Paris Time

by D. B. Gilles

  Paris Time

  A Novel

  by D.B. Gilles

  Published by Black Mask Publishing

  Copyright © 2014 by D.B. Gilles

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever including Internet usage, without written permission of the author.

  Cover Design: Don DeMaio

  E-book ISBN: 978-0-9960908-3-4

  Also by D.B. Gilles

  Non-Fiction

  Writers Rehab

  A 12-Step Program For Writers

  Who Can’t Get Their Acts Together

  The Screenwriter Within:

  New Strategies To Finish Your

  Screenplay & Get A Deal

  The Portable Film School

  You’re Funny!

  Turn Your Sense of Humor

  into a Lucrative New Career

  Fiction

  I Hate My Book Club

  Colder Than Death

  Humor & Parody

  Never Trust Ann Coulter: An Unauthorized Autobiographical Parody

  W. The First 100 Days: A White House Journal

  (with Sheldon Woodbury)

  Plays

  Cash Flow

  Men’s Singles

  The Legendary Stardust Boys

  The Girl Who Loved the Beatles

  For Putney and Wesley

  PART 1

  All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.

  Martin Buber

  Prologue

  Midnight

  Greywacke Knoll

  Central Park

  New York City

  The lightning bolt struck Peter Hillyer with such ferocity that it knocked him to the ground, causing him to drop The Brimstone.

  Cleopatra’s Needle, the ancient Egyptian obelisk, towered above him like an ancient monolith. Besides the burning sensation in the back of his neck where the bolt struck, his body trembled with spasms as the excruciating pain flooded through him.

  He reached for the object and clutched it to his chest. He knew there would be thunder and lightning, but he never expected it to be so intense. There hadn’t been enough time for him to find shelter, but there was nothing nearby even if he could. He was sprawled on a deserted stretch of grass two hundred yards behind The Metropolitan Museum of Art at the stroke of midnight.

  With the pain intensifying, he knew he would be dead momentarily. He wondered if he had done the right thing. Eliza had asked him to do some basic fact checking for her and he’d discovered much more than he had ever imagined possible.

  He’d been secretive about what he’d been involved in these last few months, more out of ego than anything else. The dark side of having a great reputation was the need to preserve it. He shared what he was doing with only one person under the condition that he tell no one, not even Peter’s son, Dalton.

  With great difficulty, he turned over onto his stomach and craned his neck, searching desperately for the person who’d been with him at the obelisk, to give him permission to tell Dalton everything.

  He was nowhere in sight.

  His final thoughts turned to his son. His greatest regret was that he hadn’t reconnected with him after four years of estrangement. He hoped that Dalton would find a way to learn why, and how, his father had left this world after uncovering what was surely the single most astonishing discovery in modern times.

  Barely able to breathe, his eyes glazing over, he knew he had to contact Dalton and give him the name of the person who could explain everything.

  He reached for his BlackBerry and with trembling fingers attempted to text a final message to his son. With great difficulty he managed to type in only a few letters of what he needed to say. He wasn’t even sure if he had hit the right keys. He hoped it would be enough to point Dalton in the right direction.

  call qi mdfo lxg

  He managed to press Send, then exhaled his last breath.

  7 Years Later

  Present Day

  Chapter 1

  May 9

  New York City

  As a professional fact checker, Dalton Hillyer was used to clients working on tight deadlines, but Dominic Fisk was driving him crazy. There were endless texts, phone calls and e-mails at all hours. He’d been hired to fact check Fisk’s manuscript on the history of fashion photography. He regretted taking the job, but he needed the money. The fact checking game was dwindling away.

  It was late on a Friday afternoon, the fifth weekend since his eight-month relationship with Tracey ended, and he had nothing to do, nowhere to go. He was in his office proofing the eleventh chapter of Fisk’s manuscript. His mind wandered as he tried to decide whether to take a break and get a haircut. His longish, brown hair was beginning to dangle over his hazel eyes, always the first sign that he needed to visit Scott at Astor Place Haircutters.

  He needed to give his hair a closer look. He liked to joke that the only part of his body he was vain about was his hair. He was getting up from his chair when the phone on his desk rang. He checked the caller ID and saw the name Juliet Kinkaid, which he didn’t recognize.

  “Factcheckers.”

  “I’d like to talk to Dalton Hillyer.” The female voice was low-pitched, firm.

  “Speaking.”

  “My name is Juliet Kinkaid. I want to hire you.”

  He reached for the pen next to the phone and his notebook. Things are looking up he thought. For a change he wouldn’t have to lay on the hard sell. “Great. How may I help you?”

  “It’s about some information I just discovered. It concerns your father. Something he may have worked on seven years ago. Would there be a record of his projects or names of clients?”

  “I don’t keep records that far back.” That she brought up his late father unsettled him. He took on a more serious tone. “What do you need to know?”

  “If your father had a client named Eliza Kinkaid. She’s my sister. It would’ve been the first week of April.”

  “That’s unlikely. My father died the first week of April, seven years ago.”

  “I know. I saw that when I Googled information about him. I think that when he died could be important information about why I need to hire you.”

  He didn’t want to turn business away, but her bringing up his father was making him lose his patience. “You said my father might have worked on a project. What was it?”

  “I’m convinced it had something to do with my sister’s disappearance. She vanished seven years ago, on April sixth. I checked The New York Times obituary archives and it said your father died on April seventh, that he was struck by lightning and that his body was found in Central Park by that old Egyptian obelisk?”

  “Yes. Cleopatra’s Needle.”

  “I think your father’s death and whatever happened to my sister are connected. If I could meet you in person I’ll fill you in on all the facts.”

  Without hesitation, Dalton said, “I work out of my apartment. Three-sixty-two East Tenth Street between Second and First Avenue. Let’s schedule an appointment.”

  “What about now.”

  Again, her assertiveness threw him, but the customer is always right. “Okay. Go to the entrance under the stoop and knock hard. The doorbell isn’t working.”

  “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.” She hung up.

  Dalton decided that if Juliet Kinkaid turned out to be a deadbeat, it wouldn’t be a waste of time. That his father died the day before her sister disappeared had struck a nerve. The Coroner’s report had always troubled Dalton. It said that Peter Hillyer died as a result of being struck by lightning.

  But there were peculiar factors surrounding his father’s death that still haunted Dalton. He hoped the meeting with Juliet Kinkaid might lead to some answe
rs.

  Chapter 2

  Juliet Kinkaid stepped out of the taxi across from St. Mark’s Church In-The-Bowery on the fringe of Greenwich Village. As she started walking east on Tenth Street, she went over in her head how she would tell the story of her missing sister.

  She knew that what she had to say could be perceived as bizarre. It all depended on how open-minded Dalton Hillyer was. She felt that she had to get to the point fast and not beat around the bush, which is what she tended to do when trying to explain things.

  At the restaurant where she worked, her fellow chefs kidded her about always giving too much information. She had to work hard to say only what was necessary.

  When she came to Dalton’s address, she took two steps down into an area that held trashcans. To their left was a gated door and to the left of it was a simple sign that said Factcheckers. 1-A. As he had instructed, she knocked hard on the door, looked at the intercom and heard Dalton’s voice say, “Give the door a good nudge.” After a loud buzz, Juliet pushed the door and stepped into a landing and was greeted by Dalton.

  He stared at the serious-looking hipster blonde standing before him, guessing her to be in her late teens. She wore beat-up cowboy boots and black jeans tucked into them. He tried not to stare at the small cuts and burn marks on her hands. “Come in.”

  He gestured toward a sitting area that was actually part of his office, which had been his father’s office. “Have a seat.” As she sat in a comfortable-looking, worn, oxblood leather chair she took in the ambience of the room. Rather than someone’s office, it looked to her like an enormous, well-catalogued library. She guessed there were thousands of books, magazines, pamphlets, videos and DVDs.

  She also observed Dalton, surprised that he wasn’t older and heavier instead of being under thirty and razor thin. He struck her as looking more like a struggling rock musician than a fact checker: the hair, the boots, the jeans and the faded blue shirt, which she was certain came from L.L. Bean.

  Dalton sat across from her on the couch. “You were going to tell me all the facts.”

  “Three days ago my sister was declared legally dead. Because my mother held out hope all these years that Eliza would return, we never touched anything in her bedroom, until now. Mom finally accepted the fact that Eliza wasn’t coming back. Her bedroom looked exactly as it did the last day she was seen alive. As I was going through her things I found this.”

  She reached into her handbag and removed a Canson Classic Hardcover Sketchbook 11” x 14” inches. She placed it on her lap.

  “When my sister was thirteen she was in an automobile accident that killed our father. From then on she became agoraphobic. She rarely left the house, and when she did she had a safety radius of a few blocks, mainly school and a couple of stores. That radius began to expand about six months before she disappeared when she joined an Agoraphobics support group. Before that, she’d gone to therapists, hypnotists, took medication, but nothing worked until the support group.” Juliet paused and took a deep breath. “Okay, Eliza always wanted to be a painter. Since she was a child she kept a journal, in an artist’s sketchbook. Besides her entries there are drawings. She had over a dozen and they were kept out in the open.”

  She picked up the sketchbook. “This one was hidden. I found it yesterday. The entries and drawings are, well, different from the ones in the other sketchbooks.”

  “What does this has to do with my father?”

  “The last page is dated April sixth.” She opened the sketchbook. “The final entry my sister wrote was ‘Peter Hillyer found the way. God bless Peter Hillyer. We leave tonight.’” She stared at Dalton. “Your father’s name meant nothing to me so I Googled it, then found your Factcheckers website. That final entry has to mean that they had some kind of connection. Don’t you think?”

  Dalton stood, walked to a bookcase near the window and somberly stared at the framed photograph of his father on the top shelf. It was taken a year before he died.

  “I know what the connection was.”

  Juliet sat up straight.

  “My father was a recovered agoraphobic. After he was cured over fifty years ago, he became a mentor. He belonged to a support group called Agoraphobics In Motion.”

  “That’s the one my sister went to,” she said, hopeful. “So they knew each other.”

  “But in what context?” He looked at the sketchbook in Juliet’s hands. “May I?”

  She handed it to him and he turned to the last entry.

  “’Peter Hillyer found the way. God bless Peter Hillyer.’” He hesitated for a moment. “Found the way to what? And where were they leaving for?”

  “That’s why I need to hire you.”

  “You’re looking for a missing person. You need to go to the police, not a guy who checks facts.”

  “The police had their chance seven years ago and they blew it. We hired a private detective back then too. He came up with zilch. Yesterday I bought a copy of your father’s book. In the introduction, when he’s describing what a fact checker does, he said that in many ways you’re like detectives. All you’re interested in is the facts.” She looked at Dalton pleadingly, her eyes filling with tears. “I know that in some way your father’s death and my sister’s disappearance are linked together. I know it! If you hear all the facts, I’m positive you’ll agree with me.”

  Dalton looked into Juliet’s blue eyes, still filled with tears. He reached for the box of Kleenex he kept on his desk and handed it to her.

  “I’m sorry,” said Juliet as she took a tissue and dabbed her eyes. “I get a little dramatic sometimes.”

  Dalton chewed over the fact that this girl had presented him with an opportunity to finally understand why his father was in Central Park at midnight. He had never had closure on his father’s death. He understood what Juliet was going through.

  “I’ll see what I can do. No charge. I’m working on a project that’s due in a few days. I can start then.”

  “I’d feel more comfortable paying you. My sister’s will was read two days ago. I’m the beneficiary of a two hundred thousand dollar life insurance policy. I’m prepared to spend every penny trying to find out what happened to her. I want you to start immediately.”

  “I can’t just drop my other assignment.”

  “I checked the going rates of fact checkers. If you’ll concentrate entirely on this, I’ll pay you fifty thousand dollars in cash.”

  Dalton was stunned. “Are you serious?”

  She nodded yes.

  He took a deep breath and decided that Dominic Fisk would have to wait for his book to be fact checked. “Deal. Okay, so they met at Agoraphobics In Motion. Did the police ever consider foul play?”

  “They felt that she just up and left to start a new life somewhere.”

  “Agoraphobics don’t ‘up and leave’.”

  “We tried to tell them that. Then they said she ran off with a guy, which was ridiculous because she never really had a boyfriend because of her isolation. Their final theory was that she killed herself. Eliza would never have committed suicide.”

  “I assume there was no note.”

  “There was nothing. No clues, no hint of what happened. She just disappeared. I was fourteen. For the first three years I convinced myself that she accidentally hit her head on something, got amnesia and would return one day. By the fifth year, I accepted the fact that she was never coming back, that she was probably dead.”

  “So she was your big sister. You must’ve been close.”

  Juliet’s eyes looked away for a moment. “Actually, we didn’t get along. Besides a seven-year age difference, I was embarrassed about her agoraphobia. I treated her horribly. Over the years, when I wasn’t thinking dark thoughts about her being murdered, I’d wonder if one day she just decided to hell with her condition and that she went to Paris to start a new life.”

  “Why Paris?”

  “Despite her agoraphobia, all she talked about was moving to Paris. She wanted to be a painter
and live amidst the great art and museums there. Her early sketchbooks are filled mainly with the musings of a precocious adolescent. But in the sketchbook I found yesterday, the entries have a sense of purpose.”

  Dalton shifted in his chair.

  “All kinds of doodles and sketches of famous Paris attractions plus drawings of people.” She turned several pages in the sketchbook, stopped at one with the face of a man and said, “Recognize him?”

  Dalton stared at the drawing of a bearded man wearing a top hat and rounded glasses. “Toulouse-Lautrec?”

  “Right. And next to it is a drawing of a windmill and the Moulin Rouge. There are a dozen sketches of Toulouse-Lautrec. Why?” She turned a page and came to another drawing of a male face. “That’s Whistler.”

  “James Whistler? The painter?”

  “Yes.” She turned another page. “Eliza drew the faces of Mary Cassatt, Claude Monet, Edward Degas and other painters of the era. Why would she do that? Your father’s body was found at the obelisk in Central Park.” She flipped a few more pages. “Look at that.” Dalton stared at a detailed rendition of Cleopatra’s Needle. “See that arrow leading from the center of the page to the next page?”

  “Yeah.”

  She flipped the page to reveal another obelisk. “That one’s in Paris. It’s called the Obelisk of Luxor. Like the one in New York, it was a gift from Egypt. Why would my sister connect these obelisks?”

  Dalton stared at the drawings, transfixed.

  “She has little maps throughout and some locations are marked with stars. There’s a To Do list of sites and places she intended to see. Especially this one: Montmartre.”

  “I’ve been there. With my father.”

  “That’s where Toulouse-Lautrec lived. Oh! And here’s the strangest thing of all.” She flipped the pages again and pointed at a drawing that took up an entire page. “It looks like an oversized charm bracelet.”