Look Closely Page 2

  The ring of the phone rattled me away from the letter. I blinked rapidly, finally getting that deep breath, and grabbed the receiver off the end table.

  “Hailey, it’s me,” Maddy said. “I’m early, and I’m two blocks from you, so I’m coming over.”

  I dropped the letter in my lap. “I need a few minutes.”

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. It’s…It’s nothing.”

  “Whoa,” she said. “I know that voice. I’ll be right there.”

  Five minutes later, she buzzed from the lobby.

  “What’s up with you?” she said when I opened the door, the letter still in my hand. “What’s wrong?”

  I handed her the note. “I’m not sure.” I felt both sick and elated, as if on the verge of some discovery.

  Maddy read it. “What in the hell is this?”

  I shook my head and took the note from her. I read it again, letting that flicker of comprehension grow brighter.

  “Hailey, what’s going on?” Maddy said, her voice cautious, slightly alarmed. She flicked her dark, ringletted hair over her shoulder.

  “I just got it in the mail,” I said inanely.

  “Who sent it?”

  I shrugged.

  Maddy groaned. “Why are you being so difficult? Give me the envelope.”

  I turned toward the couch and pointed to where it had fallen off my lap. It was now almost hidden between the cushions. Maddy’s heels tapped on the wood floor as she crossed the room. For some reason, I noticed that she was wearing an expensive-looking tan suit, one I hadn’t seen before.

  “The letter was sent from here in the city,” she said, lifting the envelope and pointing to the postmark. “Do you have any idea who sent it to you?”

  “No.” I looked down at the page, although I knew the words by heart already.

  “Well, who was murdered? I mean, do you know who it’s referring to?”

  I felt that nauseous elation again, a sick swoop and dive of my insides. “Yeah, I think so,” I said. “My mom.”

  My lungs ached, but I ignored the feeling. I ran faster, heading south down Broadway, then rounding the corner at Union Square West, just barely avoiding a full-frontal collision with a falafel vendor. I kept running, my shoes making dull slaps on the concrete, until I hit University, where I turned toward my apartment. Almost there, almost there. My breath sounded ragged to my own ears, but I pushed past it. Just a few more blocks. I pumped my arms faster, increasing my speed, feeling my bangs stick to my forehead with sweat.

  I reached Eleventh Street and dropped to a walk, letting my breath catch up with me. It was heaven to jog without all my winter layers, to let the breeze hit my bare legs, to let the run shake off the thoughts of that letter, those two sentences that I carried constantly in my brain. I’d spent the last few weeks obsessing about who had sent it to me. I wouldn’t show it to my dad, and I had no guesses myself. On a long shot, I interrogated my mailman, but he could only tell me the bit of information I already knew—that the envelope had originally been sent from here in Manhattan. Which left me with millions of residents to consider, not to mention the millions of tourists.

  I slowed even more when I reached the display of flowers on the sidewalk that signaled my favorite Korean grocery store. A few weeks ago there’d been prom carnations and roses that looked hair-sprayed—winter flowers—but now there were tulips, bright-colored and fresh. Inside the crowded shop, I picked up a bottle of grapefruit juice and a mammoth Sunday New York Times. Buying that paper every weekend made me feel like a native, one of those people who acted as if it was no big deal to live here, in one of the largest, craziest cities in the world. Maddy was like that. So were many of the associates at my firm. Manhattan lingo rolled off their tongues with ease. They’d say, “I’m going to the Korean,” instead of “the Korean deli,” or “I’m heading to Seventy-sixth and Lex” not “Seventy-sixth Street and Lexington Avenue.”

  I, on the other hand, had never been truly comfortable in Manhattan, despite my three years there during law school and the last five years of private practice. I’d thought the accumulation of years, together with the fact that my father still lived in Manhasset on Long Island, would bring me a sense of contentment. But no matter how often I put myself in the thick of things, no matter how much I tried to convince myself, I always felt a little off, a little like an impostor. It was why I jogged the chaotic streets, picking my way past too many obstacles, like pedestrians and baby strollers and bicyclists, instead of heading for the river or Battery Park. I had this notion that if I constantly placed myself in the middle of the urban crunch it would soak in, and I’d finally feel as if I belonged.

  I finished the juice while waiting in line to pay, picking the pulpy bits off my lips. I showed the bottle to the cashier when I reached him.

  “How are you today, Hailey?” the cashier said. He was a short Korean man with a wide bald head.

  “Good, Shin. How are you?” We had a few seconds of light chatter while he rang me up. Shin was the reason I went to that store; someone, other than my co-workers, who knew my name.

  I threw the bottle in a trash can outside the store, feeling a cool trickle of sweat slide down my spine, then walked in the direction of Ninth Street. I balanced the paper on one arm, while I flipped to the business section.

  “Shit!” I said. “Shit, shit, shit.” The headline read, Online McKnight Store In Trouble?

  McKnight Corporation was one of my clients—one of my newest, biggest clients—and I was scheduled to leave for Chicago that night to represent them at a federal arbitration. Until then, I hadn’t been as nervous as I usually would be in an arbitration. I’d been more focused on that letter and the fact that Chicago was right across the lake from Woodland Dunes, the town where I’d lived until I was seven. The town where my mother, Leah Sutter, had died.

  The night I had received the letter, Maddy and I split a bottle of wine, then another, talking for hours. Why, Maddy had demanded, did I think the stupid little note was about my mother? It was probably just a cruel prank, she said. By that time I was sure that the letter was about Leah Sutter, but I had a hard time explaining my conviction, my absolute certainty. I couldn’t remember much about that time, and I’d gotten used to ignoring it, yet now it had come back, a force to be reckoned with. The more I thought about it, a family shouldn’t scatter the way mine did after someone died. One day I had a mother, a father, a sister and a brother. After my mom passed away, it was only my dad and me.

  I’ve read stories of estranged families coming closer after someone dies. I don’t know why that didn’t happen to my family. We didn’t stay long in Woodland Dunes, but during the few weeks that I’d returned to school, I saw the pointed stares of my classmates, a curious fear behind their eyes. So, I’d been glad when my dad said we were leaving. Caroline and Dan went their own ways—Caroline to boarding school, Dan to college and then both of them off into the world. I grew up without siblings, without knowing what I was missing. It wasn’t until college, when I was away from my father for the first time, that I realized how strange that was.

  Staring at the McKnight headline now, thinking of the publicity it would generate, my heart rate picked up again. I hurried to my apartment, and instead of waiting for the elevator, I took the stairs two at a time to my place on the sixth floor. During law school, I’d lived on the ground floor of the same building, in a small studio with a single window that had a lovely view of the Dumpster. Once I had a steady paycheck, I moved to the top floor and into a large one-bedroom. Instead of the Dumpster, my windows now overlooked an old church on the corner, which would have been quaint if it weren’t for the couple of homeless guys who set up camp there every night and screamed obscenities at passersby.

  Inside the apartment, I skimmed the article. The beginning gave information I already knew: McKnight Corporation owned department stores nationwide and had recently gotten into online retail, but they’d been sued by a competitor who
claimed that McKnight copied its Web design and certain slogans. Their stock had gone down because of the suit, and if they lost the arbitration or a later trial, the article speculated, it could sound the death knell for the company. I knew the arbitration was important to McKnight’s business, of course. What I hadn’t known was that the company could go under if I didn’t win.

  “Christ,” I said, slamming a hand on the table.

  I stood up straight, embarrassed by my own temper, despite the fact that I was alone. It wasn’t just the professional pressure that was getting to me, I knew. It was the thought that this development might steal away the time I’d planned to spend during my visit to Woodland Dunes.

  The second half of the article gave a history of the company, something I was only vaguely familiar with. I skimmed most of it until I saw a teaser headline in the middle that read, Corporate Foul Play? The juice I’d drank felt like acid in my stomach.

  According to the piece, Sean McKnight, the current CEO, had engineered a deal twenty years ago that allowed McKnight Corporation to buy another department-store company called Fieldings. Initially, the deal had all the makings of a hostile takeover, but suddenly Fieldings’s board, made up of mostly Fieldings family members, had decided to sell. There was a rumor that McKnight had used personal information to blackmail his way into the sale. Charges were never brought, though, and McKnight Corporation had flourished until now.

  I read the section again. I’d been told by McKnight’s in-house counsel that there was no dirty laundry. I might be able to bar the plaintiff’s attorney from questioning McKnight about this Fieldings takeover, but the rules of evidence were looser at arbitrations than at trials, so I would have to be prepared. The media surrounding the story would only make my job harder. Hopefully, Illinois didn’t allow filming at arbitrations.

  I picked up the phone and dialed Maddy’s number. When I got her machine, I hung up and dialed her cell phone instead.

  I had met Maddy on the first day of law school, and I liked her right away. I liked her loud, cheerful personality and her crazy, curly hair. Maddy, unlike me, was someone who told you her life story within the first twenty minutes of meeting her. When I wouldn’t, or couldn’t, do that, she seemed to understand. As we spent more and more time together—studying in the library, griping about exams, drinking too much merlot on the weekends—Maddy found subtle ways to draw me out.

  One of her favorites was using magazines as props. We would study in the coffee-shop area of a large bookstore, and every few hours we’d take a break. Maddy would buy a stack of magazines, and we’d sit across from each other, steaming mugs of coffee in front of us, the magazines fanned out over the table. As we flipped the pages, Maddy would ask questions. They started mundane, or at least as mundane as Maddy could be. “Don’t you think I’d look amazing in this dress?” she’d say, or “Can you believe how much these frickin’ sneakers cost? They look like orthopedic shoes.” But as we continued to talk, Maddy would sneak in slightly more substantial questions. “Did you have one of these hideous dolls when you were growing up?” or “Would you wear a wedding dress like this?”

  I knew what Maddy was doing, but the questions didn’t feel threatening, so eventually I began to talk, my eyes still looking at the magazines, my fingers still turning the glossy pages. The questions grew more pointed, and by the end of our first year in law school, Maddy knew everything about me. She knew about my mother. She knew what I knew anyway, which wasn’t much. It was an odd freedom to release all those thoughts from the cage in my brain.

  “I was just going to call you,” she said as she answered her phone now. In the background, I heard the ticking of cash registers and women’s voices. “I’m at Saks, and they’re having an incredible shoe sale. Those strappy sandals you wanted are forty percent off. Get your ass over here.”

  “No, thanks. I think I’ll get enough of department stores this week. Plus, I have to leave for the airport in a few hours.”

  “Oh, that’s right. Your McKnight arb. You ready?”

  “Check out the business section of the Times, and you’ll know the answer to that one. Listen, I have a question about Illinois law. You had a few cases there, right?”

  “Well, sure, but mostly I just carried the trial bags and ran for coffee.” Maddy was also at a big law firm in Manhattan, and like many other young associates, she hadn’t gotten much trial experience. I, on the other hand, had been lucky. Right out of law school, during the dot-com boom, I’d started a cyber-law division at my firm. I was young and determined. I had time to learn this new area of law, and I liked not being under the thumb of the other attorneys. To everyone’s surprise, the division was a huge success, and the clients didn’t stop coming even after many of the start-up companies failed. There was still so much business and very few firms who specialized in cyber law. Since my department was now pulling in lots of revenue, they pretty much let me do whatever I wanted. In fact, I was hoping to make partner soon.

  “Do you remember if they allow TV cameras at arbitrations?” I asked.

  “I know they’re kept out of the courtroom. I don’t know about an arb, though. Sorry I’m not more help.”

  “That’s all right.” I moved into the bedroom and took off my jogging shoes.

  “How long will you be in Chicago?” Maddy said.

  “A week or so.”

  “You’ll be there next weekend, huh?”

  “What are you getting at, Mad?” I pulled off my socks and slumped back on the bed. The satiny-smooth cotton felt cool under my legs.

  “You know what I’m getting at. That bizarre letter. You’re going to Woodland Dunes, aren’t you?”

  Like my father, Maddy knew me too well. Normally I loved her for it. “I’m just going to ask a few questions,” I told her, trying to keep the irritation out of my voice.

  “Not smart, girl. Someone who writes a letter like that is not someone you want to mess with.”

  “Right. Well.” It had occurred to me that maybe the author meant to be helpful in some way, but I wasn’t about to try to convince Maddy.

  “Did you tell your dad?” she asked.

  “Of course not.” My dad was my other best friend. We even worked together at Gardner, State & Lord, but he worried about me too much as it was.

  Maddy sighed. “You can be such a pain in the ass. Just leave it alone, okay?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “At least promise me you’ll be careful.”

  “I will, I will.”

  “I’ll tell you what. I’ll buy those sandals for you, and I’ll hold them hostage. You only get them if you’re a good girl, and come home safely.”

  I laughed. “Deal.”

  I stripped off the rest of my clothes and took a quick shower. After I was dressed again, I loaded my laptop and the McKnight file into my large leather trial bag, the one that made me feel like a traveling salesman. Next, I packed a week’s worth of suits, some running clothes and a couple pairs of jeans into a suitcase. I had everything I needed for the arbitration, everything I needed for a week away from home, but there was one thing left to pack.

  I moved around my bed to the corner of the room where I’d set up a desk and computer. I opened the top drawer and took out the envelope. I lifted the flap to make sure the letter was still there, then I read it once more. There is no statute of limitations on murder. Look closely.

  2

  The opulent Chicago headquarters of McKnight Corporation were housed on the top floors of their State Street department store. Marble-decked with gold fixtures, I assumed that it was supposed to bring to mind old world elegance. Personally, I found the place overdone. It reminded me of some of the homes in my dad’s neighborhood in Manhasset—all show and no warmth.

  The receptionist escorted me to the top floor and into a conference room where paintings of the flagship store hung in gold-leafed frames. I was there to meet with Beth Halverson, McKnight Corporation’s in-house counsel, and Sean McKnight whom I h
adn’t yet met. Then I would review my notes and get ready for opening arguments that afternoon.

  I had the buzz, that taut, high-strung feeling I always got when I was on trial or in an arbitration. But now I was even more on edge since I’d been sideswiped with the new information about possible shady dealings in McKnight’s takeover of Fieldings Company.

  “Hi, Hailey, welcome to Chicago.”

  I stood to greet Beth Halverson, an impeccably dressed woman in her late thirties with stylish, short blond hair. I’d always found Beth competent and agreeable, and I was thrilled that she’d decided to give us McKnight’s business, but I had a bone to pick with her this time.

  She seemed to read my mind. “I want you to know that I found out about the Fieldings allegations the same way you did. By reading the paper yesterday.”

  “I mean no disrespect, but I find that hard to believe.” On a side table, coffee, juices and pastries had been set out. I poured myself a cup of coffee and added a few drops of skim milk, exactly the way my mom used to.

  “Look,” Beth said. “I only came on as general counsel a year and a half ago.”

  I turned around to see her shutting the conference-room door.

  “What I found,” Beth said in a lowered voice, glancing at the closed door, “was that this place is run exactly the way Sean wants it.”

  I took my seat again. “And what does that mean?”

  Beth walked around the table, coming closer to me, and leaned on it with both arms. “It means that Sean doesn’t want anyone to talk about the Fieldings takeover, so no one does. I wasn’t apprised of the rumors. I never heard of any of the allegations until that article. Honestly, I wouldn’t keep that from you.”