“Because she is. You knew she was when you called last night, and she never did come home-”
“Does she live with you?”
Rivka paused. “She’s been staying with me. While her life is in danger. And-”
I ushered her and Petra down the hall to my office. I sat Rivka on a couch in the client alcove and turned to my cousin. “Petra, this is a potential client. She also is a potential suspect in a murder inquiry. So we ask questions and take notes, but we won’t volunteer information. Although we will tell her what we know about last night.”
Rivka gasped as if I’d stuck her headfirst in the icy lake. “What do you mean, I’m a suspect? I came here for help. You have to find Karen. They could have killed her-”
“Who are ‘they,’ Rivka?”
“The people who attacked her last night.” Rivka was shrieking with fury at my refusal to join her in hysteria. “I called over to the club this morning, looking for Karen. Olympia was there. She told me you set the place on fire, and-”
I turned to my cousin. “Petra, your first assignment is to phone Olympia and tell her that we are making a note of every time she says I set her club on fire and that these statements will form the basis of a lawsuit for defamation.”
Petra’s jaw dropped. “Are you serious?”
“Yep. Don’t argue with her, just tell her you’re calling to give her information. I’m sure she’s scared. But being scared should make you smarter, not stupider. Call from the landline on my desk. The law requires you to tell her you’re recording the conversation; you’ll see a RECORD button on the phone. Olympia will try to get under your skin. Don’t let her.”
Petra moved toward my desk but slowly, nervous about making the call. I turned back to Rivka, who’d been shocked into silence.
“I helped your friend escape from the club last night,” I said, “which made her furious. It was as if she wanted to sit there and take the beating. Why?”
“You’re wrong!” Rivka blazed. “You just hate her because she makes you look stupid.”
“I don’t have the time or energy for histrionics this morning,” I said coldly. “If you know where the Body Artist lives, if you’ve been there and she’s vanished, tell me. Or leave.”
Rivka started to storm out, but at the door she changed her mind. “I don’t know where she lives. That’s what I want you to find out. And to make sure she’s not in any danger.”
“Do you know who’s blocking her website?”
“What does blocking her website have to do with-”
“It’s why they were beating her up last night. They need the codes Rodney keeps painting on her. What do you know about those?”
“Nothing! I keep telling her she shouldn’t let them desecrate her art. And she just laughs, and says it’s all about making art accessible even to cretins so that America becomes an art-friendly country.”
I could hear Petra starting to lose her cool, saying that since Olympia had fired her, she didn’t have a right to dictate to Petra.
“What does Vesta say?” I asked Rivka.
“She doesn’t care! She just says Karen’s a big girl, she knows how to land on her feet! It’s all part of the jealousy and small-mindedness that surrounds Karen’s art. I need to know she’s safe. Why can’t you do that for me? You’re involved even if you didn’t set the club on fire. You have to do something.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. When I opened them, Rivka was still sitting there, her small face swollen with worry and anger.
“Okay,” I said. “Call Vesta. And the burka dancers. You get them here this morning, right now. We’ll all talk. We’ll figure out where to look for Karen. Until then, you sit here and keep your mouth shut, because I’ve got a wheelbarrowful of work to do.”
Rivka wanted to argue the point, but I told her I wasn’t in the mood. “Get your pals or go home. No other choices.”
Petra had finished her call with Olympia and came to me, head hanging. “Sorry, Vic, you were right about Olympia. I did let her get under my skin.”
“Not to worry, it was a tough first assignment. Anyway, the Warshawski Agency is famous for the crankiness of its operatives. I want you to start on some of the backlog of paper until Rivka gets the rest of her gang here.”
I showed my cousin where the office essentials were-the bathroom and kitchenette at the end of the hall that I shared with my leasemate-and the importance of cleaning up instantly since it’s shared space. Refreshments for clients or ourselves in the little fridge. We have a good-quality coffeemaker and an electric kettle for tea, but I still use the coffee bar across the street for espresso.
By the time we’d finished and I’d shown Petra how to send messages from my computer phone log to my cell phone, Vesta and the burka dancers had arrived. The dancers were well swaddled in sweaters and coats, one with a big fur hat pulled so far over his ears it covered his forehead. I asked Petra to get everyone set up in the client corner while I made one last effort to log on to embodiedart.com.
The site was still down. This time, the message announced, “We’re rethinking our site. Come back soon, and thanks for visiting.”
When I joined the group, the two dancers were on the couch, with Vesta half sitting on one of its arms. Rivka had pulled up a straight-backed chair; an armchair might make her seem relaxed, and her business was too urgent for that. Petra was prim in the corner of the couch, a notepad open in her lap.
I reminded the dancers that we’d spoken backstage a few weeks ago. They’d called each other Kevin and Lee then. Their full names were Leander Marvelle and Kevin Piuma. Kevin the Feather. What was on their birth certificates, I wondered.
The dancers shed their coats, but Leander had a heavy sweater-jacket zipped up to his chin while Kevin remained swathed in a long scarf. Even so, I could see they were painfully thin, cheekbones jutting, mouths extra-wide because there was too little flesh along the jawline.
“How did you two hook up with Karen?” I asked.
Leander looked at Kevin. “The Hothouse?”
“No, no, that’s where we found Jerome. He told us this chick was trying to put an act together and she was usually at Frida’s.”
Frida’s was a club in the west Loop-not far from Plotzky’s where I’d drunk with Tim Radke, but part of the hip wave that was flooding the neighborhood.
“See, we’d just come back from a road run of Chorus Line. We needed a gig. The Body Artist dug our act. And it was kind of cool, you know, the disguised, gender-bending thing. But it’s old now.”
“Yeah,” said Leander. “Time to move on.”
“You can’t!” Rivka cried. “The Body Artist needs you.”
Kevin looked at her coldly. “She needs to update her act. It’s old. It’s stale.”
“She’s only done it for six months. How can you-”
“Six months!” Leander flung up his arms. “That is beyond stale, it’s rotting!”
“Right,” I said. “Where does Karen live?”
Kevin’s wide mouth gave an exaggerated grimace of contempt. “We weren’t dating the chick. We worked with her on her act.”
“Did you rehearse the act outside the club?”
Leander explained that one of his ballet teachers was on the faculty at Columbia College and let him and Piuma use one of the practice studios when they were in town.
“If you want to call the Body Artist, what number do you use?”
“E-mail. She didn’t give us a number.”
I looked at Rivka. “What about you?”
She bit her lips. She wanted to claim some special inside knowledge of Karen Buckley but couldn’t. The Body Artist always phoned Rivka, but she blocked her own number.
Vesta nodded agreement. “Girlfriend liked her secrets.”
Vesta had met Karen at the dojo where she trained. “She wanted to study self-defense. She took about four months of classes. That’s when we…”