CHAPTER NINE

The police remain until well after sunset. Search parties scour the cove and the rocky land to the rear of the property. Boats patrol the sea beyond, and officers interview the other homeowners in the neighborhood. If they learn anything, they don’t choose to share it with us.

Evelyn stays until the officers leave. Rather than cook dinner, she orders us pizza. Celeste doesn’t touch her food. Evelyn and I discuss whether we should push her to eat and in the end decide to give her the night to process her emotions.

After dinner, Evelyn leaves. She seems very guilty but explains that her husband works nights, and she has no one else to watch her children. I’m still not sure how suspicious I am of her, but it’s nice not to have to worry about her presence in the house.

Celeste allows me to lead her to bed after Evelyn leaves. I don’t expect her to sleep, but she is out like a light as soon as her head hits the pillow. I remain with her for a while after she falls asleep. She looks peaceful in rest. I hope her dreams are kind to her. Her waking moments will be very challenging for a while.

Eventually, I do leave the room. There is a mystery to solve now, and while I am not lying to Sean when I say I do not consider myself a detective, I am also not lying when I say that caring people don’t allow themselves to ignore the plight of the innocent. Celeste is innocent, and until I find incontrovertible proof otherwise, so is Victor. If there’s anything I can learn that will shed light on what happened to him, then I want to learn it.

I head downstairs and return to the art closet in the basement. The room is entirely rearranged after the police look through it, but they don’t take anything with them that I can see. They must have decided that there’s no evidence here.

I happen to disagree with them. The art in this room speaks of a very different person than the art in Victor’s studio. This room is not a storage closet. It’s a shrine to a past life, a different Victor. Somewhere in here is the secret to his transformation and quite possibly the secret to his disappearance.

I start with the box of newspaper clippings. It makes sense to save copies of his old artwork, and if some of this is Elias Blackwood’s work, then I understand that too. But the newspaper clippings? That doesn’t make sense on the surface. There’s a reason he chose to save these.

The articles don’t appear to be organized in any meaningful way. Some of them are from dates long before Victor’s apprenticeship. I look through them, and I’m able to put together a rough timeline of Elias Blackwood’s life.

He begins—as many artists do—as a poor Bohemian living off of the kindness of friends and the charity of strangers. After struggling in this way throughout his early twenties, he strikes gold at the age of twenty-seven when one of his paintings is selected for the Monterey Art festival. After that, his star rises steadily until by his mid-thirties he is continued the premier neorealism artist of the United States. He is in his late thirties when he takes Victor as an apprentice and his mid-forties thirty years ago when my sister was here. That makes him about twenty years older than Victor.

He died twenty-eight years ago. I skim that article, and my eyes widen. It seems that Elias Blackwood didn't die of accident. He actually walked into the ocean and drowned.

Then I learn that he committed suicide in the very cove sitting below Victor’s house.

I gasp, and my hand flies to my mouth. The article shows a picture of the cove from the same perspective as Victor's painting. The point where the ocean meets the protected inlet is labeled "Vanishing Point" by the newspaper.

I stare at that image and slowly set the paper down. When Celeste says that, I assume it’s something esoteric, some concept created in her mind. At most, I assume it’s where the inlet “vanishes” into the ocean. In that second respect, I’m not wrong, but seeing evidence here that the spot was called the vanishing point before Celeste says that is shocking.

Could Celeste have seen this article? Probably not, but she may have overheard Victor talking about it. He may even have told her about it. Her mother died of pneumonia, and she never met Elias, but Victor’s grief has clearly affected her. It makes sense that she would attach strong emotions to this vanishing point even though she’s never experienced it personally.

I look through the box. There’s nothing helpful until I pull one article from the bottom that isn’t about Elias but instead about Victor. The headline reads YOUNG ARTIST CHANGES STYLE IN SPLIT FROM MENTOR’S TEACHINGS.

The publication is a journal called Bay Area Art Roundup. I look it up and learn it goes defunct twenty years ago. Perhaps I’ll pass that information to Sean later.

I read the article. It says that Victor Holloway, a noted portrait artist and student of the incomparable Elias Blackwood, has released a new series entitled Transcendence. The author goes on to explain that in this new semi-surrealist abstract style, Victor pushes the boundaries of perception and begs the question, what is reality?

It’s typical magazine schlock, but what I note is the end when the author mentions that after the death of Elias the year prior, Victor went into seclusion. He remarks that Victor’s emergence reveals a man and an artist changed forever by the tragedy they’ve suffered. “Only time will tell if this change is for the better,” the author opines.

More schlock, but it answers one crucial question. The impetus for the change in Victor’s style and personality is the loss of his mentor.

The article shows only a few grainy pictures of the Transcendence series, but the style is clearly the same as that Victor uses to make the statues in the living room and that I see reflected in the paintings his assailant—or perhaps he himself—ruins.

I must look further into Elias Blackwood. Victor’s descent into what I cannot help but call at least a mild form of madness seems to hinge on his disappearance. His “vanishing.”

I find nothing else helpful in the art closet. I am tempted to climb the stairs to Victor’s studio to see if I can find anything in there, but police caution tape still surrounds the room, and I’m afraid to disturb the scene only to learn the police were waiting to see who would be the first to return.

I’m probably being foolish. If they still considered the studio an active crime scene, we wouldn’t be allowed to remain in the house. Still, I didn’t like the way Detective Reyes looked at me during the interview. I can’t understand why I would be a suspect since witnesses corroborate the fact that I wasn’t present when the disappearance took place, but I also don’t trust police officers to follow any form of logic that normal people would follow.

Instead, I sit in the living room. Victor’s statues loom over me, but their appearance seems panicked and distraught rather than menacing. It’s as though they can tell that their maker has disappeared, and they are anxious for his safe return.

I am far too overwhelmed to sleep, so I make myself some tea and return to the living room. I replay every event that led up to Victor’s disappearance in my head and try to come to some hypothesis about what might have happened.

The strongest and most unfortunate possibility is that Victor disappeared of his own accord. His sanity was hanging by only the slightest of threads. I can’t discount the hypothesis that he simply had a mental break and left for parts unknown. Perhaps he will return some days later, thin and subdued, but sobered by his experience and purged of whatever demons plagued him.

But I don’t think so. He was unwell, but he loved his daughter. That brief glimpse in the kitchen was enough to show me that whatever his faults, he would never abandon Celeste. Perhaps he’d wander off for a few hours, but he would return.

No, something happened to him. Someone attacked him, and if they didn’t kill him, they kidnapped him.

But why? Who could have such a motive?

Evelyn is the obvious first choice. Sophie Lacroix—the murderer of my last employer—worked for my employer for over thirty years only to learn that he had liquidated her life’s savings. She took revenge on him. Like Evelyn, Sophie seemed to care deeply for his children, so Evelyn’s affection for Celeste is not an indicator of innocence.

What is an indicator of innocence is the fact that she lives in her own home with a husband who also works and children of her own, children to whom she returned tonight. She cares for Celeste, but she is also removed from her and from Victor. She has a life outside of this job that she has worked hard to maintain. It’s not proof of innocence, but it does raise doubts that will have to be resolved before I’m comfortable naming her the murderer or kidnapper.

The other suspect is Lisa Reinhardt. Celeste’s hatred of her was palpable. Prior to the beach outing, it was the strongest display of emotion I’d seen from her. There must be a reason for that, and I doubt that it’s just jealousy or ordinary dislike. I’ll have to ask Celeste about it when she’s ready.

My own impression of Lisa is as I relate to Detective Reyes. She’s uptight and self-important. Because of this, she has a fragile ego. She took Victor’s jibe about commercializing his art personally.

But then Marcus called Victor on his hypocrisy and Victor admitted to it. She won that little verbal sparring match. And if Victor makes her money being alive and completing art, then why on Earth would she want him lost or dead and not making art?

It’s a frustrating conundrum in which I find myself. The most likely suspect based on concrete evidence is Evelyn. The most likely suspect based on subjective analysis is Victor himself. The most likely suspect based on my own observations is Lisa. As for my intuition?

I don’t have one yet. This is still too new and shocking.

The only intuition I have is that this vanishing point is at the center of it. I must learn from Celeste exactly what that is. Does it refer specifically to the spot in the cove where Elias Blackwood committed suicide? Or does it refer to the general loss of people important to her? Or perhaps it means something else entirely?

I have finally fatigued myself with the whirlwind of thoughts my mind is dealing with. I head upstairs to my room and go to bed, leaving the door open so I can hear if Celeste wakes.

A part of me hopes that the dawn will rise on Victor’s safe return, or at least on some clarity surrounding his disappearance.

But I know better. Things are never that easy. If I ever learn what happened to Victor Holloway, it will be after grueling deduction and observation.

Fortunately, I am no stranger to this situation. I will find an answer. Celeste will receive justice, and so will Victor.

With that affirmation, I finally close my eyes and allow myself to sleep.