The Blue Hammer

"Will I be quoted?" she said.

"Not by me."

"All right. I know something that very few people know. I got it from Mildred Mead."

"On the night when the two of you killed the bottle of bourbon?"

"No. Some time before that, not long after her son William was drafted. It must have been back in 1942. He got a girl pregnant and had to marry her, Mildred told me. But he was really in love with Richard Chantry's wife. And she was in love with William."

"Are you suggesting that Richard murdered William?"

"I'm telling you he had a motive, anyway."

"I thought you said that Richard Chantry was homosexual."

"Bisexual, like my husband. It doesn't rule anything out-I learned that the hard way."

"Do you think Richard killed your husband, too?"

"I don't know. He may have." She peered past me into the bright empty street. "Nobody seems to know where Richard is or what he's doing. As all the world knows, he's been gone for twenty-five years."

"Gone where? Do you have any ideas, Mrs. Grimes?"

"I have one. It struck me when I heard that Paul had been killed. I wondered if Richard was hiding out in Santa Teresa. And whether Paul had seen him, and been silenced." She hung her head, wagging it dolefully from side to side. "Those are terrible thoughts to have, but I've been having them."

"So have I," I said. "What does your daughter Paola think about all this? You said you talked to her on the phone."

Mrs. Grimes closed her teeth over her lower lip and looked away. "I'm afraid I don't know what she thinks. Paola and I don't communicate too well. Has she talked to you?"

"Soon after the murder. She was in shock to some extent."

"I'm afraid she still is. Would you be good enough to look her up when you go back to Santa Teresa?"

"I was pla

"Good. Would you take her some money from me? She says she's completely broke."

"I'll be glad to. Where is she staying?"

"The Monte Cristo Hotel."

"That sounds like swank."

"It isn't, though."

"Good." She gave me two twenties and a ten out of the cash register. "This should at least cover her rent for a couple of days."

The morning was ru

I told her my name. "I'm looking for a friend named Mildred Mead. I understand she does her banking here."

Mrs. Alvarez gave me a hard look that was almost tangible. She must have decided I wasn't a con man, because she nodded her shiny dark head and said, "Yes. She did. But she's moved to California."

"Santa Teresa? She often talked about moving there."

"Well, now she has."

"Can you give me an address for Mrs. Mead? I happen to be on my way to Santa Teresa. Mr. Biemeyer is flying me over in one of the company planes."

Mrs. Alvarez stood up. "I'll see what I can find."

She went through a door and was gone for some time. She came back looking rather disappointed.

"The only address I have for Miss Mead is a motel called Siesta Village. But that address is two months old."

"Is that where you're sending her mortgage payments?"

"No. I checked into that. She rented a P.O. box." Mrs. Alvarez looked at a slip of paper in her hand. "Number 121."

"In Santa Teresa?"

"In the main post office in Santa Teresa, yes."

I drove out to the airport and turned in my rented car. The company jet was already warming up, and Doris and Fred were in it. They were sitting in separate seats, Doris in the front behind the pilot's compartment and Fred in the back. There seemed to be no communication between them, perhaps because the sheriff was standing guard at the door.

He seemed relieved to see me. "I was afraid you weren't going to make it. I thought I'd have to make the trip to California myself."

"Has there been any trouble?"

"No." He turned a cold eye on Fred, who winced away. "I've got so I don't trust anybody under forty."

"I'm afraid I qualify for your trust."

"Yeah, you're more like fifty, aren't you? And I'll be sixty on my next birthday. I never thought it would happen, but I've started to look forward to retirement. The world is changing, you know."

But not fast enough, I thought. It was still a world where money talked, or bought silence.

XXV

The jet climbed in a long straight slant. It was a clear day. The long dry sava

Fred kept his head turned away from me, his eyes on the scenery sliding away underneath us. The girl in the seat behind the pilot seemed equally oblivious and remote. The high sierra rose in the faded distance.

Fred looked at the mountains ahead as if they constituted the walls of a jail where he was going to be confined.

He turned to me: "What do you think they'll do to me?"

"I don't know. It depends on two things. Whether we recover the picture, and whether you decide to tell the whole story."

"I told you the whole story last night."

"I've been thinking about that, and I wonder if you did. It seems to me you left out some pertinent facts."

"That's your opinion."

"Isn't it yours, too?"

He turned his head away and looked down at the great sunlit world into which he had escaped for a day or two. It seemed to be fleeing backward into the past. The mountain walls loomed ahead, and the jet whined louder as it climbed to vault over them.

"What got you so interested in Mildred Mead?" I asked him.

"Nothing. I wasn't interested in her. I didn't even know who she was until Mr. Lashman told me yesterday."

"And you didn't know that Mildred moved to Santa Teresa a few months ago?"

He turned toward me. He badly needed a shave, and it made him look both older and more furtive. But he seemed honestly confused.

"I certainly didn't. What is she doing there?"

"Looking for a place to live, apparently. She's a sick old woman."

"I didn't know that. I don't know anything about her."

"Then what was it that got you interested in the Biemeyers' painting?"

He shook his head. "I can't tell you. Chantry's work has always fascinated me. It isn't a crime to be interested in paintings."

"Only if you steal them, Fred."

"But I didn't _plan_ to steal it. I simply borrowed it overnight. I meant to return it next day."

Doris had turned in her seat. She was up on her knees, watching us over the back.

"That's true," she said. "Fred _told_ me he borrowed the picture. He wouldn't do that if he pla

Unless, I thought, he pla

She gave me a long cold appraising look. "You really believe that, that everything makes sense?"

"I work on that principle, anyway."

She lifted her eyes in sardonic prayer and smiled. It was the first time I had seen her smile.

"Would you mind if I sat with Fred for a while?" she said.

His sensitive little smile peeked out from under his heavy mustache. He flushed with pleasure.

I said, "I don't mind, Miss Biemeyer."

I traded seats with her, and pretended to go to sleep. Their conversation was steady and low, too low to be overheard through the sound of the engine. Eventually I did go to sleep.

When I woke up, we were turning over the sea, back toward the Santa Teresa airport. We landed with a gentle bump and taxied toward the small Spanish Mission terminal.

Jack Biemeyer was waiting at the gate. His wife broke past him as we climbed out. She folded Doris in her arms.