The Blue Hammer

XXVIII

The red sky was darkening when I got downtown. The stores were full of light and almost empty of customers. I parked near the newspaper building and climbed the stairs to the newsroom. There was nobody there at all.

A woman in the hall behind me spoke in a husky tentative voice: "Can I help you, sir?"

"I hope so. I'm looking for Betty."

She was a small gray-haired woman wearing strong glasses that magnified her eyes. She looked at me with sharp friendly curiosity.

"You must be Mr. Archer."

I said I was.

The woman introduced herself as Mrs. Fay Brighton, the librarian of the paper. "Betty Jo asked me to relay a message to you. She said she'd be back here by half past seven at the latest." She looked at the small gold watch on her wrist, holding it close to her eyes. "It's almost that now. You shouldn't have long to wait."

Mrs. Brighton went back behind the counter of the room that housed her files. I waited for half an hour, listening to the evening sounds of the emptying city. Then I tapped on her door.

"Betty may have given up on me and gone home. Do you know where she lives?"

"As a matter of fact, I don't. Not since her divorce. But I'll be glad to look it up for you."

She opened a directory and transcribed Betty's number and address onto a slip of paper: "Seabrae Apartments, number 8, phone 967-9152." Then she brought out a phone from under the counter. Her eyes clung to my face as I dialed and listened. Betty's phone rang twelve times before I hung up.

"Did she give you any idea where she was going?"

"No, but she made a number of calls. She used this phone for some of them, so that I couldn't help hearing. Betty was calling various nursing homes in town, trying to locate a relative of hers. Or so she said."

"Did she mention the name?"

"Mildred Mead, I think it was. In fact, I'm sure of it. I think she found her, too. She took off in a hurry, and she had that light in her eyes-you know?-a young news hen on a breaking story." She let out a sighing breath. "I used to be one myself."

"Did she tell you where she was going?"

"Not Betty Jo." The woman smiled with shrewd pleasure. "When she's on a story, she wouldn't give her best friend the time of day. She started late in the game, you know, and the virus really got to her. But you probably know all that if you're a friend of hers."

The unspoken question hung in the air between us.

"Yes," I said. "I am a friend of hers. How long ago did she leave here?"

"It must have been two hours ago, or more." She looked at her watch. "I think she took off about five-thirty."

"By car?"

"I wouldn't know that. And she didn't give me any hint at all as to where she was heading."

"Where does she eat dinner?"

"Various places. Sometimes I see her in the Tea Kettle. That's a fairly good cafeteria just down the street." Mrs. Brighton pointed with her thumb in the direction of the sea.

"If she comes back here," I said, "will you give her a message for me?"

"I'd be glad to. But I'm not staying. I haven't eaten all day, and I really only waited for you to give you Betty's message. If you want to write one to her, I'll put it on her desk."

She slid a small pad of blank paper across the counter to me.

I wrote: "Sorry I missed you. I'll check back in the course of the evening. Later you can get me at the motel."

I signed the message "Lew." Then, after a moment's indecision, I wrote the word "Love" above my "name. I folded the note and gave it to Mrs. Brighton. She took it into the newsroom.

When she came back, she gave me a slightly flushed and conscious look that made me wonder if she had read my message. I had a sudden cold urge to recall it and cross out the word I had added. So far as I could remember, I hadn't written the word, or spoken it to a woman, in some years. But now it was in my mind, like a twinge of pain or hope.

I walked down the block to the Tea Kettle's red neon sign and went in under it. It was nearly eight o'clock, which was late for cafeteria patrons, and the place looked rather desolate. There was no line at the serving counter, and only a few scattered elderly patrons at the tables.

I remembered that I hadn't eaten since morning. I picked up a plate, had it filled with roast beef and vegetables, and carried it to a table from which I could watch the whole place. I seemed to have entered another city, a convalescent city where the wars of love were over and I was merely one of the aging survivors.

I didn't like the feeling. When Mrs. Brighton came in, she did nothing to relieve it. But when she brought her tray into the dining room, I stood up and asked her to share my table.

"Thank you. I hate eating alone. I spend so much time alone as it is, since my husband died." She gave me an anxious half-smile as if in apology for mentioning her loss. "Do you live alone?"

"I'm afraid I do. My wife and I were divorced some years ago."

"That's too bad."

"I thought so. But she didn't."

Mrs. Brighton became absorbed in her macaroni and cheese. Then she added milk and sugar to her tea. She stirred it and raised it to her lips.

"Have you known Betty long?"

"I met her at a party the night before last. She was covering it for the paper."

"She was supposed to be. But if you're talking about the Chantry party she never did submit any usable copy. She got wound up in a murder case, and she hasn't thought about anything else in two days. She's a terribly ambitious young woman, you know."

Mrs. Brighton gave me one of her large-eyed impervious looks. I wondered if she was offering me a warning or simply making conversation with a stranger.

"Are you involved in that murder case?" she said.

"Yes. I'm a private detective."

"May I ask who has employed you?"

"You may ask. But I better not answer."

"Come on." She gave me a roguish smile that wrinkled up her face yet somehow improved it. "I'm not a reporter any more. You're not talking for print."

"Jack Biemeyer."

Her penciled eyebrows rose. "Mr. Bigshot's involved with a murder?"

"Not directly. He bought a picture which was later stolen. He hired me to get it back."

"And did you?"

"No. I'm working on it, though. This is the third day."

"And no progress?"

"Some progress. The case keeps growing. There's been a second murder-Jacob Whitmore."

Mrs. Brighton leaned toward me suddenly. Her elbow spilled the rest of her tea. "Jake was drowned three days ago, accidentally drowned in the ocean."

"He was drowned in fresh water," I said, "and put into the ocean afterwards."

"But that's terrible. I knew Jake. I've known him since he was in high school. He was one of our delivery boys. He was the most harmless soul I ever knew."

"It's often the harmless ones that get killed."

As I said that, I thought of Betty. Her face was in my mind, and her firm harmless body. My chest felt hot and tight, and I took a deep breath and let it out, without intending to, in a barely audible sigh.

"What's the matter?" Mrs. Brighton said.

"I hate to see people die."

"Then you picked a strange profession."

"I know I did. But every now and then I have a chance to prevent a killing."

And every now and then I precipitated one. I tried to keep that thought and the thought of Betty from coming together, but the two thoughts nudged each other like conspirators.

"Eat your vegetables," Mrs. Brighton said. "A man needs all the vitamins he can get." She added in the same matter-of-fact tone: "You're worried about Betty Jo Siddon, aren't you?"

"Yes, I am."

"So am I. Particularly since you told me Jake Whitmore was murdered. Somebody I've known half my life-that's striking close to home. And if something happened to Betty-" Her voice broke off and started again in a lower register: "I'm fond of that girl, and if anything happened to her-well, there's nothing I wouldn't do."

"What do you think happened?"

She looked around the room as if for a portent or a prophet. There was no one there but a few old people eating.

"Betty's hooked on the Chantry case," she said. "She hasn't been talking about it much lately but I know the signs. I had it myself at one time, over twenty years ago. I was going to track Chantry down and bring him back alive and become the foremost lady journalist of my time. I even wangled my way to Tahiti on a tip. Gauguin was one of Chantry's big influences, you know. But he wasn't in Tahiti. Neither was Gauguin."

"But you think Chantry's alive?"

"I did then. Now I don't know. It's funny how you change your views of things as you get older. You're old enough to know what I mean. When I was a young woman, I imagined that Chantry had done what I would have liked to do. He thumbed his nose at this poky little town and walked away from it. He was under thirty, you know, when he dropped out of sight. He had all the time in the world ahead of him-time for a second life. Now that my own time is running short, I don't know. I think it's possible that he was murdered all those years ago."

"Who had reason to kill him?"

"I don't know. His wife, perhaps. Wives often do have reason. Don't quote me, but I wouldn't put it past her."

"Do you know her?"

"I know her quite well, at least I did. She's very publicity-conscious. When I stopped being a reporter, she lost all interest in me."

"Did you know Chantry himself?"

"I never did. He was a recluse, you know. He lived in this town for seven or eight years, and you could count on the fingers of one hand the number of people who knew him to speak to."

"Can you name any of them?"

"I can think of one," she said. "Jake Whitmore knew Chantry. He used to deliver their paper. I think it was knowing Chantry that made a painter of him."

"I wonder if it was knowing Chantry that killed him."

Mrs. Brighton took off her glasses and wiped them with a lace-edged handkerchief. She put them on again and studied me through them.

"I'm not sure I follow you. Could you tell me just what you mean by that, in words of one syllable? I've had a long hard day."

"I have a feeling that Chantry may be here in town. It's something more than a feeling. Jack Biemeyer's stolen painting was probably a Chantry. It passed through two pairs of hands on its way to Biemeyer-Jake Whitmore's and Paul Grimes's. Both Whitmore and Grimes are dead. I guess you know that."

She bowed her gray head under the weight of the knowledge. "You think Betty's in real trouble, don't you?"

"She may be."

"Can I help? Do you want me to start phoning the nursing homes?"

"Yes. But please be careful. Don't mention any names. You have an aged aunt who needs custodial care. Get them to describe the facilities. Listen for sounds of guilt or any sign of trouble."

"I'm good at that," she said dryly. "I hear a lot of those kinds of sounds in the office. But I'm not sure that that's the best approach."

"What do you suggest?"

"I don't have anything specific in mind. It depends on what theory we're working on. Is it your idea that Betty located the nursing home where Mildred Mead is staying, was inveigled into going there, and got snatched? Isn't that a little melodramatic?"

"Melodramatic things are happening all the time."

She sighed. "I suppose you're right. I hear a lot of _them_ in the office, too. But isn't it just as likely that Betty simply took off on the track of something, and she'll be turning up again any time?"

"It may be just as likely," I said. "But don't forget that Jake Whitmore turned up drowned. Paul Grimes turned up beaten to death."

Her face absorbed the knowledge and grew heavy with it, like an old sponge absorbing water. "You're right, of course. We have to do what we can. But shouldn't we be going to the police?"

"As soon as we have something definite to take to them. Mackendrick is hard to convince."

"Is he not. Okay. I'll be in the office if you want me."

She gave me the number, and I wrote it down. I asked her further to make me a list of the nursing homes and their numbers as she called them.