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Grady left. I knew I should call Maggie—she was a criminal defense lawyer after all—but the problem was that Maggie would tell me not to talk to them. I had heard her tell people many times, Don’t speak to the cops. Never talk to them unless they arrest you. Maggie had seen many interrogations go awry; she’d seen suspects confess to crimes they didn’t commit. As a result, she viewed Chicago cops with the same wariness usually reserved for perfume-counter salesladies. Just say no thanks, Maggie would say, and walk away fast.
But I wasn’t a suspect here. I couldn’t see any way that I’d be considered a part in anything that had happened. More importantly, the detectives might know something about Forester. And Sam. If I just said “no, thanks,” I wouldn’t be able to find out what they knew.
“Have a seat, please,” I said.
The detectives sank into their chairs. Schneider was a big guy, whose bulk draped over the chair. Detective Vaughn was lean, a runner, I guessed.
With hands the size of Frisbees, Detective Schneider held a form with white lettering while Vaughn sat motionless and watched me move behind my desk to take a seat. I was used to men looking at me, and yet his gaze wasn’t as simple as being sized up by a guy hungry for a post-bar make-out. He was scrutinizing me.
Detective Schneider raised his eyes to me. He glanced at my hair and smiled. “My girlfriend in college was a redhead. Mindy Draper.”
“Mmm,” I said in a noncommittal way. For some reason, many people think all redheads are connected, maybe by a secret society that provided photos and contact information.
Detective Schneider dropped the chat. “We just have a couple of questions.” His voice was low and soft, but there was a rumble to it that was almost menacing. “We’re looking into the death of Forester Pickett.”
“Good. Great.” I felt a window of relief open in the room. Forester had asked me to look into the matter if something happened to him, and now I could be assured that someone was doing that.
“You were Forester Pickett’s attorney,” Schneider said.
“That’s right.”
“What kind of business was Mr. Pickett in?” I had the feeling he knew the answer already, but I explained that Forester was the Midwest’s largest media mogul. He owned radio stations, newspapers, magazines, publishing companies and television studios. As his attorney, I did his contractual work, and I defended the company if it was sued.
“Was he involved in any takeovers?” Schneider asked. “Any corporate messiness?”
“No,” I answered.
He asked a few more similar questions, all vague. I knew he was fishing, which was what he was supposed to do, but I grew impatient.
“Look,” I said, “I’ve got to tell you that Forester had been receiving threats.”
“What kind of threats?” Detective Vaughn said, speaking up for the first time.
“He received anonymous letters saying he was too old for his job and that he should step down.”
The detectives exchanged a glance, then looked back at me, and it was as if the air shifted into something brittle, crackling.
“Do you have copies?” Vaughn asked.
“No. I never saw them.”
As I had that day Forester was in my office, I felt my youth then. As his attorney, I should have insisted that I get copies of the letters. I should have had them analyzed. But Forester said he didn’t want to take action at that time, and no one told Forester Pickett what to do.
“How many letters were there?” Schneider asked in his rumbling voice.
I tried to think of the one conversation we’d had about it. “I don’t know.”
“What did they say other than he was too old?”
Why hadn’t I asked to see the letters? “I don’t know. There was also a homeless man who threatened him on two occasions.”
“Tell us about that.”
“Forester told me both times happened outside the Pickett offices. A homeless man came up to him and said if he wasn’t careful he would join Olivia. Olivia was Forester’s wife. She passed away from ovarian cancer.”
“When was that?”
“He told me about the homeless guy two weeks ago. I got the impression the incidents had taken place recently.”
Schneider blinked at me. Wrote nothing down. “What I meant was when did his wife pass away?”
I could easily remember Forester talking about Olivia, or Liv, as he called her. They had met when he was twenty-three and about to close on his first radio station. Forester had gone to a men’s clothing store to buy his very first suit. Liv’s father owned the store, and she was working that day. Forester said he was immediately “smitten.” For their first date, he took her to the closing. “She helped me with that suit,” Forester had said, “and she helped me with that closing, and then she helped me with life.” His face would always sag when he spoke about her.
“I believe Olivia passed away twelve or thirteen years ago,” I told Detective Schneider.
“Did Mr. Pickett file a police report about this homeless guy?” Vaughn asked.
“No. He said no crime had been committed.”
He grunted. “He was right. Doesn’t sound like much of anything to me.”
I crossed my fingers and leaned forward—the pose I always took during contract negotiations or depositions when I sensed things were about to get tough. “It doesn’t sound like anything? He gets these letters and then a homeless guy tells him to be careful or he’ll join his dead wife, and then he dies, suddenly, and that doesn’t sound like anything to you?”
Vaughn raised an eyebrow. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Did you want him to step down?”
“No!”
Vaughn glanced around my cluttered office, then stared warily at my law-school diploma hanging on the wall. “You’re pretty young to be handling all this legal work for Pickett, aren’t you?”
“Technically, yes.”
“How did you get it?”
“Forester. He chose me to be his lead attorney.”
He glanced at my chest, then back to my face. “Why?”
A good question. He must have seen the hesitation in my face. He leaned forward, his eyes lasering onto mine. “You sure you didn’t want him to step down?”
I was overwhelmed with the work. It was too much. But I didn’t want it to go away. I didn’t want Forester to go away.
“No, of course not. Forester is the reason I have this job,” I said.
The detectives looked at each other again, then back at me.
Schneider shrugged. “Look, at this point, our investigation into Mr. Pickett’s death is really just a formality, given the autopsy.”
“The autopsy results are already available?” I knew from some medical cases I’d worked on during law school that autopsies usually took a couple of days, sometimes a week.
“Yeah.” Schneider flipped through his notebook. “Mr. Pickett’s son got somebody to push that through.”
Why, I wondered, would Shane want to rush the autopsy? “What were the results?”
Schneider glanced back down at his notebook. “Acute myocardial infarction.”
“Heart attack.”
“Yeah. Likely caused by the usual—high blood pressure, age, history of smoking.”
“But Forester’s blood pressure was under control. He hasn’t smoked in years.”
“He had all the classic signs—he was slumped over when the EMTs found him, and he was clutching his chest.”
I squeezed my eyes shut at the image.
“We did get a tip that something might not be right with this guy’s death,” Schneider said.
“Wait, you got a tip about Forester’s death?”
Vaughn shot his partner a shut-up kind of glance, but Schneider just lifted his massive shoulders up, then let them drop. He nodded at me. Why did I get the feeling their little exchange was just for show?
“Who left the tip?” I said.
Another shrug. “Anonymous. We tested his food from that night. Clean. And Mr. Pickett’s cardiologist saw him in the emergency room after he coded. He signed the death certificate saying it was a heart attack.”
“But Forester had recently had a stress test. He said he passed with flying colors.”
“The guy had a heart attack before. You’re always at risk for another one. Could happen to anyone.”
But Forester wasn’t just anyone.
“Now, having thirty million dollars in corporate shares stolen,” Vaughn said, speaking up, “that’s a little unusual.”
I met his eyes. I felt a blush creep over my neck, but I didn’t move an inch. An uncomfortable silence filled the room as Detective Vaughn and I stared at each other. If he thought I would flinch first, talk first, he was absolutely wrong. I might doubt my legal abilities on occasion, but in a staring contest, I would always win.
Ten seconds passed, then twenty, thirty.
Schneider cleared his throat again. “You were engaged to Sam Hollings?”
“I am engaged to Sam Hollings,” I said without moving my eyes from Vaughn’s.
“When is the last time you saw him?”
“Yesterday. After work. We had a meeting with our wedding coordinator.”
Vaughn chuckled, scornfully it seemed. Still, we stared at one another.
“He was supposed to take you to some shindig last night, huh?” Vaughn said with an upward flick of the corner of his mouth.
“That’s right.”
“Didn’t show up?”
I felt my intensity melt away. “No, he did not.”
Vaughn nodded, very slowly. Finally, he dropped his gaze downward. But I felt no sense of victory. It was like winning a game deliberately thrown by the opponent.
“Any idea where he might be?” Schneider asked.
“No.” My voice came out soft.
“Any idea why he’d take the thirty million in those shares?”
“I’m not even sure that he did.”
Vaughn smirked.
Schneider looked at me for a long minute, then looked down at the form in his lap. He asked me a bunch of questions in a monotone voice. What was Sam’s height, weight, build? Did he have sideburns? A beard? A mustache? What were his hobbies and pastimes? Did he have any skin disorders? What kind of car did he drive?
I answered all his questions quickly.
When he was done, Schneider placed his hand on top of the form. “We’re going to turn over the Panamanian-share thing to the feds.”
“What will happen?”
Schneider shrugged. “The feds will do whatever the feds do.”
I took a breath and sat back in my chair. “And what about Forester’s death. Will you look into those letters?”
“Nah,” Schneider said. “Doesn’t sound like much. We’ve got a man who died of natural causes. We’re closing the matter.”
“What about the homeless guy?” I couldn’t believe they wouldn’t be looking into Forester’s death. If they didn’t, who would?
“You find that homeless guy, you let us know, okay?” Vaughn said. He stood. The meeting, apparently, was finished.
Schneider shifted his heft to one side and fished a business card out of his pocket, handing it to me. It had the Chicago skyline on it. “Be careful if you see him.”
“The homeless guy?”
“No, your fiancé.”
“What do you mean, ‘be careful’?”
“You didn’t expect him to do something like this, right? Take off with those shares?”
