The Tempest

by James Lilliefors

  “Did he ever mention a man named Belasco?” Hunter asked. “Or Walter Kepler?”

  “Kepler,” she said.

  “Yes. Do you know that name?”

  “Uh-­uh.”

  Something had changed. Thelma’s eyes had glazed over and all of a sudden she wouldn’t look at Hunter. For a few moments she wasn’t there.

  “Thelma? What is it? What did he tell you about Kepler?”

  She exhaled and finally looked at her. “That’s who this is about, isn’t it? Kepler?”

  “How do you know that?”

  “My father mentioned the name. He wouldn’t talk about him. That was one thing he wouldn’t talk about.”

  “But he mentioned the name.”

  “Yes. Once. The FBI man asked about him, too.”

  “Okay.” Hunter thought of Randall’s snaggle-­toothed smile, his dark, asymmetrical eyes. Had Randall put out the word that Eddie Charles was an FBI informant as a way of exacting revenge?

  Thelma was looking at Hunter squarely again, ready to leave. “I don’t really know why I’m talking with you,” she said. “I don’t expect the real story about my father will ever come out.”

  “What would that story be?” Hunter asked. “How would you like it to come out?”

  “I’d just like to hear someone say the truth. That it was the murder of an honorable man. That it wasn’t some drug deal. Those articles in the paper, that’s the way they left it.”

  “I know,” Hunter said. “I’ll do everything I can to get the real story out, Thelma,” she added, but her promise sounded hollow.

  They walked together to the west entrance lobby, stopping by the information desk. Hunter asked a final question: “When you said your father knew he was going to be killed, what exactly did he think was going to happen? Who did he think was going to kill him? Someone connected with Mr. Patello’s business?”

  “No.”

  “The FBI man.”

  “Yes. That’s what he said. The FBI was going to do it. Maybe not directly. But he said it didn’t matter. The FBI man was setting him up, putting him in that trap, and there was no way he could get out of it unless he did exactly what the man asked him to do. By then, it was too late.”

  She looked at Hunter and she saw the raw hurt in her eyes, her cheeks reflecting the afternoon light through the tall museum windows.

  “Okay,” Hunter said. She reached out and gripped the backs of her hands. “If you want to talk again, you know how to reach me.”

  “Yes. Mr. Walters.”

  “Yes.” Thelma lowered her head. She walked outside, onto Anne d’Harnoncourt Drive, and quickly disappeared.

  BELASCO FINALLY TURNED away from the Dali painting in Gallery 169. Self-­Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War), a grotesquely fascinating portrait of a dismembered creature in the throes of doing battle with itself. There was a terrifyingly morbid fascination to the scene, set against a lovely Catalonian sky and a barren countryside. The beans an offering to the gods. A painting depicting the Spanish Civil War, supposedly, although it had become a much more universal symbol over time. The little professor wandering the landscape had always reminded Belasco of Walter Kepler, barely noticed and barely noticing, as he went about his business.

  Belasco was killing time today. A lovely phrase. Tomorrow, it would be time again for killing, in the more literal sense. Belasco walked out through the main entrance, to the so-­called Rocky steps, having no idea that Amy Hunter, the homicide investigator from Maryland, was one floor below, on the ground level, about to exit through the west entrance.

  The real art of killing, of course, was to make it seem like something else; an accident, a suicide, death from natural causes, a random killing. As long as you could do that, you kept moving; you were free to act again. As soon as it was seen for what it was, everything changed; the investigators identified a pattern and it was a matter of time before the perpetrator self-­destructed, becoming like Dali’s self-­mutilation. A matter of time. Another lovely phrase.

  Belasco had spoken briefly to Kepler before coming here. The transactions would happen tomorrow. Belasco would drive a white van to the Pennsylvania countryside in order to participate. On Thursday, they would both be back here, at the museum, this time together.

  It was a delicious late afternoon in Philadelphia. On the walk back to the hotel, Belasco saw a man seated on a bench reading the newspaper. Funny: Belasco already knew what would be on the front page of that newspaper Friday morning. Almost alone among the 1.5 million ­people in Philadelphia, Belasco knew. With that knowledge came feelings of both power and impotence; feelings that canceled each other out, becoming something more like humility. It was Kepler’s story that would be told. Walter was the storyteller. He understood the potential of image and story as well as anyone. Belasco’s role was to be in ser­vice of that story; it was a mostly selfless role and a necessary one.

  Tomorrow one more person would have to die. Possibly two. Belasco didn’t know yet. But it was starting to look like two.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Walking along Benjamin Franklin Parkway to her car, Hunter felt a potent adrenaline cocktail working on her nervous system. She’d thought that this detour—­the meetings with Calvin Walters, and now with Eddie Charles’s daughter—­might get her closer to Belasco; that they might provide new clues to Susan Champlain’s killing. But they hadn’t done that at all. They’d circled her right back to Scott Randall and his obsession with Walter Kepler—­back to her instinct that something about Randall was seriously not right.

  Driving back to the freeway, Hunter called Fischer, wondering where he was on the backgrounds of Kepler and Belasco. She asked him to add Randall to the priority list. Fischer, as usual, sounded pleased to receive a new assignment.

  “Also,” she told him, “I’d like to know what sort of relationship there was—­or is—­between Walter Kepler and Scott Randall. Anything connecting them. And anything connecting either one with Belasco.”

  “I’m not finding a lot on Belasco, unfortunately,” he said.

  “Whatever you can do.”

  She listened to the scratch of his pen on paper. “When do you want it?” he said.

  “Tonight? Tomorrow morning? Whenever you can get to it.”

  “M’kay.”

  Twenty-­some miles down the freeway, Hunter felt hungry, and remembered she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. She stopped at a turnpike restaurant, where she ate a turkey burger with fries and a large Diet Coke. She watched the highway, feeling anxious to get back to her team—­Moore, Tanner, and Fischer. For a while she sensed that she was being watched: a booth of four smooth-­skinned young girls across the room. They went quiet as soon as she looked. One of the girls’ smiles reminded Hunter of her mother when she was young. She glanced over at them as she ate, imagining how each of their faces would change as they aged, how their cheeks would loosen and lines would etch into their skin. She only stopped doing it when her phone buzzed. This time it was her boss, Hank Moore.

  “We got a trace back from one of your crank calls, Hunter,” he said. “From Friday night?”

  “All right.”

  “We’ve ID’d the phone. A woman named Leslie Kue. She works here, in Records.”

  “It wasn’t her, though.”

  “No. How do you know?”

  “I’m guessing.”

  “No, she lost her phone that night. It turned up Saturday morning. The thing is, she knows where she lost it. She was out at Kent’s Crab House after midnight. There’s security tape. We should have an ID in the morning.”

  “Okay.” Hunter looked out: a semi-­trailer truck pulling in. “I’ll be back tonight.”

  “Let’s meet at nine thirty in the a.m. I want Fischer and Tanner in now.”

  “Okay.” Good, Hunter thought. This meant that
Moore was going to bring the full resources of the homicide unit into play.

  Hunter let her mind drift as she drove south. She was in central Delaware when her phone rang again; she was pleased to see Fischer’s name on the readout.

  “Got a few things.”

  “That was quick.”

  “This a good time?”

  “Perfect.”

  Fischer was in his element, data-­mining, although sometimes he went places he shouldn’t. Hunter heard an energy in his voice that she liked.

  “Okay, Kepler and Scott Randall. Just preliminarily. Found a ­couple things . . . Evidently they may have met in their twenties. At college.”

  “Really.”

  “Both went to Columbia. Took same art class. This was thirty-­two years ago,” he said in his verbal shorthand. “Early Modernism . . . which means, pre–nineteen twenty. Picasso. Matisse.”

  “Not Rembrandt.”

  “Rembrandt was earlier. Sixteen oh one to sixteen sixty-­nine.”

  “Okay.”

  “Randall’s first wife, maiden name Catherine Collins, was also in the class. Art history teacher now, Cornell. She worked for Kepler, too, at one time, and may have dated him. Remarried twelve years ago.”

  “Good.”

  “I did find more on Kepler’s background, too.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Papers rustled. “Okay. Kepler. Grew up, Brooklyn, New York. Only child. His father was an art writer. Opened a small art gallery. When Kepler was twenty-­two, his father died of heart disease, and he inherited the gallery.”

  Ten years later, he went on, Kepler sold his interest in the gallery and became a private art dealer. He became rich when he sold an inherited Picasso for $16.3 million. Kepler then married a painter he had once championed; it broke up after two years. Bitter divorce.

  “And nothing on Belasco?” Hunter asked.

  She heard him turning a page. “Not yet. Just getting started. I find one hundred eight Belascos in the United States. Stephen Belasco, in Philadelphia, who may be an art dealer. There’s a Darren Belasco, who’s done time for burglary, including stolen art. I’m still running it down.”

  “No connection with Kepler, though, or with Randall?”

  “Not yet.”

  “What kind of name is it?” she asked, mostly because she was curious, and because she suspected he’d checked on this.

  “Spanish. Basque origins.”

  “ ’Kay.”

  Hunter tracked with the shades of the night sky, letting the details Fischer had recited assemble themselves in her thoughts. “And how about the images?” She had asked for security-­camera tape of Nick Champlain, Sally Markos, Joey Sanders, and Elena Rodgers.

  “Still coming in. I just left a first round on your desk. And we’re getting another batch of phone records and e-­mails, too. New source. I’ll have more in the morning.”

  “What do you mean, new source?”

  “Joe Sanders’s wife. Widow. Provided e-­mail and phone accounts voluntarily. We’re going through them. I’m working from home.”

  “Terrific. Great. Great work.”

  “M’kay,” he said, cutting her off.

  The countryside had turned foggy by the time Hunter rolled back into Tidewater County. Tompkin Creek wound like a smoky serpent through the marshes and farm fields, crossed by three separate bridges along Route 12.

  Hunter was formulating a new idea about the case now. It was probably wrong, but it might explain the part that most troubled her. She kept thinking about the image from her dream the night before: Susan Champlain on the front of the boat, about to be washed overboard; Scott Randall pretending to steady her but actually preparing to push her over. Why had she gone to Pastor Luke? And why had she told him what she did?

  Someone’s going to get hurt.

  Chapter Thirty

  Hunter followed the sound of Winston’s deep-­toned “meow” to the linen closet, where he’d managed to jump from the hamper onto the third shelf, and was stretched out on a pile of clean sheets, very proud of himself. It was another first for Winston.

  “Well, that looks mighty comfortable,” she said, rubbing under his chin. Winston squawked, pretending to be mad. But she continued to rub and he purred, forgetting himself for a few blissful moments. “I envy you a little, Winnie, you know that. If I could just perch in a linen closet all day, life would be so much easier. But someone has to go out and solve homicides.”

  This drew another, disapproving, squawk.

  Winston stayed in the closet as Hunter went to her computer and checked messages, but he continued to make noises, no doubt hoping to lure her back, while making it clear that he wasn’t going to simply forget that she had left him alone with Grace Pappas.

  When she did try to rub him again, Winston let out a high-­pitched warning, which sounded like the single note of a seagull. “Okay, now quit that,” she said.

  But she knew what he wanted: a healthy dollop of Fancy Feast Tuna Florentine, in a Delicate Sauce, even though he’d already had dinner.

  So she gave him a generous serving, setting his plate right there in the linen closet, and headed out the door. “Sorry, Winston,” she said. “I need to get back to work for a while.”

  He was eating intently, and paid her no attention.

  It was 9:41 when Hunter walked into the PSC, anxious to see what Fischer had left on her desk. She was surprised to see the lights on back in Homicide.

  Tanner was in his office, his door wide open, hunched over his notebook.

  They exchanged “Hey”s as Hunter came through the reception area. Fisher’s envelope was on her desk, as promised. Sealed.

  “Welcome back,” Tanner said, coming in with his notebook. “Surprised to hear about Sanders.”

  “I know.”

  “Suicide?”

  “That’s what local PD says.”

  Tanner watched her, his dark eyes glinting with interest. “You’ve already connected some of the dots, haven’t you?”

  “Some,” Hunter said. “I could use some help getting the rest of them.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I’d like to know more about how Sanders spent his time here,” she said. “Who he talked with. And also more about Sally Markos and Elena Rodgers. I’d like to have a better idea of what their life was like here in Tidewater County. I’d like us to trace their movements as closely as possible on Tuesday and Wednesday.”

  He was writing in his notebook, still standing, each assignment on a separate line, in small, neat print.

  “And someone else: Marc Devlin. He’s the manager of the Empress Gallery in town. Can you find out where he was at the time Susan was killed?”

  “Sure.”

  “And finally: I wonder if there’s any record of Scott Randall being in town around the time of her death.”

  His pen hand stilled. “Who’s Scott Randall?”

  “The FBI man who contacted me last Friday. He’s head of the art crimes unit.”

  “Oh.” He added it on a new line.

  “That can go to the bottom of the list,” Hunter said.

  “It is.”

  “Whatever you can find, we’re meeting in the morning.”

  “I know, I heard.” He flipped back several pages. Hunter knew he’d already gotten started while she was away, getting a leg up on Fischer, probably.

  “I found a little background on Sally Markos already. The housekeeper,” he said. “Want to hear?”

  “Please.”

  Hunter nodded for him to sit and he did, folding into one of the guest chairs. She leaned back and waited as he found it in his notebook. “Okay, Sally Markos: married, lives here year-­round, rents an apartment with her husband at Piper Inlet. No children. She was hired by Nick Champlain at the beginning of
summer. Cleans the house once a week. She also cleans apartments and does general maintenance at Oyster Cove. Worked at Oyster Cove for about six years. ­People like her. Good personality. Plays the lottery. Picks up odd cleaning jobs where she can. She’s thirty-­seven. From Baltimore originally.”

  “Who’s her husband?”

  “Rob Markos. Oysterman. He’s a native of the Shore, grew up near Cambridge.” Hunter kept glancing at the sealed envelope Fischer had left for her. “Apparently, he’s gone out flounder fishing in the Bay with Joey Sanders a ­couple of times.”

  “So they knew each other.”

  “Not well. Sanders liked to drink and fish, I was told. A lot of ­people knew him down at the docks. Markos likes to drink, too.”

  “Did this Rob Markos know Susan Champlain?”

  “I don’t think so. He knew who she was. Fisch sent you those photos, right?”

  She tapped the envelope once.

  “How about Elena Rodgers?” Hunter asked. “Anything on her?”

  His eyes lowered. He flipped back a ­couple pages. “Not much, no. Came here from Philly in mid-­June to work for Champlain. Worked as kind of a personal assistant for him.”

  “So that would have been after he came down?”

  “A week or two after, that’s right.” Hunter studied his long, unrevealing face. “And, as of yesterday, Champlain’s business manager tells me, she doesn’t work for him anymore.”

  “Really. Do we know why?”

  “Nope. Wouldn’t comment.”

  “There are rumors Champlain and Elena Rodgers were having an affair, right?” Hunter said.

  “It’s possible,” Tanner said. “Except ­people say she wasn’t the usual type Nick Champlain hired.”

  “What’s the ‘usual’ type?”

  He frowned at his notebook. “He tended to hire certain physical types: thin, young, lots of hair.” Tanner kept his eyes down, uncomfortable saying this. “Elena was a little older. There was something maybe a little tough about her manner. Not her appearance, but her manner. Like you didn’t mess with her.”