Build Me Up + Blow Me Down

Where In The World Can I Find A Clue?

His eyes darted across the darkness, cautious of any possible observers, as he twisted the key into the hole and unlocked the door.

Slipping into the house and shutting the door behind him, Noah paused to consider his next action.

He knew it was unlikely for anyone else to be in or watching the house and to avoid attracting any unnecessary attention, he had walked all the way from his hotel to the house. He still had several hours until sunrise, by which point he aimed to be back in his hotel room.

With the entire house to himself, and finding himself in a more calmed state then he was the last time he had been there, he decided on making his personal rounds before getting to more pressing matters.

Noah climbed the staircase up to his room.

Kyle Van`s eyes casually followed the scale of the old fashioned clock as it swung back and forth across the wall until he became sick of it.

The 37 year old detective violently swiveled his chair back into place at his desk and dropped his eyes to the collection of papers scattered over it, his hands almost instinctively reaching to his temples and beginning to massage them.

The man was irritated to say the least and it showed over all his face. The phone rang and his hand shot to grab it off its’ hanger before the first ring had even completed.

“Yes.” He spoke fast into the speaker in a voice that simultaneously reflected his lack of sleep, his irritation at that, and its’ cause.

He sat perfectly still, receiver to ear, nodding occasionally as he absorbed the information told to him with a perpetual scowl on his face.

“Just keep working that angle, do you understand me?”

After hearing an affirmative reply, he grumbled out a goodbye and slammed the telephone down onto its’ receiver once more, containing his anger relatively successfully. He pursed his lips in thought and tapped his fingers up and down his desk as his eyes scanned the room.

“Anything newsworthy?” inquired Van’s co-worker and acquaintance, Tyler, as he carefully placed a cup of coffee before him.

“Yeah. Just one odd thing. You know the Blakely case that I’ve been working on?”

“Yeah. What about it?”

“The man. Jonathan. I had an officer check over a list of all his personal belongings on him or in his house for anything interesting that might be a clue to the case. Same thing with his wife, of course. The thing is, we were informed by his nephew that he kept a journal, but if he ever had one, it’s nowhere to be found now.”

Noah glanced once more at the framed photograph of his once whole and happy family which he held in his hands. He frowned. Although he had sworn to ensure that logic and not emotion would drive his actions tonight, he could do little to control himself now that he was actually on the spot. He slipped the photograph out of its frame and into his pocket and turned to make his exit.

After searching the upstairs bedrooms, admittedly more out of a sentiment to see them once more than an actual belief that he would discover something of value, he was certain that nothing there would lead him to the answers that he sought.

Having delayed things as far as he conceivably could, he willed himself down the stairs into his father’s private study, a place that had been forbidden to him as a child, and which he had held no great desire to see through his adulthood up until now.

He opened and closed the door as quietly as possible and flicked on the lights, turning his head slowly as he took in the whole of the room.

It was very much what one might expect out of a study belonging to someone who had suddenly passed recently. It was an organized, clean room but there were a few choice objects that had been left out, as though they were being used and the user had intended to get back to them soon. Looking in the room, Noah felt for a moment as though his father had just stepped out and would be back soon.

Noah tip-toed his way across the room hesitatingly, glancing from paper to paper and book to book each only for a passing moment. Nothing stuck out to him, nothing surprised or intrigued him.

He stopped. A cabinet marked “charitable organizations” had appeared before him. This could perhaps be what he was seeking. After all, if his father had chosen to donate all his land in a far off country to this ‘Botticelli Society’ in death, what would be the likelihood that he hadn’t donated anything to them in life?

Noah opened up the unlocked cabinet and sifted through the papers it contained. Most of what he found was within the ordinary. Tax deductibility forms for small and large donations over the years to a number of not-for-profit causes filled the cabinet to a brim. Names like the Red Cross, Salvation Army, UNESCO, and UNICEF appeared over and over again. All names which Noah recognized and was not surprised to find his father as a sponsor of. Also included in the collection was the paperwork for a sizable donation Jonathan had made to the university Noah now attended, mere days before Noah had applied.

‘Thanks Dad.’ Noah thought gratefully whilst stifling a chuckle. He was confident in his own abilities but simultaneously he couldn’t help but feel grateful towards the fact that his father always had offered a degree of extra insurance.

As Noah continued through the cabinet, he had almost scoured the entirety of its’ contents before he found a promising form. It was located near the back and was one of the earliest donations his father had made, having been filed years before Noah was even born. Noah removed the form and inspected it closer.

Yes, it referenced the Botticelli Society as the receiver of some small amount of Jonathan Blakely’s money. Unsurprisingly, it had gone towards the purpose of purchasing and preserving an Italian Renaissance painting, albeit not one by Botticelli but by another artist, Bronzino.

Noah’s eyes widened as he took in the next piece of information. Listed on the form was information on the society’s location. This society which Noah’s father had bequeathed an apparently great deal of Italian land to, was not stationed in Italy at all. Its headquarters were in fact in the city of New Haven, across state from where Jonathan himself called home but merely a couple miles from where Noah lived and attended university.