Page 11 of Close To You
Twelve days since Raymond Honanie disappeared.Every hour she spent thinking about Ben was an hour Honanie didn’t have.
She turned off the light.She didn’t sleep for a long time.
CHAPTER SIX
Kari had worked missing person’s cases before, and she'd learned that the people closest to a victim rarely knew what they knew.Details filed away as ordinary—a conversation, a stranger's face, a change in routine—only became significant after someone disappeared.
The trick was asking the right people the right questions before those details faded.
She drove to Santa Fe with Attcity, who handled the car while Kari reviewed the interview logs from Marshall's team.The agents had been methodical—they'd talked to gallery owners, fellow artists, family members, event organizers.What they hadn't done, as far as Kari could tell, was talk to the people on the margins.The assistants, the framers, the art handlers who moved pieces between studios, galleries, and auction houses.The people who saw the art world's machinery from the inside but weren't considered important enough to interview.
“Where do artists in Santa Fe go when they’re not showing?”she asked Attcity as they passed the exit for Bernalillo.
“Depends on the artist.Galleries on Canyon Road, coffee shops on the Plaza, studios in the Railyard district.Redhouse had a studio on Agua Fria that he shared with two other painters.Tafoya worked out of her home in San Ildefonso.Honanie rented space near the Railyard—small place, more of a workshop than a studio.”
“Let’s start at Redhouse’s studio.”
The building on Agua Fria was a converted warehouse that had been repurposed once a decade as the neighborhood shifted—feed store, auto shop, artist collective.The current iteration had three units, each with a rolling metal door and a smaller entrance to the side.Redhouse’s was the one on the end.Yellow crime scene tape still crossed the door, curling at the edges where the adhesive had dried in the sun.
“FBI cleared the scene two weeks ago,” Attcity said.“Forensics pulled what they could.The other two artists still use their spaces.”
Kari wasn’t interested in Redhouse’s studio—Marshall’s team had processed it thoroughly, and any trace evidence was already in a lab.She wanted to talk to the neighbors.
The adjacent unit belonged to a painter named Dolores Vigil, a compact woman in her sixties with turquoise rings on seven of her ten fingers and white paint dried in the creases of her hands.She was working when they knocked—a large canvas propped on an easel, abstract forms in earthy reds and ochres that suggested landscape without depicting it.
“I already talked to the FBI,” Vigil said, not stopping her work.“Twice.”
“I know.I’ve read the transcripts.”Kari leaned against the doorframe, keeping her posture open, non-threatening.“I’m not here to go over the same ground.I want to ask you about something they didn’t cover.”
Vigil glanced at her.“Which is?”
“In the months before he disappeared, did Leonard mention anyone new paying attention to his work?Not buyers—the FBI covered that.I mean someone who was interested in the work itself.Asking about his process, his inspirations, the stories behind specific pieces.”
Vigil’s brush paused, hovering over the canvas.“Why do you ask that?”
“Because whoever killed Leonard didn’t just study his art.They understood it.The staging wasn’t a copy—it was an interpretation.That requires a relationship with the work that goes deeper than owning a print.”
Vigil set down her brush and wiped her hands on a rag that had once been a t-shirt.She turned to face Kari, and her expression had shifted from guarded impatience to something more focused.
"There was a man.Maybe three, four months before Leonard went missing.He came to the studio twice.The first time, Leonard was showing a collector through the space, and this man was just there, standing near the Ceremonial Dancer study, the smaller version Leonard kept here.I didn't think much of it.People wander in off the street sometimes.But the second time, he came specifically to talk to Leonard.I could hear them through the wall."She tapped the partition between the units."These aren't soundproof."
“What did you hear?”
“Questions.Not the usual ones—not ‘how much is this’ or ‘do you ship to New York.’He was asking about the dance itself.The specific ceremony the painting depicted.What it meant, what Leonard had been trying to capture, why he’d chosen that particular moment.Leonard loved talking about that—he could go for hours on the spiritual dimensions of his work.But afterward, he came over here and said something I remember because it struck me as odd.”
Kari waited.
“Leonard said, ‘That guy didn’t want to understand the painting.He wanted to understand the painter.’”Vigil picked up her brush again, turning it between her fingers.“At the time I thought Leonard was flattering himself.He had an ego—most great artists do.But now...”
“Can you describe the man?”
“Older.White.Well-dressed, but not flashy—good fabric, simple cut.The clothes of someone who doesn’t need to impress anyone.”She frowned, reaching for the memory.“His hands were shaking.Not a lot—a tremor, like he was cold, except it was August.”
Kari made a note.Tremor.Could be age.Could be medication.Could be a neurological condition.
“Did he give a name?”
“Not that I heard.”
