The Tempest (4 page)

 

Chapter Six

B
esides splitting Maryland geographically, the Chesapeake Bay also serves as something of a social and imaginative divider. The Eastern Shore is the more casual side, with old wood-­frame houses, crab shacks and fish fries, cattail marshes, oyster-­shell roads and a thriving seafood industry. The Western Shore, where Charlotte's parents kept their sailboat, has a more cosmopolitan energy, with yacht clubs, boat harbors, townhouse developments and boutique shops.

Tidewater County's Old Shore Inn was something of an anomaly, its Victorian-­style elegance suggesting the early 1900s. It was by far the priciest hotel in Tidewater and the only one that asked men to wear jackets to dinner.

As they walked over the narrow polished floorboards to the dining room, Luke peered in the club room—­all leather and old brass—­and he imagined the chair where Susan Champlain had been sitting earlier in the day, talking with a “gentleman” Aggie had never seen before. Obviously, Aggie had come here looking for her, Luke decided.

“What are you doing, exactly?” Charlotte asked, sidling up against him, and holding Luke's good arm. He'd decided not to wear his sling tonight, mostly because of the comments it would elicit from Charlotte's father. Charlotte looked fetching but casual in a beige dress and jacket.

“Me? Nothing.”

She steered him toward the dining room, where Lowell and Judy Carrington—­Charlotte's parents—­were at a window table, early as always, her father leaning way back and waving them over. Lowell Carrington was a tall, urbane-­looking man, his white hair fashionably disheveled. Luke could see from the way his chair was turned that he'd been watching the pleasure boats come in; Judy, small and hunched over, frowned at her menu as if it were written in Mandarin. Charlotte's parents lived in an old-­moneyed suburb of D.C. Once or twice each summer, they sailed across the Bay to Tidewater County and docked near the Old Shore Inn, so they could visit with their daughter and a ­couple of old friends who kept second or third homes here. Lowell Carrington had once been an economics professor at Georgetown and had served as a White House advisor during the Bush 41 administration. He was long retired now although he “dabbled” in real estate, as he put it, buying and selling luxury properties in the Bahamas, where the Carringtons owned a winter home.

These dinners followed a pattern—­the four of them greeted one another with exchanges of “Great to see you!” and “You look wonderful!” then sat and began the process of evaluating the specials and new entrées—­taking turns picking an entrée for discussion, something someone would say “sounds good”; in each case, Charlotte's mother would then say “Where's that?” and her father would invariably find something wrong with it.

Midway through the standard entrées discussion, Luke weighed in: “I wonder what rosemary-­infused cannellini beans are like.”

“Where's that?” Judy said.

“The rockfish.” Luke pointed to it on her menu. “It says it comes with rosemary-­infused cannellini beans.”

“Maybe they'll let you switch it out for french fries,” Charlotte said. “Ketchup-­infused.”

Lowell Carrington gave her a mock scowl over the top of his menu, probably not realizing that Charlotte was serious. Luke decided he'd stick with cannellini beans.

They were well into their entrées—­the butter-­poached lobster for Judy, filet mignon and lobster tail for Lowell, lump crab cakes for Charlotte and the rockfish for Luke—­when Lowell Carrington said, “So, Luke, have you ever thought about going on television?”

“Television? No. Not seriously.”

“Because I met a fellow the other week, he's done this successfully in other markets. You broadcast your Sunday ser­vice—­live or delayed—­and begin to build an entirely new audience. From what he says, you can get in some markets now for just a few thousand dollars.”

“Interesting.”

“Then at the end of the broadcast, you sell your CDs or DVDs and direct ­people to your website—­that's where you recoup the upfront. And, of course, at the same time, you'd be spreading your message to a larger audience. It's a business model that's worked in a number of markets.”

Luke nodded, forking a cannellini bean.

“I'll give you this fellow's name, if you'd like to talk to him.”

“Appreciate it,” Luke said. “Although, I don't know the congregation is quite ready to go in that direction.”

“Well. You won't know until you ask.” He smiled, his hard hazel eyes giving Luke a pointed look.

“Yes. We
have
asked, actually. Over the winter. The congregation was asked whether or not they wanted to broadcast the Sunday ser­vice online. It was more than three-­to-­one against. The feeling was, it might discourage ­people from coming to church.”

Lowell frowned, as if Luke had just made a serious math error.

“Because from what this fellow says, it's just the opposite.”

He went back to his food and an awkward silence replaced the camaraderie. Luke heard distant sirens, then saw red and blue emergency lights whirling along the coast; no one else seemed to notice.

“So are they going to keep the church where it is, or move to a new building?” Judy asked Charlotte.

“Still up in the air,” Luke said. “Eventually, we're going to need a larger building. I don't think we're quite there yet.”

“It's funny, we were looking at it today,” Lowell said, “and from certain angles it's even more run-­down than I thought. Judy was saying it looks like something from an old horror movie.” A flush rose up Judy Carrington's neck. “But with a little work, you could make her a pretty elegant old building. You know, it's all cyclical, that kind of thing. First they say you're old and worn out; before long, they're calling you a classic. Kind of like us, right, Jude?”

Judy Carrington, although caught by surprise, smiled and glanced at Luke.

“Will you two be getting away at all, once the season is over?” she asked.

“Probably, yes,” Charlotte said. “Although we haven't decided where yet.”

Charlotte's mother took a long sip of her vodka and tonic.

“Us three,” Luke said.

“Yes. Technically, we're a family of three,” Charlotte said.

Lowell hissed good-­naturedly.

Something was going on, Luke saw—­more police lights speeding toward the coast road.

“A dog is fine, but it's never the same as family,” Lowell said, “your own flesh and blood.”

“He
is
flesh and blood, though,” Charlotte said.

“And fur,” Luke added.

“Yes. And fur.”

Charlotte's father surprised them both by laughing. He could be a good sport when he wanted to be. Charlotte gave him her sweet sideways smile in reply, and Lowell patted her hand. It was a rare tender moment.

Over dessert, Lowell turned to Luke: “You know, Lucas, I've mentioned this before, but if you ever get tired of what you're doing, consider coming down to the Bahamas. I could set you up in real estate down there, luxury properties, you could pull down some very nice commissions.”

Luke gave him an arch look. “Get tired of what I'm doing?”

“No, I don't mean your work, of course. I mean—­the
cir
cumstances. Living here.”

“Ah.” The salary, in other words. Luke was content, though, to be a servant, as he thought of it, earning a servant's wage. But he knew better than to argue the point with Lowell Carrington.

“The crowds here in summer,” Judy said, her nose crinkling as if she'd caught a bad smell. “The traffic.”

“Summer people,” Charlotte said. “They bring strange things.”

“It's true,” Luke said.

“Case in point.” Lowell set down his drink, stretching his chin forward. “I drove our rental car down to check on the boat before coming here and saw a lovely sight on the way back—­not more than a half mile from where we're sitting now. I was crossing one of those creeks back there with the little bridges? And this fellow was out in his boat—­fishing, I assume—­and as I drove over the bridge the man stands up and begins to urinate off the side. I tooted my horn at him and the fellow just waved. Kept urinating.”

“Oh, my,” said Judy.

“Yes, a very lovely sight.”

“And, of course, that would never happen in the Bahamas,” Charlotte said.

“Well, it might. But let's not compare this to the Bahamas.”

“Do you know who lives down there?” Judy said, to Luke. “One of our neighbors?”

“No. Who?”

Charlotte said, “Anna Nicole Smith
used
to live there, I know.”

“Sean Connery,” Lowell said.

“Really,” Luke said.

“Really. Good man.” He signaled for another drink. “But no, I'm just throwing the idea out, something to think about. Come down and have a look, if you'd like. You're always welcome.”

“We will,” Luke said.

“Think about it, that is,” Charlotte added.

“Yes.”

“I just wish we didn't have to go back on Saturday,” Judy said, turning to Luke. “We so wanted to see your ser­vice.”

“Anytime. We'd love to have you,” Luke said cheerfully. But, in fact, missing the Sunday ser­vice was as much a part of the Carringtons' visits to Tidewater County as was dinner here at the Old Shore Inn.

As they walked out into the parking lot, Luke saw more police lights down the coast. He clicked on his phone and checked messages. Nothing from Susan or Hunter. Nothing from anyone.

“Can't beat that breeze, can you?” Lowell Carrington said.

Luke just nodded and they breathed it together. He had a point.

S
NEAKERS
WENT INTO
the usual gyrations as they came in the cottage, getting down on his side in the foyer, wiggling and thumping.

“He's getting better at that,” Charlotte said.

“Yes, he must've been practicing.”

Luke let him out the front door and they both jogged toward the bluff, Sneakers stopping periodically to sniff and to water the lawn. Coming back, Luke felt weighed down again by the previous night's thoughts, recalling the pitch of concern in Susan Champlain's voice, the haunted look in her eyes. The house was dark when he came in, except for the stove surface light in the kitchen. Sneakers was lapping energetically at his water; Charlotte's classical music played very faintly from her office.

“Char?” he said. Where was she?

Luke checked the living room. He walked down the hallway to the bedroom, letting his eyes adjust, his heart tightening a little.

“Pastor?” a voice called. Luke stopped. “Is that you?”

“Yes.” He smiled. The voice sounded very much like Charlotte's. “Who is it?”

“It's me. Dr. Nicely.”

“Oh, yes. I thought I recognized you.” It was Luke's sex therapist, who made house calls. He sat on the edge of the bed and undid his shoes. “I'm actually rather glad you're here,” he said.

“Yes. I am, too,” said Dr. Nicely.

Luke's cell began to ring as soon as he got his shoes off, making the sound of an old rotary phone.

Charlotte reached for it on the nightstand. “Hmm,” she said, glancing at the readout while she handed it to him.

Amy Hunter
.

“Interesting timing,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Maybe she's watching through a telescope.”

Luke glanced out at the Bay. “Not likely.”

“I guess not.”

“Hi, Amy,” he said.

Hunter exhaled, rather than say hello. Not a good sign.

“Bad news,” she said.

Luke made eye contact in the dark with Charlotte.

“What is it?”

“Susan Champlain,” she said. “They just found her on the beach. She's dead.”

 

Chapter Seven

H
unter got the call at 8:51. It was Gerry Tanner, who often monitored police radio traffic through the night, although there was, on average, less than one homicide a year in Tidewater County. “There's a ten–seventy-­nine at Widow's Point,” he said. “I'm heading over.”

“What is it?”

“Woman in the surf. A ­couple walking their dog found her. Looks like she might have fallen from the bluff.”

The code 10–79, Hunter knew, was “notify coroner.” The fact that Homicide hadn't been called directly probably meant that the first responders thought the woman's death was accidental. But with a fall, it was often hard to tell. Three possibilities: fell, jumped, pushed.

“See you there,” she said.

It wasn't until she'd parked along the access road, where cop cars had lined up with their light bars flashing, and was walking out onto the hard sand that Hunter realized who it was.

The beach had already been secured with police barricades and crime tape—­two layers, one to isolate the death scene, the other to keep away spectators; a dozen or so had gathered by then behind the police tape.

The dead woman's fall had left her in a contorted position, her head jammed sideways into the sand, her torso jutting at 45 degrees, rump in the air, her left arm trapped beneath her.

“The girl's name is Suzanne Champagne,” sheriff's deputy Barry Stilfork told Hunter, as she stood looking on. “Summer resident. Too much to drink, apparently.”

Hunter felt a rush of disbelief. She'd assumed for some reason that it was a teenager, a summer guest who'd been partying too hard with friends.

“You know her?”

She shook her head and moved to the police sawhorses, for a better look at the body and to get away from Stilfork, who gave her the creeps. In fact, she'd been thinking about Susan Champlain much of the afternoon, processing what Luke had told her and expecting him to call. She'd run DMV and data searches on both Champlains. She'd also driven by the house they were renting, about a mile and a half down the coast road.

The investigating officer on the scene was Captain John Dunn of the state police, a burly man in his mid-­forties with pocked skin and small, jaded-­looking eyes. He was always friendly with Hunter in a distant sort of way. Five ­people had been allowed past the single entry to the death scene, she saw; the others were the coroner, two evidence techs and a police artist. The artist was doing a triangulation sketch.

Dunn shrugged when Hunter finally caught his eye. “Go on,” he said, nodding her in. There was an official protocol in Tidewater County, and there was also a working protocol. State police did the photos and the initial investigation, but the sheriff and municipal police liked to be involved. Hunter expected the usual jurisdictional conflicts.

She nodded thanks and stepped closer, keeping a respectful distance from the state tech who was taking pictures. She crouched in the sand and studied Susan Champlain, who was barefoot, dressed in white cotton shorts and a matching blouse. Despite the body's contorted position, she wore a disturbingly innocent expression—­eyes open, mouth closed; the ashen face of a child, it seemed, something that had fallen from the sky. Rigor hadn't set in yet. Hunter looked closely at the hands: one broken fingernail, something under several of the other nails.

Dunn lowered his voice conspiratorially as Hunter walked back over: “Coroner said ninety-­six point five degrees.”

“So, the last hour or so.”

“Mmm.”

She looked up at the bluff, where Susan had fallen, or been pushed over, fifty or sixty feet up. The uneven edge of the land was backlit with police floodlights, creating an eerie wedge against the pine trees and the night sky. Hunter gazed at the shadows down the beach, where a state police tech was halfheartedly combing the sand with a metal detector.

“What are the markers?” Hunter indicated the yellow vinyl evidence markers that had been placed on the beach.

“Sandal,” Dunn said, pointing to Number 1. “Some footprints that've probably been there awhile,” pointing to Numbers 2 through 8. “The others are debris that she may have caught on the way down.”

“Just one sandal?”

“So far.”

“How'd you ID her?”

“Driver's license, credit card in her shorts. Along with a house key.”

“Purse, or phone?”

“Not down here. They're processing up above.”

Hunter thanked him and moved away.

Every unattended death should be handled as a homicide until it is determined that no crime has occurred. That was basic law enforcement procedure, and also common sense. But Hunter could tell that the coroner and some of the police investigators had already made an assumption about this one.

She saw Gerry Tanner's long, stubborn face as she came around the tape, his eyes fastening on hers.

“Sight her family won't want to see,” he said.

“No,” Hunter said, “they won't.”

“Anything?”

“Not yet. I doubt if we'll know much tonight. Any idea where the husband is?”

“They're with him now, apparently. He'd been out of town since yesterday. Just returned.”

That
could be an interesting detail, Hunter thought, noticing that the sheriff, Clay Calvert, was moving their way, with his halting shuffle, upset no doubt that Hunter had been allowed so close.

“Strong smell of alcohol on her person,” Calvert said in his throaty voice, stopping on the other side of Tanner, making sure that Hunter heard. Physically, they could've passed for a vaudeville duo, the sheriff thick and squat, Tanner tall and lean. “I've been saying for months we ought to have railings up there. God forbid, but it takes something like this.” He turned his head and spat in the sand for emphasis. “Don't know that you ­people need to be here,” he added, squinting at Hunter.

Hunter said nothing. This was SOP for the sheriff: decide what happened, then look for evidence to support it. Hunter slipped off into the shadows, putting some distance between her and the police and emergency responders.

The air felt warmer in the damp sand along the cliff side, shielded from the wind. It had been just before high tide, probably, when Susan had fallen. The tide was going out now and there were several feet of beach that hadn't been visible then.

Walking south, she spotted a few things in the sand, but nothing of consequence: small odd-­shaped pieces of driftwood, a circle of metal that seemed to be the rusted top of a crushed soda can, a smooth-­edged piece of glass. Then the nearly full moon caught an angled coin as the surf receded, a quarter, faceup. And a few yards beyond it, she saw another glitter in the sand, just past where the tech had been walking his metal detector. Hunter reached down and pinched it between her fingers. A long cable chain from a necklace emerged out of the wet sand, what appeared to be a broken eighteen-­inch gold chain.

Hunter looked up again at the bluff, figuring the trajectory of Susan's fall.
Three possibilities.

She walked back to tell John Dunn, and to have another look at Susan Champlain's neck. Dunn sent a tech with her to photograph and mark what she'd found. Number 13 was the quarter. The necklace, Number 14.

“Has anyone gotten pictures of the crowd?” Hunter asked the tech as they returned. He was a young, pale-­skinned man.

“I don't think so. Why?”

Hunter shrugged. “Sometimes a perpetrator returns to the scene to watch.”

He stopped, his brow furrowing as if her suggestion were absurd, then grudgingly took several quick crowd shots. There were twenty or twenty-­five ­people gathered now, staring silently at Susan Champlain. It was a sight that struck Hunter as more grotesque in its way than the contortion of her body.

“I'm going to have a look up top,” Hunter said to the tech.

“What?”

She drove back around, up the dark shoulder-­less road to the bluff, parking her Camry behind a line of four police cars, two marked, on the dead end of the road.

A rusty chain blocked the entrance to Widow's Point with the warning “No Trespassing.” It was a law that was almost never enforced. Hunter had seen city officials picnicking here.

She walked a thin, well-­trod dirt path through the weeds to the open wedge of the overlook, which was lit up with floodlights. Two state police techs were processing the scene. A diesel engine ground away behind them, powering the lights; the air smelled like an old bus depot.

Investigator Frances Neal came out to see her in an officious, slightly territorial manner. Neal was a large, slow-­moving woman who didn't abide by the invisible hierarchies of Tidewater's old guard. Hunter liked that about her. She and the other tech had been taking shoe-­print impressions by the edge.

“Any sign of a cell phone or purse?” Hunter asked. “There's nothing below.”

“Nope.”

She showed her what they had found: a plastic bottle in an evidence bag. “Something sweet. Wine, probably.”

“The other sandal?”

“Not here.”

“Anything else?”

“Nope.” She could see from the twist in Frances Neal's face, though, that something about the scene wasn't sitting right with her.

Hunter looked out at the Bay. It was a dramatic view: the moon a column of light, glimmering on the water; traffic moving silently back and forth over the twin arcs of the Bay Bridge. She tried to picture what had happened: Susan, sitting on the rock by the edge, or leaning over to set up a photo, had somehow tripped or lost her balance, and fallen over. There was nothing she could see, though, that she'd have tripped over.

“Hers?” she said, nodding at the bicycle leaning on a pine tree, taped off behind a police barricade.

Neal turned and nodded. “Be my guest. We haven't processed it yet.” Hunter walked over to look. It was a rental bike from Tidewater Cycles, she saw, a clunky old single-­speed 24-­incher. There was a basket hanging crookedly from the handlebars and a pouch below the seat. Hunter ducked under the tape. She lifted the pouch flap carefully with the edge of her finger, saw a paperback book inside. She looked out to the point, where the police techs were bent over, talking, neither paying attention to her. The diesel engine droned. The book, she saw, was a biography of photographer Diane Arbus. Hunter flipped through it, and found something—­a receipt, being used maybe as a place marker. She leaned down and looked closer: it was a sales receipt from a health food store in town called Cool Beans, date-­stamped that morning at 8:17. Susan Champlain's breakfast: Egg biscuit and orange juice. On the back, someone had scribbled in swirling penmanship what looked like
Kairos48
.

Hunter closed the book and the pouch. She walked over to tell Frances Neal.

“We haven't processed it yet,” she told Hunter, an unexpected note of irritability in her voice.

Hunter thanked her and walked along the edge. She looked down at the emergency responders and spectators on the beach. Finally, police were setting up a partition to block the view of Susan Champlain's crumpled body.

Susan had bicycled here from her rented house before sunset. The book maybe meant that she had come to read, that it was still daylight when she'd parked her bike. Or not. Maybe the book had just been there, from an earlier bike ride.

Returning to her car, Hunter recalled the only time she had spoken to Susan Champlain, if it could be called that: They'd crossed paths in a hot parking lot by the raw bar outside Kent's on a weekday afternoon. Susan Champlain had said “Hi” with a surprising familiarity, as if Hunter were a friend. Maybe she'd mistaken her for someone else. Hunter had then realized that she was with someone, a younger man with dark, floppy hair, walking just behind. But when they reached the sidewalk, they veered off in different directions, exchanging a glance, but not saying goodbye, and she wasn't sure.

Pulling away from Widow's Point, Hunter called Henry Moore, who was the commander of the State Police Homicide Unit, and Hunter's boss. “Who's handling notification?” she asked.

“Dunn's ­people. They're on it.”

“They've found him?”

“Evidently.” Moore sighed. He was an Eastern Shore native with a lot of old-­fashioned wisdom about law enforcement; but he gave Hunter slack, knowing she worked best without much supervision. “What do you think?”

She told him, relaying the gist of what Pastor Luke had said to her that morning about Susan Champlain and then her own observations from the scene. State police troopers trained in death notification had already handled that end of it, she knew; Hunter would have liked to see his reaction.

Three possibilities.
The fact that Nick Champlain had threatened his wife days before ratcheted up the odds that this was a homicide. But there was one aspect of her death that made Hunter think it
wasn't
the husband. Nick Champlain's alleged threat had been “I could make you disappear and no one would ever find you.” But what had happened was different. What'd happened was very public: the opposite, in a way.

Hunter drove down to the wide-­porched house the Champlains were renting, a mile and a half farther along the coast road at Cooper's Point. It was a large Victorian-­style place with gabled windows and gingerbread latticework. A front light had been left on but there were no lights inside. Hunter parked and walked a loop around the property, through the night shadows of a big oak in back.

She took the rural route to the PSC, figuring what might've happened. Tidewater was a resort town this time of year, but there were still a lot of large, dark spaces—­farm fields and marshlands and back bays. The image of Susan Champlain's crumpled body was stuck in her head now; it would never go away for good, she knew.

She was almost back when Moore called again. “The husband's on his way over to give a statement,” he said. “Voluntary. They caught up to him having dinner at Kent's. Just got back into town around nine, supposedly. If you want to walk upstairs, you can see him.”