with both hands most days. If you know where the Buckley woman lives and you’re not saying—”
“Terry, on my mother’s name, I do not know word one about the Body Artist—not even whether Karen Buckley is her real name or not.”
He shut my door, none too gently, and stomped to his waiting car.
As I drove down Lake Street, my right hand hurt so badly I couldn’t hold the steering wheel. I stopped at the light on Ashland and took off my glove. A fragment of the palette knife was lodged in my index finger near the palm. I hadn’t noticed it during the heat of battle.
I wasn’t about to go to an emergency room and sit for the rest of the night. Nursing my hand in my lap, I went north to Ukrainian Village, to Rivka Darling’s home. If Karen Buckley had ridden the L back down here, Kystarnik would have found her easily.
A Hummer was parked in front of Rivka’s building, engine running. The driver flicked up the brights as I went passed, looking to see who was on the street. I pretended not to notice, although they probably had my license plate in their files.
I called Rivka on my cell phone. We had a short, annoying conversation. She wouldn’t say one way or another if Karen was there, even when I said that the Artist’s life was at risk.
“You weren’t in the club tonight,” I said, “but a gang of serious thugs attacked her at the end of the performance. She managed to get away, but if she’s with you, you need to call the cops. One of the creeps is in front of your building, so if she’s there, don’t let her leave without a police escort. If she doesn’t want the cops, call me. Do you hear?”
“Karen can look after herself. She doesn’t need you.”
I guessed from the quiver in Rivka’s voice that the Artist hadn’t shown up. I drove to my own home, where I looked at my right hand under my piano light. The fragment was just visible below the skin. I found a bottle of peroxide in my pantry cupboard and poured it into a mixing bowl. Tweezers and a needle, which took a little more finding—I don’t often mend clothes or dig out splinters. When I had my kit assembled, I went back to the living room and stuck my hand in the peroxide.
“Courage, Victoria,” I said.
I’m right-handed, and digging around for metal splinters with my left was a challenge that brought me close to the screaming point. I was beginning to think an emergency room was the answer when Jake knocked at my front door.
“We just finished rehearsing, and I saw your light,” he said. “You interested in a nightcap?”
“I’m interested in someone with long, delicate fingers and a surgeon’s deft touch.”
I held out my hand, which was bleeding pretty heavily from my bungled probing.
“Vic! Blood makes me throw up.”
I thought he was joking, but his face actually did have a greenish sheen.
“I’ll rinse it off,” I said, “if you’ll take this splinter out for me. Please! I’ll even open my last bottle of Torgiano for you.”
He made a face but took the tweezers from me.
“You go rinse this off until it’s not bleeding,” he said, “or you’ll be removing lasagna from it along with the blood.”
When I got myself cleaned up, he clamped my hand between his knees as if it were a cello. He was sweating, but he had the chip out fairly fast. He turned his head while I wrapped the hand in a towel.
“What is this?” He held the chip under the light.
“A metal fragment. A palette knife exploded in my hand.”
“A palette . . . No, don’t explain. I’m happier not knowing. And I don’t know about you, but I need something stronger than red wine right now.”
I got out a bottle of Longrow. It was a small-batch single malt that my most important client, Darraugh Graham, had brought me from Edinburgh. It went down like liquid gold. By the time I’d had my second glass and followed Jake into my bedroom, I’d almost forgotten the throbbing in my hand.
28
Mourning Coffee
When my cell phone rang four hours later, at first I incorporated it into my sleep. I was in Kiev, and the Body Artist, painted like a Russian Easter egg, was madly pulling ropes to ring church bells all across the city. The ringing stopped, then started again almost at once.
“I know the Bottesini,” Jake muttered.