The Confidence Woman Page 15

  Claire came to a library with shelves full of books, a fireplace and a chaise lounge with a reading lamp on an end table beside it. She was able to read the titles of the books on the end table and saw nonfiction adventure stories by John Krakauer and Sebastian Junger. She loved libraries and this one was a classic. The fireplace—an extravagance in Arizona—had silhouettes of Mayan faces in the tile. The wrought-iron tools were black with brass handles and as well designed and carefully chosen as everything else in the house.

  Claire followed the path that eventually led back to the front of the building. When she reached her truck she stood still for a minute wondering whether she should wait for someone to come home or move on. The lengthening shadows said she needed to think about where she would spend the night. She knew there was a room available for her at Lynn’s, but should she take advantage of it?

  Her reverie was punctuated by the sound of a horse’s hooves pounding the driveway. There were no stables on the property and she hadn’t seen any sign that anyone here had a horse. As the animal got closer, the sound intensified until she began to imagine the cavalry would gallop over the horizon. When it finally appeared, it was only one horse ridden by one woman with long blond hair wearing jeans and riding boots. She reined in the horse but remained seated in the saddle, towering over Claire.

  “Hello?” she asked, turning her greeting into a question.

  “Hello,” Claire replied. “I’m Claire Reynier, an old friend of Miranda Kohl’s. I happened to be in town, and I stopped by to visit.”

  “Jerry Bartlett,” the woman said, bending down and extending her hand. Her long blond hair and her posture on the horse made Jerry seem youthful, but her skin sent the message that she had spent years in the sun. “Miranda’s out of town, and so is Erwin. He asked me to look after the place while he’s away.”

  “It’s the first time I’ve been here. It’s a beautiful house.”

  “It is,” Jerry agreed.

  “Do you live nearby?”

  “A couple of miles down the road.” In New River that could put her in a trailer or an equally beautiful house.

  “Did Erwin and Miranda take a trip together?” Claire asked, trying to elicit some useful information from Jerry.

  “It’s been years since Erwin and Miranda did anything together,” she scoffed. “She left him about a month ago.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “That’s what Erwin told me.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “Who knows? With the residuals she gets from the commercials and the TV cameos she does, she could live anywhere. No matter where actresses have houses, their real homes remain in New York and LA. This is a vacation house for her. Erwin’s the one who takes care of it.”

  “I thought that Miranda was filming a TV series in Mexico.”

  “That’s the first I’ve heard of it,” Jerry replied. “What part would there be for a woman in her fifties? The mother? Can you imagine Miranda playing a mother day after day? Miranda wouldn’t want to be anyone day after day, certainly not a mother. Besides, a series is very hard work and she doesn’t want to work that hard. She makes commercials and does guest appearances on TV shows. Most of the time she travels and does whatever she wants to do.”

  Claire watched the shadow of Jerry and her horse stretch across the ground. The raven that seemed to haunt the property flew over and cawed again.

  “I need to check the house and make sure everything is all right,” Jerry said. “I’ll tell Erwin you were here.”

  Claire thought it might be better if Erwin didn’t know she’d been here, but her response was, “All right. Do you know where he is or when he’ll be back?”

  “He’s in Mexico for a week. See you,” Jerry said, clicking to her horse and heading for the path that circled the house.

  “Good-bye,” Claire replied.

  There was nothing to do now but turn her truck around and head out the driveway. Since she couldn’t do any more investigating with Jerry on the property, she decided to retrace her path through the maze of New River, go to Cave Creek and spend the night with Lynn.

  Chapter Seventeen

  AS CLAIRE STARTED HER TRUCK SHE PUSHED THE BUTTON to clear the odometer, intending to keep track of the mileage between Miranda’s house and the Grangers’. It ended up taking her forty minutes to cover twenty miles. As she neared Cave Creek, the growing number of houses beside the road made her feel she’d been covering decades as well as miles. In terms of density New River looked today as Cave Creek did twenty-five years ago. Ten years from now Cave Creek would be Scottsdale. New River would be Cave Creek and some town farther out would become New River. Claire knew that people who contributed to an area’s growth when they moved in didn’t have the right to complain about further growth. It was no longer an issue in Albuquerque, where anyone who claimed the right to keep the city from expanding had long since given up, but it was still an issue north of Phoenix. The fact that Lynn had lived in Cave Creek for twenty-five years might give her the right to complain, but she never heard Lynn complain about anything. It wasn’t her nature. As she negotiated the roads, she wondered how often Lynn or Steve or Miranda had made this trip. Erwin seemed to be the one who acted as messenger between the two houses. When she reached the Grangers’ and pulled into the driveway Lynn and Steve were sitting on the patio. They stood up when they recognized the truck and walked over to greet her.

  “Claire?” Lynn asked. “What on earth are you doing here?” She pressed her hand to her forehead. “Don’t tell me you said you were coming and I forgot.”

  Steve hovered behind Lynn like a shadow while Claire hugged her friend.

  “No, you didn’t forget,” Claire said. “To come here was a spur-of-the-moment decision. Amaral found the murder weapon in a trash bag beside the southbound lane of 1-25. It was a cast-iron frying pan.”

  “That figures,” Lynn said. Steve said nothing.

  “It was wrapped in a monogrammed towel that Evelyn had stolen from my house. Amaral wants to fingerprint me.”

  “Oh, God,” Lynn said.

  “It left me feeling overwhelmed. I got in the car this morning and just drove. I ended up here.”

  “You’re always welcome at our house,” Lynn said. She wasn’t a person to doubt a friend no matter what the evidence indicated. Her hug was as comforting as a pillow, but when Claire looked across her shoulder, she saw skepticism in Steve’s gray eyes.

  She stepped away from Lynn. “I went the back way through Payson and came out on I-17 at Camp Verde. I stopped at Miranda’s on my way here.”

  “Was she home?” Lynn asked.

  “No. Neither was Erwin, but a woman named Jerry Bartlett rode up on her horse. She said she was checking the house while Erwin was away.” Her instinct told her to give the rest of the information to Lynn when Steve wasn’t in the background. “Do you know Jerry?” she asked. “A woman with long blond hair?”

  “No,” Lynn replied.

  Steve’s eyes darted away, suggesting he knew more about Jerry than his wife.

  “You didn’t tell me that Miranda lived in such a beautiful house.”

  “Didn’t I?” Lynn asked. “It is beautiful, but we don’t go there very often. Miranda values her quiet time when she is in Arizona. I understand that. It’s one reason we’ve remained friends for so long.”

  “Can I get you something to drink?” Steve asked.

  “A glass of wine,” Claire said.

  “You got it.” Steve headed for the house.

  “Let’s sit on the patio,” Lynn said. “Or are you tired of sitting by now?”

  “No. I got out of the truck and walked around when I was at Miranda’s.”

  They went over to the patio. Civil twilight was approaching, but it hadn’t arrived yet. Claire couldn’t help comparing the simplicity of the Grangers’ house to the elegance of Miranda’s. The Grangers were comfortable. Miranda went way beyond comfortable.

  Having been married many ye
ars herself, Claire knew that spouses might react in one way if you presented them with information when they were together and another when they were apart. “Did you know that Miranda and Erwin had separated?” she asked, taking advantage of Steve’s absence.

  “No!” Lynn responded, putting her hand on the back of a chair to steady herself and appearing genuinely shocked. “Why on earth do you think that?”

  “Jerry Bartlett told me that Miranda moved out about a month ago, and she thought she might have gone to LA or New York.”

  “Miranda never said anything to me.”

  “Have you talked to her in the last month?”

  “I don’t know that I actually talked to her, but she’s been e-mailing me. Not as often as she used to, but I figured she was busy with the new show. I can’t imagine that Miranda would leave Erwin without telling me.” She seemed to deflate as she sank into the patio chair.

  Seeing how upset her friend was, Claire touched her shoulder and said, “Maybe she hasn’t had the right moment yet.”

  “Maybe. What are you going to do about Amaral?” she asked, changing the subject.

  “I don’t know. If he gets a court order—and I’m sure he will—I’ll have to be fingerprinted. It might be better to volunteer. I’ll make a decision when I get home.”

  Steve came back with the drinks and the conversation moved on to the weather, the back roads of Arizona, the coyote Claire saw running down the road in New River. Eventually Steve got up to prepare dinner. Claire waited a few minutes, then said she had to use the bathroom.

  She found him in the kitchen standing over a cutting board, inserting a knife between the skin and the breast of a piece of chicken. He began to cut the skin loose, an act that required a very sharp knife.

  “No more Kentucky Fried Chicken for me,” he said.

  Claire felt she had little time to circle the issue so she got right to the point. “What can you tell me about Jerry Bartlett?” she asked.

  Steve continued cutting until he’d removed the skin. He dropped it into the trash, then turned to look at Claire. “I know she is a friend of Erwin’s,” he admitted.

  “How good a friend?”

  The gray eyes got cloudy as he debated how much of a friend’s confidence he was willing to reveal. “It’s possible they are having an affair. Erwin hinted that they were, but you’ve met Erwin. Sometimes he implies more than there is.”

  “Did he tell you that Miranda had left him?” Claire asked.

  Steve picked up the knife and began working on the chicken breast again, carving the meat away from the bone. “He said something about it,” he replied without looking up.

  “When?”

  “I don’t remember exactly. A couple of weeks ago.”

  “Why didn’t anybody tell Lynn?”

  “I can’t speak for Erwin, but speaking for myself, I knew she’d be hurt that Miranda hadn’t told her. You must have noticed that Lynn places Miranda on a pedestal. Miranda has an interesting career. Lynn has me.” He put down the knife, touched his heart and gave Claire a wry grin. “Or what’s left of me. Lynn thinks Miranda is her close friend, but Miranda is a butterfly. She’s here, she’s there. Even when she is here, we hardly ever see her. An actress’s life is far more exciting than our domestic life. They belong to their audiences, their agents, their producers, not to their friends or their mates.”

  “Do you know where Erwin went?”

  “He told me he was going to Mexico to look at a property in Baja.”

  It was clear that he considered the kitchen his domain. Nevertheless, Claire felt an obligation to offer to help. He declined and she went to the bathroom then back out to the patio.

  ******

  When dinner was ready, Steve called them to the table. The food was fat-free and the conversation was also on the lean side. Claire could only give it one half of her mind while the other replayed the events of the last few days.

  They went to bed early. Claire listened for the yip of the coyotes, but for reasons known only to them, they were silent. When she finally fell asleep, she had dreams in which a part of her seemed to be standing outside the action crying “Get me out of this.” In one dream she saw her own oversized fingerprints stamped in black ink in Evelyn Martin’s house. In another she saw Evelyn’s decomposed body sprawled across the kitchen floor, the rotting flesh, the turquoise dress, the bleached hair. As she watched, it seemed to inflate like a grotesque balloon. She woke from this dream wondering how anyone even knew that the inflated body was Evelyn Martin. Because you said so, she thought before she fell asleep again. You identified the hair.

  The next time she woke up it was still dark, but she could tell that morning was coming by the sound of the chattering birds. As she lay in bed and waited for the cold light of dawn, she revised her dreams and reminded herself that she had not been the one who identified Evelyn Martin. The Santa Fe police identified her by checking dental records. She got out of bed and got dressed. The door was closed to Steve and Lynn’s bedroom, and the house was quiet. Claire let herself out the front door and walked down the road until she came to a dry streambed, a place she and Lynn had walked before. She followed the stream, which had carved a deep and sandy path. There were no houses or people visible from the depths of the arroyo. She enjoyed the morning freshness and looked for tracks. She didn’t see the chevron pattern of rattlesnake skin, but she did see the swirls of lizard tails and the footprints that formed dots beside them. A raven flew over and cawed. For all she knew it was the same raven she had seen at Miranda’s house.

  She kept on following the streambed through the narrow canyon knowing it would eventually lead to Cave Creek; water always sought the lowest level.

  As she walked, studying the ground, thinking about tracks and signs, the thought came to her that a sign that seemed so obvious had been misinterpreted. The idea was so startling that it took a while to absorb it, but once she opened this door, other questions appeared and other answers. She kept on walking and thinking, wondering what she could do to correct the error if there had been one.

  The sound of running water interrupted her reverie and she knew that Cave Creek was around the bend. It was one of those rare streams in Arizona that actually had water in it. As far as Claire knew, it flowed year-round fed by springs and snowfall from the mountains. She stood next to the stream watching the amber water flow, enjoying the ripples and shadows and the refreshing sound of the running water. She felt the sun on her back and realized that Steve and Lynn would be up by now and wondering where she was. She turned and followed the arroyo back to the house, picking up her pace and starting to sweat even though it was still early morning. As she came around a bend, she saw Steve rushing toward her.

  “Claire,” he called. “I was hoping these were your footsteps. Lynn got worried when she didn’t find you in the house.”

  “I’m sorry,” Claire replied. “I woke up early and went for a walk. I didn’t think anyone would miss me.”

  “Since I had the heart attack, Lynn worries about everything. Then Evelyn was murdered and you all became suspects. When Lynn worries she eats. She’s probably sitting in the garage right now with a bag of potato chips. Maybe that’s why she sent me to look for you, so she could eat. For every pound I lose, she gains five.”

  “You know about the eating?”

  “How else would she be putting on so much weight? But if you tell her I know, it’ll just upset her.”

  As they walked toward the house, Claire thought about the secrets couples kept from each other. Secrets could be helpful or they could be destructive, depending on the size and the subject of the secret. Since Steve already knew about Lynn’s eating, she saw no harm in asking if he also knew that Evelyn had stolen Lynn’s cache of food.

  “I knew,” he told her. “But I didn’t say anything to Lynn.”

  “Did Erwin tell you?”

  “Yes,” Steve said.

  “So that means Lynn told Miranda, Miranda told Erwin, Erw
in told you. If you told Lynn it would complete the circle.”

  “I know.” Steve continued walking at a rapid pace, keeping his eyes on the ground. The tracks were still embedded in the sand, but Claire suspected he was going too fast to notice them.

  If Lynn had been eating while she waited, she’d hidden the signs. She was standing in the driveway holding a coffee mug.

  “I was worried about you,” she said, giving Claire a hug.

  “I’m sorry,” Claire replied. “I woke up early and went for a walk. I followed the streambed to Cave Creek. You and I have been there before.”

  “I don’t go there so early in the morning when the rattlesnakes are still out.”

  Claire thought how people who were looking for a comfortable life were drawn to the desert by the warmth and the sun, but it remained a thorny and dangerous place. It was one of the things she liked about it. Awareness of danger sharpened the senses, which was not a bad thing. “There’s good visibility in the streambed. I watched for rattlesnake tracks, and I didn’t see any,” she said.

  “I know you’ve lived in the desert and you know your way around. I’m sorry to be such a worry wart, but so many things have happened lately. It makes me uncomfortable.”

  Claire felt she was standing outside a rectangle formed by the two couples—Steve and Lynn, Erwin and Miranda. She couldn’t say any more about the food theft without revealing that Steve knew about the eating and upsetting the balance. But she felt she could question Lynn about the past and her memory of Miranda. She waited until Steve went into the house.

  “The last time Miranda and I e-mailed each other I mentioned the incident at the U of A when Elizabeth found her wearing the jacket. What do you remember about it?”

  “That Elizabeth was a bitch.”

  “Do you remember what Miranda’s reaction was? Did she blow up at Elizabeth?”