Red Hot Lies

My stomach hollowed. Only six weeks.

“Charlie has to stop dragging his feet,” my mom said.

I murmured in vague agreement, but for once I felt simpatico with my brother. Mentally, I, too, needed to stop dragging my feet about this wedding thing.

“Don’t forget, you have another dress fitting tomorrow night.”

I tried not to sigh. “I know,” I said. “Battle number five.”

During the first visits with my bridal seamstress, Maria, it seemed she was trying to flatten my breasts and hide my hips, parts of my body I rather liked. I kept telling her, “I think the dress needs to be sexier,” and so she’d been dutifully making the bustline lower and the waistline tighter, until the last time, when she’d taken the pins out of her mouth and said in her accented English, “You want to look like hooker on wedding day?”

I told her I’d think about it.

I realized that most women wanted an ethereal look for their wedding, but I liked wearing sexy clothes on a daily basis, so why not for my wedding day? Plus, Sam said he wanted me in something hot. So I was going to give him hot.

“Izzy, really,” my mom said. “I don’t want you showing nipple on your wedding day.”

I laughed, and it felt good, like it was loosening up my insides. “See you tomorrow.”

I logged off the computer, grabbed my bag and left to meet Sam.

It was just an average day.

2

The funny thing—although maybe funny isn’t the right word—is that I already knew a single day could slap you around and send you reeling. I’d had such a day twenty-one years ago when my father died. It was Tuesday, and it was gloriously sunny and clear—I always remember the weather first—and Charlie and I were playing in the leaves in the backyard, making painstakingly neat piles, which we would dive into with a yelp and destroy in an instant.

My mother came out of the house. She was wearing jeans with a brown braided belt that tied at the waist, the ends of which slapped her thighs as she walked. Her red-blond hair was loosely curled around her face, as usual, but that face was splotched and somehow off-kilter, as if it had two different sides, like one of those Picasso paintings my teacher showed us in art class.

She sat us down on the scattered leaves and told us he was gone. He had been on a solo flight, training for his helicopter license when the helicopter experienced mechanical trouble and went down over Lake Erie. My father was a psychologist and a police profiler, but my mother would later tell us that he was always learning new skills. And now he was dead. It was as simple, and awful, as that.

Charlie seemed to take the news well. He furrowed his tiny brow, the way he did in school in order to avoid accusations of not paying attention. He nodded at her. He was six then, two years younger than me, and I could tell he didn’t understand, or at least he didn’t grasp the gravity of the situation. It was a trait Charlie would carry all his life.

After my mom and Charlie went inside, I raked the scattered leaves into neat piles and left them that way.

We moved from the small log house in Michigan to an apartment on the north side of Chicago, where my mother knew a few distant family members. We changed our wide swath of lawn for a concrete sidewalk. The air we breathed no longer smelled of pine or lake water, but of bus fumes and sometimes, when the wind was right, dark cocoa from the chocolate factory a few blocks away.

My mother, who had been a local radio DJ in Michigan, got some help from her boss, who found her a job as a traffic reporter. Every day, she ironically boarded a helicopter and floated above a city she hadn’t known since childhood, telling people about the congestion on the Dan Ryan Expressway, the gridlock on the Northwest Tollway.

Sometimes at my new school, I would stare out the classroom window and into the sky, imagining her flying around up there, like an angel. My mother had taken on angelic properties, too. She was thin—so thin I sometimes imagined I could see her veins and muscles right through the translucent shell of her skin. She rarely played with us anymore. She never laughed. I thought she was probably thinking of my father, of his messy brown hair and mischievous eyes that made him look as if he was about to crack up, despite his serious round glasses.

I thought I’d grown up that day, sitting on those leaves. My mother would tell people afterward that I was an “old soul,” a comment I took as the highest of compliments and a quality I worked hard to cultivate. It wasn’t difficult given the fact that I had taken on many of my mother’s duties. Every morning, I toasted two slices of bread, just like she used to. Every morning, I smeared them with peanut butter, and then, very carefully, striped the middle of the bread with a column of strawberry jam, just like my mother had when we were in Michigan. I would coax Charlie from bed and make him sit in the kitchen, where we would eat our toast, just like we used to.

And then one day, my mother came back, at least for a while. She smiled again, she had gained a little weight, she laughed when Charlie spilled chocolate milk on the couch.

As I got older, I felt stronger for having lost my dad at a young age. There was a certain relief in having experienced that loss, because I knew what pain was like; I knew I could survive. I laugh now when I think of that. The fact was I was only eight—old enough to be nearly destroyed, yet resilient enough to see no alternative but to march forward.

I’m not eight anymore, and the truth is, I grew lighter over the years. Maybe the old soul was still there, a piece of me that watched over my life, but my life had become fun again; I found friends with whom I could be silly and revel in it. Eventually, I found Sam, who had brought me so much joy. And then came that Tuesday—another autumn Tuesday—when the plates of my world screeched and shifted.

3

Forester Carlton Pickett loved being alone. Absolutely loved it. He was the youngest of eight from a poor Southern family. He had begun working steady jobs when he was eleven, and since his twenties, he had run Pickett Enterprises, which had some four hundred employees. All of this meant he was rarely alone.

At age sixty-eight, he now felt entitled to an occasional bit of solitude. So at a time like this—home early on a surprisingly balmy autumn day with no dinner parties, no date, no work occupying his mind—he planned to take advantage of that solitude.

His Audi hugged the long gravel driveway. At first, only the towering pines lining the drive were evident, but then they cleared, and his house, still far in the distance, came into view. Its style was Greek Revival, the kind Forester used to stare at in awe while growing up. It was made of white stone, the front protected by massive columns. Inside, the house boasted ten bedrooms, eleven baths, two kitchens, a gym and a movie theater. The place would have been ostentatious if it wasn’t in the big-money area of Lake Forest and if it wasn’t surrounded by acres and acres of lawn and trees. Forester had known the house was over the top, but he entertained frequently, and he felt he deserved it. He had never been shy about living a big life.

Forester entered through the garage door and came into the kitchen. His housekeeper stood at the counter, back turned, fixing his meal.

“Hello, Annette,” he said. He remembered when it was Olivia he used to call hello to. He remembered that every day, even though she’d been gone thirteen years now, stolen by ovarian cancer.

Annette turned at the waist and bid him a subdued good-evening, then returned to her work.

Forester walked from the kitchen and through his large marble foyer. In the front living room, he opened the four sets of French doors looking out onto the patio, the vast yard and a small pond. For some reason, Annette liked to keep the house sealed up tight, a habit he couldn’t seem to break. He glanced around the living room. The effect, he hoped, was one of eclectic elegance. The designer had packed it full of expensive rugs, couches and wall coverings that showcased Forester’s unique and odd collection of objects collected on his travels—an oxidized brass bowl he paid two dollars for in Malaysia; the plaster statue of a radio microphone his mother gave him after he bought his first station.

Annette stepped into the room. “Cornish hen tonight,” she said simply.

“Wonderful.”

“They’re in the warming oven when you’re ready.”

“Thank you, Annette.”

In the study, he opened a bottle of DuMol Pinot Noir and poured it into a glass decanter. He turned on Ramsey Lewis. God, he loved jazz. He could still remember arriving in Chicago when he was twenty-one. He would hang out at the Green Mill, seeing every kind of jazz he could. His favorites were the southern, bluesy stuff that made him think of home, and the true Chicago style, guys like Franz Jackson that reflected the big, new, shiny city he lived in. In a way, it was jazz that had brought him everything he owned.

Looking back at his life, Forester was amazed at the apparent organization of it. He believed now that everything had happened for a reason—leading him to the next stage—but while he was busy living that life it had felt, at the time, like a convoluted, random mess. It was random that he had lost his factory job only seven months after moving to Chicago. It was random that a radio-station owner, a guy named Gus Connifer whom he’d met at the Green Mill, offered him a job as a “production assistant” at the jazz station, where he was essentially a glorified gofer. And it was decidedly random that after a year at the station, a year in which Forester had soaked up the world of radio the way the summer ground soaks up rain, he had a chance to buy the station.

Gus Connifer was a smoking, drinking, hard-living man who’d finally been diagnosed with emphysema and a host of other respiratory illnesses. He thought he would die soon, and he was fine with that, except for one little thing—he couldn’t stand his wife, whom he suspected of cheating, and wanted her to inherit nothing. Gus was a Catholic, so divorce wasn’t an option. He wanted to unload the radio station, and he didn’t care for how much. He liked Forester, who over the last year had been a bigger help to him than his ten other employees combined. He told Forester he’d sell the station for exactly a thousand dollars. Forester got a loan and with it his first property. Later, he bought other radio stations, not to mention television stations, cable networks, production companies, newspapers, recording studios and publishing companies, making Pickett Enterprises the largest media conglomerate in the Midwest.

Forester poured wine into a long-stemmed glass. Thank God red wine was considered healthy these days. It gave him an excuse to indulge in one of his few vices. And hopefully it would give him a mellow buzz, maybe take away that vague sense that something was wrong inside his body. He was a fit, strong sixty-eight—that’s what all his doctors said, and he had a few of them. Forester now believed in preventive medicine rather than a reactionary approach. Yet there was still this tiredness, this sense that his body wasn’t exactly right. But he was nearing seventy. What did he expect?

He glanced at the framed pictures above the wet bar. He kissed the tips of his fingers and touched the photo of his late wife, Liv. He would give up everything to have her back. Were Livvie here, he would gladly give up his current preference for solitude.

The photo next to Liv’s was of their only son, Shane. He often wished they shared the bond he saw and envied between many fathers and sons. That envy had worsened with the recent doubts he suffered about Shane—ever since the anonymous letters and peculiar occurrences that had happened over the past few months.

He picked up the photo of Shane. Looked closely at it. Was there any chance he was the source of the threats? Logically, it made sense, because Shane would take over the reins of his empire whenever Forester decided to hand them over. But they both knew and understood Shane simply wasn’t ready yet. He thought they both knew and understood that.

He put the photo back. His doubts sometimes ashamed him. But who else could be behind the threats? He thought of Chaz and Walter, his two right-hand men at Pickett Enterprises. They knew Shane’s limitations, and they knew they could pull his strings if he was CEO. If Forester was out, they could manage the company the way they wanted, which was often different from his way. But that’s why Forester had hired people like them, people who didn’t think exactly as he did. And until he figured out the source of the threats, he wasn’t going to start axing people.

He heard a ding telling him a door had been opened—Annette leaving for the day. With Ramsey Lewis pounding the black and whites on “Limelight,” Forester walked to the kitchen and made himself a plate with the Cornish hen and potatoes she had prepared. He took his dinner and wine through the French doors of his study and seated himself at the iron patio table.

In the deep-blue twilight his lawn took on a silvery hue, the edges of his estate blurring in the distance. He took a few bites of the hen, then a sip of the Pinot Noir. He sighed, anticipating the pleasure he got from such nights. But satisfaction eluded him. Why? He was alone, he had a perfect glass of wine and a delicious dinner, he had his jazz. He had everything he needed for a quiet night of contentment.

Yet that vague discomfort kept command of his body. In fact, it grew, and spread to his mind. Forester felt an overwhelming tiredness, even sadness, while something else—what was it?—caused his heart to race. His eyes swept across the acres of lawn, the old, drooping oaks and the stately pines. For the first time, he wished he had gated his estate. He’d never liked that concept, didn’t like the thought of closing himself off from the rest of the world, but now it would have been a comfort against this strange dread.

He saw no one. He noticed nothing out of the ordinary.

Still, he took his cell phone out of his pants pocket. He hit a speed-dial number, not identifying himself to the person on the other end, and began to speak. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but I’m just confirming that you understand what has to be done if … well, if something should happen to me.” He paused, listening. “No, of course not. I don’t anticipate anything. I just wanted to ensure your help and tell you how much I appreciate it. And I wanted to remind you that discretion, absolute discretion, is required.”