house.'
'Is she still living in it?'
'I don't know. She may be.'
'Where is the house?'
'In Chantry Canyon in Arizona. It's on the New Mexico border, not too far from the mine. In fact it was the original Chantry house.'
'Are we talking about Chantry the painter?'
'His father, Felix,' she said. 'Felix Chantry was the engineer who first developed the mine. He was in charge of operations until he died. It's why it was such an insult to me when Jack bought the house from the old man's estate and gave it to that woman.'
'I don't quite follow you.'
'It's perfectly simple. Jack took over the mine from Felix Chantry. Actually he was related to Felix Chantry. Jack's mother was Chantry's cousin. Which was all the more reason why he should have bought the Chantry house for me.' She spoke with an almost childish bitterness.
'Is that why you bought the Chantry picture?'
'Maybe it is. I never thought of it in that way. I bought it really because I was interested in the man who painted it. Don't ask me how interested, it's a moot question now.'
'Do you still want the picture back?'
'I don't know,' she said. 'I want my daughter back. We shouldn't be standing here wasting time.'
'I know that. I'm waiting for your husband to bring me my check.'
Mrs. Biemeyer gave me an embarrassed look and went into the house. She didn't come out right away.
I still had my binoculars hanging around my neck, and I carried them down the driveway to the edge of the slope again. The black-haired man and the gray-haired woman were still cutting weeds in the greenhouse.
Mrs. Biemeyer came out of the house by herself. Angry tears were spilling from her eyes. The check she handed me was signed with her name, not her husband's.
'I'm going to leave him,' she said to me and the house. 'As soon as we get through this.'
XVII
I drove downtown and cashed the Biemeyers' check before either of them could cancel it. Leaving my car in the parking lot behind the bank, I walked a block to the newspaper building on the city square. The newsroom, which had been almost deserted in the early morning, was fully alive now. Nearly twenty people were working at typewriters.
Betty saw me and stood up behind her desk. She walked toward me smiling, with her stomach pulled in.
'I want to talk to you,' I said.
'I want to talk to _you.'_
'I mean seriously.'
'So do I mean seriously.'
'You look too happy,' I said.
'I'm seriously happy.'
'I'm not. I have to leave town.' I told her why. 'There's something you can do for me in my absence.'
She said with her wry intense smile, 'I was hoping there was something I could do for you in your presence.'
'If you're going to make verbal passes, isn't there someplace private where we can talk?'
'Let's try here.'
She knocked on a door marked 'Managing Editor,' and got no answer. We went inside and I kissed her. Not only my temperature rose.
'Hey,' she said. 'He still likes me.'
'But I have to leave town. Fred Johnson is probably in Tucson now.'
She tapped me on the chest with her pointed fingers, as if she were typing out a message there. 'Take care of yourself. Fred is one of those gentle boys who could turn out to be dangerous.'
'He isn't a boy.'
'I know that. He's the fair-haired young man at the art museum but he's very unhappy. He unburdened himself to me about his ghastly family life. His father's an unemployable drunk and his mother's in a constant state of eruption. Fred's trying to work his way out of all this, but I think in his quiet way he's pretty desperate. So be careful.'
'I can handle Fred.'
'I know you can.' She put her hands on my upper arms. 'Now what do you want me to do?'
'How well do you know Mrs. Chantry?'
'I've known Francine all my life, since I was a small child.'
'Are you friends?'
'I think so. I've been useful to her. Last night was embarrassing, though.'
'Keep in touch with her, will you? I'd like to have some idea of what she does today and tomorrow.'
The suggestion worried her. 'May I ask why?'
'You may ask but I can't answer. I don't know why.'
'Do you suspect her of doing something wrong?'
'I'm suspicious of everybody.'
'Except me, I hope.' Her smile was serious and questioning.
'Except thee and me. Will you check on Francine Chantry for me?'
'Of course. I was intending to call her anyway.'
I left my car at the Santa Teresa airport and caught a commuter plane to Los Angeles. The next plane to Tucson didn't leave for forty minutes. I had a quick sandwich and a glass of beer, and checked in with my answering service.
Simon Lashman had called me. I had time to call him back.
His voice on the line sounded still older and more reluctant than it had that morning. I told him who and where I was, and thanked him for calling.
'Don't mention it,' he said dryly. 'I'm not going to apologize for my show of impatience. It's more than justified. The girl's father once did me a serious disservice, and I'm not a forgiving man. Like father, like daughter.'
'I'm not working for Biemeyer.'
'I thought you were,' he said.
'I'm working for his wife. She's very much concerned about her daughter.'
'She has a right to be. The girl acts as if she's on drugs.'
'You've seen her, then?'
'Yes. She was here with Fred Johnson.'
'May I come and talk to you later this afternoon?'
'I thought you said you were in Los Angeles.'
'I'm catching a flight to Tucson in a few minutes.'
'Good. I prefer not to discuss these things on the telephone. When I was painting in Taos, I didn't even have a telephone on the place. Those were the happiest days of my life.' He pulled himself up short: 'I'm maundering. I detest old men who maunder. I'll say goodbye.'
XVIII
His house was on the edge of the desert, near the base of a mountain, which had loomed up on my vision long before the plane landed. The house was one-storied and sprawling, surrounded by a natural wood fence that resembled a miniature stockade. It was late in the day but still hot.
Lashman opened a gate in the fence and came out to meet me. His face was deeply seamed, and his white hair straggled down onto his shoulders. He had on faded blue denims and flat-soled buckskin slippers. His eyes were blue, faded like his clothes by too much light.
'Are you Mr. Archer?'
'Yes. It's good of you to let me come.'
Informal as he seemed to be, something about the old man imposed formality on me. The hand he gave me was knobbed with arthritis and stained with paint.
'What kind of shape is Fred Johnson in?'
'He seemed very tired,' Lashman said. 'But excited, too. Buoyed up by excitement.'
'What about?'
'He was very eager to talk to Mildred Mead. It had to do with the attribution of a painting. He told me he works for the Santa Teresa Art Museum. Is that correct?'
'Yes. What about the girl?'
'She was very quiet. I don't remember that she said a word.' Lashman gave me a questioning look, which I didn't respond to. 'Come inside.'
He led me through an inner courtyard into his studio. One large window looked out across the desert to the horizon. There was a painting of a woman on an easel, unfinished, perhaps hardly begun. The swirls of paint looked fresh, and the woman's half-emerging features looked like Mildred Mead's face struggling up out of the limbo of the past. On a table beside it, which was scaly with old paint, was a rectangular palette containing daubs of glistening color.
Lashman came up beside me as I examined the painting. 'Yes, that's Mildred. I only just started it, after we talked on the phone. I had an urge to paint her one more time. And I'm at the age
