Free The Missing and the Dead: A Bragg Thriller by Jack Lynch Page B

dizzy.
    I went inside, tinkling an overhead bell. The shop was narrow, cramped and seemingly deserted. Things elbowed one another for space. Paintings covered the walls, hung from the ceiling and stood propped on the floor. Glass display cabinets stored charcoal, oils, pencils and blades. The propped and hanging work showed a multiplicity of styles, from delicate still life to portraits to exploding heavens. Something clattered behind a curtained doorway in the rear and a man's voice cursed.
    "Hello!" it cried out. "Is there anybody out there?"
    "That's right."
    "Well come on back here and give me a hand, will you?"
    I went back through the curtain to a disordered storage area more crammed with things than the front shop. Racks suspended from the ceiling held empty frames and wooden boards and slats. A long, sinewy fellow in his fifties wearing a smock was atop a stepladder. He leaned at a precarious angle with a large, ornate frame in one hand.
    "Take this for a minute, will you? And be careful of that one on the floor beside the ladder. I just dropped the damn thing."
    I took the ornate frame and retrieved the fallen one. The man on the ladder did some more business with the rack until he pulled out yet another frame. "Now, if you'll be kind enough to take this one for me."
    I took it and put it aside.
    "Then hand back those others."
    When we were all through he climbed down and wiped his hands on his smock. "Much obliged, mister. Something's got to give, there's just no more room. Either I gotta expand or else touch off the whole shebang with a match."
    "You're not serious?"
    "I am mightily torn," said the older fellow, carrying the frame into the front of the shop. "What with all the different media and material the art gang wants—always something different. I swear to God I spend half my time on the ladder in back and the other half on the telephone to San Francisco ordering things. My name's Wiley Huggins, by the way. Owner and proprietor."
    He offered a narrow hand that had a strong grip. "Peter Bragg," I told him. "Saw in the phone book you seem to be the only art supply place around."
    "That is correct. Wish to hell I had some competition. But you have to know your business, same as with anything else. Plus not have any big dream to become a millionaire. That seems to be a hard combination to find anymore."
    "At least it should make my job easier. I'm looking for a young fellow from San Francisco. I was hoping to find him through a friend he went to school with, living up here now. Probably an artist."
    "Well there are plenty of them around. Some real, some pretending and a whole slough in between. The one who might be an artist you say, is it a man or a woman?"
    "I don't know that. Here's a picture of the man I'm looking for. His name is Jerry Lind. He was supposed to have been around town here a couple of weeks ago. Maybe he came in here with his friend."
    Huggins adjusted his glasses and squinted at the photo. "No, I've never seen this man."
    "You're sure?"
    "Yup. He bears a strong resemblance to a nephew of mine. They both have weak chins."
    "His friend would probably be about the same age. Middle or late twenties. Went to school down in Southern California."
    "Oh, God," said Huggins, dusting off the frame. "I don't know where they all come from, or where they're going. Half of them don't know themselves. They're a little crazy, you know,artists. And some of them, the long-haired and the unwashed, are apt to shamble around town with glazed eyes not knowing where they are right at the present."
    "Is there a drug problem in town?"
    "I wouldn't say that. It's mostly people passing through. There was one of those commune things a few miles back in the hills one time, but they've pretty well moved on. Still, you see somebody from time to time who looks as if that's where they'd be headed."
    "Do the serious artists around town have a special gathering place?"
    "They have several of them. Any bar in town. Of course