Page 44 of A Talent for Murder

I hadn’t brought the yearbook with me, but I’d photocopied the inscription, and I handed her a copy now. She laughed while she read it.

“I was a pretentious little shit.”

“Why did you call him the Talented Mr.Saltz?”

“Oh, from that Matt Damon movie about the guy who kills his friend and takes over his life. We’d both seen it—not together, I think—but Ethan told me how much he loved it, and how it was probably something he’d do himself one day. He was always saying things like that. In a jokey way. Like, ‘If I haven’t buried someone alive by the age of thirty, then I’ll be incredibly disappointed.’ That kind of thing.” She was still looking at the photocopy. “That’s why I made that joke here about the Art Club picture. After it was taken, he said that in fifty years the picture would be in the middle of some book about his life of horrible crime, his face circled, and I would just be some anonymous student next to him. I thought it was funny, clearly, because I remembered him saying that. But you’re here now, probably because he is some genuine psychopath and he wasn’t actually making jokes at the time.”

“I don’t know about that,” I said. “He does seem to have disappeared, which makes me think that maybe he is living under an assumed name. Did you ever talk about that?”

“You mean other than him saying that thing about killing a friend and taking over his life?”

“Yeah. Like, did he ever mention what name he would use as a pseudonym? Did he ever make a joke about that?”

She spun the pen in her hand while she thought. I looked down at her still-open sketchbook and saw that she had been drawing quick sketches of owls. “Not really. Nothing jumps to mind.”

“Why did you sign the yearbook as the unnamed narrator?”

“Yeah, I was wondering that myself. Just being pretentious, I guess. I was a fan of Rebecca when I was in high school, the book Rebecca, and the narrator didn’t have a name. So maybe it was that. I’m sorry I’m not being more helpful. I’ve always been curious about what happened with Ethan. It was a brief and platonic relationship, but it left a mark.”

“Was it platonic for a reason?” I said. “I mean, did you ever wonder if the relationship would turn romantic?”

She looked at the dregs of her coffee and said, “I remember thinking it was strange he wasn’t trying to get into my pants, only because he was a teenage boy, but he told me once that if he slept with me then he’d have to kill me. Like I mentioned already, it was the type of thing he was always saying. Also, I wasn’t calling myself a lesbian back then, exactly, but the writing was on the wall. I never really thought of him that way.”

I finished my tea, thinking about what other questions I had. Even though Alice didn’t know where Ethan was, she still might help in coming up with what name he might have picked for an alias. “You said you both liked that movie The Talented Mr.Ripley. Did he have any other favorite films or books that you remember?”

“Strangely, I kind of remember he had lowbrow tastes. His favorite film was Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Like, by far.”

“What about books?”

Alice thought. “Sorry, I can’t remember ever talking about books.”

“Celebrities he loved? Historical figures? If he’s changed his name, then maybe he changed it to something that has meaning for him.”

Alice was shaking her head. “Sorry. All I remember was that he liked Ferris Bueller and he liked talking about himself.”

I stood, thanking her and putting my coat back on, then I realized what it was that was strange about her appearance.

“Hey,” I said. “You don’t have any tattoos.”

She smiled up at me. “That you can see.”

“Right,” I said. “That I can see.”

“Actually, you’re right. I have zero tattoos.”

“That’s strange, probably, for a tattoo artist. Don’t you think?”

“Probably,” she said. “I’m not against tattoos, obviously. I think I just have commitment issues.”

When I got back to Shepaug, I went onto my computer and looked up Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, a film I had never seen despite knowing a fair amount about it. I could picture scenes, Ferris at a parade in a city, and some teacher droning out the names of his students. Even knowing just that much, it seemed to me to be an odd choice as Ethan Saltz’s favorite film of all time. The Talented Mr.Ripley made more sense, but I stayed on the Ferris Bueller page. Because I had nothing much better to do, I opened my notebook and wrote down all the character names from Ferris Bueller, then systematically I searched for all the names, adding words like “artist” or “forger” or “scam.” It was a long shot at best, but one thing I’d learned definitively about Ethan from Henry’s conversation with the brother was that he’d been fascinated by art, and particularly the commerce of it. It wasn’t an enormous stretch to think that those enthusiasms would have lasted into adulthood.

Nothing really jumped out at me online. There were no Sloane Peterson galleries involved in forgery scandals, no notorious art world figures named Cameron Frye. I went back to the IMDb page and read the trivia associated with the film. One of the tidbits was that the Charlie Sheen character—apparently a druggy in the police station who flirts with Ferris’s sister, Jeanie—was given a name in the shooting script, although it isn’t mentioned in the film. That name was Garth Volbeck.

I entered “Garth Volbeck” and “artist” into my search engine and the first item that came up was a listing from the Charnock Gallery in Philadelphia. Two abstract paintings for sale by an artist named Gareth Vollbeck. I felt something in my chest as I clicked on the link. It brought me to the Charnock Gallery website, a very minimal site, but in a way that made me think the gallery didn’t need the website as opposed to its being a gallery that couldn’t afford a good site. Besides a few pages that showed available art pieces, there was just the landing page, which provided the name of the gallery and its address. There were no hours, since viewings were only available by appointment. And there was no photograph of the gallery owner, Robert Charnock.

I searched under that name and didn’t find any photographs cropping up on other parts of the web except for one group photograph from a fundraiser in Philadelphia. The man who was identified as Robert Charnock was looking away from the camera. He had short dark hair and wide shoulders. I wasn’t sure, but it could possibly be Ethan Saltz.

I did searches for the artist named Gareth Vollbeck, and hardly anything came up, the only mentions being ones associated with the Charnock Gallery. The whole thing seemed off. Actually, it didn’t seem off. It felt as though I’d possibly found Ethan Saltz. I called Henry, and he picked up right away. I told him what I’d found out, and he said he’d start to investigate right away. I could tell from his voice that he was as excited by the possibility as I was.

---