Wall of Glass (21 page)

When I looked back, through the mist rising off the water, his eyes were still closed.

FOURTEEN

T
HERE AREN'T MANY THINGS
to do in Santa Fe until summertime, when the opera season begins, and I'm one of the philistines who believes that there aren't many things to do then, either. But one of the things you
can
do, year-round, is attend openings. New restaurants, new supermarkets, new shopping malls, new shows at the local galleries—all of them kick off with an opening. Openings provide an excuse for the locals to dress up in their Navajo silver and get out of the house to see who's seeing whom, and be seen by whoever's seeing whom. There are one or two individuals in town, it's been said, who'd be willing to attend the opening of an envelope.

I had thought that the opening at the Griego Gallery would've been called off. But when I telephoned the gallery after I got back into town from Las Mujeres, I learned that I was wrong. Despite Silvia Griego's death, The Show Must Go On.

There was a message from Hector on the machine at the office, asking me to call him. I did, and he asked me if I'd known that Griego was dead. I said I had. He asked about my visit to her gallery yesterday, and I told him I'd spoken with her because of a reputed connection between her and Biddle. He said that was very interesting, and asked if Griego had admitted the connection. I said she had, more or less, but that I didn't think she'd known anything about the stolen necklace. He said he liked the way I used the word
reputed
and suggested I come down to his office tomorrow to use it again in the statement he wanted me to make. I said I would.

I called Rita, gave her the rundown on what'd happened up at Las Mujeres, skipping lightly over the scene at La Cantina and the chase on the highway, emphasizing my talk with Montoya. I mentioned the old man's cryptic remark about “birds of a feather,” but it didn't mean any more to her than it had to me. After I hung up, I drove over to the municipal pool and swam my mile. Then I went home.

For my outing that evening I selected a pair of clean Levis, Luchese lizardskin boots, a pale blue silk shirt, and my Adolfo blue blazer. Understated elegance. The sort of thing Hoot Gibson might wear to the Four Seasons.

When I arrived, fashionably late at seven o'clock, the gallery's parking lot was packed with cars, and so were both sides of Canyon Road for a hundred feet in each direction. Apparently the death of the owner could really punch up a gallery's business. I wondered if this would start a trend.

I drove on until I found a space, parked the Subaru, and walked back. Dusk was becoming evening. The air was cooling off, but it carried the sweet purple smell of lilacs and, with it, the promise of summer.

The people milling around on the gallery's portico, illuminated by the soft glow of kerosene hurricane lamps, seemed prepared to take the promise for the reality. Most of them were dressed ten or fifteen degrees warmer than the weather. Nearly every male there was outfitted, as I was, in Middle-Class Cowboy, although there were a few three-piece suits circulating among the denims. A lot of the Hispanic women were wearing Hispanic-flavored outfits, long skirts set off with sashes of red or black, presumably to emphasize their Spanish heritage. A lot of the Anglo women—the blondes, primarily—were wearing dresses of bright summery white or yellow. Presumably to emphasize their blondhood.

I climbed up the steps into the bumble-bee rumble of conversation and spotted, among the crowd, a few people I knew. Two Santa Fe artists, Doug Higgins and Bobbi Kitsman, were sitting on the portico rail, talking to each other over plastic wineglasses. I nodded to them, and then nodded to a filmmaker friend, Sally Jackson, who was standing a few feet away. At the front door, I stopped for a minute to talk to Claudia Jessup and Jon Richards, both writers, who introduced a friend of theirs visiting from New York, someone named Meredith Rich. Jon asked me about the bruise on my cheek, and I told him I'd cut myself shaving. He asked me if I shaved with a bowling ball.

Inside the gallery I moved through thickets of chatter and streamers of scent. Lauren, Giorgio, Opium, Clinique, Chanel—the Chanel reminding me, with the immediacy that only the sense of smell can give, of my visit to Silvia Griego's house.

As I eased around one formally dressed cluster of talking heads, I bumped elbows with a man in a white sports-coat. A few drops of wine sloshed from his plastic cup, and he turned toward me, the annoyed glare already beginning. He took in the bruise on my cheek and he blinked and turned back to his friends. Even if you have the right of way, you don't pull out in front of a '65 Ford with a crumpled fender.

Without trying to, without really wanting to, I caught snatches of the conversation buzzing around me. It seemed to be divided equally between Griego's death and the art on display.

“… horrible, I heard she was
raped
… is delicious, and he's got such a
supple
feel for line … police haven't any idea at all who … lacking a certain subtlety of texture, and … I mean,
Silvia
, for God's sake, who would've
thought
… I only wish he'd chosen colors that were less
honest
…”

The artwork under discussion was a series of paintings hanging on the walls of both rooms of the gallery. They were all very much alike, splashy abstracts with a few recognizable symbols—leather moccasins and deer antlers and bison heads—floating across the muddle. They had titles like
The Medicine Man Has Passed Away and the Sun Dance is Dead.
Meaty stuff.

Someone tapped me on the shoulder and I turned. Denim work shirt, pale blond hair, delicate young male features, a grin that displayed a lot of teeth. Kevin Leighton. “Hey, Mr. Croft. How you doin'?”

“Fine, Kevin. But the name is Joshua.”

There was a girl standing at his side, and it wasn't until she smiled, showing two rows of painful-looking silvery braces, that I realized it was his sister, Miranda. She wore a dark plaid skirt and a yellow sweater and she seemed more comfortable with her body tonight; and, with a figure that showed a lot of promise, she had every reason to be. She wasn't wearing her glasses and her eyes seemed bright and shiny with excitement. Without the smile, without the braces, I wouldn't have recognized her. It was as though by leaving her home, leaving her parents, she was able to fill out, ease up, become a different person.

Kevin asked me, “What happened to your face?”

“I was eating a burrito,” I told him, “and it blew up. How are you, Miranda?”

“Oh, okay, I guess,” she said, abstracted, her glance skittering around the room. She turned to me, smiled with pleasure, “It's a nice opening, though, isn't it? I mean, even if most of these paintings are sort of bogus.”

“It's swell,” I said. “Your mother didn't come?”

The girl's face went tight and guarded, and I realized that I'd asked the wrong question.

Kevin showed a nice quick sense of diplomacy and interjected, “My mother wasn't feeling too well. She and Mrs. Griego were pretty close, I guess.”

Miranda brightened suddenly, waving off to the left, then turning to her brother to say in a rush: “It's Janice, Kevin, I'm going over to say hello.” And then she was gone.

Kevin watched her weave through the crowd, then turned to me and confided, “They had a big fight tonight.”

“Your mother and Miranda?”

He nodded.

“What about?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “Nothing. They never fight about anything
real
, do you know what I mean? Sometimes it just seems that my mother thinks Miranda can't do anything right.”

I nodded. Felice, super-competent as she was, would be a difficult mother. She'd be difficult, probably, in any capacity.

“So what brings you here?” Kevin asked me. He grinned. “You think maybe you'll spot somebody wearing my mother's necklace?”

I smiled. “Nope. Looking for someone. What about you? I wouldn't have pictured this as your idea of a good time.”

“My father thought someone should go. My mother didn't want to—like I said, she was pretty tight with Mrs. Griego.”

“You're representing the family. You and Miranda.”

“Yeah. Miranda likes all this stuff.” He looked around him with the weary cynicism that only an eighteen-year-old boy can achieve. Or a thirty-eight-year-old private detective.

Not looking at me, he put his hands in his pockets and said, “You know, I was kind of a jerk the other night. When I came to your office.”

“Don't let it bother you, Kevin. I've spent years at a time being kind of a jerk.”

“Well, anyway,” turning to me, “I apologize.”

“No need to. I appreciate your help.”

“Yeah, well,” a shrug, “if I can help you any more, let me know, okay?”

It was an offer of friendship, and I would have been a boor not to accept it. I smiled, held out my hand to shake his, and said, “I appreciate it, Kevin. I'll do that. You take care now.”

He grinned and nodded.

“I'll see you later,” I told him. “I've got to find someone.”

And, like Miranda, I moved off through the crowd.

In the narrow room leading to the gallery's office, the Santa Clara pottery and all but one of the kachinas had been carted off to make room for two trestle tables, one loaded with hors d'oeuvres and cold cuts, the other with bottles of liquor and California champagne. Naturally, it was in here that most of the deadbeats—a friend of mine calls them The Cake-Eaters—were hanging out, after having made a quick obligatory pass around the gallery. These are the people who've never been seen buying groceries or eating in restaurants. They move from opening to opening like chimps swinging from branch to branch for bananas.

And it was in here that I found the person I was looking for.

Talking with animation to a big man dressed like an honorary Indian in a headband and a buckskin shirt, her pert head cocked, her tight blond curls agleam, she was wearing a clinging black long-sleeved top, scoop-necked, and another black miniskirt, this one made of leather. As mourning clothes went, they weren't bad at all. Unfortunately she was also wearing a pair of those patterned gray pantyhose that make women look as if they're suffering from impetigo.

I tapped her on the shoulder. When she turned to face me, all the Pepsi-Cola brightness fizzled away from her wholesome face. I seemed to be having that effect on a lot of people lately.

Her features stony, she said, “What are you doing here?”

“I came for the canapés,” I said. The guy in the buckskin shirt was glowering at me from beneath a single dark Neanderthal eyebrow. He didn't look like he avoided '65 Fords with crumpled fenders. He looked as if he drove one.

The Pepsi-Cola girl said, “I gave the police your name. They know that Silvia was upset after she talked to you.”

“Good,” I said. I reached into the inside pocket of my blazer, slipping out the Polaroid print, and showed it to her, holding it so Buckskin couldn't see it. “I don't suppose you mentioned this to them?”

Instinctively, she reached for it. I snatched it away, tucked it back into my pocket.

Her mouth was set in a tight frown, her lower lip curled. “What do you want?”

“Let's talk. In the office.”

She took a deep breath, let it out, nodded once crisply. She turned to Buckskin. “I'll be back in a few minutes, Carl.”

Carl glanced at me, said to her, “You okay, Linda?”

“It's nothing,” she said, touching him lightly on the arm. “Business. Be back in a minute.”

The door to the office was only a few feet away. She opened it, and I followed her inside. Neither of the two television screens was on. Apparently, whoever was in charge had decided that no one would try to walk off with any of the paintings hanging outside. I agreed.

She flicked the light switch and turned to face me. “That photograph,” she said. “You got it from Silvia.”

“Yeah.”

Her mouth parted and her eyes widened as she realized, or thought she did, what that meant.

I shook my head. “I didn't kill her. Sit down.” I closed the door.

She sat down behind the desk and crossed her arms protectively over her breasts, exactly as Silvia Griego had done in that same chair only the day before. It seemed to me like a week ago.

I sat in the white padded chair opposite her. “Your name is Linda?” I said.

She nodded. “Linda Sorenson.” Her voice was small and guarded. Huddled against herself like that, wary, uncertain, she looked about sixteen years old.

“Linda,” I said, “I didn't kill Silvia and I'm not going to hurt you. I'm a licensed private investigator and I'm looking for a necklace that was stolen sometime last year. Your friend Silvia knew at least one of the people who could've been involved in the theft. When I spoke with her yesterday, she denied any knowledge of the necklace. That may or may not be true, but I think Silvia Griego was involved in something that got her killed. I want to know what it was.”