I groaned with frustration. “Zac, I told you I was with someone Friday night.” I looked at Q. “Please tell him.”

Q grinned. “Her first one-night stand,” he said to Zac. “I’m so proud.”

He turned to Q. “You meet this one-night stand?”

“No, but I got all the gory details.”

Right then, I saw him standing near the front door. Mick. The writer. His gray hair and tanned youthful face made him stand out from the crowd.

“That’s him!” I said.

I looked back and saw that Zac’s eyes hadn’t left mine.

“Zac,” I said, insistently, “that is the writer who Jane was with the other night.”

I pointed. We all looked in the direction of the door.

But Mick had disappeared.

33

I dodged mourners as I hurried toward the door, trying to catch up with Mick.

C.J. was suddenly in front of me. “Iz, you were great today. Really.”

“Thanks, C.J.” I stood on my toes to see over her shoulder. I couldn’t see Mick.

C.J. kept talking. “You do need to adjust a lot of things. Tomorrow let’s get you in the editing bay to watch the tape. You’ll be able to see issues that need working out.”

“Great. I’ll come in early and stay late. Look, I’ve got to run.”

“Don’t forget to look over your scripts tonight.”

“Got it.” I didn’t tell her that I also had to work at the Fig Leaf tonight.

I dashed around her, heading fast toward the entrance. I came out into a marbled foyer. A hostess stood behind a podium, a vacant smile on her face.

“Did you see a guy with a tan and gray hair come out here?” I asked her.

“A guy…? Um, now who were you looking for?”

He must have left. The elevator to the lobby was right there. I hit the button, then looked at the display. The elevator was stopping in the lobby now.

“Are there stairs to the street?” I asked the hostess.

I wanted to catch up to Mick. I wanted to find out his last name so I could give it to Zac and prove to him I wasn’t the one with Jane that night. I wanted to ask Mick why in the hell he’d been following her, whether it was really for a story or something more sinister. I wanted to give his answers to the police and let them decide if he was telling the truth.

The hostess gestured with a game-show wave toward the elevator. “This will take you right downstairs.”

“Yes, but are there actual stairs?” I couldn’t hide the impatience in my voice, causing her smooth brow to crinkle.

“There is an emergency exit.”

“Where’s that?”

But then the elevator dinged behind me. The doors opened and people flooded out, most of them heading to the memorial.

I dove inside. When the elevator reached the lobby I swiveled my head around, searching for Mick. No sign of him. I ran out into the street, crossing my arms against the late-afternoon chill. And then I saw him-I recognized the gray hair and the blazer he’d been wearing-walking west on Chicago, then taking a right onto Wabash.

Tucking my purse under my arm, I sprinted after him as fast as my high heels would let me. I’d gotten used to heels over the years. I was one of those freaks who said, I actually prefer high heels, and mostly meant it. But running in them was a different story. You simply couldn’t run heel-toe, heel-toe, the way you would with normal shoes. Instead, you had to do a ridiculously silly flat-footed, bouncy jog. And in his flat shoes, Mick was moving much quicker than me.

I turned the same way as him when I got to Wabash. I saw an open door to a bar called Pippins. Was that the arm of his coat, the flash of his gray hair entering the place? I bounced/jogged to Pippins like a lame deer and stepped inside. A bunch of college-age students with about ten pitchers of beer on their table were almost the only patrons. An older man, a professor type in a blazer, was taking a seat at the bar. Definitely not Mick.

I bolted outside, looking both ways. I ran back toward the hotel. I stood in front of the entrance spinning around, hunting for Mick. He was nowhere to be seen.

Just then Q came outside. “Okay, what happened back there?”

I kept looking around. Where had Mick gone? “I don’t know. Zac seems to think I had a thing with Jane.”

“Did you?”

I turned to face him. “Are you joking? You’re questioning me, too?”

He gave an innocent shrug. “Hey, you’re in a free-to-be-you-and-me mood these days. Maybe you tried out some girl-on-girl action, too. Ooh! If you turn gay, you have to give me credit for it. We keep track of that stuff. There’s a point system.”

I smacked him on the arm then spun around, still half hunting for Mick, although he was clearly gone.

Q stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. “Let me drive you home. I think you’ve had enough for a few days.”

I looked at my friend, at his gray eyes the color of ash. Neither of us said anything for a moment. We didn’t have to. In that look, I saw the sympathy. Sometimes it isn’t what you see in yourself, but what you see reflected in the eyes of a good friend. That gaze Q was giving me-one of concern, of compassion, even a little pity-stopped me cold and took all the fire out of me.

“Let me take you home,” he said. “Do you have a coat?”

I realized that I was standing with my arms crossed over my chest, shivering a little. I shook my head. I had stopped off at home and accidentally left it there.

Q flagged a cab and tucked me into the back then climbed in beside me. He directed the driver down Chicago, turning onto State Street. The quiet in the back of that musty cab allowed my grief and exhaustion to return. But I couldn’t go home and sleep. For one thing, I had to work tonight at the Fig Leaf. I thought of calling Mayburn and canceling, but when Sam was missing, Mayburn went above and beyond to help me. I wouldn’t let him down.

I looked at my watch. I had time before I had to punch the clock, and there was someone I suddenly very much wanted to see. As we passed Division, I turned to Q. “I need to see my mom.”

Victoria McNeil and I didn’t have the symbiotic relationship that some mothers and daughters did. She was beautiful in a willowy, reserved, strawberry-blond kind of way, a way that radiated both melancholy and mystery, while I was simply brassy and flashy. She spoke quietly, gracefully, and only when her words were necessary, so we weren’t exactly kindred spirits.

I’d found out a lot about my mom in the recent year, skeletons she never thought another living soul would see. Those secrets had initially separated us, but oddly, over the last few months as we tentatively dipped our toes back in the waters of our relationship, the secrets had bonded us. We never spoke of them, but the fact that I knew, and that I wasn’t judging her for them, brought us closer.

That recent bond was one of the reasons I wanted to see her. The other was that no matter how old you are, sometimes you just need your mom.

The cab pulled up in front of her house on State Street, the one she shared with Spencer, her real estate developer husband. Their turn-of-the-century graystone near the corner of Goethe Street was tall and graceful with a large arched front door. Lights were on inside.

“If it’s okay, I’m coming with you,” Q said.

I smiled at him. “Absolutely. I miss seeing you every day.”

We hadn’t even rung the bell before the door opened. There was my mom, beautiful in cream slacks and a silver raw-silk blouse. “Hi, Boo,” she said.

It was a nickname given to me by my father. After he died, my mother started using it, as if it kept him a little bit alive.

“How was the memorial?” she asked.

I had called her a few hours ago and told her the whole story-finding Jane yesterday, anchoring Trial TV and the fact that the memorial was this afternoon.

“Sad,” I answered. “Awful.”