The Collector

De: Peggy A. Edelheit

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

The phone rang, sharp and insistent, cutting through the silence of the night. I glanced at the clock—11:43 PM. Too late for a casual call.
“Hello?” I answered groggily.
“Samantha Jamison?” a woman’s voice came through, shaky and panicked. “...I’m so sorry to call so late. I grabbed your card on his desk; didn’t know who else to reach out to—”
“Who is this? Whose desk?” I asked, blinking away sleep.
“I’m Felicity Shaw, Alistair Davenport’s assistant. I just left his residence located off the main road to Highlands. I... I’m afraid something terrible has happened. He seems to be missing!”
The name jolted me fully awake. “Wait, hold on. Alistair Davenport? The legendary art collector?” He had a rumored reputation of surreptitiously buying and selling artifacts and artwork, while maintaining a close network of mysterious sources. Was any of it true?
“...Yes!” she stammered. “He’s vanished. I’ve been trying to reach him all day, and no one else has heard from him either. Though he’s gone missing, all his art is untouched. But...”
“But what?” I pressed, a chill seeping through me. There was always a but, wasn’t there?
“There’s a painting. The last one he acquired—it’s rumored to be a Thomas Cole, but... it’s not officially recognized. No one knows about it except a few close contacts of his. Davenport said it holds a significant secret... something tied to a historical mystery around here locally.”
Thomas Cole? “...Wait, Thomas Cole, the eighteenth century landscape painter? Are you saying Davenport found and bought an undiscovered Cole painting?” That piqued my interest.
“It’s identical in style to Cole’s work. But here’s the thing—Cole never painted North Carolina, right? This one shows a scene from the Blue Ridge Mountains. Davenport became obsessed with it; said it held valuable clues. Now, he’s mysteriously disappeared.”