The Blue Hammer

XXV

The jet climbed in a long straight slant. It was a clear day. The long dry savannahs of Mexico extended themselves on my left. On my right I could see the ten-thousand-foot peak standing above Tucson. It gradually moved backward like a drifting pyramid as we flew west.

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 planned to steal it, would he?"

Unless, I thought, he planned to steal you, too. I said, "It doesn't seem to make sense. But nearly everything does when you understand it."

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.

"Oh, Mother," the girl said in embarrassment.

"I'm so glad you're all right."

The girl looked at me over her mother's shoulder like a prisoner peering over a wall.

Biemeyer began to talk to Fred. Then he began to shout. He accused Fred of rape and other crimes. He said that he would have Fred put away for the rest of his life.

Fred's eyes were watering. He was close to tears. He bit at his mustache with his lower teeth. People were coming out of the terminal to watch and listen from a distance.

I was afraid of something more serious happening. Biemeyer might talk himself into an act of violence, or scare Fred into one.

I took Fred by the arm and marched him through the terminal into the parking lot. Before I could get him out of there, an official car drove up. Two policemen climbed out and arrested Fred.

The Biemeyer family came out of the terminal in time to see him leave. In what looked like a parody of Fred's arrest, Biemeyer took his daughter by the elbow and hustled her into the front seat of his Mercedes. He ordered his wife to get in. She refused with gestures. He drove away.

Ruth Biemeyer stood by herself in the parking lot, stiff with embarrassment and blanched by anger. She didn't appear to recognize me at first.

"Are you all right, Mrs. Biemeyer?"

"Yes, of course. But my husband seems to have driven away without me." She produced a frantic smile. "What do you think I should do?"

"It depends on what you want to do."

"But I never do what I want to do," she said. "Nobody ever does what he really wants to do."

Wondering what Ruth Biemeyer really wanted to do, I opened the right-hand door of my car for her. "I'll drive you home."

"I don't want to go home." But she got in.

It was a strange situation. The Biemeyers, for all their protestations and all their efforts, didn't really seem to want their daughter back. They didn't know how to treat her, or what to do about Fred. Well, neither did I, unless we could invent an alternative world for the people who didn't quite fit into this one.

I closed the door on Ruth Biemeyer, walked around the car, and got in behind the wheel. The air was hot and stuffy in the car, which had sat all day in the parking lot. I rolled down the window on my side.

It was a blank and desolate patch of earth, squeezed between the airport and the road and littered with empty cars. The blue sea winked and wrinkled in the distance.

Like a blind date trying to make conversation, Mrs. Biemeyer said, "This is a strange world we live in nowadays."

"It always was."

"I didn't used to think so. I don't know what will happen to Doris. She can't live at home and she can't make it on her own. I don't know what she can do."

"What did you do?"

"I married Jack. He may not have been the greatest choice in the world but at least we got through life." She spoke as if her life were already over. "I was hoping Doris would find some eligible young man."

"She has Fred."

The woman said coldly, "He isn't possible."

"At least he's a friend."

She cocked her head as if she was surprised that anyone should befriend her daughter. "How do you know that?"

"I've talked to him. I've seen them together."

"He's simply been using her."

"I don't believe that. One thing I'm pretty sure of, Fred didn't take your painting with any idea of selling it, or cashing in. No doubt he's a little hipped on it, but that's another matter. He's been trying to use it to solve the Chantry problem."

She gave me a sharp inquiring look. "Do you believe that?"

"Yes, I do. He may be emotionally unstable. Anybody with his family background would be likely to be. He's not a common thief, or an uncommon one, either."

"So what happened to the picture?"

"He left it in the museum overnight and it was stolen."

"How do you know?"

"He told me."

"And you believe him?"

"Not necessarily. I don't know what happened to the picture. I doubt that Fred does, either. I don't believe he belongs in jail, though."

She lifted her head. "Is that where they took him?"

"Yes. You can get him out if you want to."

"Why should I?"

"Because as far as I know, he's your daughter's only friend. And I think she's just as desperate as Fred is, if not more so."

She looked around at the parking lot and the surrounding flatlands. The battlements of the university loomed on the horizon beyond the tidal slough.

She said, "What has Doris got to be so desperate about? We've given her everything. Why, when I was her age I was in secretarial school and working part-time on the side. I even enjoyed it," she said with nostalgia and some surprise. "In fact, those were the best days of my life."

"These aren't Doris's best days."

She pulled away in the seat, turning in my direction. "I don't understand you. You're a peculiar detective. I thought detectives ran down thieves and put them behind bars."

"I just did that."

"But now you want to undo it. Why?"

"I've already told you. Fred Johnson isn't a thief, no matter what he did. He's your daughter's friend, and she needs one."

The woman turned her face away and bowed her head. The blond hair fell away from her vulnerable neck.

"Jack will kill me if I interfere."

If you mean that literally, maybe Jack is the one who belongs in jail."

She gave me a shocked look, which gradually changed into something more real and humane. "I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll take it up with my lawyer."

"What's his name?"

"Roy Lackner."

"Is he a criminal lawyer?"

"He's in general practice. He was a Public Defender for a while."

"Is he your husband's lawyer as well as yours?"

She hesitated, glancing at my face and away. "No. He isn't. I went to him to find out where I stood if I divorced Jack. And we've also discussed Doris."

"When was this?"

"Yesterday afternoon. I shouldn't be telling you all these things."

"You should, though."

"I hope so," she said. "I also hope you're discreet."

"I try to be."

We drove downtown to Lackner's office, and I told her what I knew about Fred as we went. I added in summation, "He can go either way."

That went for Doris, too, but I didn't think it was necessary to say so.

Lackner's offices were in a rehabilitated frame cottage on the upper edge of the downtown slums. He came to the front door to meet us, a blue-eyed young man with a blond beard and lank yellow hair that came down almost to his shoulders. His look was pleasant, and his grip was hard.

I would have liked to go in and talk to him, but Ruth Biemeyer made it plain that she didn't want me. Her attitude was proprietorial and firm, and I wondered in passing if there was some attachment between the young man and the older woman.

I gave her the name of my motel. Then I went down to the waterfront to give Paola her mother's fifty dollars.