s mom, but she’s still in London for the winter.”
“Was the house locked?”
She nodded. “I always lock it before I go anywhere, even if I’m just walking up the street for the paper. The thing is, we’ve got a key hidden outside, near the garage, just in case.”
“How many people know about that?”
She exhaled. “A fair number. I have this little problem of losing my keys, so all my friends know about it, and some of the …” She raised her eyes to me, asking me to understand.
“Some of the guys.” I said this plainly, with no judgment. And the truth was, I really didn’t judge Jane for having affairs. It wasn’t for me, but I had never believed that the rest of the world needed to conform to my ways. “So you bring people like that here?”
“Occasionally. Very occasionally.”
“Did you check to see if the key was still there?”
She turned to the counter behind her and lifted up a magnetic box. “I got it after I found the flowers. It was in the same place. I couldn’t tell if the key had been used or not.”
“Do you have an alarm?”
“Yeah, but I only turn it on at night or when I’m leaving for more than a day.”
“Could Zac have driven back from Long Beach and left the flowers?”
She looked at the vase, thinking, chewing the inside of her mouth. “I don’t think so. I mean, I guess it’s possible. Long Beach is an hour and a half away, and that’s about how long I was at the gym.”
“Are you sure he called you from Long Beach?”
Her eyebrows drew closer together. “He called from his cell phone, and he said he was there. I guess it’s possible, technically, that he wasn’t. But they don’t look like something he’d buy.”
“Have you called him since you found the flowers?”
“Yeah, but he didn’t answer. I left a message.”
I looked at the bouquet. “Maybe it was a friend, someone trying to be nice? Maybe they just forgot the card.” I looked at my watch. It was getting late. And Sam had plans with his rugby team tomorrow. If I didn’t get to spend time with him tonight, it might be a few days before I saw him again with my new work schedule.
Jane bit the inside of her mouth again. I could tell she was mulling something over. “There’s more.”
“What do you mean?”
“Can you come upstairs?”
I followed her from the kitchen back through the living room, where Sam and Charlie were sitting on the couch, laughing about something. They looked at us expectantly.
“Just give us a second,” I said.
Upstairs, we passed a guest room and a home office, both decorated to the hilt, and like the living room downstairs, accented colorfully with artwork, sculptures and rugs.
“This is our bedroom,” Jane said.
I walked in and looked up. The ceiling was at least thirty feet high and vaulted. French doors led to a balcony, where I could see two chaise lounges and a host of plants and trees. A stone fireplace was against one wall with a stack of birch inside. A massive bed with twirled posts stood against the far wall, so high that small steps had been installed on either side. It was made up in a sumptuous way with white linens, plump pillows and a salmon-colored, tufted duvet.
“Great bed,” I said.
“Isn’t it? This is my favorite room of the house. Or at least it was.” Jane pointed to the leather bench at the foot of the bed. On it sat a black box, about the size of a shoe box, but square-shaped. “That was here, too, when I came home.”
Even visually, the box seemed to have a weight to it, a presence. “What is it?”
She walked over and lifted the lid of the box, which opened on one side. She held out the box. There was something red inside, something shaped in a circle.
“Is that your scarf?”
Jane had a red scarf that she wore during important broadcasts.
“Yeah,” Jane said, her voice brittle. “Look closer.”
I stepped toward the box. I felt off-kilter, infused with an irrational fear that she might slam the lid closed on my hand.
I peered into the box. “Jane, is that …?”
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s a noose.”
13
I put my hands behind my back and looked down at the scarf. “Do you always keep it in this box?”
“No, I have it hanging inside my closet door with my other scarves. I mean, it’s become my thing, right? And I’m supposed to wear it on Monday when the station launches. But it’s not like it’s some precious fabric. I just toss it in my closet with the rest of my stuff.”
“But you came home and it was here, in this box?”
“Yeah. I was so freaked by the flowers that I came running up here, and this was sitting on the bench. And inside the scarf was tied like that.” She dropped the box back on the bench. The scarf flew out and landed softly on the wood floor. “Who would do that?” Her voice was full of pain and panic.
I stared at the scarf. “Do you tie it like that when you hang it up?”
“No! I just hang my scarves over a peg.” She was talking faster, her tone more anxious now. “And look at it. I mean, I’m not crazy, right? That’s a noose.”
There was no mistaking the hangman’s knot, tied under a seven-inch loop, just big enough for someone to put their head through. “You’re not crazy. But I’ve got to ask again, could it be Zac? You said he was angry. Maybe he’s really angry.”
With one hand, Jane nervously tugged her ponytail with her fingers. She reminded me again of a young girl, a scared girl. “I just can’t imagine Zac would do this. Why not just tell me to stop it or he’ll leave me?”
“Has he ever said that?”
“No. He’s said he could never give me up, no matter what I’ve done.”
We both stared at the noose. The scarf was made of a shiny deep red silk. I’d always thought of Jane’s scarf as competent, in-charge, bold. Now, it seemed sinister.
Her eyes cut to my own. The mauve-blue of her irises seemed to stand out against the pale of her skin. “I can’t believe this.” Her look bordered on terror. Fear emanated from her, cutting into the room, filling it, so that everything seemed to hum with intensity. “There’s something else.”
“What?”
She looked at the scarf again. She gave a little moan. “I don’t know how to say this. I mean, I don’t talk about this with my friends. And the truth is I think I need a lawyer right now as much as I need a friend. Can you be my lawyer?”
“You want me to tell you I won’t tell anyone? That whatever you tell me is private?”
She nodded.
“Jane, that’s true whether I’m your lawyer or your friend. But if it makes you feel better, I’ll put my lawyer hat on. Say anything.”
Jane breathed out hard. “I have this thing I like to do. Sexually. It’s … well … have you heard of scarfing?”
I shook my head no.
“Sometimes it’s called erotic asphyxiation.”
I remembered hearing something on the news. “It’s like self-strangulation during masturbation? Something about intensifying the experience?”
She nodded, her eyes on mine, looking for the judgment she seemed sure would come.
I kept a bland expression on my face. “So it’s something you like to do?”
“Not on my own. I do it with other people. You’re basically choking someone. Gently. It could be with a scarf or with your hands, and you don’t do it to the point of them passing out, or even close. You just do it a little, and believe me, it makes it incredibly powerful.”
“You do it to other people or you have them do it to you?” I felt like a complete sexual neophyte.
“Both.” Jane slumped farther against the bed, her arms crossed in front of her chest. “Usually I have them do it to me.”
I said nothing.
“You’ve never done anything like that?” she asked.
I almost laughed. I thought I’d tried just about every position, and I thought that had made me sexually progressive. “I’m not even sure I get it, Jane. Is it dangerous?”
She blew out a puff of air. “If you’re stupid about it, yes, or if you’re with someone you can’t trust, but it’s safe when you do it right.”
“And what happens?”
“It cuts off some of the blood flow to the brain, and you have these intense …”
“Orgasms.” At least I had one word to contribute to the conversation.
“Amazing. Like you’ve never had before.” She exhaled. Her gaze slid to the scarf on the floor, a red ring, like a circle of blood. “But you want to know something? I don’t think I figured this out until right now, but the scarf thing? I think it’s something I like to do because it’s punishing. Don’t get me wrong. I do love sex and the asphyxiation thing does get me going. But it’s also like I’m taking a penalty for cheating.”
We stared at each other.
“Boy, I’m messed up,” she said.
“You could probably use a little therapy.”
We both broke into nervous laughter that seemed to make the room lighter. But then our eyes fell again on that red noose.
“How many people have you done that with?” I vaguely pointed to it.
She shrugged. “More than a few.”
A shrill bleat cut through the air, making both Jane and me jump.
“Jesus,” she said, a hand on her chest. “It’s my cell.” She scampered in her bare feet to the nightstand, where she looked at the display on the phone. “Zac.” She sounded nervous. She threw a look at me over her shoulder, and I saw that fear again.
She answered. “Hey, hon,” she said. “Yeah, I’m all right. What happened? Well, we had a break-in. Sort of. No, nothing was taken. Not a thing. Whoever it was left something.” She quickly told him the story, leaving nothing out. She really did tell Zac everything. “Okay,” Jane said, “I’ll see you soon.” She turned around with a sigh. “He’s coming home. He’ll be here in an hour and a half.”
“We’ll stay until he gets here.”
She smiled, and it made her face light up. “Thanks,” she said simply.
I hugged her. I could think of little else to do to make her feel better, to feel safe.
“Please don’t tell Sam,” she said, her words muffled by my shoulder. “You know, about the scarf thing.”
“I told you, I won’t say anything to anyone.”
We pulled apart and went downstairs. Sam was standing by the unlit fireplace. He and Charlie were talking about rugby, but I could tell by the way Sam looked at me—eyebrows expectantly up, asking a silent, Are we ready to go?—that he’d had enough family and friends for the night.
I gave him an apologetic look. “If it’s okay, we’re going to stay until Jane’s husband gets home. They had a break-in.”
“Are you serious?” Sam looked alarmed. His arms tensed. He had a bulldog’s way of wanting to protect people that I’d always adored.
“It’s okay,” Jane said. “It wasn’t like a robbery. In fact, they didn’t even really break in. Someone came in the house using a key, as far as I can tell, and they left some flowers and … well, a gift.”
Sam’s face registered confusion. He frowned at me. There was more to the story, and he knew it. And I knew that he knew it. And yet here I was doing the same thing to him as he’d done to me—promising someone I wouldn’t tell anyone about a secret. And keeping that promise. All of a sudden, I felt both closer to Sam, and yet more distant, than ever before.
Jane brought glasses of water for us into the living room. We all sat on her couches for an hour, during which Charlie, who was oblivious to even a hint of social awkwardness, quizzed Jane about her broadcasting career, as if he were meeting her at a local pub.
Jane answered him openly, laughing at stories she must have told a thousand times, but seeming to enjoy them just the same. It reminded me of when I’d seen her with fans at the restaurant—Jane honestly appreciated the attention people gave her.
At 11:30 p.m., we heard a door opening at the back of the house. Jane flinched at the sound. Then said, simply, “Zac.”
Aside from the phone call the other day, I’d never met Zac Ellis before. But I’d seen recent spreads on him and his work in the New York Times and Michigan Avenue magazine.
He came into the living room. He was a short man, definitely shorter than Jane, with wavy, light brown hair. And he was sexy. You could see that from across the room. He wore gray jeans and a leather jacket that probably cost thousands, but was somehow beat-up and tough-looking on him.
“Hi.” He threw a glance at us before turning to Jane. “You okay?”
“I am now that you’re home.” Jane introduced us.
He shook our hands, but in a terse way. He glanced at Jane. “Can I talk to you in the kitchen?” He left.
“Be right back.” Jane followed after him.
I looked at Charlie and Sam. “Sorry about this, guys.”
Sam picked up my hand and rubbed it. “Don’t be. You had to be here for your friend.”
We sat in silence for a while, the only sound the ticking of the mantel clock which looked like a miniature grandfather clock.
When ten minutes had gone by, I stood. “I’m going to tell Jane we’re leaving.”
I walked to the kitchen, but stopped when I reached a pair of pocket doors that were closed most of the way. Through the six-inch crack I saw Jane and Zac standing close together. Her back was to the countertop on the left side of the room. With a wide-legged stance, he stood in front of her. She had her arms crossed, her head bowed. Her face looked splotched, as if she’d been crying, but now it was expressionless, almost devoid of emotion.
I must have made a sound, because both of them looked at me.
“Sorry,” I said. “Sorry, I was just coming to tell you—”
Zac stormed to the pocket doors and pushed them open.
Surprised, I backed up. He strode past me, the leather of his coat brushing me, and marched into the living room.
He looked at Charlie and Sam, then over his shoulder at me as I trailed after him. “Thanks for coming,” he said. “I appreciate you being here for Jane. But it’s time for you to leave.”
14
“Chilly,” Charlie said when we were on the street. He tilted his head at Jane’s house. He meant Zac. But that was about as negative as Charlie could get. “Weird night,” he said simply. “See ya, guys.”
He kissed me on the cheek, clapped Sam on the back and loped off down the street.
Sam and I stood on a now deserted street next to my silver Vespa.
“What was with the husband?” Sam said. “Just worked up about the break-in?”
“I guess.” And probably worked up about his wife’s stepping out. The whole thing made me wonder about Zac and why he had put up with her behavior for so long.
I stared at Sam, thinking how incredibly complicated relationships were. Such complications had never been so plain to me until the last six months.
“Why were you asking me earlier about cheating?” Sam said. “Is it because of Jane?”
Surprised, I hesitated. Then, “Why would you say that?”
He shrugged. “Just a feeling I got in there.”
I darted my eyes lower. “I don’t want to break a confidence.”
“You shouldn’t. I definitely don’t want you to do that.”
I met his eyes again. “Thanks.” I thought about Jane and Zac for a second. “What do you think about open relationships?”
“You mean where you’re together but you can date other people?”
“I guess. Or sleep with other people.”
He looked up toward the sky, as if he was thinking hard about this. His green eyes returned to mine again. “I don’t think they can work. I mean, monogamy is hard. It’s a major sacrifice, but I think that’s the only way marriage or a long-term relationship can work.”
“But what about all those long-term relationships that fail, even though both people are faithful?”
He said nothing for a second. I knew we were both thinking, Like our relationship.
“I think there’s a better chance of things working out if you’re monogamous,” Sam said.
“But there’s no guarantee.”
I glanced over his shoulder at the outline of the Sears Tower, its top lit with pink lights. It made me think of last spring, only a year ago, an uncomplicated time when we were happy, in love, almost boring in our contentedness. We would sit on my rooftop deck, Blue Moon beers on the table in front of us, and Sam would play guitar, the lights of the skyline behind him.
As much as I missed that, and as much as I was afraid of the lack of guarantees in the world of love, there was something about this new complexity that I liked, that made me feel alive.
Sam kissed my forehead. “Let’s go to my place.”
I was about to say yes, but then I remembered, after I’d met the Fig Leaf manager, Josie, today, she’d “hired” me immediately, but we both knew she was only giving me the gig because her boss said she had to. I started the next morning. At 7:00 a.m., and I’d been told to wear only black or white.
“I can’t.” I told Sam about the store job. I’d already told him about the Trial TV gig earlier.
He raised his eyebrows. “Lingerie, huh? I just don’t want you to lose your drive for the law. I mean, the Trial TV thing is fun, and at least you’re still in the legal field in some way, but c’mon, Iz, you’re a lawyer, and you’re amazing at it.”
“Thanks, but no one is paying me to be an amazing lawyer right now.”
I wanted to tell Sam that aside from the money that I needed to make, the other reason I was about to specialize in bras was because Mayburn would also be paying me. I would, essentially, be conducting surveillance on Josie and the Fig Leaf. I’d be studying how she ran the business, how the store was handled while the owner wasn’t there—keeping my eye out for, as Mayburn had told me, “anything that smells even a little bad.”
But I also remembered his cautions about telling no one, and although I’d told Sam before when I’d worked for Mayburn as a freelancer, Mayburn hadn’t been happy about it, and he was insistent I not tell anyone this time. And so there I was, standing in front of Sam, another secret in the tiny space between us.
“Come to my place?” I said.
He shook his head. “I told a guy I’d run sprints with him early. I don’t have any of my gear with me.”
Sam privately coached some high-school rugby players, often at the crack of ass on Sunday mornings.
“Call you after practice tomorrow?” he said.
“Please.”
He kissed me hard. He kissed me in a way that told me how much he loved me. I kissed him back exactly the same way. And then we split apart, that space between us widening even more.
The air felt cool and cleansing on my skin as I drove my Vespa home. I’d driven a scooter since my mother bought me one in high school, too nervous to have me waiting at city bus stops. I had thought that when I started practicing law, I’d get rid of it, but there was something about driving the Vespa that invigorated me, had never allowed me to let it go.
Ten minutes later, I was back at my Old Town condo on Eugenie Street. The building was a converted brick three-flat. Mine was the top unit, which I loved because of the rooftop deck where Sam and I used to spend so much time. The downside of my place was the three flights of stairs.
By the time I reached my condo and let myself in, I was exhausted—from the lack of sleep last night, from Jane’s confessions and the creepy break-in, from the weight of having to keep things from Sam.
The small living room had pine floors and a turn-of-the-century marble fireplace with a swirling bronze grate. I slumped into my yellow chair and tried to let the whirlwind of the last few days drain away.
My phone dinged, telling me I had a new text. I picked it up, expecting something from Sam, something about how he was missing me already.
But it was a number I didn’t recognize, one with a 773 area code.
It’s Theo, the text read. I’ve stopped myself 300 times from texting you today. I give.
I smiled. I’ve thought about you a few times today too, I wrote. It was the truth. I was aware, distantly, of how quickly I had swung from Theo to Sam and back again.
What are you doing? he wrote.
Just got home. Weird night.
Meet me out? There’s a great band playing in Bucktown.
I looked at my watch. It’s almost midnight.
So?
Can’t, I wrote. Have to get up early tomorrow.
Then let me come over, he wrote.
I laughed, then typed, Nothing like cutting to the chase.