The Blue Hammer (20 page)

She took the picture and nodded. “It certainly looks like it. It’s a really good picture and Jake got a lot of money for it. He didn’t tell me how much, but it must have been several hundred, anyway.”

“And Grimes probably sold it for several thousand.”

“Really?”

“I’m not fooling, Jessie. The people who bought the picture from Grimes had it stolen from them. I was hired to recover it.”

She sat up straight and crossed her legs. “You don’t think I stole it, do you?”

“No. I doubt you ever stole anything.”

“I didn’t,” she said firmly. “I never did. Except Jake from his wife.”

“That isn’t a felony.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m being punished like it was. And so was Jake punished.”

“Everybody dies, Jessie.”

“I hope that I die soon.”

I waited. “Before you do,” I said, “I want you to do Jake a favor.”

“How can I? He’s already dead.”

“You can help me find the person or persons who killed him.” I took the photograph from her limp hands. “I think he was killed over this.”

“But why?”

“Because he knew or figured out who painted it. I’m winging, you understand. I don’t know for certain that that’s true. But I think it is. This picture was the connecting link between the two men who were killed, Jake and Paul Grimes.”

I remembered as I said it that a third man had been killed: William Mead, whose body was found in the Arizona desert
in 1943, and whose mother was the subject of the picture. These facts coming together in my mind gave me a kind of subterranean jolt, like an earthquake fault beginning to make its first tentative move. I was breathing quickly and my head was pounding.

I leaned across the littered table. “Jessie, do you have any idea where Jake got this picture?”

“He bought it.”

“How much did he pay for it?”

“Fifty dollars at least—probably more. He wouldn’t tell me how much more. He took the fifty dollars I had in my safety fund—that’s money I kept in case we couldn’t pay the rent. I told him he was crazy to put out cash for the picture, that he should take it on consignment. But he said he had a chance to make a profit. And I guess he did.”

“Did you ever see the person he bought it from?”

“No, but it was a woman. He let that slip.”

“How old a woman?”

Jessie spread her hands like someone feeling for rain. “Jake didn’t tell me, not really. He said that it was an older woman but that doesn’t mean it was. She could be seventeen and he’d still tell me she was an older woman. He knew that I was jealous of the chicks. And I had reason to be.”

Tears rose in her eyes. I didn’t know whether they stood for anger or grief. Her feelings seemed to be fluctuating between those two emotions. So did mine. I was weary of questioning the widows of murdered men. But I still had questions to ask.

“Did the woman bring the picture here to the house?”

“No. I never saw her. I told you that. She took it down to the waterfront on a Saturday. These last years, Jake had a sideline buying and selling pictures at the Saturday art show. He bought the picture there.”

“How long ago was that?”

She was slow in answering, perhaps looking back over a flickering passage of days that seemed all the same: sun and sea, wine and pot and grief and poverty.

“It must have been a couple of months ago. It’s at least that long since he took my safety fund. And when he sold the
picture to Paul Grimes he didn’t replace my fund. He kept the money himself. He didn’t want me to know how much it was. But we’ve been living on it ever since.” She scanned the room. “If you can call this living.”

I got a twenty out of my wallet and dropped it on the table. She scowled at it and then at me.

“What’s that for?”

“Information.”

“I couldn’t give you much. Jake was secretive about this deal. He seemed to think he was on to something big.”

“I think he was, too, or trying to get on to it. Do you want to try and dig up some more information for me?”

“What kind of information?”

“Where this picture came from.” I showed her the portrait of Mildred Mead again. “Who Jake bought it from. Anything else that you can find out about it.”

“Can I keep that photo?”

“No. It’s the only one I have. You’ll have to describe it.”

“Who to?”

“The dealers at the Saturday art show. You know them, don’t you?”

“Most of them.”

“Okay. If you come up with anything usable, I’ll give you another twenty. If you can give me the name or address of the woman who sold Jake this picture, I’ll give you a hundred.”

“I could use a hundred.” But she looked at me as if she didn’t expect to see it in this life. “Jake and I had bad luck. He’s had nothing but bad luck since he joined up with me.” Her voice was harsh. “I wish I could of died instead of him.”

“Don’t wish it,” I said. “We all die soon enough.”

“It can’t come too soon for me.”

“Just wait awhile. Your life will start again. You’re a young woman, Jessie.”

“I feel as old as the hills.”

Outside, the sun had just gone down. The sunset spread across the sea like a conflagration so intense that it fed on water.

^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.”