I thought I heard something scrape against the floor. I stopped and held my breath, but I didn’t hear anything again. I put the album down. The only other room was a bathroom, to which the door was partially closed. I walked toward it, hesitated for a second and pushed it open.

Suddenly I saw myself reflected in the mirror above the sink. My hair looking wild and crazy, my eyes startled. The bathroom was empty except for a soiled white towel, a bar of Palmolive soap and a wastebasket with a piece of flattened cardboard in it. I stooped to pick up the cardboard.

It was part of the packaging for a bottle of insulin.

Armando Diaz was a diabetic. And his medicine cabinet behind the mirror was full of plastic syringes like the one we had found on the floor of the loft next to Cathy Vega’s body.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I slammed the medicine cabinet shut. Had Armando Diaz been at the loft with Cathy Vega? Believing she was going to model for a photo shoot, she had gone downtown. To her death. Her agent said a man named Rudy who had an accent asked for her. Rudy had no accent, but Armando Diaz certainly did. I remembered the camera lens I had found on the roof of the building across from Casa Guatemala. At first I had thought the man had been holding a gun.

Closing the bathroom door behind me, I dashed back into the studio.

“Bad girl, bad girl.” The parrot started his noisy harangue again.

I took another hurried look around the room. The workbench, the desk, the bridal props. On the opposite side of the room was a closet I had not yet explored. I looked at my watch. It was nearly three-thirty. It felt as if time had stopped. Where was Armando Diaz and when was he coming back? Two dark suits and two white shirts hung in the closet. A chemical pine smell from a room freshener pervaded the air. Stacked on built-in shelves were the tools of his trade: film, several lenses, a leather carrying bag, a box of business cards. I snatched one of the cards, which bore the same picture of the crossed American and Cuban flags as the decal pasted on his front window.

ARMANDO DIAZ fotógrafo Bodas

Quinceañeras

Pasaportes CUBA LIBRE PATRIA

He had two cameras. A big Hasselblad was carefully placed on the middle shelf. I wondered if this was the one Rudy Sancerre had planned to use to do my portraits. The Hasselblad was old but perfectly maintained. On the shelf above it was a Leica. Missing its lens cap. I fumbled in my purse for the lens cap I had found when I chased the man on the roof. It was for a Leica.

Armando Diaz had been the man on the roof.