“What—you didn’t tell them about him being in the office on Saturday?”
I felt a chill in my stomach. “He was? He went to Fepple’s office? Why did he do that? When did he go there?”
We went back and forth a few times, but she finally seemed to accept that I hadn’t known about it. Margaret Sommers had pushed Isaiah into going to see Fepple in person. That was what it boiled down to, although she tried to dress it up as my fault: they couldn’t trust me, I wasn’t doing anything but cozying up to the insurance company. She’d talked to the alderman—seeing Fepple was actually his suggestion. So when Isaiah wouldn’t set up an appointment, she did it herself from the office on Friday afternoon.
“The alderman?” I asked. “Which alderman would this be?”
“Alderman Durham, of course. On account of Isaiah’s cousin being part of the EYE movement and all, he’s always been very helpful to us. Only Fepple said we couldn’t come on Friday because he was completely booked. He tried to put us off, but I pointed out we worked all week, we couldn’t meet some university professor’s schedule, hopping in and out of our jobs. So he acted like I was trying to make him give me a million dollars, but he said if I was going to make such a big deal out of it, calling the alderman, like I threatened to do, we could see him on Saturday morning. So we drove up there together: I’m tired of Isaiah letting people push him around like he does. There wasn’t any answer when we knocked, and I was furious, thinking he’d made the appointment without any intention of keeping it. But when we opened the door we saw him laying there dead. Not right away, mind you, because the office was dark. But pretty soon.”
“Just a minute,” I said. “When you called, you accused me of siccing the cops on your husband. What made you say that?”
She didn’t think she was going to tell me, but then she blurted out that the cops had gotten a call. “They said it was from a man, a black man, but I figured that was just their talk, their way of trying to get under my skin. No brother I know of would accuse my husband of murder.”
Maybe the detectives had been trying to ride her and Isaiah, but maybe it was a brother who’d phoned in the tip. I let it pass: in her current distress, Margaret Sommers needed to blame someone. It might as well be me.
I went back to their visit to Fepple’s office on Saturday. “When you were in there, did you look for Mr. Sommers’s uncle’s file? Did you take any papers away with you?”
“No! Once we got into the office and saw him lying there? With his—oh, I can’t stand even to say it. We left as fast as we could.”
But they’d touched enough. My client must have left his fingerprints somewhere in the room. And thanks to me, the police had stopped looking at Fepple’s death as a suicide. So Margaret Sommers wasn’t completely wrong: I had ensured her husband’s arrest.
XXXIII
Turmoil
I drummed a series of jangly chords on the piano after Margaret hung up. Lotty often criticizes me for what she calls my ruthless search for truth, knocking over people in my path without thinking about their wants and needs. If I’d known being so clever about Fepple’s death would get Isaiah Sommers arrested—but it was useless to beat myself up for pushing the cops to do a proper investigation. It had happened; now I had to deal with the aftermath.
Anyway, what if Isaiah Sommers really had shot Fepple? He’d told me on Monday he had an unlicensed Browning, but that didn’t preclude his also having an unlicensed SIG—although they’re pricey, not the gun of choice for your average homeowner.
I hit two adjacent keys so hard that Peppy backed away from me. Staging Fepple’s death to look like suicide? Too subtle for my client. Maybe his wife had engineered it—she certainly had a temper. I could see her growing furious enough to shoot Fepple or me or any number of people if they stepped in front of her gun.
I shook my head. The shot that killed Fepple hadn’t been fired in rage: someone had gotten close enough to put a gun in Fepple’s mouth. Stunning him first, or having an accomplice who stunned him first. Vishnikov told me the whole job had looked professional. That didn’t fit Margaret Sommers’s angry profile.
I had forgotten breakfast while I was talking to her. It was after ten; I was suddenly very hungry. I walked down the street to the Belmont Diner, the last vestige of the shops and eateries of Lakeview’s old working-class neighborhood. While I waited for a Spanish omelette, I called my lawyer, Freeman Carter. Isaiah Sommers’s most urgent need was for expert counsel, which I had promised Margaret Sommers before we hung up. She had bristled at my offer of help: they had a very good lawyer in their church who could take care of Isaiah.