The two paintings found in Laurie’s van.
Jessica bent down on her haunches for a closer look. Like the paintings on display at the shop, they were both beach scenes and both impressive. Large in size. The five-grand price range, Jessica guessed. She got up with a groan, feeling the burn in her thighs, and made her way over to a large whitewashed bureau.
It looked like an old thrift store find that had been upcycled into the kind of trendy shabby chic piece of furniture you’d see on carefully curated Instagram feeds. The lower cupboard was used mainly to store art supplies but the pull-down top was more promising. It revealed shelves and drawers housing stationery, correspondence, and paperwork. Jessica found sales invoices, receipts of payments, proof of purchase for art materials, statements for Laurie’s business account, a check book and check slips, cell phone statements.
All of the woman’s business documents had been filed meticulously until two months ago. Jessica scanned the most recent bank statement and noticed a cash deposit of $2500 had been made by Laurie herself around a month before she’d vanished. Jessica opened one of the drawers and saw that it held pens and pencils and envelopes. The other drawer had more stationery junk. In among the paperclips and staples and Post-it notes and Scotch tape, Jessica found a little silver case with a black tourmaline stone glued to the front. The crystal was often used for protection and Jessica’s mind flashed to the dream catcher in the other bedroom. Laurie Simmonds had appeared to surround herself with trinkets and talismans to protect her from bad things yet had somehow ended up with a stranger rooting through her stuff, searching for clues as to what had happened to her.
Jessica opened the little case and saw it was a business card holder. One pocket held Laurie’s own cards, the other was for cards she’d been given by potential clients. Jessica flipped through them until she found what she was looking for.
A business card for a New York art gallery.
She turned it over. Jessica had never bothered with business cards of her own, preferring to scribble her digits on scraps of paper or palms of hands. But she could see this one was a quality product. Thick cream paper with “The Grand Street Gallery” in raised gold foil lettering. Underneath was an address in Brooklyn and a website address. A cell phone number and “Randal” were written on the back.
Jessica returned to the living room and rifled through the mail on the sideboard. The most recent cell phone statement showed no calls or texts. Maybe Renee was keeping the contract going in the hope Laurie would suddenly start using her cell again. The second to last statement—the one documenting the last calls and texts the missing woman had made—was also there. Laurie hadn’t called anyone on the day she vanished but she’d sent five texts. Two were presumably to Elizabeth Mann and Renee Simmonds. The other three were to a single cell phone number.
The same number as the one written on The Grand Street Gallery business card.
Jessica pulled her own cell phone from her bag and tapped in Randal’s number. Got a recorded message telling her the call could not be connected. Next, she pulled up the internet app and typed in the address for the gallery’s website, the one that had impressed Elizabeth Mann. It redirected to a domain company holding page. She called directory assistance and asked for information on the business at the address on the card. The operator told her it was a pizza delivery place. Jessica disconnected the call and confirmed what she’d been told with a Google Street View image of the premises on Grand Street in Williamsburg. Finally, she did an image search for “Randal” from The Grand Street Gallery.
There was nothing.
Nada.
Zilch.
Randal was a ghost. It was like he had never existed.
And the only person who could say otherwise—Laurie Simmonds—was nowhere to be found either.
8
LAURIE—TWO MONTHS AGO
It was the kind of day Laurie Simmonds loved. One of those days where nothing could possibly go wrong and only good things were allowed to happen.
The heat of the mid-morning sun pleasantly warmed her bare arms and legs but wasn’t so hot that she had to worry about her fair skin turning pink. It’d be another month before she’d have to break out the high-factor sun cream and her big floppy hat. The Pacific Ocean shimmered and the waves were just high enough to keep the surfers and paddle-boaters happy. Laurie dug her toes into the warm sand and put the finishing touches to the sketch she’d been working on, before lighting the joint she’d rolled earlier.
“Mind if I join you?”
She glanced up to see who had spoken to her, the bright glare forcing her to squint and shade her eyes. Laurie almost fainted when she saw who was standing there.
“Randal! Hi! Yes, please come sit.” She instinctively swapped the joint to her left hand and lowered it out of view, while patting the sand next to her with her right hand. Pot wasn’t illegal in California but Laurie wasn’t sure the owner of a fashionable New York gallery would approve. After all, their relationship was a fledgling business one and impressions—first or otherwise—were always important when working with new people.
Randal lowered himself onto the sand and crossed his legs. He was dressed casually in a short-sleeved Tommy Hilfiger shirt, chinos, and deck shoes with no socks. He reminded Laurie of her old high school boyfriend, Miles McCaw, although Randal was blond and Miles was dark. Like Miles, Randal’s style was laid-back preppy, while hinting at plenty of cash in the bank.
The sweet smell of the joint was embarrassingly noticeable over her lavender perfume and Randal leaned across and eyed it pointedly. “Are you going to share that or what?”
“Um, sure.” She passed him the joint. “Sorry, I didn’t think it’d be your kind of thing.”
“When in Rome, right?” Randal took the joint, inhaled deeply, and handed it back. “Anyway, you don’t seriously think I spent four years at art school without smoking some weed, do you?”
Laurie laughed. “Good point.” She licked her finger and pinched the lit end of the joint. Dropped it in her purse for later. “What’re you doing here, anyway? I thought our meeting was next week? Or did I get the days mixed up?”
Laurie had first met Randal a month earlier at a Venice art fair. The two-day event provided local artists with the opportunity to showcase ceramics, jewelry, paintings, and sculptures for the general public to browse and purchase. Randal had made a beeline for her stall on the first day and had talked passionately, and knowledgeably, about her work. Laurie had been thrilled when he’d offered to buy two of her paintings for $1000 each, cash in hand, right there and then, for his private collection. And she was even happier when he mentioned he was a gallery owner who was interested in including more of her work at an upcoming exhibition in Brooklyn.
They’d swapped business cards and Laurie had immediately checked out the website address listed on his card. To say she was impressed by what she saw was an understatement. The Grand Street Gallery was housed in a beautiful, ornate old building on a bustling Williamsburg street. It had once been a bank in a previous life and, while the outside was classic nineteenth-century architecture, the interior was minimal, modern and ultra-trendy, with strategically placed sculptures and paintings contrasting wonderfully with the stark decor.