I said, "Remember that you can always change your mind. You can change it right now."

"I don't want to change it right now. Why would I want to change it?" she asked me glumly. "This is the first time in a week that I even knew what I was doing."

"Bless you, my child," the leader said. "Don't worry, we'll take good care of you."

I wanted to break his bones. But that made very little sense. I turned and started back to my rented car. I felt very small, dwarfed by the mountains.

XX

I locked the blue Ford and left it standing in the lane. Fred didn't look fit to drive it, and if he had been I wouldn't have trusted him not to run out on me. He climbed into my car like a poorly working automaton and sat with his head hanging on his blood-spotted chest.

He roused himself from his lethargy when I backed out onto the road: "Where are we going?"

"Down the mountain to talk to the sheriff."

"No."

He turned away from me and fumbled with the door latch on his side. I took hold of his collar and pulled him back into the middle of the seat.

"I don't want to turn you in," I said. "But that's on condition that you answer some questions. I've come a long way to ask them."

He answered after a thinking pause: "I've come a long way, too."

"What for?"

Another pause. "To ask some questions."

"This isn't a word game, Fred. You'll have to do better than that. Doris told me you took her parents' painting and you admitted it to me."

"I didn't say I stole it."

"You took it without their permission. What's the difference?"

"I explained all that to you yesterday. I took the picture to see if I could authenticate it. I took it down to the art museum to compare it with their Chantrys. I left it there overnight and somebody stole it."

"Stole it from the art museum?"

"Yes, sir. I should have locked it up, I admit that. But I left it in one of the open bins. I didn't think anyone would notice it."

"Who did notice it?"

"I have no way of knowing. I didn't tell anyone. You've got to believe me." He turned his dismayed face to me. "I'm not lying."

"Then you were lying yesterday. You said the painting was stolen from your room at home."

"I made a mistake," he said. "I got confused. I was so upset I forgot about taking it down to the museum."

"Is that your final story?"

"It's the truth. I can't change the truth."

I didn't believe him. We drove down the mountain in unfriendly silence. The repeated cry of a screech owl followed us.

"Why did you come to Arizona, Fred?"

He seemed to consider his answer, and finally said, "I wanted to trace the picture."

"The one you took from the Biemeyers' house?"

"Yes." He hung his head.

"What makes you think it's in Arizona?"

"I don't think that. I mean, I don't know whether it is or not. What I'm trying to find out is who painted it."

"Didn't Richard Chantry paint it?"

"I think so, but I don't know when. And I don't know who or where Richard Chantry is. I thought perhaps that Mildred Mead could tell me. Mr. Lashman says she was the model all right. But now she's gone, too."

"To California."

Fred straightened up in his seat. "Where in California?"

"I don't know. Maybe some of the local people can give us the information."

Sheriff Brotherton was waiting in his car, which was parked in the lighted lot outside the substation. I parked beside it, and we all climbed out. Fred was watching me intently, wanting to hear what I would tell the authorities.

"Where's the young lady?" the sheriff said.

"She decided to stay with the society overnight. Maybe longer."

"I hope she knows what she's doing. Are there any sisteren around?"

"I saw a few. This is Fred Johnson, Sheriff."

Brotherton shook the younger man's hand and looked closely into his face. "Did they attack you?"

"I took a swing at one of them. He took a swing at me." Fred seemed proud of the incident. "That was about it."

The sheriff seemed disappointed. "Don't you want to lodge a complaint?"

Fred glanced at me. I gave him no sign, one way or the other.

"No," he said to the sheriff.

"You better think it over. That nose of yours is still bleeding. While you're here, you better go into the station and get Deputy Cameron to give you first aid."

Fred moved toward the substation as if, once inside, he might never get out again.

When he was beyond hearing, I turned to the sheriff: "Did you know Mildred Mead well?"

His face was stony for a moment. His eyes glittered. "Better than you think."

"Does that mean what I think it means?"

He smiled. "She was my first woman. That was around forty years ago, when I was just a kid. It was a great favor she did me. We've been friends ever since."

"But you don't know where she is now?"

"No. I'm kind of worried about Mildred. Her health isn't the best, and she isn't getting any younger. Mildred's had a lot of hard blows in her life, too. I don't like her going off by herself like this." He gave me a long hard contemplative look. "Are you going back to California tomorrow?"

"I plan to."

"I'd appreciate it if you'd look Mildred up, see how she's doing."

"California's a big state, Sheriff."

"I know that. But I can ask around, and see if anyone here has heard from her."

"You said she went to California to stay with relatives."

"That's what she told me before she left. I didn't know she had any relatives, there or anywhere else. Except for her son William." Brotherton's voice had dropped so low that he seemed to be talking to himself.

"And William was murdered in 1943," I said.

The sheriff spat on the ground, and then withdrew into silence. I could hear the murmur of voices from the substation, and the screech owl's cry high on the mountainside. It sounded like an old woman's husky titter.

"You've been doing some research into Mildred's life," he said.

"Not really. She's the subject of a painting that I was hired to recover. But the case keeps sliding off into other cases. Mostly disaster cases."

"Give me a for-instance."

"The disappearance of Richard Chantry. He dropped out of sight in California in 1950, and left behind some paintings which have made him famous."

"I know that," the sheriff said. "I knew him when he was a boy. He was the son of Felix Chantry, who was chief engineer of the mine in Copper City. Richard came back here after he got married. He and his young wife lived in the house up the mountain, and he started painting there. That was back in the early forties."

"Before or after his half brother William was murdered?"

The sheriff walked away from me a few steps, then came back. "How did you know that William Mead was Richard Chantry's half brother?"

"It came up in conversation."

"You must have some pretty wide-ranging conversations." He stood perfectly still for a moment. "You're not suggesting that Richard Chantry murdered his half brother, William?"

"The suggestion is all yours, Sheriff. I didn't even know about William's death until today."

"Then why are you so interested?"

"Murder always interests me. Last night in Santa Teresa there was another murder-also connected with the Chantry family. Did you ever hear of a man named Paul Grimes?"

"I knew him. He was Richard Chantry's teacher. Grimes lived with him and his wife for quite some time. I never thought too much of Grimes. He lost his job at the Copper City high school and married a half-breed." The sheriff averted his head and spat on the ground again.

"Don't you want to know how he was murdered?"

"It doesn't matter to me." He seemed to have a supply of anger in him, which broke out at unexpected points. "Santa Teresa is way outside my territory."