The Stolen Blue

by Judith Van GIeson

  “Sure.”

  “I understand that Benjamin deWitt wrote a history of the Blue,” Claire said when Janet came back with the copy.

  “He did.”

  “I’m a librarian at UNM. I’m interested in regional histories, but I haven’t been able to find deWitt’s book anywhere.”

  “I don’t think it was a best-seller.” Janet laughed. “Ben was no Danielle Steele. Did you try the local library? Right around the corner?”

  “No, but I will.”

  “If you can’t find it there, you could try askin’ Ben’s sisters. He had two. One of ’em, Ellen, died recently in Globe, Arizona, but the other one—her name is Bobbye Johnson—lives in Datil.” Janet wrote down Bobbye’s phone number and directions to her house for Claire. “She’d be pleased to know the university is interested in Ben’s book.”

  Claire suspected that as soon as she walked out the door, Janet would be on the phone, and by the time she left Reserve, everyone in town would know she’d been there and why. It was unnerving to think that a visit from her could qualify as an event. It might be pleasant to live in town where so much—the library, the post office, the courthouse, the sheriff—was within walking distance. The down side was that everybody in town knew your business. As Claire rounded the corner, she turned into the wind that came blasting out of Arizona. She put her head down, turned up her collar, and wondered whether she would find The History of the Blue in the Reserve Library. It was the most logical place for it to be, but its absence from the other libraries was not a good omen. Claire’s reason told her she might well find one, but her intuition intimated she would not. She asked herself why she was even looking now that the library had all the novels back. Why not accept John’s conclusion that the thief had discarded the history as worthless?

  If the history did start showing up, it would support Rachel’s theory that Gail or Rex had stolen the box of books and John’s theory that the history had been discarded. Rachel had made it clear that she suspected Gail first and Rex second in the theft. She was probably right, Claire thought. They fit the profile, they were the logical suspects, but neither of them satisfied her; Gail was too obvious, Rex too predictable, and both were too close to home. If she continued to find holes on the shelves where the history had been, it would open the field and suggest there was a thief out there with an unknown motive. Rachel was likely to consider expanding the investigation a waste of time and money, but the possibility appealed to Claire.

  She entered the library wrapped in a mixture of anticipation and dread, logged onto the computer, hit the A button for author, and typed in the name of Benjamin deWitt. The History of the Blue came up. Claire copied down the call number and went hunting in the shelves. Once again, she found an empty space where the history should have been. She approached a young man with sandy hair who sat at the reference desk reading.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “I’m looking for a history of the Blue that was written by Benjamin deWitt.” “Did you check the computer?”

  “Yes. It’s not where it should be shelved.”

  “Who knows? Could be anywhere.” He shrugged and went back to his book.

  ******

  As she inched her truck down the caracol that led into the Blue, Claire felt the wind diminish. It seemed to follow a trajectory that took it across the flats and smashed it into the mountains without dipping into the valley. The sense of being sheltered and protected was part of the charm of the Blue. The ranch still looked like a remote and calm paradise. Burr grazed in his corral. Smoke rose from the chimney. Claire was greeted at the door by Roamer and Corinne, who wore a baggy cardigan sweater with the sleeves pulled down to her wrists. Mariah and Eric were waiting in the hallway. Eric said hello, and Mariah gave her a hug.

  Claire settled into the guest bedroom, and a half hour later they sat down to dinner. She was introduced to the new ranch hand, Pete, who was in his mid-twenties, had lots of curly hair, and dressed like an environmentalist or a lumberjack in a plaid shirt, jeans, and thick-soled hiking boots. He was around 5´ 10˝ and had the arms and shoulders of a weight lifter. If Pete was Mariah’s boyfriend, Claire thought, she’d met her match. Pete complimented Corinne on the roast, filled his plate three times, and had two helpings of cherry pie.

  He and Orin Stoner were about the same age, and were living only a few miles apart. A visitor from another culture—or another planet—might see little difference between them. They both wore jeans, boots, and long-sleeved shirts, but Orin’s clothes were new and immaculate. Pete’s were old and messy. Old and messy indicated to Claire that the wearer came from a background of privilege. New and neat said the wearer was hoping to achieve a life of privilege. Liberal for the first, conservative for the second. Environmentalist. Rancher. A few miles distant. Poles apart.

  To test her supposition Claire questioned Pete across the dining room table. “Did you know Mariah before you took this job?” she asked.

  “We met when I was living in Phoenix,” Mariah answered.

  “I was ready to get out of the city. She offered me this job; I took it,” Pete said.

  “What were you doing in Phoenix?” Claire asked.

  “I was a zookeeper in charge of the Mexican wolf exhibit. I met Mariah when she brought Eric to see the wolves.”

  “Wolf is a four-letter word in the Blue,” Claire said.

  Pete shrugged. “I’m not intimidated. Whether the ranchers like it or not, the wolves will be reintroduced.”

  He had something else in common with Mariah, Claire thought, a kind of boldness that verged on bravado.

  “I teach Eric that wolves have as much right to be here as ranchers,” Mariah said.

  Mariah was right in theory, Claire knew, but she was anxious about how those beliefs would play out in practice.

  The meal was like every other Claire had eaten here. The food was delicious but the conversation was strained, and she couldn’t wait for dinner to be over. As soon as she finished her pie, she excused herself and walked through the dark house to Burke’s office. The living room and the den separated the office from the rest of the house. Mariah had gone outside with Pete and Eric to look at an alignment of the planets. Corinne was straightening up the kitchen, but even the churning sound of the dishwasher couldn’t be heard from Burke’s office. Claire thought that living in a house in which there was room to disappear could make it easier to get along with incompatible people. The silence in the office was intense. “Didn’t you foresee all this squabbling?” she asked Burke’s memory. “Did you really want Mariah to have the ranch at the expense of your other children?” He didn’t answer, so she turned on the computer and listened to it hum. The Windows icons dotted the screen. Claire studied them, wondering if the e-mail that came from anon.net.fi could have emanated from here. She found no sign of an Internet server, and she couldn’t remember ever receiving an e-mail from Burke. Maybe he hadn’t used the Internet, or maybe he had and the account had been canceled. Claire had found no record of it when she went through his bills. She turned off the computer and faced the ancient Corona typewriter sitting on the desk. The Corona company had recently gone out of business because there was no more demand for typewriters. What had once been the name of a state-of-the-art machine was now the name of a beer. Had Burke kept the Corona for addressing envelopes and filling out forms or because it was an antique? If so, was it his antique or Ben’s? How much of the stuff in this house had Benjamin deWitt left behind?

  Claire slid a piece of paper into the platen and typed out Burke P. Lovell’s name. It didn’t appear to be the same type that she’d seen on the birth certificate, but she took the piece of paper with her to compare when she got back home. She decided to go to bed. As she walked through the dark and silent house, she thought about Benjamin deWitt. Had he lived in this huge house all by himself? she wondered. Where had he written his elusive book? Why was that book never where it ought to be?

  Claire went to sleep in the downstairs bedroom and
dreamed she was in a library with walls that were two stories high and full of books. The only way to access the books on the upper level was by a ladder on wheels. She was standing on it, reaching for something, when the wheels began to roll and the books to tumble off the shelves. Books fell all around her and crashed to the floor. The ladder wobbled, and Claire fell, too, landing on the pile of books. The books should have felt like hard, angular elbows, but she woke with a pillow under her. It was early morning. Light came in through the window and swept away the darkness. Claire had to go to the bathroom, but she waited until she smelled coffee brewing and heard sounds in the kitchen before she got up.

  When she entered the kitchen, she found Corinne sitting at the table eating cereal with the sleeves of her bathrobe pulled down to her wrists. Claire poured herself a coffee and sat down beside her.

  “I met Janet Randall yesterday,” she began.

  “How is Janet?” Corinne asked. “I haven’t seen her for ages.”

  “She seems fine. Has she had that job for long?”

  “Forever,” Corinne said. “She’s older than she looks.”

  “She told me she knows where all the skeletons in Catron County are buried.”

  “She probably does.”

  “She gave me a copy of the deed to the ranch. There were a number of liens on the property that your father paid off. Ben owed a lot of money.”

  “He was a gambler,” Corinne said.

  “Did he live in this big house all by himself?”

  “Ben usually had a woman around. Sometimes Dad came over from Tucson on weekends.”

  Pete opened the porch door and let himself in, along with a blast of cold air. He wore a down vest over his plaid shirt. Pete was a good-looking guy, and Claire couldn’t help wondering if he had spent the night in the hired hand’s trailer or upstairs with Mariah. “Mornin’,” he said, helping himself to a cup of coffee.

  “Morning,” Claire replied.

  “Sometimes this kitchen has a real bad smell, Corinne, like an animal crawled under the floorboards and died. I notice it more when I’ve come in from outside,” Pete said.

  Corinne ate her cereal and didn’t reply. Claire didn’t smell anything, but she’d woken up feeling congested from all the wood smoke in the valley.

  Mariah and Eric came down, and Corinne cooked breakfast. When the meal was over, Claire told Mariah she wanted to talk to her. Pete took Eric out to the barn, Corinne cleaned up, and Claire and Mariah put on their jackets and went out to the porch, where they sat down in the rocking chairs. A couple of ravens flew across the field and settled into the bare branches of a cottonwood, looking like punctuation marks in the sky.

  “I talked to Sheriff Henner yesterday,” Claire began. “He told me that the DA has decided not to prosecute.”

  “I know,” said Mariah.

  “That must be a relief.”

  “It is.” Mariah smiled. She had perfect white teeth and a beautiful complexion with cheeks that turned to roses when touched by the cold. Her black hair was thick and tousled. Claire thought that every mournful Irish ballad she had ever heard might have been written about Mariah. The women in the songs had the same pale skin and dark power. Young and fresh as she was, Mariah had participated in the awful finality of death and, once she had done that, what else might she be capable of? Mariah had crossed a barrier and entered the place where veterans and criminals go, a place Claire could only contemplate. She knew very little about Mariah’s background and whether there was something in her past that had conditioned her to participate in Burke’s death. Or had her involvement been circumstantial? Would Claire have assisted Burke if he had asked for her help? She didn’t think so. A raven squawked, breaking her concentration and bringing her back to this moment when Mariah sat rocking in the adjacent chair.

  “The news isn’t all good,” Claire said.

  “Oh?”

  “My lawyer and I had a meeting with Samantha, James, and their lawyer. They intend to contest the terms of the will.”

  “On what grounds?” Mariah put her foot down to stop the forward motion of her chair.

  It was the moment Claire had been dreading. “That Burke was incapacitated and a victim of undue influence when he signed the will. That you deceived him. That you are not his daughter.”

  Mariah jumped out of her chair and stood with her arms crossed, rubbing her hands against the sleeves of her jacket. “That’s a lie,” she cried.

  “My lawyer suggested I hire a genealogical search company to see if there were any other heirs. They found your birth certificate on record, and it did not list Burke as your father.”

  “Who did it list?”

  “No one. That line was empty.”

  “Then, how do you think Burke’s name got on there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I didn’t add it,” Mariah said. She let go of her arms, dropped her hands to her sides, and clenched her hands into fists. “When I first saw the birth certificate, it had Burke’s name on it.”

  “Could it have been your mother?”

  “I don’t know. I showed it to Burke, and he didn’t question it. Isn’t that what matters?”

  “The family’s lawyer is very aggressive, Mariah. You need to get one, too, to protect your interests.”

  “A lawyer?” Mariah responded, as if Claire had suggested she get in bed with a snake.

  “You could prove you are Burke’s daughter by taking a DNA test.”

  “Burke was cremated,” Mariah said. “What would you test DNA with?”

  “There must be hair or something left here that a sample could be taken from. It doesn’t take very much. If you’re related by blood to the other family members, comparison to their DNA would establish that.”

  Mariah put her hands in her pockets and planted her feet on the floor. “Why should I have to take a DNA test?” she demanded. “No one’s asking Samantha or James or Corinne to submit to DNA testing, are they?”

  “Burke has always acknowledged them as his children. He raised them.”

  “Well, he didn’t do a very good job of it, did he?”

  “Corinne didn’t come to the meeting. How does she feel about the lawsuit? Do you know?”

  “We haven’t discussed it.”

  “Would you consider settling? Burke thought you could use the money he left you for that purpose if need be.”

  “They won’t be content with two hundred thousand. They want the ranch.” Claire saw Pete walking across the yard with Eric balanced on his shoulders. The three of them could constitute a family, she thought, and turn this into a happy place. Mariah and Pete had the strength and the determination. They reminded Claire of settlers—proud of their ability to conquer obstacles, so proud they might go out of their way to create them. She excused herself and went into the house.

  Claire’s head had cleared while she was outside. The instant she stepped into the kitchen, she smelled the rotting animal smell. She remembered what the psychologist had said about a cutter’s wounds festering, and she feared the smell might be coming from under the long sleeves of Corinne, who was unloading the dishwasher.

  “Did you ever consider moving into Reserve, Corinne?” she asked. “It seems to have a nice, supportive community. You might be happier with more people around.”

  Corinne gave her a look of such desperation that Claire felt it entering into her pores and despaired that whatever she tried to do to help would be a mistake. Corinne lived in a glass house, and Claire feared that calling attention to her disturbed behavior would shatter the glass.

  She went into the office and called the Black Diamond Ranch. Karen Stoner answered the phone.

  “We got your message,” she said. “Are you coming over?”

  “I’d like to. What time would be good for you?”

  “How about right now?”

  “I’ll be there,” Claire said.

  Chapter Thirteen

  AS THE RAVEN FLEW THE BLACK DIAMOND was only a
few miles away. To drive there Claire had to cross the river, follow the dirt road for three miles, and turn down the next driveway, which ended at the Stoners’ house, a single-story stucco far more modest than Burke’s massive log cabin. A Ford truck was parked in front of the house. A satellite dish gathered information in the yard. A golden retriever barked and ran out to greet her. Orin Stoner opened the front door with Karen standing beside him. Claire thought how close this couple was geographically to Mariah and Pete, but how far away in attitude. The valley would be a better place if they could learn to get along.

  “Howdy.” Orin Stoner said as Claire approached the door.

  “Hello.” she replied. “Is Jed here? I was hoping to talk to him.”

  “He had to go into town,” Orin said.

  “He said he was sorry to miss you,” Karen added. “Why don’t you come on in?”

  Claire followed them inside, thinking that the Stoners seemed more concerned about their animals than they did about their house, which smelled like a kennel. The sofa and armchairs were furry with dog hair. The coffee table was a wagon wheel with a glass top. There were no pictures on the walls, but two rifles were mounted over the fireplace. The only reading material in sight was a newsletter from the Cattlegrowers Association. The Stoners, who both wore jeans and Western shirts, sank into the sofa. The golden retriever jumped up beside them and lay its head in Karen’s lap. Claire lowered herself into a deep armchair. Orin focused his intense blue eyes on her, and she felt they were magnets holding her in place.

  “What brings you over to the Blue?” he asked.

  “I’m settling up Burke’s estate.”

  “How’s that going?” asked Karen.

  Once again, Claire had the sensation that everybody in the Blue knew exactly what everybody else was doing and exactly how everything was going. “There have been some disagreements,” she admitted.

  “Is that why you wanted to talk to Jed?” Karen’s eyes were more like butterflies than magnets, flitting from Claire to Orin and back again.