There was no message on the answering machine. Unavailable, call screening said.
******
The first thing she did when she reached her office on Monday was to compare the Burke P. Lovell she had typed on the ancient Corona to the Burke P. Lovell on Mariah’s birth certificate. She found that they were not a match. Next she called Janet Randall and asked if anyone else had inquired about the deed to the ranch or Benjamin deWitt’s History of the Blue.
“Only you,” Janet said.
She thought of calling the librarian in Las Vegas to see if she had told anyone else that Anthony Barbour had purchased the history, but she doubted it would prove anything. Anthony was a tumbleweed, and he could have told anyone anywhere that he had the book, if he still had the book.
Then she called Rachel and left a message. When Rachel showed up about an hour later, her cheeks were flushed with excitement. “Have I got a lot to tell you,” she said.
“I’ve got a lot to tell you.”
“You first.”
Claire told Rachel about her visit to Reserve, her attempts to locate a copy of the history and all she had learned about the death of Ellen deWitt.
Rachel was skeptical. “You think someone would kill to get a copy of a book?”
“Maybe they didn’t intend to kill. If a thief is armed and surprised in the act, anything can happen.”
“I’ll call the sheriff in Globe and see what I can find out.”
“Good.”
It was Rachel’s turn. “The description you gave me of the woman you saw Gail talking to resembled Lisa Cook, a student we’ve suspected of selling drugs. She shaved her head after she broke up with her boyfriend, and since then she’s been wearing a black baseball cap. We never saw her meet up with Gail, but we did see her closing a drug deal over the weekend and we arrested her. As soon as we threatened to call her parents, she confessed and snitched on her customers. Gail Benton was one of them. Lisa was supplying her with Percocet. You were right about that. Lisa says she stopped selling to Gail because she owed her money.”
“If Gail had stolen the books, she’d have money by now.”
“Unless she owed it to someone else.” Gail was a bone Rachel was still unwilling to relinquish. “Have you heard whether Rex Barker is driving a new truck?”
“He wasn’t the last time I saw him.”
“I’ll let you know what I find out in Globe.”
“Thanks,” Claire said.
Rachel went back to her office, and Claire began calling antiquarian bookstores to see if anyone had heard from Anthony Barbour. Great Expectations in Tucson hadn’t seen him. Yestermorrow in Scottsdale hadn’t heard from him in aeons. It had been a long time for Book Cellar in Denver, too. On her fourth call, however, Claire produced a lead. Sam Downey at Country Road Books in Durango had heard that Anthony was on his way to Santa Fe to see Joan Winn. Claire felt as if she’d turned over an ace. Since this call had been her lucky charm, Claire also asked if Sam had seen Rex Barker recently.
“He was in last week.” he replied.
“How is he?”
“Same old Rex.”
“Still driving his Silverado?”
“Still driving it. One of these days that junker will leave Rex stranded beside the highway.”
“He’ll stick out his thumb, and a woman will pick him up.”
“Shame he can’t afford to buy a new truck. He should have held on to more copies of his own book. It’s worth more as a collector’s item than it ever was as a reader’s item.”
“Rex probably has a box stored in his basement waiting for the price to go up. He’s a poker player.”
“Good luck finding Anthony Barbour.”
“Thanks.”
Next Claire called Joan Winn, the woman who had bought John Harlan’s store in Santa Fe. She was a retired teacher who had refinanced her house to pay for the store. Fortunately, she had her pension to keep the lean times from turning into the lien times. “How have you been, Claire?” Joan Winn asked. “Are you liking your new job?”
“It has been more exciting than I ever would have imagined,” Claire said.
“Good excitement or bad?”
“Both. I’ve been trying to get in touch with Anthony Barbour, but he hasn’t been returning my calls.”
“Does he ever return calls?”
“Not since I’ve known him. Sam Downey told me you’re expecting him.”
“On Thursday.”
“So he’s still alive.”
“Do you have any reason to think otherwise?”
“Not really. Did he say what time on Thursday?”
“Are you kidding? Getting Anthony to commit to a time is like asking Bill Clinton to keep his zipper zipped.”
“How do you know it will be Thursday?”
“Because I’m holding a book that he wants badly, and I told him if he doesn’t pick it up by then, I’m selling it to another buyer.”
“I’ll be up on Thursday. If he gets there before I do, stick his feet in a bucket of wet cement.”
“I’ll try. Did you ever get Burke Lovell’s books back?”
“Most of them,” Claire said.
“That must have been a relief.”
“In some ways it was.”
Rachel called later in the morning. “The police in Globe told me they have no suspects in the deWitt murder and robbery,” she said. “It had the MO of a teen punk burglary, only someone got killed. The back door was jimmied open. They took a TV, a VCR, stuffed the pillowcases with costume jewelry, the usual stuff. Either they were your basic stupid thief or doing a good imitation. The one thing unusual was that this was the only robbery reported in Globe that month, and they tend to occur in a series. But this might have been the first, and the murder scared the burglars into ceasing and desisting. The police got a couple of prints, but they haven’t been able to trace them.”
“I got a lead on the missing history,” Claire said. “The only person I know who has one will be in Santa Fe on Thursday. I’m going up there.”
“Good luck,” Rachel said.
When she got off the phone with Rachel, Claire went to the kitchen for a cup of coffee, passing Gail’s office en route. After she looked through the window and saw a dark computer screen and a dark room, she stopped in to see Ruth.
“Is Gail out?” she asked.
“She called in sick. Some lingering problem from the accident. I recommended a chiropractor, and I’m going to take her over there this afternoon.”
“Is she still having car problems?”
“Yes.”
“She ought to buy a new one.”
“She can’t afford it,” Ruth said. She focused her keen eyes on Claire. “You’re looking good. Have you changed your hairdo? Your makeup?”
“No.”
“You haven’t fallen in love, have you?”
“No,” Claire said again. She had fallen into danger, however, which was raising her adrenaline level. Her senses were heightened. She was eating and sleeping less—hearing and seeing more. On the way back to her office, she stopped at the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were bright, even her hair seemed to have more body. She didn’t need the coffee she was holding in her hand, and she emptied it down the drain.
******
On Thursday, she began her day by repulsing the monkey, embracing the tiger, feeding the cat, and locking the house tight. She wanted to be at Joan Winn’s the minute she opened for business, which put her into commuter traffic on the interstate. She remembered when the road from Albuquerque to Santa Fe was a pleasant drive, and you could contemplate the scenery instead of gripping the steering wheel tight and seeing an angry face in your rearview mirror. These days I-25 was filled with determined people driving from Albuquerque to their state jobs in Santa Fe and equally determined people driving from Santa Fe to their executive jobs in Albuquerque. The speed limit was seventy-five, but no matter how fast you went,
you were always tailgated.
Claire thought about Anthony on the drive north. He was good company whenever you saw him, but you only saw him when it suited him. Anthony lived life on his terms. You could take them, or you could leave them. He was a man who’d break the heart of anyone foolish enough to give it to him. Anthony had given up a lot to pursue his footloose lifestyle—money, pets, security, close relationships—yet it was a lifestyle other people envied. Sometimes his life made no sense to Claire, sometimes it annoyed her. But today, battling the traffic on the interstate, she understood how it might appeal to anyone who had to make this drive every morning and every night and spend the hours in between confined to an office cubicle.
She got off the interstate at St. Francis and circled downtown on Paseo de Peralta, noticing a falcon sculpture she admired on the wall of the Gerald Peters Gallery. When she reached Canyon Road, she turned right and drove a few blocks to Winn Books. Joan Winn was turning the key in the lock as Claire pulled into the parking lot.
“You’re here bright and early,” she said when Claire entered the store.
The sunlight beamed through the window, spotlighting a threadbare Oriental rug, highlighting the antique maps on the walls and the shelves of leatherbound books. Joan Winn had tidied up the store and made it a lot more orderly than it was when John was the proprietor. There was a sense of serenity and stability here that appealed to Claire.
“I always feel so comfortable here,” she said.
Joan was a plump woman with thick brown hair that she wore in a knot on top of her head. The reading glasses that she purchased in the fíve-and-dime sat low on her nose. She pushed up the sleeves of her sweater and put her hands down on the counter. “I hope I can continue,” she said. “I’m afraid the day is coming when we’ll be downloading everything we read from the Internet, and books will be like fine handcrafted furniture. What there is will be choice, but there will be less and less of it.” Joan had been a teacher for twenty-five years, and she had a tendency to lecture. She picked up a spray bottle and began to clean the glass-topped counter, giving Claire the impression it would be an intrusion to sit around waiting for Anthony to show up.
“Are the galleries open yet?” she asked.
Joan looked at her watch. “If they’re not, they will be soon.”
“I’ll take a look while we’re waiting for Anthony.”
“Check in every hour or so. I should be able to hold him for that long.”
“He knows that it’s very important we get together.”
“I’ll remind him.”
Claire began her gallery hopping by walking down Canyon Road, visiting three before checking back in with Joan, who was showing a customer a book. She looked at Claire over her glasses and said, “Not yet.”
Claire went back to Canyon Road and walked uphill until she reached the Reginald Arnold Gallery, which was having an exhibit of black-and-white photographs by George Capo, consisting mostly of clouds. When Claire opened the door, the sound of a tinkling bell caused a pencil-thin young woman who sat at a desk working the phone, to lift her hand in a desultory wave. Her name was Jennifer Owen, a plaque on the desk said. The wave was sufficient greeting for Claire, who was content to be ignored while she worked her way through the striking photographs. Capo’s blacks were dark and mysterious, his whites were dazzling. The subtle and luminous grays reminded Claire of Ansel Adams’s theory that the world could be represented in nine zones of gray. Capo’s clouds had the quality of a Rorschach test on which the viewer could project her own images. A series of three clouds—flying saucers in one photo—became an eagle with outstretched talons in the next. Claire hadn’t seen a black-and-white exhibit for some time, and she had forgotten how evocative pure light and shadow could be. Her pleasure resembled the pleasure she took in reading, when she brought her own colors to the black-and-white letters on the page. What you got out of an exhibit like this depended on what you put in.
Jennifer was preoccupied with discussing her dinner plans. Santacafé? Geronimo’s? There was a partition behind her, and beyond that the exhibit continued into another room. Claire worked her way to the back of the gallery, contemplating the clouds with Jennifer’s conversation as background music. At the rear of the building, an open door revealed an office with a desk and a worktable used to mount and frame art. Claire glanced in and saw an Ansel Adams print of the Ranchos de Taos Church lying on the table waiting to be framed. She entered the room and found three more prints from the Austin/Adams folio lying on the table. These prints were so rare that they almost had to be the ones that were stolen from her truck. Razored out of the folio Claire thought, and rather skillfully, too. The razored edge was as smooth as glass. She felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach.
“Exquisite, aren’t they?” Jennifer was suddenly at her elbow. Claire had been so engrossed in her discovery that she hadn’t heard her approach.
“Aren’t they?” She found herself parroting Jennifer. For a moment she was at a loss for words, then she asked, “Where did you get them?”
“Reginald bought them from a client who was settling an estate.”
“What client? Do you know?”
“No.” Prompted by the agitated tone of Claire’s voice, a door closed tight behind Jennifer’s carefully made-up eyes.
“A copy of the Austin/Adams folio was stolen from my truck.”
“Your…truck?” Claire felt she was being ridiculed, and she wondered why. Because she was older? Because she wasn’t skinny as a stick and dressed in Santa Fe black? Because she drove a truck? Maybe Jennifer hadn’t been in New Mexico long enough to know that in this state it was considered chic to drive a truck, especially when you had no use for one.
“My truck,” Claire repeated. She was tempted to pull out her business card to establish authority, but resisted the urge to prove herself to Jennifer Owen.
“I’m sure you’re mistaken. Reginald would not buy stolen artwork,” Jennifer replied, stepping between Claire and the prints.
Claire suspected that not only did Reginald Arnold buy stolen artwork, he knowingly bought it. He was one of the first dealers she had called when she discovered the Austin/Adams portfolio was missing. He should have called her back the moment he saw these prints. “Did he check the provenance when he bought the prints?” she asked. The provenance would show the trail of ownership and reveal whether or not a work of art had been stolen.
“Of course,” Jennifer replied. “This is a private room. You have no right to be in here.” She guided Claire to the door and closed it behind them.
Claire felt drained enough to allow herself to be led back into the gallery. Provenances were all too easy to fake by a seller or a buyer, she knew. Even easier if both were in collusion. If the prints had been stolen in one state and sold in another, it would be interstate commerce and the FBI might get involved. But in this case they had been moved from one part of the state to another. Rachel’s authority didn’t extend this far, and Claire didn’t hold out much hope for the Santa Fe police, who were more concerned with rape and murder than they were with fine art photography. By the time they got here, the prints would be long gone. The Arnold Gallery must have been mounting and framing them for a customer. She doubted that even Reginald Arnold would be arrogant enough to display stolen prints on his gallery wall.
“Are you all right?” Jennifer turned condescendingly solicitous. “Can I get you a glass of water? Would you like to sit down?”
What Claire really wanted to do was go outside and get some fresh air, but she had a few more questions. “Have you ever met a woman named Samantha Lovell?”
“No.” Jennifer pursed her lips, which were tinted brown to match her eye shadow.
“How about the artist, Rusty Siler?”
Jennifer sniffed. “Never heard of him,” she said, but she paused just long enough to make Claire wonder if she was telling the truth. “Why don’t you leave your card, and I’ll have Reginald call you?”
&n
bsp; “I’ll call him,” Claire said. The bell tinkled as she stepped into the street. Santa Fe was always ten degrees colder than Albuquerque, but Claire had neglected to prepare herself by bringing a hat or gloves. , She turned up her collar and inserted her hands in her pockets. The air smelled of smoke. She knew it was only piñon firewood burning, but it smelled as if the City Different was on fire. The smell of piñon was considered one of Santa Fe’s charms. But charm had become a commodity here, a card to be dealt in the relentless pursuit of status and power. To Claire, seeking prestige resembled attending a cocktail party full of well-dressed people smoking and drinking in a room lined with mirrors. All you got was a reflection of your reflection reflected in someone else’s eyes. Why, she wondered, did people care so much about something that was basically just mirrors and smoke?
******
When she got back to Winn Books, Anthony Barbour stood beside the counter talking to Joan. He was a slight person with a long brown beard that appeared to have been shaped by the wind. He wore a tweed coat that was thrift-store shabby and a knitted cap pulled down over his ears. The tattered hem of his jeans peeked out from under the coat. When he gave Claire a hug, he had the reassuring smell of tobacco and wool.
“You’re cold,” he said.
“Very,” she replied.
“You’ll be happy to know that I have your book. I was coming to Albuquerque tomorrow to give it to you.”
“I’ll take it now,” she said, knowing that in Anthony’s world there was often a gap between outcome and intent.
“It’s in the van. Are you going to explain why this book is so important to you?” he asked.
“I am,” she said, but she didn’t intend to do it in front of Joan Winn, who was standing behind the counter burning with curiosity.
“What book are you talking about?” she asked. Her eyes were bright and inquisitive as she peered over the top of her dime-store glasses.
“You’re better off not knowing,” Claire replied.
The Stolen Blue Page 18
