“Are you saying that the vet isn’t guilty?” Her eyes widened with alarm, dismay, or even pretense—hard to read in the dimly lit room.
“The setup calls for further exploration,” I said primly. “Chad Vishneski was asleep in his mother’s apartment with the murder weapon—the alleged murder weapon—on the pillow next to his head when the cops picked him up. Who phoned them? Why was the gun there? If it was, in fact, his gun, why didn’t he stow it with his other weapons? How did he know Nadia? That’s a raftful of unanswered questions. Come to think of it, Olympia, that wasn’t you or Rodney here who phoned the cops, was it?”
She sucked in a sharp, harsh breath and looked involuntarily at Rodney. In another moment, she’d taken off. She stopped at the bar to check on her staff, paused at Rodney’s table with a glance at me, and then worked her way through the crowd, stopping to banter with regulars or to check on people’s orders, just the good host, making sure her guests were happy.
I sipped my whisky and pretended not to be watching her. In a moment, she slipped across the small stage and disappeared behind the curtain that led to the changing rooms. I waited thirty seconds, then snaked my own way through the crowd to the back of the stage.
Olympia was standing in the dressing-room doorway, hands on hips, talking through the half-open door. My hiking boots made it hard to tiptoe, but I moved as close as I could.
“Your contract requires that the audience be able to put their art on your body.” That was Olympia. “If people walk away disappointed, they won’t come back. And we’ll both suffer.”
“I’m not the person who got into debt, and I don’t care about your suffering any more than you care about mine. For once, you and your precious investor will have to appreciate real art instead of kindergarten doodles. I spent four days on these stencils. It took Rivka six hours to paint me. I’m not wiping all this off so you can titillate people with death. Or save your club.”
“Damn you, Karen, you know damned well you have to do something. And not just to save—” Olympia spun around to bare her teeth at me. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
In my effort to eavesdrop, I’d kicked a screw so that it banged against the dressing-room wall. “I wanted to make sure Karen was all right.”
“She’s not. Or she won’t be if she doesn’t remember that we’re here to please our public, not ourselves,” Olympia said. “Get back to the theater, Detective, or I’ll have Mark throw you out.”
She went into the dressing room and shut the door before I could follow her. I heard a bolt snap into place. I put my ear shamelessly against the door but could only make out the angry rise and fall of Olympia’s voice.
The door to a smaller neighboring room opened, and I saw two slim young men peer into the hall. I realized with a jolt that these were the dancers who gyrated in burkas during Karen’s performance.
“Is Olympia murdering Karen?” one of them asked.
“Or Karen killing Olympia?” Both laughed.
“I’m V. I. Warshawski,” I said. “I’m a detective, and I’m investigating Nadia Guaman’s murder. What did you see the night that Nadia Guaman was killed?”
“Nothing,” the first one said. “Kevin and I were long gone.”
“We don’t do makeup for this gig. As soon as the Artist finishes, back we come, dump the rags, hit the road.”
“Did you leave through the back door here? Did you notice anyone in the alley?”
“We steer clear of the alley. Drunks, smokers, druggies, not our scene. Time to stretch, Lee.”
The two disappeared, shutting the door firmly in my face. I hate it when people do that. I made a ferocious face—that would teach them a lesson—and went onto the stage. The crowd noise dipped for a moment as people thought I might be the start of the act, but when they saw I was just inspecting the equipment the babble rose again.
I touched the mike and didn’t get electrocuted. I inspected the webcam and wasn’t sprayed with noxious gases when I pressed the ON button. I turned it off and moved to my position at the back of the room.
Petra zipped by with a trayful of drinks. She shot me an anxious look.
“I haven’t killed Olympia,” I assured her. “Yet.”
A moment later, Olympia herself appeared onstage carrying a tray of paint cans and brushes. The crowd noise grew more intense again. Catcalls began rising, demands for the Artist to get onstage at once.