“Why should I? I’ve got enough on my mind without you bullying me.”

“And enough on your conscience?”

“That’s between me and my conscience. I don’t need any help from you in straightening out my conscience.”

She sat as still as stone. I admired her as I might have admired a statue without concern for its history. But I wasn’t content to let her stay silent. The case, which had begun with a not very serious theft, was beginning to draw human lives into its vortex. Two men were dead, and the Biemeyers’ girl had been spun off into the darkness.

“Mrs. Johnson, where is Fred going with Miss Biemeyer?”

“I don’t know.”

“Didn’t you ask him? You wouldn’t give him money without finding out what he intended to do with it.”

“I did, though.”

“I think you’re lying.”

“Think away,” she said almost cheerfully.

“Not for the first time, either. You’ve lied to me already more than once.”

Her eyes brightened with interest, and with the superiority that liars feel toward the people they lie to.

“For instance, you left the hospital because they caught you stealing drugs. You told me you left because you had a misunderstanding with a supervisor.”

“Over drugs,” she added quickly. “There was a discrepancy in the count. They blamed me.”

“You weren’t responsible?”

“Certainly not. What do you think I am?”

“A liar.”

She stirred threateningly, but didn’t get up. “Go ahead and call me names. I’m used to it. You can’t prove anything.”

“Are you on drugs now?”

“I don’t take drugs.”

“Not of any kind?”

“Not of any kind.”

“Then who did you steal them for? Fred?”

She mimed laughter, and managed to produce a high toneless giggle. If I had heard the giggle without seeing its source, I might have taken her for a wild young girl. And I wondered if this was how she felt in relationship to her son.

“Why did Fred take the picture, Mrs. Johnson? To sell it and buy drugs?”

“He doesn’t use drugs.”

“To buy drugs for Miss Biemeyer?”

“That’s a silly idea. She’s independently wealthy.”

“Is that why Fred is interested in her?”

She leaned forward with her hands on her knees, sober and dead serious. The woman who had giggled a moment ago had been swallowed up like a ghostly emanation by her body.

“You don’t know Fred. You never will—you don’t have the understanding. He’s a good man. The way he feels about the Biemeyer girl is like a brother, an older brother.”

“Where is the older brother taking his little sister?”

“You don’t have to get snotty.”

“I want to know where they are, or where they’re going. Do you know?”

“No, I don’t.”

“You wouldn’t give them traveling money unless you knew where they were going.”

“Who says I did?”

“I say.”

She clenched her fists and used them to strike both of her white nylon knees simultaneously several times. “I’ll kill that little spade.”

“I wouldn’t, Mrs. Johnson. They’ll put you in Corona if you do.”

She grinned unpleasantly. “I was just kidding.”

“You picked a bad subject and a bad time. A man named Paul Grimes was murdered earlier tonight.”

“Murdered?”

“Beaten to death.”

Mrs. Johnson pitched sideways onto the floor. She didn’t move until the black girl, whom I called to help me, came and poured water on her head. Then she got up gasping and feeling her hair.

“What did you do that for? You’ve ruined my hairdo.”

“You passed out,” I said.

She swung her head from side to side, staggering a little.

The other nurse put her arm around her shoulders and held her still. “Better sit down, hon. You were really out.”

But Mrs. Johnson stayed on her feet. “What happened? Did somebody hit me?”

“I hit you with a piece of news,” I said. “Paul Grimes was beaten to death tonight. I found him on the street not very far from here.”

Mrs. Johnson’s face went completely blank for a moment, then set in a scowling mask of ignorance. “Who’s he?”

“An art dealer from Arizona. He sold that picture to the Biemeyers. Don’t you know him?”

“What did you say his name was?”

“Paul Grimes.”

“I never heard of him.”

“Then why did you faint when I told you he’d been murdered?”

“I didn’t. I have these fainting spells is all. They don’t mean anything.”

“You better let me take you home.”

“No! I’d lose my job. I can’t afford that—it’s the only thing that keeps us going.”

Head down and weaving slightly, she turned and moved away toward the wards.

I followed her. “Where is Fred taking the Biemeyer girl?”

She didn’t answer the question or even acknowledge it.

^chapter

13

I followed the freeway into the center of town, which was almost deserted. A cruising police car overtook me. Its driver gave me a quick once-over as he passed, and went on.

There were lights on the second floor of the newspaper building. It faced on a grassy square fringed with tall palms. The trees stood still and silent in the calm post-midnight air.

I parked my car by the square and climbed the stairs to the lighted newsroom. A clacking typewriter led me across the large unpeopled room to a partitioned space where Betty Jo Siddon was working. She looked up with a start when I spoke her first two names.

“You shouldn’t do that. You scared me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right. As a matter of fact, I’m glad you came by. I’m trying to make some kind of sense out of this murder story.”

“May I read it?”

“In tomorrow’s paper, if they use it. They don’t always print my stuff. The news editor is a male chauvinist and he tries to keep me segregated in the women’s pages.” She was smiling but her dark eyes were rebellious.

“You can tell me what your theory is.”

“I’m afraid I don’t have a theory. I’m trying to build a story around the question of who the woman in the painting was, and who painted the picture, and of course who stole it. Actually it’s a triple mystery, isn’t it? Do you know who stole it?”

“I think so, but I wouldn’t want to be quoted.”

“I won’t quote you,” she said. “This is just for background.”

“Okay. According to my witnesses, who frankly aren’t worth much, the picture was stolen twice in quick succession. An art student by the name of Fred Johnson took it from the Biemeyers’ house—”

“Fred Johnson from the museum? I wouldn’t have thought he was the type.”

“He may not be. He claims he took it to make some tests on it and try to authenticate it as a Chantry. But somebody stole it from his parents’ house, or from the art museum—there are two versions.”

Betty Jo was making penciled notes on a sheet of typewriter paper. “Where’s Fred now? Do you think I can talk to him?”

“If you can find him. He’s taken off for parts unknown with the Biemeyer girl. As for your other questions, I don’t know who painted the picture. It may be a Chantry and it may not. Maybe Fred Johnson knows. I did get a partial identification of the woman in the picture. Her name is Mildred.”

“Is she in town here?”

“I doubt it. She was a model in Tucson a generation ago. Paul Grimes, the man who was killed, knew her. He thought the painting of her had probably been done from memory. She was much younger in it than she could be in real life.”

“Does that mean it was painted recently?”

“That’s one of the questions Fred was trying to answer, apparently. He was trying to date the picture to determine if Chantry could have painted it.”

Betty Jo looked up brightly from her notes. “Do you think Chantry could have?”

“My opinion isn’t worth anything. I haven’t seen the picture or the photograph of it.”

“Why didn’t you say so? I’ll get it.”

She rose quickly and disappeared through the door marked “Photography Department.” Her passage left vibrations on the air. The vibrations lingered in my body.