Blue Hammer by Ross Macdonald

Author:Ross Macdonald [Macdonald, Ross]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Classics, Fiction, Mystery
ISBN: 9780850317107
Google: daemIg6AUoMC
Amazon: 0307279065
Barnesnoble: 0307279065
Goodreads: 1024809
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 1977-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

XXVI

The Monte Cristo was a three-story stucco hotel that had once been a large private residence. Now it advertised “Special Bates 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.

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