Sinnerman (17 page)

“It’s not what you think,” I said.

“Isn’t it? You slept at his house last night. That tells me all I need to know.”

Damn Coop, and damn his big mouth. I was sure he was the one who let that information slip out.

“Nick, why did you call me?” I said.

“You know what, I don’t know.”

And the line went dead.

I wrapped my bath towel around me and fell back on the bed and closed my eyes. I tried to muster up some tears, but they didn’t come, and I didn’t know why. After all, we’d had a long relationship and I’d loved him—hadn’t I? I thought back to what memories I had in my life where I remembered shedding tears of any kind. I could count them on one and a half hands. It wasn’t that I lacked feeling or emotion—I just didn’t have the ability to express my feelings like most other people. My life felt more in control this way, and when I was in charge of my emotions, I could manage my life. I’d never understood how most women could cry as easily as the rain falling from a wispy cloud on a dark and dreary day. How did they do that?

It was moments like this when I was all alone in a room with nothing but my thoughts to keep me company that I needed to be careful. I had to watch the bottle I’d set out to sea to make sure it didn’t come loose or worse—pop off and spray my emotions in the air for all the world to see.

During our relationship Nick prompted me to get some counseling, and all I could think about was how it would feel to be shrink-wrapped by some head case in a stuffy office painted in depressed shades of beige and decorated with knock off leather office furniture that squeaked every time my butt shifted a couple of inches. He said I needed to go in order to get past my sister. But there was no getting past Gabrielle; for me, there was but one option—closure. And no shrink could provide that. That was something I had to do for myself.

“Where are you off to today then?”

The sound of Giovanni’s voice entering the room thrust me back into the world again. I pulled my towel until it was tight and twisted the corner into a thick point and shoved it into my cleavage and sat up.

“I need to get Boo,” I said. “He’s my—”

“Westie, yes I know.”

“I’m sure he’s confused about why he was left all alone last night.”

“That might not be entirely true,” he said.

Giovanni pressed a button on the wall box in my room. A few seconds later Lord Berkeley bounded into my room and hopped up on the bed with me. His tail wagged like a jogger on a treadmill at full speed. I grabbed his snowy ball of fur and held him tight to me. Behind him a woman entered the room that I hadn’t seen in some time, and I wished more than ever that I had taken the time to get dressed when I had the chance.

“It’s good to see you,” she said.

“And you, Daniela. I didn’t know you lived here.”

She shook her head.

“I’m just in town to pester my dear brother,” she said with a wink in his direction, “but I can see he’s found plenty of other things to occupy his time.” She looked at Giovanni. “Sloane will be staying for dinner, right?”

“That’s up to her.”

She looked at me with a gleam of hope.

“You must,” she said. “We need to catch up.”

I’d never known her to be so friendly, but then again, the last time we met had been under different circumstances, and now there was no threat to her life. That threat was now six feet under.

“Sure,” I said. “I’d love to.”

“Well, see you both later then. I’ve got some shopping to do.”

Daniela turned and darted out the door.

“What now?” Giovanni said.

I had no idea. I looked at Giovanni and then to Lord Berkeley who was asleep in my lap. Everything that seemed important to me in that moment was right there with me in that room.

***

It didn’t take much for Giovanni to convince me to make my stay an extended one. I thought I’d want to cry out in protest, but when he made the offer I accepted without much consideration.

My cell phone rang again, and this time I was dressed and ready. The name on the screen said The Pretty Pen.

“Hi Robert,” I said. “How are you?”

“Sorry it took so long to get back to you,” he said. “I have some news, but I’m afraid it will be of little use to you.”

“I’ll take whatever you can give me.”

“That paper you gave me isn’t manufactured anymore, and it hasn’t been for some time.”

“How long has it been discontinued—do you know?” I said.

“Twenty years, maybe more.”

I couldn’t believe it.

“Do you have any idea what it was used for?” I said.

“It wasn’t very popular, and since it was such a long time ago, none of my distributors have any records that will tell you who they sold it to.”

“So how did you know it hasn’t been made for so long?” I said.

“I scanned the paper and sent it to several different companies that I do business with. One of them is a specialty store that deals with art schools for the most part. The manager there had worked for the company for over thirty years and had a vague memory that they stocked that type of paper back in the day.”

“Thanks for the call; you’ve helped me a lot more than you realize,” I said.

I pressed the end button on my phone and went through the house until I found Giovanni. He was the center of attention in a huddle with a handful of men, all dressed in varied shades of black. When I approached I felt like I’d interrupted what appeared to be a serious conversation. I tried to backtrack out of the room, but Giovanni saw me—it was too late.

“Sloane,” he said, “come in.”

He flicked his right hand twice and the men around him dispersed, and in a few seconds it was like they were never there. A thick cloud of smoke permeated the air in the room, and it reeked of cigars.

“What is it?” Giovanni said.

“It’s nothing. Sorry to barge in on you.”

“We’re finished, and you’re never a bother.”

“Are you available for a little excursion?” I said.

“With you—always.”

Park City offered much more than some of the world’s most exclusive ski resorts. Summer brought on the arts festival, and that’s when all the galleries in town sparked to life. In addition to various shows and exhibits, the town was also home to a variety of art schools, which included the one Giovanni and I had just pulled up in front of.

The Park City Institute of the Arts was a school dedicated to producing the next mini-Michelangelos. It was housed in a brick building that looked like it was erected around the same time the rest of the town was, and it stood two stories high. When I exited the car, I looked up to the center window at the top, and could have sworn I saw someone peek out of it. It was then I realized I’d seen far too many episodes of Ghost Hunters.

The school had vacated for the summer, and the parking lot was empty except for a single car settled in next to ours. The front door had been propped open about the length of my foot and was secured in place with a brown cinder block. Giovanni pulled the door all the way back and we walked in.

I cupped my hands around the outside of my mouth and shouted, “Hello?”

“Back here,” a female voice said.

I followed the sound into an office where an older woman was hunched over a pile of supplies. When she saw me she rubbed both of her hands together and brushed them off on her tweed pants and stood.

“Forgive the mess,” she said, “summer is just about the only time I get to organize this place.”

“I understand.”

“What can I do for you two? Do you have children you’d like to enroll?”

Giovanni’s eyes darted to me and softened, and a huge grin covered his face.

“Oh no,” I said. “We aren’t, well, what I mean to say is, we don’t have any—”

“Children together,” Giovanni said.

I looked at him and mouthed the words thank you. My face burned like it was on fire.

“No children?” the woman said.

Giovanni glanced at me and smiled and winked and then looked back at the woman.

“Not yet,” he said.

His comment startled me, and I wondered if it was his idea of a joke, but there was something about the way he said it that didn’t sound like one at all. He just continued to smile, and I realized he’d said it to get a rise out of me. And he’d succeeded.

“Have you worked here long?” I said to the woman.

“Oh, about thirty years or so; why do you ask?”

“I wondered if you could take a look at a piece of paper and tell me if you recognize it.”

She held her hand out.

“Sure, I can do that.”

“Before I show it to you though, I need you to understand that it’s personal in nature, and you can’t talk about what you see with anyone,” I said.

She giggled like a child in grade school.

“These days there aren’t too many people for me to talk to hun, but if it makes you feel any better, I won’t breathe a word of it to anyone.”

Her beady, curious eyes reminded me of my grandmother, and I believed what she said was true. I unzipped my bag and took out the pink parchment and showed it to her. She turned it around in her hand without much heed to the words written on the front.

The woman looked at Giovanni and then aimed her finger at a box in the corner.

“Would you mind getting my glasses?”

He grabbed them and opened them up and she put them on.

“Much better,” she said. She rubbed the parchment in between her fingers and then said, “I haven’t seen paper like this for ages.”

“Do you recognize it?”

“It looks like its intended use was for artists so you’re on the right track there, but we’ve never used this at our school. Not as long as I’ve been here.”

Her words gripped me like a noose around my neck. This was the oldest art school in town. Maybe my hunch had steered me in the wrong direction.

“Well,” I said, taking the paper back from her, “it was worth a try. It was nice to meet you. Thanks for your time.”

“You bet, dear.”

Giovanni headed for the door and I followed and then turned back to ask one final question.

“One more thing before I go,” I said. “I know it’s a long shot, but are there any other schools around here from a couple decades ago?”

She took some time to think about it and then said, “Well, yes. There is one. But it’s been closed for many years.”

“Can you tell me where it is?”

“Right behind the library. It’s an old yellow building. Hasn’t been used for much of anything that I know of since it shut down.”

“Do you know the name of the owner or why it closed?” I said.

She laughed. “You’re really testing my memory today. Seems like the woman’s name was Laurel or Lauren if I remember right. And as to why it closed, well…all I can tell you is the rumor back then was that the owner up and left town with her new beau.”

“She was married at the time?”

The woman nodded.

“Had a child too. Can’t tell you whether the rumor was true or not, but I do know this—she never came back.”

***

Ten minutes later I stood with Giovanni in front of an old wood house and one thing was clear—it hadn’t been occupied for some time. A white picket fence in desperate need of a splash of color surrounded the perimeter of the property. A couple of the double-pane windows had holes in the glass about the size of a golf ball, and the front walk was overrun with weeds. From a distance I could see the door knob had been broken off and was sealed shut by a couple rusty nails that had been drilled into the frame.

I turned to Giovanni. “Are you up to this, because I’d understand if you wanted to wait in the car.”

His response was swift. He walked in front of me and squared off with the front door. After he gripped it with his fingers and pulled back a few times he said, “The door is sealed shut. Let’s try this another way.”

The first two windows Giovanni yanked on wouldn’t budge, so we went around to the back of the house, but it was to no avail. The windows were sealed so tight it was like they’d become one with the walls that surrounded them. Giovanni grabbed a rock the size of his fist and looked at me.

“Do you object?”

“Not at all. Clearly this isn’t a place of business anymore.”

I pulled my zip-up sweater from around my waist and held it out. “Here, use this. I don’t want you to cut yourself.”

At first I thought he was going to tell me what a tough guy he was, but then he grabbed me and propelled me forward and the next thing I knew I was enveloped in his arms, and I had no desire to disengage anytime soon.

Several seconds later he released me, and within a minute we were inside the decrepit building. From the moment we entered the place I was overcome by two things: a sensation of sheer exhilaration and the overwhelming smell of a dingy, stuffy old house. I sheathed my nose with my hand and looked around. Papers were scattered across the floor, paintings had been overturned, and the desk in the corner of the room had been deprived of its three pull-out drawers.

The place had been ransacked—and I guessed on more than one occasion. Just the sight of the destruction filled me with sadness, and I thought about what it must have been like back in its heyday when it was filled with the hopes and dreams of aspiring young artists who lined the halls with their work.

Giovanni reached down and scooped up a pile of papers. “The old woman was right,” he said. “There was a Laurel here at one time.”

He handed the stack of papers over to me. The one on top of the pile looked like an enrollment agreement for one of the students, and at the bottom of the page was a box with typed letters that said administrator and above it a signature that read Laurel Reids.

I set the papers on top of a thick layer of dust that had collected on the desk and scavenged around to see what else I could find. In the next room stacked against the wall, I noticed a row of several easels and a few wooden chairs. A few paintings remained, but they were ruined and haphazardly thrown to the floor. One rested with the painted side down. I scooped it up and turned it over, but it was too dirty to make out the picture at first. I brushed it off with the palm of my hand and then wiped my hands on my jeans. It wasn’t the most sanitary thing to do, but it was my only option. The oil painting was of a girl who couldn’t have been more than seven years old at the time. Her dark bangs felt in a loose manner along her forehead and into her eyes, but not so much that I couldn’t see them. She looked so young and innocent, but her eyes didn’t tell the story of a child filled with happiness, they reflected something else—a sadness of some kind, and I imagined tears welled up in those enormous brown eyes of hers.