The Stolen Blue

by Judith Van GIeson

  “Hello,” she answered tentatively.

  “Claire?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s Corinne.”

  “How are you doing, Corinne?”

  “Getting by.”

  “Did Samantha arrive?”

  “Yes. She was here. The reason I’m calling is we wanted to let you and the other people at the library know that we are having a service here Saturday. We’re going to bury my father on the ranch. Everyone’s pretty distraught, so we decided to keep it to just the neighbors and the family. I hope the people at the library will understand.”

  “I’m sure they will. We intend to have a memorial service for him here, although I don’t know when yet. I hope you can come.”

  “It’s a long way,” sighed Corinne.

  Two hundred and twenty miles, thought Claire, far enough to make it possible to bring up the subject of the will but not the theft of the books. “Corinne, I think you should know that Burke made me his personal representative in his will. I’ll be in charge of settling the estate.”

  “Oh, we know that,” Corinne replied. “Kass told us and showed us the will after you left.” The line was picking up static somewhere in the long distance between Albuquerque and the Blue.

  “I’ll need to come out there to go through his papers.”

  “Okay. Just tell me when,” Corinne said, hanging up.

  Claire went back to her tortellini, but it had gotten cold and soggy. She dumped it in the disposal, ground it into mush, and made herself a bowl of microwave popcorn. When she finished the popcorn, she decided to take a hot bath and go to bed. She ran the water in the tub, poured in a pine-scented bath oil, lit a candle, and slid in. This was the time she had reserved to cry about Burke. Claire didn’t find it easy to cry, and since she’d taken the scissors to her own life and gotten divorced, it had become even harder. She sat in the tub for an hour remembering Burke, letting the tears come.

  ******

  She spent a restless night and woke before dawn, but lay in bed waiting for the sun to rise and crack the sky behind the mountains. She got up then and started the day with the infinite ultimate stance moving on through felling a tree, leopard punch, repulse monkey, and ending by embracing the tiger. Ordinarily her movements were slow, graceful, and yin, but this morning they were fast, forceful, and yang.

  Tai chi was an elegant dance capable of keeping old ladies tranquil and limber, but Claire didn’t intend to become a tranquil old lady; she thought the women who did best remained fierce. Tai chi was a meditation, but tai chi chuan was a martial art, a way of throwing an opponent off balance and causing the opponent’s defeat. Claire grew up with an athletic older brother; the fights they had were physical, and combat didn’t necessarily intimidate her. She started practicing tai chi chuan during the bad days of the divorce, and the martial aspect helped her to fend off her anger and keep her balance. This morning she imagined she was defending herself against a thief. Since the attacker was unknown and amorphous (yin), she had to be firm (yang), whereas if an opponent mounted an aggressive attack, the victim could be yielding. In tai chi chuan every action embraced its opposite. Warriors won because they knew their opponents better than their opponents knew them. Claire’s objective was to know the thief and to draw that person out of hiding.

  When she finished embracing the tiger, she showered, got dressed, and called her friend Madelyn in Tucson, hoping to catch her before she left for her job at the U of A. Claire intended to tell Madelyn about Burke’s death, but Madelyn already knew. “It must be hard for you,” she said. “First you lose your father, then your husband, now your mentor. All those strong male images gone from your life.”

  “I’ve been embracing the tiger,” Claire said.

  Madelyn laughed. She had introduced Claire to tai chi chuan and had encouraged her to get the divorce. Madelyn was several years younger than Claire and remained resolutely single, espousing Katharine Hepburn’s philosophy: Why exchange the admiration of many for the criticism of one? She was good-looking enough—with thick auburn hair and a lush body—to get away with it.

  “I feel terrible about Burke.” Claire told her.

  “Kind of a weird way to die, don’t you think? Outside in the snow?”

  “I think it was what he wanted.”

  “The daughter took the blanket off him?”

  “Apparently.”

  “That’s familial love?”

  “It might be tough love.”

  “I thought Burke only had two daughters.”

  “So did he until Mariah tracked him down, the product of one of his liaisons, I guess.”

  “Well, there were plenty of those when he worked here. I assume he slowed down in recent years. What do you hear about the funeral?”

  “The family is having a private service at the ranch.”

  “And who gets the book collection?”

  “We do.”

  “Ah.” Madelyn sighed, and Claire could see her doing it. Madelyn had a taste for drama and wore bright red lipstick that framed her sighs and exclamations. “Lucky you!”

  “Not so lucky as it turns out. I set aside some of the books I thought special, and the box was stolen from my truck in the university parking lot.”

  “What was in the box?”

  Claire told her.

  “We have most of those books in the library, including the Austin/Adams folio and deWitt’s History of the Blue. Why did you put that book in your special box? It’s not exactly collectible.”

  “It was mis-shelved, and I set it aside. When I got done packing, there was room in that box.”

  “The one book you mentioned I know we don’t have but wish we did is The Brave Cowboy. The print run was miniscule, and the people who bought it read it to pieces. It was published before Abbey became a god. That’s the book you ought to be searching for. Taos Pueblo is likely to get broken, and the photos ripped out and sold individually. The Brave Cowboy will be in demand, especially now that Abbey’s dead and there’ll be no new work. That’s a book dealers will be very reluctant to give up. What is more important to you, getting the books back or catching the thief?”

  “If I had to choose, I’d say the books, but it would be nice to find out who took them. If we knew who, that could lead us to the books.”

  “If the thief doesn’t get rid of them or trash them first. If we have the opportunity to buy the books, should we do it? I know Harrison got the job because he’s tighter than a tick. Can you find a way to reimburse us?”

  The gentlemen’s code in the rare book world said that a dealer or librarian who unknowingly buys a stolen book takes the loss and returns the book to its owner. But someone who knowingly buys a stolen book couldn’t be expected to do that. “I’ll find a way to pay you back,” Claire said.

  “The best solution would be for us to go ahead and buy them, and get as much information as possible about the seller. But you realize that the odds are we’ll never see those books. They’re far more likely to go to some unscrupulous collector.”

  “I know, but thanks for your help.”

  “Glad to do it,” Madelyn said. “Let me know how it turns out.” “I will.”

  ******

  Claire dropped the truck off at the Chevy dealer to get the broken window fixed, and got a ride to work in a courtesy van. The driver let her off at the university bookstore on Central, and she walked across the campus. The woman in the Jimenez sculpture danced seductively and flipped her skirt. The vendors on the plaza sold hand-knit sweaters from Peru and embroidered vests from Guatemala. Students hurried to class, lugging backpacks full of books. Claire couldn’t help wondering if any of those backpacks contained Burke Lovell’s books.

  Zimmerman Library, where the Center for Southwest Research was located, had been designed by the architect John Gaw Meem. The main part of the building was massive and thick and grounded in the earth, but the tower beside it reached for the sky and was the university’s signature building. Zimm
erman had a tower and it had tunnels, aspirations and secrets that fueled Claire’s imagination.

  Her first order of business was Harrison Hough, who was likely to have heard about the theft by now. When she entered his office, he sat at his desk with the overhead light beaming down on his head. While they talked, he turned a paper clip over and over in his long, pianist’s fingers. Harrison collected folk art. A papier-mache Day of the Dead skeleton sat in death’s cart and grinned at her from the shelf behind his desk.

  “Did the thief get the Austin/Adams folio?” he asked.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “At least the history books are safe.” Claire suspected that her taste for fiction marked her as an unreliable romantic in Harrison’s eyes.

  “They’ve been stored in the tower.” Where Claire hoped they would remain safe. Zimmerman had been robbed before. There was a better security system now, but no system was foolproof against someone who wanted to break in badly enough.

  “Why didn’t you bring in the books immediately?” Harrison scowled, and shadows settled into his frown lines emphasizing the severity of his expression. The admiration of yesterday had turned to approbation today.

  “I wanted to get to the meeting on time. I’d like to try to get the stolen books back.”

  “How do you intend to do that?” Harrison unfolded the paper clip, dropped it, and picked up another.

  “By contacting other libraries and book dealers, any place the thief might try to sell them.”

  “Be discreet. We don’t want the state to think we can’t protect their assets.”

  “I’d like to put them on BamBam.” It was the Web site where librarians listed stolen books.

  Harrison shook his head. “Not a good idea.”

  Claire knew what he was thinking. A listing on the Internet was a way of announcing to state officials and potential thieves that security was poor at Zimmerman and books were ripe for the taking. On the other hand, the more people who knew about the theft, the better the chances were for getting the books back. But Claire didn’t expect to change Harrison’s mind.

  “All right,” she said.

  ******

  On the way to her office she stopped at the kitchen to get a cup of coffee. Gail Benton stood at the sink, looking out the window and gulping down a large white pill with a glass of water. She didn’t hear Claire enter. Gail looked more disheveled than usual this morning in a baggy gray sweater and a skirt with a drooping hemline. Sometimes when she came upon Gail unexpectedly, the expression in her eyes was raw and jealous, a look Claire’s children called the stink eye. This look of naked competition always startled her, although she saw it often enough in academia. It was disturbing to Claire that someone could want her job so badly, but ridiculous at the same time. It was said about academics that the competition was so brutal because the stakes were so small: a title, an office, a salary the size of a secretary’s. What they were really competing for, Claire thought, was the love of an indifferent parent. If Harrison was a surrogate daddy, Gail ought to be very pleased with herself because Claire was on his shit list now.

  “Good morning, Gail,” she said.

  Gail turned away from the window. “Claire! I didn’t hear you coming.” She dropped the glass she’d been holding into the sink. It was plastic, and although it bounced, it didn’t break. “What a shame about Burke’s books!” Her sympathetic words were at odds with her sour expression.

  “It is,” Claire replied.

  “I hope they come back to the library.”

  “So do I.”

  Claire poured herself a cup of coffee and went back to her office, where she typed up an inventory of the missing books for Rachel. She e-mailed the list to the out-of-print booksellers, museum administrators, and university librarians she knew across the Southwest. The books were most likely to surface in the Southwest; it was where they’d command the best price. If she didn’t know the e-mail address, Claire called. Book dealers were usually civilized people, and she expected their cooperation. Everyone she talked to was sorry about Burke, everyone agreed to help.

  After she’d contacted everybody she could think of, she went to BookFinder.com to search all the Web sites where out-of-print books were bought and sold even though she didn’t expect the books to surface so soon. And she didn’t expect the Taos folio to surface on the Internet at any time; it was too rare, too valuable, too easy to trace. There were hundreds of Hillermans for sale, so many that Claire wondered if there weren’t more sellers out there than buyers. Some of the books, she knew, were ghosts in the system—books that were already sold but hadn’t been deleted yet. One effect of Internet sales could be to flood the market and depress prices. It used to take initiative to track down a rare book, but now it could be done with a click of the keys. When Claire searched for a first edition of The Brave Cowboy, however, she didn’t find a single copy. The only Brave Cowboy available was in a limited edition that had been signed by Kirk Douglas, who starred in the movie.

  She logged out of BookFinder, took out her Abbey bibliography, and checked Black Sun against it. She’d been right; the pub date was May of 1971. But she would have taken more pleasure in being right if she could have gone down the hall and told Burke so. “God damn it, Claire,” he would have said. “I expect you to be right.”

  Remembering her promise to Sheriff Henner, she put a copy of Burke’s will in an envelope and addressed it to him in Reserve.

  Chapter Five

  ON THURSDAY CLAIRE DROVE ACROSS TOWN to keep her appointment with the lawyer, Sally Froelich. Downtown Albuquerque was canyon country, full of the shadows cast by hotels and office buildings but void of people. Only the homeless spent any time on the street. Everyone else conducted his or her business and hurried back to their offices and cars. Sally Froelich’s office was a few blocks from downtown in a small, well-maintained Victorian house with burglar bars on the windows. One of Claire’s criteria when shopping for a house in Albuquerque was that it didn’t have bars on the windows, which meant living deep in the Valley or high in the Heights, nowhere near the middle of town.

  Sally was a solo practitioner specializing in wills, trusts, estates, and probate, and a woman of generous proportions. The lavender cotton dress she wore emphasized her size, leading Claire to assume she was comfortable with it. Sally had thick brown hair that hung down her back. Her face was as wrinkled as an unmade bed. Her brown eyes were large and warm. She wore a silver ear cuff wrapped around the side of one ear. Claire was relieved she wouldn’t be working with a tense, buttoned-down lawyer in a boring suit. The room Sally worked in was as comfortable as a home office. The curtains on the windows concealed the burglar bars. There was a thick carpet on the floor. A painting from the Taos school hung on the wall. Sally’s polished desk was lit by a lamp with a green glass shade. The desktop was empty except for a silver letter opener and cup that held pencils and pens. The room, an island of tradition and stability, made it easy to forget downtown Albuquerque was on the other side of the window and that homeless people were pushing their shopping carts down the street.

  Sally offered tea and served it in a china cup. Claire settled into a wing chair, sipping the tea. “You have beautiful things,” she said.

  “My business is stiffs and gifts.” Sally laughed. “It may seem genteel and cozy in here, but probate can be a nasty business. Sometimes it’s just as nasty as criminal law.”

  “I don’t doubt it.” Claire put her cup and saucer down on the polished desk. “Is this an antique?”

  Sally nodded. “It belonged to my grandfather and my father. They were both lawyers in Hillsboro.”

  Hillsboro was one of the New Mexican villages that Claire loved. “What brought you to Albuquerque?”

  “Opportunity. Adventure.”

  Motives that Claire understood. “Ruth O’Connor referred me to you.”

  “How is she doing?”

  “Far better than anyone expected.”

  “It’s good tha
t Robert went first. He would have been lost without her, but the widows usually find a way to cope.” Sally put her arms on the desk and looked Claire in the eye. “What can I do for you?”

  “An old friend of mine died recently and made me the personal representative in his will. Here’s a copy. I don’t know what a personal representative does, and Ruth thought you could help.”

  “It can be quite a responsibility in New Mexico, particularly if the assets are substantial.”

  “They are.”

  “First of all you are required to give notice of your appointment to the heirs and the devisees. The heirs are the people entitled to receive property under the laws of intestate succession, and the devisees are the people designated in the will to receive property.”

  “I think the devisees already know.”

  “Even so, you should put it in writing. You will need to prepare an inventory and an appraisal of the decedent’s property, to take control of the estate, to give notice to creditors, and to pay claims allowed against the estate. Is there any question of who the heirs are?”

  “There could be.”

  “I’d suggest hiring a genealogical search company to locate all of them. I can recommend Brown’s Genealogical Service in Denver. Here’s the number.”

  “Thanks.”

  Sally held the will in her hand. “I’ll take a look at this, and in the meantime why don’t you get the letters out to the devisees.”

  “All right,” Claire answered.

  “I’ll bill the estate hourly for my time.” Sally stood up, signaling that the meeting was over. “I’m looking forward to working with you,” she said, shaking Claire’s hand.