The Blue Hammer (2 page)

“Wouldn’t that be true of local art students in general?”

“I suppose so. But Fred Johnson showed unusual interest in the picture.”

“Can you give me a description of Fred Johnson?”

“I can try.”

I opened my notebook again and leaned on the rolltop desk. She sat in the swivel chair facing me.

“Color of hair?”

“Reddish blond. He wears his hair quite long. It’s already thinning a bit on top. But he compensates for that with his mustache. He has one of those big bristly shoebrush mustaches. His teeth aren’t very good. His nose is too long.”

“What color are his eyes? Blue?”

“More greenish. It’s his eyes that really bother me. He never looks straight at you, at least he didn’t at me.”

“Tall or short?”

“Medium size. Five foot nine, perhaps. Quite slender. On the whole he isn’t bad-looking, if you like the type.”

“And Doris does?”

“I’m afraid so. She likes Fred Johnson much too well to suit me.”

“And Fred liked the missing picture?”

“He more than liked it. He was fascinated by it. He gave it a lot more attention than he gave my daughter. I sort of got the impression that he came here to visit the picture instead of her.”

“Did he say anything about it?”

She hesitated. “He said something to the effect that it looked like one of Chantry’s memory pictures. I asked him just what he meant. He said it was probably one of several Chantrys that hadn’t been painted directly from a model, but from memory. He seemed to think that added to its rarity and its value.”

“Did he mention its value?”

“He asked me how much I paid for it. I wouldn’t tell him—that’s my own little secret.”

“I can keep a secret.”

“So can I.” She opened the top drawer of the rolltop desk and brought out a local telephone directory. “You wanted to call Paul Grimes, didn’t you? Just don’t try to get the price out of him, either. I’ve sworn him to secrecy.”

I made a note of the dealer’s number and his address in the lower town. Then I called the number. A woman’s voice answered, faintly exotic, faintly guttural. She said that Grimes was busy with a client but would be free shortly. I gave her my name and said I would drop in later.

Ruth Biemeyer whispered urgently in my free ear, “Don’t mention me to her.”

I hung up. “Who is she?”

“I believe her name is Paola. She calls herself his secretary. I think their relationship may be more intimate than that.”

“Where’s her accent from?”

“Arizona. I believe she’s part Indian.”

I glanced up at the picture of the hole that Jack Biemeyer had made in the Arizona landscape. “This seems to be turning out to be an Arizona case. Didn’t you say Richard Chantry came from there?”

“Yes, he did. We all did. But we all ended up here in California.”

Her voice was flat, betraying no regret for the state she had left nor any particular pleasure with the state she lived in now. She sounded like a disappointed woman.

“Why did you come to California, Mrs. Biemeyer?”

“I suppose you’re thinking about something my husband said. That this is Dick Chantry’s town, or was, and that was why I wanted to settle here.”

“Is that true?”

“I suppose there’s some truth in it. Dick was the only good painter I ever knew really well. He taught me to see things. And I liked the idea of living in the place where he did his best work. He did it all in seven years, you know, and then he disappeared.”

“When?”

“If you want the exact date of his departure, it was July 4, 1950.”

“Are you sure he went of his own accord? He wasn’t murdered, or kidnapped?”

“He couldn’t have been. He left a letter to his wife, remember.”

“Is she still in town?”

“Very much so. As a matter of fact you can see her house from our house. It’s just across the barranca.”

“Do you know her?”

“I used to know Francine quite well, when we were young. She and I were never close, though. I’ve hardly seen her at all since we moved here. Why?”

“I’d like to have a look at the letter her husband left behind.”

“I have a copy. They sell photostats of it at the art museum.”

She went and got the letter. It was framed in silver. She
stood above me reading it to herself. Her lips moved as if she was repeating a litany.

She handed it over with some reluctance. It was typewritten except for the signature and dated July 4, 1950, at Santa Teresa.

Dear Francine,

This is a letter of farewell. It breaks my heart to leave you, but I must. We have often talked about my need to discover new horizons beyond which I may find the light that never was on sea or land. This lovely coast and its history have told me what they had to tell me, as Arizona once did.

But as in Arizona the history is shallow and recent, and cannot support the major work that I was born to do. I must seek elsewhere for other roots, a more profound and cavernous darkness, a more searching light. And like Gauguin I have decided that I must seek it alone. For it is not just the physical world I have to explore, but the mines and chambers of my own soul.

I take nothing with me but the clothes on my back, my talent, and my memory of you. Please remember me with affection, dear wife, dear friends, and wish me well. I only do what I was born to do.

Richard Chantry.

I handed the framed letter back to Ruth Biemeyer.

She held it against her body. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

“I’m not sure. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It must have come as quite a shock to Chantry’s wife.”

“She seems to have stood up to it very well.”

“Have you ever discussed it with her?”

“No. I have not.” I gathered from the sharpness of her tone that she and Mrs. Chantry were not friends. “But she seems to enjoy all that inherited fame. Not to mention the money he left her.”

“Was Chantry suicidal? Did he ever talk about suicide?”

“No, of course not.” But she added after a silence, “You must remember I knew Dick when he was very young. I was even younger. Actually I haven’t seen him or talked to him for over thirty years. But I’ve got a very strong feeling that he’s still alive.”

She touched her breast, as if at least he was alive there. Droplets of sweat grew on her upper lip. She brushed them away with her hand.

“I’m afraid this is getting me down a little. All of a sudden the past rears up and smacks you. Just when I thought I finally had it under control. Does that ever happen to you?”

“Not so much in the daytime. At night, just before I go to sleep—”

“Aren’t you married?” She was a quick woman.

“I was, about twenty-five years ago.”

“Is your wife still alive?”

“I hope so.”

“Haven’t you tried to find out?”

“Not recently. I prefer to find out about other people’s lives. Right now I’d like to talk to Mrs. Chantry.”

“I don’t see why that’s necessary.”

“Still I think I’ll give it a try. She can help me fill in the background.”

The woman’s face stiffened with disapproval. “But all I want you to do is get my picture back.”

“You also seem to want to tell me how to do it, Mrs. Biemeyer. I’ve tried to work that way with other clients, and it didn’t turn out too well.”

“Why do you want to talk to Francine Chantry? She isn’t exactly a friend of ours, you know.”

“And I’m only supposed to interview your friends?”

“I didn’t mean that.” She was silent for a moment. “You plan to talk to several people, do you?”

“As many as I have to. This case looks a bit more complex to me than it does to you. It may take me several days, and cost you several hundred dollars.”

“Our credit is perfectly good.”

“I don’t doubt that. What I’m not certain of is your and your husband’s intentions.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll pay you if he doesn’t.”

She took me outside and showed me the Chantry house. It was a turreted neo-Spanish mansion with several outbuildings,
including a large greenhouse. It lay far down the hill from where we stood, on the other side of a barranca that separated the two estates like a deep wound in the earth.

^chapter
3

I found my circuitous way to the bridge that crossed the barranca and parked in front of the Chantry house. A large hook-nosed man in a white silk shirt opened the door before I could knock. He stepped outside and shut the door behind him.

“What can I do for you?” He had the voice and look of a spoiled servant.

“I’d like to see Mrs. Chantry.”

“She isn’t here. I’ll take a message for her if you want.”

“I’d like to speak to her personally.”

“What about?”

“I’ll tell her, okay? If you’ll tell me where she is.”

“I guess she’s at the museum. This is her day for that.”

I decided to call on the dealer Paul Grimes first. I drove along the waterfront toward the lower town. There were white sails on the water, and gulls and terns in the air like their small flying counterparts. I stopped on impulse and checked in at a motel that faced the harbor.

The lower town was a blighted area standing above the waterfront about ten blocks deep. There were blighted men wandering along the main street or leaning against the fronts of the secondhand stores.

Paul Grimes’s shop was a block off the main street between a liquor store and a soul-food restaurant. It wasn’t impressive—no more than a dingy stucco storefront with what looked
like living quarters above it. Inscribed across the front window in gilt was the legend
Paul Grimes—Paintings and Decorations.
I parked at the green curb in front of it.

A bell tinkled over the door as I went in. The interior had been disguised with painted plyboard screens and gray cloth hangings. A few tentative-looking pictures had been attached to them. On one side a dark woman in a loose multicolored costume sat behind a cheap desk and tried to look busy.

She had deep black eyes, prominent cheekbones, prominent breasts. Her long hair was unflecked black. She was very handsome, and quite young.

I told her my name. “Mr. Grimes is expecting me.”

“I’m sorry, he had to go out.”

“When will he be back?”

“He didn’t say. I think he was going out of town on business.”

“Are you his secretary?”

“You could call me that.” Her smile was like the flash of a half-concealed knife. “You the man that called about a picture?”

“Yes.”

“I can show you some pictures.” She gestured toward those on display. “Most of these are pretty abstract, but we have some representational ones in the back.”

“Do you have any of Richard Chantry’s paintings?”

“I don’t think so. No.”

“Mr. Grimes sold a Chantry painting to some people named Biemeyer. They told me he could show me a photograph of it.”

“I wouldn’t know about that.”

She spread her hands in front of her, palms upward, and her loose sleeves fell away from her round brown arms. The light growth of hair on her arms looked like clinging smoke.

“Can you give me Mr. Grimes’s home address?”

“He lives upstairs. He isn’t in.”

“When do you expect him back?”

“I wouldn’t know. Sometimes he goes away for a week. He doesn’t tell me where he’s going, and I don’t ask him.”

I thanked her and went into the liquor store next door. The middle-aged black man behind the counter asked if he could help me.

“I hope so. Do you know Mr. Grimes?”

“Who?”

“Paul Grimes, the art dealer in the next building.”

“Older man with a gray goatee?” He shaped a pointed beard with his fingers. “Wears a white sombrero?”

“That sounds like Mr. Grimes.”

He shook his head. “Can’t say I know him. I don’t believe he drinks. Never does any business with me, anyway.”

“What about his girl?”

“She came in for a six-pack once or twice. Paola, I think her name is. Has she got Indian blood, do you know?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“I thought so.” The idea seemed to please him. “She’s a sharp-looking chick. I don’t know how a man his age holds on to a chick like that.”

“Neither do I. I’d like to know when Mr. Grimes gets back here.” I put two dollar bills on the counter between us and laid one of my cards on top of them. “Could I check back with you?”

“Why not?”

I drove up the main street to the chaste white building that housed the art museum. The young man at the turnstile said that Fred Johnson had left the building an hour or so before.

“Did you wish to see him about a personal matter? Or something connected with the museum?”

“I understand he’s interested in the painter Richard Chantry.”

His smile brightened. “We all are. Are you from out of town, sir?”

“Los Angeles.”

“Have you seen our permanent Chantry collection?”

“Not yet.”

“You came at a good time. Mrs. Chantry is here now. She gives us one afternoon a week.”

He directed me through a room where a group of classical
sculptures stood pale and serene, to a quite different kind of room. The first pictures I looked at resembled windows into an alternative world, like the windows that jungle travelers use to watch the animals at night. But the animals in Chantry’s paintings seemed to be on the verge of becoming human. Or perhaps they were human beings devolving into animals.

A woman came into the room behind me and answered my unspoken question:

“These are known as the Creation pictures—the artist’s imaginative conception of evolution. They represent his first great creative burst. He painted them in a period of six months, incredible as it may seem.”

I turned to look at the woman. In spite of her conservative dark blue suit and her rather stilted patter, she gave an impression of rough strength. Her chastely trimmed graying hair seemed to glisten with vitality.

“Are you Mrs. Chantry?”

“Yes.” She seemed pleased to be recognized. “I really shouldn’t be here. I’m giving a party tonight. But it’s hard for me to stay away from the museum on my day.”