The Shadow of Venus (17 page)

“She told him Maia hung out in the public library. We don't know what else she said.”

Owen smiled. “Maybe we should give you a badge and let you do the interviewing. You were right about the abuse when it came to Maia. I'll give you credit for that. What made you so sure?”

“Her
attitude, the name Maia, the myth of the seven sisters fleeing to the sky to get away from an abusive man, the painting.”

Detective Owen focused the power of her cat's eyes on Claire until she felt that she was getting a full body scan, that the detective could see every ounce of calcium that had leached out of her bones, every pinhole in her story. It made Claire want to run, but to run was to admit weakness or guilt. She made herself sit still and submit to the scan.

“Were you relying on your intuition?” Owen asked.

“Maybe it was just sympathy. In some way I suppose Maia confided in me.” It was as far as Claire was willing to go. Owen stared just long enough to suggest she knew Claire herself had experienced more than she was telling. It was another chance for Claire to speak and this time to a professional, but she said nothing about her own experience. June Reid was the victim here, not Claire Reynier. Claire had been wounded by her experience, but June was dead.

“Well, it was a good thing that she spoke to you,” Detective Owen said. “Without your help we might never have identified her. June Reid would have been buried in an anonymous pauper's grave.”

By now Claire knew enough about June Reid to think she might have preferred an anonymous grave. “I'm glad you think I've been a help and not an annoyance,” she said.

Detective Owen smiled as she stood up. “I didn't say you weren't a nuisance,” she said, “only that you were also a help.”

******

Later in the afternoon an enthusiastic Lawton Davis showed up at Claire's door. “Well, how was it?” he asked. “Did the moon come up where it was supposed to?”

“Exactly where it was supposed to,” Claire said. “The monument is magnificent, both the spiral rocks and the chambers Edward has built there.”

“Did lots of people come?”

“Lots. It felt like a tribal celebration.”

“Did you talk to Edward?”

“Yes. He believes Maia is his daughter, whom he hasn't seen since she was an infant.”

“Well, that would explain her interest in the illustration and in the stars, wouldn't it?” Lawton asked.

“It would,” Claire said.

“I'm in a bit of a rush right now, but when we both have more time, you must tell me all about it. All right?”

“All right.”

Lawton
started to walk away, then turned and poked his head back in the door. “I have just one more question for now. Did you get to see the shadow of Venus?”

“Not exactly,” Claire said.

Chapter
Twenty

A
T THE END OF THE DAY
C
LAIRE WAS WALKING
through the Great Hall when she came across a security guard she recognized.

“Have you seen Ansia in the library recently?” she asked him.

“Not since we dragged her kicking and screaming out of the Willard Reading Room,” he said. “She'll be back as soon as it rains.”

Claire handed him her card. “If you see her, would you tell her I'd like to talk to her?”

“Sure.”

It wasn't the first invitation Claire had handed out for Ansia. The response so far had not been encouraging.

Instead of leaving through the rear door that led to the parking lot, she went out through the main entrance and walked across campus to Central, which was filled as always with students toting backpacks and talking on their cell phones. Lack of a cell phone could be considered a sign of a homeless person, although these days even homeless people might have them. But who did they talk to? Each other? Claire searched Central, then turned to the side streets named after more prestigious schools: Yale, Harvard, Cornell, Stanford. She didn't see any of the plastic bags, bedrolls, or piled-high shopping carts that branded the carrier as a person living on the edge of sanity. She glanced into the shabbier parked cars, but she didn't see Ansia. Street people seemed to appear and disappear according to their own inner compass and logic. Some days there were a lot of them. Some days there were none. It seemed that when she had no interest in finding Ansia, she showed up all the time, but now that Claire wanted to find her, she had disappeared. Claire was disturbed by her inability to locate Ansia and worried about her safety. How would she ever know if something had happened to her?

She walked back across the campus, got in her truck, and drove home to her house in the foothills. Nemesis was waiting at the door. She let him out, followed him into her backyard, and watched him begin a cursory evening hunt. Claire had never seen him actually catch anything. Nemesis wasn't a cat who left piles of feathers on her stoop or showed up with a lizard in his mouth. He was a house cat who liked to wander in the evening but come home at night to sleep in Claire's warm bed. His eyes didn't have a wild hunter's gleam, but his body wasn't overly plump and pampered, either. Nemesis was a middle-class cat who lacked extremes and contradictions.

While he rummaged under her rose bushes, Claire looked up and saw the setting sun light a sliver
of
a cloud, creating a long, thin shadow that slithered up the Sandias. She lived in the foothills at the edge of a wilderness area. It was a place where coyotes, foxes, deer, bears, rattlesnakes, bobcats, and mountain lions found their way into backyards. Her neighborhood association hired a Varmint Master to kill the snakes and chase away the wild animals. It still amazed Claire that she could live in a city yet be so close to the wild.

She left Nemesis to his chase, went inside, dialed information, and asked for the number of Sophie Roybal in Durango. She justified to herself her reasons for calling Sophie. She would want to know about the death of her friend June Reid, and how could Claire be sure that anyone had told her? There were things she and Sophie could say to each other that would be hard to say to anyone else. But how to open the deadbolt in that door? Claire didn't turn the lights on and her living room had a velvety darkness.

She dialed the number. The woman who answered the phone had a question in her voice. “Hello?”

“Could I speak to Sophie Roybal?”

“This is me.”

“Sophie, my name is Claire Reynier. I work at Zimmerman Library at UNM.”

“You're calling about June.” Sophie's voice went flat.

“Yes.”

“I already heard that she died. That you were in Taos asking about her.”

“From Allana Bruno?”

“From a friend.”

Claire had the sense that Sophie's door was swinging shut. She tried to insert the words that would keep it open. “I have a copy of a beautiful painting of you, June, Maureen, Rose, and other girls dancing in a circle.”

“That was a long time ago,” Sophie said.

“I feel terrible about June's death. Maybe if someone had sought her out and talked to her she could have been helped.”

“Bill Hartley sought her out and that helped a lot, didn't it?”

“Did he talk to you?”

“He's been trying, but I won't go there. I'm out of Taos now. I have my own life to live.”

“Do you ever come to Albuquerque? I'd like to talk to you if you do.” Albuquerque was the nearest city to Durango. Durango residents came to town for a number of reasons—to go to the airport, to shop, to see a doctor.

“I get to Albuquerque sometimes,” Sophie admitted. “I have family there. But honestly I want to
forget
all about Taos and June Reid.”

Claire found some words to keep the door open a crack. “There are things you can never forget. You can put them on the shelf and not think about them for years and years but you can never forget. Talking can help.”

“I'll think about it,” Sophie said.

Claire gave her her home and office numbers. Sophie said good-bye and hung up, leaving Claire with no sense of whether she would ever hear from her again. She sat on the sofa, imagining she could hear the moths in the darkness. That night she dreamed about girls in white dresses floating sinuously above a river like the painting Lisa Teague had created of Ansia.

She woke up in the morning remembering that she hadn't checked her personal E-mail since the day she left for Colorado; she'd had too many other things on her mind. Before she even made a cup of coffee she went into her office and turned on the computer. In her absence her mailbox had filled up with the flotsam and jetsam of the computer age, endless offers to enlarge her penis, reduce her debt, buy the drugs that would keep her forever young from an on-line pharmacy. She began to hit the
DELETE
key, thinking that if she didn't stay on top of it she would be buried by it. But then among the junk she found a gem, an answer from Pietro.

His news was sad. “Thank you for your E-mail, Clara,” it said. “I am glad that we knew each other when we did and that I helped you that day in Venice. You will always be a very special person to me. I am sorry I did not answer sooner. My wife died last month. It has been difficult for me and my daughter, but we are coping as best we can. Yours always, Pietro.”

In Claire's experience death came as a shock no matter how long it had been expected. She'd been right when she'd sensed there was a reason to get in touch with Pietro that went deeper than dreams of romance. There was a shared history. There was empathy. It was easy to feel it, but harder to put it into words.

“I am so sorry for you and your daughter,” she wrote. “It must have been terrible for you to watch your wife die and for your daughter to lose her mother at such a young age. My heart goes out to both of you. Please call if ever you want to talk about it.”

Now that she'd written to him, she once again had to face the problem of how to end her message. She could take the tame way out and copy his “yours always,” but she took an emotional leap, closed with “Love, Clara” and clicked the
SEND
button before she was able to change her mind.

Chapter
Twenty-one

A
FEW DAYS LATER
J
ENNIFER
R
ULE CALLED
to say that Edward Girard was coming to town and that she wanted to make an appointment for him to see Claire. As in their previous conversations, her manner was brisk and efficient. Although the last time Claire had seen Jennifer she was in Edward's kitchen dressed in jeans, she visualized her in a business suit in a slick office running the affairs of a busy executive rather than the affairs of a celestial artist. Claire was curious as to whether Jennifer traveled with Edward. Would she be coming to Albuquerque with him? Jennifer hung up before Claire could ask.

A number had shown up on caller ID but the name was Alltel Wireless, indicating Jennifer had called from a cell phone. The number didn't reveal whether she lived at Spiral Rocks or not. Much of the promotional work she did could be accomplished anywhere by E-mail, fax, or phone. Jennifer seemed too energetic and active to be content in such an isolated place, but she wouldn't have to live at Spiral Rocks to be Edward's lover. She could visit. They could travel together. Edward was a man who was likely to prefer a long-distance relationship, someone who would supply sex when he wanted it, stay out of the way when he didn't.

Claire knew other men who were willing to let a lover be a buffer and run the details of their lives. Jennifer appeared to be ten or twelve years younger than Edward, an age that was likely to appeal to him.

Jennifer's call reminded Claire that she hadn't checked the article in the Taos paper yet. She got on the Internet, went to the paper's Web site, signed on as a user, and agreed to pay the price it cost to look at old news. She searched through the archives until she found the article about Veronica Reid's death, which didn't speculate as to whether the death was deliberate or accidental. There was no mention of a suicide note. Veronica left behind a daughter named June Reid who lived in Taos. The article differed from Edward's account in the detail of where Veronica died. It confirmed Bill Hartley's story that Veronica had fallen or leapt from Buffalo Point, not from the bridge. It was tempting to attribute Edward's misstatement to dishonesty or deviousness, but it was also possible that Edward had forgotten what he had read. He was old enough and distracted enough to muddle the past.

What Claire could not explain or understand was why he hadn't contacted his daughter when he heard her mother had died. If his daughter had sent him the article, his lack of a response could be considered another nail in the coffin of a father's indifference. Spiral Rocks was remote in spirit but only a few hours' drive from Taos. It was possible that all Edward Girard knew of the events in Taos was the
newspaper
article. Not wanting to find out more showed an extreme lack of curiosity, but Edward also showed an extreme absorption in his work. On the other hand he might have known more and not have wanted to admit it, Claire thought. The web of friends and gossip she had uncovered so far had reached as far away as Durango. Why not to Spiral Rocks? Claire could ask Edward about the bridge when she saw him, but it would be harder to ask about the events in Taos and why he hadn't gotten in touch with his only child.

Before she left the Internet, she did a search on Edward Girard's name. She didn't find a Web site for him, but she found hundreds of articles about him and his work. She only had time to skim, but every one she glanced at was full of praise for the work of Edward Girard.

******

The meeting was arranged for Claire's office at CSWR. When Edward arrived he gave his name at the Information Desk and Claire walked out to meet him. Wanting to show him the Willard Reading Room where she'd last seen his daughter, she led him into the Great Hall. Edward looked up at the high ceilings with row after row of carved vigas.