The Blue Hammer

"Was there trouble between the two brothers?"

"I don't know if you could call it trouble. Healthy rivalry, anyway. Competition. They both wanted to be painters. They both wanted to marry the same girl. I guess you could say that Richard won on both counts. He even ended up with the family money."

"But his luck only lasted seven years."

"So I heard."

"Do you have any idea what happened to him?"

"No, I don't. It's away outside my territory. And incidentally I have to talk to some people and you're making me late. Goodbye."

The sheriff hung up abruptly. I went down the hall and tapped on the door of Paola's room. I heard her moving quietly inside.

She said through the door, "Who is it?"

I told her. She opened the door. She looked as though she'd been having bad dreams like mine, and hadn't fully awakened.

"What do you want?"

"A little more information."

"I've already told you everything."

"I doubt that."

She made an effort to close the door. I held it open. Each of us could feel the other's weight and the presence of an opposing will.

"Aren't you interested in who killed your father, Paola?" Her dark eyes searched my face, not very hopefully. "Do you know for certain?"

"I'm working on it. But I need your help. May I come in?"

"I'll come out."

We sat in a pair of basket chairs beside a window at the end of the hall. Paola moved her chair away from the window. "What are you afraid of, Paola?"

"That's a stupid question. My father was killed the other night. And I'm still here in this same lousy town."

"Who are you afraid of?"

"Richard Chantry. Who else? He seems to be a hero around here. That's because people don't know what an s.o.b. he was."

"Did you know him?"

"Not really. He was before my time. But my father knew him very well; so did my mother. There were some queer stories floating around about him in Copper City. About him and his half brother, William Mead."

"What stories?"

Two deep clefts formed between her black eyebrows. "The way I heard it, Richard Chantry stole his brother's work. They were both serious painters, but William Mead was the one with the real talent. Richard imitated him, and after William was drafted Richard grabbed his drawings and some of his paintings, and passed them off as his own. He grabbed William's girl, too."

"Is that the present Mrs. Chantry?"

"I guess so."

Gradually she had leaned toward the window, like a heliotropic plant that loved the light. Her eyes remained sullen and fearful. She pulled back her head as if she had spotted snipers in the street.

She followed me into my room and stood just inside the door while I called Mackendrick. I told him the two main facts that I had learned that morning: Richard Chantry had stolen and misrepresented as his own some of his half brother William's work; and after William's death an army buddy of his who called himself Jerry Johnson had turned up in Arizona.

Mackendrick stopped me. "Johnson's a common name. But I wouldn't be surprised if that's our Gerard Johnson on Olive Street."

"Neither would I. If Gerard was injured in the war and spent time in a hospital, it could explain some of his peculiarities."

"Some of them, anyway. All we can do is ask him. First I want to put out an additional query to the vets' hospitals."

"An additional query?"

"That's right. Your friend Purvis has been examining those bones you brought in last night. He found traces of what looked like shrapnel wounds, and apparently they were given expert treatment. So Purvis has been getting in touch with the hospitals on his own hook."

"What are you doing about Betty Siddon?"

"Hasn't she turned up yet?"

Mackendrick sounded bored. I slammed the receiver down. Then I sat regretting my show of anger and wondering what to do next.

XXXVIII

I drove uptown to the newspaper office. Betty had not been heard from. Her friend Fay Brighton was red-eyed. She told me she had had one call that had made her suspicious, but the woman who called had left neither name nor number.

"Was it a threatening call?"

"I wouldn't say that exactly. The woman sounded worried. She wanted to know if Betty was all right. I asked her why she wanted to know, and she hung up on me."

"When did the call come in?"

"This morning about ten o'clock. I shouldn't have let the woman rattle me. If I'd handled her with more tact, she might have told me more."

"Did you get the impression she knew something?"

She thought about the question. "Yes, I did. She sounded scared-guilty, maybe."

"What kind of a woman was she?"

"I've been trying to figure that out. She talked intelligently, like a professional woman. But her voice was a little different." She hesitated, in a listening attitude. "She may have been a black woman, an educated black."

It took me a minute to remember the name of the black nurse at the La Paloma. Mrs. Holman. I borrowed Mrs. Brighton's phone directory and looked for the name Holman, but there was no listing under it.

I needed a black co

"Some Te

"I can always use some."

"Two half-pints?" He smiled indulgently over my eccentricity.

"I'll try a whole pint this time."

While he was putting the bottle in a bag, I asked him if he knew a nurse named Mrs. Holman. He gave me an interested look that was careful not to stay on my face too long.

"I may have heard of her. I wouldn't say I know her. I know her husband."

"She's been looking after a friend of mine," I said. "At the La Paloma nursing home. I was thinking of giving her a little present."

"If you mean this"-he held the bottle up-"I can deliver it."

"I'd rather do that in person."

"Whatever you say. Mrs. Holman lives near the corner of Nopal and Martinez. Third house up from the corner-there's a big old pepper tree in front of it. That's five blocks south of here and one block over toward the ocean."

I thanked him and paid him for the whisky and drove south. The pepper tree was the only spot of green in a block of one-story frame houses. Under its lacy shadow, several small black children were playing in the wheelless body of a 1946 Chevrolet sedan.

Mrs. Holman was watching them from the porch. She started when she saw me and made an involuntary movement toward the door. Then she stood with her back to it and tried to smile at me, but her eyes were somber.

"Good morning," I said.

"Good morning."

"Are these your children?"

"One of them is." She didn't tell me which one. "What can I do for you, sir?"

"I'm still looking for Miss Siddon. I'm worried about her. I thought maybe you were, too."

"I don't know where you got that idea," she said blankly.

"Didn't you call the newspaper office this morning?"

She looked past me at the children. They were silent and still, as if the feathery shadow of the pepper tree had become oppressive.

"What if I did?" she said.

"If you can do that, you can talk to me. I'm not trying to pin anything on you. I'm trying to find Betty Siddon. I think she may be in danger, and you seem to think so, too."

"I didn't say that."

"You don't have to. Did you see Miss Siddon last night at the La Paloma?" She nodded slowly. "I saw her."

"When was that?"

"It was still the early part of the evening. She came to visit Mrs. Johnson, and the two of them went into a huddle in one of the empty rooms. I don't know what they were talking about, but it ended up with both of them walking out of there together. They drove off in Miss Siddon's car without a word to me."