Chapter Twenty-seven

CLAIRE FOLLOWED CELIA TO THE DOOR that led deeper into the basement. Celia punched in her code and blinking green lights indicated they had gained admittance. Looking over Celia’s shoulder Claire could easily read her numbers. The woman claiming to be Maia’s mother could have done the same thing with Seth. To let her in once was to let her in for as long as his code was in effect. They were in the maintenance sector now near the furnace where pipes marked CHILLED WATER RETURN snaked under the ceiling. This was where the ghost of the woman in the pinafore dress—the first librarian—was known to wander. Someone had drawn a scowling face on the wall and labeled it THE PLUMBER. Red lights flashed EXIT over the doorways and roaches lay belly-up on the floor. This was the part of the basement where maintenance had to work, but most people avoided it.

“Goddamn that boy,” Celia said.

“What are you going to do about it?” Claire asked.

“Report him to Harrison. I have to. I’m not about to lose my job over Seth Malcolm. You know that Harrison doesn’t take insubordination lightly. Seth will be locked out of the stacks and he’ll lose his fellowship.” She stopped and faced Claire. “Who do you think this woman is going around handing out drugs, looking for Maia? Could it really be her mother?”

“Not unless the body found in the Rio Grande Gorge wasn’t Veronica Reid. I heard it was badly mangled. But you’d think the police would have definitely identified the victim. Given the timing of Maia’s death—right before June was scheduled to talk to the Taos DA—I’d say it was someone who didn’t want her to testify against Damon Fitzgerald.”

“How did anybody know she was going to testify?”

“Bill Hartley talked her into meeting with the DA. He knew. His wife knew. Word might have leaked from the DA’s office. In a small town like Taos everybody seems to know exactly what everybody else is doing. The woman could have been one or more of the mothers in Taos who didn’t want the scandal to break and expose their own daughters. She could have been someone trying to protect Damon Fitzgerald or Edward Girard or even Paul Begala. I think the glasses were a diversion. Except for that detail the descriptions were generic. Average height, average looks, middle age. Some people think all middle-aged women look alike.”

“Let’s see if Paul can tell us more.”

“Is that where we’re going now? To talk to Paul?”

“Yes.”

Claire hesitated. “Don’t you think we ought to talk to Detective Owen first? There is an investigation going on.”

“Not that I’ve noticed,” Celia snapped. “The codes and the locks are my responsibility. Overseeing the security system is my job. I’m the one Harrison blames for Maia’s presence in the basement. By the time Detective Owen gets here, Seth could talk to Paul and give him all the excuse he needs to shut up. I need to get to him first. Are you with me?”

Claire didn’t share Celia’s conviction, but she couldn’t let her go to Paul’s office alone, either. She followed the blue shoes down the long, dingy basement corridors, imagining how debilitating it would be to spend all day working here. Claire rarely entered the maintenance sector. She found the narrow halls with the pipes throbbing overhead oppressive, although it was possible that to a person seeking comfort the throbbing pipes might resemble a beating heart. She felt the weight of the library resting on her shoulders down here, but Celia seemed energized by the chase. Seth had said that Maia had been sleeping in the basement for months. As Claire walked, she looked for another place as secluded as the storage room where Maia had died, but she didn’t find one.

When they got to Paul’s office they found him sitting in a swivel chair at his desk. He spun around as he heard them approach. Once again Claire had the sensation that only one of his eyes focused, but he saw enough to turn his expression guarded. Paul’s shoulders tightened in the gesture of a besieged animal hunkering down, waiting, watching. He had tacked magazine photos of outdoor scenes on his offíce walls—a rippling trout stream, views from mountain peaks, a vast green forest. One of the photos was of Paul himself casting a fishing line out over a stream. Claire saw the photos as windows out of the dreary basement.

“Did you see a woman in the basement looking for Maia shortly before she died?” Celia jumped right in without even pausing to say hello.

Claire visualized her words wrapped inside a bubble hanging over the office. She sympathized with Celia’s impatience and her anger, but her intuition told her those were the wrong words.

They gave Paul the opportunity to answer “I see women down here all the time. Librarians, students, professors. I don’t make a note of everybody I see. My job is maintenance, not surveillance. Nobody ever told me she was looking for Maia.”

Celia was too committed to her pursuit to slow down now. “This woman claimed to be Maia’s mother.”

“How’d she get in?”

“Someone let her in.”

“Well, I can tell you this much. It wasn’t me.”

Now Claire had the uneasy sensation that one of his eyes had focused on Celia and the other on her. She’d been hovering in the doorway hoping Paul wouldn’t notice her presence. She wanted to be like a bird in one of his photographs, who could watch without being observed herself.

“We only have your word that you didn’t know Maia was in the storage room,” Celia said. “Suppose the woman wanted Maia to stay locked up in there and persuaded someone to turn the deadbolt?”

Claire wished she had a way to counter Celia’s bad-cop act. The only thing that came to mind was to ask Paul about the outdoor photos, but she knew Celia would consider that an intrusion and an unwelcome diversion. Claire kept quiet, observing Paul’s body language.

He remained watchful and wary, but he wasn’t crumpling the way Seth had. Celia didn’t have the power over maintenance that she had over graduate students. Paul Begala didn’t have to answer to her and he knew it.

“I locked the door to the storage room on Friday like I always do when I leave here,” he insisted. “I went fishing over the weekend. Even if I had come in, I had no reason to check that room. I opened the door on Tuesday when I got back. I found the body. I notified the police. I didn’t talk to any woman claiming to be Maia’s mother or anybody else’s mother. And I never saw Maia in the storage room or anywhere else in the basement.”

Celia moved on, appearing to change the subject. “How’s your wife doing?” she asked. “Does she like the home she’s in now?”

“Better than the other one. What’s that got to do with anything?” Paul asked.

“Just curious,” Celia said.

Paul’s cell phone rang. He picked it up, listened briefly, then replied, “I’ll be right there.” He turned toward to Celia. “Anything else? There’s an emergency near the tower, a leak that has to be fixed right now.”

“Could someone have taken your key and used it or made a copy?” Celia asked.

“Like who? The librarian in the pinafore who haunts this place? Maybe she’s the mother you’ve been looking for. These keys here? While I’m at work they never leave my side.” Paul shook the ring with jangly sound. “Now, if you don’t mind, ladies, I have a job to do.”

They left the office. Paul locked the door behind them with an ostentatious rattle of the key chain, then walked down the corridor whistling an unidentifiable tune. Claire saw a door nearby with a red EXIT sign over it and a ramp that led outside.

“Let’s go out here,” she said to Celia. “I can’t face walking back through the tunnels again.” She had an overpowering longing to see sky over her head instead of pipes marked CHILLED WATER RETURN.

“All right.”

Once they were outside in the fresh air behind the library, Celia said, “My gut reaction is that Paul was lying. What do you think?”

Claire had gotten a different perspective from her bird’s-eye perch. “I’m not sure he was telling the whole truth,” she said. “But I wouldn’t necessarily say he was lying.”

“I think the APD needs to check his bank accounts and see if any money was deposited around the time that Maia died.”

“If there was any money, most likely it was paid in cash and spent as cash,” Claire said, remembering how the painting was purchased. “Nursing care is unbelievably expensive. Do you think Paul could possibly have been paid enough to change the kind of care his wife gets?”

“When you’re desperate anything helps,” Celia said.

“True,” Claire said. “I agree that we should contact Detective Owen. Do you want to do it or should I?”

“I’ll do it,” Celia said. “Monitoring the codes is my responsibility.”