“She was part of the situation that got Nadia Guaman murdered, and I’m having a hard time getting any real information, either about Nadia or the people she was involved with. So I’m digging. And for all the public exposure of herself, the Body Artist is surprisingly modest about her past. Which makes me wonder whether she had a past under a different name.”
The Artist was listening to me, her lips curled in a sardonic smile. I’d been hoping to provoke a response, but whatever else she was, whoever else she was, she had schooled herself to reveal nothing.
“So what if she did?” Vesta persisted. “People change their names for a hundred different reasons, and none of them are any of your business. Especially since the police arrested the guy who shot her.”
“His parents don’t believe their son was the killer,” I said. “I agreed to investigate even though I didn’t see much reason to question the arrest, but Karen has made me realize that I was wrong. Chad Vishneski may well have been framed.”
“She didn’t say any such thing,” Rivka cried. “She’s made you look pretty stupid all night.”
“She brought Vesta along,” I explained. “Even after someone wired glass to her paintbrush, the Artist didn’t think she needed a black belt on hand. But now murder has happened for real, and she’s scared.”
“It’s a natural reaction to murder,” Rivka protested. “I’m scared, too. It’s me who told her to bring Vesta.”
“Nice try, Rivulet,” the Body Artist said, “but it was my idea to add Vesta to the entourage.”
Vesta frowned. “Your entourage? Don’t put yourself on so high a pedestal you break your neck falling off, Buckley.”
I left, but Vesta followed me into the hall to ask if I thought Karen’s life was in actual danger.
I shook my head. “Right now, I’m so bewildered I don’t know which way to look let alone what I think. This is the first I heard of a connection between Nadia and the Artist, at least a connection through Nadia’s dead sister. Now I’m having to reorganize my ideas. Maybe Nadia was looking for everyone her sister slept with. Maybe she tracked down some prominent woman who didn’t want her sexuality coming to light. Maybe this unknown mystery woman murdered Allie, and then Nadia and all the fuss with Rodney and Chad and the Body Artist belongs to a completely different story, not the story of Nadia’s death.”
Vesta’s face showed warmth, trouble, intelligent concern. “Karen lives a life of great secrecy. Even though she has to be the center of attention, she almost never says anything personal about her past. The most I’ve ever heard her say was that she ran away from home when she was a teenager, but I don’t even know where her home was. When Chad Vishneski first started acting up, I thought maybe he was part of her childhood, coming after Karen, but she says she never saw him before.”
“And you believe her?”
Vesta’s wide mouth twisted. “I don’t know if I believe her when she says there’s ice on the lake, but she’s a lonely scared girl under all that paint. I know she’s maddening—at least, she maddens me—but I still don’t want to see her get hurt.”
“What about her relations with Alexandra Guaman? Do you think she genuinely forgot Alexandra’s name?”
Vesta smiled sadly. “Buckley’s universe pretty much begins and ends with her own self. The affair was brief. It ended with Buckley being angry with Guaman for not being willing to come out of the closet. And it all happened a long time ago. In another place.”
I smacked the wall in frustration. “Who else can I talk to? Who can tell me how Nadia Guaman found the Artist? Or what the two of them talked about or who else Alexandra might have slept with?”
“Perhaps she’s confided in Rivka, but I wouldn’t think so. She guards herself very carefully.” Vesta turned back to the dressing room but paused, her hand on the doorknob. “If someone is really trying to hurt Karen, what should we do?”
“Get a real bodyguard,” I said. “And, even so, she’s putting herself out in public. She’d be just about impossible to protect.”
Vesta’s worried gaze followed me back up the corridor. As I made my way through the crowd to the main exit, I saw Olympia had joined Rainier Cowles and his friends. She had her head flung back, laughing at something they were saying, putting all her considerable energy into wooing the group. If she was in financial trouble, as the scrap of conversation I’d overheard before the show indicated, maybe she thought this quartet of wealth could rescue her from Rodney.
I wondered again about Rodney’s codes. Billable hours, one of Cowles’s friends had suggested, but the numbers were too long for a single dollar transaction. Back before the lottery put the numbers racket out of business, I would have thought they had something to do with running numbers. Maybe it was something else just as simple. Although nothing around Olympia and Karen Buckley was simple.
15
Clueless in Chicago