had to get up to shower and dress for his flight, some of my earlier anguish over my visit with the Guamans had eased. I lingered in bed until the bell rang, when I pulled on my jeans and one of my sweaters while Jake went out to greet his roadie.
I stood on the landing with my champagne as the two men carted out luggage and instruments. “It will be almost April when you come home. I’ll miss you. But I’ll follow your concerts online when they’re being broadcast.”
“I hope you’ll be olive-colored again by the time I’m home,” he said. “This green and purple doesn’t look so good on you, V.I. Try to look after yourself, okay?”
A quick kiss, and then he was gone. I lingered on the landing, but there wasn’t time for me to feel sorry for myself. About half an hour after Jake left, Petra and Marty Jepson arrived with a couple of pizzas. Mr. Contreras and the dogs helped us eat while we waited for Tim Radke. When Tim showed up, around nine, he set straight to work, but even though he managed to crack Chad’s log-in and password, he couldn’t re-create the blog. The entries had been deleted, and that was that.
“Or he never wrote them,” Tim said. “I can’t tell. It’s not like the Artist’s website where we could see someone was issuing a command to shut down the site. Here, there’s just no trace that anything was ever there.”
“If we found his computer?” I asked.
He shook his head. “You’d have to hack into the blog server to see what was deleted. And even if I wanted to go to prison for Chad, which I don’t, I’m not good enough to do that kind of search. The only thing we might find if we had his machine is if he sent an e-mail or wrote a letter or something about the armor.”
I had to be satisfied with that, although it wasn’t the news I’d hoped to receive. The young people took off to go to a club. They invited me to join them in a way that made me feel like an elderly aunt. And like an elderly aunt, I stayed home and went to bed. Oh, those days of having so much energy that I could work all day and go dancing at night . . . I wanted that time back.
It was after one when the doorbell woke me. Someone was leaning on the buzzer so hard they’d roused the dogs. I could hear the barking as I made my way to the door on sleep-thickened legs. I pulled on my coat, put my gun in the pocket, and tried to run down the stairs so I could get to the door ahead of Mr. Contreras. Petra, I was betting. Petra had locked herself out of her apartment. I rehearsed a stern speech on how she could check into a motel or sleep on the living-room floor.
The ugly words died in my throat. Clara Guaman stood outside, her right eye swollen shut, her nose bleeding. When I pulled open the door, she collapsed in my arms.
46
Our Lady, Protector of Documents
You will be well, little one. Just uncomfortable for a few days, with this packing in your nose. Now, who did this? Did Victoria involve you in some desperate scheme?”
“Lotty!” I started to protest, but the words died in my throat. If I hadn’t nosed my way into the Guaman home, tonight’s assault probably wouldn’t have happened.
We were in Lotty’s clinic on Damen Avenue, along with Mr. Contreras, who had surged out of his apartment moments after Clara’s arrival.
“My God, is it Peewee?” he cried. When he saw that the face of the young woman, a stranger, was covered in blood, he’d ordered me to bring her into his place.
We laid her on his couch, and he made an ice pack for her face. “You stay with her, doll. Make her lie still. I’m getting dressed, and then we’ll get her to the doc.”
Clara was clutching her French textbook, and she wouldn’t relinquish it. I wrapped her in a blanket and concentrated on cleaning the blood from her face. While Mr. Contreras changed out of his magenta-striped pajamas, I called Lotty from the phone in his living room to ask if she could cut through the red tape at Beth Israel’s emergency room for us.
She’d been sound asleep, but years of practicing medicine made her alert at once. She told me to