The Shadow of Venus (19 page)

Claire
agreed that those events were all terrible.

“Did June tell you about her meeting with Bill? I hope he didn't frighten her when he talked to her.”

Claire couldn't help noticing that this was the second time in a very brief conversation that Bettina Hartley had hoped her husband hadn't frightened a vulnerable woman. Although the only information Claire had about Bill's meeting with June came from Bill himself, it was tempting to answer “Actually, he scared the hell out of June” just to see what kind of a reaction that would get from Bettina, but that was a lie and lying was a line Claire wasn't ready to cross.

“He told me the librarian at the Main Library on Copper asked him to leave,” Claire said. “I gather he raised his voice, which could be intimidating to someone as fragile as June.”

“Well, sometimes he loses his temper and does raise his voice, but that's as far as it ever goes. Really. Bill is very strong, of course; he won an Iron Man Triathlon last year, but he would never
hurt
anyone.” Bettina tugged the leather strap of her shoulder bag for emphasis. “I know the police will understand that when they talk to him.”

“I would think if he was going to hurt anyone, it would be Damon Fitzgerald,” Claire said.

“He gets angry whenever he sees Damon and punches the steering wheel, but that's the only way he expresses it. I'm sure if Bill got into a physical fight with Damon, he would win. But Bill would never resort to physical violence. Never.”

Claire wondered whether Bettina meant physical violence with a man or with anybody. Was Bill Hartley a man who had a taboo about not fighting other men but was unable to control himself when it came to women? Had Bill ever hurt Bettina or his own daughter? Why had Bettina brought up the subject of her husband's temper? “Bill seemed very upset by Damon's affair with your daughter,” Claire said.

“Rose always was a daddy's girl,” Bettina replied. “She could do no wrong in her father's eyes. He puts her on a pedestal, and of course it was terrible for Damon to get involved with her. But she was sixteen. She wasn't a child. Bill forgets that we were sixteen when we got together and only eighteen when Rose was born. She'll get over Damon. It's good for her to be out of Taos and away from all the gossip, but we miss her. We're a close family. Bill's hope is that Damon will be put in prison and then Rose will want to come back home.”

“I was told that people were very angry with Veronica about June,” Claire said.

“Very
angry.” Bettina swung her ponytail for emphasis. “She should have protected her daughter. Absolutely. Do you think that June could have inherited a suicidal tendency from her mother? Is that possible?”

“June's father thinks so,” Claire said.

“That's good, isn't it? I mean better that than someone else harmed June.”

“The
police have found no evidence to support that,” Claire said.

“It's very sad that June died. Very sad. Now it looks like the most Damon Fitzgerald will ever get is a slap on the wrist.”

“Unless he does it again.”

“Do you think he will in Taos with everybody watching their daughters now and watching him?”

Claire recalled a sexual offender who came to New Mexico after serving his prison sentence but was hounded and driven from town to town, never being allowed to stay in one place long enough to cause any harm. She couldn't imagine that happening to Damon Fitzgerald. He was too shrewd, too cunning, too capable of turning on the charm when he had to. “I don't know,” Claire said.

“Well, I don't want to take up any more of your time,” Bettina said, giving Claire's hand a little pat. “I just thought I'd stop by and visit for a while while Bill was busy with the APD. You've been very helpful. Thank you so much.”

Claire watched Bettina walk away. A decisive swish of the ponytail seemed to imply she thought this meeting had accomplished something. But what? was Claire's question. Bettina had obviously been looking for information about Bill's meetings with Claire and with June. Did she fear he'd been violent or threatening? Bettina was likely to know more about her husband's capacity for violence than anyone else, but how much of that knowledge would she share? Bettina struck Claire as one of those women with a cheerful, self-effacing manner who tries to make things better but ends up making them worse, which could indicate a subconscious desire to mess things up. If there had been any incidents of domestic violence in the Hartley household, Allana Bruno would know about it, unless the violence had never been reported.

Claire went back to her office, wondering whether Bill knew about Bettina's visit. She waited all afternoon to see if he would show up or call himself, but he never did.

Chapter
Twenty-three

T
HE FOLLOWING DAY
C
LAIRE TOOK ADVANTAGE
of her lunch hour to drive downtown to Copper to the main branch of the public library. She parked on the corner of Sixth Street in front of a parking meter painted with art deco swirls. A homeless man had parked his shopping cart piled high with clothes and bedrolls beside the library. Claire was glad to see that he was engrossed in a book.

She walked around the corner and went through the library's main entrance. There was fluorescent lighting in this library and red plastic chairs at laminated tables. Security guards in blue windbreakers were strategically placed. This library had none of the charm of Zimmerman and it seemed strange to Claire that Maia would hang out here. It was possible she got sick of being in the same place all the time or maybe being at Zimmerman 24/7 made her too easy to find.

Before she left her office Claire did her homework and learned that the librarian she needed to talk to was named Dorothy Bronwin. She took the elevator to the second floor and went through the glass door marked
ADMINISTRATIVE TECHNICAL SERVICES
. Dorothy was in her office clicking away at her keyboard. Claire tapped on the open door and Dorothy looked up.

“May I come in? I'm Claire Reynier.”

Dorothy didn't stand up and say “Welcome,” but she didn't say “Go away, I'm busy,” either, so Claire stepped into the office. “I work at the Center for Southwest Research at UNM.” Claire did not follow Bettina's example and add a question mark to the end of her sentence. She was who she was, even though she knew that might cause resentment here. Public librarians tended to think of university librarians as humorless and arrogant intellectuals. University librarians worked in a highly competitive atmosphere where they were forced to act humble until they were granted tenure and earned the right be as arrogant as everyone else. Claire had been in academia long enough to know how often arrogance masked insecurity.

“Dorothy Bronwin,” the librarian said. Her bright red lipstick bled into the cracks around her mouth. Her hair was too black to be real. She didn't get up from her desk, so it was hard for Claire to judge how tall she was, although the size of her upper body indicated she was a large woman. There wasn't an uncluttered surface in the office to sit on, which left Claire standing and towering over Dorothy, not a position she wanted to be in.

“Did you ever encounter a homeless woman who called herself Maia and spent some time here?” Claire asked Dorothy.

“That's
the woman who died in the basement of Zimmerman?”

“Yes.”

“She came here sometimes. She was quiet and kept to herself.”

“Was there some kind of altercation with a man a couple of weeks ago?”

“I wouldn't say it was an altercation—more of an argument.” Dorothy swung around in her desk chair to face Claire. “How did you know about that?”

“The man involved told me. His name is Bill Hartley and he's a ski instructor in Taos.”

“Did he say it was an altercation?”

“Not really. He said he raised his voice and was asked to leave.”

“That's right.” Dorothy put her elbows on her desk. “Well, if he told you all about it, then what can I do for you?”

“I don't know that he did tell me all about it,” Claire said.

“Maia died of an overdose in Zimmerman, right?”

“Apparently.”

“Does it matter now what happened here?”

“It might.” Dorothy was making her work for every tidbit of information. Claire believed that was the price she paid for being a university librarian. It was annoying but she felt she had to continue.

“The man raised his voice. A security guard asked him to be quiet or leave. He apologized and left, but then he came back and the argument started all over again. The guard was new to the job and she called me. This sort of disruption happens all the time here.”

“It happens at Zimmerman, too,” Claire said.

“Well, you have more security at Zimmerman. Here we have a couple of guards and we have me.” Dorothy laughed. “I will say that this man was a better class of troublemaker than we usually get. He was clean, sober, sane. I thought he might be someone from Maia's past. When I told him I would have to call the police if he didn't leave, he apologized and left. That was the end of it. I never saw him again.”

“What were they arguing about?”

“He was telling her there was something she had to do. No matter how hard it was, she had to do it for the sake of the other girls. He was very insistent.”

“Was Maia afraid of him?”

“I don't know that she was afraid, but she certainly wasn't happy about the encounter. She was in tears when he left. What was it that he wanted her to do? Do you know?”

“Go back to Taos and testify against a man who abused her when she was twelve years old.”

“No wonder she was in tears. Is the abuse what put her on the street?”

“I
believe it was.”

“Figures.” Dorothy's fingers returned to her keyboard, skirting the edge as if they were anxious to continue typing. “I hope she testified before she died and put the son of a bitch away.”

“She called the Taos County DA and agreed to talk to her, but she died before she ever got to Taos.”

“Well, that makes her death even sadder, doesn't it? Why did this Bill Hartley get involved?”

“His daughter had sex with the same man but she was too old for it to be a prosecutable offense. Maia was Bill's best hope of putting the abuser in prison.”

“He'll probably do it again,” Dorothy sighed. “They always do.”

“Did Maia come back to the library after that encounter?”

“You know, I don't remember seeing her, but homeless people come and go and we don't pay much attention to them until something bad happens, do we?”

“I'm afraid not,” Claire said. “Do you ever see Ansia here?”

“She used to come to the library, but she caused too much trouble. She has wild mood swings. She'd fall asleep at a table, snore, and disturb everybody, then she'd wake up and become belligerent. And the smell! Whew!” Dorothy held her nose. “We had to get tough and not let her in. I haven't seen her for some time.”

Claire handed Dorothy her card. “If you do see her, would you tell her I'd like to talk to her?”

“Sure. You may not want to take any advice from me,” Dorothy said, pushing herself out of her chair and standing up. She wasn't any taller than Claire was. It was her bulldog attitude, not her size, that gave her the power to evict the troublemakers. “But here it is. It's not a good idea to start caring about drug addicts and street people who have gone over the edge. They'll break your heart every damn time.”

“I'll remember that,” Claire said.

Before she left the library she walked around the second floor, where the periodicals were kept. There were enough magazines on display here to fill dozens of waiting rooms. She wouldn't mind spending an afternoon on this floor escaping through magazines. She saw a large window on the far side of the room facing a parking garage. The garage's blank wall was decorated with large Xs painted in primary colors. Two chairs sat in the window facing out. Claire believed that was where Maia would have wanted to sit when she came to the main library.

******

On the drive back through downtown Claire thought about what had transpired between Bill Hartley and Maia. It could have been fear of him or returning to Taos that had caused her to OD. Maia had called Allana Bruno and said she would meet with her. Of all the people Claire had spoken to
regarding
Maia, the one with the most credibility was Allana Bruno. Although she might not have told her everything, Claire believed what she had said. But something more ominous might have happened, something Allana Bruno didn't know about, between the time Maia made the decision to go to Taos and the time she took the China White.

Chapter
Twenty-four

O
N
M
ONDAY
S
OPHIE
R
OYBAL SURPRISED
C
LAIRE
by calling to say she was in town for a few hours. It was noon and she asked if Claire wanted to meet her for lunch. The timing of the call made Claire suspect that Sophie was going through the motions, all the while hoping Claire would be unavailable.

But she was available. “Where can we meet?” Claire asked.

“Outside the bookstore?” Sophie said. “I need to buy a textbook and I can get a used copy there.”

“How will I know you?”

“I have long black hair,” Sophie said.

Long black hair wouldn't distinguish anyone at UNM, but Claire let that go by, hoping she'd find some other way to identify Sophie.

She put a copy of
Summertime
in a folder and held it under her arm as she stood waiting outside the bookstore. As soon as Sophie came through the inner door with a bookstore bag in her hand, Claire knew who she was. Sophie was defined by her hair, a waterfall of thick black curls that tumbled down her back. It was hair men would want to smell, touch, bury their faces in. Sophie's full hair was an attention-getting contrast to her slender, graceful figure. She wore a thigh-length skirt that emphasized her slenderness. It was easy enough to imagine strangers approaching Sophie Roybal and telling her she looked beautiful. She moved with the reserved self-assurance of a woman who was accustomed to admiration but remained indifferent to it. Claire began to think she'd gotten the wrong impression about Sophie Roybal; there was nothing in her manner or appearance to suggest this confident young woman had ever been abused.