The Tempest (14 page)

“Someone who saw you with her,” Hunter said. “I understand you used to date Susan?”

A flush rose up his cheeks. “You've talked to the family, then.”

“Her brother and sister, yes.”

Linden shifted in the chair.

Tanner walked by, hesitating as if he was going to ask Hunter something.

“Hello,” he said, nodding to Linden.

Linden just looked blankly back at him.

“So: You used to date her?” Hunter asked.

His eyes assented. “Years ago, yeah.”

“How many?”

“Six. Five or six.”

“But you stayed in touch.”

“Occasionally. Not a lot.”

“So how did you happen to be with her here in Tidewater on the day she died?”

“How did I happen to be with her,” he said, echoing her tone. He leaned back and cleared his throat again. “Okay: Susan e-­mailed me the day before. Said she wanted to talk, could I meet with her? I drove down in the morning, Wednesday morning, we met, and I left here at about one thirty that afternoon. I was back in my office before the end of the day. You can check.”

“I will,” Hunter said. “Why did she want to meet with you then?”

“Why? She just wanted to talk. She said she was worried about something, and needed to talk.”

“Was that something she'd do—­ask to meet with you when she wanted to talk?”

“Almost never.”

“So what was different on Wednesday?” she said. “What was she worried about?”

“When she contacted me, you mean? Or—­? She didn't go into specifics. Just—­that she wanted to talk and—­We were going to have lunch, but she was real nervous when I got here so we talked at the Inn for—­I mean, just a few minutes, walked out to the water, and I left. That was it.”

John Linden cleared his throat again, unnecessarily.

“That's a long way to drive just to talk for few minutes.”

“It is.”

“And so what was she worried about?”

“Oh, well, I don't know. I mean—­her husband, mostly. There were tensions in her marriage, as you probably heard.”

“Over—­?”

“Over—­” He had to think about that. A thin film of sweat had formed above his chin. It was as if he'd over-­rehearsed and suddenly become tongue-­tied. Finally, he said, “I mean—­this is kind of getting into a personal area, asking about our conversations.”

“Not anymore,” Hunter said. “The details are part of a police investigation now. You were seen here with her the day she died. There's going to be video footage of you talking with her. It's part of our investigation now.”

Suddenly the blood seemed to leave his face and his eyes flashed a look of panic. Moments later, John Linden leapt to his feet and gasped several times. He flapped a hand up and down in front of his face and dropped back into the seat as if he was about to faint. Was he having a panic attack?

“Are you okay? Can I get you water?”

Hunter rushed out to the watercooler. Tanner waved from his office as she walked by, but she kept going. When she returned, he was better, standing again and shaking out his right leg as if the problem had just been his foot going to sleep.

“Are you all right?”

“Sorry,” he said. He took a ­couple more deep breaths and they both sat. “I just sort of got dizzy there for a second. Dehydrated, probably.”

“Take your time.” Hunter let him drink the water. He gulped down three-­quarters of it and set the cup on her desk. “Start from the beginning,” she said. “What did you talk about with Susan Champlain? Why did she call you?”

“All right,” he said. He sat forward and exhaled audibly. “She wanted to talk because—she was worried, like I say, about her husband. And I guess it had to do with—­she had learned something that she wasn't supposed to know, about her husband's business.”

“Go on.”

“And she was afraid it might have something to do with organized crime—­or that's what she said, anyway.” He gave her a tentative smile. “She was afraid he was being used and that he was going to get hurt. She was actually more concerned about her
hus
band's welfare, I think, than her own.”

“Okay. Go on. What kind of business are we talking about?”

“I couldn't tell you that.”

“You could,” Hunter said and he looked up at her for a moment like a scolded child. “You're saying she didn't share
any
of the details?”

“No, I mean—­not many of them.”

“Okay. Tell me the ones she did share.”

He sighed, reached for the rest of the water, and drank it, setting the cup back on her desk.

“She believed—­this is what she told me—­that she thought it maybe involved stolen art,” he said. “And, possibly, that this deal had something to do with organized crime, like I say.”

“Her husband's business.”

“Yes.” He drew in his lips and sat back.

“Okay. And why did she think that?”

He lifted his palms to show he didn't know. “I have no idea. I mean, that's what she said. That's what she
thought
. She did kind of overhear things. She was smarter than ­people give her credit for. A very astute observer.”

“She could read signs, I understand.”

“What?”

“Did she ever tell you that?”

“No.”

Hunter nodded and waved away the subject. “So she told you she'd overheard him talking about this deal?”

“On the phone, yeah, two or three times, making comments, talking—­
cryptically
, sometimes, I think was how she put it. Like I say, she picked up pieces here and there—­”

“Had they been arguing about it at all, Susan and her husband?”

“Arguing?” He reached for the cup again, saw that it was empty and left it on her desk. “I mean—­ She didn't get into that part with me, really. She could be very guarded about certain things. And probably a little paranoid, because of the organized crime thing.” Hunter waited. “She was afraid they were ‘shadowing' her husband. That's a word she used.”

“Why would someone be shadowing her husband? Who did she think it was?”

“Oh, I don't know.”

Hunter nodded. She could sort of understand why Susan Wilkins and John Linden hadn't stayed together. They were two nervous ­people who probably made each other a little crazy.

“It seems strange to me that you chose to meet in such a public place, at the Old Shore Inn,” she said. “Had you met there before?”

“No. I mean, it wouldn't have been
my
choice. Of course, her husband was away at the time. So—­”

“And I don't understand why you didn't come forward and say something after she died.”

“You mean to the police?”

“Yes.”

“I don't know. I mean—­” He sighed. Sweat glistened on his forehead and his chin. “In retrospect? I probably should have. Obviously, I'm devastated by what happened, as her family is. But. I guess I just didn't want to get in the way. And I didn't think it would help, anyway.”

“How would you have gotten in the way?”

“I just didn't want to confuse things.”

“Confuse things—­meaning because you're married and she's married?” Hunter said.

“Well.” He cleared his throat and shifted in the chair, his face turning scarlet. “That probably entered into it,” he said. “But, I mean—­if I thought I could have shed any light on what happened? I'd have been there in a heartbeat.”

“What do you
think
happened?”

“Oh, I don't know,” he said. “No idea.”

“Then why are you so sure that nothing you said would've helped?”

“What?”

“Why are you so sure nothing you said would have helped?”

He began to fidget with a cuff button on his shirt. Hunter had seen all kinds of affairs and knew what they did to ­people, including some that weren't technically affairs; those, at times, were worse than the real thing. “I mean, I just didn't think it would have mattered,” he said, as if this explained it. “Also, I didn't come forward because I don't think she would have wanted me to.”

“Were you having an affair with her?”

“No. Absolutely not,” he said, sounding too adamant. “But that's what I mean. That's what ­people would have thought. It would have just confused things. Who told you, anyway?”

“A guest who saw you talking with her. They said you appeared to be in a very intense conversation.”

“No.”

“How would you characterize it?”

“Friendly. Just a conversation. I think I was always kind of a sounding board for Susan, in a way. But it was perfectly innocent. Half the time she wanted advice about her husband.”

“But what was it, specifically, on that day, that made her want to meet with you?” Hunter said, circling back to the key question.

“I guess—­I mean, I think she just thought that something had changed.”

“With her husband?”

“With her husband, yeah.” Hunter nodded for him to go on. “He'd been acting, I don't know, a little erratically, he was angry at her, and I think that just worried her. But, I mean, she couldn't really pinpoint
what
it was.”

“And you never thought that you ought to tell the police about that?”

He shook his head, almost imperceptibly.

“No?” Hunter said.

“No.”

“Because you thought it would confuse things.”

“That's right, yeah,” he said. “And also—­I mean—­”

“Yes?”

“And also I was—­I guess I was kind of advised against it.”

His face went pale for a moment, then slowly reddened. He cleared his throat.

“By?”

“By the FBI.”

Oh. “You're saying you did go to the FBI about this?”

“No.” He shifted again in the chair, showing a nervous smile. “I guess I wasn't supposed to say that. No, I didn't
go
to them, I just made a call. After the fact. I made a phone call.”

“After which fact?” Hunter asked.

“After Susan died. I'd offered to do it beforehand, but she didn't want me to. That's what we were arguing about, okay? I called Thursday, the day after she died. Maybe I shouldn't have. I just felt like I had to do something, okay? I didn't think there'd be a local investigation.”

“Why the FBI?”

“That was actually her idea. We'd talked about it a ­couple of times. She knew they had a Stolen Art Division. She thought this might have something to do with stolen art. She thought maybe we could do it anonymously. Although when I did call, they actually discouraged the whole idea.”

“Who did?”

“The fellow I talked with.”

Hunter studied his face, still flushed and oily now with sweat. “Was this fellow's name Scott Randall, by any chance?”

“No,” he said.

“The fellow you talked with?”

He frowned past her out at the woods as if trying to think harder. “His name . . . yeah,
Scott Randall
. Was that it? I think so.”

Jeez-­us
, Hunter thought. She felt a twinge of anger. Why didn't
he
tell her this?

“Why—­do you know him?”

“Not really.” Hunter forced a smile. “How'd that go, by the way? What'd you tell Randall?”

“Basically, nothing. I mean—­I told him what I knew, which wasn't much.”

“Tell
me
what you know,” Hunter said. She sure could've used a bad cop/good cop partner about now. “Tell me what you told him.”

“Okay.” John Linden sat forward and summoned a new, more authoritative tone: “I did tell him this: Before things changed, early in the summer, I guess it was, Susan's husband evidently said something to her that he probably shouldn't have—­that he didn't mean to.”

“Go ahead.”

“He said something, in passing, about a famous stolen painting. He said that he knew someone, or had heard of someone, who knew where it was and was going to help recover it. It was just one conversation that lasted about a minute and a half, she said. After that, Susan and her husband never discussed it again. It never came up. But she never forgot it.”

“What did she think it was? This famous painting?”

“She thought it might be the art stolen from the Gardner Museum, in Boston. Which, of course, would make it a big deal.”

“Why would she have thought that?”

“I don't know, I guess because he said something about it being a big take or a big heist or something. And that was one of the biggest. I think she Googled ‘art thefts' and that one comes up pretty quick.”

“Did she tell you anything about a photo she'd taken? Something her husband had found on her phone?”

Linden's face remained expressionless. “No.”

“Sure?”

“Sure.”

Hunter had a different idea, then. “You know what the reward is for those paintings, I'm sure, don't you?”

“The reward? No.” Linden made a faint choking sound. “I mean, yeah—­I saw
some
thing about that, I think, yeah.” Hunter wondered if Linden might be interested in the FBI's standing $5 million reward for information leading to the return of the stolen Gardner art. “I mean, are you saying
that
could somehow pertain to her
death
?” he asked.

“I don't know,” Hunter said. “What do
you
think?”

“I have no idea. I'm asking you.”

“And I'm asking you.”

“Okay,” he said.

Hunter waited.

“What else?” she said finally. “What else did she tell you?”

“That's it,” he said. “That's all.”

He smiled uncertainly.