Sara Paretsky - Body Work

“And was it Alexandra’s face she was painting?”

Cristina’s nose twitched as if she were smelling something bad. “It was enough to see Nadia together with a naked woman. If she was involving her sainted sister, then I am thankful to God that I was spared that sight.”

“How did Alexandra die?”

Cristina backed away from me. “In a painful, hard way that I prefer not to discuss.”

“Did she have a boyfriend, a girlfriend, anyone I could talk to?”

“What are you trying to ask?” Cristina hissed.

So she knew her daughter had women as lovers. Alexandra wouldn’t come out of the closet for fear her mother would learn, and her mother had known all along. Had Alexandra committed suicide because of the pressure? Had Nadia known and moved out after fighting with her mother over Allie’s sexuality?

I couldn’t think of any good way to ask these questions, so I asked in a bad way. “Who told you that Alexandra was sleeping with women?”

Cristina gasped. “If you came here to slander my saint, my angel, I will call the police. Leave!”

“I’m not trying to upset you, Ms. Guaman, just to figure out who killed your beloved daughter Nadia.”

“They arrested a man. It’s enough, enough that we’re dragged through the dirt by Nadia, without you coming to me and pouring it over me.”

“I went to Nadia’s apartment this morning,” I said. “Someone had broken in, had stolen her computer and all her discs. All her artwork is missing.”

At that, she became very quiet. She shook her head slowly as if unhappy at whatever she was thinking, but even though I tried several different gambits, she wouldn’t share her private thoughts with me. I told her about Nadia’s conviction that someone was spying on her.

“Who would that have been, do you think?” I asked. “The person who murdered her?”

Cristina shook her head again. “Nadia had many unhappy ideas, and not very many of them are-were-true. Was it she who told you those filthy lies about Alexandra? Nadia believed them and wouldn’t accept my word that her sister was pure, a good Christian, not capable of such acts. But enough anger. Nadia is with her sister now, in the arms of the Blessed Mother. I thank God that she has no more pain on this earth.”

That was all I was going to learn from her: Nada about Nadia. I walked unhappily from the store, wondering just what it was Cristina Guaman didn’t want me to know about her daughter. Daughters.

I stopped in a taquería across the street for a bowl of rice and beans. Ernie couldn’t tell me anything. Even if I could get past security at O’Hare to reach Lazar Guaman, it was hard to convince myself that such a gray and beaten man would talk to me. That left the surviving daughter, poor young Clara. It was two-thirty-with luck, I’d make it to her school before she left.

Irode the Green Line to Halsted and walked the few blocks to St. Teresa of Avila Prep. School got out at three, and the city buses were already lined up. Unless the Guamans’ self-appointed protector could leave his La Salle Street practice to collect Clara, the easiest route home for her was on the Number 60 bus down Blue Island Avenue.

I reached the school about ten minutes ahead of the exodus. I shivered in the bus stop catty-corner to the school until the tall doors opened and the students poured out.

They seemed to arrive in one giant wave of screaming, jostling teens, but as they passed me they broke into little clots-groups of high-spirited boys, or girls laughing and kidding together, or couples in that adolescent embrace that doesn’t allow a single molecule of air between their bodies. A number were walking alone, shoulders hunched to avoid the glances of a pitying world. Most were bent under their giant backpacks, looking much as their peasant forebears must have, lugging cotton or corn or wood. And all, it seemed, were madly reconnecting to their cell phones and music players after a day of forced withdrawal.

My dressy boots were elegant, but they weren’t very warm. I was beginning to think I’d have to amputate my toes if I stood outside much longer, when Clara Guaman appeared in the middle of a knot of other girls. Unlike yesterday, when she’d gone bare-armed to her sister’s funeral, she was dressed sensibly in a parka, although she hadn’t bothered to zip it shut. She also had foresworn the gaudy eye shadow she’d sported at the funeral. When she and her friends had boarded their bus, I followed them and swiped my CTA card through the machine.

The driver, a thickset woman in her forties, nodded at the kids as they climbed up the steps. She looked at me in surprise-adults don’t usually ride the school routes-but she didn’t say anything. When the bus was packed from stem to stern, she rolled away from the curb. The shrieks and shouts of sixty or so kids, moaning over tests, over boyfriends or girlfriends, hotly arguing who’d said what to whom, made my head drum, but the driver just smiled to herself, focusing on the potholes that littered Blue Island Avenue. Like the rest of the world, she had her own little soundstage plugged into her ears.

I worked my way to the back, where Clara and her friends had found seats. She was talking animatedly, but her skin was gray, and there were dark circles under her eyes.

“V. I. Warshawski,” I said when she looked up at me. “We met yesterday at your sister’s funeral.”

Her face shut down into the arrogant angry lines I’d seen at the church.

“Are you here to apologize some more? Don’t bother.”

“I want to know when I can talk to you-”

“You’re doing it right now. I guess I can’t make you shut up.”

Her friends stared at us with frank curiosity.

“Privately.”

“You can’t. If there’s something you want to say to me, do it right here. And then get out of my life.”

We had both been bellowing to be heard over the ruckus around us, but the noise began dying down as kids nearby caught what we were saying. One of them asked if Clara wanted him to call 911.

“She’s harmless,” Clara said roughly.

I didn’t want to say too much in front of this texting, Tweeting audience, but I needed some way of getting her to talk to me.

“When I heard the shots, I ran to your sister’s side. I held her as she died. Her last word was a call to Allie.”

The silence around us became absolute. Clara sucked in a breath, her face as shocked as if I’d slapped her. Her friends gazed at her with vampire-like avidity.

When Clara didn’t say anything, I said, “Could we go someplace to talk about Nadia and your other sister?”

“You can’t talk about Allie!” Clara cried.

“Why not?”

She looked around wildly, and then said, “Her name is sacred! You can’t use it. No one is allowed to talk about her!”

The kids around us began murmuring excitedly among themselves. Even if I hadn’t been tired and cold, the chatter made it hard to think. It certainly made the bus a stupid place to try to talk, but I plowed ahead.

“When did you last talk to Nadia?”

“I don’t remember, and it’s none of your business, anyway.”

The lurching of the bus meant I couldn’t keep my eyes on her face, but I thought Clara looked more scared than angry despite her defiant words.

“Your mother says she called Nadia when your sister was seen on YouTube painting on the Body Artist. How did Nadia respond?”

“Have you been talking to my mother? She has enough to worry about without someone like you butting in.”

“Karen Buckley put on a special program in your sister’s honor last night. Karen’s the Body Artist who came to your sister’s funeral.”