“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.”
CHAPTER 41
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.