Confidence Woman

Chapter OneThe fear of anyone who lives alone is to die alone and not be missed or discovered until the body begins to smell. Claire Reynier didn't live alone until she was fifty. By then her children were grown and she was divorced. She had a rewarding job, she remained connected to family and friends, but it only took one night in her new house in the Albuquerque foothills to know the fear of dying alone. She was aware that in a sense everyone dies alone, but most people die believing they'll be missed. When she heard that Evelyn Martin died alone in her house, that no one reported her missing and that it was weeks before her body was found, Claire's rational side said that once someone was dead, the circumstances of the death weren't important. Her heart responded that to die unnoticed meant a life had had no meaning. She learned about Evelyn from Detective Dante Amaral, who called at eight-thirty one morning while Claire was finishing her tai chi exercises, settling into the infinite ultimate stance, imagining she was balancing empty spheres between her hands and her knees. When the phone rang, her first thought was that nature abhors a vacuum and that one effect of turning one's mind into an empty bowl was that something comes along to fill it up. Detective Amaral's voice had a soft, dreamy quality as if he hadn't quite woken up himself. ''Is this Claire Reynier?'' he asked. ''Yes.'' She sat down on the sofa with the phone in her hand, glanced out the window and saw that the Sandia Mountains were gray as a dove in the morning light. ''My name is Detective Dante Amaral. I am with the Santa Fe Police Department.'' Why on earth would a Santa Fe detective be calling her? Claire wondered. Her first thought was for the safety of her children, though neither of them was anywhere near Santa Fe. ''Are you acquainted with a woman named Evelyn Martin?'' Detective Amaral asked. ''Evelyn? We went to school together years ago. I've seen her a few times since.'' ''Yesterday we found her dead in her house on Tano Road. The postman noticed that the mail hadn't been picked up for some time and there was a smell coming from the house, so he called us.'' ''Oh, no. What killed her?'' ''The cause of death has not been established yet. We found credit cards with your name on them in the house and were able to locate you in Albuquerque through Visa. Have you ever been the victim of credit card fraud, Ms. Reynier?'' ''Yes,'' Claire admitted, ''I have.'' ''I would like to talk to you about it and about the death of Evelyn Martin. Would you be willing to come to Santa Fe?'' He paused between words as if each was a pearl to be smoothed and polished before it left his mouth. The last sentence had the inflection of a question, but Claire understood it to be a summons. She agreed and they set a time for later in the week. She hung up and sat still for several minutes, absorbing all she had learned. Then she began to pace from one end of her house to the other, wearing a track through her gray carpet. Her cat, Nemesis, tried to insinuate himself between her legs, but she shooed him away. She thought back to the time the previous year when she had been the victim of credit card fraud. It began with a package that came to her house containing a silky black Victoria's Secret nightgown with deep cleavage and spaghetti straps crisscrossing the back. She knew of no one who would send her a revealing nightgown and was sure it was a mistake, although the package was clearly addressed to her and the nightgown was her size--ten. She called the store and discovered that someone had taken out credit in her name. To do so, the impersonator needed her social security number, the clerk told her, a photo I.D. (which was easy enough to fake), and a good credit rating. Claire's was impeccable. She called the Albuquerque police and learned from aVan Gieson, Judith is the author of 'Confidence Woman' with ISBN 9780451205001 and ISBN 0451205006.