"I can stay late if you want."
"No, take Anne back to Catherine's and stay until the trooper arrives. Get the cruiser and bring it around to the back door.
Adam watched them go and then left for home. He had to call Erin and confirm for Tuesday night. It would be great to be with her, but he wasn't sure he would be welcome at the little theater wrap-up party. He and his men had interrogated several of the cast members and the host of the party.
Chapter Fourteen
Adam swung by Catherine's on his way into the office the next morning. Maggie bounded from the porch to meet him, her wiggling back end and wagging tail betraying the black lab in her ancestry. Adam scratched her ears as he waited at the screen door.
"Morning, Catherine. Could I speak to Anne a moment?" he asked as she held the door open for him.
"Sure, come on in. Brad is already here."
Catherine's house always smelled good, like home did when his mother was alive. This morning the aroma was coffee and sausage with the added sharp scent of oranges and cinnamon from freshly baked muffins. Brad and Anne sat at one end of the long pine harvest table, drinking coffee from oversized bright blue mugs. The remains of their breakfast were still on the table. Adam sat down in one of the mismatched press-backed chairs.
"Morning," Adam said as Catherine put down coffee and a plate of sausage and eggs in front of him.
"Thanks. What are your plans for the day?" he asked Anne.
"I'm going to the office with Brad, wearing one of your protective vests. He says to wear it or stay in. So I caved to the pressure."
Anne's light words didn't reflect the dark circles and taut lines around her eyes. Nightmares of bullets and menacing anonymous vehicles had bothered her sleep. When Anne worried, she woke at 4:00am. Always. She called them her ugly hours, four to six. Whatever the worst might be, she could imagine it. Eventually, she would sleep a little. Morning usually brought a decision.
And so it had been this morning. Though she was afraid to stay, she was more reluctant to go. If she left, she knew she would be spending many more early mornings worrying, checking her doors, always fearing who might be waiting for her. She didn't want to be anybody's loose end.
Beyond all that, she was a problem solver. If she had the key to the mystery, she'd stay.
Adam was talking to her. “He’s right.”
"I know, I know."
"When you reach the office, pull into the judges' parking. Call Pete to meet you and cover you while you go in."
Fear filled her throat with nausea. She should go home.
"Perhaps we'll find the answer in the files today."
"Sure."
Adam stood up and thanked Catherine as he left.
At the office, Adam picked up his file on the Beauchamps to have a quick read before he drove on out to their estate. There hadn't been anything added that would help him in the interview.
The day was another sunny one, spring temperatures and the earthy smell that meant the end of winter to him. The melting snow left only a few patches on the soaked and flattened lawn at the entrance to the Beauchamps. He wanted to talk to Thomas Beauchamp today. The matriarch certainly wasn't going to give him the time of day, and he didn't have anything to pry her open with.
The young maid hadn't improved her attitude any. Maybe she wasn't a morning person, he thought.
"Mr. Beauchamp can't be disturbed."
"I think you better, missy. I don't want to come back with a warrant."
Strange how that threat almost always got results.
"Mr. Davidson."
Thomas Beauchamp, heir to the Beauchamp fortune, businessman, and world-class skier as a young man was a lithe and tanned fifty, not tall, with his mother's black eyes and prominent nose. He took Adam into the library where he had spoken to the senior Mrs. Beauchamp on his last visit. Adam got right to it when they sat down.
"Mr. Beauchamp, I would like to ask you some questions about Jennifer Smith and a woman called Nicole Bouchard."
"Nicole's one of my more distant cousins in Montreal. What can you possibly want to know about her?"
His surprise seemed genuine enough.
"She had been using Jennifer to research your family."
"You mean Jennifer had been charging my mother and Nicole for the same work?"
"That's the least of what she had been doing. I have to ask you, sir, if Jennifer blackmailed you or any member of your family."
Adam knew the answer might well be a lie, but that was useful sometimes.
"Certainly not. Not only that, there is nothing anyone could blackmail us about. My mother told you, I think."
"What about this story of Andrew Beauchamp's second family."
"What about it? The story's been around for years. True or not, it doesn't affect us. We are sophisticated people, Lieutenant. Most families as old as ours have a bastard or two. It doesn't matter if the wills are written correctly and ours always are."
"What do you know about Nicole?"
"Not much. She's some kind of second or third cousin. I only met her once; at a funeral, I think."
"We'll be contacting her."
"By all means. As I said, it doesn't concern us. If that's all?"
"Not quite. What vehicles do you own? And what color are they?"
"A black Mercedes sedan, a red Porsche and one of those little Neons for the staff to use for errands. It's red also. I have an old silver Honda Prelude as well."
Adam stood up, shook hands, and left with as little information as he came with and no grounds at all for a warrant to search. He'd try to get some financial information from gossip central at the diner at lunch.
At the station, Brad checked the files on Jennifer's disk. When Adam came in, he called him over.
"I think I got something, boss, but she's used code names with amounts beside them."
"How many names?"
"Ten, but some of them are inactive now. Do blackmailers quit?"
"When the well is dry. What kind of code did Jennifer use?"
"Odd. First, there is a name, then a year and a month, followed by a sum. The names are strange, not people or cities or anything like that."
"What does Anne think?"
"I haven't shown her yet."
Anne was deep into what looked to be land records on microfilm. Brad had borrowed the set-up from the library over Nancy Webb's protests, subdued by asking her if she wanted Anne to die in her library too. Anne took a break from the tedious perusal of records to look at Brad's list.
"Those are immigrant ships' names," she said.
"Immigrant ships?" Brad said.
"Yes, the immigrants to this country came mostly on ships until recently. Now they come on planes or across the borders with Mexico or Canada. There are ships’ passenger lists for many of them. For example, you take the first one, the Samaria. She was a ship that ran between Europe and Canada. I have two friends who came on her as children, one Dutch, one Slovak. The year and month likely refer to arrivals. Maybe blackmail subject was on the ship?"
Anne read the rest of the list and shook her head.
"No, that can't be right. Some of these ships were the coffin ships."
"Coffin ships?" Adam said.
"Yes, they brought starving Irish immigrants from about 1845 on. Here's the Galway in 1852. I wonder if Jennifer looked until she found a name on a list that was the same as her victim and used a cross-reference to encode it. Brad, pull up the database she had of ships' passenger lists. Look for the Samaria."
Brad spent a few minutes finding the list and the month. Most of the passengers had been Dutch, but he did see one name he thought had been on Jennifer's client list. After cross-checking, he gave Adam the name David Hanson, address in New York City. Across from the entry they thought referred to him was a small sum—$500. With luck, he would admit to being blackmailed.
"Try and find someone a little closer to home, Brad. I don't want to go to New York this weekend."
> "Okay, but it'll take us some time."
"I'm going to go back to old records and newspapers," Anne told him. "You said there was supposed to be some land problem in the early 1900's."
"So I heard, but what the details were, I have no idea."
"I'm going to work backwards from what the Culvers and the Beauchamps own now to see if there was any conflict or dispute.
"Fine."
The phone rang in Adam's office. Bill Perkins' lab had compared the bullet that killed Davis with the one that had slammed into the wall behind Anne. No direct comparison was possible because the bullet was so flattened, but they were the same caliber.
A witness saw a guy with a big moustache drive away from the strip mall where Davis had died late Friday. Other description—medium. The vehicle was described as a black SUV, like a Jeep. Plate number—of course not.
The medical examiner placed the time of death as likely on Friday but could get no closer because of the delay in finding the body.
Adam told Bill about his no-help interview with Beauchamps and about cracking the computer code and promised to keep in touch.
It was lunchtime, and Adam promised to send food over for his hard-working researchers. Spring was definitely coming, he thought as he walked across the square to Lil's. Clumps of bright yellow daffodils dotted the formal garden beds of the green. A robin perched on the heroic figure of a founding father in the center of the square.
Adam bounded up the steps into Lil's and settled himself at the counter of the diner. He loved the time-warp feel of the place, the chrome and the red leatherette. Peg had kept the big neon sign outside and one spelling Coca-cola over the mirror. She bought the place lock, stock and beautiful old milk-shake machine. She also made great chicken salad sandwiches with French fries. Adam had two.
"Peg, what do you hear about the Beauchamps and money?" Adam said as he finished his meal.
"They have a lot," Peg said, raising an eyebrow in a question.
"Do you hear anything else, any money worries, any bad debts? Are they paying their bills on time and the staff wages?"
"People like that always pay bills a month late, and they're no different. The staff hasn't complained in here about money. Saucy little Tracey complains about how she is mistreated, but I haven't heard her say anything serious."
"Tracey?"
"You know, the maid. She probably opened the front door for you, one job she hates."
"That shows. I wondered what was biting her."
"The way I hear it she thinks she is a Beauchamp, that her great-grandmother and Andrew Beauchamp were lovers and the family got cut out of the inheritance
"What's she doing working for them? Do they know that?"
"Probably not. None of them talk to people around here."
"What's her last name?"
"Dirkens. Her mother was a Sinclair."
"Do you know the great-grandmother's name?"
"No... yes, I do. Agatha Spotiswood. When I first came to town, I volunteered at the county home. I remember Tracey and her grandmother coming in every Sunday to see her.
"What about the family, brothers, uncles. Is any one of them a hothead or the type to carry a grudge a long time?"
"No, there's only Tracey. Her dad left before she was born, her mother died in a car accident a couple of years later and the grandmother Sinclair brought her up. Mrs. Sinclair died two years ago. Tracey's about twenty now. She has attitude, but she has never been a violent kid."
"What about cousins, other descendants of this Spotiswood."
"Don't know. There weren't many in the family, or so I have always been led to believe. It's sad she's so alone."
"Thanks, Peg, see you later."
Adam picked up the order to go and crossed to the courthouse. Anne listened to the story of the maid and her lineage while she ate her take-out lunch. She told Adam she would look for Spotiswood relatives. Adam looked up Tracey Dirkens' home address. She lived at the Beauchamp estate. He wondered how resentful Tracey was, working as a servant in what she believed to be her great-grandmother's house. If she believed it. He'd send Pete out to ask her.
Brad had called Nicole Bouchard in Montreal. She was young sounding, about thirty, he thought, and she spoke heavily-accented English. Anne could speak passable French and volunteered to interpret for Brad.
Nicole claimed to be searching the Vermont Beauchamps for completeness, and to see if Jennifer could find anything for her before 1850. She wasn't interested in offshoots of the family tree that weren't legitimate. One fact she thought she had was a marriage between a Beauchamp daughter and a Culver son in 1916. Leticia and Douglas were their names. Anne hadn't come across them as yet. Nicole denied being blackmailed.
"Certainement, non.”
The crash of the phone into the cradle almost drowned out her hissed "merde".
"Whew, she is one hot-tempered lady. Maybe I should check if she's been across the border."
Brad was onto immigration as he spoke. Anne returned to checking land records.
Paper piled itself haphazardly on Adam's desk, and he spent the afternoon clearing it and writing a report for his boss on the progress of the investigation.
He answered calls from the local radio and television stations and Ted Atkins again. Ted's paper was due to go to press the next day, and he wanted Adam to confirm the blackmailing rumors. Adam called to say he would see him at the end of the day at Barclay's, a small pub at the corner of the square and Hunter.
He put the report on Captain Naismith's desk and walked out to where Anne was sitting, bleary-eyed from staring at microfiche all day.
"Anything?"
"No, I have checked these land deals back to the mid-twenties. Both these families managed to hold on to their property during the depression, God knows how. Did they do any smuggling?"
"Smuggling?”
"Yes, you know, liquor during prohibition for the Canadian liquor companies. A few American families, especially on the border, made or held onto their money that way."
"Not that I know," Adam said.
Brad was still clicking away from one passenger list to another.
"I've got three files, but the money is small, and the people aren't local: Alaska, Miami and one in Goose Bay, in Labrador. Do you want me to follow these up?"
"I doubt our killer paid a visit from Labrador. Give them up."
"Good, I'm out of here for today."
"Take Anne home, will you?"
"Sure."
This time they made a careful, rear door exit.
Atkins was waiting for him when Adam got to the pub. A shot and a beer sat untouched in front of him. The first or the fifth, Adam wondered, as he ordered plain soda for himself.
The first, he decided, as he talked to Atkins. Ted didn't show any signs of too much alcohol or even those of a carefully-controlled chronic drinker.
"Adam, I have a problem."
"Yeah?"
"You're investigating my boss. This blackmail stuff is out in the community, and we have to print. How much is there that involves the Culvers?"
"I'm not going to give you information for you to feed to the Culvers, Ted."
"Hell, no, but I want to keep my job. I don't want to print anything about them if I can get away without putting them in it."
"Leave out the names. Anyone else you name is going to be unhappy too, and it sure won't help me. We don't have it all anyway."
"Can I talk to Dr. McPhail?"
"About how Jennifer did it, not who she did it too, and only if she wants to. I don't think she's eager to talk to the press. Brad can give you some of it."
"Okay. That'll do. But I have to leave the Culvers out. You won't give it to Burlington or to the TV stations?"
"I won't, no."
So that was it. Didn't want to print it himself, and didn't want to be scooped either.
"I have to go, Ted."
"Thanks."
Adam left him staring glumly at his untouched
drinks.
At home, Adam changed into sweats for his first run in a week. His route took him out of town, across one bridge and back in. He enjoyed the view of the river and the weir at the Mill. There was talk of renovating the mill into a restaurant, art gallery, and theatre complex. He hoped it went ahead, even if an increase in tourism brought more policing problems.
Sunset was fading when he got home. Sam was meowing pitifully. A cat can sound abandoned entirely when it's missed its meal by an hour. He fed her and realized he'd better hurry if he was going to pick Erin up at seven.
Chapter Fifteen
Erin wanted to try a new restaurant called Evan's, that had opened in an old house across the square from her store. Some of her antiques had furnished the foyer and small bar. On the way, she told Adam about the place.
"They renovated the entire house, replacing all the electric and plumbing, but saving every scrap of original molding, staircase, everything. They live upstairs."
"Do you know them well?"
"Only as customers. He's the chef. She's a graphic designer and still does a lot of work from home."
The foyer was tiny with a glowing oriental rug in the center of the hardwood floor. A pine drop-leaf table stood under a primitive, portrait painting. On the table, a polished pine bowl held a collection of ceramic balls.
"What are these, Erin?"
Before she could answer, the hostess appeared and took them into the small lounge. Erin pointed out wingback chairs and an étagère that came from her shop.
They settled in the chairs in front of a stone fireplace. Adam asked for a Bloody Caesar, a Canadian drink made with spices, clam juice, tomato juice and vodka he enjoyed on a Montreal trip. Erin had a Campari and soda.
"Those balls in the wooden bowl?"
"Those are called carpet balls. The Victorians used them for an indoor game. Mary and Tom took all I had in the shop. But you must have seen at least one before?"
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