The Confidence Woman Page 18

  She’d taken a book from the shelf that had a high monetary value, but it wasn’t one that Claire loved. The issue of the black nightgown was more complicated. Had Evelyn seen Claire as a woman who would ever wear (or want to wear) a silky black nightgown slit to the navel? Was Claire now or had she ever been that person? In her dreams, maybe. She remembered Evelyn at the sorority house saying, “You have cleavage.” That was right before she went to Europe, met Pietro and spent a semester traveling around Europe and Morocco with him in a Volkswagen van that broke down in every country they visited. Claire wondered if Evelyn had seen a budding sensuality in her back then. Had she seen it again when she visited last spring? Or was it too late for sensuality to ever bloom again? Evelyn might have given her more of a gift than she’d intended.

  While Claire stared at the mirror it turned into a window opening onto a street in Marrakesh. The trees were laden with oranges. The Atlas Mountains were tipped with snow. The sun was setting on one side, the full moon rising on the other. Soft voices on the street spoke in Arabic and French. A candle burned in the room. Behind her Pietro lay on the bed smoking hashish. Was she wearing black that night or nothing? Smoke filled the window and then it became a mirror again. Claire could see that the nightgown would fit, but how would she look in it at this point? Not willing to take the risk of finding out, she folded it up, wrapped it in tissue paper and put it back in the drawer.

  She went to the living room, picked up the phone, called Lynn and broke the news that she believed Miranda had been murdered by Evelyn Martin.

  “That can’t be true,” she protested. “It wasn’t that long ago that I saw her.”

  “When was the last time you actually saw her?” Claire asked. “Not the last time you got an e-mail or saw the commercial on television but the last time you actually saw Miranda alive?”

  “At Christmas, I guess,” Lynn admitted. “I’ll tell Steve to talk to Erwin. Erwin will tell him the truth.”

  “If Steve can find him.”

  “Let me check with Steve and I’ll call you back,” Lynn said.

  When she called back two hours later, Claire was soaking in a tub of warm water lapping at the edges of sleep.

  “There was no answer,” Lynn said. “We drove over to New River and found no one home. I can’t believe that Miranda is dead, Claire.”

  “It’s hard to accept, I know, but it’s the most logical explanation.”

  “It may be logical,” Lynn said, “but to me it’s horrible.”

  “I’m hoping to talk to Detective Amaral soon. If he can be persuaded to do a DNA test, he’ll be able to establish for certain whether the body is Miranda’s.”

  “You’ll let me know what he says?”

  “Immediately,” Claire replied.

  ******

  The next day she took the copy of The Piazza Tales, the notepad and the tape to Sid Hyland. Hyland was dubious about the value of any of them, pointing out to Claire that the book and notepad could have come from anywhere and the tape could be anyone’s voice.

  “Erwin is an actor,” she said. “His voice should be on record somewhere if it gets down to that.”

  She persuaded Hyland to call Dr. Rule, and he came away from that call impressed by the dentist’s ability to describe Miranda’s teeth.

  “He’d make a good witness,” he said when he got off the phone. “He’s knowledgeable, professional and precise. You need to talk to Amaral. Let me see if I can set up a meeting here.”

  Amaral agreed to come to Albuquerque two days later. Claire never wanted to see him in her office again; they would meet at Hyland’s office at nine in the morning. She woke up early that day and prepared for the meeting by balancing militant tai chi exercises with calming tai chi. As she drove across town to Hyland’s office, she wondered how Amaral would handle himself in front of a lawyer who was twenty years older and far more experienced.

  Amaral got there first and both men were standing when she entered the room. The detective was as tall as Hyland, but Hyland outweighed him by fifty pounds. His manner was soft-spoken and deferential, as it had been to Claire when they first met, but by now Claire knew this was a mask that could be taken on and off at will. From the moment Claire entered the room Amaral avoided looking at her, averting his eyes like a guilty child. As requested, he had brought The Confidence-Man still concealed under the dust jacket of The Scarlet Letter.

  Claire didn’t waste any time playing Erwin Bush’s tape. Amaral seemed startled, but dubious.

  “How do I know that is Erwin Bush’s voice?” he asked.

  “He’s an actor,” Hyland replied. “His voice will be on record somewhere.”

  He’d quoted her rather well, Claire thought, except that he had said “will” where she had said “should.”

  “You won’t need to compare voices once you have seen the rest of the evidence,” Hyland added.

  Claire put a wrapped copy of The Piazza Tales on Hyland’s desk. “I took this book from Miranda Kohl and Erwin Bush’s library,” she said. “It was part of a complete set of Herman Melville. I believe The Confidence-Man you have is also a part of that set. It was the only book missing from the collection. The reason the fingerprints you found on your Confidence-Man match the body in Evelyn Martin’s house is because the book is Miranda Kohl’s and so is the body. If you will remove the jacket from your Confidence-Man I can demonstrate the similarities.”

  As the jacket came off, she had a moment of anxiety. Her goal was to convince a man who had shown no interest in rare books of the similarities between these two books. What if she had been wrong? The only way to be sure was to place them side by side for comparison. She put on her white gloves and unwrapped The Piazza Tales. The ostensible reason for wearing white gloves was to protect a rare book from fingerprints and damage, but putting them on also gave her an air of authority and of confidence.

  Once the two books were together it was obvious that they were peas from the same pod. They were the same dimensions. The full brown morocco was identical in texture and in color. Both books had a similar amount of wear. Claire pointed out to Amaral and Hyland how the spines of the books had faded over time, but the fronts and backs had remained close to the original color. She demonstrated that the gilt letters on the spines and front covers were identical in style.

  She opened them to the copyright pages and demonstrated that both books were first editions. The Piazza Tales had been published in 1856 and The Confidence-Man in 1857. The open books brought her to her next point. She took the notepad she had found in Miranda’s house and placed it on the desk next to The Confidence-Man.

  “Beer,” the list read, “wine, milk, hamburger meat and cheese.”

  “That’s a shopping list,” Amaral said.

  “It was written by Erwin Bush,” Claire replied. “I found it in the house. It will be useful for comparing handwriting.”

  “Did your tip that The Confidence-Man was in Claire’s office come from Erwin Bush?” Hyland asked.

  “It was anonymous,” Amaral replied.

  Claire compared the handwriting. By now she knew the handwriting in Erwin’s note well, but she had only seen the signature in The Confidence-Man briefly. She turned to the title page of The Confidence-Man and compared it to the note.

  “Herman Melville died in 1891,” she said. “As I said before this signature couldn’t possibly be his. If it were, the ink would be faded and cracked. Even without an authentic Melville signature to compare it to, the ink told me that this was a forgery.”

  Amaral examined the signature. “I don’t see any similarity between the two handwritings,” he said.

  This was where Claire felt on shakiest ground, wishing that the handwriting expert August Stevenson was here to help. The handwritings were different, but she attributed that to the deviousness of a single writer, not the differences between two.

  “When people are trying to conceal their style of writing, they are likely to slant the script in a different dire
ction,” she said. “Notice how the Melville signature slants backward toward the left, not a natural way to write. Most people write in a hurry and slant forward toward the right. Another way people conceal their writing style is by squaring off the round letters and by adding or removing embellishments to the tall letters. But the inconsistency here is revealing. See how the e’s have been squared off in ‘Herman Melville’? But the a is round, as it is in ‘hamburger meat’ in the note. The beginning letters in the signature—H and M—are large and bold with a dramatic flourish. That’s the way a forger would expect the script of a well-known writer to appear. Yet the l’s in both documents have a plain and narrow loop.”

  Hyland nodded from the other side of the desk. They had discussed the possibility of her offering to be fingerprinted and she felt confident in taking the next step.

  “I believe if you test both Melville books for fingerprints you won’t find mine on either of them.” She hoped Amaral wouldn’t suggest at this point that she had worn white gloves every time she handled a piece of evidence. He may have been thinking it, but he didn’t say it.

  “I also believe you will find Erwin Bush’s fingerprints on both The Confidence-Man and the notepad,” Claire continued, “and that you may find Miranda Kohl’s fingerprints in Evelyn Martin’s house and possibly on the frying pan if she struggled to defend herself. There should be plenty of prints in Miranda’s house for comparison.” The best way to obtain Erwin Bush’s fingerprints would be to find Erwin Bush, but Claire wasn’t sure he would ever be found.

  “Are you willing to consent to being fingerprinted now?” Amaral asked, facing her this time through the wire-rimmed glasses.

  Claire was surprised that Sid Hyland’s ego had let her do most of the talking so far. One reason for his success could be that he was capable of leaving expert testimony to the experts.

  He spoke up now and said, “DNA testing will establish without a doubt whether the corpse is Miranda Kohl or Evelyn Martin.”

  “We don’t do DNA testing when we have other means of identification,” Amaral replied. “The corpse was identified as Evelyn Martin by dental records.”

  “Miranda Kohl’s dentist in Arizona claims that her x-rays were stolen from his office, and he is capable of describing her teeth in detail. You need to see if the x-rays used for identification match Dr. Rule’s description. How well did your dentist know Evelyn Martin? How carefully did he look at the x-rays? Did he treat Evelyn Martin after the supposed time of death and provide her with an opportunity to substitute one x-ray for another? It is my belief that further examination of the dental records will give you ample justification for a DNA test.” Sid Hyland had no compunction about telling Amaral how to do his job. In fact, he seemed to enjoy it.

  He moved on to the credit cards. “Miranda Kohl’s husband claims her credit cards have been used in Los Angeles.”

  “If we establish that the body on Tano Road was Miranda Kohl’s, then I will investigate,” Amaral said.

  “Time is of the essence,” Hyland reminded him. He was being overbearing, but Claire supposed that’s what she was paying him for. She had no doubt that when his bill arrived it would be enormous, but if it removed her from suspicion it would be worth the cost.

  Hyland looked at his watch, stood up and said, “I believe we are done here.”

  “I will need to take the notepad, the tape and the book as evidence,” Amaral said.

  Hyland handed them over. He and Claire had already made copies of the notepad and the tape.

  “If you discover that Evelyn Martin is in Los Angeles, I may be able to help you find her,” Claire said. It was her nature to be accommodating, but she also sensed that she had fallen into the role of playing good defendant to Hyland’s bad lawyer.

  “Thank you for your help,” Amaral said, reverting to his previously deferential manner. He looked at her when he spoke, but his expression was difficult to read.

  After he left the office, Claire asked Hyland what he thought.

  “I believed from the very beginning that you would be your own best witness,” he said. “I doubt if Evelyn Martin would do so well on her own behalf.”

  “She’s a disturbed person,” Claire agreed. Now that the attention had shifted from her to Evelyn, her concern was that Evelyn be apprehended. “Do you think she will ever be caught?”

  “She might not,” Hyland said. “She has shown some intelligence and the police in New Mexico aren’t used to intelligent criminals. Credit card fraud is a federal crime, however. Help is available if Amaral is willing to ask for it.”

  ******

  Traffic was heavy on the drive back to CSWR, giving Claire time to mull over what he had said. Evelyn might have wondered if Claire had been Amaral’s prime suspect but had no way of knowing for sure. If the Santa Fe police started looking for her, she wouldn’t know that either unless they bungled the investigation. Claire would sleep better at night if Evelyn were caught, and she wondered if there was anything she could do to facilitate her capture. The best way to help would be to do what Evelyn had done—enter the mind of someone she had known many years ago. The thief studies the victim. The sleuth should study the thief. In her spare moments Claire tried to get inside Evelyn’s mind. She’d crossed the line from thief to murderer. What would that do to her mental state? What would she do when the credit ran out? There might be other sorority sisters living in California, but contacting them would be a huge risk, a risk Claire wouldn’t be willing to take if she were in Evelyn Martin’s position.

  Chapter Twenty

  CLAIRE BELIEVED THAT MOST LEGAL JARGON WAS BOILERPLATE, but the phrase “time is of the essence” had a poetic ring. Time was of the essence, but it wasn’t on her side when it came to apprehending Evelyn Martin. It would take time to get samples from Miranda’s house that could be tested for DNA, time to compare them to samples taken from the body found on Tano Road. How long would Evelyn stay in California, if she was in California? People on the run tended to head west. If Evelyn got scared or ran out of credit, where would she go next? Hawaii?

  Claire called Brett Moon in Los Angeles. “Have you heard anything about my Confidence-Man!” she asked him.

  “Not a word,” Brett said. “You may be sure that I’ll call you the minute I do.”

  “I have reason to believe that the woman who took the book went to LA and used stolen credit cards there. Sooner or later her credit will run out, and I’m hoping she will try to sell the book. Could you put out word that you have a buyer for The Confidence-Man or would that be too obvious?”

  “It would be obvious to me, but it might not to a person who is desperate and doesn’t know much about rare books.”

  “It might be better just to say you have a customer willing to pay a good price for a first-edition Melville, any Melville.”

  “If your thief is smart, she’ll end up here anyway; this is where the book will bring the most money. I’ll notify all the dealers in town that I have a customer, just in case.”

  “Thanks, Brett.”

  “Glad to help.”

  ******

  The phone became an instrument of torture. Claire waited for word from Brett or Hyland or Amaral, feeling all the while she was a silly schoolgirl hoping a potential boyfriend would call. The phrase “time is of the essence” played over and over in her mind like an annoyingly repetitive TV commercial.

  It took a while for the call to come. When it finally did, she was at home trimming her rosebushes. As soon as she heard the phone ring, she dropped the branch she’d been trimming, pricking her finger on a thorn. “Damn,” she swore. It was evening, the time when anonymous and unavailable were out trolling for suckers. No one she was expecting to call was likely to be working at this hour.

  “You know better than to get excited about phone calls at this time of day,” she said to herself as she ran to the house.

  She picked up the phone hoping for news but saw “unavailable” appear on her caller I.D. She waited for
the pause that comes before a computerized phone dialer kicks in.

  “Claire.” It was Sid Hyland speaking in his cowboy twang. “I have some damn good news. You are no longer a suspect in the death of Evelyn Martin. Her dentist examined his records more carefully and determined that the x-rays used to identify Evelyn Martin were not hers. Furthermore she showed up in his office on April twenty-third claiming she had a toothache. The dentist found nothing wrong and sent her on her way. The teeth in the corpse matched the description given by the dentist in Arizona. The police went to Miranda Kohl’s home and did not find her or her husband. They did find hair in a comb and on her clothes that matched the hair found on your towel. It also matched the DNA in the corpse, but there was no match with any of Evelyn Martin’s samples. Forensics determined that the corpse is Miranda Kohl. Either Evelyn Martin died somewhere else or—”

  “Or she went to LA and used Miranda Kohl’s credit cards,” Claire finished his sentence for him.

  “Entirely possible,” Hyland said.

  “What is being done to find her, do you know?”

  “I don’t,” Hyland said. “I didn’t see that as my concern now that you are no longer a suspect.”

  Claire wondered if he had already lost interest in the case and was ready to move on to the next one, or if he was thinking of how much he charged her every minute they talked. She was still very concerned with what had happened to Evelyn Martin.