by Gwen Moffat
‘Really. How naughty of them. Then when did they move the car?’
He stared at her and said slowly: ‘That’s not how they did it. Donna went off Monday morning in the car and Bunny was there all day on her own. Donna came back that night and that’s when she would have parked the car clear of town, gone in and fetched Bunny and their clothes and stuff and walked to the car.’
Miss Pink looked quite stupid, then comprehension flooded her face. ‘Someone saw them go.’
He was patient with her. ‘No one saw them. But that’s what had to happen. Donna and the car weren’t here Monday. Bunny was gone Tuesday morning, so Donna had to come back and pick her up because they were both found in the car.’
She nodded. ‘Of course. The obvious explanation. I see why Mrs Webber is angry.’
His mouth twitched under the beard. ‘She lost sixty dollars. She’s hopping mad.’
A rear door opened and Karen Fraser slipped in, slamming it behind her. When she turned to face them her expression was wary. There were dark smudges under her eyes.
‘You shouldn’t have come over in this,’ her father said sharply.
‘I’m bored.’ She crossed to the stand of magazines and stared at them without interest. Miss Pink stood up and walked to the shelf where the cookies were stacked. She took her time making her choice and heard Orville Fraser say: ‘You can look after her now you’re here.’ He raised his voice. ‘Don’t you start down to Sweetwater till this is blown itself out, ma’am.’
‘I won’t, and I’m most grateful for the shelter.’
He went back to the garage and Miss Pink wandered in a desultory fashion about the store until she had approached the check-out counter where Karen was leafing through House Beautiful.
‘Is the school closed?’ Miss Pink asked, making no move to put down a packet of cookies.
‘No. I’m sick.’ She would not look up. ‘I’ve been home all week.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that. Still, a break from routine hurts nobody. Is your mother well?’
‘She’s all right.’
‘That’s good. And your sister?’
Wide eyes were raised. The lips parted. In the back of the throat there was a sound like the start of a scream. She resembled a small child in the middle of the desert, suddenly aware that it is lost.
‘Janice?’ she whispered, then suddenly, with a flicker of—what was it? Hope? ‘She’s at Sweetwater?’
Miss Pink smiled. ‘No. I was merely asking after her.’
Karen looked desolate. ‘Why would you be asking after her if she was at Sweetwater? I’m dumb.’ Her face was set as she stared out of the window. ‘I’m full of pills. For my stomach. I don’t know what I’m saying.’
‘How often do you see her?’ Miss Pink asked casually.
‘Now and then.’ She looked down at the magazine but she made no effort to turn the pages.
‘Of course you have friends at school to talk to,’ Miss Pink mused, ‘but they’re not here now. Small wonder you’re frightened.’ She paused. ‘I was terrified. I nearly got caught in it. Just reached Molten in time. Your father let me in through the side door. I had to hammer on it with my shoe. What do your friends say about Janice?’
‘They don’t know what to think.’ The sentence was bitten off, the eyes lifted, watching Miss Pink as if she were a grizzly. They flickered towards the rear door, to the one that led to the garage, then they narrowed, calculating. She slid off the stool and came out from behind the counter, nodding towards the end of the store. Miss Pink followed her. The wind howled round the building and rattled the flyscreens. At the back, by the cold cabinets, their voices would not carry.
‘You know something about Janice?’ Karen asked tightly.
‘I know she left home.’
‘What else?’
‘I guess that you’re in touch with her and don’t want your parents to know.’
‘I wish they’d try.’
‘Try what?’
‘To get in touch with her.’
‘Does she need help? If she does—’
‘I don’t know!’ Her voice had risen. She lowered it. ‘You never know with Janice. And they’ve forbidden me to write to her.’
‘But you did.’
‘I wrote her regularly. She answered my letters, all of them until—until about two weeks ago. She was coming home. Then she stopped writing. She came. I mean, she left L.A. but she didn’t come here. And now she doesn’t write to me. And she’s not there.’
‘I don’t understand. She said she was coming to Molten? And your parents didn’t know that?’
‘She was just going to walk in on them. She knew they would be all right if she turned up like that. They love her really.’
‘What went wrong?’ Miss Pink meant originally, but Karen misunderstood her.
‘She just never came, but she left L.A.—’
‘Just a minute. Go slowly. How do you know she left?’
‘Why, there’s this guy she’s living with, right? He opened the letter I wrote asking when she was coming, because she hadn’t arrived, see? He wrote me she’d left.’
‘When?’
‘Ten days ago. He’s worried too; well, not worried like I am. She went off a lot. There’s this commune at Big Sur she went to but she isn’t there. He called them.’
‘Why was she coming home?’
Karen stared at the shelves of milk.
‘Something to do with you?’ Miss Pink pressed, and when she still would not answer: ‘Why didn’t you go to her?’
‘She wouldn’t let me. Said she wanted to come home but I figured she didn’t want me to—’ She stopped, and continued, at a tangent: ‘That’s why they forbade me to write to her: drugs and stuff, you know?’
‘Is she living with a pusher?’
Karen shrugged. ‘Could be.’
‘And your parents know that? How?’
‘The police told them I guess.’
‘What’s your problem?’ Miss Pink asked, not unkindly. ‘Why did she have to make this long journey to see you?’
‘I told her about Donna and Bunny.’
‘Yes?’
‘They were good people! Christ, I’m fifteen! They make out I’m a child. Girls get married at fifteen. I knew how Donna earned her living. So what? Just because they’d give me a lift to L.A., let me room with them someplace till I get a live-in job, doesn’t mean I’ve got to become a hooker. Janice and me could have gotten an apartment on our own anyway, if she left that guy.’
‘So you were planning to go with Donna and Bunny to L.A., and you told Janice.’
‘Of course. She’s my sister.’
‘How did she write to you? She didn’t write here.’
‘She writes to my friend at school.’
‘Of course. Simple.’
‘How do I find out what’s happened to her?’
‘At this point you have to tell your parents. The whole thing’s made you ill, hasn’t it?’ Karen nodded miserably. ‘You can’t do anything, but your parents can. You’re not going to get into much trouble. I’m quite sure your parents don’t beat you.’ She waited.
‘They never beat me. Nor Janice.’
‘You’ll get a bit of a scolding, not much because they’ll be more concerned with Janice. Now you go into the house and tell your mother. Understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do it right now. You’ll feel a lot better. And it’s the only way to find Janice.’
She saw the girl out of the back door and noticed that there was a lull in the storm. The weather seemed less important now. She had voiced no warning about the dangers of fifteen-year-olds consorting with prostitutes. The child’s mother should, and no doubt would, see to that, she thought grimly, and felt a twinge of sympathy for Mrs Fraser—the father too: one daughter living with a drugs pusher and the other eating her heart out to work under the same bright lights.
She replaced the cookies on their shelf and fought her way acro
ss the street to the motel.
Chapter 8
‘No,’ Mrs Webber said, ‘I didn’t find any map. You must have lost it some place else.’
‘I had it in the girls’ room,’ Miss Pink said. ‘In Miss Kraus’s. That’s when I last consulted it.’
‘It’s not there.’ It was difficult to tell if Mrs Webber’s face had hardened. It was stony when Miss Pink had entered the office.
‘I understand that they left owing you money.’
‘What’s that to you?’
‘I was a friend.’
‘Friend!’ Mrs Webber sneered.
‘They didn’t have many here.’
‘Girls like that don’t have friends.’
‘They should have: to balance the people who exploit them. Pimps, procurers, landlords. Is there no criminal charge in the U.S. such as living on immoral earnings for pimps, keeping a brothel for landlords?’
‘What are you saying?’ It was a venomous hiss.
‘But I was a friend,’ Miss Pink repeated, opening her bag. ‘How much did they owe you?’
Mrs Webber seemed to stop breathing then, very delicately, she opened a drawer and extracted a ledger. Turning her back, she consulted it, replaced it and closed the drawer. When she faced Miss Pink again she had decided how she was going to play it.
‘Two hundred dollars.’
‘It was sixty—and even that is debatable; it would depend what time they left.’
If Mrs Webber sensed a trap she ignored it. ‘I didn’t know what was going on.’
‘Rubbish. A truck’s engine would wake the village.’
‘Truckers were visiting and drinking just.’
‘With two known prostitutes?’ Mrs Webber opened her mouth and closed it again. ‘You cleaned the rooms,’ Miss Pink stated.
‘Of course. Soon as I knew about the accident. They weren’t coming back. I needed the room.’
‘What did they leave behind?’
‘A mess.’ She thought better of that, her eyes on Miss Pink’s bag. ‘Some old clothes. I threw them out with the rest of the trash.’
‘Just old clothes?’
‘Some bits of food. Empty liquor bottles.’
‘I’d like to see the rooms.’
Mrs Webber gave a thin smile. ‘You can’t. They’re sealed.’
Miss Pink changed tactics effortlessly. ‘The police must have given you a rough time.’
‘So? How was I to know they’d been pushed over the edge?’
‘How did you come to know there had been an accident?’
‘From a trucker coming through. It was a trucker saw the wreck first. They all got CB.’
‘How did he know it was these particular girls?’
‘He recognized the car.’
‘It was burned.’
‘Not all of it. He’d know the model.’ Mrs Webber looked at her nails—a gesture that was out of character. ‘Maybe the police told him.’
‘You didn’t waste any time cleaning their rooms. And in moving their stuff.’
A large pick-up swept into the motel’s court. Mrs Webber said quickly: ‘Satisfied?’
‘No.’ Miss Pink watched the man who must be Wayne Hammer come towards the office. To her knowledge he had not seen her until now, so to him she could be merely a traveller looking for accommodation. The door banged open. He hardly glanced at her and addressed Mrs Webber without preamble. ‘Some guys here earlier looking for me?’
‘City people,’ Mrs Webber said. ‘Probably from Vegas. Looking for the girls.’
He stared at her, not in astonishment or fear, but intensely. Ignored, Miss Pink looked annoyed.
‘They gone to Sweetwater,’ Mrs Webber told him with satisfaction.
‘You sent them there?’
She shook her head. ‘That’s the way they were headed.’
‘When?’
‘Early. Before the storm.’
‘That’s why I didn’t see no tracks. Sand’s drifted across the road.’
He glanced at Miss Pink who was looking distinctly uncomfortable. ‘Like a word with you,’ he said to Mrs Webber and nodded towards the court.
As the woman came out from behind the counter Miss Pink handed her a currency note. Hammer observed the transaction without interest and they left the office, followed by Miss Pink who went to her car. She pulled away slowly and in the rear view mirror saw him turn to watch her while Mrs Webber talked. She did not make the turn that would lead her to the Sweetwater road but went up the street and parked outside Vi’s store. Opening the glove compartment, she groped inside, watching the mirror. After a few moments the pick-up appeared and she stiffened, but it did not come her way. It turned right, crossed the road and headed towards Sweetwater. The two men from Las Vegas were more important to Hammer than the motive behind her own quest for information.
Vi looked haggard. ‘No film,’ she said heavily. ‘I’ve got some pretty jewelry though. Over here.’
Miss Pink looked at some blue plastic studs set in tarnished metal. ‘A sad thing about those girls,’ she said, picking up a ring.
‘Horrible.’ Vi stared at Miss Pink’s finger. ‘Here, try this one, see if it’ll fit.’
Miss Pink regarded her spread hand dubiously. ‘Has Wayne Hammer got a gun?’
‘I expect so.’ Vi seemed hypnotized by Miss Pink’s hand. ‘Why?’
‘Because he’s gone after the men from Vegas.’
‘The fool!’
‘Handguns aren’t much good against a rifle.’
‘How do you know—he’s taken his rifle? He’s crazy.’
‘But these men weren’t concerned in the accident—so-called.’
‘Who are you?’
‘You know.’
Vi walked across the store and took up a stance behind the counter as if it were a bulwark. She looked hard at Miss Pink. ‘You could have fooled me. What are you: a doctor—crime doctor? But then you’d be down there in Calcine messing about with the bodies. Scotland Yard? That’s what it’s called, isn’t it? What is this? Some kind of exchange visit? So why’d you come to this place?’
‘When did you last see Janice Fraser?’
‘Janice?’ She looked dumbfounded. ‘What in God’s name has she got to do with it? That’s a damfool question to ask.’ She was silent, her mind working. ‘There’s a link somewhere. That’s what you’re saying. All hookers. Janice started hustling? I hadn’t heard.’ She shook her head. ‘No, I don’t get it.’
Miss Pink was patient. ‘When was the last time you saw her?’
‘Months ago, when she left home. Wait, it was in the summer—hot as hell, one evening after Orville and Bertha were gone to pick up Karen, so it would be a Friday night. Janice closed up soon’s they’d gone because I went up for some liquor and she’d put the sign on the door. So I went out back, get her to open up. She was all dressed to go to town. Told her what I thought: her shutting up soon’s her pa and ma were gone. Didn’t make no difference, gave me the key and told me to take what I wanted, leave the money on the counter. So I came back here and I watched. Sure enough, ten minutes later along comes this guy in a big silver Mercedes, picks her up, two suit-cases and stuff. But you know all this; what you want it again for?’
‘She’s been back since.’
‘Not to my knowledge, she hasn’t. Is that kid really mixed up in this other business?’ Miss Pink made no answer. ‘Well, could be. And you’re not talking.’ Vi waited expectantly.
‘Where was Donna on the day before the accident?’ Miss Pink asked.
Vi was suddenly vicious. ‘How in hell should I know? Come back from Vegas, flashing hundred dollar bills—’ She stopped and lowered puffy eyelids. ‘Hookers. Should be run out of town.’
‘How did they get their trade?’
‘You asking me? CB.’
‘They didn’t have a radio.’
‘Most people in the desert do.’
‘And they had no telephone. Neither has Wayne Hammer.’ It was a shot
in the dark and it worked. At least, Vi did not deny it. ‘Where are the Indians?’ Miss Pink asked.
Vi’s eyes shifted as her mind changed gear, then they narrowed. ‘Why, they all disappeared.’ Her surprise sounded genuine. ‘I don’t remember seeing an Indian since the police arrived Tuesday night. That was when they sealed the rooms and put a guard on them. Police car outside all night.’ She grinned fiercely. ‘Not seen hair or hide of a red man since. They’ll be over the state-line by now.’
‘Did the police show any interest in them?’
‘They’d have a job, wouldn’t they, when there weren’t no Indians here? You mean you’re not working with the state police? Is this a drugs case then?’
Miss Pink picked up a chunk of rock, vaguely striated.
‘That’s petrified wood,’ Vi said automatically. ‘It’s five hundred million years old.’
‘Really. How much is it?’
‘Five dollars. Let you have it for four.’
‘I’ll take it. Five hundred million? Incredible.’
She emerged to a deserted street. Behind her she heard Vi slip the bolt on the door. She regarded the aerials above the roof and the telephone line without expression and then she looked at the threatening sky which was uniformly grey. Under it each range of mountains carried its own long duvet of cloud.
She lowered herself on to the driver’s seat. Her skinned knees hurt and she felt exhausted. As she drove past the garage she glanced at her petrol gauge automatically and was relieved to see that she had ample fuel. There was no light in the store or in the garage, and the last people she wanted to see at this moment was any member of the Fraser family.
There were two sets of tyre marks in the sand on the Sweetwater road, no more. About a mile from Molten she started to meet the long ground swell before the mountains began and after a few more miles one of the sets of tracks she was following bore left, or came from the left. The other continued. She stopped before the junction and got out.
The same vehicle had made both tracks. She looked around. There was no sign of any habitation; even the town was hidden although she could see the tops of the cottonwoods. Taking the binoculars she plodded to the crest of a long dune. It was no more than twenty feet high but from its crest she could see a straggle of ugly shapes about half a mile away. She focused the glasses and saw a jumble of old cars about a tiny wooden cabin. Its door was open and someone in trousers was just about to step inside. She frowned. He was long-haired and fat and was certainly not Wayne Hammer.
