You have to image his pons. "Peripheral" VII palsies can be central if they involve the nucleus or fascicle of the 7th nerve. You would expect crossed weakness with a pontine infarct(face on one side, body on the other), but if he had a more midline perforator this can cause a midline infarct that hit both the descending motor tracts on one side and the motor nucleus/fascicle of 7 on the other. It's also possible he had multiple perforators affected from a basilar abnormality.
Not a classic case by any means and certainly not 100% localizing, but small vessel disease risk factors and collateral symptoms of "dizziness" (? vertigo) make small vessel posterior circulation disease worrisome.
MRI/MRA head & neck are how I would proceed...
Due to the crossed innervation of the forehead/upper face in most people, an anterior circulation cause would have to affect both motor corticies involving the facial fibers--not impossible, but certainly rare.
All this is assuming the facial weakness is of a peripheral pattern as you implied; some people will mistake mild weakness of eye closure as involvement of the upper face, but I've seen enough strokes with orbicularis oris affected to know this is not true. Only if they cannot raise their eyebrow, wrinkle their forehead, ect. do I consider it a definite 7th nerve/nucleus lesion.