Red Blooded Murder. Laura Caldwell
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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.”
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