Because of that celebrity magazine, Mick ended up having a quickie marriage to an actress he fell in love with. And it was because that actress shot a film in Chicago for a couple of months that he moved there with her. The marriage didn’t survive the two months, but Mick got his first book out of it-a tell-all about the ex. And Mick got Chicago, too, which he liked a lot more than the East Coast and a hell of a lot more than L.A. He found it honest and unpretentious.

So he’d stayed, and so it was really all because of his father that he was in Chicago. And if he looked at it now, his latest project was yet another attempt to distinguish himself from Beaumont Grenier. He was a different kind of creative than his father. Reality was his medium. People today were crazier, more fucked up, than any character a mere novelist like his father could create. And it was pure skill to be able to use that reality-all the pretty, gory truth of it-to tell the perfect story; to edit out the commonplace and spit-shine the salacious.

He paused now and looked at the grid of information he’d created about Jane Augustine. This grid was always what he did when he was nearing the end of a research period. This time it was different, of course. This time his subject was dead.

35

T he doorbell rang. Hearing it, my mother stood. “That’s Maggie,” she said.

If I’d been a jealous person, I might have been envious of my mother’s absolute adoration of my friend Maggie. She was delighted by her, charmed by her and impressed with the fact that Maggie was a criminal defense lawyer-a tiny, sweet girl who rumbled with the scary kids and held her own.

As soon as Spence delivered his news that I was a “person of interest,” my mother had opened her eyes wide and murmured, “We must call Maggie.”

As luck would have it, Maggie and her sort-of boyfriend, Wyatt, had been on their way to drinks and dinner downtown and agreed to stop by.

“Let’s adjourn to the living room,” my mother said. “There’s no room in here for all of us.” She really did like Maggie if she was suggesting the living room.

We trooped through the kitchen and dining room, my mother turning on bright lights along the way.

Maggie opened the front door on her own, calling, “Anybody home?” Her wavy, light brown hair with its natural streaks of gold swung away from her face.

My mother, so much taller than Maggie’s short, little frame, swooped her into a hug.

Maggie introduced Wyatt to everyone. He was an undeniably handsome guy in his midforties, almost fifteen years older than Maggie, and a high-ranking exec at a biotech firm. The two originally met when Maggie was in law school, back when she thought she should choose an area of law different from her grandfather, a famous prosecutor turned defense lawyer. Even though she had no apparent affinity for it, she picked labor and employment work. She got a summer associate position at a big firm, and there she met one of the firm’s clients, Wyatt Bluestone, who was getting sued for sexual harassment. Maggie was asked to conduct the intake interviews with Wyatt, and so they had to spend a fair amount of time together. He told her what a bunch of crap the claim was. He talked to her about how hard it was to be in his position and to bring your employees along without crossing any lines. Maggie believed him, and they started dating.

They were together for seven months back then. Wyatt was charismatic, but I never trusted him. And yet Maggie was in love. Finally, though, she began to realize that they spent all their time at restaurants eating fabulous dinners or in his bed having fabulous sex. While this wasn’t necessarily bad, it became clear that Wyatt wasn’t interested in spending time with her friends and family, nor was he interested in introducing her to his. One day, Maggie went to his place in the middle of the day to retrieve the cell phone she’d left there, and she found him having sex with his assistant. It hit her then that the sexual harassment thing was probably true. It hit her that, as one of Wyatt’s attorneys, she might have a claim against him. Technically, his assistant certainly did. Technically, Maggie was heartbroken. After that, I had spent many nights watching Maggie cry into a large glass of vodka to get her through the breakup with Wyatt.

But now Wyatt was back. They’d reconnected on Face-book. He was older but still gorgeous-a full head of black hair, big shoulders cloaked with only the most expensive designer clothes.

I shook his hand. “Good to see you.” I tried hard to sound genuine.

Maggie swore that she wasn’t being stupid. She swore Wyatt had changed his dastardly ways. And as they took a seat on my mother’s silk couch, with the streetlights through the front window making halos around their heads, I had to admit that Wyatt seemed more devoted, more calm. He helped Maggie off with her coat; he stroked her arm; he smiled while looking deeply into her eyes.

I was dying to ask Maggie what I was supposed to do now that I was a person of interest, but my mother believed strongly in small talk before anything else. “Where are you two going to dinner?” she asked, settling onto an ivory-colored chair.

“Les Nomades,” Wyatt said.

“Les Nomades on a Tuesday?” My mother was clearly impressed.

“I’m friends with the head chef.”

Maggie and I exchanged looks. Her eyes said, Please shut up. Please don’t even think it.

What I was thinking was what I’d told Maggie once-that Wyatt was allegedly friends with everyone. If you said you were going to a bar, it was likely Wyatt would tell you he was tight with the manager. If you mentioned a Cubs game, he was buddies with the first baseman.

Les Nomades was a French restaurant, one of the fanciest in the city. The fact that Wyatt and Maggie were headed there reminded me of the Wyatt of old-all the snazzy restaurants and the glitzy nights out-and yet the fact that he was here, that he’d veered away from his evening plans to bring his girlfriend to see her train-wreck best friend and her family, was promising.

My mother told a brief story about the last time she had been at Les Nomades. Q described a disastrous date he’d had there once, and then my mom segued into the topic at hand. “We need your help, Maggie. Spence just had a disturbing phone conference with the chief of police.”

Spence, his brow furrowed, related his conversation. After being on the anchor desk all morning, I found it a balm to let someone else do the talking. Spence finished with, “He says Izzy has been named as a person of interest.”

Maggie made a disapproving tsk.

“What do you think?” I said.

“I think that “person of interest” is bullshit. On one hand, it doesn’t mean anything except that the cops have some Law and Order-style hunch about you, but they don’t want to call you a suspect and risk a lawsuit. The term has no legal significance.”

“Seriously?” I felt optimism trickle into the room. “That’s good, right?”

“In a sense, yes. It doesn’t even mean you’re a witness. All it means is that you’re someone the police want to talk to again. The problem is that if it leaks out, the media will pick it up and splash it everywhere. Your reputation could be damaged forever. Think about Richard Jewell, the guy who was a person of interest in the Olympic bombings in the ’90s. They dragged that guy through the mud.”

“The Chicago police haven’t announced this yet,” Spence said.

“That just means they don’t think they need help from the community right now.”

“There must be a way to stop the police from mentioning it in the future,” my mom said.

Maggie shrugged. “They do what they want to do.”

My mother leaned forward. “Certainly, we can do something. Izzy has been through enough. This person of interest thing is ridiculous, and I won’t have her go through hell for the whims of the cops. I won’t have her name tarnished by this.”