Page 35 of Insidious Threats
“Right, in the Hudson Valley. Mom was going to spend Christmas with my Aunt Rhiannon because Uncle Simon just died. But Mom and Dad had plans to celebrate New Year’s Eve together. He never showed up, and we haven’t heard from him since.”
“But until then, through the fall, he was in contact?”
“Not a ton, but some. The last communication was a package. He sent Mom some charcoal sketches through the mail just before Christmas. After that, it was radio silence. Then John Porter showed up at the house asking a lot of questions about where Dad was and how to reach him. Mom said he was very insistent. Pushy, is how she put it.”
Sasha tried, and failed, to imagine someone pushing Gillian around. Ellie must have read her mind because she laughed.
“Right. Mom sent him packing.”
“Did she tell him where your Dad was?”
“I doubt it.”
That tracked. If the partnership knew about the artists’ colony, she imagined they’d have given her that lead when they asked for her help.
“Did she let your Dad know about Porter’s visit?”
“She called and left a vague message, but he never called her back. We don’t know if he got it.”
“You haven’t reached out to the artists’ colony again? Or visited?”
Ellie frowned. “My mom is in some sort of frozen denial state. And I’m not sure it’s my place to make those decisions for her. That’s one reason I’m glad the firm went to you. If you do it … I don’t have to get into it with my mom.”
Sasha understood. Mother-adult-daughter dynamics could be tricky, even in the absence of a crisis.
“Is there a reason you haven’t called the police?” She kept her tone gentle and nonjudgmental, even though it was an absolute no-brainer to report a missing person to the authorities.
Ellie snorted. “Oh, there are lots of reasons. How much time do you have?”
“As much time as it takes.”
“Well, the main one is we’re not sure he didn’t do anything unethical before he left the firm. Like siphon off client funds or take documents he wasn’t supposed to take or … I don’t know, something shady.”
“Why would you suspect that? Did he say something?”
“Not exactly. But we wondered. Especially after he sent those sketches home.”
“Really? Why?”
“You should see them for yourself. We’re storing them in Dad’s studio,” Ellie told her.
She pointed across the courtyard to a stone structure that looked like it might be a pool house. But unless Sasha’s memory was failing her, the pool house and the pool were behind Gillian’s English garden on the far side of the house. She fell into step beside Ellie.
“What was the studio originally?”
“A summer kitchen.” She ducked her head, as if she thought the grandeur of her parents’ estate was off-putting.
“So the house must be very old. It predates central air conditioning?”
“Oh, yeah. The buildings were all built between 1886 and 1894.”
They hurried through the courtyard toward what Sasha hoped would be the warmth of the studio. They reached the small stone structure, and Ellie dug a keyring out of her pocket, unlocked the door, and stepped inside.
Sasha followed, curious to see the inside of Cinco’s studio. She looked around wide-eyed while Ellie closed the door, turned on the lights, and adjusted the temperature on a thermostat on the wall.
“We keep it on just high enough that the pipes won’t freeze. But it’ll warm up fast,” Ellie assured her.
Sasha nodded, barely registering Ellie’s words. She’d never been inside a professional artist’s studio before. But she imagined Cinco’s hobbyist space would put most of them to shame.
