The Stolen Blue

by Judith Van GIeson

  “It is an issue if Mariah Geraty deceived Lovell.”

  “The burden of proving that is on you.” With the rudeness that comes naturally to lawyers, she stood up, looked at her beeper, and indicated that the meeting was over. “Can I use your phone? I have to make a call.”

  “Be my guest,” Massey said, indicating a phone on a table in the corner. He excused himself to make a phone call of his own.

  Claire was left at the table with the heirs while the lawyers conducted their other business. “Have you given any thought to the books you’d like?” she asked Samantha and James.

  “No,” said James.

  “There must be something you want,” Laura said.

  “No, nothing.” James got up from the table, walked to the window, and stared out.

  “I’ve been too busy,” said Samantha.

  “Samantha told me that you work at the Center for Southwest Research,” Rusty Siler said to Claire.

  ‘‘That’s right.”

  “I read in the Reporter that the center is exhibiting some Eliot Porter photos that have never been shown.”

  “We are.”

  “Which ones?”

  “The violets in Appalachia, the canyon lands of Utah, the apple trees in Tesuque.”

  “The Appalachian violets was a favorite of Eliot’s.”

  “Oh?”

  “I had a studio in Tesuque, and we were neighbors. I was good friends with Eliot and his wife,” he said, name-dropping in Santa Fe style.

  “We’re having an opening for the photographs in the exhibition hall Friday night. You might like to come.”

  “We’d love to,” said Samantha, hooking her arm in Rusty’s, “but we have other plans.”

  “We’ll try to make it,” said Rusty.

  “Ready?” asked the no-nonsense Sally, who had completed her phone call.

  “Ready,” Claire replied.

  “I’ll walk you to your car,” Sally said. “What was that guy doing with Samantha?” she asked as soon as they were out the door.

  “He’s her boyfriend, an artist named Rusty Siler.”

  “From Santa Fe?”

  “Yes.”

  “Never heard of him,” Sally said, dismissing Rusty Siler. She was an art collector who made it her business to know who was hot, who was up-and-coming, who was neither. “Did I hear him tell you he was Eliot Porter’s neighbor in Tesuque? Gardener would be more like it,” she snorted.

  They reached Sally’s car, a silver Lexus, and stopped beside it. “You know, there was a lot of bullshit and bluffing going on in there,” she said, “but the truth is with both witnesses now willing to testify that Burke was incompetent, Massey has an excellent case. What I said about legal fees eating up the inheritance applies to both sides. I’m not her lawyer, but I believe it would be in Mariah’s best interests to discuss a settlement. Can you talk to her?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Have you heard anything yet from the Genealogical Search Company?”

  “No.”

  “I’d give them a call.”

  “Will do.”

  “Good luck,” said Sally.

  ******

  Claire prepared herself a cup of tea and called the Genealogical Search Company when she got back to her office. “We’re just about finished with our report,” Joe Hopper said. “We found the birth certificate for Mariah Geraty, and it doesn’t list a father.”

  “The copy I have lists Burke P. Lovell.”

  “His name must have been added later, possibly with an attempt to defraud.”

  “Wouldn’t that depend on whether the person who added it was the father or not?”

  “True,” said Joe Hopper. “The best way to establish that would be through DNA testing. We found no record of who Mariah Geraty’s father is and no record of any previously unacknowledged offspring or heirs for Burke Lovell. We’ll get the report in the mail to you.”

  “Thanks,” Claire replied.

  She knew this information would mean another trip back to the Blue, but the Porter reception was scheduled for Friday and she decided to put the trip on hold until the reception was over.

  She examined the copy of Mariah’s birth certificate she had on file. It looked as if it had been copied on one of those second-rate Xerox machines located in libraries and drugstores. Put in a dime, and they spit out a copy, but not a very good copy. The letters on this copy were blurred around the edges. She looked into the rectangle that held the father’s name. The letters in Burke P. Lovell were as dark as the other entries, suggesting they had been typed on the same machine at the same time, but on closer examination, she could see that the typeface was different. The tail was clipped on the l’s, and the vowels were rounder. Claire had experience authenticating documents, and was annoyed that she hadn’t scrutinized this one more carefully. Too much stress, she thought, too little time. She called Sally to tell her what she had discovered.

  “Could the forger be Mariah?” Sally asked.

  “That’s what I’ll have to find out.”

  “How do you intend to do it?”

  “Ask her.”

  “It might work,” Sally said.

  ******

  That afternoon Claire left work early and went for a walk in Elena Gallegos Park in the foothills. The park spanned several life zones beginning at the 6,000-foot elevation, which was scattered with cholla and prickly pear, and ending at 10,000 feet in a conifer and aspen forest. Claire walked toward the mountains as far as the wilderness gate, then she turned back, stopping at a monument to an environmentalist who had helped design the park and who had died young in a climbing accident. The monument was a series of sculpted boulders that stood like sentinels in the desert, in formation, but also very much alone. This late in the day the stones cast long shadows. The silence and solitude of the monument spoke to Claire’s dark moods. She visualized the boulders as tombstones, tributes to the men who had departed her life: Burke, her father, even Evan, who was dead to her now. The Porter exhibit was coming up, her job was challenging, her life was moving forward in a positive way. But in order to move forward, sometimes it was necessary to go back and touch base with the past. While Claire thought about Burke and all she had lost, the shadows deepened and the sun sank behind the West Mesa, turning the lingering jet trails to gold.

  ******

  The Porter reception went well. The exhibition room was packed. Most of the people Claire had invited came: booksellers, writers, art historians. Sally Froelich and John Harlan were there. The library staff made an appearance. Rex Barker drove up from Socorro. Claire didn’t have time to look at the photographs, but she could feel them shimmering on the exhibition room’s walls. Snatches of praise floated around the room like bubbles. She tried to reach out and grab them, but Harrison got in the way.

  “Thank you,” she heard him say while he held court in the middle of the room, playing the part of gracious host in his navy blazer and turtleneck. “To be sure, I am extremely proud of these prints. It is an honor for me to be able to exhibit them here.”

  I? Claire thought, Me? remembering how Harrison had resisted her idea. John Harlan came up and offered her a cup of punch. “Hey, Claire,” he said in his Texas twang. “You sure have done a great job here.” Claire felt she’d been handed sparkling wine instead of a punch that was duller than dishwater. “But that pompous poobah is taking all the credit.”

  “That’s the way he is,” Claire said, attempting to shrug Harrison off.

  John made a show of turning his head and looking behind his shoulder.

  “What are you doing?” Claire asked.

  “Just wanted to make sure no one was preparing to stab me in the back. Can’t be too careful here in the land of the kiss ass and the suck up. You know, Claire, you ought to consider coming to work for me and gettin’ away from this place.”

  “On what you’d pay me, I’d have to live in a tepee.”

  John had always lived in dark apartments full of
books, never considering there could be anything better. “You could…”

  He didn’t get to finish his sentence, because Ruth O’Connor walked up and inserted a comma into the conversation. “Harrison might have spent some more money on the refreshments,” she said, eyeing her punch with disdain.

  “He’s the kind of guy who’d drive to Socorro to save a dime,” John replied.

  “Speaking of Socorro,” Ruth replied. “Rex Barker knows how to work a room.”

  Rex was talking to a young woman with chestnut hair tumbling down her back. Claire noticed that not far away Gail was alone leaning against the wall. She’d been looking for an opportunity to talk to Gail, so she excused herself to John and Ruth and walked over. Claire had dressed up for this occasion, as much as anyone ever did in Albuquerque, in a black dress and a silver Navajo pin from the thirties that had belonged to her mother. Gail was in a drab gray dress and slouching like she was trying to disappear.

  “Nice exhibit.” Gail said, which was the best she was able to do and about as much as Claire expected.

  Claire knew most of the people here, but not all. “Did Irina come?” she asked. Ignoring Gail’s advice, Claire had sent out the invitation. She had no idea what Irina looked like, and didn’t know if she was in the room or not.

  “No,” Gail replied.

  “I’m sorry. I was hoping to meet her.”

  Gail shrugged. “I told you she would never come back here, didn’t I? Excuse me.”

  She walked away, and Claire watched her weave through the crowd, wondering if she might have been drinking something other than punch.

  John Harlan was back at her elbow. “Claire, I’ve been wantin’ to ask you if…”

  “Hey,” Rex Barker said over Claire’s shoulder. How could someone so tall arrive so unexpectedly? she wondered. His black jeans, black shirt, and black cowboy hat made him seem even taller. Rex was like a shadow. When he moved straight on, you saw him; when he moved sideways, he disappeared.

  “Hey,” said John Harlan.

  “Hello, Rex,” Claire said. She was surprised he had come. Rex wasn’t very good at small talk, and he avoided parties.

  John started talking to someone he knew, and Claire felt Rex edging his way between them, as if he were trying to cut her out of the herd. When his back was to John, he leaned over and said, “Could I talk to you alone?”

  “When?”

  “Now?” he asked, surprising Claire by his intensity.

  She looked around, saw that people were starting to leave, and led Rex down the hall to her office.

  “Being at a party makes me nervous as a cat in a roomful of rocking chairs,” he said, shaking his shoulders as if he was shaking off a bad dream.

  Claire turned on her desk lamp. The hallway was dark, and the light created a feeling of intimacy, a circle isolating her and Rex from everyone else. The party at the other end of the hallway seemed very far away.

  Rex took off his hat and laid it on the desk. His black hair had begun graying at the temples. He had gaunt cheeks and hooded turtle eyes that served him well in poker and in bed. Unsociable as he was, there were women who found Rex Barker irresistible. Years ago he had published a collection of romantic poems about an older woman he claimed he’d been passionately in love with. The woman died. There were no witnesses left to prove or disprove the claim, but Claire had never known Rex to be passionate about anything other than poker and cigarettes. As far as she knew, Rex hadn’t written a word since, but he continued to cash in with women on the lonely writer mystique he’d created with his poetry book.

  Rex took a pack of Camels from his pocket and pulled out a cigarette. “Mind if I smoke?”

  Claire shook her head. “You can’t in here.”

  Rex looked at the dark hallway, then bent his head toward Claire as if they were conspirators. He rolled the unlit cigarette in his fingers, and Claire noticed that he wore a silver watch band and a large turquoise ring.

  “I got an offer to sell your books,” he said in a stage whisper. “The novels anyway.”

  “From who?”

  “I don’t know. It came over the Internet from anon.net.fi, that’s a server that forwards mail anonymously.’’

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “What do you want me to do about it?”

  “Buy them,” Claire said.

  “We’re looking at twelve thousand dollars here if I buy them as a dealer. Eighteen if I buy them as a collector. I don’t have that kind of money.” Rex put his cigarette in his mouth, remembered it was unlit, and took it out.

  “I’ll cover it. Can you get the seller to bring the books to you so you can look them over to make sure they’re the library’s books, and we can find out who the seller is?”

  “I doubt it. He says he’ll only deal by mail. He ships the books to me. I get a chance to look at them, if I like them, I pay the shipper by a cashier’s check made out to cash.”

  “Which shipper?”

  “He won’t say.”

  “Do you know it’s a he?”

  Rex tapped his cigarette against Claire’s desk. “Not really.”

  “The trouble with this plan is we may never find out who the seller is.”

  Rex’s eyelids drooped another fraction of an inch. “True,” he said. “But you get the books.”

  “I’d like to be there when they arrive.”

  “I’ll see if I can work it out. There’s one more thing,” he said, leaning back in his chair.

  “What’s that?”

  “Black Sun is the only book of Abbey’s I don’t have in a signed edition.”

  “Actually, the date on that inscription is wrong.”

  “To me it doesn’t matter. I’ll be helping you and the library out and, uh, well, I…”

  “You want me to give you Black Sun?” It was a book she hated to part with; it brought back memories of her last conversation with Burke. As one of the signed books in the collection, it also had evidentiary value.

  “I am sticking my neck out for this place.”

  “I’ll have to discuss it with Harrison.”

  “Claire, this seller has hot property. He—or she—is not going to wait around for long. There’s nothing to stop the seller from offering the books to another dealer.”

  “I’ll call you Monday.”

  “You do that,” Rex said, standing up and putting his hat on his head.

  Claire walked him to the side door. The minute he was outside, he flicked his lighter and ignited the cigarette that was now dangling from his lip. “Are you driving back to Socorro tonight?” Claire asked.

  “Not till morning,” Rex said.

  Claire supposed that meant that somewhere in Albuquerque a woman was waiting, maybe even the woman she’d seen him talking to. She watched him walk across the plaza, thinking that Rex had the longest legs she’d ever seen, the legs of a spider. The shadow walking beside him made them appear even longer.

  The party was breaking up, and from where she stood, she could see the guests leaving. Gail walked across the plaza and entered the shadows under the balcony of the humanities building, where she was approached by another woman. Actually, Claire thought, accosted might be a better word. The other woman was wearing a black baseball cap, which would have hidden her face even if she weren’t standing in the shadows. She gestured angrily at Gail, who started to walk away. The other woman followed, grabbed Gail’s arm, and restrained her. At this point they stood beside the stairs leading to the balcony that circled the humanities building. They were arguing, but Claire couldn’t hear anything from where she stood.

  Mingling with some people who were leaving the party, she crossed the plaza and entered the humanities building from the far side. She climbed a flight of stairs and let herself onto the balcony, staying close to the shadows cast by the building. When she reached the corner, she peered around it quickly, then dropped below the wall, which was about three feet high. She caught a quick glimpse of Gail and the other wo
man standing nose to nose. From here she could hear clearly what they were saying.

  “I told you I need the money,” the other woman said. “I’ve already put my ass on the line for you more than once.”

  “I don’t have it,” Gail whined.

  “Then, get it. I can give you a week. That’s it. Meet me at the same place. Same time.”

  “Shit,” Gail said.

  She stomped back across the plaza while the woman headed in the direction of Central. Claire stepped into the shadows of the humanities building and watched, noticing that Gail’s adversary wore the black pants and basketball sneakers of a student. A gust of wind caught the black hat and lifted it from the woman’s head. She reached up to catch it, but before she did, Claire caught a glimpse of a scalp that was bald as a man’s.

  Chapter Eleven

  OVER THE WEEKEND CLAIRE TRIED ANTHONY AGAIN, but all she got for her trouble was Willie Nelson. Anthony could be anywhere in the Southwest, scouting or peddling his books. He might show up tomorrow. He might show up next year. He might never show up at all. Anthony was a free spirit.

  On the other hand, she considered Rex to be a stingy spirit. He wasn’t bad-looking and had once written a decent book. Still Claire couldn’t figure out why women were so attracted to him. Rex was about as warm as the blue ice pack she kept in her freezer for camping trips, and he was obviously trouble. On Sunday he called to tell her he’d had further contact with his seller, and the seller had accepted his offer of twelve thousand dollars. “Have you discussed the deal with Harrison?” he asked.

  Claire hadn’t, but she’d had a day to think it over and had decided to go ahead. It was her money. It was her decision to make, not Harrison’s. “I’ll do it,” she said.

  “I’ll need a cashier’s check made out to cash.”

  “That’s as good as handing you twelve thousand in bills,” Claire replied.

  “You’ve known me for ten years, Claire. Have I ever gone back on my word?”

  “Not when it comes to books.”

  “You’ll get your books. I guarantee it. And I won’t accept them unless they are in perfect condition.”