CHAPTER TEN

I call Sean first thing in the morning. He answers on the first ring, far more alert than he usually is at this time of day. “Hey, Mary. I’m afraid I don’t have any new information yet. Other than what I sent you before we came here, there doesn’t seem to be anything floating around out there about Annie. Have you had a chance to talk to Victor?”

“You haven’t heard?”

He pauses. “Christ in Heaven, Mary. Don’t tell me he’s dead.”

“I very much hope not.”

Another pause. “Why does that sound worse somehow? What happened?”

“He’s vanished.”

“What do you mean, he’s vanished.”

“There aren’t very many possible meanings to that, Sean.”

“All right, all right,” he says in an injured tone. “So he’s missing.”

I rub my temples. “Yes.”

“Well, shite. That complicates things. Foul play?”

“I believe so, yes. I was at Victor’s private beach with Celeste yesterday morning when the housekeeper alerted us to his disappearance. His studio had been torn apart and one of the window shattered. There was a bottle of whiskey in the room, so the initial assumption was that he had a meltdown, but we found no sign of him, and the neighbors didn’t see anything.”

“What about the housekeeper?”

“She’s the most likely suspect,” I admit, “but she’s not acting like a suspect.”

“Neither did Sophie Lacroix,” he reminds me.

"Actually, she did. I just didn't see it at first. Perhaps it's the same with Evelyn, but if she's acting like a suspect, it's differently from how Sophie did. You should look into her, just in case. Her name is Evelyn Torres."

“That’s a very common name.”

“She’s Hispanic, in her mid-thirties, with a dark complexion. She has a husband and young children and doesn’t live in the house.”

“You mean she lives in her own house?”

“Yes.”

“All right. That’s enough for now. Besides the housekeeper, who have you got in mind?”

“Victor’s dealer, Lisa Reinhardt.”

“Dealer? Like drug dealer?”

“Art dealer.”

“Artists don’t ‘have’ dealers. They have agents. Is she his agent?”

“He introduced her as a dealer.”

“Then she’s someone he’s trying to sell to. That’s important to know because an agent relies on their clients to survive. Dealers can pick and choose who they work with.”

That does challenge my earlier conclusion that Lisa couldn’t have allowed Victor to disappear. “She had dinner with Victor and Marcus Fairfax two nights ago. He’s the owner of the Carmel Art Gallery.”

“Got it. I’ll look into all of them.”

“Do that. Also, look into Elias Blackwood.”

“That’s one lead I can close right away. He’s dead. He committed suicide twenty-eight years ago.”

“Yes, by walking into the ocean. Victor went into seclusion immediately after that and emerged a year later as a changed man. And not for the better.”

Sean chuckles. “Did you ask me to look into Elias so you could brag that you already had?”

“Much as I love bruising your ego, no. The timeline is suspicious. Annie arrived here thirty years ago. Victor painted her portrait. Elias was a fixture in Victor’s life, which means he would have known Annie too. Annie disappears again, then Elias commits suicide. After that, Victor becomes a manic-depressive person who paints in the abstract because ‘reality is a facade.’”

“And then he marries a woman and has a daughter with her. He can’t have gone too far off the deep end.”

“I wish I could agree with you that women only marry sensible men.”

“Fair enough. So this is related to Annie then, not the current mystery.”

“Actually, it’s related to both.”

“Both?”

I take a deep breath. “The newspaper article I read in the art closet labels the mouth of the inlet that feeds Victor’s cove as the Vanishing Point.”

“Does that mean something?”

“It’s where Elias killed himself.”

“Hold on. Elias killed himself in Victor’s cove?”

“He did. And both Elias and Celeste have referred to people vanishing. When Victor went missing, she wailed that he’d gone to the vanishing point.”

“I assume the police searched the cove.”

“They did, but I don’t know if the cove itself is what’s important. I think that vanishing is the word they use when someone disappears from their life, and I suspect it specifically refers to something tragic or traumatic.”

“I understand what you’re saying, Mary,” he says patiently, “but that’s not really a connection.”

“Not yet. You’re going to find out if it is. And if it’s not, then yes, it’s just a lead to Annie.”

“I assume you want me to prioritize finding Victor if I have to choose.”

I pause, but only briefly. “Yes. Finding him is more important.”

“Right. I’ll keep working. In the meantime…”

“I know, I know. Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Good girl.”

He hangs up, and I take a deep breath and release it in a heavy sigh. The play is in motion now. I can only hope—

“Get out!”

Celeste’s voice awakens some primal protective instinct in me. I am inside the house and rushing toward the stairs before I register my movement.

"Get the hell out of here, you fucking whore!"

I sprint downstairs and arrive to see Evelyn holding Celeste back. Celeste is purple with rage, kicking and snarling at Lisa Reinhardt, who stands in the foyer, shellshocked.

“Get out of my house! I’ll kill you! I’ll fucking kill you, bitch!”

Evelyn picks Celeste up off of the floor and carries her away. I rush to Lisa and grasp her arm firmly. “Let’s go outside.”

“I just wanted to—”

“Outside.”

I lead her outside. In the house, I can still hear Celeste screaming. I keep my hand on Lisa’s arm until we’re a good twenty yards away from the door. Then I release her and say, “I’m sorry about that.” I’m not really sure if I am, but there’s no gain from impoliteness right now.

“Yeah,” Lisa says, reaching into her purse. “It’s all right.”

She withdraws a cigarette and lights it. Her hands shake badly, and it takes several tries, but finally, she takes a grateful puff. She offers me one, and I shake my head. When she replaces the pack into her purse, she says, “So she blames me. Guess I’m not surprised.”

“Why does she hate you so much?” I ask.

Lisa scoffs. “Who the hell knows? I’ve worked with artist types for thirty years, and I still don’t know how the hell their minds work.” She catches herself and offers a half-hearted, “Sorry. I’m just a little shaken up.”

“I don’t blame you.” I hesitate before probing, but if I am to find gold, I must be willing to dig. “However, I find it hard to believe that there’s no reason for her behavior.”

Lisa scoffs again. “She thinks I’m the reason for her father’s stress.”

“Are you?”

She sighs heavily. “I don’t see it that way, but I don’t know. Maybe he does. Look, I’m a dealer. I have to sell stuff. Victor’s an artist. Things like food and shelter are inconveniences, not necessities. He doesn’t like when I tell him that such and such won’t work if he wants his art to sell. It’s not about money, right? It’s about beauty and art and legacy and all that other crap.”

“So you two argue about his work?”

“Every artist argues with me about their work. I’ve handed people one-hundred-thousand-dollar checks that I’ve earned for them selling their paintings, and they’ll start an argument about how they can’t ‘suppress their vision’ anymore.” She releases another sigh, then gives me a tight smile. “But that’s the job.”

“I still don’t see what this has to do with Celeste.”

She takes a deep drag on her cigarette. I see her hands are shaking again. “It’s really not my place to comment on Victor’s parenting, but he’s made damned sure the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

“How so?”

She takes another puff, then says, “She’s moody, she’s manic-depressive, she has a very… I’m not sure how to put this… different understanding of reality. To Victor and Celeste, art is life. It’s everything. More important than eating, breathing, paying bills, everything. They harbor deep resentment to anyone who suggests that anything should ever get in the way of their artistic expression. Victor resents me because I’m the voice of reason who has to tell him that an abstract painting of someone disemboweling themselves and laughing about it isn’t going to pay his mortgage. Celeste is a child, so she hears us argue and mistakes Victor’s resentment for hate. So she amplifies that hate because he’s her father and the only family she has.”

She drops her cigarette and stamps it out, then stoops to pick up the butt. “That’s my opinion, of course. I could be wrong, but that’s what it feels like to me.”

Her curt tone and stiff shoulders make it clear to me that this subject is closed. I still think she’s deflecting and avoiding an honest answer to my question, but I leave it for now. “Has Victor always been this way?”

“More or less. It got worse when his mentor died.”

“Elias Blackwood.”

“Yes.” She raises her eyebrow. “Are you familiar?”

“I heard him mention Elias once.”

“Ah. Well, yes, it got worse after Elias died.”

“They were close then.”

“In the most dysfunctional way I’ve ever seen two people be close, yes.”

This is surprising to me. “Really?”

"Oh yeah. Elias was like Victor is now but without the anxiety. That made him even more demanding and inflexible. Anything that didn't meet his standards of beauty or brilliance was worthless. There was no in-between. Hell, I used to have Victor crying on my shoulder because of something Elias said to him." She pulled a new cigarette from her pack and lit it. "Good times."

“Was there anyone else in Victor’s life?” I ask, “someone he lost that might have contributed to his behavior?” It’s as close as I want to get to asking explicitly about Annie.”

“Well, Julia, but he didn’t really change after losing her. Or rather, he changed when he had her and went right back to who he is now when she passed on. She was a smart woman. If she hadn’t gotten sick, things would be so much easier now.”

She takes a heroic puff from this cigarette, then puts it out. “I should get going. I pushed back a lot of work to come check on Celeste. My mistake.” She smiles one last time. I can’t tell if the frost in that expression is for me or just general irritation. “It was nice talking to you, Mary.”

She stalks off, leaving me with more questions than answers. I suppose it’s not all that surprising to learn that Victor’s relationship with Elias wasn’t entirely healthy. It certainly explains why his personality shifted permanently upon his loss.

But I still don’t know what might have finally pushed Victor over the edge. I still don’t know where Annie fits into all of this. I still don’t know who might have been motivated to hurt Victor.

One thing I am certain of. She avoided giving me a real answer to why Celeste hates her. She’s hiding something, and whatever it is, I feel that uncovering it will solve this mystery.