The Tempest (16 page)

“Not sure, Edward or Edwin. And I also need to know everything about a man named Walter Kepler. He's a high-­end art dealer. And, in particular, any connection there may be between the two. Belasco and Kepler.”

“Walter Kepler.”

Hunter spelled it. “And, I'd like to see any security images we can get of Nick Champlain, Sally Markos, Joey Sanders, or Elena Rodgers. At Kent's or at the Old Shore Inn.”

“Going through them now.”

“Okay, good.” Hunter realized that she probably sounded wound up. Probably she
should
take some time off. But not now. “Sorry,” she said. “Whatever you can get to. Belasco and Kepler first.”

“No problem. I'm on it.”

Twenty minutes later, a mile into Delaware, Hunter called the number Helen Bradbury had given her, in the little town of Scattersville, Pennsylvania.

“Calvin Walters,” a friendly voice answered.

Hunter explained who she was, mentioning Susan Champlain and telling him that Helen Bradbury had recommended she call. “I'd like to talk with you about Eddie Charles, if you can spare a few minutes.”

He seemed unsurprised. “Well, okay,” he told her. “I can't guarantee I can tell you a lot. But, sure, I'll talk with you.”

“Are you free tomorrow?”

He chortled. “Well, I ex
pect
to be free. What time you-­all want to stop by?”

“Ten? Eleven?”

“Eleven o'clock tomorrow morning,” he said, stretching out the syllables as he wrote it down.

“I'll see you at eleven, then.”

“Don't know that I can tell you a lot,” he said again, “but I'm glad to meet with you.”

W
ALTER
K
EPLER
WAS
floating in the Atlantic Ocean on a clear plastic mattress, doing the numbers again in his head, his taut body undulating pleasantly with the pulse of the water, the sun warming his skin. He savored the freedom he had to just float for a ­couple of hours, disconnected from everyone. Much of Kepler's work involved thinking—­and he especially liked doing so on the ocean, where he couldn't be interrupted.

“The cost of a miracle,” he said aloud, enjoying the sound, and the irony, of those words, the way his voice folded into the rise and fall of the waves.

He cast his eyes back to shore. Kepler's attorney, Jacob Weber, would be coming to visit tomorrow, with news from his trip north. If Weber brought good news, as he fully expected, then Kepler was going to push the schedule so that all three phases took place in a single twenty-­four-­hour period. Wednesday. Which had been his intention all along, although he had kept that detail to himself.

There were reasons all around why this new time frame would be acceptable. The sale would make Vincent Rosa five million dollars wealthier and free him of an albatross. Champlain, too, was restless, wanting to take his profit in cash and return to Philadelphia, to his shopping center deals and his girlfriends, with the promise of an even bigger transaction down the road. Kepler was the only one who'd be losing anything financially. But making money wasn't the point this time; the point was creating a “miracle.” Kepler had long ago set up accounts to comfortably finance the rest of his life. This time, money wasn't an issue.

Champlain would recite the authentication details to Kepler again when they met tomorrow: five identifying characteristics (a pinprick hole in the upper right corner being the most recent), proof that this painting they were buying was the real thing.

Once Rosa had led Champlain to the work, and he had authenticated it, Champlain would call Kepler. The rest of the payment would then be transferred to Rosa's account through a holding company in Bermuda. Afterward, the painting would belong to Champlain.

The second phase would be on Kepler's terms. Champlain would sell him the painting and walk away with three million dollars of Kepler's money.

The third part would be up to Jacob Weber. It would cost Kepler nothing.

L
UKE WATCHED
C
HARLOTTE
as she rose from their bed to get a bottled water from the kitchen, feeling a long moment of gratitude as he listened to her footsteps in the hallway. He was home for lunch to work on their “project,” which was going to be a regular activity for a while; or so he hoped.

“I was at the shelter this morning and talked with Claire,” she said, coming back, along with a tired-­looking Sneakers, who'd been napping in her study. “She told me she knows the whole story about Susan Champlain.”

“Well, there's a teaser for you,” Luke said.

“Yes, I know.”

Charlotte sat on the bed, leaning against the headboard. She handed Luke the water.

Sneakers hopped up and settled against Luke's leg.

“Do you believe her?”

“No. But you know Claire.”

“Sort of,” Luke said. “If you insist.”

Luke took a drink and handed the bottle to Charlotte. Claire French was an eccentric Tidewater native in her late sixties, a tall, sinewy woman who dressed in jeans and tank tops and wore her long gray hair in twin braids, like Willie Nelson. Charlotte knew her only because they both volunteered at the Humane Society. Claire, who lived several miles inland on a small farm with a menagerie of animals, was probably one of the most knowledgeable residents of Tidewater. But she was also a strident atheist who occasionally took preemptive strikes against Luke, pointing out the contradictions of Chris­tian­ity as if these were topics Luke had never considered before.

Luke maintained what he considered a healthy skepticism toward atheism, particularly with ­people like Claire, whose certainties approached fanaticism. Most atheists Luke had known experienced profoundly religious moments on occasion, he had found; they just chose to define them as something else.

“I didn't think she even knew Susan,” Luke said.

“I didn't either. She said Susan had worked at the shelter one afternoon and they'd gotten to talking. Which was news to me. Her name wasn't on the volunteer sheet.”

“Did you ask her what the ‘whole story' was?”

“I tried,” Charlotte said. “But Claire's always in a rush to be somewhere, so she couldn't tell me. I called her back before you came over and, naturally, she completely downplayed what she'd said earlier. By tomorrow, she will deny she even said it.”

“Such is the life of an eternal nonconformist,” Luke said. “Why do you think she said it?”

“Conversation. Some ­people like to invent stories that make their lives momentarily more exciting.”

“Yes. I know.”

Charlotte set the water on the bed stand. She snuggled against Luke and held him, pushing Sneakers away, laying her head on his chest. They stayed like that for a long time, listening to the silence, the occasional squeak of the weather vane on the back deck.

Luke went for a drive after Charlotte woke him, feeling grateful for the family he had and the one that he might have in the future. He drove along the coast road, stopping for a minute at the Gray Inlet overlook, then heading south past the oyster reefs and the seafood processing plant, and turning inland, passing Landrum's Boatyard and the mini-­market and the storage bays where Luke had rented a small locker years earlier and then had all but forgotten about what he'd left there—­his papers, books, notebooks, family letters, photos and keepsakes; his life before Charlotte, in effect.

He wound up at Widow's Point again, where he parked on the access road and walked out onto the beach. It was just past low tide. Luke took off his shoes and walked along the edge of the water, thinking maybe he'd find something this time: the other sandal, perhaps, or Susan's cell phone. He stopped in the shade below the bluff and gazed out at the Bay, which glittered brilliantly in the afternoon light. There was no one on the beach in either direction; and no visible reminders of what had happened last Wednesday. Luke closed his eyes and thought of Susan Champlain. It was his third visit here alone. He left finding nothing, with the same empty feeling he'd carried away the other two times.

 

Chapter Twenty-three

N
icholas Champlain's spacious eleventh-­floor office overlooked the Benjamin Franklin Parkway with a view of the Rodin Museum, the Barnes Foundation building and the Philadelphia Museum of Art at the other end. In the old days, “wearing a wire” meant having an electronic microphone attached by adhesive to one's body. Now voice recordings could be transmitted digitally from a pin-­sized device and streamed to a remote computer. Hunter carried the transmitter on her shirt pocket. Scott Randall, presumably, was at the other end, and would be listening in and recording their conversation.

Champlain's receptionist, a fetching but very serious young woman with full red lips and lots of black hair, ushered her into Champlain's office, a large paneled room, with dark, expensive-­looking furniture.

“Mr. Champlain,” Hunter said.

Champlain stood, nattily dressed today in a navy business suit. His expressive, good-­natured face seemed pleased to see her, although his manner was more hurried than before.

“I'm sorry I've been difficult to reach,” he said, gripping her hand. Hunter sat. “I've been making arrangements for this funeral. I'm going out there this afternoon.”

“Oh.” This surprised Hunter, considering how Susan's sister felt about him; she wondered if he was making it up.

“I must confess, I was surprised to hear from you. I thought we'd covered everything the other night.”

“Most,” she said. “There are a few things we didn't get to.”

“Okay.” His eyes gave her a once-­over. An eight-­by-­ten smiling headshot of Susan stood on the cabinet behind his desk, along with several smaller pictures that she assumed were his daughter. “I understand you're Homicide.”

“Yes.”

“So . . . are you saying you think my wife's death may've been a homicide?”

“No, I'm just investigating the circumstances.”

“I assume you've checked my whereabouts. You're satisfied I couldn't have had anything to do with it?”

“Yes, sir. We understand you were here on Tuesday in a business meeting and returned to Tidewater County on Wednesday, just after nine in the evening.”

“That's correct. More like nine fifteen, I'd say. I'm sure they have video that'll confirm the time.”

“You went back and forth a lot, I understand,” Hunter said.

“Pardon me?”

“Between Tidewater and here.”

“Correct.” He summoned a pleasant smile, surprisingly detached, Hunter thought, from the topic of his wife's death, although part of it was just the easy way his face worked. “Tidewater was a nice getaway. That's what we thought, Sue and I. Good place, good ­people. But, naturally, I couldn't put my business on hold entirely.”

“No.”

“This shopping center, they're bringing site plans for a zoning review next month. My wife, though, she likes to get off by herself sometimes. And, of course, she has a little history down there on the Shore. So it was more for her than anything else.”

“History?” Hunter asked. She hadn't heard this before.

“I'm not even sure what it is exactly,” he said, waving the subject away. “She vacationed there with her family, I think. My business manager found the house, figured it'd be a good place for her to relax. He's from that area. Lovely region. Although I wish now I'd never seen the place.

“I might just mention, too, Amy,” he said. He scooted forward and spoke in a more hushed tone: “That because of Sue's love of the region and the tragedy that occurred, I'm thinking about funding an arts center down there in her name. Not a museum, but like a photography center. Where ­people could display their photographs. That kind of thing.”

“I see.”

Hunter suspected he'd already talked with J. Michael Bunting at the newspaper about this.

“But anyway,” he said, leaning back again, “I know you have to do your job. And I don't want to impede that in any way. So I'm here for you, Amy, anything you need to know.”

“Okay, I appreciate that.”

“But—­have you had lunch, Amy?”

“I did, actually.”

He was trying to flirt with her, she suddenly realized, which felt kind of icky considering the circumstances.

“I do have a few questions I need to get to,” Hunter said, paging through her notebook.

Champlain nodded, once.

“Your wife gave indications in the days before she died that she was concerned about a business deal you were involved in.”

“Did she?”

“That's what I'm told, yes. True?”

“What—­you mean, the
shopping center
?”

“No. Something else,” she said, still flipping through her notes. “Something she said you two had argued about. Something you became angry about after you saw a picture on her cell phone.”

His expression stiffened. “You already asked me that once,” he said. “What, is this something the pastor told you?”

“No. Why would you say that?”

“Process of elimination.” He swiveled in his chair to look out the window. “I know she was talking to him. It wouldn't surprise me.”

“Wasn't that an issue between you, though? A photo she'd taken.”

“No. Look, as I told you the other night, Amy. And, I mean, come on—­even if it was, we're talking ancient history. And the issue wouldn't have been about taking
pic
tures. It would've been about respecting ­people's privacy.”

“It
was
something that came up in recent days, then.”

“No, not at all.” He said it too quickly and seemed to be reassessing her a little bit, put off by how serious she was, how un-­charmable she must've seemed. “I mean, the
subject
may've come up.”

“Of the picture.”

“No,” he said, “there
wasn't
any picture. As I said before.”

H
UNTER OPENED THE
file folder she had brought and pulled out copies of the images from Susan Champlain's cell phone. She set them one at a time in front of Nick Champlain, whose face tilted one way and then another. It told her something about him: that he was guilty of something, although she wasn't sure, yet, what it was.

“Okay,” he said, displaying his smile. “I give up—­what are you showing me here?”

“These are pictures your wife took. Which had evidently become an issue between you.”

“These?” He made a dumb face, looking at them while shaking his head dismissively. “I have no idea what this is. Why are you showing me this?”

“Do you remember where these were taken? Whose house it is?”

“No idea. I have no idea what you're showing me here, Amy.”

“It's Sergeant Hunter.”

“Oh, okay.” He smiled faintly.

“You don't recognize this?”

“Not a clue, no.”

Hunter left the images sitting in front of him as she flicked through her notes. He seemed nervous now, moving the paperweight on his desk, to one place and then, moments later, to another.

Hunter pulled out the last image from her folder, showing the gold necklace she'd found in the sand at Widow's Point.

“How about this? Does this necklace look familiar? Was this your wife's?”

His eyes stared at it strangely.

“No,” he said. “Why?”

“This doesn't look familiar?”

“No. My wife, frankly, didn't wear a lot of necklaces. To be honest.”

Hunter nodded, leaving the pictures in front of him.

“How long had Joseph Sanders worked for you?” she asked.

“Joey?” His voice went up an octave; it seemed to surprise him more than it did her. “Not long. Why?”

“How long is not long?”

“Off and on, a ­couple of years. He wasn't planning to stay on after mid-­August anyway.” His lips aligned and smiled. “The man makes more money in construction than I was ever able to pay him.”

“In this area?”

“Pittsburgh.”

“He was your bodyguard?”

“No, he was my driver. My assistant.”

“Was there ever an issue, sir, between Joe Sanders and your wife?”

His face contorted, an exaggerated show of confusion. “Who said there was?”

“I'm asking you.”

“No,” he said.

“Sure?”

“Of course I'm sure. Joey was always respectful. I had no problems with Joey Sanders. Ever.”

“Aren't you also working with a man named Walter Kepler?”

His eyes narrowed. He seemed unable to speak for a moment.

“Sir?” Hunter said.

“I'm not sure I understand what you're asking me here.”

“Walter Kepler,” Hunter said. “Do you know who he is?”

“I don't know.”

“You don't know
him
? Or you don't know?”

“No. I don't. Know him.” His face looked very naked right then. Hunter let the lie sit there.

“Belasco?”

“What?”

“Does that name mean anything?”

“Nothing.”

“Did you ever have a discussion about stolen art that your wife may have overheard? Possibly involving works stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, in nineteen ninety?”

“Now you've lost me.”

But Hunter could almost feel the blood pulsing in his neck, the anger roiling below the surface. She bought some more time by paging through her notes.

“You say you're planning to attend Susan's funeral in Iowa. Do you know that the sister thinks you had something to do with Susan's death?”

He grinned broadly and swiveled to face her directly. “Is that what Nan told you? I guess that shouldn't surprise me.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Some ­people have a harder time accepting reality than others,” he said. His smile was still doing a slow fade. “Nan's one of them. Good little farm girl, married a good little farm boy. I'll leave it at that.”

Hunter continued to watch him, feeling the invisible presence of Champlain's anger crowding the room. He was upset about Nancy Adams's accusation; but more so, she thought, he was upset that Hunter had brought up Kepler's name. She glanced at his sparse desktop, wondering if Kepler might be listening in, too.

“Did you have anything to do with your wife's death, sir?”

“Come on.” Hunter waited. “Of course not. Of course I didn't.”

“Do you think there was foul play involved?”

“Unfortunately, no. Well, not unfortunately.
No
. I mean, no, I don't.”

“All right.” Hunter closed her notebook and they stared at each other. “Well, if you think of anything else, sir, feel free to call. As I say, I'm just doing a routine follow-­up.”

Champlain walked with her to the elevator, the quiet clinging to them. He pushed the down button twice as they waited. Hunter felt that she probably shouldn't have said so much. He'd told her more in his evasions and silences than in his words—­and now she needed to sort through it. She looked across the parkway to the “Rocky steps” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She'd rattled him a little bit, and wasn't sure how she felt about that.

W
ALTER
K
EPLER LISTENED
to the conversation on his computer, surprised by the aggressiveness of this homicide cop and the fact that she'd brought up
his
name. So Belasco was right about her. Kepler saw where this was likely headed: The predator, Scott Randall, had recruited this woman, not to make Kepler nervous, but to make
Champlain
nervous. It was a clever ploy, in that sense; Kepler was sure that Randall would try to use her again, playing on Champlain's weaknesses. They'd whittle away at him until he felt so vulnerable that he would agree to negotiate with the FBI. Then Randall would offer Champlain a deal, trading immunity for giving up Kepler. That was surely his strategy.

Unfortunately for Scott Randall, it would never reach that point. There simply wasn't enough time. The miracle was less than three days away now.