Текст книги "The Blue Hammer"

Автор книги: Ross MacDonald

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She made a doleful mouth and looked at me to measure its effect. For some reason, it made me angrier. I had had enough of the woman and her lies, enough of her truth as well. While I sat trading words with her, a woman I cared about was lost in the dangerous night.

“Do you know where Betty Siddon is?”

She shook her silver head. “I’m afraid I don’t. Has something happened to Betty Jo?”

“She went looking for Mildred Mead and got lost herself. Do you know where I can find Mildred Mead?”

“No. I don’t. She phoned me a few months ago, when she’d just come to town. But I didn’t want to see her. I didn’t want to stir up all the old memories.”

“Then you should never have dug up those bones,” I said.

She swore at me violently, damning me to hell. But the wish rebounded, almost as if she’d meant it for herself in the first place. A gray look of self-loathing dropped like a veil across her face. She covered it with her hands.

“Why did you dig them up?” I said.

She was silent for a while. Then she said behind her hands, “I simply panicked.”

“Why?”

“I was afraid the place would be searched, and I would be blamed for the man’s death.”

She was watching me between her fingers, like a woman behind bars.

“Did somebody threaten you with exposure?”

She didn’t answer. I took this to mean yes. “Who was it, Mrs. Chantry?”

“I’m not sure. She didn’t come here. She phoned me last night and threatened to go to the police with what she knew. I think it was the woman who came here with the little boy the day the man was killed.”

“What did she want from you?”

“Money.” She dropped her hands: her mouth was twisted and her eyes were hard.

“How much?”

“She didn’t specify. A large amount, I gather.”

“When does she want it?”

“Tomorrow. She said she’d call me again tomorrow, and meanwhile I should raise all the money I could.”

“Do you plan to do that?”

“I had planned to. But there’s no point in it now, is there? Unless you and I can come to some arrangement.”

She thrust her hands into her hair and held her head between them, chin high, like a work of art that she was offering for lease or outright sale.

I said, “I’ll do what I can. But you can’t keep Mackendrick out of this. If you can help him to close the case, he’ll be grateful. I think you should get in touch with him right away.”

“No. I need time to think. Will you give me until morning?”

“I will on one condition. Don’t do anything rash.”

“Like run away, you mean?”

“Like kill yourself.”

She shook her head in a short angry movement. “I’m going to stay here and fight. I hope you’ll be on my side.”

I didn’t commit myself. As I got up to leave, the eyes of Chantry’s portraits seemed to be watching me from the shadowed walls.

Mrs. Chantry followed me to the door. “Please don’t judge me harshly. I know I appear to be a wicked person. But I’ve really had very little choice about the things I’ve done, or left undone. My life wasn’t easy even before my husband took off. And since then it’s been a kind of shabby hell.”

“With Rico.”

“Yes. With Rico. I said I had no real choice.”

She was standing close to me, her eyes hooded and calculating, as if she might be getting ready to make another unfortunate choice.

I said, “A young soldier named William Mead was murdered in Arizona over thirty years ago. He was the illegitimate son of Felix Chantry by Mildred Mead—your husband’s half brother.”

She reacted as though I had struck her and she was about to cry out. Her eyebrows rose and her lower lip dropped. For a moment, her face was open. But she didn’t make a sound.

“Your husband left Arizona immediately afterwards, and there was some suspicion that he had killed William Mead. Did he?”

“Certainly not. What reason would he have?”

“I was hoping you could tell me. Weren’t you quite close to William at one time?”

“No. Of course not.”

But there was no conviction in her denial.

^chapter

34

I left her and drove south along the waterfront. The traffic was still fairly heavy. It wasn’t really late, but I was tired. The long indeterminate conversation with Mrs. Chantry had drained my energy.

I passed a hamburger stand that reminded me that I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. I had a couple of hamburgers and some French frieds. Then I checked in at my motel, hoping that Betty might have left a message for me.

She hadn’t. But there was one from Paola Grimes, who wanted me to call her at the Monte Cristo Hotel. I got the front desk of the hotel after some difficulty.

Paola answered her room phone on the first ring: “Hello?”

“This is Archer.”

“It’s about time.” Her voice was flat and angry. “My mother told me she gave you some money for me. Fifty dollars. I need it. I can’t get out of this flea-trap without it, and my van won’t start, either.”

“I’ll bring you your fifty now. I tried to deliver it earlier.”

“You could have left it at the desk.”

“Not that desk. I’ll see you, Paola.”

I found her waiting for me in the Monte Cristo lobby. She had evidently brushed her hair and washed her face and put on fresh lipstick. But she looked sad and out of place among the night-blooming girls and their followers.

I handed her the fifty dollars. She counted and rolled the bills, and thrust them into her brassiere.

I said, “Will that cover your hotel bill?”

“Up until now I guess it will. I don’t know about tomorrow. The police want me to stick around but they won’t release any of my father’s money. He was carrying quite a lot of money.”

“You’ll get it back, or your mother will.”

“Or my great-grandchildren will,” she said bitterly. “I don’t trust cops and I don’t like this town. I don’t like the people here. They killed my father and I’m afraid they’ll kill me.”

Her fear was contagious. I followed the movements of her eyes and began to see the place as she was seeing it, an anteroom where lost souls waited for a one-night stand that was never going to end.

“Who killed your father?”

She shook her head, and her black hair fell like night around her face. “I don’t want to talk about it. Not here.”

“We could talk in your room.”

“No, thanks.” She gave me a sharp dark paranoid look, like a frightened animal peering out from the cover of her hair. “The room may be bugged. That’s one reason I can’t stay in it.”

“Who would bug it?”

“Maybe the cops. Maybe the killers. What difference does it make? They’re all in this together.”

“Come out and sit in my car.”

“No, thanks.”

“Then let’s take a walk, Paola.”

Surprisingly she agreed. We went out and joined the people on the sidewalk. Across the road, a line of palms tossed their plumes above the empty booths of the weekly art show. Beyond them the phosphorescent white waves broke and rose and receded as if they had been set the eternal task of marking time and measuring space.

Gradually, as we moved along the sidewalk, Paola became less tense. Our movements seemed to relate to the natural rhythms of the sea. The sky opened out above us, poorly lit by the low sinking moon on the horizon.

Paola touched my arm. “You asked me who killed my father.”

“Yes.”

“You want to know what I think?”

“Tell me what you think.”

“Well, I’ve been going over in my mind everything my father said. You know, he believed that Richard Chantry was alive and staying here in town under a different name. And he thought that Chantry actually painted that picture of Mildred Mead. I thought so, too, when I saw it. I don’t claim to be an expert, like my father, but it looked like a Chantry to me.”

“Are you sure your father’s opinion was honest, Paola? The picture was worth a lot more to him if it was a Chantry.”

“I know that, and so did he. That’s why he did his best to authenticate it. He spent the last days of his life trying to locate Chantry and trace the picture to him. He even looked up Mildred Mead, who is living here in town. She was Chantry’s favorite model, though of course she didn’t actually sit for that particular portrait. She’s an old woman now.”

“Have you seen her?”

She nodded. “My father took me to see her a couple of days before he was killed. Mildred was a friend of my mother’s in Arizona, and I’ve known her ever since I was a child. My father probably thought that having me there would get her talking. But Mildred didn’t say much the day we visited her.”

“Exactly where was this?”

“She has a little place in a court. She was just moving in. I think it’s called Magnolia Court. There’s a big magnolia tree in the middle of it.”

“In town here?”

“Yes. It’s in the downtown section. She said she took it because she couldn’t do much walking any more. She didn’t talk much, either.”

“Why not?”

“I think she was scared. My father kept pressing her about Richard Chantry. Was he alive or dead? Did he paint that picture? But she didn’t want to talk about him. She said she hadn’t seen him in over thirty years and he was probably dead, and she hoped he was. She sounded very bitter.”

“I’m not surprised. Chantry may have killed her son William.”

“And he may have killed my father, too. My father could have traced the picture to him and got himself killed for his trouble.”

Her voice was low and frightened. She looked around suspiciously at the palms and the low moon, as if they were parts of a shabby stage set hiding the actual jungle life of the world. Her hands grasped at each other and pulled in opposing directions.

“I’ve got to get out of this town. The police say I have to stick around, they need me for a witness. But they’re not even protecting me.”

“Protecting you from what?” I said, though I knew the answer.

“Chantry. Who else? He killed my father—I know that in my bones. But I don’t know who he is or where he is. I don’t even know what he looks like any more. He could be any man I meet on the street.”

Her voice was rising. Other people on the sidewalk had begun to notice us. We were approaching a restaurant-bar that was spilling jazz through its open front door. I steered her in and sat her at a table. The room was narrow and deep, resembling a tunnel, and the band at its far end was like a train coming.

“I don’t like that music,” she said.

“No matter. You need a drink.”

She shook her dark head. “I can’t drink. Alcohol drives me crazy. It was the same with my father. He told me that was why he went on drugs.” She covered her ears with her hands and closed her eyes. “I’ve got to get out of here.”

I took her hand and drew her to her feet. Pulling and jerking against my movements, she followed me out. She stared at the people on the street in profound distrust, ready to yell if anyone looked twice at her. She was on the narrow edge of hysteria or something worse.

I gripped her arm and walked her quickly in the direction of the hotel.

She hung back. “I don’t want to go back there. I don’t like it there. They kept me up all night, knocking and fooling around and whispering. They think that any woman is their meat.”

“Then check out of the place.”

“I wouldn’t know where to go. I guess I could go back to the gallery. I have a little room in the back there. But I’m afraid to.”

“Because your father isn’t there?”

“No.” She hugged herself and shuddered. “Because he might come back.”

That sent a chill through me. I didn’t quite believe that the woman was losing her mind, but she was trying hard to. If she went on like this, she might succeed before morning.

For various reasons, I felt responsible for her. I made a kind of superstitious bargain with the controlling forces of the world, if any. If I tried to look after Paola, then maybe Betty would be looked after.

I took Paola into the Monte Cristo and paid her bill and helped her pack her suitcase and carried it out to my car.

She trotted along beside me. “Where are we going?”

“I’ll get you a room in my motel. It’s across from the yacht harbor, and it’s quieter. There’s an all-night restaurant on the corner if you get hungry.”

“I’m hungry now,” she said. “I haven’t been eating.”

I took her to the restaurant for a sandwich, then got her checked into the motel. Biemeyer could pay for her room. She was a witness.

I left the motel without going into my own room. But when I was out in the parking lot getting into my car, I had a sudden wild idea that Betty might be waiting for me in that room. I went and looked. The room was empty, the bed unslept-in.

There was only one thing I could do: follow my case until it took me to her. Not too late. Please.

^chapter

35

The magnolia tree hung like a tethered cloud over the court to which it had given its name. There was light in only one of the small cottages, shining dimly through drawn blinds. I tapped on the screen door.

I heard a movement behind it, and then a breathing silence. A woman’s voice finally said, “Who is that?”

“My name is Archer. I’m a private detective working for Jack Biemeyer.”

“Then you can go plumb to hell,” she said quietly. “But before you do you can go back and tell Jack Biemeyer to do the same.”

“I’ll be glad to, Miss Mead. I don’t like that s.o.b. either.”

She opened the inner door, a small and dainty figure against the light. “What did you say your name was?”

“Lew Archer.”

“Did Jack Biemeyer send you here?”

“Not exactly. He had a picture stolen—a painting of you. I thought you might be able to help me trace it.”

“How did Jack know I was here? I haven’t told a living soul.”

“Paola Grimes sent me.”

“I see. I should have known better than to let her into my house.” Her body had stiffened as if she were getting ready to slam the door in my face. “She’s a bad-luck member of a bad-luck family.”

“I talked to her mother, Juanita, this morning in Copper City. She sent her best wishes to you.”

“Did she? That’s nice.”

I had said the right thing. She moved to unlatch the outer door. Until then, she hadn’t shown her age. She was lame, and her hips moved awkwardly. I was reminded of certain kinds of pelagic birds that move at ease in the air or on the ocean, but have a hard time walking.

Her white head was like a bird’s. It was sparse and elegant, with hollow cheeks, a thin straight nose, eyes that still had distance and wildness. She caught me looking at her, and smiled. One of her front teeth was missing. It gave her a gamine touch.

“Do you like my looks? I can’t say they’ve improved with age.”

“That’s true.”

She went on smiling. “Who would want them to? My looks got me into more trouble. I don’t mean to complain. A woman can’t have everything in her life. I traveled a lot—first class a good deal of the time. I knew some talented and famous men.”

“I met one of them in Tucson yesterday.”

“Lashman?”

“Yes.”

“How is he?”

“Getting old. But he’s still painting. As a matter of fact, when I left him he was working on another portrait of you.”

She was silent for a moment. Her head was poised and her eyes were empty. “The way I am now, or the way I was?”

“The way you were.”

“Of course, it would have to be. He hasn’t seen me since I got really old.” She talked about herself as if she were an object of art that unfortunately hadn’t been made to last—a Japanese flower arrangement or a song by a composer who didn’t know musical notation. “But that’s enough about me. Tell me about Juanita.”

She sat in an armchair under a standing lamp, and I sat facing her. I gave her a brief report on Juanita Grimes, then on Juanita’s ex-husband, Paul, and his death.

She seemed shocked by the knowledge. “I can’t believe Paul Grimes is dead. He was here just the other day, with his daughter.”

“So she told me. I understand he wanted you to authenticate a painting of you.”

“That was the general idea. Unfortunately I couldn’t place it. All he had was a small photograph of it, and I’ve been painted so many times I lost track long ago. As a matter of fact, I’ve got very bored with pictures, especially pictures of my own face. I haven’t hung any pictures since I moved in, though I’ve got a ton of them in the back room.” She waved her fingers at the bare walls. “It’s no fun being reminded of what you’ve lost.”

“I know that. But would you mind taking another look at a photograph of a picture?”

“A picture of me?”

“I think so. It’s the same picture that Paul Grimes was interested in.”

I got out my photograph of the painting and handed it to her. She held it up to the light and studied it. Then she let out a little wordless grunt of recognition.

“Have you seen it before, Miss Mead?”

“This is the third time I’ve seen it. The second time tonight. But I still can’t say for sure who painted it, or when. It looks like a Chantry, all right, but I don’t remember him painting it.”

“It’s been suggested that it was a memory picture, one you never sat for—maybe done quite recently.”

“That’s what the young woman was saying this evening.”

“What young woman?”

“The girl from the local paper. I told her I don’t give interviews. But she was very persistent and I finally let her come. I must admit she was nice enough. I wasn’t much help to her, though.”

“Was her name Betty Siddon?”

“That’s it. Betty Siddon. Do you know her?”

“I’ve been trying to get in touch with her. Did she tell you where she was going from here?”

“She said something about a beach—Sycamore Beach?”

“Sycamore Point?”

“I guess that was it. Anyway, the man who sold the picture to Paul Grimes drowned in the ocean there the other day. What was his name?”

“Jake Whitmore. He didn’t drown in the ocean, though. He was drowned in fresh water, probably in somebody’s bathtub.”

Without intending to, I had succeeded in shocking her. The life and color drained from her face. Its bones still made it handsome, though her eyes had gone as dead as any statue’s.

Her pale mauve mouth said, “This Whitmore was murdered, too?”

“The police and the coroner think so.”

“Jesus.” She was breathing like a runner.

“Can I get you some water, Miss Mead?”

“Got something better than that.” She pointed at a cabinet against the wall. “There’s a fifth of Jack Daniel’s in there. And glasses. Pour yourself one, too. I take mine straight. Double.”

I got out the whisky and poured her a double shot and myself a single. She took hers in a single gulp. She asked for another double. I poured it, and she drank it. I watched the color rise in her face.

“Drink yours down,” she said. “I hate to drink alone.”

I wondered if she was an alcoholic, and decided she probably was.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she said. “Do I look funny? Do my eyes look funny?”

“No. They look fine.”

“Then quit staring at me like that.”

“I’m sorry. I have to leave, anyway.”

“You’re interested in that Siddon girl, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am. You’re a mind reader.”

“I know men,” she said. “Isn’t she a little young for you?”

“Maybe. How long ago was she here?”

“I didn’t look at the time. It was early in the evening.”

“How did she find you?”

“She called the—” The old woman’s mouth clamped shut. After a short period of strained silence, she said, “I have no idea.”

“You were going to say she called somewhere.”

“Was I? Then you know more than I do. I must have been thinking about something else. Don’t let me keep you—you say you have to go. Just leave that bottle where I can reach it, will you?”

She touched the table beside her chair with one of her wrinkled white hands.

I said, “I’m not leaving yet.”

“I wish you would. I’m very tired. Anyway, I’ve told you all I know.”

“I seriously doubt that, Miss Mead. When I was in Arizona, I stumbled into some very interesting facts. Back in the early forties, your natural son William was killed by someone and buried in the desert.”

Her face grew paler and longer. “Juanita Grimes always did talk a lot.”

“She wasn’t my main source. Your son’s murder was and is public knowledge. I talked to the man who discovered his body and investigated his death. Sheriff Brotherton.”

“So?”

“Aren’t you interested in who killed your son?”

“It doesn’t matter now,” she said. “What difference can it possibly make? He’s dead. He’s been dead for over thirty-two years.”

“But I think the man who killed him is still alive.”

“How can you know that?”

“I feel it in my bones. Not that there isn’t plenty of evidence. There have been other deaths. Paul Grimes, Jacob Whitmore. And the man whose remains were dug up tonight in Richard Chantry’s greenhouse.”

She tried to speak, and succeeded on her second attempt. “What man?”

“He hasn’t been identified yet, but he will be. He came to Chantry’s house about twenty-five years ago with a woman and a little boy. There was an argument, and a fight between him and Chantry. According to the account I heard, the man fell down and hit his head and died. The Chantrys buried him.”

“Did Mrs. Chantry tell you this?” she said.

“Some of it.”

Her eyes widened while the rest of her face had tightened and thinned. She looked like a kestrel or some other small bird of prey.

“What else did Mrs. Chantry tell you?”

“That was the gist of it. What else was there to tell?”

“I’m asking you,” she said.

“But I think you’re the one who knows the answer. Why did Jack Biemeyer buy you the house in Chantry Canyon?”

“Because I asked him to.”

“Jack Biemeyer isn’t that generous.”

“He was to me, in those days.” A little color came into her face and gathered on her cheekbones. “I admit he hasn’t improved with age. But then neither have I.”

“I suggest that Biemeyer bought you that house on behalf of the Chantry family. Or possibly they gave it to you, by way of him, for nothing.”

“What reason would they have to do that?”

“To keep you quiet about your son William’s murder.”

“William’s death was public knowledge. What was there to be quiet about?”

“Who killed him. I think it was Richard Chantry. He left Arizona for California right after the murder and never went back. The case against him was quashed, or never developed. If you had any suspicions, you kept them to yourself.”

She shook her head. “You don’t know me. I loved my son. When they showed me William’s body, I almost died myself. And don’t forget he was a Chantry, too. Felix Chantry was his natural father. And there was no bad blood between William and Richard.”

“Then why did Richard leave Arizona immediately after William’s death?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps he was afraid of being murdered, too.”

“Did he say that?”

“I never discussed it with him. As a matter of fact, I haven’t seen Richard since then.”

“Since William’s death?”

“That’s right. I haven’t seen Richard once in thirty-two years. Nobody’s seen him in the last twenty-five years. And I didn’t find out why until tonight, from you.” She moved restlessly, and looked at the bottle beside her. “If you’re planning to stay around for a while, you might as well pour me another. And yourself, too.”

“No, thanks. I have a few more questions, and that should do it. I understand that when your son William was killed he left behind a wife and a small son.”

Her eyes changed as if she were looking inward and downward into the past. “I believe he did.”

“You mean you don’t know?”

“I’ve been told about them. I’ve never seen them.”

“Why not?”

“It wasn’t through any wish of mine. They simply dropped out of sight. I did hear a rumor that the woman, William’s widow, married another man and changed the boy’s name to his.”

“Do you know the name?”

“I’m afraid I don’t. They never contacted me.”

“Do you think they contacted Richard Chantry?”

She looked away. “I wouldn’t know about that.”

“The woman and the little boy who came to Chantry’s house twenty-five years ago—could they have been William’s widow and son?”

“I don’t know. It seems to me you’re really reaching.”

“I have to. It’s all a long way back in the past. Do you have any idea who the man was—the man who got himself killed and buried in the greenhouse?”

“I haven’t the slightest.”

“Could it have been your son William?”

“You must be crazy. William was killed in Arizona in 1943—seven years before that.”

“Did you see his body?”

“Yes.”

“I understand it was pretty chewed up. Were you able to make a positive identification?”

“Yes. I was. My son William died thirty-two years ago.”

“What happened to his body after you identified it?”

“I don’t know exactly.”

“That’s surprising.”

“Is it? He had a wife in California, you know. She wanted his body shipped back here for final burial. And I had no objections. Once a man is dead, he’s dead. It doesn’t matter where he’s finally planted.”

Her voice was rough and careless, and I got the impression that she was deliberately violating her own feelings.

As if she realized this, she added, “I want my own body cremated—it won’t be long now—and the ashes scattered on the desert near Tucson.”

“Near Lashman’s?”

She looked at me with irritation, and renewed interest. “You know too damn much.”

“You tell me too damn little, Mildred. Where was your son William buried?”

“Someplace in California, I was told.”

“Did you ever visit his grave?”

“No. I don’t know where it is.”

“Do you know where his widow lives now?”

“No. I never was much interested in family. I left my own family in Denver when I was fourteen years old, and never went back. I never looked back, either.”

But her eyes were in long focus now, looking back over the continent of her life. She may have been feeling what I felt, the subterranean jolt as the case moved once again, with enough force to throw a dead man out of his grave.