The Confidence Woman Read Online Free PDF Page B

of A.”
    â€œDid your boss know about it?”
    â€œUnlikely. I can’t think of any reason I would tell him about it.” Claire spoke to her pompous and prickly boss, Harrison Hough, as little as possible. She had to talk to him about library books. She didn’t have to talk to him about her personal collection.
    â€œHe collects Melville. Did you know that?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œHe did his doctoral dissertation on Melville. He’s always asking me to find signed first editions for him. He would have wanted to buy yours if he’d known you had one.”
    Claire was glad she hadn’t mentioned it. The last person she would have wanted to sell her book to was Harrison Hough.
    â€œI’ll call you immediately if it turns up here,” Brett said.
    â€œThanks,” Claire replied.
    A book Harrison coveted had been stolen from her bedroom. Evelyn was the obvious culprit, but even if she were not, Claire would never have suspected Harrison. If he was capable of stealing anything it was his employees’ joy and spirit, not their books. As if to prove her point—or make her feel guilty for the thoughts she’d had—he walked by her office wearing a sour expression. She turned her back to the window that faced the hallway and dialed Detective Amaral’s number.
    â€œI checked when I got home and found The Confidence-Man was gone,” she told him. “Evelyn replaced it with a worthless critical edition. I called the places where the book is likely to turn up, but none of the dealers have seen it yet. They all promised to call me if they do see it.”
    â€œDo you trust them?” Amaral asked in his soft, precise voice.
    â€œI do. There aren’t very many people who deal in books of this caliber, and they all know each other. Reputation is everything. It seems strange to me that the book hasn’t shown up yet, if Evelyn stole it when she was in my house.”
    â€œDo you know that she took it then?” Amaral answered. “If she copied your key, she could have come back for it at any time.”
    â€œHave you found out yet what caused her death?” Claire asked to fill the depression caused by the detective’s remark.
    â€œYes,” he said. “There was a single blunt force trauma to the skull.”
    â€œOh, no,” Claire replied. “What kind of a blunt instrument was used?”
    â€œThat hasn’t been established yet. I may wish to talk to you further.”
    â€œOf course,” she said. When she got off the phone she had the sense that a storm that had been building in the distance was moving closer to her narrow canyon.
    ******
    On Friday afternoon Claire left for Tucson. It was a drive she enjoyed, full of wide-open spaces and light that shifted from moment to moment. In full daylight the mountains south of Albuquerque appeared to be gray wolves loping toward Mexico. Clouds crossing the sun dappled their backs with shadow. At sunset these mountains turned a radiant rose. Interstate 25 passed by Elephant Butte, where the Rio Grande had been dammed to form a lake. The water reflected the pale sky as it drifted in and out of view between the mesas.
    She turned southwest onto State Highway 26 at Hatch, the town that billed itself as the chile capital of the world. At this time of year farmers were plowing the fields and stirring up clouds of dust. Claire was glad to escape from the dust as she continued southwest on the emptiness of Highway 26. At Deming she turned onto I-10, the southern route to California. It was not as popular with truckers as I-40, the middle route, which made for easier driving. It was also an airplane route and the sky was crisscrossed with white contrails.
    As she approached the Arizona border, Claire drove through some of her favorite open spaces in the Southwest. The vastness here left room for wandering thoughts, and hers turned to the death of Evelyn Martin and to her old friends