“Fine.” I got to my feet. “How are you holding up?”

“A lot of support here. Good people. My son and Will have been handling the press. My daughter sticks right by me, and my wife…well, Virginia has occasional rough moments, but she’s smart and strong. She took the call that came in today, herself, and let this ‘M’…that’s what he calls himself…have it.”

“Really.”

“Yes. Told the bastard there’d been enough runaround. But afterward…” He swallowed thickly and the blue eyes behind the glasses were glittering. “…she rather…came apart. You see, she had specific questions that M couldn’t, or anyway didn’t, answer. Name of our driver on the latest European trip…what Bobby was building with his monkey blocks in his room. The caller skated over those, just said what a handful Bobby was being. I think for the first time, Virginia…well. You know.”

I did know. She had realized how possible it was that her boy might already be dead.

The little girl stirred. She looked up at me with big eyes, as blue as her father’s, and grabbed his arm, startled, afraid. “Is he one of them, Daddy?”

“No, darling. This is Mr. Heller. He’s on our side.”

CHAPTER TWO

The fifteen-story Hotel President in the Power and Light District—Kansas City’s business and entertainment section—was unquestionably elegant, even if it was best known for a mysterious murder that happened in Room 1046 in 1935. Nobody asked me to solve it then and I wasn’t interested in doing so now.

But Bob Greenlease had always known how to treat the help. The lobby—quiet on a Sunday afternoon but for my echoing footsteps—put any Chicago hotel to shame, what with the golden two-story columns, chandeliers, marble floors, wrought-iron second-floor balcony, green palms and over-stuffed furnishings.

My room on the eighth floor was larger than need be, but who was complaining? The hotel had been around since the late twenties, but a recent remodel had led to modern, spindly furnishings, abstract wall art, and a red coverlet to make up for gray walls and curtains; there was even a small TV by the mirror on the dresser opposite the bed.

I unpacked my bag and retrieved the second suit I’d brought along—a gray twill woolen number from Richard Bennett in the Loop, cut to conceal a holstered accessory. I hung the Botany 500 in the closet and the tailored suit on the hook inside the bathroom door and took a shower, providing steam for the suit to hang out and for me to loosen up. The meeting with Greenlease had left me tight as a drum.

Speaking of which, the hotel’s Drum Room—a big circular restaurant with a snare-shaped red-and-yellow bar at its center—was my destination for an early supper. Sunday was the only night they didn’t offer live music—everybody from Frank Sinatra and Benny Goodman to Glenn Miller and Dean Martin had played here. Right now, at six o’clock, one of a handful of diners, I had to settle for mellow Muzak.