Miss Skeffing, the headmistress at the Camden High School for Girls, was on the board at the Royal Free Hospital. She had encouraged me to do the science course that would prepare me for medical-school entrance. I didn’t want to leave her, or the chance to read medicine. Although I saw very little of Claire these days, since she was starting her junior houseman rotation, I didn’t want to leave her, either. After all, it was Claire’s example that made me stand up to Cousin Minna and insist on applying to the Camden school. Minna was furious-she wanted me to leave school at fourteen to help make money in the glove factory. But I reminded her that since she wouldn’t recommend my father for a job in 1939, she had a nerve expecting me to quit school to take one now.
She and Victor also tried to put a stop to my going to meet friends for Miss Herbst’s music evenings. During the war years, those evenings were a lifesaver. Even for someone like me, with no musical ability, there was always something to do-we staged operas, held impromptu glees. Even during the Blitz, when you found your way around London by guess, I would slam out of Minna’s house and move through the black streets to Miss Herbst’s flat.
Sometimes I’d go by bus: that was an adventure, because the buses had to obey the blackout, so you wouldn’t know one was coming until it was almost on top of you, and then you’d have to guess where to get off. Once on the way home, I guessed wrong and landed miles away from Minna’s. A street warden found me and let me spend the night in their shelter. It was great fun, drinking watery cocoa with the wardens while they talked over football scores, but my little adventure left Minna more sour than ever.
Much as we were worried about our families, none of us-not just me or Hugo, but no one in that group at Miss Herbst’s-wanted to resume life in German. We saw it as the language of humiliation. Germany or Austria or Czechoslovakia were the places where we’d seen our beloved grandparents forced to scrub the paving stones on their hands and knees while crowds stood around jeering and throwing things at them. We even changed the spelling of our names: I turned Lotte into Lotty; Carl used a C instead of the K he’d been born with.
On V-E night, after the king’s speech, I put Hugo on the tube back to Golders Green, where the Nussbaums lived, and met up with Max and some of the others in Covent Garden to wait for Carl, who’d gotten a job with the Sadlers Wells orchestra, which was playing that night. Thousands of people were in Covent Garden, the one place in London you could get a drink in the middle of the night.
Someone was passing bottles of champagne through the crowd. Max and the rest of our group put our personal worries to one side and became riotous with the other revelers. No more bombs, no more blackouts, no more minuscule bits of butter once a week-although of course that was ignorant optimism; rationing went on for years.
Carl eventually found us sitting on an overturned barrow in St. Martin ’s Lane. The owner, who sold fruit, was a little drunk. He was carving apples carefully into slices and feeding them to me and another girl in our group, who later became utterly suburban, bred corgis, and voted Conservative. At the time she was the most sophisticated of our set, wearing lipstick, dating American servicemen, and getting nylons for her pains, while I darned my cotton stockings, feeling like a dowdy schoolgirl next to her.
Carl bowed grandly to the barrow owner and took a slice of apple out of the man’s hand. “I will feed Miss Herschel,” he said, and held the piece of apple out to me. I suddenly became aware of his fingers, as if they were actually touching my body. I put my hand around his wrist to guide the apple to my mouth.
XIX Case Closed
The dreams woke me in the grey light of predawn. Nightmares of Lotty lost, my mother dying, faceless figures chasing me through tunnels, while Paul Radbuka watched, alternating between weeping and manic laughter. I lay sweating, my heart pounding. Next to me, Morrell slept, his breath coming out in soft little snorts, like a horse clearing its nose. I moved into the shelter of his arms. He clung to me in sleep for a few minutes, then rolled over without waking.
By and by my heart rate returned to normal, but despite yesterday’s fatigues I couldn’t get back to sleep. All of last night’s tormented confessions churned in my head like clothes pounding in a washing machine. Paul Radbuka’s emotions were so slippery, so intense, that I couldn’t figure out how to respond to him; Lotty and Carl’s history was just as overwhelming.
It didn’t surprise me to hear that Max wanted to marry Lotty, although neither of them had ever mentioned it around me. I seized on the small problem instead of the large, wondering if Lotty was so used to her solitary life that she preferred to be on her own. Morrell and I had talked about living together, but even though we’d both been married in our younger days, we couldn’t quite agree on giving up our privacy. For Lotty, who’d always lived on her own, it would be an even harder move.
It was clear that Lotty was hiding something about the Radbuka family, but I had no way of knowing what. It wasn’t her mother’s family-she’d been startled by that suggestion, almost affronted. Perhaps some poor immigrant family whose fate had mattered terribly to her? People have unexpected sources of shame and guilt, but I couldn’t imagine something that would shock me so much it would make me turn against her… something she wouldn’t even tell Max.
What if Sofie Radbuka had been a patient whose care she had bungled during her medical training? Sofie Radbuka had died, or was in a vegetative coma; Lotty blamed herself and pretended to have tuberculosis so she could go to the country to recuperate. She’d taken Radbuka’s name in some kind of guilt storm that had her overidentifying with the patient. Aside from the fact that it contradicted everything I knew about Lotty, it still wouldn’t turn me from her.
The notion that she’d pretended to have TB so she could go to the country and carry on an affair with a Sofie Radbuka-or anyone-was ludicrous. She could have had an affair in London without jeopardizing a training program that women in the forties entered only with great difficulty.
It unnerved me to see Lotty teetering on the edge of collapse. I tried to recite Morrell’s good advice: that I should not sleuth after her; that if she didn’t want to tell me her secrets, it was her demons, not my failure, that made her keep them to herself.
I should stick to my business, anyway, to exploring the kind of financial shenanigan that Isaiah Sommers had hired me to untangle. Not that I’d done much about that situation, either, other than get him to stir up Bull Durham to denounce me in public.
It was only five-forty. I could do one little thing for Isaiah Sommers. Which Morrell would holler about if he knew. I sat up. Morrell sighed but didn’t move. Pulling on the jeans and sweatshirt out of my overnight bag, I tiptoed out of the room with my running shoes. Morrell had absconded with my cell phone and picklocks. I went back to the room for his backpack, which I took to his study with me-I didn’t want the clanking of keys to wake him. I left a note on his laptop: Gone to the city for an early appointment. See you tonight for supper? Love, V.
Morrell’s place was only six blocks from the Davis L stop. I walked across, in company with other early commuters, joggers, people out with their dogs. Amazing how many people were on the streets, and how many looked fresh and fit. The sight of my own red-stained eyes in the bathroom mirror had made me flinch-the Madwoman of Chaillot let loose upon the town.
The express trains for the morning rush were running; in twenty minutes I was at my own stop, Belmont, a few blocks from my apartment. My car was out front, but I needed to shower and change so that I looked less like the ghost of my own nightmares. I crept in quietly, hoping the dogs wouldn’t recognize my step. Trouser suit, crepe-soled shoes. Peppy gave a sharp bark as I tiptoed back outside, but I didn’t slow down.
I stopped at a coffee bar on my way to Lake Shore Drive for a large orange juice and an even larger cappuccino. It was almost seven now; the morning commute had begun in earnest, but I still made it to Hyde Park before seven-thirty.
I gave a perfunctory nod to the guard at the entrance to the Hy
de Park Bank building. It wasn’t the same man Fepple had warned against me on Friday. This man gave me a cursory glance over his newspaper but didn’t challenge me: I was professionally dressed, I knew where I was going. To the sixth floor, where I pulled on latex gloves to start work on Fepple’s locks. I was so tense, listening for the elevator, that it took me a moment to realize the locks were already open.
I slipped into the office, snarling as I tripped once more on the torn corner of linoleum. Fepple was behind his desk. In the pale light coming through the window, I thought he’d fallen asleep in his chair. I hesitated at the door, then decided to put a bold face on it, wake him, force him to hand over the Sommers file. I switched on the overhead light. And saw that Fepple would never speak to anyone again. His mouth was missing. The side of his head, the carpet of freckled skin, nothing left of them but a smear of bone and brain and blood.
I sat abruptly on the floor. Head between my knees. Even with my nose muffled I thought I could smell blood. My gorge rose. I willed my mind to other matters: I couldn’t add my vomit to the crime scene.
I don’t know how long I sat like that, until voices in the hall made me realize how precarious my position was: in an office with a dead man, with picklocks in my pocket and latex gloves on my hands. I stood up, so fast that my head swam again, but I shook off the faintness and turned the dead bolt to lock myself in.
Trying to make it a clinical exercise, I edged around the desk to look at Fepple. A gun had fallen to the floor just below where his right arm dangled. I squinted at it: a twenty-two SIG Trailside. So he had shot himself? Because whatever he’d seen in the Sommers file had unbalanced his mind? His computer was still on, in a suspend state. Suppressing my nausea, I gingerly stretched an arm past his left side, using a picklock to bring up the screen so that I wouldn’t disturb any evidence. A block of text came back to life.
When my father died this was a flourishing agency but I am a failure as an agent. I have watched my sales and profits go in a downward spiral for five years. I thought I could cheat my way out of debt but now that the detective is watching me I’m afraid I would be a failure even at that. I’ve never married, I’ve never known how to attract women, I can’t face myself any longer. I don’t know how to pay my bills. If anyone cares, perhaps my mother, I’m sorry. Howard
I printed it out and stuffed the paper in my pocket. My hands inside their latex gloves were wet. Black spots swam around my eyes. I was very aware of Fepple’s shattered head next to me, but I couldn’t look at it. I wanted to leave the obscene mess, but I might not get another chance to find the Sommers file.
The cabinets were open, which surprised me: when I was here last week, Fepple had made quite a point of unlocking them when he wanted to put the papers away, then promptly locking them again. The third drawer, the one where he’d stuck the Sommers file, was labeled Rick Hoffman’s clients.
The files were jammed into the drawer, some upside down, none in any kind of order. When I pulled out the first file, Barney Williams, I thought I was at the end of the alphabet, but it was followed by Larry Jenks. With an uneasy eye on the clock, I emptied the drawer and replaced the folders one at a time. The Sommers file wasn’t there.
I flipped through the folders looking for anything that related to Sommers. There wasn’t anything in them but copies of policies and payment schedules. About three-quarters of them were closed cases, where the policy was stamped Paid with the date or Lapsed for nonpayment with the date. I looked in the other drawers but found nothing. I took a half dozen of the paid policies: I could get Mary Louise to check on whether they’d been paid to the beneficiary.
I listened uneasily to voices coming from the hall, but I couldn’t leave until I’d looked for the Sommers papers in the mess on the desk. The papers were flecked with bits of blood and brain. I didn’t want to disturb them-an experienced tech could tell in a flash that someone had been searching-but I wanted that file.
Bracing myself, keeping my eyes shielded, willing myself to believe there was nothing in the chair, I leaned over the desk, pulling back the edges of the documents in front of Fepple. I worked my way outward from the middle in a circle. When I found nothing, I moved around to Fepple’s side of the desk, trying not to step in anything, and looked in the desk drawers. Nothing but signs of his dismal life. Half-eaten bags of chips, an unopened box of condoms covered in cracker crumbs, diaries dating back to the 1980’s when his father was booking appointments, books on how to improve your table-tennis game. Who would have thought he had enough stick-to-it-iveness to pursue a sport?
It was nine now. The longer I stayed, the more likely it was that someone would come in on me. I went to the door, standing to the left of the frame so I couldn’t be seen through the glass, listening for sounds from the hall. A group of women was passing, laughing about something, wishing each other a good morning: how was the weekend, heavy workload this morning in Dr. Zabar’s office, how was Melissa’s birthday party. Silence, then the elevator bell and a pair of women with an infant. When they had gone, I slid the door open a crack. The hall was empty.
As I went out, I saw Fepple’s briefcase in the corner behind me. On an impulse, I picked it up. While I waited for the elevator, I stuffed the latex gloves into the case along with the files I was borrowing.
I hoped I didn’t have anything on me to link me to the crime scene, but when I got off the elevator at the bottom, I saw my shoe had left a nasty brownish smear on the car floor. I somehow managed to walk out the door with my head up, but as soon as I was out of the guard’s sight lines I skittered around the corner, barely making it to the alley before throwing up my orange juice and coffee.
XX Hunter in the Middle
Back home, I scrubbed my shoes obsessively, but all the perfumes of Dow Chemical wouldn’t wipe them clean. I couldn’t afford to throw them out, but I didn’t think I could bear to wear them again, either.
I took off the suit, inspecting every inch under a strong light. There didn’t seem to be anything of Fepple on the fabric, but I bundled it up for the dry cleaner anyway.
I had stopped at a pay phone on Lake Shore Drive to call in the news of a dead body in the Hyde Park Bank building. By now the police machinery should be in motion. I walked restlessly to the kitchen door and back. I could call one of my old friends on the force for an inside report on the investigation, but then I’d have to reveal that I’d found the body. Which would mean I’d spend the day answering questions. I tried calling Morrell, hoping for comfort, but he’d already left for his meeting at the State Department.
I wondered what Fepple had done with my business card. I hadn’t seen it on his desk, but I wasn’t looking for anything that small. The cops would come after me if they figured out I was the detective mentioned in Fepple’s suicide note. If it was a suicide note.
Of course it was. The gun had fallen from his hand to the floor underneath, after he shot himself. He felt like a failure and couldn’t face himself any longer, so he shot away the lower half of his face. I stopped at the kitchen window to stare at the dogs, which Mr. Contreras had let into the garden. I should take them for a run.
As if catching my gaze, Mitch looked up at me and grinned wolfishly. That nasty little smile of Fepple’s when he’d read the Sommers file, when he said he was going to take over Rick Hoffman’s client list. That was the smile of someone who thought he could capitalize on another person’s weakness, not the smile of a man who hated himself so much he was going to commit suicide.
This morning he’d been in the same suit and tie he’d worn on Friday. Who had he dressed up for? A woman, as he had implied? Someone he tried to romance, but who told him horrible things about himself, so horrible that he came back to the office and committed suicide? Or had he dressed for the person who’d called him when he was talking to me? The person who told him how to ditch me: go to a pay phone, await further instructions. Fepple cut through the little shopping center, where his mystery caller picked him up. Fepple figured he
could cash in on some secret he’d seen in the Sommers file.
He tried to blackmail his mystery caller, who told Fepple they needed to talk privately in his office-where he shot Fepple, staging it to look like suicide. Very Edgar Wallace. In either case, the mystery caller had taken the Sommers file. I moved restlessly back to the living room. More likely Fepple had left the file on his bedside table, along with old copies of Table-Tennis Tips.
I wished I knew what the police were doing, whether they were accepting the suicide, whether they were testing for gunpowder residue on Fepple’s hands. Finally, for want of something better to do, I went down to the yard to collect the dogs. Mr. Contreras had his back door open; when I went up the half flight of stairs to tell him I was going to take the dogs with me for a run and then to my office, I could hear the radio.
Our top local story: the body of insurance agent Howard Fepple was found in his Hyde Park office this morning following an anonymous tip to police. The forty-three-year-old Fepple apparently killed himself because the Midway Insurance Agency, started by his grandfather in 1911, was on the brink of bankruptcy. His mother, Rhonda, with whom he lived, was stunned by the news. “Howie didn’t even own a gun. How can the police go around saying he shot himself with a gun he didn’t have? Hyde Park is real dangerous. I kept telling him to move the agency out here to Palos, where people actually want to buy insurance; I think someone broke in and murdered him and dressed it up to look like he killed himself.”
Area Four police say they will not rule out the possibility of murder, but until the autopsy report is complete they are treating Fepple’s death as a suicide. This is Mark Santoros, Global News, Chicago.
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