The Confidence Woman (7 page)

“How was the ex?” Lynn asked as soon as he had disappeared into the house.

“All right, I guess. I didn't talk to him for long.”

“And the new wife?”

Claire shrugged. “She was there, but I managed to avoid her. I went back to the sorority house after the funeral.”

“Oh, God, what was it like after all this time?”

“I felt like I didn't belong there and maybe I never had. Next I went to see Elizabeth, who was
being
bitchy to her boyfriend's daughter.”

“She always was bitchy, wasn't she? What did you think of Jess? You did meet him. didn't you? I can't imagine Elizabeth not showing her trophy off to everyone who visits.”

“Is that how she thinks of him?”

“Most likely,” Lynn said.

“He seemed nice.”

“Nice? Do you think Elizabeth keeps him around because he's
nice
?”

“All right, he's young, tall, good-looking, but Elizabeth seems to be sapping his energy.”

“She does that to everyone, which is why her relationships never last. Once the conquest is over and she has a man totally under her control, she gets bored.”

“When I visited the sorority house, I saw a Goodwill box, and it reminded me of the time Elizabeth accused Miranda Kohl of robbing her. Do you remember that?”

“I remember, and I know Miranda was not the thief.” Lynn was vehement in her defense, reminding Claire that she and Miranda had kept in touch all these years. Lynn had once wanted to be an actress and lived out her unfulfilled dream by following Miranda's career. Considering that Miranda's career had brought her to the point of posing as an old woman in Lemon Pledge commercials, Claire thought Lynn might have made the wiser choice. She had a devoted husband. She lived in a beautiful place.

“Evelyn was her roommate then. Did you ever consider that she was the thief?” Claire asked.

“Not at the time, but it makes perfect sense now.”

Eventually Steve called them in for dinner. As far as Claire could tell nothing but the photographs had changed inside the house in all the years she'd been coming here. The brown sofa in the living room appeared to be the same brown sofa she'd seen on her first visit. Lynn had never been very interested in decorating. They sat down at the table and Steve served a dinner that would have pleased a cardiologist. Claire couldn't find a drop of fat anywhere. The chicken had been grilled and the skin removed. The potatoes were boiled and so was the asparagus. Desert was a dish of strawberries, no cream, no sugar. Lynn couldn't be putting on the pounds eating like this.

She took a few bites, complimented her husband on his cooking, then returned the conversation to Evelyn. “I didn't think of her when the credit card bills appeared, but Steve did.”

“I knew the house wasn't robbed,” he said, cutting into his chicken. “We're always home. Anyone robbing mailboxes around here would be noticed because there's so little traffic on the road. The other guests we've had were all family or close friends. Why would Evelyn look Lynn up after all this time? I didn't believe her when she said she wanted to move to Cave Creek. It's isolated, it's not a good place for a single woman. I told her she'd be happier in Santa Fe.”

“Do
you think Evelyn would have been happy anywhere?” Claire asked.

“No,” Lynn replied.

“Have you seen Miranda recently?” Claire asked.

“She and her husband, Erwin, live in New River now. She's on location a lot, but we see them when they are in town. Erwin and Steve play golf together.”

“You'd enjoy meeting him,” Steve said. “He can be entertaining. I could invite him over tomorrow.”

“Any excuse to play golf.” Lynn laughed.

“He's an actor himself,” Steve said. “He's done TV and movies.”

“He's not getting much work these days,” Lynn said. “So he does his performing in real life.”

“I'll call him,” Steve said.

******

Shortly after dinner Claire excused herself and went to bed. She fell asleep immediately but woke up later when moonlight beamed in through her window. She got up to go to the bathroom, following the glow of a nightlight down the dark hallway. On her way back to her room she glanced out the window and saw Lynn sitting alone on the patio hugging a bag of potato chips as if she were clutching a pillow. The moonlight was bright enough that Claire could see her dip her hand into the bag, pull out a chip, put it in her mouth. It was an automatic gesture, as if she was sleep-eating. Late-night eating would explain the weight gain. During the evening she had seemed content to Claire, but something had to be wrong to make her get up in the middle of the night to eat. Claire thought it would be an invasion of Lynn's privacy to interrupt her, so she went back to bed.

When she woke again, it was morning. She dressed and went into the kitchen, where she found her hosts having a breakfast of dry toast and fruit.

“Did you sleep all right?” Lynn asked her.

“Fine. And you?”

“Very well,” Lynn said.

The little lies, Claire thought, that grease the engine of friendship. She helped herself to a slice of mango.

“I called Erwin and he's coming over,” Steve said. “We'll play some golf and let the two of you talk.”

******

Erwin arrived during coffee. From the kitchen window they could see him pull into the driveway.
He
drove the kind of oversized, overpriced SUV that made Claire think she'd need a tank for protection. The downside of the prosperity of the nineties was that everything—even the people—was getting oversized.

“He's not as bad as he looks. He can be quite funny,” Lynn whispered to Claire as Steve let Erwin in.

He was a big man, in girth if not in height, with the kind of straight-backed posture Claire admired, but holding his back straight made his stomach protrude. Claire had the sensation he was the drummer in a marching band and his taut belly was the drum. Playing the part of a golfer, Erwin wore knickers and a navy blue shirt. His hair was slick and black and his complexion ruddy. He wasn't good-looking enough to be a leading man, but he exuded a certain vitality. Claire supposed he could qualify for character parts, although the uniqueness of his looks might limit the number of roles.

“How are you, Erwin?” Lynn asked.

“All the better for seeing you,” he replied, kissing her cheek. “And who is your lovely friend?” He turned toward Claire.

“Claire Reynier, Erwin Bush. We were sorority sisters at the U of A.”

“Miranda never mentioned you,” Erwin replied, taking Claire's hand and holding it longer than seemed necessary. “She doesn't much like to talk about her U of A days. She was treated very shabbily by that sorority, very, very shabbily. But as they say, revenge is a dish best served cold. Past hurts will be forgotten when she stars in her own TV series next fall.”

“What's it about?” Claire asked.

“I can't say.” He put his index finger to his lips. “Very hush-hush. Miranda is on location in Mexico. She and I communicate by cell phone and e-mail, but I will tell her that I met you. I'm sure she will be delighted. Are you from Arizona?”

“New Mexico. I was in Tucson for the funeral of my former mother-in-law,” Claire said.

“Don't forget the death of Evelyn Martin,” Lynn added.

“And who is Evelyn Martin?” Erwin asked.

“Another sorority sister who traveled around the Southwest visiting her old friends and stealing from them,” Lynn said. “She was once Miranda's roommate. She was found dead in a rental house in Santa Fe. A house that we all paid for. I forgot to ask what else she took from you,” she said to Claire. “Detective Amaral told me she stole something personal from each of us.”

“She took a signed first edition of Herman Melville's
The Confidence-Man,”
Claire said.

“What did Evelyn take from—” she began to ask, but Lynn mouthed the word
later,
leaving Claire feeling that a half-formed sentence was dangling from her lip.

Erwin filled the void. “I once saw an off-Broadway production of
The Confidence-Man.
The
show
never made it to Broadway. It wasn't a very good script or a very theatrical book. There was no hook. The playwright never got a fix on the character. Personally I don't think Melville ever got a fix on him either.”

“It wasn't his best book,” Claire agreed.

“My favorite was
Moby-Dick,”
Steve said.

“That's everybody's favorite,” Lynn said.

“Ready to play some golf?” Steve asked Erwin.

“Ready,” Erwin replied.

The men went off to play golf and the women sat on the terrace drinking coffee. Claire had an extra cup to rev herself up for the drive back to Albuquerque.

“Remember the time we were sitting here and a mother quail walked across the driveway with her babies tagging along behind her and the dad bringing up the rear?” Lynn asked.

Claire remembered. One of her joys in visiting Cave Creek was the wildlife. Over the years she had seen a coyote lope down Lynn's driveway, a rattlesnake slither across the floor of the garage, a javelina snort through the garbage, a desert skunk with a plumed tail, numerous quail and several hawks. Wildlife visited Albuquerque, too, but it was rarely visible. At home Claire heard coyotes barking in the foothills, but she had never seen one.

“I belong to a group that protects quail,” Lynn said. “I keep them for a few days before they are released back into the wild. I don't have any at the moment, but that's where I keep them.” She pointed to a pen on the far side of the driveway. “Last year the group released four hundred quail. Those birds wouldn't have survived without our help.”

Lynn was a gentle environmentalist who resembled a quail herself, unlike the hawkish Elizabeth. Claire knew there was room for both types in the environmental movement. Lynn was so proud of the group's accomplishment and her role in it that Claire didn't have the heart to point out that quail were predator fodder. The more quail that survived, the more rattlesnakes and hawks would survive. Nature was full of checks and balances. Claire thought more of all of them would be a good thing, but she didn't have to worry about stepping on a rattlesnake in her garage.

There remained the issue of the unfinished sentence, so she picked up where she had left off earlier. “You didn't tell me what Evelyn took from your house that you valued,” she said.

“I didn't want to talk about it in front of Steve,” Lynn replied, staring into the desert as if she were hoping some wildlife would come along to divert Claire's attention and change the subject. “I started eating when he was in the hospital; I was so afraid I would lose him. The only thing that made me feel better was eating. Then he survived and came home and now all he can eat is low-fat food. It would be cruel to pig out in front of him. I wake up in the middle of the night scared to death that he'll have
another
heart attack, and I get up and eat. I can't fit into any of my old clothes. All I can wear are these baggy jeans and T-shirts. I had a couple of caches of food hidden in the garage. Evelyn must have found one and taken it. I know that now, but when I first noticed it was missing I thought Steve might have found it and thrown it away. I didn't dare say anything because I was afraid to reveal I was secretly eating if he didn't already know.”

How could he not know? Claire wondered, watching the wings of skin flap under her friend's arms. “Did you tell anybody about the food theft?”

Lynn's eyes searched the desert as she answered. “Only Miranda.”

“She knew Evelyn had visited you?”

Lynn nodded.

“Did she suspect Evelyn when you told her the food was missing?”

“She did, but I didn't believe Evelyn would steal from me until Amaral called. He found the box of food in her house. When he described it, I knew it was mine.”

“It would have been very easy for Miranda to take the next step and assume that Evelyn had framed her back in college.”

Lynn didn't respond.

“Did she?” Claire asked.

“What?” Lynn asked.

“Make the leap that Evelyn had framed her in college?”

“Yes,” Lynn admitted.

“Did you know that Evelyn had moved to Santa Fe?”

“Not until Amaral called. Don't tell him about Miranda and Evelyn, Claire. I don't want to make any trouble for her.”

“Somebody needs to tell him,” Claire said. “Evelyn was murdered. He suspects one of us, but Miranda would have had more of a motive.”

“It wasn't Miranda. She wouldn't kill anyone, and I know it wasn't you either,” Lynn added, squeezing Claire's hand. “Amaral could be wrong. Maybe it wasn't any of us.”

“Maybe,” Claire said. “Wouldn't Miranda have told Erwin about the food theft and that Evelyn was here? He just said that he didn't know who Evelyn was.”

“I asked her not to tell him. I didn't want Erwin to tell Steve about the food.”

Claire, who knew well enough that promises made not to confide in spouses were not always kept, wondered just how good an actor he was.

“It was awful the way Evelyn died.” Lynn shivered even though the temperature had already risen above ninety degrees.

“You
mean being hit on the head with a blunt object?” Claire asked.

“No. That would have been quick.”

“Not necessarily,” Claire said. “Maybe she was incapacitated and she lay on the floor until she starved to death or died of dehydration.”

“I didn't think of that. What was awful to me was dying all alone and not being missed until the body had decomposed.”

“I thought that was just the fear of people who live alone,” Claire said.

“It's the fear of everyone,” Lynn replied. She shook her baggy T-shirt as if she was shaking crumbs out of her lap and stood up. “Can you stay for lunch?”