Read Online Love and Fear by Reed Farrel Coleman - Free Book Online

their T-shirts or whatever. But does it get us anywhere?”
    “We’re almost there, Mr. Dowd. The domain name is still hers, and the hosting fee has been prepaid for five years. There are still two years left on that. But the site hasn’t been active for at least two years. Click on ‘About Bellartgirl.’ Look at her image. Look at her bio.”
    Gulliver did so. Bella was a smart girl. She wanted to sell her work and get it out into the world. But she also knew she could not do it as the girl of a Mafia don. So there was no photograph of her. Only a sketch done in charcoal with her turned away from the viewer. All it revealed was a portion of the right side of her face, her bare shoulder and the sweep of her hair. Her bio was just the opposite. It was full of details—but the details were lies. The post-office box to which buyers were to send payment for her art was in New Jersey, not New York City.
    “And did people buy her art?” Gulliver asked.
    “Some. Mostly other art kids.”
    “But not all.”
    Shea smiled the Happy Meal smile he flashed when you got to where he wanted you to go. Gulliver had seen it before.
    “One person bought most of it,” Shea said. “A man named Igor Telenovich. He also wrote to her all the time. Scroll down to the bottom of the ‘About Bellartgirl’ page. See? There’s a box for sending messages to her. At first his messages were pretty plain. Stuff about how much he loved her work and how with the right teaching she could be great. She would thank him and be nice. Then after a few months, his messages started getting weird. I have all of them printed out for you. He started asking to meet her. He offered to be her teacher. He said he could make her great. Then they turned threatening.”
    “Threatening?”
    “You can read for yourself. But they aren’t threatening like, I will kill you. He says he must save her from herself. He will take her and teach her and make her great. That it would be a crime to waste her talent, and how he can’t let that happen.” Shea stopped to let his words have their full impact on Gulliver.
    “Go on.”
    “Once his messages got weird, Bella seems to have abandoned the site. This guy spooked her. She no longer responded to sales requests and didn’t answer when people wrote to her.”
    “And you say this was two years ago?”
    Shea nodded. “Look at your screen,” he said, clicking his mouse.
    And there on Gulliver’s screen were two side-by-side photographs. Both showed an older man with gray hair and a gaunt face.
    Gulliver said, “Igor Telenovich.”
    “That’s him. The photo on the right is from Plandome Art Institute on Long Island, where he used to teach painting. The one on the left is from—”
    Gulliver finished the sentence. “The closed-circuit video outside Bella’s building in Brooklyn.”
    “That’s right, Mr. Dowd. I think this Telenovich guy has her somewhere.”
    “The Phantom of the Opera,” Gulliver said to himself.
    “What?”
    “Never mind. What about this guy? Where is he? You said he used to teach at the Plandome Art Institute. Why not any longer?”
    “It’s all printed out for you there, and I’ve sent all this to your computer. Telenovich was fired.”
    “Why?”
    Shea shrugged. “It’s not clear why. The when is more important.”
    “About two years ago,” Gulliver said.
    “Twenty-two months ago. It took him most of that time to track Bella down.”
    “How?”
    Shea said, “I may be the best at this, but I’m not the only one who does it, Mr. Dowd. He might have even taught himself how to do it.”
    “That’s not important now.”
    Gulliver collected all the materials Happy Meal had printed for him and turned to leave.
    “You may have found Bella, Sha’wan. Maybe even saved her life. Thank you.”
    “You saved me, Mr. Dowd. Go get her. I like her work, and she is beautiful.”
    “Do you think so?”
    “The most beautiful girl I have ever seen.”
    Gulliver smiled and