“Did you see a woman in the basement looking for Maia shortly before she died?” Celia jumped right in without even pausing to say hello.
Claire visualized her words wrapped inside a bubble hanging over the office. She sympathized with Celia’s impatience and her anger, but her intuition told her those were the wrong words.
They gave Paul the opportunity to answer “I see women down here all the time. Librarians, students, professors. I don’t make a note of everybody I see. My job is maintenance, not surveillance. Nobody ever told me she was looking for Maia.”
Celia was too committed to her pursuit to slow down now. “This woman claimed to be Maia’s mother.”
“How’d she get in?”
“Someone let her in.”
“Well, I can tell you this much. It wasn’t me.”
Now Claire had the uneasy sensation that one of his eyes had focused on Celia and the other on her. She’d been hovering in the doorway hoping Paul wouldn’t notice her presence. She wanted to be like a bird in one of his photographs, who could watch without being observed herself.
“We only have your word that you didn’t know Maia was in the storage room,” Celia said. “Suppose the woman wanted Maia to stay locked up in there and persuaded someone to turn the deadbolt?”
Claire wished she had a way to counter Celia’s bad-cop act. The only thing that came to mind was to ask Paul about the outdoor photos, but she knew Celia would consider that an intrusion and an unwelcome diversion. Claire kept quiet, observing Paul’s body language.
He remained watchful and wary, but he wasn’t crumpling the way Seth had. Celia didn’t have the power over maintenance that she had over graduate students. Paul Begala didn’t have to answer to her and he knew it.
“I locked the door to the storage room on Friday like I always do when I leave here,” he insisted. “I went fishing over the weekend. Even if I had come in, I had no reason to check that room. I opened the door on Tuesday when I got back. I found the body. I notified the police. I didn’t talk to any woman claiming to be Maia’s mother or anybody else’s mother. And I never saw Maia in the storage room or anywhere else in the basement.”
Celia moved on, appearing to change the subject. “How’s your wife doing?” she asked. “Does she like the home she’s in now?”
“Better than the other one. What’s that got to do with anything?” Paul asked.
“Just curious,” Celia said.
Paul’s cell phone rang. He picked it up, listened briefly, then replied, “I’ll be right there.” He turned toward to Celia. “Anything else? There’s an emergency near the tower, a leak that has to be fixed right now.”
“Could someone have taken your key and used it or made a copy?” Celia asked.
“Like who? The librarian in the pinafore who haunts this place? Maybe she’s the mother you’ve been looking for. These keys here? While I’m at work they never leave my side.” Paul shook the ring with jangly sound. “Now, if you don’t mind, ladies, I have a job to do.”
They left the office. Paul locked the door behind them with an ostentatious rattle of the key chain, then walked down the corridor whistling an unidentifiable tune. Claire saw a door nearby with a red EXIT sign over it and a ramp that led outside.
“Let’s go out here,” she said to Celia. “I can’t face walking back through the tunnels again.” She had an overpowering longing to see sky over her head instead of pipes marked CHILLED WATER RETURN.
“All right.”
Once they were outside in the fresh air behind the library, Celia said, “My gut reaction is that Paul was lying. What do you think?”
Claire had gotten a different perspective from her bird’s-eye perch. “I’m not sure he was telling the whole truth,” she said. “But I wouldn’t necessarily say he was lying.”
“I think the APD needs to check his bank accounts and see if any money was deposited around the time that Maia died.”
“If there was any money, most likely it was paid in cash and spent as cash,” Claire said, remembering how the painting was purchased. “Nursing care is unbelievably expensive. Do you think Paul could possibly have been paid enough to change the kind of care his wife gets?”
“When you’re desperate anything helps,” Celia said.
“True,” Claire said. “I agree that we should contact Detective Owen. Do you want to do it or should I?”
“I’ll do it,” Celia said. “Monitoring the codes is my responsibility.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
CLAIRE WAS BUSY WITH MEETINGS AND PHONE CALLS until the end of the day, when she found herself sitting at her desk, staring at her computer screen. The books-with-wings screen saver had clicked off and the screen was blank. All it took to pull images from the darkness was a click of the keys. If Claire clicked the right keys, she might even find images that would help in the investigation. Ansia could evaluate the images—if Claire could find her again.
She left the library and walked across campus, passing the Student Union, then the bookstore. She crossed the dividing line of Central and entered the parking lot behind the Frontier restaurant. The painted hollyhocks were still in bloom. The parking places were all taken. Claire walked to the alley parking lot and found the Chrysler in place.
Trying to care for Ansia reminded her of caring for a stray cat. You put out food at night and checked to see if it was gone in the morning. Sometimes the caregiver went for days without seeing the cat. The only way to know it was still alive was if the food had been eaten. Claire peered through the dirty window of the Chrysler. The blanket was in the backseat. The black bag and her card were gone. Ansia could have come back or someone else might have taken them.
As she turned away from the car, Claire caught a glimpse of a black strap hanging over the edge of the Dumpster. Part of her wanted to walk away and not know any more, but she made herself go to the Dumpster and peer over the edge into the pile of stinking garbage. Death stank, but Claire didn’t know how to identify that smell. She had a stomach-churning anxiety that she might find cherry Jell-O hair and rotting flesh among the garbage, but all she saw was the basic pile of trash and an empty black bag. Was that a sign that Ansia had rejected her gift? Knowing better than to apply the rules of society to people who lived on the street, Claire dismissed the thought. If you’re going to give, she told herself, you do it for the sake of giving, not for the sake of getting a return. She wasn’t looking for gratitude. She was looking for information. The clothes and food she’d left in the bag were gone. Claire hoped it was Ansia who had taken them. She wouldn’t want to come across someone else wearing her clothes on the street.
Deciding it was useless to leave another card, she reached into her purse and pulled out a notepad and a pen. “Ansia,” she wrote. “You can help me identify the woman who was looking for Maia. I’ll be working late. Please come to the library and ask for me at the Information Desk. It’s important. Thank you. Claire Reynier.”
She left the note in the backseat, crossed the parking lot, and walked back to the library. As she passed the Jimenez statue of the woman dancing in a swirling skirt, Claire asked herself why she felt such a strong sense of anxiety about Ansia. She hoped it wouldn’t turn out to be a premonition. Ansia lived a dangerous life on the street, but she had survival skills. She had a home of sorts with a door she could lock. She’d survived the deadly China White, but suppose the person who gave it to her came back with something even finer and even more dangerous? Was there anything finer? Detective Owen had said China White was a West Coast drug rarely seen in Albuquerque. It came from someplace more populated, Claire thought, someplace more cosmopolitan and more affluent, someplace where addicts could afford a better class of drugs.
She hoped Celia had called Detective Owen. Claire felt that they were in over their heads now and that Ansia needed more than clothes and food. She needed protection. Celia had tried with Seth and Paul, but Owen was a more skillful interrogator. Claire felt Celia had given up too m
uch when she asked Paul Begala if he’d seen a woman claiming to be Maia’s mother in the basement because now he knew exactly what he needed to deny. It would have been better to ask if he had seen anyone suspicious without revealing just who she was looking for. It was Celia’s nature to jump right in, but Owen waited and watched, letting the suspect set her own trap. Claire suspected the detective knew exactly why she herself had taken such a strong interest in the story of Maia. But Celia, who was a good friend, had no idea. Owen dealt with violence and abuse on a daily basis. Celia did not.
Claire stopped at the Information Desk and asked the student working there to call her if Ansia showed up. Like everyone else who worked at the library, the student knew of Ansia.
“Are you sure you want to talk to her?” he asked.
“Yes,” Claire replied.
When she reached her office, she shut the door behind her, called Celia, and asked if she had spoken to Detective Owen.
“Not yet, but I left a message,” she replied.
Claire hung up and turned toward her computer, tapping the keys to see what images she could pull from the darkness, hoping a Google search would determine whether any of the people connected to Maia went to the West Coast before Memorial Day. She was looking for information to give Detective Owen when she called back and for pictures to show Ansia. Claire had read somewhere that the main Google office had a screen displaying all the words being searched at any given moment, providing an overview of the world’s ever shifting interest. The most popular searches were of well-known celebrities, although occasionally the name of a lesser-known celebrity showed up as the answer to a question on a quiz show.
The names she was searching would have very low priority on the Google scale. The most famous person connected to Maia and the one person Claire knew would appear on a search engine was Edward Girard, who had told her he was setting up an installation at MOCA, the Museum of Contemporary Art, in Los Angeles. If a person were in the market for top-of-the-line designer heroin, L.A. would be as good a place as any to look. Given the name, the China White probably came from Asia, making it even more likely to be sold on the West Coast. Although Edward hadn’t been a model of familial devotion, Claire found it hard to believe that he could be responsible for giving heroin to his own daughter. Nevertheless she entered his name in the search engine.
There were many entries for Edward Girard, making it difficult to tell if any had been added since her last search. She came across the Web site for MOCA, which announced that Edward Girard’s installation would open in September. The museum’s Web site did not reveal if or when Edward had been in town to help with the installation.
Claire moved on to Jennifer Rule, who might well have accompanied Edward on his trips to the West Coast. She’d come to Albuquerque with him. She had the schizophrenic job of promoting the artist at the same time that she needed to shelter him. Did she want to protect him badly enough to try to prevent the scandal that would follow June’s testimony about Damon Fitzgerald? June died right before the Maximum Moon celebration and a few months in advance of Edward’s museum exhibition. It was a time of maximum achievement for Edward. It wouldn’t reflect well on him to have it known that he’d ignored his daughter and she’d been abused by her mother’s boyfriend in Taos. But Claire had no idea if Jennifer even knew he had a daughter.
If Edward had been telling the truth, he didn’t know what had become of June in Taos, but it hadn’t taken Claire long to find out. She had been struck by Jennifer’s odd reaction to the photocopy of Summertime, the way she treated it as if was an annoying and threatening bug. It could have been because Edward admired the artist and Jennifer saw talented women as competition. Or had she seen the painting as a threat to Edward’s career and her job? Claire didn’t consider Jennifer a middle-aged woman, but she wasn’t looking at her from the perspective of a graduate student. She didn’t see Jennifer as a plain, nearly invisible person, either, but she could visualize her wearing large black glasses and a hat. She could also imagine the ambitious and focused Jennifer considering a homeless person a nonperson.
Claire entered the name Jennifer Rule and learned that she was as good about getting her own name out there as she was about publicizing Edward Girard’s. Whenever Edward’s name was mentioned, Jennifer’s was likely to be connected to it. She had her own slick and professional Web site, which included a photograph showing every chestnut-colored hair in place. Claire made a note of Jennifer’s URL, then printed out the photo.
From Jennifer’s Web site Claire learned that she was the publicist for several artists. Edward Girard was the biggest name on Jennifer’s client list, which didn’t necessarily mean he was the biggest moneymaker. The museum installation would be prestigious but Edward was unlikely to make much money on it. Although Spiral Rocks was magnificent, Edward didn’t charge admission. Jennifer promoted Edward’s installations, as well as a book about his work, on her Web site. And there was something else Claire learned from Jennifer’s Web site that she had yet to see in the articles about Edward. Filming would begin soon at Spiral Rocks for a PBS documentary.
Claire printed out that page, too. Next she searched the name Bettina Hartley. She hadn’t considered Bettina middle-aged either, but that was an image makeup—or lack of makeup—could change. The only place she found the name Bettina Hartley was on Web sites devoted to class reunions and genealogy. Claire tried Bettina’s husband, Bill, and learned what she already knew: He was a ski instructor in Taos who had won an Iron Man Triathlon. The Triathlon had its own Web site and on it Claire found a picture of Bill accepting his trophy. Bettina stood behind him with her blond hair tied back in a ponytail. She looked even younger in this photograph than she did in person. Claire printed it out anyway; if nothing else a positive ID of Bill would be useful.
Next she searched the all too common names of Maureen and Nancy Prescott, but nothing of value came up. She tried the even more common name of Sharon Miller, getting fifty thousand hits, which was about as useful as getting none. Claire was curious about where Sharon lived before she moved into her getaway house in Taos with Damon Fitzgerald. She called Sophie Roybal to ask.
Sophie happened to be at home and her voice was far more welcoming this time. “I’m glad we had the chance to meet and talk,” she said.
“Me, too,” Claire replied. “I hope we can do it again. Could you tell me where Sharon Miller lived before she moved to Taos?”
“It was in the Bay Area near San Francisco, but I don’t know exactly where.”
“What was the creative career she pursued without success?”
“She tried to be an actress. When she first came to Taos she appeared in some amateur productions, but then she gave that up and decided to make Damon her career.”
“Thanks,” Claire said. “Please call next time you come to Albuquerque.”
“I plan to,” Sophie promised.
Claire had learned what she needed to know about Sharon Miller, but not everything she needed to know about Damon Fitzgerald. His name was her next search. She was sure Jennifer would be gratified to learn that Edward Girard had produced far more hits. Damon appeared mostly as a speaker at alternative housing conferences, but Claire also found his name on a Web site for the Center of Light Chapel, not in the prominent position of the Phoenix architect who won the commission, but in a discussion of the designs that were rejected. The committee wanted a dome that reached for the sky and Damon’s design was considered cavelike and uninspiring. One critic went so far as to label it dull. The criticism raised the question in Claire’s mind of whether it was a humiliating public rejection that started Damon on his spiral of abuse. Or was it the confirmation of something he might have already suspected—that he didn’t have the talent to be an important architect?
Claire printed out that page and continued her search. On the more recent site of a conference about the use of solar energy she found Damon listed as keynote speaker. Speaking was something at which he excelled. There
was a photo of him smiling for the camera. The conference took place from May 16 to May 20 in San Francisco. Claire checked the list of attendees and was not at all surprised to find Sharon Miller’s name there. She hoped to find a picture of her on the site, too. Sharon was not on the presenters’ page and to be an attendee didn’t merit a photograph. Claire searched the site until she came across a page of photographs taken at various conference functions. She found Damon and Sharon standing together at a cocktail party, apparently unaware of the camera. Damon wasn’t looking at Sharon. In fact, he was smiling at another woman. No one was looking at Sharon, leaving her with no one else’s expression to reflect. Her slouch and anxiety were all her own. Sometimes the camera caught truths the naked eye did not. Claire sent Damon and Sharon’s image to the printer, too.
Chapter Twenty-nine
SHE STOOD UP TO STRETCH HER LEGS and go to the bathroom. By now it was late enough that the wrought iron gate separating CSWR from the main library was locked. Claire had to key in her code to leave without setting off the alarm. She notified the student on the Information Desk that she was taking a walk and would check in on her way back. A reference librarian waylaid her in the lobby to discuss their boss. It was always a guilty pleasure to bitch about Harrison and Claire lingered while the librarian complained.
When she passed by the Information Desk again the student said no one had been looking for her. Claire went to the gate and punched in her code to open it again. She walked down the hall to her office, opened the door, and had the disturbing sensation that she had stepped outside her body and was looking back at herself. There was a woman in the office wearing Claire’s sage green cotton dress. The woman’s back was turned and her head bent over the desk. It wasn’t until she straightened up that Claire knew for sure it was Ansia. She hadn’t realized when she gave away the dress how unsettling it would be to see Ansia wearing it. As Claire got older she discovered how women’s fears changed with time. Fears that had once been projected outward became internalized. Once her greatest fear had been of the harm that men could inflict but tonight the fear that brought out the rats was of turning into a ranting, raving, drug-addicted woman who slept in the backseat of a junked car and peed on her clothes. Claire wanted to run from the image but this was her office. She saw a bouquet of wilted flowers lying on her desk, roses that were still red at the center but turning brown at the edges. If this was Ansia’s gift, she should be thanked for it.
The Shadow of Venus Page 18
