The Shadow of Venus (22 page)

Next she searched for clothes that had gone out of style, but she didn't find many of those, either. Her style had remained simple and classic. As she pulled hangers along the rack, the search took her into the back of the closet where clothes with bad memories attached to them like markdown tags ended up. She yanked out the black dress she'd worn to the funeral of her ex-husband's mother. She hated that dress and never wanted to wear it again. Her hand was on the collar when she realized there were likely to be more deaths in Evan's family. Why buy a new dress to hate when she already had this one? Besides, Ansia's life was morbid enough without dressing in black. Ansia should wear colors.

Claire's hand went to a pink silk shirt she had last worn during a humiliating encounter with her boss, Harrison Hough. The price on that garment got slashed and slashed again every time Harrison embarrassed her. The person pink would have looked best on was Maia, not Ansia, and Claire was too
practical
to give anyone silk to wear on the street. She reached deeper into the bad-memory corner of the closet. Many of the clothes there were connected with men, but there was also a melon colored T-shirt worn on the day an old friend from college had ripped her off. That T-shirt would work for Ansia; it wouldn't fight with the cherry Jell-O hair. But how could she give a T-shirt full of bad vibes to a woman whose life was already desperate?

Claire's hand returned to the front of the closet where she kept the clothes that she liked and wore. She had so much and Ansia had so little. It didn't mean anything to give away the clothes she hated. There was no sacrifice or atonement in discarding marked-down rejects. She skipped her jeans—too hard to fit—and picked out two loose cotton dresses she liked, a few T-shirts, and some cotton drawstring pants. The colors of sage and beige would complement Ansia's hair. She knew she was acting like a mother dressing a daughter with a future to go off to school. It was an illusion; anything Ansia wore would turn to dirt and rags on the street. But it was a gesture Claire needed to make.

Wondering where to put the clothes, she went to the cupboard where she stored her plastic bags. The bags from Smith's were too fragile. The bags from Whole Foods were stronger but represented too much affluence, not the right message for a person to be carrying around the street. Why did it have to be a plastic shopping bag anyway? In the hall closet Claire found a more durable black vinyl shoulder bag she had gotten at a conference and put the clothes inside.

Then she went to the kitchen looking for food that was nourishing and wouldn't spoil, picking out a bag of granola, a bag of nuts, a jar of peanut butter, a box of whole wheat crackers. She added some health food bars, carrot sticks, and a ripe mango. The mango would spoil, but Claire put it in because it was delicious. She added a dull paring knife for peeling the mango. She put the food in a Smith's bag and added it to the shoulder bag.

Before she went to work, she drove down Central, pulled into the lot on the alley behind the Frontier restaurant, and parked beside the Chrysler. It was early enough that the lot was still empty. The door to the car was unlocked. Claire assumed Ansia didn't have a key and only locked the doors when she was inside. The owner of the car wouldn't want her to be able to drive it. It was a kind gesture for that person to let her sleep in the car, far more comfortable and secure than sleeping on the street. Ansia's blanket was on the seat and it bore the impression of a curled-up body. It was a fetal shape, the shape of a conch shell, a shape that represented the search for security.

Claire placed her bag on the backseat, leaving her card on top, aware that she was acting like a foolish mother who thought if she could dress and nourish she could save. But Maia was already abused and dead and the odds of saving Ansia were terrible. Someone out there was pretending to be a mother, a dark mother reaching out like the shadow in the painting and giving away a deadly white powder. In myth a man chased the girls into the sky. In reality Maia had been pursued by a woman. Had she intended to
kill
Ansia, too? Would she come back when she found out she had not? Was finding this woman the only way to protect Ansia? This could be the person who had to be incarcerated before Sophie Roybal could safely tell her story.

Chapter
Twenty-six

C
LAIRE LEFT THE LOT AND DROVE
to her own parking space behind the library. Her first stop when she got inside was Celia's office. She knew exactly how Celia would react to Ansia's story that the man with the white in his hair was the one who gave Maia the code. The outburst would be better expressed outside the halls of CSWR. Celia wore a print dress today with blue shoes that reminded Claire of Dorothy dancing off to see the Wizard of Oz. She was busy working on her computer and didn't notice Claire until she cleared her throat.

“We need to talk,” Claire said.

“What about?” Celia asked.

“Seth Malcolm. Let's go outside.”

“It's that bad?”

“Yes.”

Claire led Celia out of the library's main entrance. There was no place Celia could explode on campus without attracting attention, but at least outside the attention wouldn't be from Harrison Hough. Claire was headed for a bench beside the duck pond, but as soon as they were out the door, Celia stopped her.

“Tell me now and get it over with,” she said.

“I found Ansia sleeping in a parked car behind the Frontier last night and we talked. She described a man who looks like Seth as the one who gave Maia the code.”

“Goddamn him,” Celia said. The students walking by were too engrossed in their cell phones to pay much attention to her outburst. “What in the hell was he thinking?”

“I'd say thinking is the wrong word for it,” Claire replied. “Ansia told me a woman claiming to be Maia's mother came looking for her. She told the woman about Seth and told her how to find Maia. In return the woman gave Ansia China White.”

“You think that's how Maia got it?”

“Yes, and I think that if she found herself locked in a room with China White she would have taken it. Locking her in may have been a deliberate act, not the accident Paul Begala claims. Ansia said Maia slept in the library all the time. She wouldn't have let Paul lock her in more than once.”

“Seth has been working in the stacks recently. Let's see if we can find him.”

They went back inside. Celia marched to the elevator and punched in her code, and they took the
elevator
down to the stacks, where scholars burrowed among the books. Celia's blue shoes wove a path through the section of leather-bound ledgers with gold embossing on the spines. When there was no other paper available on reservations in the nineteenth century, Plains Indians painted their ponies and their lives on ledger paper with the numbers and records as background. Claire loved ledger art and would have preferred to think about these books than the confrontation looming with Seth. It was too reminiscent of the day she confronted her husband about his lies and his affair. She knew what followed accusations—denial, denial, and more denial—and then the blame was turned on the accuser. When the husband is guilty, the wife gets the blame.

They left the ledger section and entered the shelves where documents were stored in plain brown boxes, went around a corner, and came upon an office Seth had created by pushing boxes aside and clearing a place on a shelf. He wasn't at his bookshelf desk, but he'd left behind a stack of papers with notes about Tobiah James.

Celia picked up the papers and snapped them for emphasis. “It's a privilege and an honor for Seth to have access to this information and this room. He has done nothing but abuse it.”

“What do we do now?” Claire asked.

“Wait and see if he comes back. He may have gone to the men's room.” Celia looked through the papers, tapping her toe against the floor while she waited.

Claire stared at the rows of brown boxes until Seth came around the corner wearing khaki pants and a white short-sleeved T-shirt.

When he saw Celia holding his papers, he burst out, “What are you doing? That's my dissertation.”

“It
was
your dissertation,” Celia replied. “Your right to use the stacks is about to be revoked. And you could lose your fellowship, too.”

“What'd I do?” The color drained out of Seth's face, leaving him looking as pale as his T-shirt.

“ ‘What did I do?' ” Celia mimicked his anxious tone. “You gave a homeless woman your code. She went into the basement and she died there.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.” Seth raised his chin in denial.

“Ansia told me about your relationship with Maia,” Claire said.

“Ansia's an addict,” Seth replied. “You can't believe anything she says.”

“Oh, but I can,” Celia said. “I'm the one who gives out the codes. When it comes to granting access to the stacks, I'm the judge and I'm the jury.”

Claire knew that wasn't quite true. Celia was prone to exaggeration in her clothes and her statements. She didn't have the right to arbitrarily take away anyone's code. Seth could appeal and, like everything else at the library, the issue would be decided by committee. But he knew that even the
accusation
would be damaging. Another committee would decide whether or not to grant him a Ph.D., and members of the two committees were certain to be acquainted.

“I felt sorry for Maia,” he admitted. “She was an intelligent person. I helped her out. Is that so terrible? What harm did she ever do to anybody?”

“She cut a valuable illustration out of a rare book,” Claire reminded him.

“I'm sorry about that. Really. I'll pay the library back for it, if that's what you want.”

“How?” Celia asked. “By selling drugs?”

“I don't sell drugs.”

Claire noticed that his bare arms were free of scabs, scars, and needle marks. Seth rubbed his hand across the top of his head and his premature white spot seemed to spread. Claire had the impression that if they kept him here long enough all the hair on his head would turn white.

“Maia was interested in Tobiah James. She would have been a great student, but she couldn't get into UNM,” Seth said. “I fell behind on my research and she helped me. I let her into the Anderson Reading Room and then when she needed a place to sleep I gave her my code.”

“How long had that been going on?” Celia asked.

“Couple of months, I guess.”

“Where was she sleeping all that time?” Claire asked. “She couldn't have been letting Paul Begala lock her into the storage room every night.”

“I don't know where she slept,” Seth said. “It could have been anywhere in the basement. It might have been safer to move from place to place. Maybe that's what she did.”

“Did you ever tell anyone that Maia was sleeping in the basement?” Claire asked.

Seth's eyes went from Celia to Claire as if trying to estimate what other damaging information they had. Celia crossed her arms and tapped her fingers against the sleeve of her dress. Her fierce glare said the only way out for him was to tell the whole truth.

He fessed up. “One day when I left the Anderson Reading Room, I found a woman waiting outside. She told me she was Maia's mother and asked if I could help her find her daughter. They were estranged, she said, but there had been a family crisis and she had to find Maia. She knew her daughter needed help and she was hoping for a reconciliation.”

“What did she offer you in exchange for that information?” Celia asked.

“Nothing. She offered me nothing and she gave me nothing. She told me she was Maia's mother, and I believed her. I was just trying to help.”

Celia's expression remained dubious but Claire was inclined to believe him. She saw Seth as a person all too likely to bend to the will of others. Too much accommodating to too many others could explain why he was in so much trouble and why his dissertation remained unfinished.

“What
did the woman look like?” Claire asked.

“She looked as if she could be Maia's mother. She was old enough.” He stared at his inquisitors as if he was thinking “as old as you are,” but he didn't say so. “She had blondish hair. She was about your height,” he said to Claire. “Like Maia, she was a quiet-looking, inconspicuous person. She didn't wear any makeup. You wouldn't notice her except that she had on large glasses with square black frames. The one thing I really remember about her is those ugly glasses. She would have been an attractive woman without those glasses.”

“Did you notice the color of her eyes?” Claire asked.

“No.”

“What was she wearing?”

“Jeans and a shirt, I guess.”

The woman Ansia described had darker hair and Ansia hadn't mentioned the glasses. The woman could have been wearing a disguise on one or both occasions or there could have been more than one woman. Ansia might not be considered a reliable witness, but she hadn't been wrong about Bill Hartley. “Did the woman offer you any proof that she was Maia's mother?” Claire asked.

“She showed me a painting of a group of girls dancing in a circle. I recognized one of them as a younger Maia.”

Claire felt weak when she heard that, like her emotions were draining into a pool on the floor. Ansia had provided the information about Seth and the painting. Lisa Teague's beautiful portrait had been used to find and kill the woman who posed for it. In exchange for what? The chance to be a hero on the street? A BB of China White? For an addict there was no justice, no friendship, no loyalty. For an addict the only truth was
la jeringa y la chiva.

“I believed her,” Seth said. “She came back that night. I didn't give her the code. I only let her in once. I don't know what happened after that. I don't even know if she and Maia connected. Maia died of a drug overdose, right? Nobody made her take it. Nobody twisted her arm. Nobody beat her up. Okay, I shouldn't have let her or the woman in, but what did that have to do with Maia's death?”