“Never have to worry about biting on a shot in these.”
“Mr. Bimmel, did Fredrica know anybody from Calumet City or the Chicago area?”
He shrugged and shook his head.
“Had she ever been to Chicago, to your knowledge?”
“What do you mean, ‘to my knowledge?’ You think a girl of mine’s going off to Chicago and I don’t know it? She didn’t go to Columbus I didn’t know it.”
“Did she know any men that sew, tailors or sailmakers?”
“She sewed for everybody. She could sew like her mother. I don’t know of any men. She sewed for stores, for ladies, I don’t know who.”
“Who was her best friend, Mr. Bimmel? Who did she hang out with?” Didn’t mean to say “hang.” Good, it didn’t stick him—he’s just pissed off.
“She didn’t hang out like the good-for-nothings. She always had some work. God didn’t make her pretty, he made her busy.”
“Who would you say was her best friend?”
“Stacy Hubka, I guess, since they were little. Fredrica’s mother used to say Stacy went around with Fredrica just to have somebody to wait on her, I don’t know.”
“Do you know where I could get in touch with her?”
“Stacy worked at the insurance, I guess she still does. The Franklin Insurance.”
Starling walked to her car across the rutted yard, her head down, hands deep in her pockets. Fredrica’s cat watched her from the high window.
CHAPTER 54
FBI credentials get a snappier response the farther west you go. Starling’s ID, which might have raised one bored eyebrow on a Washington functionary, got the undivided attention of Stacy Hubka’s boss at the Franklin Insurance Agency in Belvedere, Ohio. He relieved Stacy Hubka at the counter and the telephones himself, and offered Starling the privacy of his cubicle for the interview.
Stacy Hubka had a round, downy face and stood five-four in heels. She wore her hair in frosted wings and used a Cher Bono move to brush them back from her face. She looked Starling up and down whenever Starling wasn’t facing her.
“Stacy—may I call you Stacy?”
“Sure.”
“I’d like you to tell me, Stacy, how you think this might have happened to Fredrica Bimmel—where this man might have spotted Fredrica.”
“Freaked me out. Get your skin peeled off, is that a bummer? Did you see her? They said she was just like rags, like somebody let the air out of—”
“Stacy, did she ever mention anybody from Chicago or Calumet City?”
Calumet City. The clock above Stacy Hubka’s head worried Starling. If the Hostage Rescue Team makes it in forty minutes, they’re just ten minutes from touchdown. Did they have a hard address? Tend to your business.
“Chicago?” Stacy said. “No, we marched at Chicago one time in the Thanksgiving parade.”
“When?”
“Eighth grade, that would be what?—nine years ago. The band just went there and back on the bus.”
“What did you think last spring when she first disappeared?”
“I just didn’t know.”
“Remember where you were when you first found it out? When you got the news? What did you think then?”
“That first night she was gone, Skip and me went to the show and then we went to Mr. Toad’s for a drink and Pam and them, Pam Malavesi, came in and said Fredrica had disappeared, and Skip goes, Houdini couldn’t make Fredrica disappear. And then he’s got to tell everybody who Houdini was, he’s always showing off how much he knows, and we just sort of blew it off. I thought she was just mad at her dad. Did you see her house? Is that the pits? I mean, wherever she is, I know she’s embarrassed you saw it. Wouldn’t you run away?”