Killing Icarus by Paul Kemprecos

Author:Paul Kemprecos [Kemprecos, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: Suspense Publishing
Published: 2021-07-13T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Abi would have loved to have wandered the halls of the MFA to bask in the warmth of the Impressionist paintings, but now that the Hopper sketches had been authenticated, she was eager to find out why they’d been hidden all these years. She also wanted to beat the ferocious Boston rush hour that turns the highway south of the city into a parking lot.

Abi made good time to the Cape Cod Canal. Late in the afternoon she arrived at Beach Plum. Grabbing her backpack from the Land Rover, she went into the cottage and pulled together a Greek village salad for her dinner. Between bites of tomatoes, kalamata olives and feta cheese, she jotted down notes of her Boston conversations while they were still fresh in her mind.

Given her recent history as a bad luck magnet, the offer of a curator’s job might never come through. But if and when it did, she wanted to be ready to jump right into the position. Living in a cottage by the sea was none too shabby, but she was eager to resume her career and was tired of eating alone.

Abi decided she would wait to hear from the professor before telling him about the Hopper sketches. She didn’t want to upstage his announcement of her job offer. The smart thing would be to have the filing job done by the time Waldstein’s call came. She did a quick cleanup then went into the office and sorted out a couple more boxes. Like the earlier material, the folders were chaotic and she soon had piled up several stacks of unrelated paper. Her eyelids began to droop and she realized she was exhausted.

Before she climbed the stairs to the second level, she took the art book out of her backpack. She slipped the sketches from between the stuck pages and found space on a corner of the desk where she laid them out side by side. She paid particular attention to the sketch Hopper had labeled Bad Face. It was evident that Hopper had been both fascinated and repelled by the face he had drawn.

She picked up the sketch in both hands and held it at arm’s length. She wanted to know why the man was at the barn and what he was doing. If the man was bad, as Hopper suggested, maybe what he was doing was bad as well.

She gathered up the sketches and put them back into the book, which she carried upstairs and tucked into a dresser drawer. Then she turned off the lights and looked out the window at the sequined glimmer of Provincetown.

The sky above the bay was clear except for a few whisker-like clouds. She could almost count the stars in the Milky Way. She scanned the sky looking for the strange wrinkling she thought she had seen earlier, but everything was normal.

She got into a nightie and slipped under the covers. What a wonderful day it had been, with good news about a job and place to live.

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