That she was a dyke. Why can’t you just say it?
Don’t use that word about Allie! Who told them? Was it you? Because you were so angry with her for not returning your calls?
Karen sat up and began pulling on clothes-sweater, jeans, boots.
Nadia, you want someone to be at fault because the sister you adored so much is dead. But if she was a lesbian, people in Baghdad would have known. Believe me, I did not say one word to one person about my week with her. She was of no interest to me once she made it clear that I was of no interest to her.
For once, Karen spoke in a real voice, someone who was feeling the words she was saying. Or at least someone who acted as though she felt them.
The clip ended there, abruptly, as had the segment with Vesta. There was no way of knowing whether Nadia, like Vesta, had realized Karen/ Frannie was recording her.
41 A Clutch of Apartment Raiders, Plus Dogs
Dinner was a success, at least for my guests. Petra had recovered from last night’s trauma, aided by her military escort, and they, in turn, seemed to be thawing in her ebullience. My neighbor was beaming happily. Mr. Contreras wanted to see Petra settle down with “some nice boy,” and Marty Jepson and Tim Radke both fit the bill.
I sat at the end of the table, smiling, nodding, wondering where Alexandra Guaman’s journal was. I had played the video the Body Artist had recorded with Nadia three times. Alexandra felt so hounded and tormented that she wrote about it in her journal. Nadia had said that. Which meant Nadia had seen the journal. Which meant that whoever ransacked Nadia’s apartment might have been looking for it.
“Julian Urbanke,” I suddenly said out loud.
Everyone at the table stared at me, until Petra said, “Vic, there’s no one with a name like that in my family, unless it’s someone on the Warshawski side. Marty was asking who in my mom’s family had been in the service.”
My aunt’s ancestors had mostly been in the Confederate Army. I wondered how the veterans would react to that.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was trying to remember the name of the man who lived across the hall from Nadia Guaman. Her apartment was ripped apart, the pictures even taken down from the walls. A couple of days after she died, someone took her computer and all her discs. Urbanke had a key to her apartment. He seemed to have had a crush on Nadia-maybe he helped himself to Alexandra’s journal, thinking it was Nadia’s, before the home-wrecking crew arrived.”
“What would you like us to do, ma’am?” Jepson asked.
“Marty, it’s so funny to hear you call Vic ‘ma’am.’” Petra laughed. “She may be older than us, but she’s not, like, a hundred. Just call her ‘Vic,’ like everybody else does.”
“Darling, I love the staff sergeant’s impeccable manners,” I said. “Who knows, maybe some of them will rub off on you and me.”
I looked at Jepson, who was staring straight ahead, blushing.
“I’d like to go over to Urbanke’s place,” I continued, “see if he has the diary.”
Petra’s eyes sparkled. “All of us? A midnight raid-”
She stopped, remembering last night’s fight. The muscles in her face tightened. “Vic,” she said, “why don’t you just call and ask him.”
“Too easy to brush people off on the phone,” I said.
“You’re not going to beat him up, are you?” She was pleating her napkin by now.
“Of course she ain’t,” Mr. Contreras grumbled. “If she had any sense, she’d stay right here.”
He turned to me. “If it wasn’t for these boys here riding to your rescue last night, you’d be dead and in the morgue right now.”
“I’m going to bring Peppy; if Urbanke tries to attack me, he’ll trip over her and fall, and then she’ll smooch him into confessing.” I stood too quickly for my abdomen and ended up clutching the edge of the table.
“Uh, ma’am?” Jepson said. “I mean, Vic. I’d, uh, it would be a pleasure to visit this man Urbanke with you.”
Well, if he was going to put it like that, implying that the Marines had a sense of duty even if no one else understood it, then Mr. Contreras had to join in, which meant Tim Radke and Petra could hardly stay behind.
Petra bent over Mitch, hands on his jowls. “You want to come, too, don’t you, Mitch? Just in case.”
After Petra and Tim finished the washing up, we laced up our winter boots and zipped up our coats and went back into the night, dogs and all. I wondered if any other detective on the planet had ever traveled with this kind of entourage. Sam Spade, with dogs, cousin, old man, and Marines-kind of like calling on a suspect with a circus parade in tow.
My fellow performers were full of enthusiasm. Jepson took me and the dogs in his truck; Tim Radke followed in my car with Petra and Mr. Contreras.
The heater in Jepson’s pickup was as old as the shocks, and my feet turned numb as we bounced over ruts. I grabbed the edges of the seat, trying to minimize the jolts to my sore muscles.
“Sorry about that, ma’am. Vic, I mean. Kind of like the roads in Baghdad, just without the gunfire and the IEDs and so on. Although this part of town, I guess we could get some gunfire,” he added as we moved into the grimmer, gang-ridden streets west of Western.
We got to Nadia’s building ahead of the others. While we waited, we talked about ways and means.
“I don’t want all seven of us barging in on Urbanke,” I said. “Why don’t we let Mr. Contreras and Petra wait in Nadia’s apartment with the dogs while you and I talk to the guy.”
It was hard to persuade Mr. Contreras that this was a good idea-he hadn’t come along just to sit on the sidelines and cheer for me, thanks very much. In the end, Tim offered to babysit Petra and the dogs while my neighbor and the staff sergeant and I went into Urbanke’s.
A bit of good luck: he was home. A bit of bad luck: he remembered me and did not wish to see me.
“You’re not a cop,” he squawked over the intercom. “You can’t make me talk to you.”
“Right, Mr. Urbanke,” I bellowed at my end. “We don’t need to talk. We just want to ask you about Alexandra’s journal.”
Another bit of good luck: someone came out of the building just as I was debating whether to open the outer door on my own. The man looked at us suspiciously, and I grinned happily.
“We’re the new tenants in 3E. Thanks! The key they gave us for the outside door doesn’t work.”
“No dogs allowed in this building,” he said.
“They’re not moving in, just helping my friends set up housekeeping. We’ll see you.”
My parade swept past him and up the stairs to the third floor. I opened the door to Nadia’s place with my picklocks, then knocked on Urbanke’s. Petra stood in Nadia’s doorway, watching. Mitch and Peppy were behind her, trying to push between her legs. When Urbanke didn’t answer his door, Jepson began kicking it, and Mitch started to bark. In about thirty seconds, we’d drawn a crowd, people from two of the other apartments on the floor and a woman bending over the railing on the fourth floor.
“No dogs allowed in here.” “Who are they? Someone call the cops.” “Call the police and let them rob us in our beds? Call the building management.” “The building management? Don’t be insane-they still haven’t fixed my broken window.” “Because you’re three months behind on-”
“Mr. Urbanke has been really helpful in looking after my niece’s home since Nadia was murdered.” I cut into the flow. He has a key to her apartment, he took her cat. But he also took some of her other things-I’m sure for safekeeping! Security is terrible in this building, and he didn’t want anyone to steal her jewelry. But I need to get it back to give to my sister. Nadia’s mother is so overcome with grief, she can’t come herself. So she asked me to stop by and collect her jewelry.”
“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.
“And I told you I was running a detective agency. If you want to be part of it, please respect the fact that we are working for people who often are in desperate need. You had one assignment tonight, to hold on to the dogs. You blew that. Mitch roared around Urbanke’s apartment and was a major nuisance until Tim grabbed his leash and got him under control.”
“If Mitch hadn’t gotten away, he wouldn’t have freaked out Urbanke’s cat and we wouldn’t have gotten in to find that creepy shrine. I did you a favor.”
“You’ll get your Distinguished Service Medal first thing in the morning,” I said drily. “In the meantime, if you want to keep working for me you can’t be playing games. And you can’t ignore your assignments because they’re dull, or because you’re flirting with Tim Radke.”
“I don’t believe you,” Petra cried. “Is this about you being je
alous because I’m young and attractive?”
I was so angry I jammed my hands into my pockets to keep from slapping her. “Weren’t you the one who chewed me out yesterday for teasing you about your youthful attractiveness? Your looks are off limits, but my age isn’t?”
She glared at me, but asked, “Am I fired?”
“Not tonight. But you are not captain of this expedition.”
I went back to the living room, wondering how long it would be before I ended up in the Dwight women’s prison for murdering Petra.
Jepson and Radke got to their feet. “We’ll take off now, ma’am,” the staff sergeant said. “Thank you for dinner.”
“Thanks for coming along tonight,” I said. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”
Jepson flushed. “A pleasure to help you, ma’am. Vic.”
“What is this? A recruiting commercial for the Marines?” Tim punched his friend in the ribs, and added to Petra, who was trailing behind me, “We’re going to Plotzky’s to catch the last period of the Hawks game. Want to come along?”
My cousin smiled warmly at the two young men, glowered at me to make sure I knew I was not forgiven, and bounded out of the apartment with them. It was harder to move Mr. Contreras and the dogs, but they finally left as well.
I moved slowly through my nighttime routine. Anton didn’t care about the Body Artist’s website anymore, or so he said. He wanted papers he thought I had. Perhaps he’d meant Alexandra’s journal. But if that was the case, it meant he’d somehow hooked up with Tintrey, because Alexandra’s journal was of interest to them. Even if he was only looking for it as a potential way to blackmail Jarvis MacLean, it still meant that somehow, in the last two days, he’d learned about Tintrey’s interest in the Guaman family.
September 2. Leaving Istanbul for Baghdad.
Even after I was lying exhausted in my bed, the words kept running through my head. I saw Alexandra Guaman, her dark curls damp with sweat. She’d taken the overseas job because the money would help Clara go to a good college. At least, that’s what Clara believed. What else? What had happened to her? Why, with no experience as a convoy driver, had she left the safety of the Green Zone to drive a truck to the Baghdad airport?
Body Work Page 30