The Confidence Woman (19 page)

Claire began to wish she had a rifle balanced across her rear window or had brought a bodyguard. This was a very lonely place to be confronting a possible murderer. Her premise for some time had been
that
Evelyn's death was either accidental or self-defense, that someone had confronted Evelyn with the truth, that Evelyn had attacked and the murderer had fought back. She had come to that conclusion by putting herself in the murderer's shoes, easy enough to do once she became a suspect. As she continued down the driveway, she had to consider the possibility the murder had been committed with intent. If that were the case, what was to stop a person who had killed once from killing again? The driveway was barely wider than Claire's truck and surrounded by thorny vegetation that made it impossible to turn around. There was no choice but to continue. She was almost relieved when she reached the house and it appeared that no one was home.

The doors were all shut. No dogs barked or ran out to greet her. She stepped out of the truck and the sound of the door closing behind her fractured the silence. The house had been designed to blend into its site with the skill of a Frank Lloyd Wright building. There was no landscaping. The desert came right up to the door. It was close to the ground and the exterior had been stained subtle desert colors. At first glance it appeared as modest as a bungalow, but that was deceiving. It was actually a very large house that sprawled like a centipede across the desert. It was totally isolated—a place one could live for years and have no contact with neighbors.

Sometimes when Claire tried to evaluate how well she was doing vis-a-vis an old friend, she would compare their living situations. This was a place she would have taken in a minute for the beauty of the setting and the subtlety of the architecture. It made her own house seem like a tract house. If Miranda was referring to this house when she said she had been doing well, she'd been correct.

Claire went to the front door and rang a brass bell shaped like a lizard. She heard a melodious ring deep within the house, but it was not followed by anyone calling out “I'm coming” or by the pad of footsteps. She waited a few minutes, rang again and heard nothing but silence. She walked to the garage, which had a side window, and peered in. There was room for three cars, but the garage was empty, which gave her the confidence to circle the house. She could always say she was looking to see if anyone was at the pool if an owner showed up. Claire followed a path around the house expecting to come to a pool, and eventually she found one surrounded by a patio with weathered wood furniture, pink umbrellas and pots of flowering plants. It was what she thought of as an infinity pool; the water appeared to drop off the edge and disappear. An empty glass sat on a poolside table, the first sign that anyone was in residence.

“Hello,” Claire called, but there was no answer.

She climbed onto the patio and walked up to the house. Most of the windows were on this side facing toward the mountains and away from the sun. At first Claire could see nothing but reflections in the tinted glass, which had a sort of bronze glow that made her own reflection appear to be a gilded statue. She had to get close to the glass in order to see through it. It was hard to tell exactly what purpose the room she saw served in the scheme of a very large house, but it was beautiful and elegant enough to give
Claire
a tinge of envy. The ceiling was high, but not overwhelming. The room was beautifully proportioned and furnished in a subtle style she admired. The tile around the fireplace had ghostly figures that resembled petroglyphs. It was a room with soft colors, a room that whispered. This wasn't an outside house like the Grangers', but an indoor house that encouraged fantasy.

Claire wondered why Lynn hadn't told her how exquisite Miranda's house was. For a moment she wondered if she could even have gotten the wrong house, but then she remembered how inattentive Lynn was to decoration. This house reflected the Miranda she had known—imaginative, creative, beautiful. If it inspired a bit of envy in her, it could have caused devouring envy in the unstable Evelyn. Of course there was no indication that Evelyn had ever been here. Or perhaps she should revise that to Erwin had implied she had never been here. A raven cawed, broke the silence, then flew over the roof and dive-bombed the patio.

Claire moved on, following the path around the other side of the house and peering through windows as she went. Unlike Evelyn's bare-boned rental house, every room in this house showed signs of Miranda's exquisite taste, although little sign of Miranda. Claire saw books and artwork, but all the clothes or objects she spotted appeared to be Erwin's. In the largest bedroom the bed was unmade, and a man's khaki pants and Topsiders lay on the floor. The master bath had a Jacuzzi with a skylight above it for watching the stars and the moon. Towels were wadded up and tossed on the floor. The kitchen had an open bag of chips and a half-finished Corona on the counter.

Claire came to a library with shelves full of books, a fireplace and a chaise lounge with a reading lamp on an end table beside it. She was able to read the titles of the books on the end table and saw nonfiction adventure stories by John Krakauer and Sebastian Junger. She loved libraries and this one was a classic. The fireplace—an extravagance in Arizona—had silhouettes of Mayan faces in the tile. The wrought-iron tools were black with brass handles and as well designed and carefully chosen as everything else in the house.

Claire followed the path that eventually led back to the front of the building. When she reached her truck she stood still for a minute wondering whether she should wait for someone to come home or move on. The lengthening shadows said she needed to think about where she would spend the night. She knew there was a room available for her at Lynn's, but should she take advantage of it?

Her reverie was punctuated by the sound of a horse's hooves pounding the driveway. There were no stables on the property and she hadn't seen any sign that anyone here had a horse. As the animal got closer, the sound intensified until she began to imagine the cavalry would gallop over the horizon. When it finally appeared, it was only one horse ridden by one woman with long blond hair wearing jeans and riding boots. She reined in the horse but remained seated in the saddle, towering over Claire.

“Hello?” she asked, turning her greeting into a question.

“Hello,”
Claire replied. “I'm Claire Reynier, an old friend of Miranda Kohl's. I happened to be in town, and I stopped by to visit.”

“Jerry Bartlett,” the woman said, bending down and extending her hand. Her long blond hair and her posture on the horse made Jerry seem youthful, but her skin sent the message that she had spent years in the sun. “Miranda's out of town, and so is Erwin. He asked me to look after the place while he's away.”

“It's the first time I've been here. It's a beautiful house.”

“It is,” Jerry agreed.

“Do you live nearby?”

“A couple of miles down the road.” In New River that could put her in a trailer or an equally beautiful house.

“Did Erwin and Miranda take a trip together?” Claire asked, trying to elicit some useful information from Jerry.

“It's been years since Erwin and Miranda did anything together,” she scoffed. “She left him about a month ago.”

“Are you sure?”

“That's what Erwin told me.”

“Where did she go?”

“Who knows? With the residuals she gets from the commercials and the TV cameos she does, she could live anywhere. No matter where actresses have houses, their real homes remain in New York and LA. This is a vacation house for her. Erwin's the one who takes care of it.”

“I thought that Miranda was filming a TV series in Mexico.”

“That's the first I've heard of it,” Jerry replied. “What part would there be for a woman in her fifties? The mother? Can you imagine Miranda playing a mother day after day? Miranda wouldn't want to be anyone day after day, certainly not a mother. Besides, a series is very hard work and she doesn't want to work that hard. She makes commercials and does guest appearances on TV shows. Most of the time she travels and does whatever she wants to do.”

Claire watched the shadow of Jerry and her horse stretch across the ground. The raven that seemed to haunt the property flew over and cawed again.

“I need to check the house and make sure everything is all right,” Jerry said. “I'll tell Erwin you were here.”

Claire thought it might be better if Erwin didn't know she'd been here, but her response was, “All right. Do you know where he is or when he'll be back?”

“He's in Mexico for a week. See you,” Jerry said, clicking to her horse and heading for the path
that
circled the house.

“Good-bye,” Claire replied.

There was nothing to do now but turn her truck around and head out the driveway. Since she couldn't do any more investigating with Jerry on the property, she decided to retrace her path through the maze of New River, go to Cave Creek and spend the night with Lynn.

Chapter
Seventeen

A
S
C
LAIRE STARTED HER TRUCK SHE PUSHED THE BUTTON
to clear the odometer, intending to keep track of the mileage between Miranda's house and the Grangers'. It ended up taking her forty minutes to cover twenty miles. As she neared Cave Creek, the growing number of houses beside the road made her feel she'd been covering decades as well as miles. In terms of density New River looked today as Cave Creek did twenty-five years ago. Ten years from now Cave Creek would be Scottsdale. New River would be Cave Creek and some town farther out would become New River. Claire knew that people who contributed to an area's growth when they moved in didn't have the right to complain about further growth. It was no longer an issue in Albuquerque, where anyone who claimed the right to keep the city from expanding had long since given up, but it was still an issue north of Phoenix. The fact that Lynn had lived in Cave Creek for twenty-five years might give her the right to complain, but she never heard Lynn complain about anything. It wasn't her nature. As she negotiated the roads, she wondered how often Lynn or Steve or Miranda had made this trip. Erwin seemed to be the one who acted as messenger between the two houses. When she reached the Grangers' and pulled into the driveway Lynn and Steve were sitting on the patio. They stood up when they recognized the truck and walked over to greet her.

“Claire?” Lynn asked. “What on earth are you doing here?” She pressed her hand to her forehead. “Don't tell me you said you were coming and I forgot.”

Steve hovered behind Lynn like a shadow while Claire hugged her friend.

“No, you didn't forget,” Claire said. “To come here was a spur-of-the-moment decision. Amaral found the murder weapon in a trash bag beside the southbound lane of 1-25. It was a cast-iron frying pan.”

“That figures,” Lynn said. Steve said nothing.

“It was wrapped in a monogrammed towel that Evelyn had stolen from my house. Amaral wants to fingerprint me.”

“Oh, God,” Lynn said.

“It left me feeling overwhelmed. I got in the car this morning and just drove. I ended up here.”

“You're always welcome at our house,” Lynn said. She wasn't a person to doubt a friend no matter what the evidence indicated. Her hug was as comforting as a pillow, but when Claire looked across her shoulder, she saw skepticism in Steve's gray eyes.

She stepped away from Lynn. “I went the back way through Payson and came out on I-17 at
Camp
Verde. I stopped at Miranda's on my way here.”

“Was she home?” Lynn asked.

“No. Neither was Erwin, but a woman named Jerry Bartlett rode up on her horse. She said she was checking the house while Erwin was away.” Her instinct told her to give the rest of the information to Lynn when Steve wasn't in the background. “Do you know Jerry?” she asked. “A woman with long blond hair?”

“No,” Lynn replied.

Steve's eyes darted away, suggesting he knew more about Jerry than his wife.

“You didn't tell me that Miranda lived in such a beautiful house.”

“Didn't I?” Lynn asked. “It is beautiful, but we don't go there very often. Miranda values her quiet time when she is in Arizona. I understand that. It's one reason we've remained friends for so long.”

“Can I get you something to drink?” Steve asked.

“A glass of wine,” Claire said.

“You got it.” Steve headed for the house.

“Let's sit on the patio,” Lynn said. “Or are you tired of sitting by now?”

“No. I got out of the truck and walked around when I was at Miranda's.”

They went over to the patio. Civil twilight was approaching, but it hadn't arrived yet. Claire couldn't help comparing the simplicity of the Grangers' house to the elegance of Miranda's. The Grangers were comfortable. Miranda went way beyond comfortable.

Having been married many years herself, Claire knew that spouses might react in one way if you presented them with information when they were together and another when they were apart. “Did you know that Miranda and Erwin had separated?” she asked, taking advantage of Steve's absence.

“No!” Lynn responded, putting her hand on the back of a chair to steady herself and appearing genuinely shocked. “Why on earth do you think that?”

“Jerry Bartlett told me that Miranda moved out about a month ago, and she thought she might have gone to LA or New York.”

“Miranda never said anything to me.”

“Have you talked to her in the last month?”

“I don't know that I actually talked to her, but she's been e-mailing me. Not as often as she used to, but I figured she was busy with the new show. I can't imagine that Miranda would leave Erwin without telling me.” She seemed to deflate as she sank into the patio chair.