Red Hot Lies

10

The day I met Sam I made him bleed.

We were at Forester’s house in Lake Forest, at the annual end-of-June barbecue he threw for all his employees and business associates. Everyone was invited—from the execs to the valets.

The weather was crisp and sunny, a brand-new summer day with everyone conscious of how the Chicago climate would soon give way to sticky humidity and biting mosquitoes. Families were invited to the party, and many people rowed their children across Forester’s pond or whacked the croquet balls across his rich, green lawn.

I had already spent the better part of a painful hour sipping a mimosa and listening to Tanner Hornsby talk at his pack of sycophants. Technically, I was one of those sycophants. I was a year out of law school, and although Forester had thrown me a couple of cases, he wasn’t yet giving me the bulk of his files. I understood that my job as an associate was to perform grunt work, to smile about it and to murmur comments of thanks to Tanner for the great opportunity.

Tanner was repeating a story I’d heard ten times before about a caddy who’d given him bad advice on a putt. This story was always told with scathing scorn toward the caddy and a hero’s verbal welcome for Tanner himself, since he’d seen through that awful recommendation and, using his stellar athletic intuition, read the green perfectly and sunk the putt.

That was how Tanner operated—he pumped himself up and up and up, so that his bloating, floating presence seemed akin to a Macy’s parade balloon on Thanksgiving morning. Tanner only talked about three things—sports, the law and, most importantly, himself. The rest of us were supposed to scuttle along after him, guffawing and clapping him on the back. Some people liked getting their butts kissed, others despised it. Tanner thrived on it.

My buddy Grady was there, too, but Grady loved sports stories so he asked Tanner lots of questions and yucked it up. Meanwhile, my only contribution was a few saccharine chuckles, until I couldn’t take it anymore.

“You know, Tanner,” I interjected, “the word caddy comes from the term cadets after the men who attended Mary, Queen of Scots, when she played the game. Caddies are there to merely aid the golfer, not ensure victory.”

This comment was the intellectual sports equivalent of flashing my tits, and Tanner stared at me, verbally stumped for a moment. A few of the other guys raised their eyebrows.

Tanner recovered by ignoring me and launching into a story about how he then went on to birdie the eighteenth hole. I was plotting my escape when Forester stepped up to our group. He was dressed in a cream linen jacket and a yellow tie, with a matching handkerchief tucked in his jacket pocket. His thick silver hair was perfectly groomed. He looked every inch the gentleman he was. Everyone immediately hushed, except for Tanner, who boomed to Forester about the just fantastic party and asked about “the Mouse.”

“The Mouse” was Tanner’s nickname for Forester’s son, Shane, who was one of his best friends from childhood. I hated that moniker, especially since “the Mouse” was the precise reason that Tanner had all of Forester’s legal work.

Forester smiled kindly and pointed to his son Shane—a short man in a seersucker jacket—who was speaking with a few other people on the limestone patio.

Forester turned to me. “Can I steal you away, Miss McNeil? I’d love you to meet someone.”

I saw Tanner’s face flash with surprise, then annoyance. Just as fast, the look disappeared. “Sure, sure,” Tanner said, as if giving permission. “But don’t keep my girl too long. Izzy’s got a big Saturday night ahead of her, working on interrogatories for me.”

Forester blinked a few times at Tanner’s proprietary statement, which made me sound like a little lawyer geisha he only brought out at parties.

“That’s right,” I piped in, unable to stop myself. “I’ll be working tonight, since Tanner will be too busy house hunting.”

Tanner had just gotten a divorce from his third wife, a very public divorce in which she’d forcibly removed him from their home, a home the judge had awarded to her. The story of Tanner being ousted from his own castle had spread rapidly. We all knew that Tanner was living in a temporary apartment on Ohio Street.

I bit my lip as soon as I’d said it. Grady laughed loudly, then when no one joined him, shut his mouth. Tanner glowered.

“All right then,” Forester said, like a dad on a playground. “Izzy will be back shortly.”

Don’t count on it, I thought as I followed him across the lawn.

Forester wore a bemused grin. “You know, you shouldn’t have said that.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not, and I don’t blame you. The man can be insufferable. Has been since he was a kid. But then, I don’t work for him.” He looked pointedly at me.

I felt a flash of panic. I’d probably just set my career back by that jab at Tanner. It was one thing to toss in a random remark about golf history. It was another to attack him personally.

We passed the bar, and I swiped a beer from a tub full of ice. Enough mimosas. I needed something heartier, and I noticed Forester had a beer himself.

I’d just twisted the cap off when Forester stopped and tapped the shoulder of a man who swung around in mid-chuckle. He had blond hair that shone in the sunlight and eyes that were both soft and sparkling, like an olive in a martini glass. He was so yummy I wanted to mop him up with a biscuit.

“Forester, how are you?” the man said. I noticed he was about my age, but he spoke to Forester as if they were old and dear friends. Later, I would learn that Sam viewed Forester as a father figure. Sam’s own dad was a jackass of epic pro-portions—a hard-partying, fist-flinging man who Sam’s mom had finally divorced when Sam was in high school.

And, apparently, Forester felt the same way. “Son,” he said to Sam, “I want to introduce you to a member of my legal team, Izzy McNeil. Izzy, this is Sam Hollings. Sam is one of my financial advisors.”

Sam turned his gaze my way and held out his hand. He was on the shorter side, but he gave the impression of solidity and strength. He dipped his head slightly as if shy, yet a grin pulled at the corners of his wide mouth. And then the strangest thought occurred to me. I could kiss that mouth. Forever.

I’d really never had such a thought before. I could be hot for a guy, and I could think he might make a decent date to a wedding (i.e., drink enough to be funny, but not enough to embarrass me), but I usually didn’t want to kiss—just kiss—someone so immediately. And I never used the word forever. I knew forever didn’t exist.

I realized suddenly I was staring. I noticed Forester watching us, and it dawned on me that I hadn’t shaken the guy’s hand. I thrust my hand forward and gave him a fierce, tight handshake to cover up my lapse.

“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.”

11

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.”

“So.” Maggie said, trailing off.

“So he came home sometime after he saw me, and changed clothes and left.”

“Not abducted, then.”

“Probably not.”

Maggie and I stood still.

I balled up the suit and hugged it to me.

I sat down hard on the wood floor. And then I started to cry.

“Oh, Iz,” Maggie said, huddling her little form around me. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” I said between my tears.

“I know.”

I wept for a few minutes and Maggie said nothing, just holding me.

Finally, I sat up straight. “I am okay,” I said to convince myself.

Maggie sat back and watched me, saying nothing. Maggie always knew when to say nothing.

She hugged her arms around her chest, her black wool coat pooling around her, making her look like a little girl playing dress up. The difference was that Maggie was smarter than most adults I knew.

“The thing is,” I said, “I really can’t believe Sam stole those shares on purpose. He’s the most honest man I know.”

“We don’t always know the people we love. I’ve seen that often enough,” Maggie said. As an attorney specializing in criminal law, very little shocked her anymore.

“I know Sam.” I shook my head. “Or at least I thought I did.”

I closed my eyes and thought of Sam and me sitting on my rooftop deck, drinking Blue Moon, while Sam played guitar for me. He played songs he’d known for years—Buddy Guy and John Hiatt and Eric Clapton and Willie Nelson. He played songs he’d heard on the radio, since he could pick up almost anything by ear. And then he’d play songs he wrote for me. One was called “Wanting You Everywhere.” At the bridge of the song, Sam would look at me with his martini-olive eyes, and he would say all the places he wanted us to go together—Barcelona, Bangkok, Africa, Indonesia, Peru, Iceland, Tibet. Panama had never been on that list.

Maggie pushed herself to her feet. “We’d better look around and see what he took.”

“Is this a crime scene or something like that?”

“Not yet, and you need to figure out if he grabbed anything after he tossed off that suit.”

I went into the bathroom and looked under the sink. “His shaving kit is gone.” I opened a drawer. “And his toothpaste. And his deodorant.”

“What about his clothes?”

Back in the bedroom, I opened the closet. “I can’t really tell. It looks like a few things are gone, but I’m not here that much. Some stuff could be at my house or at the dry cleaner’s.”

“Is there anything he would take if he was going to be gone for a while?”

I stood in Sam’s bedroom and glanced around. I tried to think like Sam. Like Sam standing in his bedroom with thirty million dollars in bearer shares.

I seized on a thought. I opened his nightstand drawer and reached under the small stack of rugby magazines. My fingers searched for the textured top of Sam’s journal, a thin, green leather notebook one of his sisters had given him a few years ago. He wrote song lyrics in there, I knew, and occasionally thoughts about work or whatever else people wrote in journals. I didn’t know for sure because I had never read it. Don’t get me wrong, I’d thought about it a few times—once when Sam was pissed at me and stormed out of his house, another time when he’d been getting a few phone calls from his ex, Alyssa. But I wasn’t a snooping kind of girl.

I knew exactly where he kept the journal, though, because I’d seen him pack it when he went on vacation or long business trips. My hands searched through the drawer. I took out the magazines and a few books until the drawer was empty. The journal was gone.

12

Maggie offered to stay with me for the day, but I didn’t want to just sit around, staring at the walls of Sam’s apartment or mine, so I went back to work. Forester might be gone, but he wouldn’t want the business of Pickett Enterprises to stop, or so I told myself, not sure if this thinking was for his benefit or mine.

Back at the building, I got off the elevator, ran my key card through the slot and hustled to my office. Was it a little quieter as I strode through the hallways? Were some of the assistants giving me looks?

Q sat at his desk, his bald head gleaming like a black globe under the lights. “Everyone’s talking about it.”

My eyes moved up and down the hall. “Talking about which part of it?”

“All of it. Forester. Sam taking those bonds.”

“They’re called shares.” Why I was making the point, I have no idea. “How did everyone hear?”

“How do you think?”

“Tanner?”

“As far as I can tell. You shouldn’t have had that conversation with him there.”

“But I didn’t really say anything out loud.”

“He knew you were talking to Mark Carrington. Tanner used to be Forester’s number-one guy, remember? He knows the inside circle. And you said something about ‘the safe.’ From what I can tell, he called Mark, who told him the whole story.”

I groaned. Q was right. Talking in front of Tanner was a mistake. One I wouldn’t have made twenty-four hours ago. I looked around. Down the hallway, a twenty-year-old assistant named Sheridan eyed me openly. The mail guy, pushing his cart, looked at me then quickly averted his gaze.

I turned back to Q’s desk. “Where were you last night? I called you a bunch of times, but I couldn’t get you.”

“Out.”