“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.

^chapter

26

The Monte Cristo was a three-story stucco hotel that had once been a large private residence. Now it advertised “Special Rates for Weekenders.” Some of the weekenders were drinking canned beer in the lobby and matching coins to see who was going to pay for it. The desk clerk was a little doll-faced man with an anxious look that intensified when he saw me. I think he was trying to decide whether I was a cop.

I didn’t tell him whether I was or not. Sometimes I didn’t even tell myself. I asked him if Paola Grimes was in. He gave me a puzzled look.

“She’s a dark girl with long black hair. Good figure.”

“Oh. Yeah. Room 312.” He turned and examined her key slot. “She isn’t in.”

I didn’t bother asking him when to expect Paola. He wouldn’t be likely to know. I kept her fifty dollars in my wallet and made a mental note of her room number. Before I left the hotel, I looked into the bar. It was a kind of post-historic ruin. All the girls waiting there were blond. Outside, along the beach front, there were a number of women with long black hair but none of them was Paola.

I drove uptown to the newspaper building and left my car at a fifteen-minute curb in front of it. Betty was at her typewriter in the newsroom. Her hands were quiet on the keys. She had faint blue circles under her eyes, no lipstick on her mouth. She looked dispirited, and she failed to brighten appreciably when she saw me.

“What’s the matter, Betty?”

“I haven’t been making good progress on the Mildred Mead thing. I can’t seem to find out enough about her.”

“Why don’t you interview her?”

She screwed up her face as if I’d threatened to slap her. “That isn’t funny.”

“It wasn’t meant to be. Mildred Mead has a box in the Santa Teresa post office, number 121 in the main branch. If you can’t get to her through that, she’s probably in one of the local nursing homes.”

“Is she sick?”

“Sick and old.”

Betty’s eyes, her whole face, changed and softened. “What on earth is she doing here in Santa Teresa?”

“Ask her. And when she tells you, you tell me.”

“But I don’t know which nursing home she’s in.”

“Call all of them.”

“Why don’t you?”

“I want to talk to Captain Mackendrick. Besides, you can do a better job on a phone check. You know the people in this town and they know you. If you locate her, don’t say anything to scare her off. I wouldn’t mention that you work for a newspaper.”

“What shall I say?”

“As little as possible. I’ll check back with you.”

I drove across the center of town to the police station. It was a stucco oblong that lay like a dingy sarcophagus in the middle of an asphalt parking lot. I talked my way past an armed and uniformed woman guard into Mackendrick’s office, which was small and bleak. It contained a wall of files, a desk and three chairs, one of which was occupied by Mackendrick. Across the single window there were bars.

Mackendrick was studying a typed sheet that lay flat on the desk in front of him. He was slow in looking up. I wondered if this was meant to imply that he was more important than I was, but not important enough. He finally raised his impervious eyes to mine.

“Mr. Archer? I thought you’d left town for good.”

“I went to Arizona to pick up the Biemeyer girl. Her father flew us back in one of his company’s jets.”

Mackendrick was impressed, and slightly startled, as I had meant him to be. He massaged the side of his crumpled face with his hand, as if to reassure himself of its solidity.

“Of course,” he said, “you’re working for the Biemeyers. Right?”

“Right.”

“Does he have some special interest in the Grimes killing?”

“He bought a picture from Grimes. There’s some question whether it’s a phony or a genuine new Chantry.”

“If Grimes had anything to do with it, it probably is a phony. Is that the picture that was stolen?”

“It wasn’t exactly stolen,” I said, “at least not the first time around. Fred Johnson took it to make some tests on it at the art museum. Somebody stole it from there.”

“Is that Johnson’s story?”

“Yes, and I believe it.” But even to me the story had sounded weak in my retelling.

“I don’t. Neither does Biemeyer. I’ve just been talking to him on the phone.” Mackendrick smiled in cold pleasure. He had taken a point from me in the endless game of power that complicated his life. “If you want to go on working for Biemeyer, you better check with him about some of those little details.”

“He isn’t my only source. I’ve talked to Fred Johnson at some length, and I don’t believe he’s a criminal type.”

“Nearly everybody is,” Mackendrick said. “All they need is the opportunity. And Fred Johnson had that. He may even have been in cahoots with Paul Grimes. That would be quite a trick, to sell a phony Chantry, then steal it back before it could be detected.”

“I thought of that possibility. But I doubt that it happened. Fred Johnson isn’t capable of planning and carrying out an action like that. And Paul Grimes is dead.”

Mackendrick leaned forward with his elbows on his desk, his left palm and his right fist forming a ball joint under his chin. “There may be others involved. There almost certainly are. We may be dealing with an art-theft ring of queers and addicts. It’s a crazy world.” He disengaged his hands and waved his fingers in front of his face, miming the wildness of the world. “Did you know Grimes was a queer?”

“Yes. His wife was telling me that this morning.”

The captain’s eyes widened in astonishment. “He has a wife?”