The Shadow of Venus (20 page)

It wasn't until she walked up close that Claire saw any sign of “a girl who.” Sophie's features and complexion were perfect. She had nothing to emphasize or conceal. Even though she needed no makeup, she wore far too much—mauve eye shadow, purplish lipstick outlined in an almost black shade, blush that was a bright slash on her cheeks. It reminded Claire of the overdone clown makeup in Lisa Teague's paintings.

“Are you Sophie?” she asked.

“I am.”

“I'm Claire Reynier.”

“Hi,” Sophie said.

“Did
you find the textbook you wanted?”

“Yes.” Sophie glanced at her watch. “How about the Olympia Café for lunch? It's right across the street.”

The Olympia Café was crowded and noisy at lunchtime and Claire avoided going there, but she agreed. They ordered gyros at the counter, found a booth to sit in, and waited for their number to come up. A man stood at the counter yelling out numbers as the orders were filled, not necessarily in numerical order: sixty-four, fifty-eight, sixty-seven. Conversation with Sophie was difficult enough without the numerical interjections.

“June called herself Maia when she was in Albuquerque,” Claire said, trying to get a conversation going.

“Oh yeah?” Sophie replied.

Two academics in the adjacent booth argued about physics. It seemed far too complicated to try to explain why June called herself Maia in the noise and confusion of the Olympia Café, far too confusing to introduce
Summertime
here. “Did you ever see her when you came to town?” Claire asked.

“No. I didn't even know she was here until I heard she had died.”

“Sixty-six,” the owner yelled.

Claire tried again. “I met June twice, once at a reading at the library, once beside the duck pond. She talked me to about the stars.” Claire paused. “She told me I looked beautiful.”

Sophie smiled. “She used to tell me that I looked beautiful, too. You could tell her she was pretty forever, but she would never believe it.”

“Did you live at the commune?”

“For a while.”

“What do you do in Durango?” Claire asked.

“I'm getting a degree in anthropology at Fort Lewis College.”

“That's good.”

“It beats hanging out in Taos,” Sophie said.

“Seventy-two,” the man called. “Seventy-four.”

“That's my number.” Sophie jumped up and went to get her gyro. Heads turned as she walked through the restaurant. Heads turned again as she walked back. There was a pause in the beat of the argument in the adjacent booth. Igniting the fantasies of men was the blessing of being young and beautiful, but it was also the curse, Claire thought. She was struck by the difference in the demeanor of the dramatic Sophie and the subdued June who had dressed and acted as if she wanted to disappear. June hid her essence behind the faded clothes of a homeless person while Sophie hid behind her beauty.

“I brought your order, too,” she said, putting both gyros on the table.

“Thanks,”
Claire said.

Eating made conversation even more difficult. Claire gave up and concentrated on her gyro. When Sophie finished she took out a compact and lipstick, redid her lips, then closed the compact with a decisive click.

“Ready?” she asked Claire.

“Ready,” Claire said.

As they got up and walked through the restaurant and out the door Claire despaired of accomplishing anything. Had Sophie come all the way from Durango to say nothing? There had to be something she was willing to reveal, but Claire didn't know how to get her to open up.

They stood on Central. Sophie extended her hand and said, “Nice meeting you.”

The picture of the girls was still in the folder under Claire's arm, unseen by Sophie. It was about to become the perfunctory end to a perfunctory meeting when a homeless woman walked down Central pulling her belongings behind her in a shopping cart. She stopped and stared into a parked car's side-view mirror, rearranging her hair.

“Addicts look into car mirrors to find veins in their eyeballs that they can use to shoot up,” Claire said. It was a grim fact of street life that she had learned from Detective Owen and one way to get Sophie's attention.

Sophie cringed.

“That's how June ended up,” Claire continued. “On the street. On drugs. Dead in a storage room in the library's basement.”

Sophie's eyes flashed. “Well, you can blame her mother and Damon Fitzgerald for that. Her mother should have kept that man away from June.”

“We need to talk somewhere, Sophie. In private.” Claire had been struggling to find a secluded place to talk; there weren't many at UNM. But then she had an inspiration. “I know just the place.” She switched into mother mode, using a tone of voice that would tolerate no hesitation or excuses from a woman young enough to be her daughter. “Come with me.”

Sophie might have been waiting for a firm hand. She didn't give Claire an argument, following her across Central and into the Center for the Arts. Claire was hoping the Rodey Theatre would be open and empty and was relieved to find that it was. Popejoy Hall was too large for an intimate conversation, Theatre X was too far away in the basement, but Rodey was nearby and it happened to be available. Nothing was in rehearsal at the moment. They sat down in seats in the back row facing the empty stage. Sophie put her knees up against the back of the seat in front of her. Claire's imagination filled the stage with images of twinkling stars and girls dancing in summer dresses.

“Tell me what happened in Taos,” she said. “It's important to know how and why June died.”

Sophie
wrapped a black curl around her finger and gave it a tug. “What happened is that June slept with Damon Fitzgerald, her mother's lover.”

“It's hard for me to understand why she would do such a thing.”

“It wouldn't be so hard if you had been there. Veronica had her own problems and she ignored June. Maybe June was trying to get her attention or get even, or maybe she was just young and naïve enough to fall for Damon. He was charismatic and had a lot of power in Cave Commune. It meant a girl was special when Damon singled her out, but he went too far when he got involved with June. The commune fell apart after that. Later Veronica was found dead in the Rio Grande Gorge. Put it all together and you can understand why June died.”

“Did Veronica kill herself?”

“Who knows? Her body was so mangled when it was found, no one will ever know. She could have been pushed over the edge. People at the commune blamed Veronica for what happened. Some of them were very angry.”

“Shouldn't Damon be the one to take the blame?”

“Of course, but Veronica was dispensable. Damon wasn't. It was convenient to blame her. Damon was the pied piper. There were people at Cave Commune with no lives of their own who would have followed him anywhere. One time we all went rafting in the Rio Grande and Damon jumped out of the raft into the river. The water was snowmelt and freezing cold but everybody followed him into it like mice. Damon was good-looking and charming. Then he discovered the drug Ecstasy. When he started handing that out it made him irresistible. I had support from my family. I got over it. June didn't.”

“How old were you?”

“Fourteen. Old enough to know better.”

“Young enough for it to be criminal sexual penetration, which is a felony.”

“But not a first-degree felony. Trust me, I've been through all this with Allana Bruno. June was the only one young enough for it to be a first-degree felony. For the rest of us time will eventually run out. But as long as June was alive and willing to testify, Damon could have been prosecuted. There is no statute of limitations when you have sex with a twelve-year-old.”

The darkness of the theater and Sophie's openness made it possible for Claire to say the words she had kept under lock and key for so long. “Twelve is a dangerous age, old enough to attract predators, young enough to be defenseless. I was molested by a friend's father at that age.”

Sophie let go of her hair and the curl bounced over her shoulder. “Women tell me stories like that all the time once they find out about me and Damon. Some men—relatives, uncles, friends, strangers, whatever—can't keep their hands off young women. With men like that, the more forbidden and dangerous the act, the more they are turned on by it. I'm sorry for your friend. I'm sorry for you. I'm
sorry
for all of us. But you only get one life and you can't let the Damon Fitzgeralds ruin it.” Sophie dropped her feet to the floor and sat up straight in her chair. “One thing you can count on is that I'm going to graduate from school. I'm not going to die homeless and drugged out like June did. I may be all Allana Bruno has left now to try to make a case against Damon before the statute of limitations runs out. But do you know what it would be like to stand up in court, face the guy who did it, and tell the whole world about it? Did you do that?”

“No. I couldn't bear to hurt my friend and my family. I never even told my parents.”

“I suppose you thought you did something to encourage the guy, right?”

“I was afraid that I had.”

Sophie stared at the empty stage. “My family lives in Taos. Why should I have to go to court and embarrass them? I'm doing well in school. I have a life. I have a boyfriend. Why go back to Taos and wreck it all? It's not even a first-degree felony in my case. Look at me. You know the defense lawyer is going to say that I seduced Damon. And what would he get even if he was convicted? A couple of months in the state pen?” She turned toward Claire and said softly, “Tell me this. Would you testify if you had to do it all over again?”

“I don't know. I'll always be sorry that I did nothing to stop the man from molesting or raping other girls. I know now that abusers don't stop until they are caught.”

“Sooner or later they get too old for it, don't they?” Sophie's voice had a hopeful tone.

“But it's never soon enough. You could help make sure there were no more Junes for Damon Fitzgerald.”

“Only for the time that he's in prison, if he even goes to prison. I could also become another June. I could be risking more than my happiness and my reputation by testifying. I could be risking my life.”

“Do you think someone killed June?”

“I don't know.”

“How could that be possible? The police said her prints were the only ones on the needle.”

Sophie stared at the blank stage and said, “Damon would be the logical person, I suppose, but I never saw him be violent. He's the kind of man who kills with a kiss. Bill Hartley is very angry. June could have met someone in Albuquerque who wanted to harm her, I guess.”

“A woman bought the original of the painting of June and the other girls and paid cash for it. I'd like to find out who she is.”

“Show me your copy,” Sophie said. “I'm ready to look at it now.”

Claire took
Summertime
out of its folder and handed it to her. Sophie stared at the image. “We were so young then,” she said, “so innocent, so dumb. And then the caveman came out of the cave. Damon ruled at Cave Commune. It went to his head and he thought he could get away with anything he
wanted
to. In a way I guess he did.”

“I met him,” Claire said. “I went to his house in Taos.”

“It's not his house,” Sophie said. “It belongs to Sharon Miller. It was her vacation getaway in Taos and then she met Damon, moved to town, took him in, and started supporting him. She inherited the bucks. Sharon never earned a penny in her life. She tried to pursue a creative career when she was younger but she didn't get anywhere. So she made Damon her career. When he finds some other way to support himself he'll break her heart just like he's broken everyone else's in his life. I used to think you'd have to be fourteen years old to fall for Damon, but there was Veronica and now there's Sharon. There's always a woman willing to be a fool for a good-looking man. What did you think of him?”

“That he was a ladies' man and not much of an architect.”

“Every time he tried for a commission and didn't get it, he slept with someone else. The troubles at the commune began when Damon lost out on the Center of Light Chapel. It was the largest church ever built in Taos, a major commission that would have put his name on the map. The congregation was open to new ideas. They really wanted to use a Taos architect and Damon expected to be chosen, but the committee dissed his design.”

“Did he sleep with all the girls in the painting?”

“The only ones I know for sure were me and June and Bill Hartley's daughter, Rose. Part of Damon's act was to play us off against each other, to get the girls competing for his favors.”

“What about Maureen Prescott? Did she sleep with Damon, too? Could he be the father of her baby?”

“Maureen claims Tommy Courier is the father and he never denied it. The baby looks like Tommy. I don't know if Maureen slept with Damon. Maybe June knew something I didn't when she had that picture painted. If she did sleep with Damon, Nancy, Maureen's mother, would never let her talk about it. Nancy still idolizes Damon. She believed all of his bullshit and was totally committed to the commune. They're still living there, aren't they?”

“That's where I met them. Was it Maureen who told you about me?”

“Yeah. It was her. We've stayed friends.”

Sophie put the picture back in the folder. “When the person who was responsible for June's death is locked up, that's when I'll be willing to testify against Damon Fitzgerald.”

“That's unlikely to happen. The police think June's death was either an accidental or a suicidal overdose. They believe the only criminal was the person who sold her China White.”

“Then I'll never testify. I have to go. Can I keep this copy of the painting?”