Rivka rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand, smearing paint across her face. She opened a small refrigerator tucked under a ledge and pulled out a bottled smoothie.
Karen spread cream over her breasts and started removing Nadia’s face. “It’s almost like a metaphor for life, isn’t it. One minute you’re here, the next minute you’re not.” Her voice was toneless. It was impossible to tell if she had any strong feelings about Nadia or Rivka, or even herself.
“Did she ever mention Rainier Cowles to you?”
Vesta flipped the brushes she’d been playing with onto the counter and looked at me. “Who is Rainier Cowles?”
“A lawyer,” I said. “He claims a special interest in the Guaman family. He may still be out front-he came here tonight with a tableful of corporate types. He said he wanted to examine the strip joint where his protege’s daughter spent her last night.”
“The Body Artist isn’t a stripper,” Rivka cried. “How could you say such a thing? And then to pretend you admired the angel-”
“Whoa, there,” I interrupted. “I’m just reporting what he said, not my own beliefs.”
“Vesta doesn’t need to be my bodyguard while I have Rivka,” the Artist said.
The younger woman flushed again. Her slender neck, with little tendrils of hair curling from sweat, made her look as vulnerable as a daylily.
Vesta had slipped out of the room during Rivka’s outcry. She came back in now to report that the house was still rocking. “I think your corporate guys are there. Near the back of the room, left side? Go take a look, Buckley. Maybe it’ll refresh your memory.”
“I don’t need to refresh a memory I don’t have. If that’s why you came, Ms. Detective, I’m exhausted, and I’d like to finish paint removal so I can go to bed.” The Artist didn’t stop sponging her breasts while she spoke.
“I’m tired, too, between the weather, and death, and people lying to me,” I said. “Tell me what Nadia told you about Chad Vishneski.”
“She didn’t tell me anything,” the Artist said. “Rivka, finish my shoulders so I can put on a sweater. It’s freezing in here.”
Rivka jumped up and began scouring the cypress branch and pomegranate away from the Artist’s shoulders. “Vesta, can’t you help? Can’t you see how she’s shivering?”
“You’ve got her covered, or uncovered, Rivka,” said Vesta, “you’re doing fine.” She leaned against the counter and started fiddling with the brushes again.
“Chad Vishneski,” I repeated. “Every time Nadia painted on the Artist here, Chad exploded. If all Nadia cared about was her sister, then I’m guessing Chad knew her sister, right?”
“You’re the person making up the story.” The Body Artist put on a camisole and then pulled a heavy sweater over it. “Something about Nadia bothered him so much he shot her, and it could have been her cunt, since that’s what most guys see when they look at a woman.”
“And so you display yours as a defiant statement: If that’s all you think I am, that’s what I’ll be?” I asked. “Nadia found you because you’d slept with Allie. But how did she learn about your affair?”
“She never said, or, if she did, it was after I stopped listening to her.” The Artist slammed her palm against the dressing table. “She was more fucked up than her sister, if that’s what you want to know. She pretended she wanted to have sex with me, when obviously she was a virgin or at least not a dyke, and backed away into a corner when I started kissing her. And then she laid this heavy trip on me about her sister as if it was me, not God, who chose Allie’s sexuality.” The Artist pushed her straggling hair into a clip. “I told Nadia to go home and get a dildo and leave me alone, but she kept coming back to the club and doing her stupid painting. I am so bored by her and her hang-ups, and her crush on her sister, I can’t tell you how uninterested I am in all those girls.”
“Right. Warm and fuzzy, you are safe from ever hearing that criticism from me.” I started to zip my coat. “What’s the story on Rodney? Why did Olympia insist that he draw his chicken scratchings, even tonight?”
“You’ll have to ask Olympia. I don’t understand why she does anything.”
“She’s in financial trouble, I gather?”
“Not my problem.” The Artist took off her thong and put on a pair of conventional underpants, then pulled her jeans up over her legs, interrupting Rivka’s efforts to finish cleaning them. “If you’re having fun, I hate to ask you to leave, because I am an entertainer and I like my audience to have a good time. But the evening is over.”
“Talking to you is definitely my idea of a fun-filled evening, but I’ll let you go home.” I opened the dressing- room door, then turned back. “There is one last question. What did your mother call you when you were born?”
The Artist had been buttoning her jeans, but her hands dropped to the side. She stood completely still, not speaking, until she realized her friends were staring at her with the same interest, or even astonishment, that I was showing.
“I don’t remember that far back,” she finally drawled. “But, going on experience, she probably said, ‘Here comes Trouble.’”
Rivka cackled in delight, but Vesta said, “Are you investigating Buckley? Why? Why, don’t you think Karen Buckley’s her real name?”
“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.”
