The Blue Hammer

XXXVI

It was nearly three by my car clock when I got out to Sycamore Point. At the foot of the beach, the sea was coughing in its sleep. My own tides were at a low ebb and I was tempted to go to sleep sitting up in the front seat.

But there was a light in Jacob Whitmore's cottage. I let myself hope for a minute that Betty was there. But Jessie Gable turned out to be alone.

I noticed the difference in Jessie as soon as she let me into the lighted room. Her movements were more assured, her eyes more definite. There was wine on her breath, but she didn't seem to be drunk.

She offered me a chair and said, "You owe me a hundred dollars. I found out the name of the woman who sold Jake the picture."

"Who was it?"

She reached across the table and laid her hand on my arm. "Wait a minute, now. Don't be in such a hurry. How do I know you _have_ a hundred dollars?"

I counted out the money onto the table. She reached for the stack of bills. I picked them up again from under her hands.

"Hey," she said, "that's my money."

"You haven't told me the woman's name yet."

She tossed her blond hair. It fell like a soiled silk shawl over her shoulders. "Don't you trust me?"

"I did until you started not trusting me."

"You sound like Jake. He was always turning things around and upside down."

"Who sold Jake the picture?"

"I'll tell you when you give me the money."

I dealt fifty onto the table. "There's half. I'll give you the other half when you tell me who she is."

"It's worth more than that. This is an important case. I was told I should get a big reward."

I sat and studied her face. Two days before, when I had first come here, she hadn't seemed to care about money.

"Who's going to pay the reward?" I said.

"The newspaper."

"Did Betty Siddon tell you that?"

"More or less. She said I'd be well paid for my information."

"Did you tell Betty who the woman was?"

She disengaged her eyes from mine and looked away into a shadowed corner of the room. "She said it was important. And I didn't know if you were coming back or not. You know how it is. I really need the money."

I knew how it was. She was selling Jake Whitmore's bones, as survivors often do. And I was buying them. I dealt the rest of the hundred onto the tabletop.

Jessie reached for the bills, but her hand fell on the table short of them. She looked at me as if I might interfere, or possibly hit her.

I was sick of the game. "Go ahead and take it."

She picked up the tens and twenties, and put them inside her shirt against her breast. She looked at me guiltily, close to tears.

I said, "Let's not waste any more time, Jessie. Who was the woman?"

She said in a low hesitant voice, "Her name is Mrs. Johnson."

"Fred's mother?"

"I don't know whose mother she is."

"What's her first name?"

"I don't know. All I got from Stanley Meyer was her last name."

"Who is Stanley Meyer?"

"He's a hospital orderly who paints in his spare time. He sells his stuff at the beach art show. His booth is right next to Jake's. He was there when Jake bought the picture from her."

"You're talking about the portrait of a woman that Jake later sold to Paul Grimes."

She nodded. "That's the one you're interested in, isn't it?"

"Yes. Did your informer Stanley Meyer describe the woman to you?"

"Sort of. He said she was a middle-aged woman, maybe in her fifties. A big woman, broad in the beam. Dark hair with some gray in it."

"Did he say how she was dressed?"

"No."

"How did he happen to know her name?"

"He knew her from the hospital. This Mrs. Johnson worked there as a nurse, until they fired her."

"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 connection with Mrs. Johnson."

"What connection?"

"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.