The Blue Hammer

"Why did they fire her?"

"Meyer said he didn't know. He said that the last he heard she was working at the La Paloma nursing home."

"What else did he tell you about Mrs. Johnson?"

"That's about all I remember."

"Did you tell all this to Betty Siddon?"

"Yes."

"How long ago?"

"I don't really know. Jake didn't believe in clocks. He thought that we should tell time by the sun, like the Chumash Indians."

"Was it before or after sundown that Betty Siddon was here?"

"After sundown. I remember now-it was right after you were here."

"Did you tell her you'd seen me?"

"No."

"Did she say where she was going when she left?"

"She didn't say it in so many words. But she asked me about the La Paloma nursing home. She wanted to make sure she had it straight that that was where Mrs. Johnson was working now."

I drove back down the highway, which was empty except for a few long-distance trucks. I felt as though I had climbed the ridge between the late dead middle of the night and chilly early morning. I could go on now, for another day if I had to.

I parked in the La Paloma lot and rang the bell at the service entrance. Someone inside groaned and muttered in reply. I rang again and heard rapid quiet footsteps. The door was opened six inches on a chain, and the young black nurse peered out at me.

"I was here the other night," I said.

"I remember you. If it's Mrs. Johnson you're after, she isn't here. It's the second time tonight she left me to handle the whole place by myself. I'm just about beat now and I've got hours to go yet. Talking to you isn't getting my work done, either."

"I know how you feel. I've been working all night, too."

She gave me an incredulous look. "What at?"

"I'm a detective. May I come in and talk to you for a minute, Miss?"

"Mrs.-Mrs. Holman." She sighed and unlatched the chain. "I guess so. But make it fast, please."

We leaned against the wall in the dark hallway. The breathings and groans of the patients and the intermittent sounds from the highway made a late-night undersong. Her face merged with the darkness so that her eyes appeared to be the night's own glowing eyes.

"What do you want to know?" she said.

"Why Mrs. Johnson went home."

"Well, she got a call from Fred. Fred is her son. He said the old man was on the rampage again. He's a terrible drunk-she's the only one who can handle him when he's that way. So she took a taxi home. I don't hold it against her, because you gotta do what you gotta do." She took a big breath and let it out: I could feel the warm exhalation in the darkness. "I don't mean to bear down hard on Mrs. Johnson. There are drinkers in my family, too."

"Did you ever visit the Johnson house?"

"No," she said abruptly. "If that's all you want to know, you're wasting my time."

"It isn't, though. This is very important, Mrs. Holman-a matter of life and death."

"Whose life?" she said. "Whose death?"

"A woman named Betty Siddon. She works for the local paper."

I heard the woman draw in her breath.

"Do you recognize the name?"

"Yeah. I do. She called here from the newspaper office right after I came on duty. She wanted to know if we had a patient here named Mildred Mead. I said we did have but not any more; Miss Mead got independent and moved out to Magnolia Court. The only reason she came here in the first place was on account of her co

"What co

"Her-Miss Mead and Mrs. Johnson were relatives."

"What kind of relatives?"

"I never got that straight."

"Did you mention Miss Siddon's call to Mrs. Johnson?"

"No. I didn't want to get her stirred up. She didn't like it at all, you know, when old Miss Mead moved out of here. She took it personally, you might say. They had quite an argument when Miss Mead left. As a matter of fact, they almost came to blows. They're both a couple of blowtops, if you want my opinion."

I got the impression that the woman was talking too freely, sending up a smoke screen of words between me and the thing I wanted to know.

I said, "Has Miss Siddon been here tonight?"

"No." Her answer was firm. But her eyes-seemed to flicker a little, as if a counter-thought had moved behind them.

"If she has been, you better tell me. She may be in serious danger."

"I'm sorry about that. I haven't seen her."

"Is that the honest truth, Mrs. Holman?"

She flared up. "Why don't you stop bugging me? I'm sorry there's trouble in the air, and that your friend's in trouble. But I'm not responsible. And I've got work to do, if you haven't."

I left her reluctantly, feeling that she knew more than she was willing to tell. The atmosphere of the nursing home, compounded of age and sickness and blurred pain, followed me across town to the Johnson house.

XXXVII

The high old house was completely dark. It seemed to hang over me like a dismal past piled generation on generation against the stars. I knocked on the front door, knocked repeatedly and got no answer.

I felt like shouting at the house as Gerard Johnson had done, and I wondered if I was going crazy, too. I leaned on the wall and looked out at the quiet street. I had parked my car around the corner, and the road was empty. Above the dense masses of the olive trees, a pallor was slowly spreading up the sky.

The dawn chill made my bones ache. I threw off my lethargy and pounded on the door and ski

Gerard Johnson spoke through the door: "What is it?"

"Archer. Open the door."

"I can't. She went away and locked me in." His voice was a hoarse whine.

"Where did she go?"

"Probably the La Paloma-that's the nursing home. She's supposed to be on night duty."

"I just came from there. Mrs. Johnson walked off the job again."

"She shouldn't do that. She'll lose that job, too. We'll have to go on welfare. I don't know what will happen to us."

"Where's Fred?"

"I don't know."

There were other questions I wanted to ask him, about his wife and the missing picture, but I despaired of getting useful answers. I gave Johnson a curt good night through the door and drove to the police station.

Mackendrick was in his office, looking not much different from the way he had looked seven or eight hours before. There were tender-looking blue patches under his eyes, but the eyes themselves were stern and steady, and he was freshly shaven.

"You look as if you didn't get much sleep," he said.

"I didn't get any. I've been trying to catch up with Betty Siddon."

Mackendrick drew in a long breath that made the chair creak under him. He let it out with a sigh.

"Why is it so important? We can't keep twenty-four-hour tabs on every reporter in town."

"I know that. This is a special case. I think the Johnson house ought to be searched."

"Do you have any reason to think Miss Siddon's in there?"

"Nothing definite, no. But there's a possibility, more than a possibility, that the missing picture is hidden in that house. It passed through Mrs. Johnson's hands once before, and then through her son Fred's."

I reminded Mackendrick of the facts of the case: Fred Johnson's theft or borrowing of the picture from the Biemeyer house; its subsequent theft from the art museum or, according to Fred's original story, from the Johnson house. I added what Jessie Gable had told me, that Whitmore had bought the picture from Mrs. Johnson in the first place.

"All this is very interesting," Mackendrick said in a flat voice. "But I haven't got time to look for Miss Siddon right now. And I haven't got time to look for a lost or stolen or mislaid picture which probably isn't worth very much anyway."