My hint to leave. I tried offering her a tip for her help, but she flung up her hands in disgust. She was sorry about my earring: she would keep looking for it.
As I drove up the street, I passed the children returning from their walk. They were punching at each other from either side of the nanny—happy families, as Tolstoy said.
So the Rossys hadn’t been home on Friday night. That didn’t mean they’d been in Hyde Park shooting Howard Fepple. Still, I could see Fillida phoning him, saying her name was Connie Ingram, persuading him she was hot for him. I could see her coming in with him and all the Lamaze parents—perhaps her husband melting into the group as well—twining herself around Fepple in his chair. Bertrand slips into the office, whacks the back of his head, she puts the SIG’s barrel into his mouth. At the spray of blood and bone, she jumps off, places the gun under his chair. She’s cool, but not cool enough to remember to get his hand on the gun so that the morgue will find gunpowder residue on it.
Then she and Bertrand search the office, find the Sommers file, and take off. Yesterday, Fillida went to Hoffman’s house. How had she found the address when I hadn’t been able to? Oh, of course, through Ulrich. They knew his name: they were looking for him, looking for those records of Edelweiss–Nesthorn sales. It must have made Rossy’s eyes jump out of their sockets when Connie Ingram brought the Sommers file up to Ralph’s office last week. The agent he was looking for, Ulrich Hoffman, right under his nose in Chicago. Maybe it took them a while to figure it out, but eventually they realized if he was dead they could still get his address a bunch of different ways. Old phone books, for instance.
I could see all of this happening. But how could I prove any of it? If I had world enough and time, I could probably find they’d gone to Ameritech for old phone books. The cops hadn’t been able to trace the SIG that killed Fepple. Perhaps Fillida’s friend in the Italian consulate had brought it in with her under diplomatic cover. “Laura, darling, I want to bring my guns with me. The Americans are so bizarre about guns—they all carry them the way we do pocketbooks, but they will make my life a misery of forms if I try to carry my own through customs with me.”
As I cruised down Lake Shore Drive for my meeting with Durham, I thought uneasily about Paul Hoffman in his hospital bed. Where had Fillida Rossy been going on a Friday afternoon with her gym bag? Did she work out this late in the day, or did the bag hold a gun for finishing the job on Paul?
At the lights on Chicago Avenue, I called the hospital: there was a block on his room, so they wouldn’t connect me. That was good. Could they give me a status report? His condition had been upgraded to serious.
When I’d found a meter a few blocks south of the Glow, I called Tim Streeter up at Max’s. Max hadn’t come home from work yet—Posner had been back at the hospital today. The demonstrations had been more subdued, but the board was meeting late to discuss the problem.
Tim was bored; they really didn’t need him any longer. If I could get Calia Ninshubur’s collar they would all be happy.
“Oh, that wretched collar.” I told Tim if I couldn’t get up to Evanston tonight, Calia would have to accept receiving it in the mail when she returned home. More important was my dilemma about Paul’s safety, which I explained to him.
Tim said he’d talk to his brother to see if one of the women on their team would look after Paul for a few days. He himself needed a break from bodyguarding: four days of Calia had turned him prematurely white.
When we finished, I leaned my head wearily against the steering wheel. Too much was going on that I didn’t understand and couldn’t control. Where had Lotty gone? She’d stalked angrily off into the night last night, driven home—and disappeared. I dialed her apartment, where her clipped voice came on again from the machine. “Lotty, please call me if you are picking up your messages. I’m seriously worried.” I called back up to Evanston, intending to leave a message for Max, but he’d just walked in the door.
“Victoria, have you had any word from Lotty? No? Mrs. Coltrain called, wanting to know if you had been able to get into her apartment.”
“Oh, nuts—calling Mrs. Coltrain back went out of my head—I’m spinning in too many directions right now.” I told Max about my tour through the apartment this morning and asked if he could tell Mrs. Coltrain about it himself.