The Facepainter Murders Read online

"Then let's hope he was able to set her down."

  The storm was passing, and the helicopter was airborne when Catherine arrived. He shook his head at her when she reached him.

  "Nothing yet, Catherine. I'm so sorry. They want to know if there is any family we should call."

  "Her cousin in Toronto. I told him I would call if we had any news."

  "What about her sister?"

  "Time enough, later."

  They sat on two of the hard plastic chairs in the waiting area, staring out at the darkening sky.

  "What the hell, Adam? What have you got her into this time?"

  Ted banged open the outer door.

  "Take it easy. I didn't send her to New Hampshire. She wanted some information and went for a day's outing with Thomas Beauchamp. And she loves to fly."

  "Sorry, I sort of feel responsible for her after last year. What's the story?"

  Adam gave him what he had, which was little, and the reporter went to call it in.

  Catherine was a pacer: back and forth in front of the long windows, peering out at the runways, empty of planes and dimly lit, over to the board the search and rescue team was keeping of sightings and follow-ups, and back again. Adam interrupted her steady march.

  "Catherine, would you like something to eat?"

  "No, thank you, I couldn't. Why haven't they found the plane? This isn't Alaska for heaven's sake."

  "The storm."

  His phone rang.

  "Adam? Brad. Pete's called all the airfields, even the ones that close at night. Nothing. There are some abandoned fields. One looks good, at St. Johnsbury, but I can't raise anyone. Could you get a trooper to go and look?"

  "Sure."

  Adam walked over to the small office where Jacqueline was working. Her trim, controlled figure hunched over her computer as she talked on her phone. One of her staff stood waiting, his report a dismal two lines.

  "What's up," she asked.

  "One of my guys says there's a field at St. Johnsbury. Can you call the state police to check it out?"

  "That's right on their flight path. They couldn't land there in the storm, but sure, we'll check."

  Brad didn't say anything about his work, but Adam knew he was at his computer, finding surveillance pictures, looking for fields big enough for the small plane to land.

  He wasn't surprised at another call.

  "Boss, it's me again. Pete got a call from one of his buddies in the state police. They got a report of a possible plane crash and a fire north of St. Johnsbury. Noone's been out there yet."

  Brad's voice choked as he finished his report.

  "I'll tell Search."

  He walked over and told the information to Jacqueline.

  Catherine waited by the window. As he walked towards her, he saw her cross herself. Maybe prayer was all they had.

  "The state police reported a possible plane crash north of St. Johnsbury," he told her, “but nothing definite."

  "Should we call Mrs. Beauchamp?"

  "I don't think so. Let's wait until the state police call."

  More hours passed, more waiting. Police reported a fire in a farmer's field, called in by the owner when he found his cows inspecting the remains of the plane. No bodies. Adam called Mrs. Beauchamp.

  "Adam, can we drive up there? I would like to be close by if they find Anne," said Catherine.

  "Sure."

  Anything was better than this, he thought. Before he left, he called Brad.

  "Catherine and I are going to drive out to the crash. Keep in touch."

  Three hours later, they stopped in front of the police barracks on route 5. The trooper at the desk directed them to the site, northwest of St. Johnsbury, called Caledonia, and as lonely as its British namesake. A scattered thirty thousand people shared the still rural landscape. Catherine stared through the car windows at the wreckage, appalled at the twisted mass of flame-marked steel. How had they ever escaped, she thought? No bodies, the trooper said. Adam was talking to the police officers and conferring with the searchers who emerged from the bush that lined the short field.

  The trooper showed Adam the path along the side of the pasture. Under a bit of shelter from dense overhanging trees, he found traces of footprints, not enough to identify, but enough to show walkers had passed through, likely since the storm let up. It was a snowmobile path, he said, but walkers shared it with ATVs in the summer.

  "Where does it lead."

  "It ends at Route 15."

  "Could they walk that far, overnight?"

  "If neither of them was injured. If they turn north, there's no town and few homes until they reach Nevesville, and even that is off the highway. We sent a car along there early this morning, but we didn't see anyone."

  "Maybe they hadn't reached the road yet. Are you sending an ATV along the trail?"

  "Yes, sir. It'll be along."

  Adam walked back to where Catherine waited for him, her anxious face peering at him through fogged windows.

  Adam told her what he learned from the police and said they would drive Route 15 again.

  It was 10:00 am by the time they reached the junction of the trail with Route 15.

  "Which way, Adam?"

  "I think they would have walked north, assuming home lay that way. The troopers searched to the south because they knew a town lay a few miles in that direction. Anne and Thomas may not have realized that," he said as he accelerated north.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Anne and Thomas trudged in silence along the side of the highway through a bone-chilling early morning mist.

  "I think we are the only living creatures in this part of the state," Anne said "Not even a highway patrol or a logging truck."

  "They'll be looking for us. Maybe we should have stayed with the plane."

  "They can find us on this road, then. I couldn't sit there in the mud all night long. No one saw us go down in the storm, or the fire either. The rain put it out too soon."

  "I'm saying it might have been smarter."

  "And I'm saying we were too cold, too wet and too thirsty to stay there. This is a road. Surely the state didn't build a road to nowhere."

  “Hey, we decided to walk, not you."

  "We didn't decide; we got up and left. I don't remember deciding. There was no deciding going on."

  Her body shook and tears coursed down her face.

  "I don't know why I am crying, except I'm tired and hungry and scared for no reason. And mad as hell."

  Thomas held her, saying, "I'm tired and hungry and angry, too. Let's try to be angry at the road or the weather or the State of Vermont, instead of each other."

  "We could write a letter to the Governor."

  And so they did, walking along the roadside, shouting angry phrases, shaking their fists, and dissolving into laughter as they blamed the governor for the storm, the crash, the mud and the road to nowhere.

  Anne tried her cell phone again and threw it back in her pack in disgust. Still no service. It was mid-morning, and they'd met no traffic.

  "I think this road ends somewhere out here and there is no town."

  "I'm beginning to remember this road now. My dad used to do business in St. Johnsbury, and I would go with him now and then. This was when I was maybe ten years old. We stopped in a town called Nevesville for ice-cream. After that, there was a long boring stretch. This is the same road. Or looks a lot like it."

  "Ice-cream sounds nice. And look at those lovely rocks up ahead, begging for someone to sit on them."

  "Want to set awhile, ma'am?

  "I surely do," she said as she replied in her best mock- Southern accent.

  And that is how Adam and Catherine found them, sitting on a flat rock in the sun, their backs against the boulder behind them, holding hands and talking.

  Yet another visit to a Vermont hospital, Anne thought. Soon the insurance company would think she was too big a risk for international travel. Thomas was sitting in his curtained space, enduring the suturing of his head
laceration.

  She insisted she was unhurt, but a seat belt bruise across her abdomen triggered an ultrasound. A gentle nurse cleaned the blood off her feet where blisters formed and burst and bled during their long walk. The doctor came and went, assuring her the ultrasound was normal and she could go as soon as Thomas ’s suturing was done. His CAT scan was normal.

  A knock came at the door to the room. Adam and Catherine poked their heads through the gap in the curtains.

  "You two look like children at a Christmas concert," Anne said. "Come in. Thomas will be finished in a few minutes, and we can go home."

  "How are you feeling?"

  "Fine but in desperate need of some Tim's. The nurse warned me against the hospital's coffee."

  "Did you phone my mother?" Thomas said. "I don't think she believed me when I told her I was fine."

  "Yes," Adam said as he stepped around the curtain. "I think she's convinced. I persuaded her to wait until I delivered you to her front door."

  "Thanks. She's been against my flying since I took it up. I'm never going to hear the end of this."

  Thomas shook his head at the thought of his mother's response to the crash.

  "Hold still," the doctor said.

  Half an hour and some bill-paying later, they were on their way back to Culver's Mills. Anne fell asleep and woke up as Adam parked in the driveway at Catherine's.

  "Time to go to bed," Adam said, taking Anne's backpack from the trunk.

  "I have so much information to go through."

  "Tomorrow."

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Every bone ached, and muscles Anne hadn't remembered for years protested her every move as she sat up in response to the quiet rap at her door. Catherine drifted in like a benevolent ghost, bringing breakfast and opening her curtains to a bright pink morning. She deposited the tray on the white wicker table beside Anne's bed.

  "You said you wanted me to call you by ten, but I still don't know what's the rush."

  "I have some information I want to go over."

  "It can't wait?"

  "I'm sure it can but I can't. I've had it, Catherine. I want to go home, and I want to finish what I started here. If this ageing body will move for me. I hope I didn't carry that pack all those miles for nothing."

  "Are you working here this morning? I'm due at the shelter."

  "No, I'll go down to the station. Brad will help me with some of it."

  * * *

  Anne drove over to the courthouse and entered the squad room to a round of applause from the staff.

  "Glad you made it," Pete said as he shook her hand.

  "Thank you. You all worked hard to find us. I'll never forget it."

  Through the rest of the day, she worked at Brad's computer, searching databases on Ancestry.com, for a trace of Marilyn Andrews. What would a woman do in 1952, widowed so young? Remarry. Anne found no record of a wedding in the Laconia paper.

  "Brad, I'm looking for a Culver's Mills connection. Maybe Vermont relatives on her father's side?"

  "Worth a shot."

  A deputy escorted Anne across to the Library and waited, watching while she searched through phone books and city directories. In 1966 she found a phone number for Marilyn Andrews. Nothing in 1967. Did she stay in Culver's or did she remarry?

  The newspaper archive was next. Anne turned the pages of the local paper for 1966. No mention anywhere, until she hit New Year's Day, 1967. She found a marriage notice for Marilyn Andrews, nee Windeman, and Peter Webb.

  Webb. Nancy Webb was in the diner the day she reacted to the perfume. She was at the antique show too, talking to the librarian who died. What if she were another heir? What if she attacked her? Whoa. Going ahead of the data again, and imagining way too much on too little evidence.

  Find the evidence. More patient page turning brought her to a birth announcement in October of the same year for a daughter, Nancy.

  Anne met Adam at the courthouse steps and poured out her dates and connections.

  "Stop. The last person you found, the Trevelyan cousin, is Nancy Webb."

  "Yes."

  "Do you think she was listening to you?"

  "I'm not sure she was listening. She was at the antique show, and at Lil's both times I reacted, but I can't say she was the one who wore the scent. It could have been aftershave or cologne. The librarian who died was there both times as well."

  "She is a Leclerc descendent?"

  "Oh, yes, unless there is a wild coincidence of names."

  Adam raised an eyebrow.

  "Possible."

  "Yes, I suppose."

  "Don't look so disappointed. We'll ask Nancy where her mother was born."

  "If she knows."

  Anne limped down the steps to where Thomas waited for her beside his car.

  "Are you feeling rough? We can skip dinner if you don't feel up to it."

  "Oh, no. I have trouble with my leg on stairs and the blisters of course, but otherwise, I'm fine. How are you?"

  The bandage was off the row of neat stitches that closed his head wound.

  "My head aches a bit but otherwise okay. What are your plans?"

  As they drove the short distance to the Beauchamp home, Anne told him she planned to leave as soon as she finished the genealogy work and wrote a final report that tied up all the loose ends.

  Twilight bathed the Beauchamp home in pink and amber, reflecting off the granite stones and mullioned windows, as they stopped in front of the bright blue door.

  "Your home is so lovely, Thomas."

  "It's always a pleasure to come home, just to look at it. Mother wondered if she should sell it and move to New York, but the kids and I encouraged her to stay here."

  "It would be a shame if the house left the family. One of your ancestors built it, I assume?"

  "Yes, my great-great-grandfather."

  "I'm surprised he left it so your mother could sell it. Most men of his generation left property in the male line."

  "I haven't thought about that. I've always called it Mother's house and was so young when Dad died I wasn't involved in the financial side. Let's leave it for now."

  They walked down the hall to the living room where his mother waited.

  * * *

  Adam drove to the library, trying to remember what he knew about Nancy's family. Her mother died a few years before Adam's parents. They were older than most of the parents in his crowd. Her father died last year. He kept a small hardware store all the time Adam knew him.

  Nancy worked for her father, summers and between semesters at college. She'd started her career somewhere, Burlington, he thought, before she came back to Culver's Mills. Never married, or he didn't think so. Hard to believe she would be involved in international art theft. Canada counted as international.

  The library was closing as he walked through the old oak door. The lady at the desk stood up to head him off but sat down when she recognized him.

  "Is Ms. Webb in?"

  "Yes, she is. Shall I call her for you?"

  "No thanks."

  Adam walked to the door of the office, gave a short, hard rap and walked in.

  Nancy's indignant voice assaulted him as she glared at him.

  "What do you think you are doing, barging in here?"

  He sat down in one of the oak armchairs across from her.

  "I came to ask you where you were the day Jim Trevelyan and Anne McPhail were attacked."

  "Where was I?"

  Nancy's shocked and puzzled face surprised Adam. He suspected she might be involved because of the relationship with Trevelyan they discovered, but her surprise seemed genuine enough.

  "Why should I tell you?" she said, steadying her voice. "I don't answer to you for my whereabouts."

  Those nervous hands were at it again, this time playing with a short strand of amber-colored beads.

  "Then would you tell me your mother's maiden name? No objection to that is there?"

  "My mother? What on earth do you wa
nt with her name?"

  "It's a simple question of identification. The sooner you answer; the sooner I'll be out of here."

  "She was a widow when she married my father. Her name had been Windeman."

  Nancy's eyes strayed to a wedding picture of a young couple in the clothes of the fifties that stood on a bookcase. Her parents, he presumed.

  "Have you looked into your genealogy?"

  "No. I am far too busy with the present, to ever be able to spend my time looking into the past."

  Adam remembered she had been almost ousted from her job by an assistant librarian who was murdered last year. That woman had been a genius at genealogical research. Maybe Nancy didn't want to compete in that field too.

  "Anne McPhail searched for descendants of the original owners of Evan's. You're one and have the same claim as James Trevelyan."

  Color flooded her face as her shrill voice rose again.

  "That's why you're asking me where I was. You think I would kill an old man for a house."

  "Or whatever was hidden in the house."

  "Hidden? I have no idea what you are talking about. I was in Burlington for two days, including the day they were attacked. I can give you a list of the people I was with."

  She scribbled on a notepad, broke one pencil lead, and took another from a jar on her desk.

  "Then I won't have to bother you anymore."

  He reached across the desk for the paper then stood up to go.

  "Can I talk to Anne McPhail about the genealogy?"

  "You can ask. What she tells you is up to her."

  * * *

  Adam drove to Burlington after the interview with Nancy. He wanted to talk to Alisse before his law class. He found her in a private room in the Fletcher Allen Health Center, looking pale, but still elegant, in spite of the lack of make-up and the surgery to remove the bullet from her shoulder.

  "Thank you for seeing me, Ms. Bertrand."

  "What can I do for you, Lieutenant?"

  Somehow she sounded more French today. Fatigue, he supposed.

  "I wanted to ask you if your husband ever mentioned some people to you. Does the name Matilde Gagnon mean anything to you?"

  "Matilde? I don't think so. There is a Matilde who is a server in the restaurant in Culver's Mills. Is that who you mean?"