The Blue Hammer Read Free

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 lookedlike 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