“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.

“Which matters more to you? Saving your husband or saving your pride?” I’d asked; after a pregnant pause she muttered she guessed they’d take a look at my lawyer, but if they didn’t trust him right off they wouldn’t keep him.

Freeman quickly took in my sketch of the situation. “Right, Vic. I have an assistant who can go down to the Twenty-first District for the time being. You have an alternative theory of the murder?”

“Fepple’s last known appointment was on Friday night with a woman from Ajax Insurance. Connie Ingram.” I didn’t like tossing her to the wolves, but I wasn’t going to have the state’s attorney railroad my client, either. I told Freeman about the situation with the Sommers policy documents. “Someone in the company doesn’t want those papers around, but my client couldn’t possibly be the one who stole the microfiche out of the Ajax claims-department file cabinets. Of course, the company may say I did it for him-but we can cross that bridge if the road goes that far.”

“And did you, Vic?” Freeman was at his dryest.

“Scout’s honor, no, Freeman. I’m as hot to see those documents as every other person in this benighted town, but so far I’ve only looked at one sanitized version. I’ll keep sniffing around for evidence about the murder, in case the worst happens and we have to go to trial.”

Barbara, the waitress who’s worked at the Belmont Diner longest, brought my omelette as Freeman hung up. “You know, you look like every other Yuppie in Lakeview with that thing stuck to your ear, Vic.”

“Thanks, Barbara. I try to fit into my surroundings.”

“Well, don’t make a habit of it: we’re thinking of banning them altogether. I’m sick of people shouting their business to an empty table.”

“What can I say, Barbara? When you’re right, you’re right. You want to put my food under the heat lamp while I go outside for my next call?”

She snorted and moved to the next table: the place was filling with people on their morning coffee breaks-the mechanics and repairmen who keep the area Yuppies comfortable. I ate half the omelette quickly, taking the edge off my hunger, before phoning Amy Blount. A strange woman answered, checking my identity before passing me on to Ms. Blount.

Like Margaret Sommers, Amy Blount was angry, but she was more restrained about it: she wished I had gotten back to her sooner-she was under considerable stress and hated hanging about for my phone call. How soon could I get down to Hyde Park?

“I don’t know. What’s the problem?”

“Oh. I’ve told the story so many times I forgot you don’t know it. I had a break-in at my apartment.”

She had come home at ten last night from a lecture in Evanston to find her papers strewn about, her computer damaged, and her floppy disks missing. When she called the cops, they didn’t take it seriously.

“But those are my dissertation notes. They’re irreplaceable. I have the dissertation written up and bound, but the notes, I would use those for another book. The police don’t understand, they say it’s impossible to track down all the burglaries in the city, and since no valuables are missing-well, I don’t have valuables, just my computer.”

“How did the intruders get in?”

“Through the back door. Even though I have a gate across it, they broke through it without any of the neighbors paying the least attention. Hyde Park is supposed to be such a liberal neighborhood, but everyone scuttles away at the first sign that anyone around them is in trouble,” she added bitterly.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“At a friend’s. I couldn’t stay in the middle of all that mess, and I didn’t want to clean it up until someone saw it who would pay attention to the problem.”

I took her friend’s address and told her either I or Mary Louise would be there within the next two hours. She tried to argue me into coming sooner, but I explained that emergency detectives were like emergency plumbers: we had to fit the job in around all the other broken boilers.

I finished the omelette but skipped the steak fries-my usual weakness, but if I ate one I’d eat them all, and then I’d be too logy to think very fast. And the day was looking like one that would require Einstein-like thought. I didn’t wait for my bill but put fifteen dollars on the table and trotted back up Racine to my car.

I had a couple of errands to run in the financial district before going in to my office. As I drove downtown, I called Mary Louise to make sure she was able to work some more hours this afternoon so that she could go see Amy Blount’s apartment. She was pretty terse with me, but I told her she’d see me soon enough to off-load her complaints in person.

Since I was down by the City-County building anyway, I went inside to find Alderman Durham’s office. Naturally he had one on the South Side, in his own ward, but aldercreatures mostly hang out in the Loop, where the money and power are.