The Facepainter Murders Read online

"Do you know who he is yet?" asked Peg when she brought him the food.

  "Don't tell me the news is around already."

  "I'm afraid so."

  "No identification yet. Have there been many strangers through this week?"

  "A few. Most people were families or couples. Early in the week, a guy asked about art galleries and antique stores. I sent him across to Erin."

  "What did he look like?"

  Adam reached for the catsup for his fries.

  "About six feet, brown hair and eyes, small tight ears, straight nose, good teeth. Spoke well but he was pushy."

  "Could be our guy. You don't remember a name or a vehicle?"

  "Didn't hear a name and I didn't see him get in a car. He walked over to Erin's after his lunch."

  "Thanks. How's your sister?"

  Adam knew that Peg's sister May suffered from severe rheumatoid arthritis.

  "Much better. Since we got the money from the trust, you know, we moved to the farm, all one floor and we got her some first-class care."

  Last year, as fallout from a murder case, Adam identified May and Peg as beneficiaries of a local family trust.

  "Has the family been decent?"

  "Couldn't have been nicer or more welcoming. We keep a distance, but they've been good to us."

  "Why are you still here?" Adam asked, suspecting the answer he got.

  "I enjoy it, especially the gossip."

  Adam laughed, paid, and left to visit Erin.

  The lights were on upstairs in Erin's building though the shop was dark. Adam went around the side and rang the bell. The intercom that he insisted she install crackled a moment before he heard her voice asking who was there.

  "It's me," he said with the softness that crept into his voice when he spoke to her. The lock snapped open as she told him to come up. He took the stairs two at a time to reach where she stood, silhouetted against the light from her apartment.

  Erin was tall enough that her dark hair brushed his chin. Dark brown eyes accentuated the pale complexion of her oval face. Adam kissed her softly, and they walked together into her apartment. Erin called it her loft although her bed stood in a screened alcove and not visible from the living area. The large room took up most of the second floor of the house. One wall held a brick and tile fireplace surrounded by old pine bookshelves. Erin changed the furniture often, swapping pieces with her shop. Today she had a green corduroy overstuffed sofa and chair—his favorites.

  "What's the matter?"

  "You know Anne's here to visit? She's found another body."

  "Oh, no. Who is it?"

  "We don't know. He was naked, and nothing was around him to identify him except this."

  He showed her the ticket fragment, but she shook her head slowly no.

  "Peg said she sent a stranger who was interested in art galleries and antiques over to see you. Tall, she said, brown hair and eyes, pushy?"

  "Oh, yes. Tuesday. I remember him because he demanded to see any paintings I had stored away. I told him what I had was in the shop and he was welcome to browse. What I wanted to do was throw him out."

  Adam grinned at the thought of fierce little Erin throwing the guy out. Aloud he said, "Did you get a name?"

  "John."

  "Just John?"

  "Just John. He didn't buy anything, so I don't have a check or a credit slip or anything."

  "Will you look at a picture when I get one? It won't be too nice."

  "Sure."

  Erin's face had grown paler. Adam put his arm around her and started talking about their upcoming vacation. In a few months, he and Erin planned a trip to Bermuda—sun and relaxation and each other.

  Their conversation was interrupted by a call telling Adam that the body was being moved from the crime scene to the morgue.

  "Back to work."

  He got up from the sofa and stretched. A quick kiss and he was gone.

  Chapter Two

  The smell of freshly-baked bread nudged Anne awake from a sleep troubled by nightmares of bodies and bloodstained water. After she showered, she put on a pair of jeans and a heavy Arran cable knit sweater in her favorite soft violet color. It would be a cold walk to the library.

  She opened the door at the bottom of the back stairs to the kitchen. Catherine stood at the old range, frying bacon and quietly crying. She wiped her face with the corner of her apron as Anne came in.

  "Has something else happened?" Anne asked.

  "Adam questioned the boys, and Mrs. Adams checked out, and it will be all over town, and people will talk. They'll say he was my lover and he was killed in my house. What am I going to do?"

  Anne put her arms around the shaking shoulders, and made soothing sounds and patted Catherine's back.

  "Adam will find the killer, and then it will be clear the crime had nothing to do with you. He had to question the twins, but they played basketball in Brownsville all weekend, didn't they?"

  "Yes."

  "I'm sure the time of death will clear them of all suspicion. Mrs. Adams was an old fusspot and more trouble than she was worth. We'll get Peg at the diner to spread the word the body was dumped in the lane, not on your property. She can talk if she wants to."

  "How do you know the body was dumped?"

  "Not much blood and there were tracks in the lane."

  They stood at the window and looked out over the garden. Frost had touched the flowers that glistened in the early morning sun. Birds flitted to and from the feeder. Catherine's shoulders relaxed, and Anne took her arm away.

  "Do you think I could have some of that lovely bacon?"

  "Oh, of course."

  Catherine returned to the familiar routine of feeding a guest, and Anne to eating the substantial breakfast Catherine offered to help her guests get through their day.

  The art gallery housed a travelling exhibit of colonial paintings in the library Anne wanted to view. After breakfast, and satisfied Catherine was calmer, she walked the few blocks towards the town square.

  The octagonal, red-brick library and its glass and stone addition sat back from the street in a small park outlined by a black wrought-iron fence. A new herringbone-patterned brick walk led to the front door, but the plaque on the wall, dating it to 1912 and identifying Andrew Carnegie as the benefactor, remained.

  Anne walked up the three cut-stone steps and pushed on the oak door's brass plate, worn from a century of hands, and went upstairs to the gallery in the addition.

  The door stood open, although the sign said the show was over. A few paintings still hung on the pale yellow walls of the long gallery, illuminated by a single large window behind the volunteers' table, and a complicated series of pot-lights and track-lighting on the ceiling. Old-fashioned faces stared back at her as she looked around the room. Blank spaces marked the missing paintings that a young girl, working near the back exit, wrapped and inserted into crates.

  "Hello, Anne. Welcome back to Culver's Mills," said the grey-haired volunteer smiling up at her from her table.

  Anne recognized Ada Warren, a retired teacher and local history authority.

  "Thank you, Ada. I hope I'm in time to see some of the paintings?"

  "Oh, yes. I'll ask Chrissy to stop wrapping."

  Ada was using a cane this year, a change for an active woman who had been an avid bowler and gardener.

  "No fee?" said Anne, glancing at a roll of tickets on the desk.

  "Not today."

  Ada walked down the room and spoke to the young girl who bounced up and out.

  "I hope the cane isn't permanent?" Anne asked when she returned.

  "Oh no, I twisted my ankle trying roller-blading."

  She strolled with Anne down the gallery, pausing to look at each picture that remained on view. The details of the painting—the background, the clothing, the furniture and other smaller details helped place a portrait in time. Some were memorial with different figures in the landscape representing aspects of the subject's life. They stopped in front of the portr
ait of a young woman standing with one hand resting on the back of an ornately carved chair.

  "My great-great-grandmother," Ada said.

  "You look like her."

  Anne noted the long, oval face and the upward slant to the smoky blue eyes. The artist captured the playful nature of the subject despite the serious pose.

  "She was one of the early teachers in the school here, and married the first mayor of Culver's Mills."

  "And you carry on the family tradition?"

  Ada had taught history at the local high school for thirty years.

  "Yes, except for the marrying the mayor portion."

  Ada was the widow of a long-serving judge. Of the paintings that were missing, two, in particular, would have been of interest to Anne, she said.

  "Except for the one of Ada Deacon, my ancestor, the other local painting was that of a man whose family has long since died out. We have a sampler worked as a family register by a later family member."

  "Where are the paintings going?"

  "To Brownsville, a town about a hundred miles south of here. We're shipping them this evening, but those two have local owners so perhaps another time."

  "Whose are they?"

  "They belong to Evan's. You know—the restaurant?"

  "Oh, yes."

  "The subject of the painting, Samuel Hall, a goldsmith, quite a well-known one, who lived in Boston was born in the house, and when he died, some of his belongings were sent back here to his sister. Zedekiah Belknap painted his portrait."

  Anne laughed.

  "What a delightfully eccentric name. Who was he?"

  "Quite a well-known face-painter or limner. He worked in New England all of his life and lived here in Vermont for much of it," Ada said. "You're familiar with limners?"

  "Weren't they itinerant artists who travelled from village to village, painting the members of families, in the days before photography."

  "Yes, that's right. A museum in New Hampshire sent us the sampler. It was worked by a later descendant of the Halls. It's framed in intricately carved mahogany and stitched in silk on linen, with a border of exquisite flowers. It had been locked away for many years, and the colors are very fresh."

  "Sounds beautiful and valuable, too."

  "Oh, I think so. We had to pay a lot to insure this show, especially with the Belknap and the museum piece in it."

  After some further discussion of the economics of running small-town art galleries and fund-raising, Anne left to walk back to Catherine's. She stood for a moment on the steps of the library, with the nagging feeling that she had ignored something important. Knowing that it would eventually come to her, she shook her head and strolled on.

  Chapter Three

  "Any word back on the prints?" Adam asked Pete when he walked into the squad room that afternoon.

  "Not yet, but we're still waiting for Interpol."

  Pete was roaming the squad room from computer to fax and back.

  "Why can't these guys get back to us sooner."

  "Don't forget the RCMP and the Sûreté."

  Close as they were to the Canadian border, Pete never remembered the police services north of the line.

  "No record of him in the motels?"

  "We're still checking."

  Pete sat down at his desk to write another fax.

  "Something else, boss?"

  "No. I was thinking how much easier it would all be if the hotels had to report on their guests every night, the way the French had it in the past."

  "Like people here would put up with that."

  "Yeah."

  "The sheriff over in Brownsville called. You know that art show that was at the library?" Brad said.

  "No."

  "The paintings left last night by courier to Brownsville and arrived today. They're reporting that two of the paintings are missing. Someone wrapped up blank canvases and frames and substituted them for the originals."

  "They think it happened here?"

  "Or between here and there. Thing is the company that moved them specializes in this, and they insist that they delivered what they picked up. Each piece had a seal."

  "Someone stole them from the library here. The library again."

  Erin had directed the dead man to the library. Perhaps a connection, he thought.

  "Okay, let's get over there."

  Brad stayed with the vehicle while Adam took the stairs to the gallery. The notice on the door said it was closed until the next week. On his way out, he stopped at the chief librarian's office door and knocked.

  "Morning, Nancy."

  He had gone to school with Nancy Webb, a tall blustery woman with an aggressive tone of voice. They didn't get along then and didn't now, especially since her assistant had turned up dead in the middle of the library floor last year. Adam took Nancy's computers into evidence, and she resented it.

  "Hello, Adam. What is it this morning?"

  Nancy walked out from behind her desk to meet him at her door.

  "Theft. Two of the paintings from upstairs were stolen. They never arrived in Brownsville."

  "Well. The library is not my responsibility. It does have separate management and director."

  "The security isn't. Have you had any problems?"

  "One of those silly teenage volunteers forgot to set it last night." Nancy turned back to her desk and sat.

  "Which one?"

  "Chrissy."

  "Did you notify us?"

  "Of course not. Nothing was missing."

  "There's something missing now, and you're supposed to call us."

  "I can't call you every time one of those foolish teenagers forgets to do what's she's told."

  "Yeah, you can. Where can I find this Chrissy?"

  "I have no idea. Ask Ada. Those girls are her pets."

  "Is she here?"

  "I have no idea."

  The woman at the desk did and told Adam that Ada had gone home.

  Adam walked down the few steps to the front door and out to his car. Nancy stared after him, running both hands through her mousy-brown hair, her long face impassive.

  Ada's red-brick home stood back from the street, its front garden surrounded by a picketed wrought-iron fence. Adam parked on the street and walked up the flagstone walk to the front door. When there was no answer to his rings, he followed the path, under a rose arbor and through an arched white gate to the back garden.

  Ada, her tall, elegant figure dressed in jeans and work boots, was dumping bags of leaves onto her flower beds, helped by a ponytailed, teenage girl. Ada's cane was hooked over the branch of a near-bye tree.

  "Morning, Ada."

  She was one of Adam's favorites, his high school history teacher and mentor.

  "Good morning, Adam. Do you know Chrissy Chambers?"

  Perky described Chrissy, he thought, as she said, "Lieutenant Davidson, I presume." Or maybe cheeky. Cheerful.

  "Hi, Chrissy. I'm glad you're here. I'd like to talk to both of you."

  "Come in the kitchen. What's the matter?" Ada said as she led the way, stopping to remove her dirt-laden boots.

  While they sat at the well-scrubbed pine kitchen table, Adam asked about the paintings.

  "Chrissy, did you wrap all the paintings for travel?"

  "No."

  "No?" said Ada.

  "No, I didn't. I thought that you started before I came. Two of them were already wrapped. The ones at the end."

  Both looked at Adam, more perplexed than worried.

  "Did you set the alarm?" Adam said

  "Yes, I did. No matter what that old witch Nancy Webb says. I set it like Mrs. Warren showed me. She trusts me. That's why she lets me close. Isn't it, Mrs. Warren?"

  She turned a face threatening to cry, to her teacher.

  "Nancy got you in trouble, did she?"

  "Yes, but I didn't do anything wrong."

  "Chrissy's a reliable girl," Ada said.

  "Can either of you remember anyone coming more than once or behaving
in a way that drew you attention?"

  Ada sat back in her chair, shaking her head.

  "I didn't spend time looking at the visitors during the week."

  "I did," said Chrissy. "Some were strange, like that guy who wanted to copy the picture. He wanted to set up his easel and paint right in the middle of all the other visitors. Do you remember?" she said, turning to Mrs. Warren. "He was angry when Mrs. Fox said he couldn't."

  "Mrs. Fox?"

  "Our director. I can give you her number."

  "He came back two more times. Once to take pictures, and Mrs. Fox said no again, and then on the day before and on the last day, too," Chrissy said.

  "What did he look like?"

  "Oh, I don't know. He was an older guy, tall, sort of plain."

  "Did you see anyone else come more that once?"

  "Oh, sure," said Chrissy, as she shifted her chair closer to Adam. "Erin Maxwell from the antique store, she came three times, and the librarian, she came every day and that old guy who lives out in the Scott house. He was really creepy."

  Chrissy paused to take a breath.

  "Stop, Chrissy. Who is this old guy? Ada?" he asked.

  "James Trevelyan. He claims to be descended from the people who owned the house Evan's is in. The family was called Hall. Incidentally, Hall was the subject of the missing portrait. Nancy came by daily on her way to the reference section as part of her rounds. She always does it."

  "Okay. You say the portrait was of this Hall?"

  "Yes. The sampler was an early record of the family. The family has died out, so I'm not sure Trevelyan is a descendant.

  "What did he do, Chrissy? Why was he so weird?"

  Chrissy tossed her hair and rolled her eyes.

  "He came and sat in front of that painting all morning and didn't move. Three mornings. I think he made everyone nervous. All the other people would sneak past him, and he would make a rude noise, sort of a growl, if someone stood in front of him too long."

  "Anyone else?"

  "No."

  "Thank you, ladies."

  Two unusual crimes in one week, Adam thought, as he drove towards the station. There wasn't any evidence that they were connected except the possibility that Chrissy's old plain guy was their corpse. Why such interest in those paintings? Why was Erin in so often? Might as well ask her, he said to himself as he drove into the parking space in front of the shop. Erin waved to him as he came in. She was ringing up a sale.