The Shadow of Venus (14 page)

Comparing all Meem had accomplished to what she'd seen of Fitzgerald's work, Claire considered those words to be blarney, but Damon spoke them in a resonant baritone voice that could sway the unbeliever, lull children to sleep, and lure women into bed. Sharon's head was tilted slightly as she listened with a rapt and adoring expression. If Damon was on the lecture circuit, that might have paid for this house. Or was it Sharon's house? Claire figured they were her antiques.

“Did you go to UNM?” Claire asked Damon.

“No. I went to Stanford, but I've lectured at UNM. Sharon told me you asked about June Reid?”

“Yes.”

“I haven't seen her in ages. She left town after her mother died. What is it you want to know about June?” He blinked his blue eyes disingenuously, calling attention to his thick black eyelashes. Claire had the sensation that there was a mirror on the wall behind her where Damon monitored his own performance. The feeling was so strong she was tempted to turn around and check, but she kept her eyes on Damon while she told her story.

“A homeless woman was found dead in a storage room under the library. I have been trying to identify her and I now believe it's June.” It was one more shot of adrenaline for Claire. As long as she went on talking about June Reid's death, she could stay awake forever. She hoped that being energized by death wouldn't become habitual.

“No!” Damon said, shaking his mane of tousled hair. “That's terrible. What happened to her?”

Claire
gave him credit for the performance, but she didn't believe this was the first he'd heard of June's death. There was plenty of time for Maureen's mother or someone else to have called him from the commune, plenty of time to have prepared this act. She looked to Sharon and found that her reaction mirrored Damon's, although not as professionally.

“She died of a heroin overdose,” Claire said.

“Did you know her well?” Damon asked.

“I met her a few times.”

“How did she end up homeless in Albuquerque? I helped to raise that girl. Where was her father, Edward Girard?”

“He told me he lost touch with her after Veronica moved to Taos.”

“That's bullshit. Veronica stayed in touch with him. She sent him pictures of June, but Edward couldn't be bothered to come down off his mountaintop to see his own daughter. He's a coldhearted son of a bitch. His monument leaves no room for people in his life.”

“You know him?”

“We've met. June told me she contacted Edward after Veronica died. Edward should have been there for her at that time. She could have moved to Spiral Rocks if she was broke. She didn't have to end up homeless in Albuquerque.”

Veronica had had two artistic men in her life and now they'd given Claire two different versions of events. One of them was lying at worst, concealing facts at best. Damon had more flair, but did that make him a better liar? “What happened to Veronica?” Claire asked. “How did she die?”

“She fell off her horse and injured her back. She was in a lot of pain and started using, then abusing, Percocet. She couldn't break the habit. She got depressed and she threw herself into the Taos Gorge. It was a rotten thing to do to June, who hung around the commune for a while but eventually left. Sounds like she ended up in Albuquerque abusing drugs, just like her mother.”

“She called herself Maia while she was in Albuquerque.''

“Why?”

“Maia was a figure in Greek mythology who escaped into the sky to get away from the attentions of Orion the hunter.”

“June was a looker, just like her mother. I'm sure she was pursued by men wherever she went unless she got heavily into drugs. Drugs will ruin a woman's looks for sure.” Damon worked his thick lashes. “You kind of remind of them, the same pale coloring, the same high cheekbones.”

He smiled at Claire, but she resisted his charm, glancing over at Sharon to see how she was taking the flattery and the conversation's focus on Veronica and June. Not well, was Claire's impression. Sharon was the moon to Damon Fitzgerald's sun, but her expression reflected an uneasiness not visible in
Damon's
practiced smile. Claire was reminded that the moon had peaks and valleys and shadows of its own.

A bird popped out of a kitschy cuckoo clock on the wall to announce the hour. The timing was so perfect that Claire imagined it had been set off by a remote.

“Anything else?” Damon asked. “I'm pretty busy right now.”

“That's all,” Claire said.

“Good to meet you. Stay in touch,” Damon said, squeezing her hand.

His attention had been focused on Claire throughout the conversation. She hadn't seen him glance at Sharon once, although Sharon had not taken her eyes off him. He turned toward her now. “Would you take Claire to the door?” he asked.

“Of course,” Sharon said. She walked Claire back through the house and let her out the front door.

******

Claire was glad to be out of the house and into her truck. She was looking forward to going home, but she had one more stop to make before leaving Taos. Instead of turning south in the direction of Albuquerque, she turned north and drove through the village toward the place where the river had sliced a deep gash through the sagebrush mesa and the bridge straddled the gorge to the place where Veronica Reid had died.

Chapter
Seventeen

T
HERE WERE PARKING LOTS ON THREE CORNERS
of the bridge and a picnic area with restrooms on the fourth. Claire pulled into the empty lot on her side of the road. Barbed wire marked the edge of the lot and the beginning of Taos Pueblo land. She parked her truck, got out, and walked up to the bridge, which had sidewalks on both sides. The railing was chest height with protrusions in the middle of the bridge where pedestrians could look down several hundred feet into the depths of the gorge. A woman stood on the far side taking pictures. Her blond hair, a magnet for sunlight, made golden promises in the landscape of muted green sage and black volcanic rock. Claire imagined June's mother, Veronica, standing on this bridge with her hair blowing in the wind. She'd been a beauty, a “looker,” a word used by men who thought a woman's purpose was to look good on their arms. Damon had said that Claire resembled Veronica. Was that why Maia told her she looked beautiful, or was that just BS on Damon's part? He was a man who'd be capable of flattery if he thought he could benefit from it—at least until someone else caught his eye. Edward hadn't told Claire she resembled Veronica, but then he'd said he hadn't seen her in almost twenty years.

Claire had come here thinking that if she could understand Veronica's death, she could understand why Maia—June—died the way she did. On the surface both seemed like suicides, but this was a place where the surface had a deep crack in it. If there was another way to look at Veronica's death, it might be found by walking a mile in her shoes. Claire stepped onto the bridge and a passing car caused a tremor beneath her feet. She gripped the railing but that trembled, too. The blond woman had returned to her car and driven away. There was no one else on the bridge. In the east clouds were building up over Wheeler Peak. Lightning flashed and Claire felt electricity zing through the railing. She released her grip and walked to the middle of the bridge with her hands at her sides and her eyes on the pavement.

When she reached the lookout, she raised her eyes to the wild and vast landscape. When she was younger the wide openness of this place would have caused rats to gnaw at her stomach. Her heart would have been racing, her palms sweating. She would have been pierced by the fear that she would harm herself or someone else if she didn't flee, but once a woman started to run, she might never stop. Running turned a woman into prey. Claire gripped the rail and made herself look into the depths of the gorge, down, down, down into the place where the rocks met a ribbon of bronze river. She'd heard rafters' accounts that the riverbanks were littered with the wrecks of canoes and of vehicles that had rolled off the edge of the mesa. It was a place that tempted the reckless and the unhinged. Many people had died here.
Their
spirits seemed to linger in the gorge and whisper on the wind.

Claire wondered if Veronica had come here intending to kill herself or if the gorge had exerted an irresistible pull that sucked her in. The railing was an obstacle that could be climbed over, but nobody accidentally fell from this bridge. Death in this place was a deliberate act. Why did a woman who was afraid of heights choose this spot to die? Why not shut herself up in a room with her drugs the way her daughter had? Claire could imagine the terror an acrophobic person would feel staring into the gorge. Maybe Veronica wanted to rid herself of all her fears and her
ansia
had pulled her in.

Claire's thoughts were interrupted by a cackling sound. At first she thought it was a raven, but then a couple stepped onto the southern edge of the bridge, shoving each other and laughing. Claire hadn't solved anything. She didn't want her thoughts to be interrupted by laughter. She yielded her place to the couple and walked off the bridge.

There were three vehicles in the parking area now—her truck, an SUV, another truck. Since she needed to use the restroom before heading home, she got into her truck and drove across the bridge. After she used the facilities, she decided to take a walk along a trail that followed the rim to stretch her legs before the long drive back to Albuquerque. Walking on the trail felt far more natural than walking on the bridge. There was nothing to hold on to, but the ground didn't shimmy beneath her every time a vehicle passed by. She saw a few places where the mesa ended abruptly at the gorge, but mostly a series of sage-dotted ledges led down to the river. The color of the water changed from green to bronze to brown as her perspective shifted. Sometimes the water had no color of its own but was a shimmering reflection of the sky.

Claire enjoyed the walk and went farther than she had intended. When she noticed that her shadow was lengthening beside her, she knew it was time to head for home. She turned toward her car and saw a man, wearing jeans and a blue T-shirt, approaching on the footpath. He was slender and medium-sized with short and straight brown hair. He had a quick, alert way of walking, like a boxer balancing lightly on the balls of his feet.

“Hey,” he called out.

Claire had been so deep in her thoughts that she had the sensation the man was a vision or a dream. She blinked but he didn't go away. She didn't relish meeting a man in such an isolated place. No one else was in sight on the rim. The path was too narrow to circle around him. It would be foolish to run. There was nothing to do but stand still and watch him approach.

The man stopped and extended his hand palm up in the conciliatory gesture used to calm an anxious dog. “I didn't mean to alarm you,” he said. “I'm sorry. I just want to talk for a few minutes.”

He was close enough now for Claire to see the tension that wasn't evident in his movements chiseled into his face. His forehead rippled with worry. “What about?” she asked.

“June
Reid. I heard you were asking about her.”

“June's dead,” Claire replied. She was too tired to put a bouquet of pretty words on this piece of bad news.

“So I heard.”

“How did you know I was asking about her?”

“A woman at the commune called and told me you'd been there.”

“What woman?” Claire asked, thinking it must have been Maureen.

“She asked me not to say. She told me you might be going to Damon Fitzgerald's house. I saw your truck parked out front. I waited and I followed you here. It took me a while to get up my courage to talk to you. I thought you'd be alarmed if I approached you on the bridge, and then that couple showed up. I'm sorry if I frightened you.” He pointed into the gorge at a point well south of the bridge. “That's where June's mother Veronica died.”

“I thought she jumped off the bridge.”

“Who told you that?''

“June's father, Edward Girard. He said he read it in a newspaper clipping someone sent him.”

“It's not true. I was on the search-and-rescue crew that pulled her body out of the gorge. A rafter saw it there and called us.”

“Could the river have washed the body downstream?”

“No. Veronica landed on the riverbank, not in the water. She never even got wet. If she jumped, she jumped from Buffalo Point.” He pointed to a place where the mesa jutted into the gorge.

“She killed herself?” Claire asked.

The man left pauses of doubt between his words. “No note was found. The police ruled it an accidental death. Veronica had reason to commit suicide, so everyone assumes that's what happened.”

“Oh?” Claire asked.

The man's hands were at his sides and he clenched his fists. His shadow lengthened beside him, reaching toward the gorge. “Her former lover Damon Fitzgerald had sex with her daughter, June.”

Claire felt the ground was falling away and leaving her standing perilously close to the edge. It was deeply shocking news, yet in a way it made perfect sense, like finding the one uniquely shaped piece that fit the hole in the heart of the puzzle. As Claire had suspected Maia/June was “a girl who.” “How old was June when that happened?” she asked.

“Twelve.”

The age in the painting, the dangerous age.

“Damon thought he was a Peter Pan who would never grow old. He had a good idea once and a chance to make it big, but he lost a couple of major commissions. To feed his ego he turned to seducing
young
women. Ecstasy helped.”

“He slept with his lover's daughter?” Claire asked. It would be step-incest, one stage removed from the ultimate taboo—real incest. Damon Fitzgerald was the shadow in the corner of the painting, the relative who turned into a bear.