Finding Sam (Featured)

Chapter 4 - What He Knew

The day after I lost one of my big social networking accounts after the company brought it in-house, Olivia Firelli called to inquire about my services. It was perfect timing, getting this new lead, and if I managed to convince her to use my services, her new account would make up for the one I had just lost.

Though I usually met prospective clients either at their offices or at Java Man, a small coffee shop on Pier Avenue, Olivia wanted to meet me at her house on the Strand. She had a small child, she said, and didn't have a nanny that day though she completely understood if I said no and she'd just have to reschedule. When I asked her how she found me, she said she got my card through her brother, who had gotten my card through Rosie.

"Your brother?" I asked, trying to remember if I knew anyone by that last name. "Do I know him?"

"I don't think you've met him yet. But he knew Rosie." A baby began crying in the background and I heard her muffle the receiver as she spoke in something that sounded like Italian. "I understand if you don't want to come. My Bella's got a cold and I don't want her to be out and about but we can reschedule-"

"No, no, that's alright," I said quickly. "I can come over and meet with you. Just tell me where to go."

I left Michael with my neighbor, George. A former professional surfer, George McAllister lived in a two-story town home just across the street from my house. We used to have identical cottages, but two years ago, he had it demolished and had a two-unit condo built in its place. He lived in one unit and leased the other.

David had always wanted me to do the same thing, though what he really wanted to do was just sell my property to the developers who bought the houses on either side of me and built condos in its place. I'd resisted only because of Rosie's assertion that the house was the only thing I had that he couldn't' take away from me. The last thing Rosie and I wanted to become, after David would have gotten hold of the check, was to be homeless.

Olivia told me to park in front of the two-car garage in the alley, and to leave the right side of the garage free for her brother when he came home. A Hispanic woman with cropped hair named Consuelo let me in and led me into the living room. It was a gorgeous room with floor to ceiling glass windows that opened right onto a deck overlooking the Strand and the beach. I could only imagine the sunsets Olivia got to see every day.

But it wasn't the view outside the glass window that made my heart really race. The colors were the first thing I noticed, vivid and full of life, it arrested the eye along with the crisp strokes to define each outline, each shadow. It was a painting on the south-facing wall, just behind the long white L-shaped couch. A plain wall divider that stood a few feet from the glass window protected it from the sun's rays.

The over-sized painting featured the Strand just outside the window, the very Strand where I jogged with Michael tucked in his stroller. The painting was done in a style reminiscent of DJ Hall, a California painter known to paint the women of Palm Springs in such sharp, bright, photorealistic colors. This particular painting depicted the people who walked on the Strand, their expressions captured in profile as they headed towards some bright point in the far right of the canvas.

There were families with children, a hippie couple holding hands, a jogger, a surfer, and in the far left, a woman pushing an umbrella stroller where a young girl sat holding up a paper cutting of interlocked people. I'd seen the painting before. I just never expected to see it again, and not in a house right on the Strand.

I walked towards the painting and inspected its frame. It had to be custom made to fit a painting this size. Definitely not one of those franchise frame jobs, I thought, just as a door behind me opened.