She turned and handed him a small softcover German book entirely devoted to photographs of a dominatrix with various men.
Kerney opened it to the first photograph, which showed the finely sculpted buttocks of a woman wearing garter belts, stockings, and spike heels. At her feet kneeled a fat, elderly, nude man with downcast eyes.
“Well, well, indeed,” Kerney said.
“There’s a whole wall of this stuff, Chief.”
“Let’s see if Claudia Spalding left any messages inside these tantalizing little volumes,” Kerney said, fanning through the pages.
They carefully searched through every book in the library, discovering an errant bookmark or two, a forgotten postcard, an occasional cash receipt for a book purchased but never read. They emptied one shelf at a time, and soon the floor, the desk, the chairs, and the top of the baby grand piano were covered with wobbly stacks of books.
Ramona finished first, thumping down an enormous old copy of The Oxford Universal Dictionary of Historical Principles on the last empty bit of floor space. She cleared off the piano bench, sat, and watched Kerney as he pulled a book off the lowest shelf and inspected it in the dim light of dusk that filtered through the window.
Ramona switched on the desk lamp. Her fingers were dirty gray, the creases in her palms etched with grit. During the time they’d been searching Claudia’s library, Ramona had learned that the chief shared her love of books. They’d exchanged comments about interesting titles, the discovery of favorite authors, and some of the more valuable signed first editions.
Kerney fanned through the last book to be checked, put it down, and rubbed his hands on his jeans. “That does it. Have we missed anything?”
“I don’t think so,” Ramona said.
“Have you looked inside the piano bench?”
Ramona opened the bench. Inside there was a stack of sheet music, and under it a diary bound in red leather with gilt edging and a sterling silver clasp lock.
“Is there a key for this in the desk?” she asked, holding up the diary.
Kerney found the key and passed it over. Ramona unlocked the diary and read a random, dated entry, written in neat script.
K has a lovely penis, medium in size, but he uses it enthusiastically. He lets me fondle it, but I haven’t yet taken him in my mouth. I wonder if he’s afraid to give up control.
She scanned another entry.
I’m as twitchy and horny as a broodmare in heat. Masturbated three times this morning.
Ramona flipped back to a longer entry.
Dinner out with K last night. The lovely blonde who arrived soon after us with her escort was enchanting. Tiny waist, long legs, perfect hips, and just a sexy hint of a round tummy. I told him she’d be perfect for us to share, and he made some inane comment that he’d have to sleep with her first before he could suggest a threesome. I’m beginning to wonder if I can take him to the next level. He’s sexually possessive and not as open-minded as he’d like to believe. But I’ll continue to hold my tongue and stroke his little-boy’s ego.
She read aloud an entry made soon after Claudia’s move to Santa Fe.
Putting distance between Clifford and myself hasn’t worked. It’s still bondage of a certain kind, no matter how much freedom I’ve managed to broker for myself in this marriage. It’s all an anachronism, lacking only the lordly robes of some duke or earl hanging from Clifford’s aged body in testimony of his right to possess me. Even his generosity is a two-edged sword, designed to bind me to him to do his bidding, right down to his need to have me at his side at some absurdly boring event. This cannot continue. I will not be owned.
“I think this clears up a few things,” Ramona said as she handed the diary to Kerney.
He scanned a few passages. One detailed how Claudia had used her erotica collection to stimulate Kim Dean’s interest in more adventuresome sex. It read like a sex manual. Another spoke directly of Claudia’s growing desire to rid herself of Clifford.
Kerney closed the diary. “She may have never put her murder plan on paper, but what’s here is damaging.”
“What do you make of her?” Ramona asked.
Kerney shook his head. “I don’t know, but the psychiatrists on both sides will have a field day in court.”
Ramona shook her head. “I never imagined sex could be so devoid of any feelings.”
Kerney smiled at the comment. “Perhaps you just didn’t expect it from a woman.”
Ramona laughed and headed for the loft stairs. “Good point, Chief.”
“Make a copy of the diary for me, if you will.”
“It will be on your desk in the morning.”
A full moon hung in the clear evening sky, shedding a silvery light over the Galisteo Basin and spilling pale shadows across rangeland, low wood-land mesas, and grassy hills.
Kerney’s earlier attempt to locate Jennifer Stover, the woman who’d owned the gallery where Debbie Calderwood’s college roommate once worked, had failed. He was determined, if possible, to find and talk to Stover before calling it a day.
He knew the village of Galisteo well. For a time, he’d worked on the basin as a caretaker of a small ranch while recovering from gunshot wounds, and now he had his own spread on the north lip of it.
Although some of the land near the village had been carved up into residential parcels, most of the surrounding countryside remained open range owned by ranchers who still ran cow-calf operations and cowboyed every day. There were outfits that encompassed ten and twenty thousand acres, but the largest ranch took up almost ninety thousand acres of grassland, canyons, low-slung mesas, and wide sandy creeks that ran west toward the Rio Grande.
Within the private holdings were the remnants of ancient Indian pueblos, petroglyphs etched on massive rock outcroppings, ruins of early Spanish sheep camps, caves with painted pictographs, and abandoned farmsteads rarely viewed by outsiders. Kerney had been fortunate enough to see many of the sites during the times he’d participated in gathering cows on the neighboring ranches during spring and fall works.
A village of several hundred people, Galisteo still retained the look and feel of a Spanish settlement. Tall cottonwoods spread thick branches over high adobe walls, and dirt lanes wound past flat-roofed haciendas and veered away from the deep channel of the small river, in truth no more than a stream, that defined the eastern boundary of the settlement. A small distance beyond the village stood a narrow old highway bridge with concrete railings, and beyond that were the rodeo grounds, consisting of a fenced arena and corrals, where every summer working cowboys from the basin gathered for a weekend of friendly competition.
An adobe church with stone buttresses and rows of narrow, tall windows defined the center of the village, fronting a two-lane state road that crossed the bridge and wandered up grassland hills to Comanche Gap, an ancient route once used by Plains Indians to raid nearby pueblos. Across the road from the church was a small general store with turquoise-blue wood trim, earthy peach plastered walls, and a hand-painted sign that advertized homemade tacos. To the rear of the church, away from the lush tree cover by the river, was a scattering of more modest houses and a cemetery on a rocky knoll.
There were a few businesses in and around the village, but they were not the usual array of gas stations, diners, and motels found in small towns. There was a bed-and-breakfast inn with an excellent restaurant, a riding and horse-boarding stable, an herbalist’s shop, an upscale spa resort, a new age spiritual awareness center, and of course the Stover-Driscoll Gallery, which had to be somewhere nearby.
Kerney stopped at a lighted house behind the church to ask where the gallery was, and was directed to the old territorial-style schoolhouse on the county road that cut west toward the Cerrillos Hills.