“If this horrid little man is going to be stalking us, I might see if we can get on an earlier flight. Although the gallery I went to last week wants me to come in on Thursday to meet with their backers; I’d hate to lose that opportunity.”
I rubbed my face with my free hand. “There’s a service I use when I need help bodyguarding or staking out places. Do you want me to see if they have someone who can stay in the house until you go home?”
Her relief rushed across the airwaves to me. “I’ll have to talk to Max—but, yes. Yes, do that, Vic.”
My shoulders sagged when she hung up. If Radbuka was turning into a stalker, he could become a real problem. I called the Streeter Brothers’ voice mail to explain what I needed. They’re a funny bunch of guys, the Streeter Brothers: they do surveillance, bodyguarding, and furniture moving, with Tom and Tim Streeter running a changing group of nine, including, these days, two well-muscled women.
By the time I finished my message, we had passed into the exurbs. The road widened, the sky brightened. When I left the tollway, it was suddenly a beautiful fall day again.
XXII
Grieving Mother
Howard Fepple had lived with his mother a few blocks west of Harlem Avenue. These weren’t the suburbs of great wealth but of the working middle class, where ranch houses and colonials sit on modest plots and neighborhood children play in each other’s yards.
When I pulled up in front of the Fepple home, only one car, a late-model navy Oldsmobile, sat in the drive. Neither news crews nor neighbors were paying their respects to Rhonda Fepple. The dogs strained to follow me from the car. When I locked them in, they barked their disapproval.
A flagstone path, whose stones were cracked and overgrown with weeds, curved away from the driveway to a side entrance. When I rang the bell, I saw that the paint on the front door had peeled loose in a number of places.
After a long wait, Rhonda Fepple came to the door. Her face, with the same carpet of freckles as her son’s, held the blank, stunned look most people wear after a harsh blow. She was younger than I’d expected. Despite the grief that was collapsing her inside her clothes, she had only a few lines around her red-stained eyes, and her sandy hair was still thick.
“Mrs. Fepple? I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m a detective from Chicago with a few questions about your son.”
She accepted my identity without even wanting a name, let alone some identification. “Did you find out who shot him?”
“No, ma’am. I understand you told the officers on the morning shift that Mr. Fepple didn’t own a gun.”
“I wanted him to, if he was going to stay in that creepy old building, but he just laughed and said there wasn’t anything in the agency anyone would want to steal. I always hated that bank, those halls with all the little turnings off them, anyone could lie in wait for you there.”
“The agency wasn’t doing very well these days, I understand. Was it more prosperous when your husband was alive?”
“You’re not trying to say what they told me this morning, are you? That Howie was so depressed he took his own life? Because he wasn’t that kind of boy. Young man. You forget they grow up.” She patted the corners of her eyes with a tissue.
It was comforting somehow to know that even a dreary specimen like Howard Fepple had someone who mourned his death. “Ma’am, I know this is a really hard time for you to try to talk about your son, with the loss so fresh, but I want to explore a third possibility—besides suicide or a random break-in. I’m wondering if there was anyone who might have specifically had a quarrel with your son. Had he talked to you about any conflicts with clients lately?”
She stared at me blankly: thinking new thoughts was hard in her grief-drained state. She stuffed the tissue back into the pocket of the old yellow shirt she was wearing. “I suppose you better come in.”
I followed her into the living room, where she sat on the edge of a sofa whose cabbage roses had faded to a dull pink. When I took a matching armchair at right angles to her, dust bunnies bounced along the walls. The new piece in the room, a tan Naugahyde recliner parked in front of the thirty-four-inch television, had probably belonged to Howard.
“How long had your son been working at the agency, Mrs. Fepple?”