When artist, Nicole Jeffords, learns that a reputable psychic who often works with the police has had a vision that the remains of a fifty-year-old male may be buried under an artist's studio in Austin, she becomes convinced that the studio in quest...
"Unless we dig up your studio floor," Alicia interjected.
"What do you know," I asked, taking a slow sip of coffee, "about something called the 'foundation'? It's a group in Toronto that bought the house Victor was renting."
"Not much," Emil said. "I know he had all sorts of connections in Toronto and traveled there frequently." He was silent for a moment. Then he said, "What I do know for sure is that Victor was always frightened. He had this strong belief that people were after him, that someone was out to get him. I thought he was paranoid, and treated him that way. But really it was the Bukh that made him so crazy. Possession of the Bukh with all the danger it entailed."
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Emil
"And he never told you where he'd hidden it?"
Emil smiled at me so I could see the flash of his teeth in the dark. "If he had, I wouldn't tell you."
That was all I got out of him. I reminded him that if Victor were still alive he'd be sixty-two this year, the age his father, grandfather, and great grandfather had been when they met their deaths. "Yeah, the curse of the Bukh," was all Emil said. When I asked him who else might know the whereabouts of the Bukh, he shook his head. "Helen Sprouse, Victor's receptionist, remember her? She's the only person I can think of."
Helen Sprouse. I hadn't seen her in years. I remembered then that I'd spotted her in a grainy newspaper photo taken at the rodeo together with the roommate of Victor's client who'd died in his care. She'd once been a barrel racer, hard to imagine when I pictured the plain, dumpy, difficult woman who'd been Victor's gatekeeper.
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Helen
I wondered if I could find Helen now. She'd disappeared along with Victor, a vivid personality who'd receded like the thickness of air after a rain, gone just like that. Emil didn't have a clue where she was. Nor did Alicia, from whom Helen had once bought a small painting. I left their house only slightly more informed than when I'd arrived. I now knew why the Bukh was so important and how dangerous possession of it was. But I didn't know much else.
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