Doubt (Caroline Auden #1) - C. E. Tobisman Page 0,44
Do you have a number for him?”
“I don’t know it, but I could probably find his address. We’ve gone to art shows at his loft from time to time. I’m sure I have his address around somewhere.”
“Please,” Caroline implored.
“I’ll find it for you. But I should warn you. Henrik can be a bit . . . much.”
Caroline cocked her head at the vague warning.
“Let’s put it this way,” Yvonne said. “He’s not the most refined soul.”
“What the fuck do you want?”
That’s how Henrik Stengaard had answered the door when Caroline knocked.
Shouting to be heard through the rusted metal door, she’d explained her business. When the door had creaked, groaned, and grated its way open, one word had come to Caroline’s mind: Viking. Thick as a standing stone at Stonehenge and as blond as a poster child for the Aryan Youth, Henrik exuded a physical presence that Caroline could equate only to Nordic marauders. Or football players. Swallowing a thick lump of trepidation, Caroline had entered the loft.
Now she stood in the center of the live/work space, surrounded by canvases mounted on easels. Some shimmered, still wet in the afternoon sun. Unlike the behemoth who had created them, the images were soft and subtle, plays on light and shadow exhibiting a sensitivity incongruent with the artist’s brute appearance. Admiring Henrik’s abstract canvases, Caroline reflected that Henrik’s art was not the sort of thing that Louis would ever collect. No, her boss’s taste tended toward only the most expensive old masters.
“My life’s a goddamn disaster,” Henrik said, pacing his home like a neurotic leopard in a too-small zoo enclosure. “I’ve got a gallery show starting downtown in a week. I need to finish these canvases.”
The artist’s big hands gestured around the space, sweeping the accumulated chaos within their reach. “But I can’t focus. Ever since Annie disappeared—” He ran a hand through his shaggy mane of blond hair. “Look, I get why you’re here, but I’m not sure there’s anything I can tell you that’ll help you find her.”
Caroline watched him pacing back and forth across the vaulted workspace, from the cluttered kitchen area that reeked of old food to the sleeping area demarked by a spray-painted shoji screen. The artist looked like he walked a razor’s edge. She feared what would happen if he fell off. But she’d come for a reason. She had to ask her questions. Even if they pushed him off the edge.
“Did Annie leave any hint where she went?” she asked.
Henrik stopped pacing and just shook his head no. He swallowed heavily, as if jamming his emotions, his words back down his throat.
Caroline looked with sympathy at the artist. He looked like he didn’t get out much. She wondered if he had any friends to whom he’d been able to vent his pent-up emotions.
“That must be hard,” she offered.
“Hard?” Henrik put his paint-spattered hands on his hips and glared at Caroline. “This whole thing’s totally fucked. One second Annie’s saying she wants us to move slowly—she doesn’t want to move in with me too fast. Fine, I get it. She loves her house in Santa Monica. But then the next second, she’s moving in. She’s sold her place. Great. We’re moving ahead as a couple. Just like I wanted. But then, a half a second after that, she’s leaving town. It’s a fucking smorgasbord of mixed messages.”
“How was she doing before she left? Was she . . . preoccupied or anything?” Caroline asked. She sensed that with the slightest prodding, the sluice gates would open . . . and hopefully bring a flood of information, not rage.
“If by preoccupied you mean, was she totally shutting down on me, then yes, she was preoccupied,” Henrik said. “I tried to find out what the hell was going on with her, but she wouldn’t say anything.”
“That must have been frustrating.”
“Frustrating? It was fucking terrifying.” Henrik glowered.
The artist took a breath and tried to compose himself. “You got to understand, Annie doesn’t trust people easily. But she trusts me. Or she used to,” Henrik said, his voice thick with emotion. “I wanted to be there for her. God, I tried to be. Even after she left town, I kept on trying. I called her a dozen times. I told her I’d go wherever she was. Screw my gallery show.”
“But she wouldn’t tell you where she was?”
“Worse. She left me a fucking video message breaking up with me.” The artist’s voice rose, his anger covering his pain.