The Confidence Woman Read Free Page A

station and people were talking, but she barely heard them. She was relieved to step outside into a clear Santa Fe day. The City Different was fifteen hundred feet higher than Albuquerque. The sunlight was even brighter here, giving the shadows deeper definition.

Chapter Three
    C LAIRE WALKED ACROSS THE PARKING LOT , let herself into her truck and sat down behind the steering wheel, grateful for the familiar shelter of the cab. She wasn’t ready to drive back to Albuquerque and considered what to do next. Ginny Bogardus lived in Santa Fe. Claire saw her a few times when she first moved to New Mexico and had been to her house near Acequia Madre. She circled downtown Santa Fe on Paseo de Peralta, turned onto Acequia Madre and off it again onto Ginny’s bumpy dirt road. In Santa Fe the better the neighborhood the worse the road. Ginny lived in an excellent neighborhood, close to the Plaza and full of old adobe houses. Claire had once heard it described as an adobe theme park, and it did have a too-perfect-to-be-true quality. But the lilacs were in bloom, the wind ruffled the blossoms, and today the neighborhood had the prettiness-in-motion appearance of an impressionist painting. She parked in the driveway, walked to the front door and rang the bell. Ginny answered with a glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other. It was only two-thirty in the afternoon, too early to be drinking in Claire’s opinion, but she knew that since she’d gotten divorced and moved to Santa Fe, Ginny had lived her life to the accompaniment of ice tinkling in a glass. It was one reason Claire avoided her. Ginny wore a flowered shift that concealed any weight gain. Her hair was layered in an expensive cut and tinted the color of champagne.
    â€œClairier,” she cried. Ginny had nicknames for all her friends, even for people who weren’t her friends. “Isn’t it just too wonderful?”
    â€œIsn’t what wonderful?” Claire responded.
    â€œThat Evie ripped us off and died, and now we’re being investigated by Dante. I love it!”
    Claire thought that Ginny had to be starved for excitement if she found this wonderful, but all she said was, “Dante? You mean Detective Amaral?”
    â€œThat’s him. Muy suave, don’t you think? I called the police the minute I saw in the paper that Evelyn had died. He invited me to his office yesterday. I suppose that’s why you’re in town?”
    â€œIt is.”
    â€œCome in.”
    Claire followed her into the house, which was surprisingly neat considering the carelessness with which Ginny lived. It was decorated with polished antiques and shiny silver. They got as far as a spindly legged antique table in the hallway, where Ginny stopped to rub her cigarette out in an already full ashtray.
    â€œWhat did Evie steal from you?” she asked.
    â€œMy identity.”
    â€œShe took all of our identities, or tried to. I mean what did she take from your house that you cared about?”
    â€œA book apparently. Herman Melville’s The Confidence-Man. ”
    â€œYou always did love books, didn’t you? I think she wanted to take something we all loved and identified with. I’m partial to jewelry myself, but the jewelry she took was an antique necklace that belonged to my ex-husband’s mother. It was pretty, but it wasn’t all that valuable. I didn’t miss it. I thought I had hidden it well in a fake head of lettuce in my refrigerator, but she found it. Dante described a necklace he discovered in Evie’s house that I was sure was mine. When I looked in the lettuce I saw that she had replaced the one I had with a cheap imitation. He said I could have the original back once the investigation was over.”
    â€œWhy did she want to take something we valued?”
    Ginny shrugged. “She identified with us from the past. She wanted to get even with us in the present because we were doing better than she was.