The Confidence Woman (2 page)

A long-forgotten memory came to her as she peered in the mirror. She was in the sorority house dressing for a party and trying on a scoop-necked black dress that belonged to her friend Lynn. The dress, which was too tight, pushed up her breasts and created the illusion that she was stacked.

Evelyn walked by and stopped in the doorway. “Look at you. You have cleavage!” she said with more than a touch of envy.

As Claire recalled, it was the time right before she went to Europe when she was beginning to discover her sexuality. As she folded the nightgown and put it back in the drawer, the thought occurred to her that the theft might have been motivated by envy as well as financial need. It wasn't a thought that Claire was comfortable with, and she folded it up and put it away with the nightgown.

Chapter
Two

O
N THE DAY OF THE APPOINTMENT WITH
D
ETECTIVE
A
MARAL
, Claire spent the morning in her office at the Center for Southwest Research. At ten her coworker Ruth O'Connor stopped by to ask what she was doing for lunch.

“I'm going to Santa Fe,” Claire replied.

“Oh?” asked Ruth, cocking her head.

Ruth had an inquisitive nature and Claire knew she wouldn't be satisfied until she found out exactly why she was going to Santa Fe. “I have an appointment with a detective there,” she said.

“A detective?” Ruth's eyes brightened behind her thick glasses. “Have you committed a crime?”

Claire paused for a minute watching her friend, knowing that Ruth was already speculating about the type of crime.

“A woman I knew in college was found dead in her house in Santa Fe. No one missed her until the mailman reported mail piling up in her mailbox.”

Ruth, who also lived alone, shivered. “It's not the way I would want to die.”

“Me neither.”

“Does the detective know what caused her death?”

“Not yet.”

Ruth tilted her head and peered through the point in her trifocal lenses where the middle distance was sharp. “Why does he want to talk to you?”

Claire hadn't told anyone about the credit card connection yet, but she knew that eventually she would have to and she might as well begin now. “Because credit cards with my name on them were found in the woman's house.”

“Stolen?”

“Issued fraudulently.”

“Do you have a lawyer?” Ruth asked.

“Why on earth would I need a lawyer?”

“If the woman was murdered, you would have a motive.”

“You're letting your imagination run away with you. There's no reason to believe Evelyn was murdered,” Claire replied, but while she said it she had a sense of dark excitement similar to the feeling she'd had when she opened the Victoria's Secret box, an element of fear mingled with the sense that there
were
dimensions to life that she hadn't begun to explore yet.

******

In New Mexico spring is the windy season. The winds were churning on the day Claire drove to Santa Fe, reminding her of children who had been cooped up too long and were running wild with their freedom. Gusts turned her pickup truck into a jittery horse, and she had to hold tight to the steering wheel to keep it from bolting into the fast lane. She got off the interstate at Cerrillos Road and drove to Camino Entrada where the police station was located.

The policewoman at the desk gave directions to Detective Amaral's spartan office. He stood when Claire entered the room and she saw immediately that he was several inches taller than she was. He was young and had a deferential manner. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and his hair stood up in a brush cut that gave him a quality of alertness.

“Thank you for coming,” he said in a soft voice that insisted the listener concentrate. “Be seated, please. I hope you had a pleasant drive.”

“It was quite windy,” Claire said.

“What is it you do in Albuquerque?”

“I am a librarian at the Center for Southwest Research at
UNM.”

“Ah,” said the detective, appearing to make a mental note of this fact and store it away for future reference. “You knew Evelyn Martin in school?”

“Yes. We were classmates at the University of Arizona.”

“She is a hard person to place. We can't find any next of kin. Does she have any family, husband or ex-husband, children?”

“Not that I am aware of. She seemed to be living a solitary life. I didn't know her well, but I had the sense she was looking for herself.” She supposed from Amaral's startled expression that he didn't know middle-aged people went looking for themselves.

“Are you familiar with any of these names”—the detective glanced at a list on his desk—“Ginny Bogardus, Lynn Granger, or Elizabeth Best?”

“I know all of them,” Claire replied. “We were in the same sorority at the
U
of
A.”
The right phrase, she supposed, was sorority sisters, but she couldn't bring herself to say it.

“We also found credit cards in their names in Evelyn Martin's house.”

Claire felt that Detective Amaral was gauging her reaction. “Did she steal their identities, too?” she asked.

“Apparently.”

Claire knew that Evelyn's body had been found in a wealthy neighborhood. “Did our good credit
buy
her a house on Tano Road?”

“No. She was renting. Tell me about your experience with the credit card fraud. Did you file a police report?”

“Yes, with Officer Susan Deutsch from the Albuquerque Police Department.”

Amaral wrote down the policewoman's name and listened carefully while Claire told him all about the theft.

“Did you lend Evelyn a key when she visited you?”

“Yes,” Claire admitted.

Amaral didn't need to point out that Evelyn could have copied the key and entered her house at any time after her visit. Claire's mind had made that leap already. “How long had she been living in Santa Fe?” she asked.

“She moved here a year ago January.”

Claire, who felt that the walls of the slot canyon were closing in on her, pressed her hand against her forehead. “Evelyn lied when she visited me. She told me she was living in Denver and
thinking
about moving here.”

“She signed the lease on the house sixteen months ago. In an envelope along with the credit cards we found a list of personal property. Some of it was found in the house. Are you missing any personal property?”

Claire had a few pieces of valuable family jewelry, but she either wore them daily or kept them in her safe-deposit box. “Not that I know of.”

“There is a book on the list.
The Confidence-Man
by Herman Melville.”

Claire owned a signed first edition of
The Confidence-Man.
The few books with Melville's signature were valuable. “I have a copy of that book. I hadn't noticed it was missing, but it's possible. It's worth about ten thousand dollars.”

“That much for a book?” Amaral's raised eyebrows contributed to his already startled expression.

“That much. Was the book in the house?”

“We didn't find it there. You told me merchandise was charged to your credit card, but you didn't say what it was.”

“A large TV, an expensive stereo. Things I never would have bought for myself.”

“Anything else?”

“She charged lingerie and underwear at Victoria's Secret. The first sign I had that something was wrong was when I received a package in the mail from the store.”

“What was in it?”

“A silky black nightgown.”

“Would
you be willing to look at a photograph of the deceased?” Amaral asked. “The body is badly decomposed. It will not be a pleasant sight, but you might see something that will help our investigation.”

“If the body was decomposed, how were you able to identify her?”

“Dental records matched.”

Claire took the photo, which showed a disturbing image of swollen and rotting flesh sprawled across a kitchen floor. The corner of a stove was visible. Evelyn wore a turquoise blue dress with ethnic embroidery. Her hair was bleached blond. While Claire studied the photo, Amaral studied her.

“Evelyn's hair was blond,” she said, returning the photo. “That's all I can really identify. Have you discovered yet what killed her?” Claire was thinking a heart attack or possibly a stroke. Evelyn was young for either of those, but she had been overweight and out of shape when she visited Claire.

“Not yet. The OMI needs to do some further testing.” Amaral stood up. “Thank you for your time. May I call you if we need to talk further?”

“Of course,” Claire said.

She felt numb as Amaral escorted her down the hall to the door. Telephones were ringing in the police station and people were talking, but she barely heard them. She was relieved to step outside into a clear Santa Fe day. The City Different was fifteen hundred feet higher than Albuquerque. The sunlight was even brighter here, giving the shadows deeper definition.

Chapter
Three

C
LAIRE WALKED ACROSS THE PARKING LOT
, let herself into her truck and sat down behind the steering wheel, grateful for the familiar shelter of the cab. She wasn't ready to drive back to Albuquerque and considered what to do next. Ginny Bogardus lived in Santa Fe. Claire saw her a few times when she first moved to New Mexico and had been to her house near Acequia Madre. She circled downtown Santa Fe on Paseo de Peralta, turned onto Acequia Madre and off it again onto Ginny's bumpy dirt road. In Santa Fe the better the neighborhood the worse the road. Ginny lived in an excellent neighborhood, close to the Plaza and full of old adobe houses. Claire had once heard it described as an adobe theme park, and it did have a too-perfect-to-be-true quality. But the lilacs were in bloom, the wind ruffled the blossoms, and today the neighborhood had the prettiness-in-motion appearance of an impressionist painting. She parked in the driveway, walked to the front door and rang the bell. Ginny answered with a glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other. It was only two-thirty in the afternoon, too early to be drinking in Claire's opinion, but she knew that since she'd gotten divorced and moved to Santa Fe, Ginny had lived her life to the accompaniment of ice tinkling in a glass. It was one reason Claire avoided her. Ginny wore a flowered shift that concealed any weight gain. Her hair was layered in an expensive cut and tinted the color of champagne.

“Clairier,” she cried. Ginny had nicknames for all her friends, even for people who weren't her friends. “Isn't it just
too
wonderful?”

“Isn't
what
wonderful?” Claire responded.

“That Evie ripped us off and died, and now we're being investigated by Dante. I
love
it!”

Claire thought that Ginny had to be starved for excitement if she found this wonderful, but all she said was, “Dante? You mean Detective Amaral?”

“That's him.
Muy suave,
don't you think? I called the police the minute I saw in the paper that Evelyn had died. He invited me to his office yesterday. I suppose that's why you're in town?”

“It is.”

“Come in.”

Claire followed her into the house, which was surprisingly neat considering the carelessness with which Ginny lived. It was decorated with polished antiques and shiny silver. They got as far as a spindly legged antique table in the hallway, where Ginny stopped to rub her cigarette out in an already full ashtray.

“What
did Evie steal from you?” she asked.

“My identity.”

“She took all of our identities, or tried to. I mean what did she take from your house that you cared about?”

“A book apparently. Herman Melville's
The Confidence-Man.
”

“You always did love books, didn't you? I think she wanted to take something we all loved and identified with. I'm partial to jewelry myself, but the jewelry she took was an antique necklace that belonged to my ex-husband's mother. It was pretty, but it wasn't all that valuable. I didn't miss it. I thought I had hidden it well in a fake head of lettuce in my refrigerator, but she found it. Dante described a necklace he discovered in Evie's house that I was sure was mine. When I looked in the lettuce I saw that she had replaced the one I had with a cheap imitation. He said I could have the original back once the investigation was over.”

“Why did she want to take something we valued?”

Ginny shrugged. “She identified with us from the past. She wanted to get even with us in the present because we were doing better than she was. Her life was pretty miserable. We had a couple of drinks one night and she told me she'd developed a major crush on her boss, who didn't reciprocate. He was married, of course. She got fired and she couldn't find another job. I think she was also suffering from a hormonal imbalance. We're at that age, aren't we? I told Evie she ought to start taking Premarin. Are you?” Ginny focused on Claire over the rim of her glass.

“No. Are you?”

“Sure. I'll take whatever helps. Evie told me she had enough money to retire on, but she had to have been lying about that. Did she send you a nightgown from Victoria's Secret?”

“Yes.”

“I suppose that was some kind of message that she'd been in our house and had the goods on us. I didn't pick up on it, did you?”

“No. I found it hard to believe that someone I knew in college would rip me off.”

“Me, too, especially Evie. She was too boring to be a thief. My nightgown was shocking pink. It was a size fourteen. Did you try yours on?”

“No.”

“I did. It made me look like a bottle of Pepto-Bismol. How did Evie know I wore a size fourteen?”

Claire wondered about that since the flowered dress concealed the details of Ginny's figure. “She looked in your closet?”