The Facepainter Murders

by Virginia Winters

  "Something stronger?"

  "Tea." Anne sank into a metal armchair. The dark green fabric of the back and seat felt rough through the thin cotton of the hospital greens.

  "Do you want to clean up? There's a full bath attached to the office," Liz asked again.

  "Yes."

  But cleaning up had to wait. Dave opened the door behind the assistant's desk. He towered over her five-foot-two sister. His dark blue eyes, brilliant in his tanned face, narrowed when he saw Anne.

  "What's going on? Anne, are you hurt?"

  "No, no."

  "In your office," Liz commanded.

  Dave raised his eyebrows but followed along as she ploughed through the door and along the hall to his expansive corner office. High windows on two sides gave views of the harbor and the city, and let in the light needed for his work. Two junior architects stood over a model of an office building. Dave asked them for a few minutes privacy, and after a glimpse of Anne's face, they scuttled out the door.

  "What the hell?"

  "Anne found another body."

  Liz collapsed into a black leather visitor's chair near Dave's desk. Anne took another. Dave stood in the window, looking, or so it seemed, across the harbor. He was curly-haired and blue-eyed, tanned and cheerful, middle-height and middle-aged. Took care of himself, Anne saw—a little midriff spread but not much—testimony to the benefits of sailing and Bermuda's hilly landscape.

  "Where were you?" he asked when he turned around.

  "At the art gallery. When I walked out of the gallery, I heard something, like a muffled gunshot. There were two men, one lying on the floor, the other rifling through the fallen man's pockets. When I reached the one on the floor, he was gone. There was nothing I could do for him. He'd been shot, straight through the heart it looked like. I called for help, and the paramedics and the police came. A woman called Spottiswood is the investigator, and she told me not to try to leave the island and said they would want my passport. Can she do that without charging me with anything?"

  "You're a witness. She won't want to let you go."

  "They found a weapon outside the exit door. She showed it to me. A gun with a tube attached to the barrel, a silencer, I suppose.

  "The gun's not connected to you, so try not to worry," Liz said.

  "I need to talk to the consulate."

  "Ken Marshall's a good solicitor. I'll call him," said Dave.

  "I don't understand why I need one. I've done nothing. They did the test to see if I'd fired a gun."

  "Accomplice," Dave said.

  "What?"

  "They may think you're an accomplice."

  Wind, whipping torrential rain against her bedroom window, woke Anne the next morning. Black clouds and rain, she thought. Perfect. The weather was tracking her mood. She caught a glimpse of the angry sea through a moon gate in the stacked stone wall that surrounded the property. She jerked the drapes closed. She wanted off the island; wanted to go home to Canada, to her safe little house.

  Liz knocked and carried in a jaunty orange tray laden with a white china teapot and two cups. She sat it down on a glass-topped table in front of the window and handed Anne a cup decorated with roses and took one, daisies, for herself, then opened the drapes. She looked casually elegant in a soft blue dress and jacket in a darker shade.

  Anne scowled at the open window. "You're up early," she said.

  "I have to go to work."

  "You're not coming to the lawyer, then? I hoped you would be able to."

  She pushed away her cup and gripped her hands together until the knuckles turned white.

  "No, but Dave stayed home. He'll go with you."

  "I hope the lawyer believes me."

  "Whether he does or doesn't, his job is to give you advice."

  "If he doesn't, how can I expect the police to?"

  "Come on, Anne. You should wait to worry about whether or not he believes you until after you meet him. The office is in Hamilton, but I'll see you at home afterwards. Try to relax a little. This isn't like you."

  "It is though. I had the same reaction in Vermont, the first time."

  Anne dressed for her meeting in a dark green skirt, celery-colored cotton sweater and a jacket that matched the skirt. She added a single gold chain and wore the ruby and diamond engagement ring that Michael had given her, on her right hand. She struggled a little to get it over the knuckle. Her professional self looked back at her from the mirror. A uniform always helped, she thought.

  She sat across the breakfast table from Dave, nibbled toast, and picked at a dish of mango slices and strawberries. He was a man who never sugarcoated anything, so Anne was certain of blunt answers to her questions.

  "Is he a criminal lawyer?"

  "You mean does he do the courtroom work?"

  "Yes."

  "No. He would brief the barrister if it were to come to that. He's a good lawyer, Anne. Tough and well- respected."

  "I still can't believe I'm in this position. What is wrong with that woman? Why did she leap to the conclusion that I must be involved, without knowing the first thing about me?"

  "I don't know anything about her, but the lawyer might. We should get going."

  Sunshine had replaced the wind and rain by the time they left the house. Anne loved the quirky streets in Bermuda: the circular mirrors mounted at intersections; the stone walls, draped in flowers; the morning glories climbing the telephone poles and creeping out along the wires. The street names intrigued her—Flowercote Lane was a favorite. That morning she didn't see any of them.

  The lawyer's office inhabited the penthouse level of a four-story building on Church Street. The architect must have been striving for a Caribbean look, Anne thought, judging by the balconies that punctuated the facade, and the deep-set windows, Small projections from the roof-line, on the other hand, suggested a gesture towards the crenelations of English castles. Perhaps it was a new school, Interpretive Caribbean Architecture, or some such.

  They took the elevator to the third floor and walked up to the fourth. The foyer, guarded by a single receptionist, opened into a large room, filled with light and sunshine from the tall windows on three sides. Low partitions separated the space into cubicles. Law books lined the walls between and under the windows. The four partners' offices were along the remaining side, with the two seniors in the corners and the juniors in the center.

  The lawyer, Ken Marshall, furnished his space in an old-fashioned way—dark wood furniture and bookshelves, comfortable leather chairs for himself and the client. Pictures of his family occupied a shelf in one corner, visible from his spot behind the desk.

  He took the details in the old way too, longhand on a legal-sized yellow pad. Was there a whole industry devoted to creating these pads for lawyers all over the world, Anne wondered, or just Western ones? She liked him: his handshake; his reading glasses, pulled from a desk drawer when she started her story; his deep voice.

  "Can they take my passport? And should I speak to the consulate?"

  "Yes, they can take your passport, but let's wait for an official request. The consulate should know about the trouble. Their office in New York handles Bermuda, but there is an on-island Honorary Consul. I'll call her. If she wants or needs to see you, I'll let you know."

  He was taking charge in his lawyerly way, but that meant she would get her money's worth, not that she would be safe.

  "I told the detective you would be in touch."

  "Clients say and do many things without discussing it with us first. We can ignore that. Don't speak to them again without me there."

  "Do I have the right to ask that you be contacted if they arrest me or take me in for questioning?"

  "Yes, you do, if you were arrested. If they ask you to come in for questioning, call me before you go. If they take you, but don't give you time to call, say nothing whatsoever but to ask that I be called."

  "Won't they think I'm guilty of something if I behave like that."

  There was that ca
se of the nurse in Ontario accused of murdering babies. The press and the crown attorney used the fact that she asked for a lawyer immediately as evidence of guilt. And her roommate was a lawyer. Kafka would have understood.

  "Answering questions without advice is dangerous. I urge you to call me."

  "I will."

  He handed her his card, wrote a night phone number on the back, and got down to the business of a retainer, which they paid at the desk. Anne's hand shook a little as she signed the credit card slip for the five-figure fee.

  "Do I get some of this back it was to turn out that I didn't need much legal help?" she asked.

  "Oh yes," said clerk.

  On the way down in the elevator, Dave told Anne not to expect to see much of the ten thousand again.

  His son, Martin, met them at the door when they reached home.

  "Dad, the dead guy is Nathan Smith."

  "Nathan Smith?"

  "You remember. We looked at his paintings last weekend at the fair. The news said the police thought the death was drug-related. He was a good guy. He didn't do drugs."

  Anne could hear the outrage in his voice.

  "You know they always say that now. Was he a good friend? I don't remember you talking about him."

  "No. We knew some of the same people. He lived at home with his mother and worked on one of the big estates as a gardener, and he painted."

  Martin had dark curly hair and sea-blue eyes like his father and a mouth that was serious most of the time. His smiles were rare, sudden and dazzling. Not that day.

  "I should visit his mother. I'm sure she would want to know that he didn't suffer," Anne said.

  "I don't think the police would like that," Dave said.

  "Why not?"

  "Collusion between witnesses."

  "For God's sake, Dave. His mother and the woman who held him as he died. You can't be serious."

  Anne paced the length of the room, paused to gaze at the Sound for a few seconds and turned back towards the others.

  Liz came in from the kitchen and said, "What's all this uproar about?"

  "I want to talk to the boy's mother, and Dave thinks the police wouldn't like it."

  "You have to be careful, Anne. You're not at home."

  "I'm beginning to understand that."

  "A bike turned into the driveway," Martin said. "Are we expecting someone?"

  "No."

  A tiny black woman parked her bike and stood for a moment, looking away from the house towards the Sound, letting the onshore wind blow into her face. She turned and walked up the stairs to the front door. Liz waited for the doorbell to ring and then a few seconds more before she opened it.

  "I'm Margaret Smith, Nathan's mother. Could I speak to Doctor McPhail?"

  "Yes, of course."

  She sat on the sofa, a dark figure in sweater and slacks. A pair of red barrettes in the corn rows that marched across her fine-boned head betraying a taste for color. Perhaps these were her only clothes that weren't vibrant, Anne thought. She sat down beside her and waited in silence. Liz brought in tea and only then did Mrs. Smith speak; her voice heavy and weighed with sadness and tears.

  "The police said you were with my boy when he died."

  "Yes, I was."

  "That detective, Spottiswood, she told me not to talk to you. Why did she say that? Does she think you killed Nathan."

  Her voice trembled and her eyes searched Anne's face.

  "I didn't, Mrs. Smith. I'm a doctor from Canada. I came to visit my family. I was only at the gallery to look at the art." Anne leaned forward and touched the woman's large-knuckled hand.

  "So was Nathan," she said.

  Her tears overflowed her eyes and coursed down her cheeks. Anne waited.

  When Mrs. Smith was calmer, she said to Anne, "Tell me what happened."

  "I came out of the art gallery and saw two men on the mezzanine. One of them slumped to the floor, and the other ran out through the exit. I saw that Nathan was bleeding badly from the wound in his chest, and I tried to help him. He wasn't conscious, and if he suffered, it was only for a moment.

  A guard came and looked and a woman from the gallery. They must have called the emergency services because the paramedics came and then the police."

  "You don't know who did it?"

  "No. I only had a brief glimpse of his face."

  "Was he a white man?"

  The image of the man's face, his dead white skin under a navy-blue ball cap with its New York Yankees logo, came into focus in her memory.

  "Yes. Yes, he was."

  "Do you have any idea who would want to kill him?"

  "No. There's a girl at Tucker's Point."

  Anne knew that the ultra-rich from many countries kept homes in the exclusive enclave of Tucker's Point.

  "How did he meet her?" Anne asked.

  "He works on her family's estate. He wanted to have some connection to the land that should have been ours."

  She lifted her head to look at Dave, as though he would understand.

  "What do you mean?" he asked.

  "Nathan and I have been searching the land records and the genealogy records for years, trying to find what happened to the land our ancestors owned here."

  "Sold?" Dave asked.

  "No. No. We couldn't find anything about a sale, and my grandmother told me the land was stolen from us. I'm not very good at this research and Nathan was more interested in his art. After he met Candice, he told me not to worry, that the land would be ours when he married her. He was such a dreamer."

  "Was he seeing Candice Wainwright?" Martin said

  "Yes."

  "He was dreaming. Her father wouldn't let her marry a local."

  "How could he stop it?" Liz asked.

  "He'd cut her off. Money is very important to Candice. She would never marry anyone without her daddy's approval."

  "Nathan told me they were in love," Nathan's mother said.

  Anne saw Liz give Martin a little kick and a look that told him to stop talking.

  "Maybe Anne could help you with your research," Dave said. "She has a lot of experience."

  "I don't know anything about Bermuda genealogy," Anne said.

  "You know how to dig."

  "That would be wonderful. I want to know," Margaret said. "I want to know if Nathan and I were right. I don't expect to get any land back. Could you help me?"

  "Perhaps. I'll let you know," Anne said.

  Margaret was satisfied with that. Dave called her a taxi and waited outside with her until it arrived.

  "What were you thinking?" Anne asked Dave when he came back in the house. "When I start to look at someone else's genealogy, I always get into some trouble."

  "If the land should belong to her, it would be helpful to know that."

  "Helpful to whom?"

  "To you. As a motive for murder that doesn't involve you."