The Tempest

by James Lilliefors

  Early in the afternoon, Hunter paid a visit to the Empress Gallery on Main Street, where Susan Champlain had supposedly displayed her photographic art for several days earlier in the summer.

  A trim man with floppy black hair and arresting blue eyes emerged from a cubicle space. “Good afternoon,” he said, bouncing out to greet her. “Welcome to the Empress Gallery. Can I help you find anything—­Eastern Shore landscapes? Photography?” he said, guessing at her taste.

  “I’m on business, actually.” Hunter showed her badge. “I understand this gallery represented Susan Champlain?”

  One side of his mouth made a funny downward wiggle, as if a worm were inside his lips. “Susan Wilkins,” he said, correcting her. “She wasn’t represented here, no. Although I believe she may have had one piece for sale.” His blue eyes had an attentive, otherworldly quality that reminded her of a husky dog’s. “May I ask where you heard that she was represented here?” he said.

  “You may,” Hunter said. “But, unfortunately, I’m not able to answer.”

  This caused him to smile, in a quick, passive-­aggressive way. “It was just up for a few days, as I recall,” he said, his tone turning more businesslike. “We routinely rotate the selections.”

  “Did it sell?”

  “I couldn’t give out that sort of information.”

  “Okay.” She snuck a glance at his shoulders; not bad, but she wouldn’t call them elegant. “Did you know her?”

  “Did I know—­?”

  “Susan Champlain. Wilkins.”

  “I believe I met Miss Champlain, yes. But, no, I didn’t know her. May I ask what this is regarding?”

  “Just part of a routine investigation.”

  He gave Hunter a curt smile and she suddenly recognized something—­this was the man she’d seen walking behind Susan Champlain that hot afternoon several weeks ago, in the parking lot outside Kent’s, her sandals making a clip-­clop sound, oil stains glowing in the sun. The only time Susan Champlain had spoken to her.

  “How did it happen that her work was on sale here?”

  “I couldn’t comment on that. You’d have to talk with the owner. Excuse me,” he said. He pivoted and walked back to his cubicle. Hunter waited, glancing around the gallery. He came out again with two business cards, one in each hand. One for the owner, Darian Empress; the other, him: Marc Devlin, manager, Empress Gallery.

  “Let me know if there’s anything else I can help you with,” he said, meaning the art.

  Hunter gave him her card, which he looked at as if it were filled with a paragraph of text. “Would you have Ms. Empress call me?” she said.

  “I will leave Mrs. Empress a message, certainly.”

  “Thank you.”

  Hunter browsed for a ­couple minutes before leaving. She could see quickly that Susan Champlain’s art wouldn’t have fit here. The paintings on the walls were mostly oils of Eastern Shore landscapes and sailing scenes. There were also waterfowl carvings and small colored-­glass sculptures.

  Devlin gave her space, pretending to be checking a wall text across the room, but keeping an eye on her. Hunter noted the prices, which were mostly in the $2,000 to $6,000 range. She saw one for $24,000, and stepped back to study it more carefully. She didn’t get it. Was it really worth $21,000 more than the landscape next to it?

  Hunter enjoyed going through the Philadelphia Museum of Art, seeing the Impressionists, some of the Hudson River School paintings; she liked the ancient Greek and Roman art at the Penn Museum. Things that lasted: she was a sucker for that. But the world of art galleries was a mystery to her.

  She turned to say goodbye to Marc Devlin, who immediately raised his right hand.

  Hunter stood under the awning on the sidewalk and was surprised when the door creaked open behind her. Devlin stepped out, squinting at the light.

  “Your ID said Homicide,” he said, in a quieter voice.

  “That’s right.”

  He glanced both ways up and down Main Street. “I thought Miss Champlain’s death was an accident.”

  There was a note of compassion in his question that made Hunter suddenly like him.

  “It may have been. We don’t know yet.”

  Her card was still in his hand, and he pretended to read it again.

  “Could I call you later?” he said.

  “Sure, if you’d like.”

  “Good. I will.” Devlin looked at her with those blue eyes, then made a pivot and went back inside.

  FISCHER AND TANNER were in their offices at the PSC, heads down. But Tanner’s eyes lifted subtly as Hunter walked into her office.

  He gave her a minute to settle before coming in. Hunter knew she’d eventually have to tell them about the photo, and the Rembrandt painting, but for now she was going to honor Scott Randall’s request not to talk about it with anyone, other than Henry Moore, her boss, and Pastor Luke. At least until Moore told her different.

  “Anything?”

  “Not a lot. You?”

  “Possible witness.”

  “Oh?” Hunter nodded him in. “To Susan’s fall?”

  “I wish. No. But someone saw a pickup driving away from the bluff road Wednesday night. Where it forks off onto, I guess, Route 11?”

  “12.”

  “12. The woman came forward after the fact, talked to one of Dunn’s investigators. She got a partial on the license plate. The interesting thing is, it matches three of the numbers on Joey Sands’s truck.”

  “Joe Sanders.”

  “Right. The lifeguard—­I mean, the bodyguard.”

  “Right.”

  “And where is he?”

  “Sanders? I’m still following up. He may have left town already.”

  He studied her with his dark, liquid eyes.

  “Nothing more on the footprints, either? Cell phone, computer, sandal?”

  “None of it, no.”

  “Strange.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Joey Sanders was becoming more interesting to this case, Hunter thought. She made a mental note to ask Randall about him.

  “Let me get this,” she said, as her phone began to ring again.

  But there was no one there. So she thought. Then she realized that someone was breathing on the other end.

  “Amy Huuun-­ter?”

  “Yes? Hello?”

  A deep, splintery breathing sound, in and out, in and out. Then nothing. The caller had hung up.

  Hunter sighed. She closed the door and called Dave Crowe, at the FBI building in Washington. 4:02. It was almost two days now since Susan Champlain’s body had been found on the beach at Widow’s Point. There was too much still that she didn’t know about what had happened; and too much she wasn’t supposed to talk about. If Susan had been killed because of a stolen painting, then it probably wasn’t Hunter’s business to solve the case. But she kept thinking back to what Randall had said: what if solving one case solves the other?

  “How was your meeting?” Crowe asked, in a tone suggesting he already knew.

  “Have you talked with him?”

  “Randall? Just briefly, yeah. He asked me a few questions about you.”

  “Great. What did he want to know?”

  “I, eh, need to be careful. Talking on this phone.”

  Hunter sighed. “Let’s meet, then.”

  IT WAS EASY by then for Belasco to get close to Joey Sanders. He was an open book with some ­people, closed up with others. But there was a lot about him that was predictable. He was like Belasco’s brothers. There was a cocksure steadiness in the way that Sanders looked at you, chin up, an entitled quality to his smile. He was a man who counted on things going his way; and if they didn’t, no biggie. He didn’t wrestle a lot with angst. He worked hard, he played by the rules (those he had to). He liked to drink at night, b
eer and vodka. He was seducible, but thought he was doing the seducing. A lot of ­people were raised that way; it was an attitude that they never really shed, not completely.

  But he was also smart, in a deceptive way, and that worried Belasco. That’s why they were doing this, before Belasco left for good at the beginning of the week. They were headed now to pick up Belasco’s car; but taking a circuitous drive first, down through the protected marshlands. Sanders had something he wanted Belasco to see.

  Sanders was driving, only too pleased to help, windows lowered a third, cool air streaming from the vents. It was a hot afternoon, the outdoors making their clothes stick. Sanders’s face eager like that of a much younger man; like he was pretty sure something was going to happen. That was the game, the anticipation: shared desire. Just let it sit there, and simmer a little in the summer heat.

  Sanders turned onto a rural route, which would take them to Virginia eventually if they kept going. He picked up speed again, laying rubber at one point, but doing it responsibly, like a forty-­something-­year-­old man. The marshlands were sparkling in the distance all around. There was a motel ten or maybe fifteen miles up ahead.

  “A beer’d sure taste good,” Sanders said.

  “Okay.”

  “Want one?”

  “I could have one.”

  Sanders slowed. He eased off onto the shoulder of the road in the shade, by a narrow creek. He had a cooler of Budweiser in the truck bed. Belasco opened the passenger door. The air was still under the leaves, buzzing with insects. A small plane flew toward the beaches, towing a banner.

  As Sanders let down the tailgate, Belasco stuck the needle in his neck. Sanders had no time to do anything but look surprised. Then he tried to swat at it for a moment like a mosquito had bit him. Belasco always enjoyed seeing that transformation, that instant when someone you know turns out to be someone you don’t know.

  Eventually Sanders’s eyes and his arms stopped moving. He was fully paralyzed as Belasco heaved him up into the bed of the truck. Sanders should have known better than to let things get personal. In that instant before the tarp went over his face, Joey Sanders’s open eyes reflected the blue sky, and it reminded Belasco of Kepler’s eyes the first time they’d met, at the museum in Philadelphia: It had been like peering into a magnificent house full of elegant furnishings where nobody actually lived. That’s how it had seemed. Now Belasco knew better. It was a vast house with many rooms still unknown. But it wasn’t uninhabited. It was now the place where Belasco lived.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Hunter fed Winston and began the drive west, across the narrow creeks and farm fields toward the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Dave Crowe had agreed to meet with her at Fred’s Crab House on the water in Anne Arundel County. Not “halfway” to D.C. as he called it, but close enough.

  Crowe was a different man after a few drinks in the evening than he was sober behind his desk downtown during the day. Night and day, literally and figuratively. Hunter had benefited from this transformation in the past, when he’d told her more than he should have about the FBI’s investigation into what became known as the Psalmist case, for instance. But she also worried about him drinking and driving, and vowed she would end this at a reasonable hour.

  She’d just started up the eastern ramp to the Bay Bridge when her cell phone rang. Marc Devlin’s name came up. Hunter raised her windows, so she could hear.

  “Miss Hunter? I just wanted to apologize.”

  “For?”

  She thought for a moment that Devlin had been the heavy breather; that he was calling to say he was sorry.

  “I couldn’t talk openly in the gallery earlier,” he said. “The place is wired, for audio and video. Everything that happens there, she sees it. Mrs. Empress.” A truck whooshed by, and Hunter missed a few words of what he said next. “I wonder if I could meet with you, just for a ­couple minutes. I have a few things . . . Are you busy tonight?”

  “Actually, I’m on my way over the Bay Bridge right now on business. What’s it about?”

  “I just wanted to say—­that I sort of did know Susie Champlain. I told you I didn’t know her. Well, I sort of did.”

  “Okay.”

  “I mean, not intimately or anything. But—­I’m the one who put her art up in the gallery, to be honest with you,” he said. “And Mrs. Empress took it down. I wasn’t authorized to do that. She made that very clear.”

  “When was this?”

  “Beginning of July.”

  “Why’d she take it down?”

  “It wasn’t a good match with our clientele, she said. She was afraid it might scare ­people off. If it’s not duck decoys or sailboat pictures, they tend to become very uncomfortable.”

  Devlin sounded much more natural than he’d seemed in person. Hunter liked the slow cadence of his voice, which had some sideways Southern inflections.

  “So how’d you come to know Susan?” she said, gazing at the brightening lights of the Western Shore past the bridge.

  “Oh, I didn’t know her. But I ran into her a ­couple of times, and we got to talking. I mean—­a total of maybe four or five times, at most. Just chitchat, mostly, you know.”

  “When was the last?”

  “The last? Oh—­the last time? Was . . . Tuesday morning, I guess, outside the library.”

  The same day she had talked with Pastor Bowers.

  “And what time was this?”

  “Well, the gallery opened at noon and I open the gallery. So, it must’ve been eleven thirty. Eleven thirty-­ish.”

  “So, the day before she died.”

  “Right.”

  “What did you talk about? What was her state of mind?”

  “Actually, we didn’t. She was kind of jammed up that day, like she couldn’t talk.”

  “Jammed up.”

  “Well, yeah, stressed out. She kind of gave me the cold shoulder, if you want to be honest. I was kind of like—­ohhhhhh-­kay.”

  “Any idea what caused it?”

  “Caused it? No. Not a clue. I’d never have taken her for doing that kind of artwork,” he added incongruously. “I think she must’ve had a very abstract mind. She was a mystery girl, really, that’s what I thought. You know that Roy Orbison song?”

  “Mmm-­mmm,” Hunter said. She knew Pretty Woman.

  “The other thing is, if you’re interested, I could probably tell you a few things about Mrs. Empress.”

  “Oh? What sorts of things?”

  “Fraudulent appraisals? Faked provenances? I mean, if you ever wanted to look into it. I’m probably not going to stay there beyond the summer, anyway.”

  “Okay. Thanks,” Hunter said, “but I do homicides, I don’t investigate art fraud. I’ll be in touch about Susan, though. Can I call on you for follow-­up?”

  “Oh. Of course. By all means.”

  He sounded quite happy about the prospect.

  “I’M A LITTLE worried about Amy Hunter, if you want to know the truth,” Charlotte Bowers said.

  “Really?”

  Luke turned from the stove, where he was sautéing scallops. Charlotte was sitting at the table, drinking wine, keeping him company. Luke had stopped at Kent’s on his way home and was preparing his seared scallops with mango salsa, one of Charlotte’s favorites, to celebrate their decision to introduce a new Bowers into the world.

  “I just worry that she’s too independent and it’s going to catch up with her before long.”

  “Well,” Luke said. “I think Hunter’s pretty good at handling herself, actually.”

  “Oh, I know you do,” she said, giving him a saucy look.

  Luke turned back to his scallops. “So,” he said. “Is that one of the things?”

  “Things?”

  “You said you had two things to tell me tonight.”

  “Oh. No.” C
harlotte laughed. “It’s just that I wonder about this Scott Randall and what his intentions are. I had a funny vibe about him.”

  “We all did, didn’t we?”

  Perhaps coincidentally, Sneakers raised his head then and looked up at Charlotte. Then he returned his chin to the floor.

  “I wonder what Amy Hunter thinks about him.”

  “I guess we both do,” Luke said, stirring the scallops.

  “So how about we invite her to dinner? She’s never even been to the house. At least as far as I know.”

  “Really?”

  Charlotte eyed him mischievously. “To which part?”

  “Inviting her.”

  “Yes. Really. That was one of the things.”

  “Okay. Good.” He liked that Charlotte was suggesting this.

  “Let’s see if she’s free over the weekend.”

  “I’ll ask her,” he said. “Good idea.”

  Charlotte smiled at him, ambiguously. They ate Luke’s dinner on the back deck, drinking wine, talking about the future. The sun deepened to a warm orange-­copper shade that seemed to settle into the wetlands before dimming into darkness. A year from now, we might be living somewhere else, raising a child: it was an exciting feeling.

  “You said two things,” Luke reminded her.

  “Oh, yeah,” Charlotte said. “The second was just that I thought we could work on our project later. After dinner.”

  Luke smiled, looking at the long, brightening stretch of the Bay Bridge. “Another good idea,” he said.