parents had burdened their child with such a name. “Prince Rainier,” I murmured to the computer. He’d probably been called that a ton in his subdivision growing up. Maybe it’s why he’d put on the carapace of corporate success. Imposing trial presence, important car. But he must have a soft center, or he wouldn’t be involved with the hard-luck Guamans. Or maybe he’d represented them in litigation over Ernie’s injuries.
None of this speculation was helping me look at Chad’s relationship with Nadia.
“The client is the boss. His son is innocent. Get to work proving it,” I said aloud in my sternest voice and phoned Mona Vishneski.
Mona had left her mother’s as soon as she learned of her son’s arrest, and was now back in Chicago. She was staying with her ex-husband in Wrigleyville, which John hadn’t bothered to tell me. She agreed to meet me for a cup of tea at Lilith’s, a little café on Southport near John’s apartment, around five.
The snow had started again. Lilith’s was six blocks from my apartment. With the ice and snow packed along the curbs making street parking a challenge, it was better to put my car in my building’s alley garage and walk. I carried my laptop with me in a waterproof case.
It was already dark by the time I got to the café. The warmth and lights inside seemed feeble against the wind whipping snow pellets against the windows. I ordered a double macchiato and found a table as far from the door as possible.
While I waited for Mona, I started to download the reports LifeStory and the Monitor Project had given me on Olympia, Karen Buckley, and on Chad himself. I was especially curious about Karen, after her performance at Nadia’s funeral.
The most important question—who had known whom and how—wasn’t one the computer could answer reliably, although I took a stab at the question through MySpace and Facebook. Olympia had a Facebook page, but you had to have her permission to see any details, such as her cyberfriends. Chad had a MySpace page, but none of the women were among his “friends.” I couldn’t find Karen Buckley on any of the social networks.
Fishing around to see where Karen’s and Nadia’s lives might have intersected, I checked to see if they had gone to art school together. I already had looked up Nadia’s details—her training at Columbia College in the south Loop, her job at a big design firm, followed by precarious freelancing after she was laid off—but I couldn’t find any information on Karen Buckley. A quick search revealed hundreds of Karen Buckleys—singers, quilters, doctors, lawyers—across the country, but only four dozen Karen Buckleys or K. Buckleys in our four-state area. About six of those seemed to match the Body Artist’s race and age. None of them had a findable history as an artist.
Unlike most artists, who are at pains to tell you where they’ve trained, where they’ve held shows, what museums own their work, Karen’s history wasn’t just sketchy, it was missing altogether. She didn’t list her education or her shows on the [http://embodiedart.com] embodiedart.com website. She didn’t offer any personal information at all.
I needed her Social Security number, but I couldn’t find a home address for her, let alone a credit history that might yield information on her background. I went back to [http://embodiedart.com] embodiedart.com. If you had to pay her for her work, she must have a bank account or a credit card somewhere, but she took payment only through PayPal, which meant she could be collecting the money under another name, maybe even in another state.
I sat back in my chair. Here was a woman who was aggressive in exposing herself before audiences and yet she’d left no trail in our hyper-documented age. I could imagine a fear of stalkers might require total anonymity in her life these days, but it was strange that someone so purposefully self-exposing left no public trace of her private life.
I transferred addresses for the handful of K. Buckleys who might be the Body Artist. I could do old-fashioned legwork, see if any of them had a home studio, but I wasn’t expecting to find her.
I was so lost in thought, and files, that I didn’t notice Mona Vishneski until she appeared at my table and hesitantly said my name.
“Ms. Vishneski!” I sprang to my feet.
She was a lost-looking woman around my age, her clothes hanging on her, as if worry over her son had made her lose a dress size