The scenario made me shudder in disgust. If I was right. Peppy leaned her head across the backseat and nuzzled me, whimpering. My neighbor wrapped a towel around me.
“You get into the passenger seat, doll, I’m driving you home. Tea, honey, milk, you need that and a hot bath right now.”
I didn’t fight him, even though I knew I couldn’t afford to sit around for very long. While he boiled water for tea and fussed around with bread and eggs I went upstairs to shower.
Standing under the hot water, drifting, my mind turned up what Ralph had said yesterday to Connie. Something like, I didn’t think we ever deep-sixed papers in an insurance company. If Fepple had sent her samples of his wares, so to speak, she’d have kept them.
I turned off the water abruptly and dried myself quickly. Say Rossy took care of the claims master file, cleaning out anything in Ulrich’s handwriting. He’d found the microfiche copy—nothing simpler than for him to roam the floors of the building after hours: just checking on local operations. Hunt for the right drawer, abstract the fiche, and destroy it.
But I’d guess Connie had a desk file—the documents she needed to consult every day on a case while she was actively working on it. It probably hadn’t occurred to Rossy—he’d never done a day’s clerical work in his life. And I bet Fepple’s stuff was in it.
I scrambled into my clothes: jeans, running shoes, and the softly cut blazer to conceal my gun. I ran down the stairs to Mr. Contreras’s place, where I took the time to drink the hot, sweet tea he’d made and eat scrambled eggs. I was impatient to be going—but I owed him the courtesy to sit at the table for fifteen minutes.
While I ate I explained what I wanted to do, muting his protest at my taking off again. The clinching argument in his eyes was that the sooner I got going on Rossy and Ajax, the sooner I’d be able to start looking for Lotty.
XLIX
Clerical Work
I ran back up to my apartment to collect my bag—and to call Ralph, so I’d know where he was instead of bouncing around town hunting for him. My phone was ringing when I got upstairs. It stopped before I got my door opened but started again as I rummaged in my briefcase for my Palm Pilot.
“Vic!” It was Don Strzepek. “Don’t you ever check your messages? I’ve left four in the last hour.”
“Don, knock it off. Two people connected with my investigation were murdered last night, which is way bigger in my mind than returning your phone calls.”
“Well, Rhea was lucky she wasn’t murdered last night. A masked gunman broke into her place, looking for those damned books of Ulrich Hoffman’s. So if you can clean the snot off your nose and be responsive, go get them back from Dr. Herschel before someone else is hurt.”
“Broke into her home?” I was horrified. “How do you know they were after Ulrich’s books?”
“The attacker demanded them. Rhea was terrified: the bastard tied her up, held a gun on her, started tossing stuff out of her bookshelves, going through her personal things. She had to say that Lotty had them.”
I felt the air drain from me, as if I’d been kicked in the solar plexus. “Yes, I can see that.”
My voice was as dry as the dust under my dresser, but Don was full of his own alarms and didn’t notice. At four this morning, Rhea woke to find someone standing over her with a gun. The person was completely covered in a ski mask, gloves, a bulky jacket. Rhea couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman, a black person or a white, but the attacker’s size and ferocity made her think it was a man. He pulled a gun on her, forced her downstairs, taped her hands and feet to a dining-room chair.
The intruder had said, “You know what we want. Tell us where you’ve hidden them.” She protested that she didn’t know, so the man had growled out: the books of her patient Paul Hoffman.
Don’s voice shook. “Prick said he’d already searched her office. She says it was the worst part, in a way, that she had to keep asking him to repeat what he was saying—he apparently spoke in a kind of growl that was hard to understand. Something deep in the throat; that’s why she couldn’t even tell the sex of the speaker. Also, well, you know how it is when you’re terrified, especially if you’re not used to physical attacks—your brain doesn’t process stuff normally. And this—people look so horrible in ski masks and everything. It’s paralyzing to see someone in that getup. They don’t look human.”