“Hey, Izzy.” Now, Izzy McNeil was the rare kind of lawyer-the kind who didn’t think her J.D. made her better than anyone else. And it didn’t hurt that she was hot as hell. He’d worked with her a few times when she was still Tanner’s associate and once when Forester Pickett was courting a well-known editor and Izzy wanted to know if the editor was in talks with other newspapers.

“You got a second?” she said.

“Sure.” He found his silver 1969 Aston Martin DB6 coupe. It was a pain-in-the-ass car, always needing work, and when it got icy in Chicago, it was useless, but he loved the thing.

He slid inside and started the engine. He listened to Izzy’s tales of woe-a fiancé who’d skipped town, apparently with a bunch of corporate shares of stock; the death of Forester Pickett; some business about letters Forester had gotten before he died and a freaky homeless guy.

“I’m really sorry about Forester,” he said. He didn’t meet the man when he’d handled the editor investigation, but he’d heard good things.

“Yeah.” Izzy sounded on the verge of tears, which made Mayburn uncomfortable. He stared through the windshield at two girls, probably high-school students, eating bagels while they walked up the street.

He said nothing to Izzy. He’d found it more helpful to let people say what they wanted on their own terms.

Izzy got herself together and asked if she could hire him to find the fiancé-Sam, the guy’s name was-and if he’d look into the matter of whether Forester Pickett had been killed.

“I thought you said he died of a heart attack.” Mayburn put the car into drive and pulled out of the lot.

“That’s what they say. But he’d been getting those letters. And what the homeless guy said to him-about how he’d join Olivia if he wasn’t careful-I mean, it’s clear someone was threatening him.”

“I don’t know about that.” Izzy was sounding like a conspiracy theorist, and it depressed him that this woman he’d always thought of as sexy with her head screwed on straight was losing it a little.

She made a short growl, like she was irritated with him. “I promised Forester I would look into this if something happened, and now it has. I just don’t think there’s any way Sam would steal outright from Forester.”

“But he logged in to the safe and now those shares are gone, and they’re worth, what, thirty million?” He turned onto Franklin and headed north. “He made off with them in the middle of the night and disappeared. On the same day Forester died.”

“Yeah, but-”

“Yes, but what?” he said.

They both fell into silence.

Lately, Mayburn had found himself simply wanting to do his work and go home. He knew this meant he was growing bored.

He only wanted cases that paid top dollar, or that gave him the street cred to continue building his résumé. Because if he wasn’t personally drawn to the work anymore-and he wasn’t, he was sick of the brain-stultifying effort that mostly involved sitting in a car with an audio surveillance system, listening to people taking a shit and having sex and just generally living their lives the way he wasn’t-then he might as well get paid a heck of a lot of money to do it, and it better not depress the hell out of him. There was no way that Izzy’s case-if he could even call it that-was not going to depress him. He would watch her go from a girl with exuberance and optimism to a bitter, pissed-off woman who’d been dumped and bamboozled.

“Hey, Izzy, I’m sorry this is happening to you, but I don’t handle domestic stuff.”

“This isn’t domestic! It’s not like Sam is screwing around on me, and I’m asking you to take pictures for evidence.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but that’s probably what would happen. If I could locate him, I’d probably find him in bed with some sweet young thing, and I’d have to give you photos of it, in order for you to believe it.”

“Screw you.”

He chuckled, grudgingly. She had a mouth, he had noticed and despite his North Shore upbringing, he liked that in women. “Really, I’m sorry. I’ve got my hands full right now and, even if I didn’t, you couldn’t afford me.” He reached Division, turned left and then right onto Clybourn, headed toward his house just south of Lincoln Square.

“Sorry,” she said. “Look, I’ll pay whatever it takes.”

“I charge a retainer up front, and it’s big.”

“I remember. I approved your bills when you investigated the editor.”

“That was small-time, and my rates have gone up since then. I’ve got more work than I can handle.”

He mentioned a sum, the same he’d charged the bank where DeSanto worked. He explained how he then charged hourly, eating away at the retainer, but how he usually went well over it. He detailed the incidental fees that the client also had to pay-food, gas, copying, phone calls. He told her how his hourly rate soared if he worked nights or weekends, which was often, especially in a missing person’s case. And then just to scare her, he told her how much he’d charged on his last case.

Izzy went silent. “We’re getting married,” she said, “and so we’ve got a lot of money going out the door. I couldn’t afford those fees.”

“Right.” Sad that the girl thought she was still getting married. “I really wish you the best, and if you hire someone else and you want to run things by me, give me a call, okay?”

“Yeah. Sure.” Her voice sounded flat, which was hard to hear, since he’d always thought of her as full of life.

He’d watched her during the editor case. He was good at that-the watching. What he’d observed about Izzy was a quick ability to adapt. You could see her changing her vocabulary, her thinking, to fit whatever she was talking about or dealing with. She didn’t seem like a natural at her job as Forester’s lawyer, but he could also see that she believed she could be good at it if she just tried her ass off.

It would be an uphill battle for her now that Forester was dead. He’d gotten the feeling from everyone at the firm that they thought of her as the pretty girl who’d lucked into the gig.

He pulled into the alley behind his house and then into the garage. “Again, I’m sorry you’re going through this, Izzy. Good luck.”

“Thanks. Okay, thanks.” Her voice sounded far away, fragile.

He hated to do it, but he hung up.

15

Between the meeting with the detectives and Mayburn’s rejection I was feeling scared, my anxiety soaring. I paced my office. I picked up my phone over and over. I couldn’t think of who else to call, and so I kept banging the phone onto the base.

Q opened the door and came inside. “Need anything?”

Behind him, I could see Holly, the assistant of the attorney next door, watching us. “I need you to get Holly to stop staring at me.”

“Oh, ignore her.” He looked over his shoulder and waved a hand. “She’s two bad decisions away from being a crack whore.”

I sat down. “I don’t know what to do with myself.”

“Sounds like what you need is a Halloween party with a lot of gay men.”

I groaned. “I forgot.” Q’s annual party was that weekend.

“Max and his mother have been decorating for days.”

“I don’t think I can do it.”

“I don’t want to do it either. I’m so not in the mood. But you have to come. It wouldn’t be the same without you.”

“Sam was supposed to come with me.” I swallowed. I was supposed to do everything with Sam. For the rest of my life.

“You can still wear the pumpkin costume,” Q said.

I managed half a laugh. “I did not get a pumpkin costume, you pervert.”

Q’s big idea had been for me to dress as a pumpkin and for Sam to stick pumpkin seeds all over his face and wear a name tag that said, Peter the Pumpkin Eater.

“It’s not for a few days,” Q said. “Give it some thought.”

“A few days. That seems so far away.” For a long time, I’d been able to see my entire future before me-my work with Forester, my marriage to Sam. When it was all overwhelming me it seemed that the future was just a postcard-appealing and detailed on the front but flat when you really looked at it. And yet now that I had no idea what the next day would be like, I craved that pretty picture.