The Blue Hammer (12 page)

“Why didn’t you stop her?”

“She didn’t give me notice that she was leaving. I couldn’t have stopped her if she had.”

“Why not?” Ruth Biemeyer was leaning toward me, her handsome head poised like a tomahawk.

“Doris is old enough to be a free agent. She may not be smart enough, but she’s old enough.”

“Where have they gone?”

“Possibly Arizona. I have a little bit of a lead in Tucson, and I think they may be heading there. I don’t know if they have the picture with them. Fred claims it was stolen from
him.”

Jack Biemeyer spoke for the first time. “That’s horse manure.”

I didn’t argue with him. “You’re probably right. If you want me to go to Tucson, it’s going to cost you more, naturally.”

“Naturally.” Biemeyer looked past me at his wife. “I told you there would be another bite. There always is.”

I felt like hitting him. Instead I turned on my heel and walked to the far end of the driveway. It wasn’t far enough. A five-foot wire fence stopped me.

The hill slanted sharply downward to the edge of the barranca. On the far side stood the Chantry house, miniatured by distance like a building in a bell jar.

The greenhouse behind it had a half-painted glass roof. Through its flashing multiple panes I could make out dim movements inside the building, which was choked with greenery. There seemed to be two people facing each other and making wide sweeping motions, like duelists too far apart to hurt each other.

Ruth Biemeyer spoke in a quiet voice behind me. “Please
come back. I know Jack can be difficult—God knows I know it. But we really need you.”

I couldn’t resist that, and I said so. But I asked her to wait a minute, and got a pair of binoculars out of my car. They gave me a clearer view of what was going on in the Chantry greenhouse. A gray-headed woman and a black-haired man, whom I identified as Mrs. Chantry and Rico, were standing among the masses of weeds and overgrown orchid plants, and using long hooked knives to cut them down.

“What is it?” Ruth Biemeyer said.

I handed her my binoculars. Standing on tiptoe, she looked over the fence.

“What are they doing?”

“They seem to be doing some gardening. Is Mrs. Chantry fond of gardening?”

“She may be. But I never saw her doing any actual work, until now.”

We went back to her husband, who all this time had been standing in a silent stony anger beside my car, like some kind of picket.

I said to him, “Do you want me to go to Tucson for you?”

“I suppose so. I have no choice.”

“Sure you have.”

Ruth Biemeyer interrupted, glancing from her husband to me and back again like a tennis referee. “We want you to go on with the case, Mr. Archer. If you need some money in advance, I’ll be glad to give it to you out of my own savings.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Biemeyer said.

“Good. Thank you, Jack.”

“I’ll take five hundred dollars from you,” I said.

Biemeyer yelped and looked stricken. But he said he would write me a check, and went into the house.

I said to his wife, “What made him that way about money?”

“Getting some, I think. Jack used to be quite different when he was a young mining engineer and had nothing. But lately he’s been making a lot of enemies.”

“Including his own daughter.” And his own wife. “What about Simon Lashman?”

“The painter? What about him?”

“I mentioned your husband’s name to him this morning. Lashman reacted negatively. In fact, he told me to go to hell and hung up on me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter to me personally. Still I may need Lashman’s cooperation. Are you on good terms with him?”

“I don’t know him. Naturally I know who he is.”

“Does your husband know him?”

She hesitated, then spoke haltingly. “I believe he does. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You might as well, though.”

“No. This is really painful for me.”

“Why?”

“There’s so much old history involved.” She shook her head, as if it were still encumbered by the past. Then she spoke in a smaller voice, watching the doorway through which her husband had disappeared. “My husband and Mr. Lashman were rivals at one time. She was an older woman than my husband—actually she belonged to Lashman’s generation—but Jack preferred her to me. He bought her away from Lashman.”

“Mildred Mead?”

“You’ve heard of her, have you?” Her voice grew coarse with anger and contempt. “She was a notorious woman in Arizona.”

“I’ve heard of her. She sat for that picture you bought.”

She gave me a vague disoriented look. “What picture?”

“The one we’re looking for. The Chantry.”

“No,” she said.

“Yes. Didn’t you know it was a picture of Mildred Mead?”

She put her hand over her eyes and spoke blindfolded. “I suppose I may have known. If I did know, I’d blanked out on the fact. It was a terrible shock to me when Jack bought a house for her. A better house than I was living in at the time.” She dropped her hand and blinked at the high harsh light. “I must have been crazy to bring that picture and hang it in the
house. Jack must have known who it was. He never said a word, but he must have wondered what I was trying to do.”

“You could ask him what he thought.”

She shook her head. “I wouldn’t dare. I wouldn’t want to open that can of worms.” She looked behind her as if to see if her husband was listening, but he was still out of sight in the house.

“You did open it, though. You bought the picture and brought it home.”

“Yes, I did. I must be going out of my mind—do you think I am?”

“You’d know better than I would. It’s your mind.”

“Anybody else would be welcome to it.” There was a faint rising note of excitement in her voice: she had surprised herself with her own complexity.

“Did you ever see Mildred Mead?”

“No, I never did. When she—when she became important in my life, I was careful not to see her. I was afraid.”

“Of her?”

“Of myself,” she said. “I was afraid I might do something violent. She must have been twenty years older than I, at least. And Jack, who had always been such a skinflint with me, bought her a house.”

“Is she still living in it?”

“I don’t know. She may be.”

“Where is the house?”

“In Chantry Canyon in Arizona. It’s on the New Mexico border, not too far from the mine. In fact it was the original Chantry house.”

“Are we talking about Chantry the painter?”

“His father, Felix,” she said. “Felix Chantry was the engineer who first developed the mine. He was in charge of operations until he died. It’s why it was such an insult to me when Jack bought the house from the old man’s estate and gave it to that woman.”

“I don’t quite follow you.”

“It’s perfectly simple. Jack took over the mine from Felix
Chantry. Actually he was related to Felix Chantry. Jack’s mother was Chantry’s cousin. Which was all the more reason why he should have bought the Chantry house for me.” She spoke with an almost childish bitterness.

“Is that why you bought the Chantry picture?”

“Maybe it is. I never thought of it in that way. I bought it really because I was interested in the man who painted it. Don’t ask me how interested, it’s a moot question now.”

“Do you still want the picture back?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I want my daughter back. We shouldn’t be standing here wasting time.”

“I know that. I’m waiting for your husband to bring me my check.”

Mrs. Biemeyer gave me an embarrassed look and went into the house. She didn’t come out right away.

I still had my binoculars hanging around my neck, and I carried them down the driveway to the edge of the slope again. The black-haired man and the gray-haired woman were still cutting weeds in the greenhouse.

Mrs. Biemeyer came out of the house by herself. Angry tears were spilling from her eyes. The check she handed me was signed with her name, not her husband’s.

“I’m going to leave him,” she said to me and the house. “As soon as we get through this.”

^chapter
17

I drove downtown and cashed the Biemeyers’ check before either of them could cancel it. Leaving my car in the parking lot behind the bank, I walked a block to the newspaper building
on the city square. The newsroom, which had been almost deserted in the early morning, was fully alive now. Nearly twenty people were working at typewriters.

Betty saw me and stood up behind her desk. She walked toward me smiling, with her stomach pulled in.

“I want to talk to you,” I said.

“I want to talk to
you.”

“I mean seriously.”

“So do I mean seriously.”

“You look too happy,” I said.

“I’m seriously happy.”

“I’m not. I have to leave town.” I told her why. “There’s something you can do for me in my absence.”

She said with her wry intense smile, “I was hoping there was something I could do for you in your presence.”

“If you’re going to make verbal passes, isn’t there someplace private where we can talk?”

“Let’s try here.”

She knocked on a door marked “Managing Editor,” and got no answer. We went inside and I kissed her. Not only my temperature rose.

“Hey,” she said. “He still likes me.”

“But I have to leave town. Fred Johnson is probably in Tucson now.”

She tapped me on the chest with her pointed fingers, as if she were typing out a message there. “Take care of yourself. Fred is one of those gentle boys who could turn out to be dangerous.”

“He isn’t a boy.”

“I know that. He’s the fair-haired young man at the art museum but he’s very unhappy. He unburdened himself to me about his ghastly family life. His father’s an unemployable drunk and his mother’s in a constant state of eruption. Fred’s trying to work his way out of all this, but I think in his quiet way he’s pretty desperate. So be careful.”

“I can handle Fred.”

“I know you can.” She put her hands on my upper arms. “Now what do you want me to do?”

“How well do you know Mrs. Chantry?”

“I’ve known Francine all my life, since I was a small child.”

“Are you friends?”

“I think so. I’ve been useful to her. Last night was embarrassing, though.”

“Keep in touch with her, will you? I’d like to have some idea of what she does today and tomorrow.”

The suggestion worried her. “May I ask why?”

“You may ask but I can’t answer. I don’t know why.”

“Do you suspect her of doing something wrong?”

“I’m suspicious of everybody.”

“Except me, I hope.” Her smile was serious and questioning.

“Except thee and me. Will you check on Francine Chantry for me?”

“Of course. I was intending to call her anyway.”

I left my car at the Santa Teresa airport and caught a commuter plane to Los Angeles. The next plane to Tucson didn’t leave for forty minutes. I had a quick sandwich and a glass of beer, and checked in with my answering service.

Simon Lashman had called me. I had time to call him back.

His voice on the line sounded still older and more reluctant than it had that morning. I told him who and where I was, and thanked him for calling.

“Don’t mention it,” he said dryly. “I’m not going to apologize for my show of impatience. It’s more than justified. The girl’s father once did me a serious disservice, and I’m not a forgiving man. Like father, like daughter.”

“I’m not working for Biemeyer.”

“I thought you were,” he said.

“I’m working for his wife. She’s very much concerned about her daughter.”

“She has a right to be. The girl acts as if she’s on drugs.”

“You’ve seen her, then?”

“Yes. She was here with Fred Johnson.”

“May I come and talk to you later this afternoon?”

“I thought you said you were in Los Angeles.”

“I’m catching a flight to Tucson in a few minutes.”

“Good. I prefer not to discuss these things on the telephone. When I was painting in Taos, I didn’t even have a telephone on the place. Those were the happiest days of my life.” He pulled himself up short: “I’m maundering. I detest old men who maunder. I’ll say goodbye.”

^chapter
18

His house was on the edge of the desert, near the base of a mountain, which had loomed up on my vision long before the plane landed. The house was one-storied and sprawling, surrounded by a natural wood fence that resembled a miniature stockade. It was late in the day but still hot.

Lashman opened a gate in the fence and came out to meet me. His face was deeply seamed, and his white hair straggled down onto his shoulders. He had on faded blue denims and flat-soled buckskin slippers. His eyes were blue, faded like his clothes by too much light.

“Are you Mr. Archer?”

“Yes. It’s good of you to let me come.”

Informal as he seemed to be, something about the old man imposed formality on me. The hand he gave me was knobbed with arthritis and stained with paint.

“What kind of shape is Fred Johnson in?”

“He seemed very tired,” Lashman said. “But excited, too. Buoyed up by excitement.”

“What about?”

“He was very eager to talk to Mildred Mead. It had to do with the attribution of a painting. He told me he works for the Santa Teresa Art Museum. Is that correct?”

“Yes. What about the girl?”

“She was very quiet. I don’t remember that she said a word.” Lashman gave me a questioning look, which I didn’t respond to. “Come inside.”

He led me through an inner courtyard into his studio. One large window looked out across the desert to the horizon. There was a painting of a woman on an easel, unfinished, perhaps hardly begun. The swirls of paint looked fresh, and the woman’s half-emerging features looked like Mildred Mead’s face struggling up out of the limbo of the past. On a table beside it, which was scaly with old paint, was a rectangular palette containing daubs of glistening color.