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“I’ll be right there.”
12
Jane’s place in River North was one of eight town houses, all clearly built at the same time, probably by the same developer, but hers was the nicest—an elegant graystone, nearly white. It was new construction but built to appear old with iron streetlamps with electrical flame that flickered like real fire and a black iron fence with twisted posts. French balconies surrounded the tall upstairs windows.
The house was lit up—all the lights must have been on—but the shades on the first floor, tasseled at the edges, were drawn, hiding whatever was happening there. I hurried up the front steps, trailed by Sam and Charlie.
The brass knocker was shaped like a lion’s head. I used it to pound on the door.
Jane answered right away, as if she’d been standing behind the door, waiting for us.
She wore workout clothes—black pants that hugged her long legs and a tight pink T-shirt that proclaimed the name of a local jewelry store and said, Simply the Best for 20 Years. Her hair was in a high, swinging ponytail. She seemed younger somehow, almost like a girl barely into her teens who looks like an adult from far away but seems so vulnerable and coltish up close.
Or maybe it was the scared look on Jane’s face.
“Izzy!” She launched herself into my arms with a fierce, tight hug. We’d never really embraced before, but I could tell she needed it, and I squeezed her back just as tight. “Thanks so much for coming.” She drew back. “You look cute,” she said, distractedly.
“Thanks.” I was wearing a red, patterned skirt and tall black heels for my date with Sam. “Jane, this is Sam, my …” I still didn’t know what to call him. My ex-fiancé wasn’t right, and boyfriend wasn’t, either. I decided to just skip it. “And my brother, Charlie.”
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.
