The Blue Hammer by Ross MacDonald Read Free Book Online Page B

heard of him.
    Betty Jo turned to me when we had finished our rounds. “Would you like a drink?”
    “Not really.”
    She looked at me more closely. “Are you feeling all right? You look a little peaked.”
    I caught it from a dead man I just found on Olive Street. What I said was, “I don’t believe I’ve eaten for a while.”
    “Of course. You look hungry.”
    “I am hungry. I’ve had a big day.”
    She took me into the dining room. Its wide uncurtained windows looked out over the sea. The room was uncertainly lit by the tall candles on the refectory table.
    Standing behind the table with the air of a proprietor was the large dark hook-nosed man, whom the girl addressed as Rico, I had met on my earlier visit. He cut some slices off a baked ham and made me a sandwich with which he offered me wine. I asked for beer instead, if he didn’t mind. He strutted toward the back of the house, grumbling.
    “Is he a servant?”
    Betty Jo answered me with deliberate vagueness: “More or less.” She changed the subject. “A big day doing what?”
    “I’m a private detective. I was working.”
    “Policeman was one of the thoughts that occurred to me. Are you on a case?”
    “More or less.”
    “How exciting.” She squeezed my arm. “Does it have to do with the picture the Biemeyers had stolen?”
    “You’re very well informed.”
    “I try to be. I don’t intend to write a social column for therest of my life. Actually I heard about the missing picture in the newsroom this morning. I understand it’s a conventionalized picture of a woman.”
    “So I’ve been told. I haven’t seen it. What else was the newsroom saying?”
    “That the picture was probably a fake. Is it?”
    “The Biemeyers don’t think so. But Mrs. Chantry does.”
    “If Francine says it’s a fake, it probably is. I think she knows by heart every painting her husband did. Not that he did so many—fewer than a hundred altogether. His high period only lasted seven years. And then he disappeared. Or something.”
    “What do you mean, ‘Or something’?”
    “Some old-timers in town here think he was murdered. But that’s pure speculation, so far as I can find out.”
    “Murdered by whom?”
    She gave me a quick bright probing look. “Francine Chantry. You won’t quote me, will you?”
    “You wouldn’t have said it if you thought I would. Why Francine?”
    “He disappeared so suddenly. People always suspect the spouse, don’t they?”
    “Sometimes with good reason,” I said. “Are you professionally interested in the Chantry disappearance?”
    “I’d like to write about it, if that’s what you mean.”
    “That’s what I mean. I’ll make a deal with you.”
    She gave me another of her probing looks, this one edged with sexual suspicion. “Oh?”
    “I don’t mean that. I mean this. I’ll give you a hot tip on the Chantry case. You tell me what you find out.”
    “How hot?”
    “This hot.”
    I told her about the dead man at the hospital. Her eyes became narrower and brighter. She pushed out her lips like a woman expecting to be kissed, but kissing was not what was on her mind.
    “That’s hot enough.”
    Rico came back into the room carrying a foaming glass.
    “It took me a long time,” he said in a complaining tone. “The beer wasn’t cold. Nobody else drinks beer. I had to chill it.”
    “Thanks very much.”
    I took the cold glass from his hand and offered it to Betty Jo.
    She smiled and declined. “I have to work tonight. Will you forgive me if I run off now?”
    I advised her to talk to Mackendrick. She said she would, and went out the back door. Right away I found myself missing her.
    I ate my ham sandwich and drank my beer. Then I went back into the room where the music was. The woman at the piano was playing a show tune with heavy-handed professional assurance. Mrs. Chantry, who was talking with Arthur Planter, caught my eye and detached herself from him.
    “What happened to Betty Jo? I hope you didn’t