Текст книги "The Blue Hammer"

Автор книги: Ross MacDonald

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

^chapter

28

The red sky was darkening when I got downtown. The stores were full of light and almost empty of customers. I parked near the newspaper building and climbed the stairs to the newsroom. There was nobody there at all.

A woman in the hall behind me spoke in a husky tentative voice: “Can I help you, sir?”

“I hope so. I’m looking for Betty.”

She was a small gray-haired woman wearing strong glasses that magnified her eyes. She looked at me with sharp friendly curiosity.

“You must be Mr. Archer.”

I said I was.

The woman introduced herself as Mrs. Fay Brighton, the librarian of the paper. “Betty Jo asked me to relay a message to you. She said she’d be back here by half past seven at the latest.” She looked at the small gold watch on her wrist, holding it close to her eyes. “It’s almost that now. You shouldn’t have long to wait.”

Mrs. Brighton went back behind the counter of the room that housed her files. I waited for half an hour, listening to the evening sounds of the emptying city. Then I tapped on her door.

“Betty may have given up on me and gone home. Do you know where she lives?”

“As a matter of fact, I don’t. Not since her divorce. But I’ll be glad to look it up for you.”

She opened a directory and transcribed Betty’s number and address onto a slip of paper: “Seabrae Apartments, number 8, phone 967-9152.” Then she brought out a phone from under the counter. Her eyes clung to my face as I dialed and listened. Betty’s phone rang twelve times before I hung up.

“Did she give you any idea where she was going?”

“No, but she made a number of calls. She used this phone for some of them, so that I couldn’t help hearing. Betty was calling various nursing homes in town, trying to locate a relative of hers. Or so she said.”

“Did she mention the name?”

“Mildred Mead, I think it was. In fact, I’m sure of it. I think she found her, too. She took off in a hurry, and she had that light in her eyes—you know?—a young news hen on a breaking story.” She let out a sighing breath. “I used to be one myself.”

“Did she tell you where she was going?”

“Not Betty Jo.” The woman smiled with shrewd pleasure. “When she’s on a story, she wouldn’t give her best friend the time of day. She started late in the game, you know, and the virus really got to her. But you probably know all that if you’re a friend of hers.”

The unspoken question hung in the air between us.

“Yes,” I said. “I am a friend of hers. How long ago did she leave here?”

“It must have been two hours ago, or more.” She looked at her watch. “I think she took off about five-thirty.”

“By car?”

“I wouldn’t know that. And she didn’t give me any hint at all as to where she was heading.”

“Where does she eat dinner?”

“Various places. Sometimes I see her in the Tea Kettle. That’s a fairly good cafeteria just down the street.” Mrs. Brighton pointed with her thumb in the direction of the sea.

“If she comes back here,” I said, “will you give her a message for me?”

“I’d be glad to. But I’m not staying. I haven’t eaten all day, and I really only waited for you to give you Betty’s message. If you want to write one to her, I’ll put it on her desk.”

She slid a small pad of blank paper across the counter to me. I wrote: “Sorry I missed you. I’ll check back in the course of the evening. Later you can get me at the motel.”

I signed the message “Lew.” Then, after a moment’s indecision, I wrote the word “Love” above my name. I folded the note and gave it to Mrs. Brighton. She took it into the newsroom.

When she came back, she gave me a slightly flushed and conscious look that made me wonder if she had read my message. I had a sudden cold urge to recall it and cross out the word I had added. So far as I could remember, I hadn’t written the word, or spoken it to a woman, in some years. But now it was in my mind, like a twinge of pain or hope.

I walked down the block to the Tea Kettle’s red neon sign and went in under it. It was nearly eight o’clock, which was late for cafeteria patrons, and the place looked rather desolate. There was no line at the serving counter, and only a few scattered elderly patrons at the tables.

I remembered that I hadn’t eaten since morning. I picked up a plate, had it filled with roast beef and vegetables, and carried it to a table from which I could watch the whole place. I seemed to have entered another city, a convalescent city where the wars of love were over and I was merely one of the aging survivors.

I didn’t like the feeling. When Mrs. Brighton came in, she did nothing to relieve it. But when she brought her tray into the dining room, I stood up and asked her to share my table.

“Thank you. I hate eating alone. I spend so much time alone as it is, since my husband died.” She gave me an anxious half-smile as if in apology for mentioning her loss. “Do you live alone?”

“I’m afraid I do. My wife and I were divorced some years ago.”

“That’s too bad.”

“I thought so. But she didn’t.”

Mrs. Brighton became absorbed in her macaroni and cheese. Then she added milk and sugar to her tea. She stirred it and raised it to her lips.

“Have you known Betty long?”

“I met her at a party the night before last. She was covering it for the paper.”

“She was supposed to be. But if you’re talking about the Chantry party she never did submit any usable copy. She got wound up in a murder case, and she hasn’t thought about anything else in two days. She’s a terribly ambitious young woman, you know.”

Mrs. Brighton gave me one of her large-eyed impervious looks. I wondered if she was offering me a warning or simply making conversation with a stranger.

“Are you involved in that murder case?” she said.

“Yes. I’m a private detective.”

“May I ask who has employed you?”

“You may ask. But I better not answer.”

“Come on.” She gave me a roguish smile that wrinkled up her face yet somehow improved it. “I’m not a reporter any more. You’re not talking for print.”

“Jack Biemeyer.”

Her penciled eyebrows rose. “Mr. Bigshot’s involved with a murder?”

“Not directly. He bought a picture which was later stolen. He hired me to get it back.”

“And did you?”

“No. I’m working on it, though. This is the third day.”

“And no progress?”

“Some progress. The case keeps growing. There’s been a second murder—Jacob Whitmore.”

Mrs. Brighton leaned toward me suddenly. Her elbow spilled the rest of her tea. “Jake was drowned three days ago, accidentally drowned in the ocean.”

“He was drowned in fresh water,” I said, “and put into the ocean afterwards.”

“But that’s terrible. I knew Jake. I’ve known him since he was in high school. He was one of our delivery boys. He was the most harmless soul I ever knew.”

“It’s often the harmless ones that get killed.”

As I said that, I thought of Betty. Her face was in my mind, and her firm harmless body. My chest felt hot and tight, and I took a deep breath and let it out, without intending to, in a barely audible sigh.

“What’s the matter?” Mrs. Brighton said.

“I hate to see people die.”

“Then you picked a strange profession.”

“I know I did. But every now and then I have a chance to prevent a killing.”

And every now and then I precipitated one. I tried to keep that thought and the thought of Betty from coming together, but the two thoughts nudged each other like conspirators.

“Eat your vegetables,” Mrs. Brighton said. “A man needs all the vitamins he can get.” She added in the same matter-of-fact tone: “You’re worried about Betty Jo Siddon, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am.”

“So am I. Particularly since you told me Jake Whitmore was murdered. Somebody I’ve known half my life—that’s striking close to home. And if something happened to Betty—” Her voice broke off and started again in a lower register: “I’m fond of that girl, and if anything happened to her—well, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do.”

“What do you think happened?”

She looked around the room as if for a portent or a prophet. There was no one there but a few old people eating.

“Betty’s hooked on the Chantry case,” she said. “She hasn’t been talking about it much lately but I know the signs. I had it myself at one time, over twenty years ago. I was going to track Chantry down and bring him back alive and become the foremost lady journalist of my time. I even wangled my way to Tahiti on a tip. Gauguin was one of Chantry’s big influences, you know. But he wasn’t in Tahiti. Neither was Gauguin.”

“But you think Chantry’s alive?”

“I did then. Now I don’t know. It’s funny how you change your views of things as you get older. You’re old enough to know what I mean. When I was a young woman, I imagined that Chantry had done what I would have liked to do. He thumbed his nose at this poky little town and walked away from it. He was under thirty, you know, when he dropped out of sight. He had all the time in the world ahead of him—time for a second life. Now that my own time is running short, I don’t know. I think it’s possible that he was murdered all those years ago.”

“Who had reason to kill him?”

“I don’t know. His wife, perhaps. Wives often do have reason. Don’t quote me, but I wouldn’t put it past her.”

“Do you know her?”

“I know her quite well, at least I did. She’s very publicity-conscious. When I stopped being a reporter, she lost all interest in me.”

“Did you know Chantry himself?”

“I never did. He was a recluse, you know. He lived in this town for seven or eight years, and you could count on the fingers of one hand the number of people who knew him to speak to.”

“Can you name any of them?”

“I can think of one,” she said. “Jake Whitmore knew Chantry. He used to deliver their paper. I think it was knowing Chantry that made a painter of him.”

“I wonder if it was knowing Chantry that killed him.”

Mrs. Brighton took off her glasses and wiped them with a lace-edged handkerchief. She put them on again and studied me through them.

“I’m not sure I follow you. Could you tell me just what you mean by that, in words of one syllable? I’ve had a long hard day.”

“I have a feeling that Chantry may be here in town. It’s something more than a feeling. Jack Biemeyer’s stolen painting was probably a Chantry. It passed through two pairs of hands on its way to Biemeyer—Jake Whitmore’s and Paul Grimes’s. Both Whitmore and Grimes are dead. I guess you know that.”

She bowed her gray head under the weight of the knowledge. “You think Betty’s in real trouble, don’t you?”

“She may be.”

“Can I help? Do you want me to start phoning the nursing homes?”

“Yes. But please be careful. Don’t mention any names. You have an aged aunt who needs custodial care. Get them to describe the facilities. Listen for sounds of guilt or any sign of trouble.”

“I’m good at that,” she said dryly. “I hear a lot of those kinds of sounds in the office. But I’m not sure that that’s the best approach.”

“What do you suggest?”

“I don’t have anything specific in mind. It depends on what theory we’re working on. Is it your idea that Betty located the nursing home where Mildred Mead is staying, was inveigled into going there, and got snatched? Isn’t that a little melodramatic?”

“Melodramatic things are happening all the time.”

She sighed. “I suppose you’re right. I hear a lot of them in the office, too. But isn’t it just as likely that Betty simply took off on the track of something, and she’ll be turning up again any time?”

“It may be just as likely,” I said. “But don’t forget that Jake Whitmore turned up drowned. Paul Grimes turned up beaten to death.”

Her face absorbed the knowledge and grew heavy with it, like an old sponge absorbing water. “You’re right, of course. We have to do what we can. But shouldn’t we be going to the police?”

“As soon as we have something definite to take to them. Mackendrick is hard to convince.”

“Is he not. Okay. I’ll be in the office if you want me.”

She gave me the number, and I wrote it down. I asked her further to make me a list of the nursing homes and their numbers as she called them.

^chapter

29

I drove up the dark hill to Biemeyer’s house feeling angry and powerless. The house was blazing with lights but entirely silent.

Biemeyer answered the door with a drink held securely in his hand. He gave the impression that the drink was holding him up. Everything else about him, shoulders and knees and face, seemed to be sagging.

“What in the hell do you want?” His voice was husky and frayed, as if he had been doing a lot of shouting.

“I’d like to have a serious talk with you, Mr. Biemeyer.”

“I can translate that. You want more money.”

“Forget about the money for a change. I don’t care about your money.”

His face lengthened. He had hoisted his money up the mast, but I had failed to salute it. Slowly his face came together again, wrinkling around his dark hostile eyes.

“Does that mean you won’t be sending me a bill?”

I was tempted to turn my back on him and leave, perhaps taking a swing at him first. But Biemeyer and his household possessed knowledge that I had to have. And working for them gave me standing with the police that I couldn’t get in any other way.

“Please take it easy,” I said. “The money you’ve advanced will probably cover it. If it doesn’t, I’ll send you a bill. After all, I did recover your daughter.”

“But not the picture.”

“I’m working on the picture, getting closer to it. Is there some place we could have a private talk?”

“No,” he said. “There is not. All I’m asking you to do is to respect the sanctity of my home. If you won’t do that, to hell with you.”

Now even the glass in his hand was no longer steady. He waved it in a declamatory gesture and sloshed some liquor on the polished floor. Mrs. Biemeyer appeared behind him, as if the spilling of liquor was an understood signal in the family. Much farther back, half hidden by the edge of a partition, Doris stood still and silent.

“I think you should talk to him, Jack,” Ruth Biemeyer said. “We’ve been through quite a lot in the last couple of days. And thanks in good part to Mr. Archer, we’ve survived it.”

Her face was calm and smooth, and she was dressed for evening. Her voice was resigned. I guessed that she had made a bargain with whatever fates she recognized: bring Doris home and I’ll put up with Jack. Well, Doris was there, standing like a Chirico figure in the receding distances of the house.

Biemeyer failed to put up an argument. He didn’t even acknowledge his wife’s remarks. He simply turned on his heel and led me through the house to his study. Doris gave me a small propitiatory smile as we went by. Her eyes were bright and scared.

Biemeyer sat down at his desk in front of the picture of his copper mine. He set down his drink and swiveled his chair toward me. “All right. What do you want from me now?”

“I’m looking for a pair of women. I think they may be together. One of them is Betty—Betty Jo Siddon.”

Biemeyer leaned forward. “The society reporter? Don’t tell me she’s turned up missing.”

“Just tonight. But she may be in danger. You may be able to help me find her.”

“I don’t see how. I haven’t seen her in weeks. We don’t go to many parties.”

“She didn’t get lost at a party, Mr. Biemeyer. I’m not sure how it happened, but I think she went to a nursing home in town here and got waylaid. That’s the theory I have to work on, anyway.”

“Where do I come in? I’ve never been in a nursing home in my life.” He gave me a macho look and reached for his drink.

“Miss Siddon was looking for Mildred Mead.”

His hand jerked and closed on his drink, spilling part of it on his trousers. “I never heard of her,” he said without conviction.

“She was the subject of the painting I’ve been looking for. You must have recognized her.”

“How?” he said. “I never met the woman in my life. What did you say her name was?”

“Mildred Mead. You bought her a house in Chantry Canyon quite a few years ago. That was a generous gift to a woman you say you never met. Incidentally, your daughter, Doris, ended up in that house last night. It’s been taken over by a commune. Mildred sold them the house a few months ago and moved here. Don’t tell me this is news to you.”

“I’m not telling you anything.”

Biemeyer’s face had turned fiery red. He got to his feet. I expected him to take a swing at me. Instead he rushed out of the room.

I thought that was the end of our conversation. But he came back with a fresh drink and sat down opposite me again. His face had turned pale in blotches.

“Have you been researching me?”

“No.”

“I don’t believe you. How did you find out about Mildred Mead?”

“Her name came up in Arizona, together with yours.”

He sighed. “They hate me there. There were times when I had to close down the smelter and put half of Copper City out of work. I know how it feels—I’m a Copper City boy myself. Back before the war, my family didn’t have two nickels to rub against each other. I worked my way through high school and played football to stay in college. But I suppose you know all that already?”

I gave him a knowing look, which didn’t come hard. I knew now.

“Have you talked to Mildred?” he said.

“No. I haven’t seen her.”

“She’s an old woman now. But she was something to see in the old days. A beautiful thing.” He opened and closed his free hand and gulped part of his drink. “When I finally got hold of her, it made everything worthwhile—all the work and the goddam football games getting my bones beaten. But she’s old now. She finally got old.”

“Is she here in town?”

“You know she is, or you wouldn’t ask me the question. Or she was.” He reached out with his free hand and grasped my shoulder. “Just don’t tell Ruth. She’s insanely jealous. You know how women are.”

Just beyond the open door of the study the light stirred. Ruth Biemeyer moved into the doorway, trampling on the heels of her own shadow.

She said, “It isn’t true that I’m insanely jealous. I may have been jealous at times. But it gives you no right to speak like that.”

Biemeyer stood facing her, not quite as tall as she was on her heels. His face was set in creases of bitter loathing that gave it the character it had lacked.

“You were eaten up with jealousy,” he said. “You have been all your life. You wouldn’t give me normal sex, but when I got it from another woman you couldn’t stand it. You did your dirty damnedest to break it up. And when you couldn’t, you ran her out of town.”

“I was ashamed for you,” she said with acid sweetness. “Chasing after that poor old woman, when she was so sick and tired she could hardly walk.”

“Mildred isn’t so old. She’s got more sex in her little finger than you ever had in your body.”

“What would you know about sex? You were looking for a mother, not a wife.”

“Wife?” He swept the room with an exaggerated glance. “I don’t see any wife, I see a woman who cut me off when I was in my prime.”

“Because you chose that old hag.”

“Don’t call her that!”

Their quarrel had had from the start a self-conscious dramatic aspect. They looked sideways at me as they spoke, as if I were their judge or referee. I thought of their daughter, Doris, and wondered if she had been used in this way as the audience and fulcrum of their quarrels.

I remembered Doris’s memory of the scene when she had hidden in the clothes hamper in the bathroom, and I began to get angry again. This time I kept my anger hidden. Doris’s parents were telling me some of the things I had to know. But both of them were looking at me now, perhaps wondering if they had lost their audience.

I said to Ruth Biemeyer, “Why did you buy that picture of Mildred Mead and hang it on the wall?”

“I didn’t know it was Mildred Mead. It’s an idealized portrait, and she’s a wrinkled old crone by now. Why should I connect her with the picture?”

“You did, though,” Biemeyer said. “And she still was better-looking than you ever were on your best day. That was the thing you couldn’t stand.”

“You were the thing I couldn’t stand.”

“At least you’re admitting it now. You used to pretend that all the trouble originated with me. I was the King Kong of Copper City and you were the delicate maiden. You’re not so bloody delicate, or maidenly.”

“No,” she said. “I’ve grown scar tissue. I’ve needed it.”

I was getting sick of them. I had gone through quarrels like theirs myself, when my own marriage was breaking up. Eventually the quarrels reached a point where nothing hopeful, and nothing entirely true, was being said.

I could smell the sour animal anger of their bodies, and hear them breathing quickly, out of phase. I stepped between them, facing Biemeyer.

“Where is Mildred? I want to talk to her,” I said.

“I don’t know. Honestly.”

“He’s lying,” the woman said. “He brought her to town and set her up in an apartment on the beach. I have friends in this town, I know what’s going on. They saw him beating a path to her door, visiting her every day.” She turned on her husband. “What kind of a creep are you, anyway, sneaking away from your lawful home to make love to a crazy old woman?”

“I wasn’t making love to her.”

“Then what were you doing?”

“Talking. We’d have a few drinks and some conversation. That’s all it amounted to.”

“Just an innocent friendship, eh?”

“That’s right.”

“And that’s all it ever was,” she said sardonically.

“I don’t claim that.”

“What do you claim?”

He pulled himself together and said, “I loved her.”

She looked at him in a lost way. It made me wonder if he had ever told her that before. She burst into tears and sat down in his chair, bending her streaming face close to her knees.

Biemeyer seemed upset, almost disoriented. I took him by the arm and led him to the far end of the room.

“Where is Mildred now?”

“I haven’t seen her for weeks. I don’t know where she went. We got into an argument about money. I was looking after her, of course, but she wanted more. She wanted me to set her up in a house with a staff of servants and a nurse to look after her. Mildred always did have big ideas.”

“And you didn’t want to pay for them?”

“That’s right. I was willing to pay my share. But she wasn’t penniless. And she was getting old—she’s in her seventies. I told her a woman has to adjust when she gets into her seventies. She can’t expect to go on living like a queen.”

“Where did she go?”

“I can’t tell you. She moved out several weeks ago without telling me anything. She said she was going someplace to move in with relatives.”

“In town here?”

“I don’t know.”

“You didn’t try to find her?”

“Why should I?” Biemeyer said. “Why the hell should I? There wasn’t anything going on between us any more. With the money from the house in Chantry Canyon, she had enough to live on for the rest of her life. I didn’t owe her anything. Frankly, she was turning into a nuisance.”

So was Biemeyer, but I stayed with him. “I need to get in touch with her, and you may be able to help me. Do you have any contacts at the Southwestern Savings branch in Copper City?”

“I know the resident manager. Delbert Knapp.”

“Can you find out from him where Mildred Mead has been cashing her mortgage checks?”

“I guess I can try.”

“You can do better than try, Mr. Biemeyer. I hate to press you, but this could be a matter of life or death.”

“Whose death? Mildred’s?”

“Possibly. But I’m more immediately concerned with Betty Siddon. I’m trying to trace her through Mildred. Will you get in touch with Delbert Knapp?”

“I may not be able to do it tonight. He wouldn’t have the information at home with him, anyway.”

“What about Mildred’s local contacts? Can you help me with those?”

“I’ll think about it. But you understand I don’t want my name in the paper. I don’t want my name mentioned at all in connection with Mildred. In fact, the more I think about it, the less I like the whole idea of getting involved.”

“A woman’s life may be at stake.”

“People die every day,” he said.

I stood up and spoke down to him. “I got your daughter back. Now I want some help from you. And if I don’t get it, and something happens to Miss Siddon, I’ll fix you.”

“That sounds like a threat.”

“It is. There’s enough crap in your life to make you fixable.”

“But I’m your client.”

“Your wife is.”

My voice sounded calm in my ears, a little distant. But my eyes felt as if they had shrunk, and I was shaking.

“You must be crazy,” he said. “I could buy and sell you.”

“I’m not for sale. Anyway, that’s just talk. You may have money, but you’re too tight to use it. The other day you were bellyaching about five hundred measly bucks to get your daughter back. Half the time you’re the king of the world, and the other half you talk like poor white trash.”

He stood up. “I’m going to report you to Sacramento for threatening to blackmail me. You’re going to regret this for the rest of your life.”

I was already regretting it. But I was too angry to try to conciliate him. I walked out of the study and headed for the front door.

Mrs. Biemeyer caught me before I reached it. “You shouldn’t have said what you did.”

“I know that. I’m sorry. May I use your phone, Mrs. Biemeyer?”

“Don’t call the police, will you? I don’t want them here.”

“No. I’m just calling a friend.”

She led me into the huge bricked kitchen, seated me at a table by the window, and brought me a telephone on a long cord. The window overlooked the distant harbor. Closer, near the foot of the hill, the Chantry house had lights on in it. While I was dialing the number Fay Brighton had given me, I took a second, longer look and saw that some of the lights were in the greenhouse.

I got a busy signal, and dialed again.

This time Mrs. Brighton answered on the first ring: “Hello?”

“This is Archer speaking. Have you had any luck?”

“Yes, sir, but all of it was bad. The trouble is that a whole lot of the people sound suspicious. It may be something in my voice that does it to them. I’m sort of scared sitting here by myself, you know. And I don’t seem to be accomplishing anything.”

“How far down the list are you?”

“Maybe halfway. But I feel that I’m not accomplishing anything. Is it all right with you if I quit for the night?”

I didn’t answer her right away. Before I did, she let out an apologetic snuffling sob and hung up.