“That’s a lie!” Urbanke had opened his door just enough that we could see his nose and mouth. “She’s no aunt. She was going through Nadia’s apartment herself, pretending to be a detective.”
“I saw you go into the girl’s apartment the day after she died,” a woman on the upper landing said to Urbanke, fortunately not to me. “Poor Nadia, you were always looking at her like-like this dog here looking at a bone.” She pointed at Mitch, who had pushed past my cousin and was nosing around the crack in Urbanke’s door. “And then she’s barely dead, and you let yourself into her place. How you even got a key to her door, that’s what I want to know.”
“She gave it to me,” he said.
Mitch suddenly yelped, a piercing shriek of pain. A white ball of fur bolted between his legs, crossed the hall, and ran into Nadia’s place. The dog’s nose was bleeding.
“What’d you do to my dog?” Mr. Contreras demanded as Urbanke opened the door, shouting, “Ixcuina! Chain up that vicious dog or I’ll shoot him. Ixcuina! Ixcuina, kitty, kitty!”
Urbanke ran after the cat, tripping over Peppy, who was standing in Nadia’s doorway barking her head off. Petra was doubled over with laughter.
I grabbed her shoulders. “Get those dogs under control! Now! This is an investigation, not Comedy Central.”
I didn’t wait for her response but took the opportunity to go into Urbanke’s apartment. Jepson and Radke followed me. And Mr. Contreras. And two of the people from the building. And Mitch.
Urbanke lived in three shabbily furnished rooms, with a layout similar to Nadia’s. Jepson and Radke went through the rooms as if it were a terrorist hideout in Iraq, crouching, peering around the corners. After a moment, Jepson called to me from Urbanke’s bedroom. They’d found a shrine to Nadia that he had created inside his closet.
Photographs he’d shot of her when she didn’t know he was watching her. A few pieces of her artwork that he’d filched. We didn’t find her computer or any of her missing DVDs, but there was a red-covered notebook, propped up inside an open papier-mâché box, with roses and candles around it.
The notebook was open. I bent over to read it.
September 2. Leaving Istanbul for Baghdad. It’s so hot that we all sit unmoving, waiting for them to close the plane doors and turn on the air-conditioning so we can breathe again.
“Is that what we were looking for, ma’am?” Jepson asked.
I nodded, breathless, and lifted the notebook carefully as if it might disintegrate with careless handling. The interior of the box was decorated with paintings of Alexandra Guaman-Alexandra in a coffin, arms crossed over her chest, tears like chandelier drops falling from her eyes. Alexandra kneeling in front of the Virgin, who was placing a crown of roses on her head. Alexandra in heaven, reaching her hands down to Nadia, Clara, and Ernest.
“Clara should have this box,” I said to Jepson. “She’s the surviving sister.”
He helped me place the journal back into its papier-mâché container and said he’d carry it for me. Before heading home, I went looking for Urbanke. I found him in Nadia’s kitchen, trying to coax Ixcuina, the attack cat, out from behind the refrigerator, where she’d taken refuge.
“I’m taking the diary,” I told him. “It wasn’t Nadia’s, by the way; it was her older sister’s.”
He looked up at me. “I know. I read it. The sister was perverse. But the diary mattered to Miss Nadia, and I am protecting her memory. Or I was trying to protect her from people like you who want to drag her through the mud. I could sue you for breaking into my home. And for having a wild dog.”
I smiled. “Your neighbors are worrying now about whether their daughters are safe around you. If I were you, I’d lay low for a bit, not bring any lawsuits where you might need a witness to describe what happened tonight. Their version and yours are likely to be a million or so miles apart.”
An ugly expression crossed his face, but before he could speak I added, “Another thing. I wouldn’t mention Alexandra Guaman’s journal to anyone. To a neighbor, to your children, even to your pastor. We don’t know what the people who trashed this apartment were looking for. Maybe it was Nadia’s computer. But maybe it was this diary. If they learn that you’ve read it, you will need the charmed nine lives of this cat here to escape.”
He tried to stare me down, but my words had taken the stuffing out of him. He turned back to the cat, looking a little pale. It made me think he’d already told someone about the journal. The sister, she was perverse, he would have hissed to a coworker, trying to make himself the center of attention.
I couldn’t worry about his problems. I just hoped he was embarrassed enough by his neighbors’ reaction to his actions that he wouldn’t complain publicly about my taking the journal.
I left him to Ixcuina and rejoined my circus in the hallway. Mr. Contreras had struck up an acquaintance with the woman from the floor above, both of them clicking their teeth over the dangers of living in the city, the dangers of apartment life where you couldn’t know what kind of fiend might be renting right next door to you!
“Look after your beautiful granddaughter,” she told him, nodding her head toward Petra when she saw we were leaving, which delighted Mr. Contreras so much he repeated it several times on our way down the stairs.
42 A Love Story/A Horror Story
When we got home, the two vets followed us inside. Staff Sergeant Jepson seemed to think I needed extra support on my way up the stairs. I wondered if he saw me as elderly and frail or mature and exciting, and then I remembered Kystarnik’s thug calling me a dried-up cougar the previous night and felt myself blushing.
Jake and his friends were still rehearsing. They were working on Berio’s Sequenze, discordant, not to everyone’s taste. Still, I resented it when Tim Radke muttered, “Sounds like that guy Urbanke’s cat is dying in there,” and Petra burst out laughing.
“Vic, you totally rock! How did you even know he’d built a shrine to Nadia?” my cousin demanded when we were inside my place.
I bent over the piano bench and slipped Allie’s journal inside my score of Don Giovanni. “I didn’t. Lucky guess. Even luckier was when the cat ran for cover.”
The adrenaline wave I’d been riding began to recede, leaving me so overcome with fatigue that I had to hold on to the piano for support. I guess the answer to my question was “elderly and frail.”
“That wasn’t lucky!” Mr. Contreras huffed. “I have half a mind to report him to Animal Control, keeping a cat like that. Wild animal, it attacked my dog.”
“Just don’t let them see the poor, abused victim,” I said, collapsing on the piano bench.
Mitch grinned up at me, red tongue lolling, to show he knew he was a con artist-and what was I going to do about it.
I looked at Petra and the two vets. “Thank you all for your help tonight, but I need to get some rest.”
“Hey, no way,” my cousin said. “We didn’t go through all that so you could go to bed. We’re reading Allie’s journal before we leave.”
I pushed myself to my feet and propelled Petra into the kitchen. “You’re not a child, and I’m not your nanny, so don’t start whining and cajoling. Looking at a piece of evidence in a murder investigation is not the same thing as begging for a new bike.”
“I told you when I agreed to work for you, I won’t be bullied.” Petra scowled.