Fred Taylor Art (Audio)
1 primary work • 2 total works
Book 8
The young woman in the hair salon raises her shirt in a brief gesture to show a friend a work in progress - a riot of stunning tattoos. From his accidental vantage point in the barber's chair, Fred Taylor knows that those images - weird insects, beasts, and naked human figures - could only come from something amazing: a hitherto unknown painting of rare and significant value. And the girls don't have a clue. Fred knows such a painting needs to be found. His inquiries lead him from the salon to the illegal tattoo parlor of an unlicensed genius. Fred is met everywhere by ignorance and denial. Anyone who must have seen the painting denies that it exists, despite the vivid proof increasingly laid bare on the canvas of the hairdresser's skin. Fred's employer, the collector Clayton Reed, is out of the country. So Fred, left to his own devices, is free to follow the trail, despite the distractions presented by the intriguing librarian Molly Riley. Not wanting to spook his unwilling witnesses, Fred must proceed with caution. Then he encounters the first serious bump in the road: a suspiciously convenient hit-and-run that brings one potential informant into an abrupt dead end....
Stillton Academy on the coast north of Boston is in trouble. The academy's days are numbered unless extraordinary help arrives. Worse, a Stillton instructor has purportedly dis - appeared with a female first - year student, daughter of the Academy's only significant donor. Two of the trustees travel to Boston where they ask wealthy, intensely secretive art collector Clayton Reed for the services of his employee, Fred Taylor. Fred goes undercover as a member of the faculty and soon discovers conflicting motives and designs among faculty and students, as well as a board of trustees whose interest in the long - term survival of the operation seems lazy, misguided or - perhaps - a good deal more sinister. Meanwhile, the motives of Taylor's employer remain obscure. What is it that whets his acute acquisitive instincts? He will only say, "Trust no one. Look at everything." In sleepy Stillton, a town suspiciously backward, un - exploited, and ripe for development, what hidden treasure is Clayton hoping for? And can Fred find it before the college goes up in flames?