The Shadow of Venus (23 page)

Everything, Claire thought, but she didn't say so. There was still a police investigation going on and she was afraid she and Celia had already strayed too far into Detective Owen's territory.

“Shouldn't you be talking to Paul Begala?” Seth asked. “He's the one who locked the door, not me.”

“I'll be talking to him, too,” Celia said.

“What about my code?” Seth Pleaded. “Can I keep it?”

“I haven't made that decision yet.” Celia turned to Claire. “Let's go,” she said.

Before they rounded the corner into the next aisle, Claire looked back and saw Seth sitting in his
chair
slumped over his makeshift desk, clutching his head in his hands.

Chapter
Twenty-seven

C
LAIRE FOLLOWED
C
ELIA TO THE DOOR
that led deeper into the basement. Celia punched in her code and blinking green lights indicated they had gained admittance. Looking over Celia's shoulder Claire could easily read her numbers. The woman claiming to be Maia's mother could have done the same thing with Seth. To let her in once was to let her in for as long as his code was in effect. They were in the maintenance sector now near the furnace where pipes marked
CHILLED WATER RETURN
snaked under the ceiling. This was where the ghost of the woman in the pinafore dress—the first librarian—was known to wander. Someone had drawn a scowling face on the wall and labeled it
THE PLUMBER
. Red lights flashed
EXIT
over the doorways and roaches lay belly-up on the floor. This was the part of the basement where maintenance had to work, but most people avoided it.

“Goddamn that boy,” Celia said.

“What are you going to do about it?” Claire asked.

“Report him to Harrison. I have to. I'm not about to lose my job over Seth Malcolm. You know that Harrison doesn't take insubordination lightly. Seth will be locked out of the stacks and he'll lose his fellowship.” She stopped and faced Claire. “Who do you think this woman is going around handing out drugs, looking for Maia? Could it really be her mother?”

“Not unless the body found in the Rio Grande Gorge wasn't Veronica Reid. I heard it was badly mangled. But you'd think the police would have definitely identified the victim. Given the timing of Maia's death—right before June was scheduled to talk to the Taos DA—I'd say it was someone who didn't want her to testify against Damon Fitzgerald.”

“How did anybody know she was going to testify?”

“Bill Hartley talked her into meeting with the DA. He knew. His wife knew. Word might have leaked from the DA's office. In a small town like Taos everybody seems to know exactly what everybody else is doing. The woman could have been one or more of the mothers in Taos who didn't want the scandal to break and expose their own daughters. She could have been someone trying to protect Damon Fitzgerald or Edward Girard or even Paul Begala. I think the glasses were a diversion. Except for that detail the descriptions were generic. Average height, average looks, middle age. Some people think all middle-aged women look alike.”

“Let's see if Paul can tell us more.”

“Is that where we're going now? To talk to Paul?”

“Yes.”

Claire hesitated. “Don't you think we ought to talk to Detective Owen first? There is an investigation going on.”

“Not that I've noticed,” Celia snapped. “The codes and the locks are my responsibility. Overseeing the security system is my job. I'm the one Harrison blames for Maia's presence in the basement. By the time Detective Owen gets here, Seth could talk to Paul and give him all the excuse he needs to shut up. I need to get to him first. Are you with me?”

Claire didn't share Celia's conviction, but she couldn't let her go to Paul's office alone, either. She followed the blue shoes down the long, dingy basement corridors, imagining how debilitating it would be to spend all day working here. Claire rarely entered the maintenance sector. She found the narrow halls with the pipes throbbing overhead oppressive, although it was possible that to a person seeking comfort the throbbing pipes might resemble a beating heart. She felt the weight of the library resting on her shoulders down here, but Celia seemed energized by the chase. Seth had said that Maia had been sleeping in the basement for months. As Claire walked, she looked for another place as secluded as the storage room where Maia had died, but she didn't find one.

When they got to Paul's office they found him sitting in a swivel chair at his desk. He spun around as he heard them approach. Once again Claire had the sensation that only one of his eyes focused, but he saw enough to turn his expression guarded. Paul's shoulders tightened in the gesture of a besieged animal hunkering down, waiting, watching. He had tacked magazine photos of outdoor scenes on his offíce walls—a rippling trout stream, views from mountain peaks, a vast green forest. One of the photos was of Paul himself casting a fishing line out over a stream. Claire saw the photos as windows out of the dreary basement.

“Did you see a woman in the basement looking for Maia shortly before she died?” Celia jumped right in without even pausing to say hello.

Claire visualized her words wrapped inside a bubble hanging over the office. She sympathized with Celia's impatience and her anger, but her intuition told her those were the wrong words.

They gave Paul the opportunity to answer “I see women down here all the time. Librarians, students, professors. I don't make a note of everybody I see. My job is maintenance, not surveillance. Nobody ever told me she was looking for Maia.”

Celia was too committed to her pursuit to slow down now. “This woman claimed to be Maia's mother.”

“How'd she get in?”

“Someone let her in.”

“Well, I can tell you this much. It wasn't me.”

Now
Claire had the uneasy sensation that one of his eyes had focused on Celia and the other on her. She'd been hovering in the doorway hoping Paul wouldn't notice her presence. She wanted to be like a bird in one of his photographs, who could watch without being observed herself.

“We only have your word that you didn't know Maia was in the storage room,” Celia said. “Suppose the woman wanted Maia to stay locked up in there and persuaded someone to turn the deadbolt?”

Claire wished she had a way to counter Celia's bad-cop act. The only thing that came to mind was to ask Paul about the outdoor photos, but she knew Celia would consider that an intrusion and an unwelcome diversion. Claire kept quiet, observing Paul's body language.

He remained watchful and wary, but he wasn't crumpling the way Seth had. Celia didn't have the power over maintenance that she had over graduate students. Paul Begala didn't have to answer to her and he knew it.

“I locked the door to the storage room on Friday like I always do when I leave here,” he insisted. “I went fishing over the weekend. Even if I had come in, I had no reason to check that room. I opened the door on Tuesday when I got back. I found the body. I notified the police. I didn't talk to any woman claiming to be Maia's mother or anybody else's mother. And I never saw Maia in the storage room or anywhere else in the basement.”

Celia moved on, appearing to change the subject. “How's your wife doing?” she asked. “Does she like the home she's in now?”

“Better than the other one. What's that got to do with anything?” Paul asked.

“Just curious,” Celia said.

Paul's cell phone rang. He picked it up, listened briefly, then replied, “I'll be right there.” He turned toward to Celia. “Anything else? There's an emergency near the tower, a leak that has to be fixed right now.”

“Could someone have taken your key and used it or made a copy?” Celia asked.

“Like who? The librarian in the pinafore who haunts this place? Maybe she's the mother you've been looking for. These keys here? While I'm at work they never leave my side.” Paul shook the ring with jangly sound. “Now, if you don't mind, ladies, I have a job to do.”

They left the office. Paul locked the door behind them with an ostentatious rattle of the key chain, then walked down the corridor whistling an unidentifiable tune. Claire saw a door nearby with a red
EXIT
sign over it and a ramp that led outside.

“Let's go out here,” she said to Celia. “I can't face walking back through the tunnels again.” She had an overpowering longing to see sky over her head instead of pipes marked
CHILLED WATER RETURN
.

“All right.”

Once
they were outside in the fresh air behind the library, Celia said, “My gut reaction is that Paul was lying. What do you think?”

Claire had gotten a different perspective from her bird's-eye perch. “I'm not sure he was telling the whole truth,” she said. “But I wouldn't necessarily say he was lying.”

“I think the APD needs to check his bank accounts and see if any money was deposited around the time that Maia died.”

“If there was any money, most likely it was paid in cash and spent as cash,” Claire said, remembering how the painting was purchased. “Nursing care is unbelievably expensive. Do you think Paul could possibly have been paid enough to change the kind of care his wife gets?”

“When you're desperate anything helps,” Celia said.

“True,” Claire said. “I agree that we should contact Detective Owen. Do you want to do it or should I?”

“I'll do it,” Celia said. “Monitoring the codes is my responsibility.”

Chapter
Twenty-eight

C
LAIRE WAS BUSY WITH MEETINGS AND PHONE CALLS
until the end of the day, when she found herself sitting at her desk, staring at her computer screen. The books-with-wings screen saver had clicked off and the screen was blank. All it took to pull images from the darkness was a click of the keys. If Claire clicked the right keys, she might even find images that would help in the investigation. Ansia could evaluate the images—if Claire could find her again.

She left the library and walked across campus, passing the Student Union, then the bookstore. She crossed the dividing line of Central and entered the parking lot behind the Frontier restaurant. The painted hollyhocks were still in bloom. The parking places were all taken. Claire walked to the alley parking lot and found the Chrysler in place.

Trying to care for Ansia reminded her of caring for a stray cat. You put out food at night and checked to see if it was gone in the morning. Sometimes the caregiver went for days without seeing the cat. The only way to know it was still alive was if the food had been eaten. Claire peered through the dirty window of the Chrysler. The blanket was in the backseat. The black bag and her card were gone. Ansia could have come back or someone else might have taken them.

As she turned away from the car, Claire caught a glimpse of a black strap hanging over the edge of the Dumpster. Part of her wanted to walk away and not know any more, but she made herself go to the Dumpster and peer over the edge into the pile of stinking garbage. Death stank, but Claire didn't know how to identify that smell. She had a stomach-churning anxiety that she might find cherry Jell-O hair and rotting flesh among the garbage, but all she saw was the basic pile of trash and an empty black bag. Was that a sign that Ansia had rejected her gift? Knowing better than to apply the rules of society to people who lived on the street, Claire dismissed the thought. If you're going to give, she told herself, you do it for the sake of giving, not for the sake of getting a return. She wasn't looking for gratitude. She was looking for information. The clothes and food she'd left in the bag were gone. Claire hoped it was Ansia who had taken them. She wouldn't want to come across someone else wearing her clothes on the street.

Deciding it was useless to leave another card, she reached into her purse and pulled out a notepad and a pen. “Ansia,” she wrote. “You can help me identify the woman who was looking for Maia. I'll be working late. Please come to the library and ask for me at the Information Desk. It's important. Thank you. Claire Reynier.”

She left the note in the backseat, crossed the parking lot, and walked back to the library. As she
passed
the Jimenez statue of the woman dancing in a swirling skirt, Claire asked herself why she felt such a strong sense of anxiety about Ansia. She hoped it wouldn't turn out to be a premonition. Ansia lived a dangerous life on the street, but she had survival skills. She had a home of sorts with a door she could lock. She'd survived the deadly China White, but suppose the person who gave it to her came back with something even finer and even more dangerous? Was there anything finer? Detective Owen had said China White was a West Coast drug rarely seen in Albuquerque. It came from someplace more populated, Claire thought, someplace more cosmopolitan and more affluent, someplace where addicts could afford a better class of drugs.

She hoped Celia had called Detective Owen. Claire felt that they were in over their heads now and that Ansia needed more than clothes and food. She needed protection. Celia had tried with Seth and Paul, but Owen was a more skillful interrogator. Claire felt Celia had given up too much when she asked Paul Begala if he'd seen a woman claiming to be Maia's mother in the basement because now he knew exactly what he needed to deny. It would have been better to ask if he had seen anyone suspicious without revealing just who she was looking for. It was Celia's nature to jump right in, but Owen waited and watched, letting the suspect set her own trap. Claire suspected the detective knew exactly why she herself had taken such a strong interest in the story of Maia. But Celia, who was a good friend, had no idea. Owen dealt with violence and abuse on a daily basis. Celia did not.

Claire stopped at the Information Desk and asked the student working there to call her if Ansia showed up. Like everyone else who worked at the library, the student knew of Ansia.