I ran my finger over the initials, remembering my conversation with Naomi Ndiaye, searching for anything I might have missed. After a while, I put the dossier back together and clipped the cover into place. I had some answers, but there was only so much I could do without more information.
I pulled out the phone Minka had set up for me and dialed in Naomi’s number. There was a long moment of silence, then an automated voice.
“This number is no longer in service. If you believe you have reached this message in error, please hang up and dial again.”
I jabbed the “off” button and swore. The bitch had changed her number, no doubt to keep me from calling her again.
I figured it was a long shot, but I was running low of options. I punched in the number of the answering service I’d given Martin. When it picked up, I keyed in the pin, expecting to hear the usual snippy recording. “You have no new messages.” Instead, she perkily told me that I had a new message and asked if I’d like to hear it.
“Yes, you stupid bitch,” I muttered.
The recording didn’t like that. “I did not recognize that response,” she said, sounding offended as a recording can sound.
“Yes, please and thank you, with sugar on top and cream on Sundays,” I said.
“One moment, please.”
There was a long few seconds of staticky silence before Martin’s voice came through, sounding younger than I remembered and hushed, as if he were afraid of being overheard.
“Billie, it’s Martin. I think I heard something, or maybe I didn’t. I don’t know. But I had to bring some files to Vance and I went to the bathroom and when I came back, he was on the phone. He didn’t hear me, so I . . . shit, I eavesdropped, okay. I don’t know what it means, but he said the same phrase twice. Toll mash. I know it sounds stupid and I’m probably going to hate myself for even thinking it might help, but I feel bad. I mean, you were always nice to me, Billie. I—I have to go. Toll mash. I hope it helps.”
I pressed “end call” and stared at the phone, rolling the phrase over in my mind. Toll mash. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what it might mean. It sounded like a wrestling move or something to do with a chocolate chip cookie.
“Toll mash.” I tried saying it out loud and that didn’t help. I closed my eyes and pictured the letters, but they didn’t look right. Instead of toll mash, I kept picturing something different.
tollemache.
The name was vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t remember why. I clapped my hands together to get some warmth back into them, then plugged the word into the search bar of my phone. There were 775,000 results, but the first was what I wanted. Tollemache’s Auctions and Private Sales. Along with Christie’s and Sotheby’s, it was one of the big three auction houses in London, specializing in paintings and jewelry. I pulled up their website and the landing page featured an exquisite Boldini woman in pink satin and tulle. Tollemache’s was traditional, stuffy even. They’d sooner burn the house down than sell contemporary art. No stuffed taxidermy sharks or canvases streaked with menstrual blood for them. They were strictly old-school.
And they meant nothing to us. I’d never even set foot in the place, and to my knowledge neither had any of the others. Tollemache’s was old money, housed in a sagging Tudor building that made Liberty look postmodern. I clicked through the site for maybe a quarter of an hour before I found it.
It was on the Events page, an announcement of their annual January sale. This year’s theme was female painters and it was titled A Celebration of Five Centuries of Women in Art, 1500–1950. I clicked through the online catalog, translating the estimates in pounds sterling to dollars as I read. There was a luscious O’Keeffe predicted to hit mid–eight figures, with works by Gentileschi, Cassatt, and Vigée Le Brun expected to fetch a little over five million dollars each. A Vallayer-Coster was projected to roll in the range of $900,000, with a Fontana bringing up the rear at a cool half a million.
At the bottom of the listing was a line in bold. Recent addition to the sale. I clicked it and stared. I took off my reading glasses, polished them carefully on my shirttail, then stared some more. And suddenly I knew exactly how we were going to find Vance Gilchrist.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The others were in the kitchen when I came in, waving my phone and doing a little victory dance.
“What the hell are you so excited about?” Mary Alice asked. Her temper was getting sourer by the day as Akiko kept her distance.