The Shadow of Venus (13 page)

“The reporter from the
Denver Post
is waiting,” Jennifer said. “It's an important interview, Edward; you know that.”

“I'm sure it is,” he said.

“Have we met before?” Jennifer asked Claire.

Wrapped around that simple question was the more complex question of Who are you, anyway, and what are you doing alone with Edward at the crack of dawn? “We haven't actually met,” Claire said. “I talked to you over the phone about coming here.”

“I talk to so many people,” Jennifer said, throwing her hands up in an exasperated gesture. “It's hard to remember them all. What's that?” She looked at the photocopy of the painting Edward held.

“It's a copy of a painting of a young woman who died in the basement of the library at the University of New Mexico, where Claire works,” Edward said. “She brought me this.”

Jennifer turned away from the picture as if it were an annoying insect that she wished would fly away without her having to learn any more about it. She seemed either remarkably uncurious or totally focused on the task of promoting Edward Girard as she changed the subject to his appointment. “The reporter's name is Laura St. James,” she said to him. “She brought a photographer with her and they'd like to photograph you in a few minutes at the rocks.
If
that's all right.”

“I'm
afraid it is a necessary evil,” Edward groaned. “Can I keep this?” he asked Claire, indicating the photocopy.

“Of course,” Claire said. She handed him her card. “Could you send me a copy of the newspaper clipping?”

“If I can find it.”

“Thanks for your help,” she said.

“Thank you for coming.”

Chapter
Fifteen

A
S
C
LAIRE WALKED BACK ACROSS THE MESA
to her truck, she thought about the relationship between Edward and Jennifer. Were they merely business partners or were they also lovers? Where had Jennifer spent the night and how did she manage to be so well groomed so early in the morning? Claire's own slept-in jeans reflected every toss and turn she'd made inside her sleeping bag. Her hair, far from sleek and perfect, had fallen into the mussed-up style known in Hollywood as bed head. She had put on no makeup. Jennifer's sleek style and forceful personality seemed in opposition to Edward's laid-back reserve. But opposites attract, and one thing they had in common was ambition for Edward. Could that make Jennifer the one woman who could tolerate Edward's devotion to his work? When he succeeded, she would, too.

Other campers were packing up and leaving Spiral Rocks in the early morning light. Claire followed their dust down the winding dirt road. She was glad to finally get back on a paved highway. At the first pull-off she came to, she stopped and took out her map. Taos was out of her way but not by much. It was easier to get there from here than it would be from Albuquerque. She was tired, but now that she was on the path of learning about Maia, her adrenaline began to kick in. She'd found Maia's possible next of kin and delivered the terrible news, but instead of ending her quest it had sent it in another direction. Claire put away the map, turned her truck back onto the highway, reversed her direction, and headed southeast to Taos.

It was four hours of glorious mountain scenery and picturesque small towns, a spectacular drive from Spiral Rocks, yet Edward claimed he'd never made the trip to see his own daughter. Claire knew there were men who lived in the same town as their children and never bothered to see them. It wasn't miles that kept the dads away. It was indifference or guilt or fear—or hatred of the mothers. She also knew that different rules were likely to be applied to the very talented. If an artist created enduring and monumental work, his failings as a father or a human being would be forgiven. Claire believed that Edward's work was significant and would endure, yet his daughter might have died of an overdose, homeless and alone. What kind of legacy was that? Claire admired him as an artist but not as a parent. A parent should never have let his daughter get away; a parent should have tracked Maia down wherever she went.

Claire had heard of the Cave Commune, one of those places in New Mexico where the sixties never ended. She knew it was located somewhere between Arroyo Hondo and Taos. She took the road in
from
Lama and followed the signs to Cave Commune on the wide open, windswept, sagebrush mesa. Some places were too vast for human habitation and Claire considered this one. She pulled into the commune, a cluster of dwellings built into the side of a south-facing ridge. She saw a kind of desolation here, a sense of poverty and unfulfilled dreams. Dogs ran loose, yapping at each other. A string of Buddhist prayer flags flapped in the wind. The colors had faded and the edges were whipped into tatters. It surprised Claire that Damon Fitzgerald was considered the architect and Edward Girard the artist. Girard's domes had pleasing proportions and were carefully placed. Fitzgerald's houses were not well situated and they seemed unfinished. They looked like dwellings where the skylights leaked and let in cold air, houses that were always cold and damp—not an easy feat to accomplish in New Mexico. Claire saw imagination here, but she also saw carelessness. She parked her truck and climbed out to greet the barking dogs.

A young woman came out of one of the cave houses balancing a baby on her hip. She looked like she belonged more on Central Avenue than in the high clear air of Taos. Her style was similar to Lisa Teague's but even more streetwise. The thighs of her jeans were sandblasted white. Her red tank top had spaghetti straps that didn't even try to cover the straps of her black bra. Her hair was held loosely in place with a plastic butterfly clip. She had golden rings in the side of her nose and a stud marking the middle of her tongue. It wasn't a look Claire expected to find in Taos. She'd been expecting tired hippie gear, but she reminded herself that every generation has to defy its parents' rules and reinvent the blue jean.

“Shut up,” the girl said to the dogs. “Hey,” she said to Claire.

“Hello,” Claire replied.

“Can I help you?”

“I'm looking for information about a girl named June Reid who used to live here.”

“Sure, I knew June. We were good friends, but she left after her mother died and she never came back.”

“Her mother was Veronica?”

“Yeah.” The girl shooed the dogs away and began to bounce the baby up and down in her arms. It amused the infant, who smiled and giggled, but the bouncing made Claire nervous.

“How did she die?” Claire asked, checking Edward's story.

“She jumped into the Rio Grande Gorge. It was a shitty thing to do, if you ask me. She coulda hung on for her daughter's sake.”

“Veronica killed herself?”

“That's what I think. The police say she coulda fallen, but who falls accidentally into the Rio Grande Gorge unless they've already got one foot over the edge? Things got tough and Veronica gave up.” She started swinging the baby back and forth headfirst, as if it was about to become a guided missile.
Claire
cringed.

“What kind of things?” she asked.

“Oh … things,” the girl said.

“I have a copy of a painting by an artist in Albuquerque. Could you tell me whether it's a picture of June?”

“Sure.”

The girl's arms were busy with the baby, so Claire pulled the picture out of the folder and held it in front of her eyes.

“Yup, that's June all right,” the girl said, “when she was around twelve or thirteen. She was so pretty then, just like her mother. She coulda been a model, but she stopped taking care of herself after her mother died. That girl there with the black hair all the way down her back is Sophie Roybal. That girl on the right is me. So many of the girls have left now. There's no one left to hang with anymore.”

“Maureen!” A woman yelled from the doorway of the house. “Who's that you're talking to?”

The woman came out of the house and the dogs began barking again. She had the worn sixties look Claire had expected to find—faded jeans, sandals, and a T-shirt without a bra. Her breasts wriggled like a litter of puppies as she walked. She was Maureen forty pounds heavier, thirty years older. Maureen with a hostile attitude.

“This lady's lookin' for June Reid,” Maureen said.

By now the woman stood next to them. “Stop bouncing the baby,” she told Maureen.

“Sure, Ma,” the girl responded, catching the baby and hugging it in her arms.

“Why are you looking for June?” the mother asked, adding more creases to her already weathered face as she narrowed her eyes and squinted at Claire.

“I'm not looking
for
her. I'm looking for information about her. I work at the library at UNM in Albuquerque. A homeless woman died recently in a storage room in the basement. She left no ID, but I have reason to believe it was June.”

“Aw, shit!” Maureen cried, squeezing the baby tight. “June died?” Echoing her distress, the baby began to whimper.

Claire showed the older woman the picture. “An artist in Albuquerque painted this picture of the woman who died. Can you tell me if it's June?” The reaction she'd been getting from the picture was turning into her own jolt of java that kept her alert on a day when exhaustion might have turned her into a stone.

“Who knows? It could be anybody,” the woman said, burying her reaction in another squint.

“C'mon, Ma,” Maureen said. “You know that's June.” She pointed at the picture. “That's Sophie Roybal and that's me.”

“I
don't know that,” the woman said. “You can't even see the other girls' faces. If June died, it would be sad, but I can't say that's a picture of her or anybody else I know. Come on, Maureen, let's take the baby inside. She's getting too much sun.”

“Is Damon Fitzgerald around?” Claire asked.

“He doesn't live here anymore,” the woman said, turning away from Claire.

“He lives in town now on—,” Maureen began.

“I said go inside,” her mother interrupted.

“It's no big deal, Ma. Everybody knows where Damon lives.”

“Go inside,” her mother insisted. She put her hand on Maureen's back, guiding her and the baby into the house, where she shut the door behind them.

If there was a deadbolt, Claire had no doubt it had clicked into place. The mother's actions had raised a number of questions but had ended any further investigation at Cave Commune.

Chapter
Sixteen

C
LAIRE GOT BACK INTO HER TRUCK AND DROVE INTO TOWN
. Taos was still small enough that a few queries were all it took to locate Damon Fitzgerald. At the third convenience store she found someone to give her directions to where he lived. The combination of bad road and magnificent houses reminded her of the saying in Santa Fe that the better the neighborhood, the worse the road. Damon had gone from a cave house worth maybe a hundred thousand dollars to a mud hut worth at least half a million. His new residence was a beautifully restored, sprawling adobe with a hand-carved door that was a work of art in itself.

Claire parked and walked up to the door, wondering whether he'd found out about her visit to the compound yet. It wouldn't take any time to make a phone call from there to here.

A woman with a round, smooth face came to the door. It was a face that had no visible bone structure, one that appeared to reflect back what others thought before it expressed the woman's own desires. Her pale hair was pulled back in a knot. She wore a pink cotton sundress. Her friendly manner suggested that she didn't consider Claire a threat.

“Hello,” the woman said.

“Hello,” Claire responded. “I'm looking for Damon Fitzgerald. Is he here?”

“He's working in his studio. Can I help?”

“I'd like to talk to him.”

“What's it about?”

“June Reid.”

Anxiety ruffled the placid surface of the woman's face. “I'll get him. What did you say your name was?”

“Claire Reynier. I work at UNM library in Albuquerque. And you are?”

“Sharon Miller. Just a minute,” the woman said, but it took several minutes for her to return. Claire waited at the door. She watched a truck approach and stir up a cloud of dust. She listened to a dog bark and a raven caw. She admired the distant purple mountains.

Eventually the door reopened and the woman said, “Come in.”

She led Claire down a hallway with a polished wooden floor, through a living room decorated with elegant antiques, into a room at the back of the house furnished in a kind of fifties kitsch with plastic bucket chairs that were amusing to look at but uncomfortable to sit in. The door on the far side of the
room
opened onto a lush rose garden. The door was open and a man stood in front of it wearing a faded T-shirt and paint-splattered pants. His hair was thick and curly—black with gray highlights. His eyes were a startling sapphire blue. He wasn't tall—about five feet ten—but he had broad shoulders and muscular arms. His stomach, however, showed the beginnings of a paunch. He had a forceful and dynamic presence that seemed too large for this room, too large for this house, maybe even too large for Taos.

“I'm Damon Fitzgerald,” he said, stepping into the room and extending a paint-stained hand.

“Claire Reynier,” she replied.

“What is it you do at UNM?”

“I'm a librarian and an archivist at the Center for Southwest Research.”

“That's at Zimmerman, right?”

“Right.”

“People always think of Zimmerman as a temple to higher learning. It was a major commission for John Gaw Meem. He could have broken away from those boring Southwest conventions—the vigas, the corbels, the endless latillas—and done something bold and original. Even in his day the Southwest style was ripe for reinvention.”