Chapter 5
Chapter Five
I arrived at Liam's bar, The Peak, shortly before five.
The building was in the middle of a re-energized street of renovated warehouses and was apparently a bar and grill during the day and a club at night, featuring local music acts.
It was exactly the kind of business Liam had always envisioned owning.
As I got out of the cab and stood on the sidewalk in front of the building, I felt a wave of nerves.
I hadn't seen Liam in nine years, and things had ended badly between us.
I didn't know how he would react to seeing me now.
He might not care at all. It had been a very long time.
He could be with someone else. He could be engaged or married. I had purposefully never looked him up.
As I stalled, my phone buzzed. "Cassidy," I said, happy I could buy a little more time before I had to go in the bar. "What's up?"
"You're on speaker with me and Morgan. Ray threw us out of his office," she said.
"As in, he got a security guard and forced us to leave the building.
He said he was going to take out a restraining order against all three of us, and that if we continued to look into his sister's death, we were going to find ourselves in a lot of trouble. "
"He was even angrier than he was this morning," Morgan put in. "I don't know what his problem is, but he definitely does not want us investigating Paige's death."
"Maybe I need to talk to Alina again to find out why Ray is so outrageously angry about it," I said. "He could have just told you he had nothing to say without getting so dramatic."
"He was amped up the second we walked in the door," Morgan added. "We didn't have to say more than hello to get him to explode."
"Maybe he had something to do with Paige's death," Cassidy interjected.
"His actions are strange, but I can't imagine why Ray would have wanted to kill Paige. She always looked out for him. She was a good big sister."
"Maybe he was doing something she didn't like," Cassidy suggested. "And he didn't want her to tell anyone."
I understood why she'd make that point, but it didn't add up. "It doesn't feel like that's what was going on, but it's a theory we should explore."
"I agree," Morgan said. "I'm going to see if I can find any of Ray's friends who are still in the area and were at Northwestern with him. What did you find out?"
"Detective Colton Barclay was not very helpful.
He said he trusted Detective Cabot to have run a thorough investigation.
Unless I have a new clue or new evidence, he's not going to reopen the case.
I did ask him to send me the files. He said he would, but then he got a call, so I don't know if he forgot about me as soon as I left the office, but hopefully not.
I just got to Liam's bar. I'm about to go inside now. I'll text you when I'm done."
As they hung up, I slipped my phone into my bag and then headed into the bar.
I didn't know how Liam would react when he saw me, but I had no intention of showing my nerves.
My life was going pretty well right now.
And I looked damn good, too, thanks to my addiction to Pilates and walking the streets of New York instead of taking the subway or a cab.
If I had to see my ex, at least I could show him that my life had turned out good even without him in it.
With that mental pep talk behind me, I stepped inside, taking a moment to look around.
The bar ran the length of one exposed-brick wall, all dark wood and brass rails polished to a shine that said Liam still cared about details, and beyond the scatter of small round tables, a low stage waited at the far end under a single ghost light.
The floors were old wood, scarred and honey-colored, the kind that had been something else in a former life.
Vintage concert posters lined the brick in plain black frames: Buddy Guy at the Checkerboard, Muddy Waters, and a faded Aragon Ballroom bill.
The interior was warm, somewhat masculine, and musically oriented. It felt like the Liam I used to know.
I started when I saw him come out of a back room and into the bar area, and I couldn't stop my heart from skipping a beat.
I'd forgotten how attractive he was with his wavy brown hair and sharp brown eyes.
He'd filled out since our college days, but he was fit, with broad shoulders enhanced by a T-shirt, and long, lean legs encased in comfortable jeans.
A flood of memories rushed through my head, leaving me shaken and off-balance.
Liam had been my first serious relationship.
I'd had boyfriends before, but no one with whom I'd felt such deep, sometimes scary emotions.
I'd never been comfortable with that depth of feeling.
I'd always been afraid of it. I'd always expected it to end.
And I hadn't been wrong. It had ended. Maybe because in some way that had made leaving him so much easier.
I didn't know how long I stood there staring at him, but suddenly he turned, as if sensing my gaze, and when our eyes met, I could see the flash of recognition, even with ten feet between us.
For a few seconds, we just looked at each other.
And then two women crossed between our line of sight, breaking the odd spell between us.
I needed to talk to him, but I also felt like I needed a moment, so I sat down at the nearest empty table and drew in a deep breath.
A moment later, he pulled out the chair across from me and sat down. He was so close…too close.
"What the hell are you doing here, Tessa?"
It wasn't the warmest of greetings, and somehow that made it a little easier.
"I need to talk to you."
"I can't believe you came back to Chicago."
"I had a conference here."
"Yeah, I heard. You're a podcaster now. I'm not surprised. You've always liked to talk and to entertain. But that doesn't answer my question. Why are you here, in my bar?"
"My podcast covers true crime stories. Alina MacIntyre, Paige's sister, came to see me yesterday. She asked me to put her sister's case on our podcast. We're officially looking into Paige's death. Alina doesn't believe it was an accident. I need to find out if she's right or wrong."
Liam stared back at me, his gaze completely unreadable, reminding me of how I'd felt in those last weeks of our relationship when I'd gone from feeling like we were completely in sync to feeling like we were strangers who had never slept together, never been intimate.
It was so strange. I'd never understood what had happened.
"That's a mistake," he said. "Paige's death was an accident. Why dredge it all up now? You can't bring her back."
"Alina wants justice, and the more I've thought about it, the more I've wondered if it really was an accident, or if we all just wanted to believe that because it wasn't as terrifying as thinking someone killed her."
"If there had been evidence of murder, the police would have found it."
"It seemed like the case was closed quickly."
"Because everything pointed to an accident." He sat back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. "Frankly, you're the last person who should be looking into this. You hated Paige."
"I didn't hate her," I said immediately. "I didn't like that she got the lead because I thought I deserved it, but I didn't hate her. I didn't want her to die."
"But then you got the role you wanted."
"Come on, Liam. You know I didn't have anything to do with her death."
"I know she called you, and you allegedly didn't call her back."
"Allegedly?" I echoed in angry amazement. "Why are you talking like a cop?"
"Detective Cabot told me that the last person Paige called was you, but it didn't look like you answered or called her back. I waited for you to mention it to me, but you never did."
"What about the texts that you two exchanged? You never brought those up, either. You never mentioned that Paige wanted to see you. Were you hooking up with her? Were you cheating on me with her?"
"No!" His reply came out angry and explosive. "I never hooked up with her."
"I saw you in the bar one night. You were talking so close to each other. It felt like something was going on. And all I could think was that Paige was trying to take something else from me."
He stared back at me with a mix of emotions running through his gaze now. "I didn't cheat on you, Tessa. Not with Paige or anyone else."
"But there was something going on between you two. What was it?"
"It was nothing."
"I don't believe you."
"I don't care if you believe me. I have nothing to say about it. Is that why you came here? You want me to go on record for your podcast?"
"No. I want to know if there was something going on with Paige that you knew about, and I didn't. If she was having a problem in her life that could have led to her death."
He shook his head. "You need to drop this. Go back to New York. Go back to your life."
"Why won't you tell me what you were talking to her about?"
"Because it was meaningless. She was flirting with me. I wasn't interested. And honestly, I thought she was trying to make you jealous. She was lonely, sad, and pissed off at you."
"Lonely? Paige? She had a boyfriend, and she was starring in a play. She had everything a girl could want. Why would she be sad?"
"I don't know, but she was. You know that, Tessa. You were the cause of some of her unhappiness. You were hard on her. You made your feelings about her getting the starring role quite clear. Not just to me, to everyone. You trash-talked Paige all the time."
He was right about that, and I was certainly more embarrassed about my behavior now than I had been back then.
"I didn't handle my disappointment well.
But Paige and I hadn't been close most of that year.
We were always competing, and she was always winning.
I didn't want to be around her." I paused.
"Is there anyone else besides me that Paige had a problem with, that she might have mentioned to you? "
"She complained about other people in the play not liking her success. She said it was hard to be happy when so many people hated her for being good."
I felt another twinge of guilt at that comment, but I pushed past it. "What about outside of the theater world?"
"I wasn't her confidante, Tessa. We talked a few times; that's it. Whatever you plan on doing, leave me out of it. I don't want to be dragged back into the past, certainly not with you."
"I didn't want to get dragged back there, either, but Alina came to me and begged me to help.
She thinks if I can generate public interest, the police will reopen the case, so I agreed to try to do that.
If you get caught up in it, that's because you had a relationship with Paige, and Alina knows that. So do the police."
"Fine. Whatever. I never could change your mind."
As he pushed back his chair to stand up, I said, "Liam, wait."
"Why?" he demanded.
"I don't know how we fell apart so fast, but I don't think I handled our breakup very well."
"You handled it the way you always did when something didn't go your way. You lashed out and then you ran, leaving damage in your wake. You know what my friends used to call you? Hurricane Tessa, beautiful but in the end, deadly."
His words stabbed me like a knife to the heart. "Is that really what you thought about me?"
"Can you say I'm wrong?" He threw the challenge down. When I didn't reply, he said, "I have to get back to work." And this time, I didn't try to stop him.
It took me a minute to pull myself together and then I left the bar, feeling ridiculously shaken and also hurt. But as I stood outside, I also started to feel angry.
Our breakup had not been one-sided. To have everything dumped on me didn't feel fair.
Needing to walk, I headed down the sidewalk in the direction of the hotel, my turbulent thoughts driving my fast pace.
I hadn't expected Liam to be friendly, but I also hadn't thought he'd be so hostile.
Nine years had passed since we'd broken up, but his anger with me felt as strong as if we'd seen each other yesterday. I didn't get it.
Then I started to wonder if his anger hadn't been about hurting me but about getting me to leave, to drop the investigation. Had he been lying about Paige's texts? About their relationship? Was he afraid that my talking about the case might reveal something he wanted to keep buried?
Or was I trying to create a mystery so that I wouldn't have to face the fact that I'd had a shitty breakup and my ex-boyfriend still hated me for it?
I was so lost in thought that it wasn't until I heard someone yell that I woke up and realized I was in the middle of the street and a car was speeding straight toward me.