The Shadow of Venus Read online

  “Can you show me the book?” Detective Owen asked.

  “I hope so,” Claire replied.

  She took Owen to the Anderson Reading Room, where even a detective had to show ID before being admitted. She went to a balcony shelf and was pleased to find Ancient Sites exactly where it was supposed to be. Claire lifted the book from the shelf, checked the index for Spiral Rocks, and turned to the page. Her stomach lurched again when she discovered a smooth edge where the illustration had once been. Detective Owen placed her illustration beside it and one razor-bladed edge connected with another in a perfect fit. Claire turned to the other illustrated pages in the book and was relieved to see them all in place.

  “Maybe she began with Spiral Rocks intending to work her way through the book,” Owen said.

  “If I were gutting this book for drug money, Spiral Rocks wouldn’t be my first choice,” Claire replied. She showed Detective Owen the Chaco Canyon illustrations, which were even more magnificent than the one of Spiral Rocks. Chaco Canyon was a vast and important ruin created for purposes that still weren’t understood. Spiral Rocks was small and intimate in comparison, created by the forces of nature and not by man.

  “Those rocks look like . . . you know what,” Detective Owen said.

  Claire knew. The Southwest was full of rocks that resembled erect penises. “I don’t think that’s why Jane Doe cut this illustration out,” she said. “Maybe Spiral Rocks represented something to her. If she traded it for China White, you wouldn’t have found both the illustration and the drugs in the storage room, would you?”

  “Unless she traded something else for the China White and planned to trade Spiral Rocks the next time she needed to shoot up.”

  Claire’s eyes circled the reading room. From floor to balcony, from balcony to ceiling, there were rows and rows of valuable books. The story of the Southwest could be found in this room. How would anyone ever establish what had been cut out of the books here? You’d have to open every book, check every page. There were thousands of books in the Anderson Reading Room and many contained artwork. “Do you think there is a drug dealer who would trade drugs for art?”

  “Not at the street level, but maybe higher up. Those guys have to put their money somewhere. Why not collect art? China White is a better class of heroin that we usually see in Albuquerque. Maybe we’re looking at a better class of dealer. On the other hand, Jane may have been selling artwork to another interested party and using the cash to buy drugs. She could also have been turning tricks for drug money.”

  “If Jane Doe was systematically looting books in the Anderson Reading Room, she had to be doing it when there was no one around, which again raises the question of how she got in. She’d need an ID in the daytime and a security code after hours.”

  “What about the cleaning people? Could they have let her in?”

  “No one but staff cleans in the Anderson Reading Room. The security people don’t have a code either. If they find that someone has left a door open, they are supposed to notify Celia Alegria.”

  “She’s on my list,” Detective Owen said.

  Chapter Three

  CLAIRE HAD DINNER WITH HER FRIEND JOHN HARLAN after work and didn’t get home until nine. Her house was dark and her cat, Nemesis, was waiting at the door. She fed him and went into the bathroom. When she turned on the light a flock of moths flew out of her towels and beat their wings against the light fixture. Every few years Albuquerque had a moth infestation. There was nothing to do about it but turn off the lights whenever possible and wait in the dark for them to go away. A moth settled on the windowsill, giving Claire a moment to examine it. The wings were the color of parchment and had a pattern that resembled endpapers. She knew if she touched the wings they would leave a smudge on her fingers. While the moths fluttered around the light, Claire stared at herself in the mirror. What had Jane Doe seen that made her use the word “beautiful”? Claire couldn’t continue to think of the deceased as Jane Doe. She had to find another name for her. If she couldn’t discover the woman’s true identity, she would pick a name herself.

  Claire liked the way her hair looked now—short and curly with hairdresser highlights. She had good bones and robin’s-egg blue eyes. She wasn’t bad looking but it had been a long time since anyone had called her beautiful. Knowing that a joyful expression could momentarily transform most people, Claire tried to bring back the enthusiasm and the radiance she had felt when she introduced Jorge Balboa, but she couldn’t do it. Her features settled into a worried frown. The moths beating against the light were distracting and she was disturbed by the things she’d learned from Detective Owen.

  She turned off the light and paced her house in the dark. The compliment had been so unexpected and so pleasing she had wanted to cherish it, to bring it out of memory from time to time and polish it. She hated to think it came from a drug addict who went around the library after hours cutting illustrations out of valuable books. But until Claire examined every illustrated book the library owned or knew more about the woman, it was a fear likely to come, flapping its wings, out of the night. She didn’t see the woman she met as a street person or an addict, but then how to explain the China White and the plastic bag containing a toothbrush, a change of clothes, a comb, and baby wipes? How to explain how the woman gained access to the basement and the Anderson Reading Room?

  Claire had a more recent edition of Ancient Sites, too recent to be valuable. She went to her bedroom and shut the door, hoping to lock the moths out before she turned on the light. She took the book from her bookshelf and turned to the illustration of Spiral Rocks. In the years since the Duval exploration a great deal had been learned about the sacred sites the expedition visited, some of which—like evidence indicating there was cannibalism at Chaco Canyon—Claire would rather not know. It had been established that some buildings at Chaco Canyon were orientated toward the sun and others toward the phases of the moon. The spiral carved into Fajada Butte recorded solstices, equinoxes, and other cycles with amazing accuracy.

  But little was known about Spiral Rocks. Since it was a small site, located now on private property, it hadn’t been studied the way Chaco Canyon had. Claire looked at Quentin Valor’s illustration of the rocks pointing toward the sky and wondered whether there was any astronomical significance to the site. Was the rock formation worshipped by the Anasazi or used by them in some way as a calendar? Jane Doe had expressed an interest in Venus. It was possible she had an interest in astronomy, too. She might even have taken courses in the subject.

  A solitary moth had made its way into the bedroom and fluttered toward the light with the ardor of an addict. Claire turned off the lamp, but the moth found the warmth and beat its wings against the bulb as if it had discovered a long lost mate. The moth infestation resembled having a house full of unwelcome intruders, restless thoughts, spirits of the dead, and the unnotified next of kin.

  Claire didn’t sleep well, was awake at dawn and at her office by eight. She took her copy of Ancient Sites to work with her. Before she even sat down at her desk, Celia showed up at the door wearing a crimson dress that flattered her vivid coloring and reflected her angry mood.

  “I am deeply, totally, pissed off,” she said.

  “About Jane Doe?”

  “Yes. How in the hell did she get into the basement and into the Anderson Reading Room after hours?”

  “Could she have worked here at some point or been a graduate student?” Claire asked.

  “The detective showed me the photo, but I didn’t recognize her. She hasn’t been an employee or a student at the center since I’ve been here. I never gave Jane Doe a code, but somebody must have.”

  Claire’s mood was beginning to feel like she had dressed in scratchy brown burlap. “Wouldn’t someone have noticed Jane Doe if she was in the Anderson Reading Room after hours? There are security guards on duty then.”

  “There are, but they don’t check ID. Suppose they did see Jane Doe and thought she was a grad student o
r a staff member. Could she have passed for one?”

  “Yes. She wasn’t outrageously dressed or out of control like Ansia.”

  “There are lots of legitimate people who work late in the Anderson Reading Room. Detective Owen is going to show the photo to the guards. Maybe one of them will remember Jane Doe. If the guards find a door open or anything out of order at night they are supposed to report it to me. Every time someone punches in a code anywhere in the center the time and date are recorded. I told Detective Owen I would go through the records and see what I could find.”

  “If s also possible someone carelessly left the door to the Anderson Reading Room open and Jane Doe let herself in.”

  “Well, then, did someone leave the elevator door to the basement open, too? You can’t get into the basement without taking the elevator and the elevator won’t move unless you enter a code.”

  “What’s the room she died in like?” Claire asked. Like most people who worked at the library she avoided the utilitarian part of the basement.

  Celia shrugged. “Beige. Depressing. There isn’t much in there except for empty boxes and dead roaches.”

  “That whole part of the basement is depressing, isn’t it?”

  “Some people think it’s enlivened by ghosts,” Celia said. “Supposedly it’s haunted by the very first librarian here, who is seen from time to time wandering around in a pinafore dress.”

  “Have you ever seen her?” Claire asked.

  “Only her shadow.”

  “Did Detective Owen tell you about the illustration that was cut out of Ancient Sites?”

  “Yeah. I bet you were thrilled about that.”

  “I wasn’t happy. I brought in my own copy,” Claire said, opening it to the Spiral Rocks illustration. “It’s possible Jane Doe cut out this particular illustration because it meant something to her.”

  “The meaning of those rocks is obvious, isn’t it?” Celia said, raising her thick and luxuriant eyebrows.

  “Maybe there’s a deeper meaning.”

  “So to speak,” Celia laughed. “Why are you so interested in Jane Doe?”

  “I met her, or maybe I should say I talked to her. I was standing by the duck pond at dusk last year and she came up and pointed out the Venus-Jupiter conjunction in the evening sky. She told me Venus was so bright it could cast a shadow. She said it was visible in the daytime to those who had eyes to see. Maybe she had an interest in astronomy or archeoastronomy.”

  “Maybe,” Celia said. “The person here who knows the most about that subject is Lawton Davis in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. You should talk to him.”

  “I will. I spoke to Jane Doe again at the Jorge Balboa reading,” Claire continued, “when she offered me a seat. Ansia appeared in the doorway and began to recite an ode to heroin, drowning out Jorge Balboa. I got up to close the door and Jane panicked, pushed me aside, and ran out.” Claire didn’t repeat the “You look beautiful” remark. She felt foolish doing so in front of Celia.

  “Homeless people aren’t in the best of mental health,” Celia said. “Maybe Jane suffered from claustrophobia.”

  “If she was claustrophobic, what was she doing in a locked room in the basement?”

  “She didn’t lock it herself,” Celia said. “The storage rooms have deadbolts that can only be locked with a key. The police didn’t find a key inside the room. Trust me, I asked. Paul Begala in maintenance says he always locked that door before he went home and he locked it on Friday night. He didn’t realize anybody was inside, he says. When he opened it again on Tuesday morning he found Jane Doe dead.

  Because Detective Owen told me to, I’m going to check the records to see who used the code to get into the basement on Friday. But it won’t prove anything. Any number of people could have gone down there on Friday. I pointed out to her that the elevator also stops at the stacks.”

  “What about the Anderson Reading Room records?”

  “I’ll check them, too, but I think it will be the same story. The code only needs to be used after hours, but everybody who works or studies here has a legitimate reason to use the Anderson Reading Room day or night. I have to go.” Celia raised her eyes to the ceiling. “I have a meeting with Harrison.”

  Harrison Hough, their prickly boss, was difficult in the best of times. “I suppose he’s going to get on your case about Jane Doe entering the basement.”

  “I suppose he is,” Celia replied.

  Chapter Four

  CELIA RETURNED TO CLAIRE’S OFFICE JUST BEFORE NOON, scowling in imitation of a disgruntled Harrison. “What did he say?” Claire asked.

  “ ‘We must get to the bottom of this.’ ”

  “He has a knack for stating the obvious.”

  “I was planning to go through the records, anyway. Here’s what I discovered. There were three incidents this spring when security reported to me that they found the door to the Anderson Reading Room open at night but no one inside. On all three occasions the code of a doctoral candidate named Seth Malcolm had been entered. He could easily have left the door open for Jane Doe on his way out.”

  “Did he use the elevator last Friday?”

  “Several times. The last entry was at five P.M. I need to talk to Seth. He’s not entitled to do his research here if he’s been breaking library rules.”

  “I want to be there when you talk to him.”

  That remark elevated Celia’s eyebrows. “Why?”

  “I need to find out if he’s responsible for the stolen illustration.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “We’ve met.” Claire remembered Seth as a lanky, preppy-looking student with long bangs and a nervous gesture of shaking them out of his eyes.

  “He’s writing his dissertation on Tobiah James, and that gives him access to the stacks, the Anderson Reading Room, and everyplace else in the library.”

  Claire knew Tobiah James as an Easterner of independent means who wandered New Mexico in the early twentieth century studying the Pueblo Indians, sketching, and taking voluminous notes.

  They discussed where to meet Seth. Claire was in favor of somewhere far away from campus where they wouldn’t run into anybody they knew.

  “But then I’d have to explain why I want to see him,” Celia said. “I want to surprise him with what I know.”

  “What about Detective Owen? Won’t she want to talk to him?” Claire asked.

  “Sure, but I want to do it first. As Harrison just reminded me, supervising the codes is my responsibility. It’s my job that’s on the line here. We’d be better off hiding in plain sight someplace nearby. Then Seth won’t suspect it’s a big deal. He’ll think I’m just assigning him a new code. How about the Frontier?”

  It was a popular restaurant right across Central from the university. “All right,” Claire said.

  ******

  Celia left a note in Seth’s box asking him to meet her there the following afternoon. She and Claire arrived on time, sat at the window, and watched the street life pass by on Central while they waited for Seth to show up. As the time dragged on Claire asked Celia how she would interpret Seth’s tardiness.

  Celia’s voice was acerbic with sarcasm. “Let me see. He got wrapped up in his work and forgot? He doesn’t wear a watch? He thinks his time is more valuable than ours? He’s a space case? He doesn’t want to meet me because he’s feeling guilty or embarrassed?”

  “Is he a New Mexican?” Claire asked. New Mexicans were known for their elastic sense of time. Trying to get two New Mexicans together could take all day.

  “No. He’s from the East,” Celia replied. “He got his B.A. in American Studies from Boston University.”

  “What brought him to UNM?”

  “He got a fellowship to pursue a doctorate on Tobiah James. James was also from the East. Maybe Seth felt a connection. His advisor told me that he hasn’t been doing his work and is in danger of losing his fellowship.”

  “He’s been seen doing research, hasn’t he?
”

  “He’s been spending time in the library, but he hasn’t been turning in his papers.”

  “Which raises the question of whether he was doing something else in the library.”

  “Like stealing illustrations?” Celia asked.

  “It’s possible,” Claire said.

  While Celia poured sugar into her espresso, Claire looked out the window and noticed Seth dodging traffic as he crossed the street. In the carnival atmosphere of Central Avenue, he looked alien in his khakis and white shirt with the collar open and the sleeves buttoned at the wrist. His preppy way of dressing made him stand out, reminding Claire of the way Jane Doe’s pallid neatness made her stand out. Their very inconspicuousness made them conspicuous. Claire watched Seth slouch as he walked with his head down and his hands in his pockets. The mother in her wanted to admonish him to straighten up.

  “Here he comes,” she said to Celia.

  “At that speed it’ll be another twenty minutes before he gets inside,” Celia replied. She went to the door and waved to Seth. When he didn’t respond, she yelled at him. He looked up and quickened his pace.

  After he entered the restaurant he went to the counter, got himself a Coke, and brought it over to the table. Before he sat down he took off his backpack and put it on the floor. His bangs separated as he bent over to sip the Coke, revealing a premature white streak in his mouse brown hair.

  Celia introduced Claire.

  “We’ve met, haven’t we?” he asked. “Aren’t you the rare-book expert?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s this about?” he asked Celia. “Are you assigning me a new code?”

  “Have you heard about the woman who was found dead in the storage room?”

  “Yeah. Sure. Of course. Hasn’t everybody?”

  “Did you know her?”

  “She hasn’t been identified. So how could I say whether I knew her or not?”

  “I’ll ask the investigating officer to show you her photo,” Claire said.

  Seth’s eyes widened as if the words “investigating officer” had set off an alarm. He turned back to his Coke and it gurgled as he sucked on the straw.