Red Blooded Murder

Theo walked into the room, still naked, still so sizzling hot. He was holding out a white plate, on which was a yellow omelet with two red pepper slices crisscrossed on top. “Hungry?” he said.

I nodded. But I wasn’t exactly looking at the omelet. I took the plate. My thoughts crisscrossed too, calling out different directions. Call Sam back and make nice. Call Jane and find out where she was last night. Save the omelet for later and take Theo back to bed.

I opted for the last one.

6

Minutes after Theo said goodbye—a goodbye that involved a fair amount of groping—Jane called.

“I’m sorry Zac phoned you,” she said.

“Don’t be. Are you all right?”

“Can you meet me for coffee in an hour? I want to prep you on some Trial TV stuff, and I want to talk to you about something else.”

“Sure.” I had to meet Mayburn an hour after that, but I could fit it in.

Jane gave me the address of a coffee shop near her house in River North.

Before I got in the shower, I called my old assistant, Q, short for Quentin.

“How was girls’ night?” he said, answering.

“I slept with someone.”

Q and I used to be the busiest lawyer-assistant duo at the law firm of Baltimore & Brown, and we never had time for the usual Hi, Hello, How are you this morning? kind of stuff. Even though we had both been out of work for six months now—me because the firm had all but ousted me, and Q because he never really wanted to be a legal assistant anyway—we still continued to eschew common pleasantries when we talked and got right to the point.

“Thank, God. Who was it? Sam?”

“No.”

“Grady.”

“No.”

“Someone new?”

“Yes.”

“How many dates have you had with this person?”

I paused. “None.”

“A one-night stand?” His voice rose a few decibels.

“Yep.”

“Your first one-night stand?”

“Yep.”

“I’ll be right over.”

Although Q had been in a relationship with a man named Max for most of the years I’d known him, at the end of our tenure at Baltimore & Brown, he’d gotten involved in an illicit affair. I call it illicit because not only was Q living with Max at the time, but he’d fallen for someone who wasn’t even out of the closet. But now he was official with the new boyfriend and living up the street from me at North and Dearborn.

True to his word, Q was banging on my door in less than ten minutes, which gave me just enough time to shower and toss on a dress that had been itching to get out of the closet since last fall.

Q sat on my bed, the overhead lights gleaming on his bald, black head, while I dashed around my bedroom putting on makeup and jewelry. When we worked at the law firm, Q’s uniform was crisp khakis and a stylish blazer. Now that he wasn’t working, he’d kept the blazer, but switched to jeans.

“Cute,” I said, pointing to the jacket, which was black.

“It’s too tight.” He tugged at the sleeves. “Everything is too tight. I thought being in love would give me the motivation to lose ten pounds, but it’s been the opposite.” Q worked out religiously and attempted every diet he heard about, but so far the flawless gay-man physique evaded him.

“You look great.” This was true. Happiness, even if it hadn’t translated into weight loss, made Q’s gray eyes sparkle and his skin gleam.

“Thanks. Is this new?” He fingered my waffle-cotton duvet cover.

“It’s old, actually.” I had been using a beautiful ivory spread that Sam and I had registered for and gotten as an early wedding gift. But once everything with Sam blew up, I tucked it in the closet for the time being.

“Is this where the magic happened?” Q patted the bed.

“Here and in the kitchen.”

“Tell me.”

“His name is Theo.”

“Nice. What’s he do?”

“Owns a Web design software company.”

“Like a real company? Or is he one of those guys who says he has a company, but it’s really him in his pajamas in his studio apartment?”

“From what I hear, it’s a real company, with some big profits.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“Jane.”

“How is she?”

I almost said, In deep shit with her husband. But I held my tongue, since I’d been on a stop-swearing campaign for a while now. The other reason I didn’t say it was because I didn’t believe in telling one friend another’s business. “She’s great. She’s the new anchor at Trial TV, that start-up legal network that launches Monday.”

“It’s perfect for her.”

“I know. And she’s taking me with her.”

“What?”