“It’s the end of an era.”

He shoved me playfully. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to start competing with you for overachiever status.”

My mom put a plate of cheese, prosciutto and bread in front of us. I looked up and noticed that the TV was on low in a corner above the cabinets. Spence and my mother so rarely watched TV that I couldn’t ever recall seeing it on. When I looked closer, I saw why they were watching it.

“CNN,” I said. “Has there been anything about Jane?” It was easier to say about Jane than about me.

Spence and my mother exchanged glances.

“A story earlier,” my mom said. “Just a short piece.”

“What did it say?”

“Nothing really.”

“They were reporting rumors,” my brother said. “They’re like a bunch of eighth-grade girls.”

Until today, I had been part of that bunch. “They’re just doing their job.”

Spence poured me a glass of wine.

“Tell me about the story,” I said. “I want to know everything.”

Earlier, I had no interest in seeing what the media was churning out. I thought I’d be too freaked out. But ever since I told Sam that I was saving myself, I no longer wanted to hide. Not from anything. Not from rumors or lies or half-truths. I was in a battle, and I needed as much intel as I could get.

Spence and my brother stayed silent, but my mom looked at me and nodded. “They’re just hashing and rehashing. They showed the press conference. They said you were a person of interest. They showed you leaving Trial TV. They showed you coming home and then leaving again.” She looked at her watch. “We’ve been waiting for the nine-o’clock local news.”

I glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall. It was just about nine now. “Let’s put it on.”

My mom and Spence sat down, and my mom changed the channel to WGN.

We silently sipped our wine, while we waited for the news at the top of the hour. And finally there it was. My mother picked up the remote again and turned it louder.

“Good evening,” the newscaster was saying. “Once again, our leading story is the murder of local newscaster Jane Augustine. And we have breaking news.”

“Oh, boy,” my brother said.

My stomach tensed.

“Earlier today the police asked the community for help in identifying a man known only as ‘Mick,’ a man who had possibly spent time with Augustine over the weekend. And now, that man is speaking out.” The shot changed to a guy standing in front of a bookshelf. A handsome guy. Gray hair, tanned face. It was Mick, all right. I grabbed the remote, dialed up the volume even more.

A banner across the bottom of the screen read Mick Grenier, and below that, Writer. Spent time with Jane Augustine. There were three news mikes set up in front of him. He began speaking. “I invited the press into my home today in order to let the authorities know that I was the person who spent time with Jane Augustine on the Friday before her death. We were friends. And I had nothing to do with her murder.”

“Oh, really?” I jumped up from the table. “That guy was stalking Jane!”

I grabbed the phone from the counter and dialed the number for the Belmont police station, a number I’d just dialed. I asked for Vaughn. He wasn’t in. Yet again his voice mail.

“Hey, Vaughn,” I said. “The guy I told you about, the one who was stalking Jane Augustine? He’s giving a press conference right now on WGN, in case you care.”

I slammed the phone down. I looked at my family. Charlie was making a face like Uh-oh. My mother’s eyes were riveted to the TV. Spence gave me a little smile and a nod, and I could just hear him thinking something like, Nice spunk.

On TV, Mick was still going on about his friendship with Jane, how she was a lovely woman, how he’d met her because he was covering her for some story.

“Oh, that’s bullshit!” I said.

Just then they showed the outside of Grenier’s house. “Hey!” I pointed to it. “I know that house.” It was on Goethe Street, only a few blocks from my mom’s.

“Gotta go,” I said. Without grabbing a coat or even my purse, I strode through the living room, stepping into a pair of my mother’s shoes, and dashed out the front door.

62

I t took me five minutes to find Mick’s place. It wasn’t hard. Three news trucks were parked on the street, men loading stuff into them. Clearly, Mick’s little press conference was over. I waited down the block, watching the cameramen pack their vehicles then a few reporters leave the house, which was small, well-tended and tucked between two larger buildings.

When it looked as if everyone was gone, I trotted up the steps. I was about to knock on the front door-an old one made of carved wood and painted a deep cabernet-but I decided instead to just try it. The knob turned, opening onto a small, sophisticated living room lined with books. And there, in front of a bookshelf, was Mick. He was picking up chairs, obviously tidying up after the conference.

“Did you tell them you were stalking her?” I asked.

He turned. He was wearing dark jeans and a brown shirt that matched his eyes. If he was startled by my presence, he didn’t say so. In fact, he grinned. “Isabel McNeil,” he said, ignoring my question. “How are you? I only met you that once on Friday night, but I’ve seen a lot of your face on the news today.”

“Yeah, you, too. Why did you call a press conference to announce you were the one the police were looking for? Why not just go to the cops with it?”

He shrugged. “You know the saying. There’s no such thing as bad PR. Plus, I’m a writer. I learned a long time ago to never trust the police. And part of my next book is about Jane.” He looked me up and down. “And maybe about you.”

“Who are you kidding about this ‘book’? You’d been following her. Were you the one who killed her?”

He laughed. “I didn’t do anything to Jane.”

“You slept with her, right?”

“Good point.”

“She told me you had a collection of articles about her and pictures of her.”

“I do.”

“You were stalking her.”

He didn’t react defensively. He didn’t respond at all. He just cocked his head. Only a tiny fraction. And if I’d been in a nightclub, talking to a guy like Mick, I would have seen that as a playful move, something inviting discussion. But now, his freakish calm chilled me.

“Ever been a writer?” he said.

“I’m a lawyer.” I bit my lip. “Was. I was a lawyer.”

“And a newscaster.”

“They fired me.”

“Whoa, are you serious? God, this story keeps getting better.” He bent toward a brass-topped table and grabbed a notebook, scribbling something inside.

He looked back at me, giving me a peculiar stare. I wondered, for a weird second, if he’d done research on me, too, if perhaps there was a picture of Izzy McNeil somewhere in his desk, mixed in with the photos of Jane Augustine, who was no longer alive, who hadn’t realized on Friday night that her time was tick, tick, ticking away.

I glanced behind me at the door. I was only a foot from it. It was still a crack open.

“I wasn’t stalking her,” Mick said. “I was writing about her.”

“What were you writing?”

A pause. “Do you want to sit down?” He gestured at a brocaded sofa under the front window.

“No.” I took a step toward the door.

“Well, I’m going to sit.” He sank onto the sofa. “Look, I don’t usually talk about what I’m working on with anyone but my agent and my editor, but I’m going to talk to you. So let me ask you something. Have you read Norman Mailer?”

I stopped for a second, surprised by the shift in topic, disconcerted by the intensity in those eyes. I thought about the question. “I prefer less misogynistic writers.”

“You’ve heard that, right?”

“Heard what?”

“That he hated women.”

“I read one of his books.”

“But mostly you’ve heard that he was a misogynist?”