The Stolen Blue Page 8

  She figured there had to be a way to search a person’s screen name on the Internet. Claire went to Netscape, clicked on e-mail finder, entered her own name, and got the message that no listings matched her search criteria. Either AOL had honored her request not to list her name or e-mail finder was not yet state of the art. Then she did a reverse lookup to see if searching her e-mail address would produce her name. Once she put out her request, a seller might search to see who her screen name belonged to, but the chances were good the seller wouldn’t find her. Once again, she got the message that no listings matched her search criteria.

  Claire couldn’t list too many of the stolen books without alerting the thief. The scarcity of the limited edition of the Austin/Adams folio made it far too obvious. She decided to try The Brave Cowboy; it was hard to find, but first editions did show up every now and then. If Rex had been lying, he might respond to her query. Since she didn’t know whether she was looking for an amateur or a professional, she put her query on Alibris, Bibliofind, and rec.arts. Her message read, “Collector seeking The Brave Cowboy by Edward Abbey, very fine, will pay top dollar.” She decided to leave off the dust jacket as a way of testing Rex. She gave no phone number or snail mail address. The only way to respond would be by e-mail. Claire had set her trap. There was nothing to do but wait and see if anyone took the bait.

  She preferred using AOL at night. Looking at the subject lines of her unsolicited messages in the morning could ruin the day, but the next morning she was eager to see if her query had gotten any response. She had fifteen messages, all of them trying to catch her eye with a subject line that was only a few words long. Six messages came from the hotmail list server. “Hi,” said Tanya and Michelle. “Hot college stud,” said Brad. Claire made it a point to automatically delete anything that came from hotmail. She had tried to block it, but the gods of cyber space had not favored her request. If biblio thieves were people who had great sex and liked Nostradamus’s prophecies, then AOL users were people who had perverted cyber sex, a bad credit rating, and wanted to get rich setting up pyramid schemes from home.

  The only subject line that interested Claire was two parentheses reversed and back-to-back that came from 876543@compuserve. She opened that one and found the entire message was a smiling face composed of parentheses, dots, and dashes. It might be a spam mail wishing millions of people a nice day. It could have come from someone who’d seen The Brave Cowboy query and figured out it came from her. It could even have come from Rex Barker. It wasn’t the e-mail address she had for him, but he might have more than one account or be using someone else’s. It was easy to get paranoid when dealing on the Internet. Claire composed a frowning face with parentheses and dashes and a period for the nose, hit the send now button, and returned it to the sender.

  Chapter Six

  ON FRIDAY MORNING CLAIRE TOOK THE DAY OFF from the library and returned to the Blue. She needed to get there on a weekday to take care of the business at the bank. It was a cold morning, and ice clustered all over her windshield. Her breath hovered in front of her while she scraped off the ice. She drove across town on Paseo del Norte and saw smoke rising from chimneys in the Valley as it might have risen from fires long before the conquistadors arrived. A heron-shaped cloud floated above the West Mesa. A flock of ravens lifted off a power line, rising and falling like notes on a musical score. On I-25 the road belonged to distracted commuters putting on makeup and talking on cell phones. On I-40 it belonged to truckers determined to make it to California. After she turned south on State Highway 117 an hour later, the road belonged to her. The highway set her mind wandering.

  Claire had spent the summer after her sophomore year of college traveling around Europe. She started out with her girlfriends but ended up with Pietro, an Italian student she met in Spain. Her friends went back to France, but Claire and Pietro continued south in his VW van, having coffee in a café every morning, picking out a place on the map and going there. They took the ferry from Algeciras to Tangiers. From Tangiers they went south to Rabat, Casablanca, Fez, and Marrakesh, wandering through a maze of medinas. Many people saw a resemblance to Spain in the high plains of New Mexico, but in the narrow, winding streets of the adobe pueblos, Claire could see Morocco, too. It intrigued her that the Spaniards had ended up in a place so similar to the one they’d left behind.

  Traveling with Pietro, Claire discovered the pleasures of the lines between the dots on the map, that it was the going that mattered, not the destination. She didn’t return to school until the spring semester. Pietro was the first romance of her life. She thought he would be the last, but they quarreled and separated in Venice, and three years later she was married to Evan, who never picked a place on a map and just went. When he traveled every stop was planned, every motel and restaurant recommended in the AAA guidebook, budgets were followed, mileage was calculated. When Evan got stuck in traffic, he swore and pounded the steering wheel. They argued over what to listen to on the radio. Evan liked talk shows and PBS. Claire liked music. Poor Melissa, Claire thought, inserting Vivaldi into her CD.

  Having a job and doing it well was rewarding. Having a family and watching them grow and thrive had been deeply satisfying. But Claire had never forgotten the lure of the open road and a day with no agenda, and she still wondered what had become of Pietro, whether he’d gotten middle-aged, bald, and fat, whether he was even alive. In some ways, her life was an open highway again, with a yellow line curving in front of her. She thought little of driving a couple of hundred miles to see a friend. She’d gotten across the hormonal divide, and could have thirty or more healthy years to do whatever she wanted. Sometimes she felt the divorce had pushed her out of the nest with her wings still wet. It wasn’t where she’d expected to be at this point in life, but it wasn’t a bad place to be, either. She lived in a time when people had to reinvent themselves; jobs were lost, marriages dissolved. Tai chi said a practitioner should always be ready to shift her base if the floor gave way, to imagine she was stepping on thin ice about to break or that stones moved under her as she crossed a river.

  Claire looked at the new glass on the other side of the cab and at the passenger’s seat, where the stolen books had been, and felt she was stepping on unsteady stones. In the time since Burke’s death, the ache had dulled, but it was still there. She sent her thoughts about Burke and the will into the air like trial balloons with strings attached. What if she were wrong about his death and Samantha were right? Could Mariah have gotten Burke outside under the cottonwood tree if he didn’t want to go? If he’d objected, he could have raised his voice and woken Claire, who was just down the hallway. Would he have gone outside willingly in the middle of the night if he hadn’t wanted to die? And how could Mariah have gotten away with pretending to be someone she wasn’t? Wouldn’t Burke have known whether or not she was his daughter? He had introduced her as his daughter and seemed perfectly rational when he did so. Another puzzle was why Burke had chosen Claire for the difficult job of being his personal representative. She released a balloon marked resentment into the air, but held onto one marked responsibility. He had trusted her, and she couldn’t let him down. When the estate was settled, maybe she would get in her truck and go somewhere. She might even leave her truck behind and return to Europe. It would be interesting to travel around Europe again with the Mediterranean at her side. She had never been back in all these years.

  When she reached Reserve, she stopped at the bank and made arrangements to access Burke’s account, and then she went to the sheriff’s office. She was relieved to find Sheriff Henner sitting at his desk and not out cruising the back roads of Catron County.

  Henner stood up when he saw her and extended his bear paw hand. “Ms. Reynier. What are you doing in Reserve?”

  “I’m settling up matters with the Lovell estate.”

  The sheriff smiled, turning his face into a maze of wrinkles, cracked and dry as the desert floor. “You have your work cut out for you with that family. I got the copy of
the will, by the way. Thanks for sending it.”

  “You’re welcome. How’s the investigation coming?”

  “The DA hasn’t decided whether or not he’s going to prosecute. He’s waiting to get the drug screen back. The daughter from Santa Fe was in here angry as a hornet. I don’t know as I blame her now that I’ve seen the will. Mariah’s an outsider in Catron County. Some people will hold that against her. Still, here we believe a man’s got a right to choose how and when he wants to die. But like 1 said, it’s up to the DA. Give my regards to Corinne while you’re in the Blue.”

  “I’ll do that,” Claire said.

  ******

  As she drove down the dirt road into the Blue, Claire thought of the Spanish word caracol, meaning snail, spiral staircase, winding road. Snow was melting in the higher elevations. The river was up and rushing under the bridge to the ranch. There would be no footing at all on the stones today. As she crossed the bridge, Claire saw a woman on horseback galloping across the field. The woman seemed perfectly attuned to the rhythms of the horse. Watching her, Claire could understand how the Native Americans, who had never seen a horse before the Spaniards arrived, had the impression that horse and rider were one. Her childhood had been full of music lessons, dancing lessons, and tennis lessons, but she hadn’t gone through a horse phase, unlike most of her girlfriends, or ever considered the possibility that she and a horse could move as one. To her, a horse was a stubborn animal determined to dump her and race back to the stable to eat. After Dancer succeeded in throwing her into the mud, Claire never rode again.

  She parked her truck near the house. The rider, Mariah, approached, pulling up on the reins and bringing the horse to a halt. The horse stood while Claire talked to Mariah, but it wasn’t still. Its black coat was slick with sweat. It snorted and danced in place. This was the kind of horse that would have taken Claire’s measure and thrown her immediately. Mariah’s face was flushed. Her black hair tumbled loose around her head. “Good to see you,” she said.

  “How are you?” Claire replied.

  “All right. Let me put Burr in the corral, and I’ll meet you inside.”

  “Okay.”

  She was greeted at the front door by Corinne, who looked as if she hadn’t eaten since the last time Claire was there, and a forlorn Roamer, whose long ears drooped closer to the ground. As soon as the door opened, Claire caught the odor of something cooking.

  “It smells delicious,” she said.

  “I’ve been cooking for you.”

  “You didn’t need to do that.”

  “I wanted to.”

  The women hugged. Claire bent over and scratched Roamer’s head. “Are you all right, Corinne?”

  “Getting by.”

  “Sheriff Henner says hello.”

  “You saw him in Reserve?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where’s Eric?”

  “Taking a nap.”

  They went inside and sat down in the kitchen. Roamer flopped at Claire’s feet. Corinne gave her a cup of hot cider with a stick of cinnamon. Claire breathed in the smell of the spice. “Did you get my letter about the will?” she asked.

  Corinne nodded. “Yes.”

  “Samantha came to see me.”

  “I know.” Corinne got up from the table and went to the stove, turning her back to Claire.

  When Claire told her about the theft of the books, Corinne didn’t respond. Claire asked if there was anything she’d like from Burke’s collection, and Corinne replied, “Not really.”

  “What time is dinner?” Claire asked.

  “Around six. I’m cooking a ham.”

  “Why don’t I get started on the papers, then?”

  “You know where the office is.”

  Claire left Corinne in the kitchen and walked through the living room, where the hunting trophies were staring blankly at the ashes in the fireplace. There was no fire burning in the woodstove in the library, and the room seemed cold and empty. Her footsteps echoed as she walked across the bare floor. The books on the shelves had provided soundproofing and insulation. She had expected to find the shelves still empty, but some of them had been taken over by squatters: fat ceramic figurines and frilly dolls, the kind of trite knickknacks that made Claire squirm. There was printed material on the shelves, too: paperbacks, hardcovers, and magazines, which she stopped to examine. The magazines were Good Housekeeping, Martha Stewart Living, and Redbook. The hardcovers were cookbooks. The paperbacks were romances with Fabio (or Fabio clones) and big-breasted women in ripped bodices on the covers, books with tattered covers that would bring a quarter at a paperback exchange, books with plots that were so identical, the only reason to read them was to induce sleep. Someone had made their mark on Burke’s den, and Claire supposed it was Corinne.

  She hurried out of the library and into the office, where she found that the computer had been dusted and the top of the desk cleared. Had Burke ever been that organized? she wondered. Or had someone been in here cleaning and rearranging his things? She’d been comfortable packing Burke’s books in the library, but she felt like an intruder in the office. Still, it was something that had to be done, and the sooner she got started, the sooner she would finish. She straightened her back, opened the drawers, and began examining the files.

  When Corinne called her to dinner, Claire had found Burke’s copy of the will, a folder of bills that needed to be paid, bank books, checks, and a stock portfolio. The liquid assets were as he had said—eight hundred thousand dollars, two hundred thousand for each devisee. There were no mortgage statements for the ranch, indicating he’d owned it free and clear. Claire found the insurance policy and an appraisal establishing the ranch’s value at two million dollars, even more than she had expected. The only important paper she couldn’t locate was the deed to the ranch.

  “Do you know where your father kept the deed?” she asked Corinne.

  “No.”

  “Did he have a safe here or a safe deposit box at the bank?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  They sat down for dinner under the antler chandelier along with Jed, Mariah, and Eric. The baked ham had been cured with something smoky and sweet, and was delicious. Eric chattered away, but the adults said little. Claire wondered how these people could eat together night after night without talking. There are three ways of being, she thought. The best is to live with someone you love. The second best is to live alone but have good friends. The third (and worst) is to live with someone you can’t stand or have nothing in common with.

  When dinner was over, Claire asked Mariah to meet her in the living room after she put Eric to bed. While she waited, she started a fire in the stone fireplace, then sat in front of it, absorbing the warmth and trying to ignore the glassy eyes of the antelope and buffalo at her back.

  “I expected to find you in the library,” Mariah said when she showed up. “I call this the dead animal room. I’m going to take them out of here once this house is mine.”

  “They do have a presence,” Claire replied. “But the library has a different feeling now that Burke’s books are gone. I feel even less comfortable there.”

  “Corinne has left her mark.”

  “Who would have thought it would be so…” Claire searched for the right word. Insipid? Banal? “Domestic,” she said.

  “Corinne is a domestic person.”

  “How is it working out with the two of you living here without Burke?”

  “Fine,” Mariah said. “She has her interests, I have mine. She stays in the library and the kitchen. I spend a lot of time outside. She’s good with Eric.”

  Mariah sat down in a leather chair on the other side of the fire. The rest of the room receded into the shadows. It was as good a time as any to talk about difficult things. “Did you get my letter about the will?”

  Mariah’s eyes reflected back the flame. “Yes.”

  “Samantha came to see me. The family is very unhappy about the terms.”

  “I know.�
��

  “They’re talking about contesting it.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “That Burke was under the influence of drugs and alcohol, and not competent when he signed it.”

  “That’s not true.”

  Claire looked into the fire and found encouragement in the leaps of the flames. “Samantha also believes you are not who you say you are.”

  “Meaning?”

  “That you are not Burke’s daughter.”

  “That’s a lie!” Mariah’s eyes were bright, her cheeks flushed. “And I can prove it.” She jumped out of her chair and ran from the room.

  The fire had gotten too hot, and Claire pushed her chair back. An advantage to a woodstove was that it was easier to control the flow of air and dampen the flame. The fireplace damper was over the flames and unreachable at this point. This fire would just have to burn hot until it burned itself out. In a few minutes Mariah came back with a folded-up document that she handed to Claire.