The Confidence Woman (24 page)

Hyland nodded from the other side of the desk. They had discussed the possibility of her offering to be fingerprinted and she felt confident in taking the next step.

“I believe if you test both Melville books for fingerprints you won't find mine on either of them.” She hoped Amaral wouldn't suggest at this point that she had worn white gloves every time she handled a piece of evidence. He may have been thinking it, but he didn't say it.

“I also believe you will find Erwin Bush's fingerprints on both
The Confidence-Man
and the notepad,” Claire continued, “and that you may find Miranda Kohl's fingerprints in Evelyn Martin's house and possibly on the frying pan if she struggled to defend herself. There should be plenty of prints in Miranda's house for comparison.” The best way to obtain Erwin Bush's fingerprints would be to find Erwin Bush, but Claire wasn't sure he would ever be found.

“Are you willing to consent to being fingerprinted now?” Amaral asked, facing her this time through the wire-rimmed glasses.

Claire was surprised that Sid Hyland's ego had let her do most of the talking so far. One reason for his success could be that he was capable of leaving expert testimony to the experts.

He spoke up now and said,
“DNA
testing will establish without a doubt whether the corpse is Miranda Kohl or Evelyn Martin.”

“We don't do
DNA
testing when we have other means of identification,” Amaral replied. “The corpse was identified as Evelyn Martin by dental records.”

“Miranda Kohl's dentist in Arizona claims that her x-rays were stolen from his office, and he is capable of describing her teeth in detail. You need to see if the x-rays used for identification match Dr. Rule's description. How well did your dentist know Evelyn Martin? How carefully did he look at the x-rays? Did he treat Evelyn Martin after the supposed time of death and provide her with an opportunity to substitute one x-ray for another? It is my belief that further examination of the dental records will give
you
ample justification for a DNA test.” Sid Hyland had no compunction about telling Amaral how to do his job. In fact, he seemed to enjoy it.

He moved on to the credit cards. “Miranda Kohl's husband claims her credit cards have been used in Los Angeles.”

“If we establish that the body on Tano Road was Miranda Kohl's, then I will investigate,” Amaral said.

“Time is of the essence,” Hyland reminded him. He was being overbearing, but Claire supposed that's what she was paying him for. She had no doubt that when his bill arrived it would be enormous, but if it removed her from suspicion it would be worth the cost.

Hyland looked at his watch, stood up and said, “I believe we are done here.”

“I will need to take the notepad, the tape and the book as evidence,” Amaral said.

Hyland handed them over. He and Claire had already made copies of the notepad and the tape.

“If you discover that Evelyn Martin is in Los Angeles, I may be able to help you find her,” Claire said. It was her nature to be accommodating, but she also sensed that she had fallen into the role of playing good defendant to Hyland's bad lawyer.

“Thank you for your help,” Amaral said, reverting to his previously deferential manner. He looked at her when he spoke, but his expression was difficult to read.

After he left the office, Claire asked Hyland what he thought.

“I believed from the very beginning that you would be your own best witness,” he said. “I doubt if Evelyn Martin would do so well on her own behalf.”

“She's a disturbed person,” Claire agreed. Now that the attention had shifted from her to Evelyn, her concern was that Evelyn be apprehended. “Do you think she will ever be caught?”

“She might not,” Hyland said. “She has shown some intelligence and the police in New Mexico aren't used to intelligent criminals. Credit card fraud is a federal crime, however. Help is available if Amaral is willing to ask for it.”

******

Traffic was heavy on the drive back to
CSWR,
giving Claire time to mull over what he had said. Evelyn might have wondered if Claire had been Amaral's prime suspect but had no way of knowing for sure. If the Santa Fe police started looking for her, she wouldn't know that either unless they bungled the investigation. Claire would sleep better at night if Evelyn were caught, and she wondered if there was anything she could do to facilitate her capture. The best way to help would be to do what Evelyn had done—enter the mind of someone she had known many years ago. The thief studies the victim. The sleuth should study the thief. In her spare moments Claire tried to get inside Evelyn's mind. She'd crossed the
line
from thief to murderer. What would that do to her mental state? What would she do when the credit ran out? There might be other sorority sisters living in California, but contacting them would be a huge risk, a risk Claire wouldn't be willing to take if she were in Evelyn Martin's position.

Chapter
Twenty

C
LAIRE BELIEVED THAT MOST LEGAL JARGON WAS BOILERPLATE
, but the phrase “time is of the essence” had a poetic ring. Time
was
of the essence, but it wasn't on her side when it came to apprehending Evelyn Martin. It would take time to get samples from Miranda's house that could be tested for DNA, time to compare them to samples taken from the body found on Tano Road. How long would Evelyn stay in California, if she was in California? People on the run tended to head west. If Evelyn got scared or ran out of credit, where would she go next? Hawaii?

Claire called Brett Moon in Los Angeles. “Have you heard anything about my
Confidence-Man!”
she asked him.

“Not a word,” Brett said. “You may be sure that I'll call you the minute I do.”

“I have reason to believe that the woman who took the book went to
LA
and used stolen credit cards there. Sooner or later her credit will run out, and I'm hoping she will try to sell the book. Could you put out word that you have a buyer for
The Confidence-Man
or would that be too obvious?”

“It would be obvious to me, but it might not to a person who is desperate and doesn't know much about rare books.”

“It might be better just to say you have a customer willing to pay a good price for a first-edition Melville, any Melville.”

“If your thief is smart, she'll end up here
anyway;
this is where the book will bring the most money. I'll notify all the dealers in town that I have a customer, just in case.”

“Thanks, Brett.”

“Glad to help.”

******

The phone became an instrument of torture. Claire waited for word from Brett or Hyland or Amaral, feeling all the while she was a silly schoolgirl hoping a potential boyfriend would call. The phrase “time is of the essence” played over and over in her mind like an annoyingly repetitive
TV
commercial.

It took a while for the call to come. When it finally did, she was at home trimming her rosebushes. As soon as she heard the phone ring, she dropped the branch she'd been trimming, pricking her finger on a thorn. “Damn,” she swore. It was evening, the time when anonymous and unavailable
were
out trolling for suckers. No one she was expecting to call was likely to be working at this hour.

“You know better than to get excited about phone calls at this time of day,” she said to herself as she ran to the house.

She picked up the phone hoping for news but saw “unavailable” appear on her caller
I.D.
She waited for the pause that comes before a computerized phone dialer kicks in.

“Claire.” It was Sid Hyland speaking in his cowboy twang. “I have some damn good news. You are no longer a suspect in the death of Evelyn Martin. Her dentist examined his records more carefully and determined that the x-rays used to identify Evelyn Martin were not hers. Furthermore she showed up in his office on April twenty-third claiming she had a toothache. The dentist found nothing wrong and sent her on her way. The teeth in the corpse matched the description given by the dentist in Arizona. The police went to Miranda Kohl's home and did not find her or her husband. They did find hair in a comb and on her clothes that matched the hair found on your towel. It also matched the
DNA
in the corpse, but there was no match with any of Evelyn Martin's samples. Forensics determined that the corpse is Miranda Kohl. Either Evelyn Martin died somewhere else or—”

“Or she went to
LA
and used Miranda Kohl's credit cards,” Claire finished his sentence for him.

“Entirely possible,” Hyland said.

“What is being done to find her, do you know?”

“I don't,” Hyland said. “I didn't see that as my concern now that you are no longer a suspect.”

Claire wondered if he had already lost interest in the case and was ready to move on to the next one, or if he was thinking of how much he charged her every minute they talked. She was still very concerned with what had happened to Evelyn Martin.

“I have some ideas about how she might be found,” she said. “Would you mind if I called Amaral and discussed them with him?”

“Just as long as you don't have anything criminal in mind.” Hyland laughed at his own joke.

“I don't,” Claire said. “Thank you very much for your help.”

“My pleasure,” he replied.

Apparently he didn't mind working late, but Detective Amaral had gone for the day when Claire called him. She left him a message to call back as soon as possible.

She knew she should call Lynn, but what had been good news for her would be very upsetting to her friend. She thought about waiting until she was feeling less elated herself, but she kept her promise and called.

“Oh, God,” Lynn said when she heard the body had been positively identified as Miranda. “I know you told me it was a possibility she was dead, but I kept hoping it wouldn't be true. Miranda was so talented and so full of life. Are you sure?”

“The
police took
DNA
samples from her house in New River and compared them to the body. DNA evidence doesn't lie,” Claire said.

“It's heartbreaking,” Lynn replied. “And what makes it worse is that Evelyn will probably get away with it.”

“Have you or Steve heard from Erwin?'' Claire asked. “Not a word.”

******

Amaral called back in the morning before she left for work. She took the phone into her bedroom and sat down in the armchair surrounded by books. Books made good witnesses—silent, intelligent, dispassionate, calm.

“Ms. Reynier,” he said. “Have you spoken to your attorney yet?” The tone of his voice had reverted to the polite, respectful, pearly manner it had when they first talked. Claire realized that she had been hearing disappointment in his voice in their more recent conversations, as if she had somehow let him down by becoming a murder suspect.

“Yes,” Claire said. “He told me that
DNA
testing established that the body found on Tano Road is Miranda Kohl.”

“We thank you for your help. I regret that the evidence seemed for a time to implicate you in the death of Evelyn Martin.”

Claire understood that was as close as he would come to an apology and she accepted it. “I was wondering if there was any way I could help you further. I have some ideas about how you might be able to locate Evelyn Martin.”

“Such as?” Amaral asked.

“Presumably you have been in touch with the credit card companies.”

“Yes.”

“Are Miranda Kohl's credit cards still being used in
LA?”

“No. The credit ran out.”

“I believe that if Evelyn had sold my
Confidence-Man
I would know it. It's a valuable book and when she runs out of friends to rob, she may well try to sell it. I think I know how to catch her if she does.” She outlined her plan to Amaral.

He didn't object to the outline of her plan, although he wasn't enthusiastic about her participation. He insisted on communicating directly with Brett Moon.

Claire went back to waiting. She found any kind of waiting annoying, but long-distance, high-stakes waiting resembled a wire strung too tight that picked up every vibration. She continued to do her job while she waited to see what would happen in Los Angeles, but she was using only half her brain. The
other
half wandered around LA imagining what it would be like to be Evelyn Martin, wondering where her next dollar or scam would come from. The kind of loneliness and tension she was feeling had to be extreme.

Brett Moon agreed to call Detective Amaral the minute someone tried to sell him
The Confidence-Man
and he kept his word. Then he called Claire.

“I've notified the detective,” he said, “but I also wanted to tell you that a woman went to Other World books in Venice with a
Confidence-Man
to sell and Thomas Barnes referred her to me. She called and I told her that I always have customers for a Melville first edition and made an appointment with her for tomorrow afternoon. This doesn't give the police much time, but I was afraid that if I postponed the meeting she would get away.”

“Did she give you a name?”

“No. I asked, but she refused,” he told her. “Your detective wanted to come but it's the LAPD's jurisdiction and they're going to send one of their own. I know their detective and I told him that your presence is absolutely totally necessary in order to identify the suspect and the book.”

Claire knew that wasn't entirely true. The police had other ways of identifying the suspect and the book. But she appreciated Brett's efforts to include her.

“I said I wouldn't do it without you.”