The Tempest

by James Lilliefors

  “Were you having an affair with her?”

  “No. Absolutely not,” he said, sounding too adamant. “But that’s what I mean. That’s what ­people would have thought. It would have just confused things. Who told you, anyway?”

  “A guest who saw you talking with her. They said you appeared to be in a very intense conversation.”

  “No.”

  “How would you characterize it?”

  “Friendly. Just a conversation. I think I was always kind of a sounding board for Susan, in a way. But it was perfectly innocent. Half the time she wanted advice about her husband.”

  “But what was it, specifically, on that day, that made her want to meet with you?” Hunter said, circling back to the key question.

  “I guess—­I mean, I think she just thought that something had changed.”

  “With her husband?”

  “With her husband, yeah.” Hunter nodded for him to go on. “He’d been acting, I don’t know, a little erratically, he was angry at her, and I think that just worried her. But, I mean, she couldn’t really pinpoint what it was.”

  “And you never thought that you ought to tell the police about that?”

  He shook his head, almost imperceptibly.

  “No?” Hunter said.

  “No.”

  “Because you thought it would confuse things.”

  “That’s right, yeah,” he said. “And also—­I mean—­”

  “Yes?”

  “And also I was—­I guess I was kind of advised against it.”

  His face went pale for a moment, then slowly reddened. He cleared his throat.

  “By?”

  “By the FBI.”

  Oh. “You’re saying you did go to the FBI about this?”

  “No.” He shifted again in the chair, showing a nervous smile. “I guess I wasn’t supposed to say that. No, I didn’t go to them, I just made a call. After the fact. I made a phone call.”

  “After which fact?” Hunter asked.

  “After Susan died. I’d offered to do it beforehand, but she didn’t want me to. That’s what we were arguing about, okay? I called Thursday, the day after she died. Maybe I shouldn’t have. I just felt like I had to do something, okay? I didn’t think there’d be a local investigation.”

  “Why the FBI?”

  “That was actually her idea. We’d talked about it a ­couple of times. She knew they had a Stolen Art Division. She thought this might have something to do with stolen art. She thought maybe we could do it anonymously. Although when I did call, they actually discouraged the whole idea.”

  “Who did?”

  “The fellow I talked with.”

  Hunter studied his face, still flushed and oily now with sweat. “Was this fellow’s name Scott Randall, by any chance?”

  “No,” he said.

  “The fellow you talked with?”

  He frowned past her out at the woods as if trying to think harder. “His name . . . yeah, Scott Randall. Was that it? I think so.”

  Jeez-­us, Hunter thought. She felt a twinge of anger. Why didn’t he tell her this?

  “Why—­do you know him?”

  “Not really.” Hunter forced a smile. “How’d that go, by the way? What’d you tell Randall?”

  “Basically, nothing. I mean—­I told him what I knew, which wasn’t much.”

  “Tell me what you know,” Hunter said. She sure could’ve used a bad cop/good cop partner about now. “Tell me what you told him.”

  “Okay.” John Linden sat forward and summoned a new, more authoritative tone: “I did tell him this: Before things changed, early in the summer, I guess it was, Susan’s husband evidently said something to her that he probably shouldn’t have—­that he didn’t mean to.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “He said something, in passing, about a famous stolen painting. He said that he knew someone, or had heard of someone, who knew where it was and was going to help recover it. It was just one conversation that lasted about a minute and a half, she said. After that, Susan and her husband never discussed it again. It never came up. But she never forgot it.”

  “What did she think it was? This famous painting?”

  “She thought it might be the art stolen from the Gardner Museum, in Boston. Which, of course, would make it a big deal.”

  “Why would she have thought that?”

  “I don’t know, I guess because he said something about it being a big take or a big heist or something. And that was one of the biggest. I think she Googled ‘art thefts’ and that one comes up pretty quick.”

  “Did she tell you anything about a photo she’d taken? Something her husband had found on her phone?”

  Linden’s face remained expressionless. “No.”

  “Sure?”

  “Sure.”

  Hunter had a different idea, then. “You know what the reward is for those paintings, I’m sure, don’t you?”

  “The reward? No.” Linden made a faint choking sound. “I mean, yeah—­I saw something about that, I think, yeah.” Hunter wondered if Linden might be interested in the FBI’s standing $5 million reward for information leading to the return of the stolen Gardner art. “I mean, are you saying that could somehow pertain to her death?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Hunter said. “What do you think?”

  “I have no idea. I’m asking you.”

  “And I’m asking you.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  Hunter waited.

  “What else?” she said finally. “What else did she tell you?”

  “That’s it,” he said. “That’s all.”

  He smiled uncertainly.

  “And is there anything else you’d like to tell me?”

  “About?”

  “Anything.”

  Linden made a face.

  “No?” she said.

  “No.”

  “Okay.” Hunter kept her eyes on his. “I’ll be back in touch with you, then.”

  She stood.

  “You will?”

  This seemed to bother him as much as anything.

  “Or you with me,” she said. “Whichever comes first.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Hunter went home to spend some quality time with Winston before visiting Luke and Charlotte Bowers for dinner. Winston didn’t know it (or perhaps he did), but she was going to be away overnight on Monday and he would be tended to by Grace Pappas, a crotchety older neighbor whose voice scared Winston something awful. The quality time was more for her than for Winston, of course, although he didn’t mind. They communed on the back porch, watching the marina activity, Hunter stroking the sides of his face and beneath his chin.

  Then she showered again and got dressed. Nothing fancy, just crab cakes, he’d said. Still, she’d ironed a dress shirt and pulled out her gray slacks. Somehow, she’d forgotten that the slacks fit funny, a little too tight at the waist and sort of bunchy around her thighs. But her usual selection of well-­worn jeans didn’t seem appropriate tonight. She had never been to the Bowerses’ house, which was more of a cottage, a “parish house,” he called it, whatever that meant.

  As soon as Luke opened the door that evening, the Bowerses’ dog Sneakers was all over her. Hunter went with it, getting down on one knee as he rolled onto his back and turned to jelly, his tail thumping wildly on the hardwood floor.

  “Looks like we’ve got some competition,” Charlotte said to Luke as she came in, holding a glass of wine.

  “That’s actually quite unusual,” Luke said. “He doesn’t often act that way.”

  “Tell her what happened when the FBI man came by.”

  “Well, it wasn’t pretty,” Luke said. “Sneakers isn’t used to being ignored.”

  Hunter straightened up.


  “FBI man?” She felt a shiver race through her. “Was Scott Randall here?”

  “Yes. I probably should have told you that.”

  “He ignored Sneakers,” Charlotte said. “Can I show you the house?”

  “Sure,” she said. Then added, “Yes.”

  There wasn’t a lot to show. The house was small and neat, with antique wooden furniture, nautical knickknacks, little embroidered pillows, photos. Hunter’s place was neat, too, but she didn’t go in for knickknacks. Sneakers followed, sniffing at her ill-­fitting pants each time they stopped. It was starting to make her self-­conscious.

  Back in the living room, she sat across the sofa from Luke. A baseball game was on television, the sound off. Charlotte came out, leaning in the doorway. Hunter told them about John Linden and some of what Randall had shared with her about Walter Kepler. Both Bowerses listened with great interest, not moving, as if any undue motion would interrupt her story.

  “I guess it goes without saying, this is all just between us,” she said in conclusion.

  “Yes.”

  Luke said, “Charlotte was saying before you came over that we’re kind of a secret society now.”

  “Yes.”

  “We might even need to come up with a secret handshake,” Charlotte suggested.

  “We’d probably have to include Sneakers in that,” Luke said.

  “Of course,” Hunter replied. And Winston, she thought, but didn’t say.

  “He has learned to shake,” Luke explained.

  “I’m not surprised.” Hunter smiled. She hadn’t really expected this degree of banter, which seemed to be the natural way they communicated.

  “So you’re going to see Nick Champlain tomorrow?” Luke asked, once Charlotte had brought out the salads and Luke had said grace. “Will you press him about the photo?”

  “I think so. It’s one of my topics, yes.”

  “Is Randall feeding you any questions?” he asked.

  “No. He gave me a few suggestions.” Hunter took a drink of wine. “I keep having to remind myself why I’m doing this.”

  “Which is?” Luke said.

  “Susan Champlain. Not stolen art.”

  “Right.”

  “But you’re going to ask about the Gardner art?” Charlotte said.

  “I think so, yes.” Hunter picked up a cherry tomato and popped it in her mouth. “Although it’s a sensitive area, obviously,” she said. “I mean, if it has something to do with what happened, then, it’s part of the . . . Oh, my God! . . . Whoops!”

  Hunter stared in horror at the table. She’d bitten on the cherry tomato and squirted juice all the way across the table and onto Charlotte’s salad plate. For a moment, there was silence, all of them staring at the line of tomato juice and seeds.

  “No worries,” Luke said, bounding up. “We do that all the time, Charlotte in particular.”

  She punched him in the arm as he passed by.

  “Luke taught me,” she said. “He used to be quite good at it.”

  Hunter did the usual “Let me help” and “I’m so sorry” as Luke sponged away the juice, impressed how deftly they were able to leapfrog her faux pas.

  “No harm,” Charlotte said, in a tone that was reassuring but also seemed to be asking her to cool it with apologies. These Bowerses are full of surprises, Hunter thought.

  Charlotte commandeered the conversation as Luke prepped the crab cakes. Telling her about something called the Coriolis Force, which she said caused the saltier water in the Chesapeake Bay to move toward the Eastern Shore rather than the Western Shore, particularly in late summer. “That’s why the breeze this time of year feels like sea air,” she said.

  “I didn’t realize that.”

  “No, most ­people don’t.”

  “Coriolis was a French engineer,” Luke added, bringing in the dinners on expensive-­looking china plates. “He’s one of the seventy-­two names inscribed on the Eiffel Tower. Scientists, engineers, mathematicians.”

  “Really,” Hunter said. “This is becoming quite an education.”

  “Aren’t you going to tell her the names of the other seventy-­one?” Charlotte asked.

  “I was saving it. Maybe during dessert?”

  They ate in silence for a while, Hunter careful not to make any mistakes. The crab cakes were delicious, crisply cooked with lump fin crabmeat and no detectable filling. Hunter praised them to Luke, who smiled quickly and shifted the subject back to Susan Champlain. “You know, I’ve sort of been rethinking a few things that Susan told me,” he said. “I’m not sure I believe the circumstances under which she took those pictures, for instance.”

  “Oh?”

  “Having had some time to reflect.”

  “Which circumstances?” Hunter asked.

  “The story about stopping off at that house on the way to the airport, where the painting was. I’m not sure I quite believe that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the way she told it was funny.” He glanced at Charlotte, then back at Hunter. “I realize, from an investigative standpoint, that may not be the soundest reason—­”

  “Although it surprised me a little, too,” Hunter said, “that he’d take her so close to the painting. To something that valuable.”

  “Or that such a great painting would just be sitting out there in the open like that,” he said.

  “Well, it was in a side room,” Charlotte said. “And anyway, ­people who deal with stolen art are notorious for not exactly caring for it the way a museum would.”

  Hunter nodded. “Stolen masterpieces have been recovered in storage sheds and behind Dumpsters.”

  “That’s right.”

  “One other thing I heard,” Luke said, “is that Susan may have left a note behind. That’s not true, is it?”

  Hunter frowned. “Where’d you hear that?” she asked, suspecting Aggie, the receptionist.

  “J. Michael Bunting.”

  “The newspaper guy?” Even better. They shared a quick smile around the table. “No,” Hunter said, “no note yet. Although she did have a book in the pouch on her bicycle and there was a receipt inside that she’d scribbled on.”

  Hunter saw something change in Luke’s face as she told them what Susan had written. Kairos48. “Does that mean anything?”

  “Well, yes, maybe,” he said.

  “Kairos and Chronos,” Charlotte said.

  “I gave a sermon on Kairos and Chronos early in the summer,” Luke explained. “Chronos is man’s time, Kairos is God’s time.”

  “Well, that’s interesting.”

  “Yes.”

  “I wonder how much Susan actually knew,” Charlotte said. “Do you think she knew what was in that photo—­that she may have inadvertently taken a picture of the stolen Rembrandt?”

  “From what John Linden said, no,” Hunter said.

  “I’d vote no, also,” Luke added. “I think she would have said something if she did.”

  “It’s interesting what John Linden said, though,” Hunter said. “He made it sound like she was afraid for her husband rather than of him.”

  “Yes, I picked up on that, too,” Luke said.

  “So maybe she was starting to figure it out.”

  “Whatever it is,” Luke said.

  “Yes.”

  They all smiled at that. By the time Charlotte brought in dessert, they’d finished up with secret society business. Hunter was feeling good after a ­couple of glasses of wine; the tomato incident was ancient history.

  “How’d you get into this, anyway?” she said, slicing a fork through her apple pie. “I don’t know that I’ve ever asked you.” With Luke, it seemed, any question was fair game.

  “I want to hear, too,” Charlotte said, pretending to be a little girl.

  Luk
e smiled. “Not much of a story.”

  “You were working as a paramedic, right?” Charlotte prompted.

  “Yes, out West, some years ago. Taking a ­couple of graduate courses. It’s rewarding work, paramedics, but with a high attrition rate. We were the first responders to emergencies. Let’s you see how fragile life is.”

  “How we’re all one step from death,” Charlotte said.

  “Well, yes.”

  “To be honest, I related more to the story you told about the parking space,” Hunter said. “That’s me, at times.”

  “It’s most of us at times,” Charlotte said.

  “It was me before I was called to do this,” Luke said.

  “A long distance call if ever there was one,” Charlotte said.

  “Ha-ha.”

  “What did your parents raise you to be?” Hunter asked.

  “Independent.”

  “Did you have brothers and sisters?”

  Luke shook his head. “Still don’t.”

  “I liked Susan Champlain’s family,” Charlotte said, to Hunter. “Her brother and sister.”

  “Me, too.”

  “I think Susan saw herself as having a calling, and a gift,” Luke said, “and she really wanted to make the most of that.”

  “Her art.”

  “Yes. I think so.”

  “We all have our own unique gift,” Charlotte said, “and we need to find what it is.”

  “Yes. Paul says that,” Luke said.

  “Paul—­?”

  “St. Paul. The apostle.”

  “Oh.” Hunter was thinking for some reason of Paul McCartney.

  “In Romans and again in First Corinthians.”

  “Does he say just one gift?” Hunter asked.

  “One above others,” Luke said. “And I think, with that, we have two obligations: to find what it is. And then, more important: figure out how best to use it.”

  Hunter was gazing at the darkened Bay, thinking about Susan Champlain’s final hours, feeling extremely comfortable now. Pleased that neither of them had asked much about her past and confident that neither of them would.

  “Anyone ready for more wine?” Charlotte asked.

  BELASCO WATCHED AMY Hunter’s window from a bench in the shadows on the Bay end of the marina. Her bedroom lights went out at 11:45. Came on again at 11:52. Then went out at 12:01, for good. Amy Hunter. Belasco had identified her now as a potential obstacle. She had spent her Sunday evening with the pastor and the pastor’s wife. Susan Champlain had gone to the pastor, too, on Tuesday afternoon; the day she should have had her fall. Then on Friday morning, Hunter had met with Scott Randall. They’d taken a drive. All of those were reasons for concern.