Claire heard Rachel say, “Drop the gun, Rusty.”
“You son of a bitch,” Rusty said to Anthony. “You set us up.”
“You set yourselves up,” Anthony replied.
“This book isn’t the history!” Samantha cried.
Claire had been ordered to conceal herself until Rusty and Samantha were disarmed. From where she hid, everyone seemed to be yelling in unison.
“Drop it,” said Rachel. “You’re under arrest.”
“What for?” asked a surly Rusty.
“The theft of library books and the murder of Ellen deWitt.”
“What kind of cops are you anyway?”
“UNM police.”
“Jesus Christ, we’re getting busted by the Keystone cops,” Rusty said.
“Are you going to drop the weapon?” Rachel demanded.
“It’s yours,” Rusty said.
Rachel began reading the suspects their rights, which was the signal they’d been disarmed and it was safe for Claire to appear. She walked around the rock pile to see Paul handcuffing Rusty while Rachel kept her gun pointed at him.
Samantha’s face was distorted in fear and in anger. A suede purse, trimmed with fringe, hung from her shoulder. Her hands, embellished by their silver rings, were clenched. “Claire! Did you have to get involved in this?”
“You took the university’s books, Samantha.”
“They should have been my books.”
“You could have had them, if you’d wanted them.”
“You’re keeping the family from getting the ranch. Mariah is not my father’s daughter. She has no right to it.”
“She’s Ben deWitt’s daughter. Your father knew that when he left her the ranch. The history proves it. Ever since Burke died, you’ve been stealing the histories from libraries all over the Southwest so no one else would discover what you knew.”
“Where’s yours?”
“In a university safe.”
“How could you do this to me, Claire?”
Claire was close enough now to see the tears in Samantha’s eyes. She was tall, slim, blonde, and all too unpleasantly reminiscent of Melissa. Even for this occasion she’d worn makeup. Her mascara ran and made dark streaks on her cheeks. She’d reached the age where you create your own face, and the face she’d created was bitter and disappointed. Claire wondered if Anthony considered her pretty now.
Samantha slid her hand down her side and into her purse. Claire heard a click as she pulled it out holding a slim silvery object that gleamed in the sun. Samantha raised her hand and lunged at Claire. Their proximity left two options: to yield or to fight back. There was no time to flee. The move was so quick and unexpected that Claire’s reaction came automatically, revealing her true nature better than deliberation ever would. In tai chi every action embraced its opposite. Warriors won because they knew their opponents better than their opponents knew them. If the opponent mounted an aggressive attack, the victim should yield. Claire dodged Samantha’s raised arm and stepped quickly aside. When the force of Samantha’s lunge encountered no resistance, she stumbled and fell on the ground, twisting her ankle in a prairie dog burrow. In a flash Rachel was standing over her with a drawn weapon. Paul knelt down, took the object out of Samantha’s hands, and cuffed her.
“Nice work,” Rachel said to Claire.
Paul examined the slim silver weapon. “What is it?” he asked.
“A blade cutter,” Claire answered. “There’s a snap-off razor blade inside. When you push the plastic knob, the razor extends. It’s used to cut tape and open boxes or to razor plates out of valuable books.”
“There’s not much to it,” Paul said. “But it’s sharp enough to sever an artery.”
Samantha’s fringed purse had fallen off her shoulder and lay beside her on the ground. Rachel picked it up, took out a wad of bills, and counted them. “Your thousand dollars,” she said to Anthony. “I’m afraid I’ll have to hold it for evidence.”
Anthony was staring down at Samantha with the crushed expression of someone who has seen a dream shattered. “You were right,” he mumbled to Claire, burying his disappointment in his beard.
It was a victory that gave Claire no pleasure.
******
Rusty and Samantha were indicted for robbery and murder. Rusty’s fingerprints matched the prints found at Ellen deWitt’s house. Samantha’s prints were found on the stolen books. She knew about deWitt’s history and suspected it contained information that could affect the validity of the will. When the family read the will, and James revealed that Claire had packed the history in her box of valuable books, Samantha drove to Albuquerque and stole the box. Laura, James, Rusty, and the Stoners helped steal the rest of the histories and were indicted as coconspirators, but no evidence could be found linking Corinne.
“I was hoping that book thieves would present more of a challenge,” Rachel told Claire. “When you get right down to it, they weren’t much smarter than any other thief.”
Corinne went on living at the ranch with Mariah, Eric, and Pete. Mariah talked her into consulting a therapist and drove her into Tucson once a week. The estate was settled, and the property was deeded to Mariah. She had a DNA test to determine once and for all whether she was Burke’s daughter, and it confirmed that her father was Benjamin deWitt. “I have no memory of him, and I feel like I’m Burke’s daughter in spirit,” she told Claire. In that spirit she ran the ranch as a nature preserve.
Jed Acker got Claire’s message from the bartender in Reserve, and he called to apologize for his part in the conspiracy. The Stoners had sent him on a cattle-buying trip the weekend Claire was in the Blue and did not tell him she was coming. They played on his loyalties when they pressured him into signing the affidavit.
“Damned sorry,” he told Claire. “My first loyalty should have been to Burke. I know he wanted the ranch to go to Mariah. This valley is getting to be an angry, uncomfortable place, and I’m thinking maybe it’s time for me to move on.”
“Good luck.” Claire said.
******
After the indictments came down, Claire and John Harlan went out to dinner to celebrate. He suggested she pick the place, and the place she chose was Scarpa’s on Academy.
He looked at the menu and said, “Hell, Claire, what kind of pizza place is this? Santa Fe pizza with Kalamata olives and sun-dried tomatoes? Shrimp pizza with artichoke hearts and pesto? No cheese pizza? What kind of pizza has no cheese?”
“Try the spaghetti with meat sauce,” Claire said.
“They can’t do anything to spaghetti and meat sauce, can they?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I suppose you were smart enough to know all the time that the thief was Samantha,” John said.
“I thought it was a good possibility,” Claire replied. “But I didn’t want to believe it.”
“Now that you have the history back, what are you plannin’ to do with it? A murder was committed over that book. It could become the stuff of legend someday and worth a bundle. You should consider it a legacy for your children.”
“How would anybody distinguish that copy of the history from any of the other copies? It didn’t have a library stamp.”
“It might have a on, ni on ffep or ifc.”
It sounded like a code from the personal ads, but Claire knew that he meant owner’s name, name in ink on front free endpaper or inside front cover. In her mind, writing a name in a book defaced it.
“How many copies did Samantha have?” John asked.
“The police found ten in her house. Most had library stamps: one from Reserve, one from the U of A. They didn’t find the center’s copy. It could still be in the tower, mis-shelved somewhere. They found a copy marked in pencil with an r y on the inside front cover.”
“That’s mine.”
“You’ll have to prove it to the police if you want it back.”
“No problem.”
Book dealers use a code to remind themselves how much
they paid for a book. Ordinarily they pick a word with ten different letters. The first letter in the word signifies that they paid one dollar, the second letter two dollars and so on. The first and second letter together would mean twelve. “What’s your code word?” Claire asked John.
“You’re askin’ me to give away my secret code?”
“You may need my help to get your book back.”
John looked down at the empty white tablecloth. “Ravenously,” he said. “Which is kind of the way I feel right now.”
“Your code word is…ravenously?”
“Why not? It’s got ten different letters.”
“The first is r and the last is y. So you paid ten dollars for the history?”
“Right.”
“Your book could gain in value, too, if only for its proximity to the crime.”
“Anything that increases a book’s value is all right with me. What happened with the Austin/Adams folio?”
“The police got nowhere. Rusty wouldn’t admit to knowing anything about it and neither would Reginald Arnold. The prints were long gone by the time the police got to the gallery.”
“I’ll bet they’re hanging on somebody’s wall in Santa Fe,” John said.
“And Reginald’s bank account has been enriched by more than I want to contemplate.”
John’s spaghetti arrived, and he began rolling it around on his fork. “Here’s a question for you. Can you tell me when spaghetti became pasta?”
“I think it was 1972.”
“A good year. Not many of us left who remember it. You didn’t tell me what you’re going to do with your History of the Blue.” He put down his fork and watched her.
Claire saw dollar signs in his eyes. “Are you making me an offer?”
“Not exactly, but, hell, if you want to get rid of it, I’d be willing to help you out. That book might have some bad memories for you. Selling to me is one option.”
Claire had considered the other options. She knew she’d never be comfortable coming home alone at night with the history in her house. She didn’t want to see it in Harrison’s office marked by the stamp of his ego. She feared that if it went to the tower it, too, would disappear. But she didn’t want to sell it, no matter how much John was willing to pay. “It’s in my safe deposit box,” she said.
They lingered over coffee, then walked out to the parking lot to their cars. John waited while Claire inserted the key in her lock. “That was fun,” he said. “We’ll have to do it again sometime.”
She looked over his shoulder and saw that the ghost of his deceased wife, Jane, was becoming ever more ephemeral. “We will,” she replied.
THE END
You can find more of Judith Van Gieson’s mysteries as ebooks:
The Stolen Blue: A Claire Reynier Mystery (#1)
Vanishing Point: A Claire Reynier Mystery (#2)
Confidence Woman: A Claire Reynier Mystery (#3)
Land of Burning Heat: A Claire Reynier Mystery (#4)
The Shadow of Venus: A Claire Reynier Mystery (#5)
North of the Border: A Neil Hamel Mystery (#1)
Raptor: A Neil Hamel Mystery (#2)
The Other Side of Death: A Neil Hamel Mystery (#3)
The Wolf Path: A Neil Hamel Mystery (#4)
Lies that Bind: A Neil Hamel Mystery (#5)
Parrot Blues: A Neil Hamel Mystery (#6)
Hotshots: A Neil Hamel Mystery (#7)
Ditch Rider: A Neil Hamel Mystery (#8)
The Stolen Blue Page 21