The Confidence Woman (13 page)

She saw Elizabeth and Brian enter a room with their arms around each other, whispering and laughing. The door closed softly and clicked shut behind them. Claire took the elevator back down, all too aware of its sinking motion. She had witnessed something she had never experienced herself—the excitement of an illicit encounter in a hotel room. Sex in your own bed with your own mate was bound to seem dull in comparison. She felt flushed as she walked across the Hyatt lobby hoping no one would notice her. No one did. She took the elevator at the rear of the building down to the depths of the hotel parking lot. She didn't like underground lots, especially at night. Usually her antennae out for shadows and suspicious people, but tonight her mind was full of what she had just witnessed. She got in her truck and drove home still under the erotic spell of Elizabeth and Brian.

******

It was too warm for a fire, almost warm enough to sleep with the window open. After Claire got into bed, she thought about opening it, but she didn't feel like getting out of bed again. As she drifted into the suburb surrounding the city of sleep, she had the sensation that Brian (or was that Jess?) was in bed with her. She didn't want either of those men. She didn't want John in her bed, and she certainly didn't want Evan back. Still it would be nice to have someone. For a while she had enjoyed the freedom and the room of sleeping alone, but by now her bed felt empty. It was an idle exercise, but she had no one to answer to so she indulged herself. If she could pick anyone in the world to bring to her bed, who would it be? She had been thinking so much about the years in the sorority house that her mind naturally gravitated
to
that time. She remembered the semester she had spent in Europe and North Africa at the beginning of her junior year. She remembered Pietro Antonelli, the Italian student she met in Spain. She left her girlfriends behind and traveled with him through Spain, Morocco, France and Italy. In many ways that had been the happiest period of her life. She loved Pietro's company, his spirit of adventure and his sense of humor. She liked the freedom of the open road and a day with no plans. But they quarreled in Venice and parted company. She returned to the U of A and met Evan. What had become of Pietro? she wondered as she drifted into a sleep surrounded not by a suburb but by a medina in Morocco with streets as narrow as alleys and souks where craftsmen were dying yarn and tanning leather.

In the morning she practiced tai chi, made a cup of coffee and took it into her courtyard. She needed to think and the walls of her courtyard were better for thinking than the riot of her rose garden. The green shoots of a datura plant were poking through the ground, and soon the courtyard would be putting on a performance of its own, but right now there was nothing to distract her from the sunlight, shadow and texture of her adobe wall. There wasn't any wind this morning. Claire stared at the line of demarcation where sunlight ended and shadow began and thought about what she had witnessed at the Hyatt. Elizabeth was having an affair with Brian. Maybe it was only a pleasant diversion when she came to New Mexico, food for her hungry ego, but she wouldn't want Jess to know about it. It was a rare person who wanted an affair to be discovered. She wondered if Brian was the good-looking man Ginny had seen Elizabeth with, not Jess. If Brian was the person Elizabeth had had dinner with, not Ginny. She was more likely to have spent several hours dining with Brian than with Ginny. She needed an alibi for that night. She might well have paid for the dinner with Brian, and she wouldn't want Jess to know she'd had dinner with him. She got to Ginny before Amaral did and concocted an alibi for both of them. It covered her, at least for the important part of the evening, but it didn't cover Ginny.

While Claire pondered the alibi issue, the shadow slid across her courtyard wall. Shadows caused by sunlight were always in motion. She blinked and focused on her own emotions. Was that sinking feeling she experienced when she saw Elizabeth and Brian enter the room the elevator shaft of envy? Was envy a natural response for women who had known each other thirty years ago? Would a woman always be comparing her condition in life to that of her former friends? Elizabeth had everything a woman might desire on the worldly plain. She had looks, money, children and sex, but she didn't have something that Claire valued—tranquility.

Chapter
Twelve

W
HEN THE OTHER SHOE DROPPED A FEW DAYS LATER
and Amaral showed up in her office, tranquility went out the window. Claire wasn't entirely surprised to see him. She knew the saying “be careful what you wish for because it might come true” could be revised to “be careful what you feared,” because that also had a way of coming true. Once she saw Amaral, she realized that on a subliminal level she had been expecting him. She was working on the computer when she felt a shadow cross her window. Thinking it was Harrison, she didn't look up.

“Ms. Reynier?” Amaral said in his soft voice.

Claire spun around in her desk chair and saw him standing in the doorway. “Detective Amaral?” she asked. She considered it an invasion for him to come to her office without stopping at the information desk to announce his presence. “What are you doing here?”

He stepped into her office and stood in front of her desk while she remained seated. It gave him the advantage of towering over her, but she was too stunned to get up. “I have received information that
The Confidence-Man
you claimed was stolen from your house is here in your office.”

“That's ridiculous,” Claire said.

“May I take a look?”

“If you must.”

The absurdity of this search allowed Claire to lean back in her chair while Amaral went to the bookshelves on the side wall to examine her books. When he didn't find what he was looking for, he turned toward the shelves on the wall behind Claire. His eyes looked across her shoulder and landed on one particular book.

“Would you hand me that copy of
The Scarlet Letter,
please?” he asked.

“I don't have a copy of
The Scarlet Letter.”

“Yes, you do.” He reached over her shoulder, took a book from the shelf and showed Claire that it wore the jacket of the Modern Library edition of
The Scarlet Letter.

“That's not my book,” Claire protested.

Amaral ignored her while he removed the dust jacket, placed it on her desk, then displayed the spine of the book. It was bound in full brown morocco, gilt-stamped with raised bands. The golden letters read
“The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade
by Herman Melville.”

“Good God,” Claire said.

“There's
no need to put on a performance for me, Ms. Reynier.”

“I am
not
performing.” Her shock at having
The Confidence-Man
appear in her office masquerading as
The Scarlet Letter
was genuine.

“My informant warned me that you were concealing your book beneath the cover of
The Scarlet Letter.”

“And who exactly is this informant?”

“I can't say.”

“Do you suppose that the reason you found the book exactly where your informant said it would be is because your informant put it there? It was easy enough for you to walk in here unnoticed, wasn't it? Someone else did the same thing and put that book on my shelf when I was out.” The task would have been even easier, Claire thought, if that person knew when she would be out.

“Don't you lock your door when you're not here?”

“Not necessarily,” Claire said. People at the center were lax about security. The solidity of the massive Pueblo revival-style building made the people who worked there feel sheltered and safe. She had been robbed while at work, but the theft had been from her truck, not her office. “If that book is a first edition, it has been rebound. It wasn't originally printed with a full morocco binding and gilt letters,” she said, trying to keep any hint of sarcasm from her voice. She didn't want to suggest that Amaral was ignorant about rare books, even though it happened to be true. “My book was in the original binding.”

Amaral's eyes behind the wire-rimmed lenses were doubtful, and she realized that the only description he had of her book was the one she had given him. Unlike valuable paintings, books rarely came with a chain of title. She hadn't mentioned the binding when she described the book to him; she didn't think it was significant. She had mentioned Melville's signature, however.

“Would you open the book?” she asked him.

Amaral obliged.

“Go to the title page, please. That's the page where you should find Melville's signature, if this book has a signature.”

Amaral turned to the page and showed it to Claire. She saw a signature that read “Herman Melville,” but she wasn't convinced Melville had put it there. She needed to see it at closer range.

“May I examine it?” she asked Amaral. If it was her book, it would already have her fingerprints on it, but if it wasn't she would be a fool to put them there. “I won't put any prints on it,” she added. “I have gloves in my desk that we use when we examine rare and valuable documents.”

Amaral agreed. She reached into her desk, took out a pair of white gloves, inserted her fingers into them and accepted the book, balancing it in her hands for a moment, sniffing it and feeling its weight. She closed her eyes; in Claire's experience, dulling one sense made the others more acute. Librarians
often
developed a sixth sense about books. Some believed they could tell where a book had been by its smell. Others could remember exactly where on a page they read something. Claire wasn't an expert on odors, but she thought this book had a vaguely musty smell, as if it had spent time in a damper place. Her books did not have a musty smell, but her
Confidence-Man
had been gone long enough to have picked up that odor somewhere else. It didn't take long, Claire knew, for a book to smell musty. She opened her eyes and studied the signature. Her first impression was that it was not Melville's signature and, therefore, not her book. But that was also what she wanted to believe, and she had to find a way to support her conclusion with logic.

“That's not an authentic signature,” she said. “In fact it is a poor imitation.”

“And why is that?” Amaral replied with amusement dancing behind his wire-rimmed lenses.

Before she answered him, she checked the copyright page and ascertained that this was the same edition as her book, although it couldn't be the same signature. “This book and mine were both published in 1857. This book has been rebound since then. Most likely my book was signed near the time it was published, but, if not, it was definitely signed in Melville's lifetime. He died in 1891. This isn't an old signature. The ink isn't faded or cracked as it would be in a book that was signed so long ago. The age of the ink would be enough to ascertain that Melville didn't sign it, but if you want further proof, this signature doesn't have the peaks and valleys of Melville's writing. It is not his M. It's not his
e.”
Claire was winging this to some extent, working from memory since she didn't have an authentic signature in front of her for comparison. “Melville was a deep and complicated man. This is the signature of a more shallow person. I know a handwriting expert in Santa Fe quite capable of proving this signature is a fraud. I'd be happy to give you his name if you're not willing to accept my opinion.”

“Would an expert you recommend be capable of giving an unbiased opinion, Ms. Reynier?” Amaral's precise way of speaking had become intimidating. Instead of smoothing and polishing his words before he released them, he seemed to be dicing them with a knife, a knife that was wrapped in a velvety smooth scabbard, but still a knife.

“Yes. Reputation is everything in his business. But if you don't trust him, find somebody else. There are a number of experts capable of establishing that signature is a fraud.” The temperature was rising in her voice. She tried to lower the volume so as not to let Amaral know how angry she was or attract the attention of anyone passing by.

“And if someone were to establish that signature is a fraud, what would that prove?” he asked.

“That this book is not my
Confidence-Man
.”

“Isn't it possible the signature in your book was a fraud?”

“I wouldn't have a book in my house that was a fraud.”

“Do you have any documentation to prove that?”

All
Claire had for authentication was the word of the person who sold it to her twenty years ago, a book dealer she knew then and trusted, a book dealer who was now dead. “Not really.”

“Are you aware that your book was the only object on Evelyn Martin's list that was not found in her house?”

If you re implying that I went to her house and took my book back, you're wrong. This is not my book. I never went to see Evelyn Martin. I was never in her house. Even if I took the book, which I didn't, I wouldn't be dumb enough to keep it in my office.”

“It was well hidden, though, wasn't it?”

Amaral seemed to be enjoying this investigation, reminding Claire of a comment she once heard from a former Albuquerque policewoman that she was thrilled when she found a criminal who had given a crime more than five minutes' thought. Whoever had perpetrated this hoax had given it considerable thought. The author of
The Scarlet Letter
was Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville's neighbor near Pittsfield, Massachusetts. It was a fact that might be known to anyone who had taken a college-level course in American lit, but apparently not to the detective. Claire didn't think it would serve her purpose to tell him.

“That book was hidden from me, perhaps, but not from you,” she said. “You knew exactly where to look; but I had no idea it was on my shelf. Someone is trying to frame me. If you could find that person, you would find your murderer. Test the book for fingerprints. If it was the book that Evelyn stole, you should find her fingerprints on it. You won't find mine on it, because I never owned that book.”