Page 50 of A Talent for Murder

Henry Kimball was in Philadelphia, parked across the street from a building owned by Rebecca Grubb, when his phone rang. The number said it was from Shepaug, Connecticut, and he instantly knew that it was bad news.

“Hello,” he said.

“Is this Henry?”

He recognized Lily’s mother’s voice. “It is. Hi, Sharon. What’s going on?”

“Oh, sorry to bother you, Henry, but David thought it would be worth giving you a call and I guess that I agreed with him. Lily’s gone missing. She took a walk into town this afternoon and she never returned.”

“Did she have her phone with her?”

“No, of course she didn’t. I’ve dialed her number, but she’d left it by the couch in the living room.”

“Did you call the police?”

“Well, we did. They were here earlier, and they were helpful, but I’m not sure there’s too much they can do right now.”

“What time did she take the walk into town?” he said.

“Same time she usually does. Probably around three o’clock. She’s usually back by five at the absolute latest.”

“And she walks through the woods, usually?”

“I think so. Maybe she’s there now. Maybe we should go look for her.” Sharon’s voice was rising in pitch.

“No, don’t go look for her,” he said. “The police can do that tomorrow morning, and if the police won’t do it, I’ll come down, okay?”

“Okay,” Sharon said. She sounded scared. Henry felt as though she knew what he did, which was that something bad had happened to Lily.

“You don’t think she’s taken the train up to see you, then?” she said, as though the idea had just occurred to her.

“Maybe,” he said. “If she shows up here, you’ll be the first to know, okay? Try to get some sleep, and call me first thing in the morning.”

“Thank you, Henry,” she said. “You’ve always been such a good friend.”

Henry sat in the car for a moment on the dark street, the phone in his hand. He tried to slow his thoughts down, to think rationally about what might have happened to Lily. If Ethan Saltz had gotten to her in Shepaug—and it sounded as though he had—then he had either killed her and left her, in which case she was probably lying in the woods, or he’d killed her and taken the body with him, in which case she was anywhere. Maybe in some dumpster or in a shallow grave that would never be uncovered. Or maybe he had taken her alive. If it was one of the first two options, then there was nothing much he could do now except make it his goal in life to find Ethan Saltz and make him pay. But if Lily was still alive—and until he knew otherwise, he would make the assumption that she was—then it was crucial that he find Ethan as soon as possible.

The fact that he was already in Philadelphia was a good thing. Before leaving from Cambridge to drive down here Henry had done research into the name that Lily had given him. Robert Charnock, owner of Charnock Gallery. It seemed possible, maybe even probable, that Saltz was Charnock, if for no other reason than the fact that there was so little information about Charnock and so few pictures of him online. He owned a high-end gallery, which would make one think he had a very public presence, but it was clear he avoided exposure. There had been, however, a wedding announcement from six years earlier—Charnock married a woman named Rebecca Grubb. She, unlike her husband, had a fairly robust online presence. She was a divorcée with two children. She was on the boards of several Philadelphia arts institutions, including the Mütter Museum, and she ran her own charitable organization called SEAP, or Society for the Encouragement of the Arts in Philadelphia. Henry found her address, a house in Rittenhouse Square, one of the tonier parts of Philadelphia.

And that was where he was sitting, on a street of brick town houses that reminded him of Beacon Hill in Boston. His plan had been to sit and watch the front entrance. It was just past eight at night, and he was hoping to catch sight of Charnock coming or going, hoping to get a good enough look at him to see if he really was Ethan Saltz. But now that he’d gotten the phone call from Sharon, everything had changed. He got out of the car and crossed the road, going up the stone steps to Rebecca Grubb’s front door.

There was a very old knocker on the door in the shape of a lion’s head and he rapped several times, then waited. Just as he was about to knock again, the door opened a crack and a woman peered out from behind the door chain. Her skin had the glossy look of someone who had just removed all her makeup. “Can I help you?” she said.

“Hi, you must be Rebecca Grubb. I’m very sorry for the late call, but I was hoping to speak to your husband.”

“Robert’s not here right now. What is this about?”

“I’m a private investigator.” Henry pushed one of his fake cards—identical to his real card but with a different name—through the crack in the door and she took it but didn’t look at it. “I’m employed by someone who has been conned out of a great deal of money, and in my investigation it has become clear that the prime suspect is someone who has also had business dealings with your husband. Sorry for being so vague, but the reason I’m here bothering you is because I thought your husband would like to know as soon as possible that he might be in some financial jeopardy. I tried to find a phone number for him, but...”

“Yes, he likes to remain anonymous,” Rebecca said. “He’s really not here tonight. He’s scouting for antiques on the Maine coast.”

“Is it possible for you to give me his cell phone number? I really do think he’d like to hear what I have to say.”

He watched her think about it. She had a bland but pretty face, her hair pulled back and held with a floral-print headband, and Henry thought that he’d never seen such a smooth forehead on someone who wasn’t a child. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I don’t give out my husband’s cell number, but I’m happy to get a message to him from you.”

“Do you think he’ll be at the gallery tomorrow?”

“Doubtful,” she said, “but his schedule changes all the time. Chris Salah will be there, though—he’s the one who really runs the gallery. In fact, he’s probably a much better person for you to speak with than my husband if it has anything to do with a client of the gallery.”

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