She frowned at me. "Did my father send you after me?"
"No. I sort of came on my own. But your mother is paying me. She wants you back. So does he."
"I don't really think they do," the girl said. "Maybe they think they do, but they don't really."
Fred spoke up behind me. "I do, Doris."
"Maybe you do, and maybe you don't. But maybe I don't want you." She looked at him in cold unfriendly coquetry. "I wasn't what you wanted, anyway. You wanted the picture that my parents bought."
Fred looked down at the porch floor. The leader stepped between the girl and us. His face was a complex blend of exalted mystic and Yankee trader. His hands were shaking with nervousness.
"Do you believe me now?" he said to me. "Doris wants to stay with us. Her parents have neglected and rejected her. Her friend is a false friend. She knows her true friends when she sees them. She wants to live with us in the brotherhood of spiritual love."
"Is that true, Doris?"
"I guess so," she said with a dubious half-smile. "I might as well give it a try. I've been here before, you know. My father used to bring me here when I was a little girl. We used to come up and visit Mrs. Mead. They used to-" She broke off the sentence and covered her mouth with her hand.
"They used to what, Doris?"
"Nothing. I don't want to talk about my father. I want to stay here with them and get straightened out. I'm spiritually unwell." The self-diagnosis sounded like a parroting of something that she had recently been told. Unfortunately it also sounded true.
I had a strong urge to take her away from the brothers. I didn't like them or their leader. I didn't trust the girl's judgment. But she knew her own life better than I could possibly know it for her. Even I could see that it hadn't been working out.
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.