Portrait in Crime, Page 2

  Tommy motioned them over to where he was standing with a tall, elegant woman.

  “Nancy Drew, Sasha Petrov, this is my mother, Cynthia Gray,” Tommy said. “And you’ve met Bess.”

  Nancy shook hands with the handsome older woman, who was dressed in layers of flowing peach silk. “Nice to meet you.”

  “And you,” Cynthia responded warmly. “I’m glad you could come,” she said, refocusing her attention to include Sasha.

  “We want to help in any way we can,” Sasha offered.

  “Well, then, why don’t we go into my office?” Cynthia invited, leading them across the room. “I’m afraid I won’t be much help, but I’ll tell you everything I know.”

  “Um, Nancy,” Bess called. “Do you need me? Tommy wants to show me some of Christopher Scott’s work.”

  “Good idea,” Nancy said, as she and Sasha followed Cynthia down a hall and into a quiet and perfectly decorated office. Cynthia had hung a few paintings on the taupe fabric-covered walls. A small bronze statue was spotlighted next to the door. “Your gallery is beautiful,” Nancy said sincerely.

  “Thank you.” Cynthia shrugged. “It’s really just a hobby for me, but I have fun with it. Now, what can I tell you? Tommy says you’re willing to help me.”

  “Well,” Nancy began, “Tommy said you were worried about Christopher Scott, and we’d like to know why specifically.”

  Cynthia nodded. “I am. He’s absolutely disappeared. I have a major show of his work coming up in a few days and I have to have him here!”

  “You’ve tried contacting any family members?” Sasha asked.

  “Bob has. Bob Tercero is my manager. He works out all the details around here.”

  “He’s the one who arranged Nicholas’s funeral?” Nancy asked.

  Cynthia nodded. “Chris didn’t even show up for that.” She stopped suddenly. “Maybe you could go to Chris’s studio to check it out for clues. Bob went by there, but maybe a detective could find something that he missed.”

  “I’ll go,” Nancy agreed, “but first I should probably get some more information about Christopher. Did he say anything about going on a trip?”

  “Oh, goodness, I have no idea!” Cynthia said, surprised. “You know, I can’t remember the last time I spoke to him.

  “I’m sorry, you must think I’m crazy,” Cynthia continued sheepishly. “Bob really runs the show around here. I just stop in and put the finishing touches on things. Most of my dealings with Chris were worked out between Nicholas and Bob.” She wrinkled her nose. “Nicholas Scott was not the most pleasant person to deal with. Bob was a friend of his. It was a lot easier to let the two of them take care of business.”

  “Is Bob around?” Sasha asked.

  Cynthia picked up the phone. “Bob? Could you come to my office, please?”

  While they waited, Cynthia said, “We’ll help you any way we can. It’s just me, Bob, and our receptionist, Cecilia. I’ll tell her to cooperate with you, too. She’s a college student and just works summers. I’ll introduce you on the way out.”

  A few minutes later a broad, dark-skinned man with black eyes and hair breezed into the room. Cynthia introduced him to Nancy and Sasha and excused herself.

  “I’m glad you’re here to help,” Bob Tercero said, settling himself behind Cynthia’s desk. “I’m worried sick about Christopher.”

  “I know this may seem silly,” Nancy began carefully, “but I’m afraid I’m a little confused. You’re worried sick, and Cynthia is, too, but still no one seems to think this is serious enough to take to the police.”

  “Well, Christopher is famous for dropping out of sight. Most of the townies just assume he’s out of the country.”

  “And?”

  “And . . . I don’t know,” Bob said, exhaling slowly. “It seems like the only reasonable explanation, but I talked to Nicholas the day he died, and he told me Chris was working furiously.”

  “Cynthia tells me you and Nicholas were friends,” Nancy said.

  Bob nodded. “Good friends. We did quite a lot together.”

  Nancy glanced over at Sasha. Bob didn’t seem to be in mourning for his “good friend.”

  “Well, then, perhaps you can tell us how to get to the Scotts’ house?”

  “I can do better than that,” Bob said eagerly. “I’ll take you there.”

  Nancy shook her head. “No, thanks. It’s nice of you to offer, but the fewer people, the easier any investigation is.”

  Bob’s smile faded.

  “Please don’t take it as an insult,” Nancy said. “It’s just the way I work.”

  “I thought I could help you,” Bob said stiffly. “It’s not as though Nicholas had many friends. In fact, toward the end, I may have been his only one. He wasn’t a very nice person, you know.”

  “But he was a good friend of yours?” Sasha asked doubtfully.

  “Well, we had a working relationship. Christopher is the gallery’s most important client, so I devoted a lot of my time to working with the Scotts.”

  “You said he wasn’t a nice person,” Nancy prompted. “What exactly did you mean?”

  “I mean he was nasty. He was arrogant. He had a violent temper, and he treated people terribly.”

  Bob placed his arms on the desk and leaned across them. “In fact, Nicholas had so many enemies, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if someone had decided to get rid of him for good!”

  Chapter

  Three

  ARE YOU SAYING someone murdered Nicholas Scott?” Nancy asked.

  “Uh, no, not really,” Bob said, suddenly defensive. “I only meant that there are people around who hated him enough to kill him.”

  Nancy studied Bob more carefully. He was acting very oddly. First he said Nicholas was a friend, then he changed his mind and told them Nicholas was a business associate and that he was nasty and selfish. Then he came out with the statement that Nicholas could have been murdered and then quickly reversed himself, saying it was an accident. It seemed as if Bob was trying to slander his friend without actually doing it. Nancy wasn’t sure why, especially since Nicholas’s character wasn’t the issue. It couldn’t have anything to do with Christopher’s disappearance.

  “So there was nothing strange about his death?” she asked.

  “No. The police looked into it very carefully,” Bob replied. “The investigation is closed. It was an accident.”

  Nancy decided not to question Bob further, and she and Sasha stood up to go. Bob escorted them back down the hall. “This is one of Scott’s recent paintings,” he said, gesturing toward the huge pink canvas hanging in the main room.

  As Nancy and Sasha stood studying the painting again, Bob asked suddenly, “I wonder if you could do me a favor when you check out the Scott place? One of Christopher’s paintings is missing.

  “It’s called Vanity,” Bob continued. “It’s an oil that Chris did about six months ago of a woman sitting in front of a mirror, combing her hair. You can’t miss it; she’s a pretty girl with long red hair. It’s a very striking image.”

  “How do you know it’s missing?” Sasha asked.

  “It belongs to the gallery. We bought it, but Christopher had a hard time parting with it, so we let him keep it for a while. I was at the house when I was making arrangements for the funeral, and I noticed it wasn’t in its usual place.”

  Nancy looked skeptical. “Isn’t it odd for a painter to sell something but keep it in his house?”

  “Well, I think he was doing another portrait, or maybe a whole series, and he needed the Vanity for reference,” Bob replied. “Christopher is a little odd, you know. A genius, but a little odd.”

  “Was there anything unusual about the painting?” Nancy asked. “Any reason why it would be missing?”

  Bob shook his head. “Nothing unusual. Well,” he corrected himself, “Christopher doesn’t usually paint portraits. He’s really a landscape painter, but I don’t think that could be a reason for the painting to be missing.�
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  “What about the model?” Nancy asked. “Could he have given it to her?”

  “Nah.” Bob dismissed the idea. “Besides, we paid for it.”

  “Maybe we should check with her anyway,” Sasha ventured.

  “Good luck!” Bob replied. “People here come and go all the time. I don’t have a clue how you’d even begin to look for her.”

  “She doesn’t live around here?” Nancy asked.

  “No, she was just someone who was here briefly. I don’t even know what her name is.”

  Nancy nodded. “Thank you for your time,” she said.

  “No problem. Thank you for helping us look for Christopher. If we don’t find him, it’s going to be a problem for the gallery.”

  Nancy and Sasha found Bess and Tommy outside. After Tommy offered to lead the way to the Scotts’ place, Nancy signaled Bess that she wanted to talk to her. The girls jumped into Nancy’s car, and Sasha reluctantly joined Tommy in his jeep. They drove through the center of the bustling beach town on its wide main street, which was lined with boutiques and quaint shops.

  After Nancy told Bess about her conversations with Bob and Cynthia, Bess said, “Wait. Is this mystery about Christopher or his nephew?”

  “I’m not sure,” Nancy admitted. “I’ll have to check out Nicholas’s death just to be sure. This mystery may be more interesting than I thought.”

  The girls followed Tommy out of town and into the residential area. They passed huge old-fashioned houses set back on perfectly manicured lawns edged with masses of summer flowers in every color.

  “This is such a beautiful little town,” Bess said as they went along. The road was shaded by a canopy of large trees that looked as though they’d been there forever.

  “It smells so clean, just a hint of the sea in the air,” Nancy added.

  As they drove the houses thinned out and were set even farther back from the road. Soon massive hedges blocked the girls’ view of the properties completely.

  Following Tommy, Nancy turned her silver Honda into a long, private driveway. No house was visible from the road.

  “Look at this place!” Bess gasped as she watched a sprawling wooden house rise from the sloping, grassy yard. It had a gray gabled roof and a deck that wrapped around the second story. “It’s a mansion!”

  The two cars pulled up in front of the house.

  “Just how do we get in?” Sasha asked, slamming his door. “I thought the whole point was that no one’s home.”

  “That’s easy,” Tommy said, pushing back a branch of one of the blue hydrangeas that lined each side of the front walk. He stooped and came up with a key. “Nicholas always kept his key hidden here under the front step.”

  They split into two groups to search the house. The guys checked out the downstairs, and Nancy and Bess took the second floor. They started in the master bedroom, Christopher’s room.

  “Do you think Christopher could have killed Nicholas and skipped town?” Bess asked, kneeling to peer under the queen-size bed.

  “Possibly,” Nancy replied. “But if he did, it doesn’t look like he took anything with him.” Nancy showed Bess the bathroom, where the sink was covered with toiletries. “He would have left in an awful hurry.”

  Bess returned to the bedroom and opened the closet door. “You’re right. This closet is stuffed. If he has more clothes than these, I don’t know where he would have put them. What are we looking for?”

  “I don’t know,” Nancy said. She swung the door to the bedroom open and checked behind it. “Anything unusual.”

  The girls walked down the hall to search the next room.

  “This must have been Nicholas’s bedroom,” Bess commented in a low voice.

  “It doesn’t look as if anyone has cleaned it since the accident,” Nancy commented.

  The girls searched the smaller bedroom quickly, sifting through the clothes draped over the back of an overstuffed chair in one corner and checking the drawers and surfaces.

  “Just the usual stuff,” Nancy said when they had finished.

  After the girls searched the guest rooms, they headed back downstairs to meet Sasha and Tommy in the entrance hall.

  “Nothing,” Tommy reported. “Everything looks normal.”

  “And no portrait of the red-haired girl,” Sasha added. “I checked everywhere.”

  “It’s strange,” Nancy mused as they left the house. “Only two paintings in the whole place. And nothing to indicate a painter lives or works here. No oils, canvases, nothing.”

  “They’d be in his studio,” Tommy said. “It’s a separate building.”

  Nancy snapped her fingers. “Of course. I should have known. Can we go there and investigate now?”

  “It’s six o’clock,” Bess said. “What about tonight?”

  “Oh, that’s right.” Nancy glanced at her watch. “We’re going out tonight. But this shouldn’t take much longer here.”

  “Nancy,” Bess protested, “I promised George we’d be back by six. We’re late already. Besides, I still have to decide what I’m going to wear tonight.”

  “The studio’s just over that way,” Tommy said, pointing. “Why don’t I take Bess back to your aunt’s and you two can check out the studio?”

  “Great idea!” Nancy said. “Bess can pick out something for me to wear, too,” she added mischievously.

  “Oh, no! I’ll never have time to choose two outfits!” Bess wailed.

  Nancy and Sasha set out across the back lawn in the direction Tommy had pointed. As the ocean came into view, they saw a small, square outbuilding. It was an old, two-story structure facing the water. A short, clipped hedge ran along the far side of it, defining the end of the Scott property. A fragile-looking wooden dock reached out into the bay right below the house. Several powerboats and a sailboat were moored along one side of it, swinging gently in the surge.

  “That’s got to be the studio,” Nancy said, shading her eyes from the slanting sun bouncing off the water. They veered off toward the building. As they approached, Nancy noticed a light on in one of the rooms.

  “Sasha,” she asked, putting her hand on his arm, “do you see what I see?”

  Sasha looked at her, then back at the small building. Just as he did, a shadow passed across a window.

  “Well, what do you know?” he said under his breath. “Someone’s inside!”

  Chapter

  Four

  DO YOU THINK it’s Christopher?” Sasha asked.

  “Only one way to find out,” Nancy replied. They walked around to the front, to where a door had been cut into the wide opening of the original building. The building must have been a boat house before its conversion to a studio, Nancy decided. The first floor had large plate-glass windows overlooking the water.

  Nancy knocked on the door and waited.

  When the door finally swung open, a petite girl was standing beside it, her hand on the knob. Her dark brown hair hung in shoulder-length ringlets, and her soft brown eyes looked sad.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you,” Nancy said. “We’re looking for Christopher Scott.”

  “He’s not here,” the girl replied. Her eyes instantly filled with tears. “No one’s here.”

  “Do you mind if we come in?” Nancy asked.

  The girl released the doorknob and walked into the living room. Nancy glanced at Sasha and they followed, closing the door behind them.

  The living room took up almost all of the ground floor. It was shabby, furnished with a rickety rattan couch and a few unmatched armchairs. The flowered cushions on the couch were faded, and the coarse outdoor carpet that covered most of the floor hadn’t been cleaned in a while.

  “I’m Megan Archer,” the girl said as she sat down and motioned for them to join her. “Are you friends of Christopher’s?”

  “Actually, no,” Nancy said. She and Sasha introduced themselves. “Cynthia Gray asked us to come by. She’s worried about Christopher.”

  Megan nodded mechanically, tuc
king her slender legs under her on the couch. She smoothed her brightly printed skirt over her knees and looked down. After an uncomfortable pause, Nancy asked, “And you?”

  “I’m . . . I was Nicholas’s girlfriend,” Megan said. She put her hand to her forehead and laughed, a hint of desperation in her voice. “We were together for four months. That’s all. It’s kind of silly to be so upset after only four months, don’t you think?”

  “No,” Nancy said quietly, leaning in toward the girl. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Megan lifted her delicate face and fixed her eyes on Nancy. “You must think it’s strange, finding me here. I live right across the hedge, so it’s very convenient. I used to spend a lot of time here.”

  “So you know Christopher, then,” Sasha stated, sitting on a chair opposite the girl. “Do you know where he is now?”

  “No, I’m afraid I don’t. In fact, I’ve never seen him. He’s not around much.”

  “I understand he’s a recluse,” Nancy said, probing delicately.

  Megan shrugged. “I don’t know. I do know he travels a lot. Nicholas always said Christopher just didn’t have any patience with people.”

  “Do you mean you never met him once?” Sasha asked. “Not even in his own studio?”

  Megan looked at him in surprise. “Well, no. But I’m not here every minute. I work during the day, and I guess Christopher also does most of his work during the day. There are new paintings lying around sometimes.”

  “Is there a painting here that he’s working on now?” Nancy asked.

  “If he is, I haven’t seen it. The studio’s upstairs,” Megan said, pointing to a spiral staircase near the door. “There’s nothing up there now, though.”

  Nancy changed the subject. “Tell me about Nicholas,” she suggested.

  As Megan spoke, Nancy did her best to hide her surprise. The girl’s description was obviously colored by love—it was the exact opposite of Bob Tercero’s. And of Tommy’s and Cynthia’s, too, she realized. According to Megan, Nicholas spent all his time taking care of his uncle. He was a sensitive, artistic person who adored Megan so much that they spent most of their evenings alone together at the studio, rarely seeing anyone.