Miss Pink Investigates series Box Set Part Two

by Gwen Moffat

  ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘Between the dead man and the dead bear?’ The sheriff was expressionless. ‘I mean,’ she pressed, ‘have you uncovered fresh evidence? Or am I being presumptuous?’

  ‘She means pushy,’ Seale said.

  ‘We got the evidence. I’m expecting a call any time from the forensic lab. The bear was shot, probably Tye was too. The bullets won’t show who was behind the gun but then—’ He stopped, wide-eyed.

  Seale grinned. ‘Then all you have to do is find the gun.’

  ‘And the owner won’t have it any longer,’ Logan said.

  ‘But,’ Miss Pink pointed out, ‘everyone knows what kind of gun everyone else has—and the calibre—so all you have to do is concentrate on the man who can’t produce his rifle.’

  ‘Correct.’ The sheriff sat back. He was sweating lightly. ‘And you’re forgetting that the bear skin has to be somewhere; it left Sundance—the dogs would have found it otherwise—so that means it was took out on a pack-horse, on a horse anyway, and then there’s Tye’s gun; he carried a Colt ·45, and that’s missing. Someone’s took that. And his billfold.’

  ‘His billfold?’ Miss Pink repeated.

  ‘His wallet,’ Seale said. ‘How much was he carrying?’

  ‘A lot.’ Again the sheriff fixed Logan with a bright stare. ‘Tye sold his car before he left Chicago, and he took the money in cash. Joe Bullard says he must have had a couple of thousand in his billfold.’

  Seale was incredulous. ‘The killer stole money too?’

  Logan said: ‘If he killed a bear and a man, what makes you think he’d stop at stealing?’

  The sheriff said heavily: ‘People have murdered for two thousand dollars, let alone for what this man had at stake: discovery, revoking of his grazing licence—’ this raised polite smiles all round, ‘—and what makes you think it was a man? Could be a woman.’ He looked from Seale to Logan. ‘Or a couple working in—in—’

  ‘Collusion,’ Seale supplied, and smiled at Logan.

  The telephone started to ring. The sheriff made a move to rise but Ginny was there before him. ‘That could be the result of the autopsy,’ he said, beaming. ‘This is where everyone starts producing their guns—or concealing them.’

  ‘It’s for you,’ Ginny said.

  He nodded pleasantly at Logan, took the receiver, drawled: ‘Sheriff Murray,’ and listened. The smile left his face. ‘Where?’ he barked, and then: ‘Who found her?’

  Seale glanced at Miss Pink but all her attention was on Murray as she tried to make sense of the garbled sounds at the other end of the line.

  ‘Okay,’ Murray said. ‘I’ll find her. I’ll get to it right away.’ He replaced the receiver and turned to the company. ‘They found Shelley Patent.’ Apparently oblivious to the tension he went on: ‘I gotta find Edna Lenhart—’

  Ginny asked: ‘Is the girl all right?’

  He blinked at her. ‘A few bruises, that’s all. She was in Trapper’s Cabin on Squaw Creek. One of Proctor’s hands found her, saw the chimney smoking. He’s bringing her to Prosper now.’

  Miss Pink said suddenly and loudly that everyone must turn out to look for Edna: there was plenty of transport available and no doubt the sheriff could summon more, and more men, by telephone. ‘I need gas,’ she muttered, and walked quickly out of the kitchen.

  ‘We can let her have gas—’ Logan began.

  ‘She takes unleaded.’ Seale glared at him. ‘We’d better scatter and find Edna.’

  Miss Pink drove straight down Cougar, bouncing through the potholes, turned left at the highway and, once on the tarmac, let the Jeep have its head until she came to the sign: Speed Zone Ahead on the outskirts of Prosper.

  She passed the gas station, the motel which she had thought was closed but which had a couple of cars on its forecourt and a light in the office; she passed cabins and a shingled barn with a neon sign: The Covered Wagon, and turned in at Edna’s studio. It appeared to be closed and abandoned, but then she realized, squinting against the sun, that there was a light behind the window screens.

  Joe Bullard opened the door, his face eloquent and resigned, fearful of the worst.

  ‘It’s all right.’ She patted his arm as she entered, seeing Edna with a picture clutched to her breast like a shield, her eyes wary, her lips a thin line. Beside her Gale was a travesty of the beauty Miss Pink had met on Wolverine.

  ‘Shelley’s safe and well,’ she announced. ‘She was in Trapper’s Cabin on Squaw Creek and they’re bringing her to Prosper now.’

  Edna licked her lips. There was a gentle sigh, and Miss Pink was knocked sideways as Bullard plunged forward to catch Gale before her head struck the floor.

  ‘Gale has taken this hard,’ Miss Pink said, driving west from Prosper with Edna beside her in the Jeep. When Otis Lenhart had dropped the others at the studio he had driven away in the Cherokee and left them without transport so Miss Pink was taking Edna to meet Shelley on the road. Bullard had stayed with Gale, fortifying her with coffee in the studio, with the light turned out and the door locked against Press and police.

  ‘We all took it hard.’ Edna smiled. ‘But I said she was alive.’

  ‘You knew all along.’

  ‘Oh, no—’ The denial was automatic, but bitten off.

  ‘On Sunday night you thought Shelley had died a horrible death.’

  ‘Yes. That was Sunday.’ Edna stared through the windscreen. ‘Can you go a little faster? I’m dying to see her—after the terrible things we’ve been thinking.’

  The needle crept up to fifty. ‘This morning,’ Miss Pink said, ‘you knew Shelley was alive. Who told you she was?’

  ‘Oh, I see what you mean!’ Edna turned and Miss Pink glanced sideways, noticing what she had failed to remark earlier: that the woman’s eyes had sunk in their sockets—or had those hours since they met in the foothills been particularly ravaging? She had, after all, talked with the police, and probably the Press. She was saying: ‘You’re thinking of some—specific information.’ She gave a deprecating little laugh. ‘It was a sensation only, a gut feeling. Something told me, not so much that she was alive, but that she wasn’t dead. What I’m trying to say is that I’d have known if she’d been dead. Am I making sense?’

  ‘You thought she was dead on Sunday evening, so your change of mind occurred yesterday.’

  ‘Did it? Here’s a car coming. Slow down! Flash your lights! Does Shelley know the Jeep?’

  ‘If she’s in this car and it doesn’t stop, I’ll turn round and follow.’

  ‘I want you to stop that car!’ Edna was panicking. Miss Pink flashed her lights at a grey Mercedes. The driver, the sole occupant, stared at her belligerently as he passed.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Edna collapsed. ‘I do want to see her.’ It sounded like an afterthought.

  The road stretched ahead, a pale ruler between the spurs of the range and the wide river plain. They passed the mouth of a canyon that must be Hoodoo Creek, they passed two cattle trucks and three pick-ups, but Shelley was in none of them. At length Miss Pink began to wonder if she could have been in the back of one of the trucks because they could see for miles, surely to the mouth of Squaw Creek, and there was nothing on the road.

  A long way ahead cattle started to drift from the highway leaving one animal on the verge. Miss Pink registered its presence only because it appeared to be outside the fence and therefore a potential hazard, but as she drew nearer she saw that the animal was too tall for a cow. It was a horseman.

  His silhouette was distorted, growing more so, more peculiar, until she exclaimed: ‘There are two people on that horse! Can that be Shelley?’

  It was. Edna jumped from the Jeep before it stopped. Behind her Miss Pink switched off the engine and sat still, seeing Shelley slide off the horse and go to her mother. She expected them to throw their arms round each other and she watched for that and observed it but, and perhaps because she had been waiting for an emotional reunion, she wondered if there were not some rest
raint about this one. Of course it isn’t easy to hug and be hugged when one is carrying a rucksack.

  She climbed down as mother and daughter came towards the Jeep. Shelley was wearing dark glasses. She looked as if she would halt and speak but Edna steered her towards the passenger’s door. Miss Pink faltered, received a look from Edna which she interpreted as a request for privacy, and strolled over to the cowboy, who had dismounted and opened his tobacco tin.

  ‘I’m a friend of the family,’ she announced. ‘Are you employed by Mr Proctor?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. Luke Stagg. I’m sorry we took so long but I hadn’t got wheels. The boss dropped me on Squaw this morning and then he went off to drop the other guys who were riding our lease so I didn’t have no way of getting Shelley out except on my horse. I thought she’d get a lift on the road but no one stopped.’

  ‘How fortunate you found her. Weren’t you surprised to find her in the cabin? You must have known about the search.’

  ‘I knew some people were missing and I knew Shelley was one of them, but Sundance is all of twenty-five miles from Trapper’s Cabin and when I saw the smoke I thought it had to be vandals, squatters—someone who hadn’t got no right to be there.’

  ‘You must have had quite a surprise.’

  ‘No.’ Reflectively he chewed his tobacco. ‘I knew who she was and I were glad she got down safe.’

  ‘Quite.’ This was going to be hard work. ‘And considering she’d come so far from Sundance. Twenty-five miles, you said?’

  ‘It took her all day. She never meant to come down Squaw, of course. She were lost.’

  ‘She must be fit to walk twenty-five miles in a day, with a pack.’ She stroked his horse’s neck. ‘I wonder how she came to be separated from Irving Tye.’

  ‘That happened in the blizzard. They went in different directions looking for the trail out of Sundance and she lost him. Is there any news of him?’

  She blinked slowly. ‘News—of Irving Tye?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  She glanced from him to the Jeep. The women were sitting in the front, deep in conversation, oblivious of observers.

  ‘A body was found in Sundance,’ she said.

  He nodded. ‘I’m not surprised. Shelley was lucky to find the cabin; all the same, she’s been in the back country before, she wouldn’t panic. Tye was a townie. If he couldn’t find the way out of Sundance, he’d die there.’

  ‘Her mother will be telling her about it now. Although she may wait until she gets Shelley home. Better not mention it when you take your leave.’

  ‘I have to get back—’

  ‘You’ve given up a lot of your time. Was it you who telephoned the news that Shelley had been found?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. I called the Lazy S but couldn’t get no reply so then I called the sheriff’s office in Sweetgrass.’

  ‘Is Trapper’s Cabin on the phone?’

  ‘No. The nearest phone is a cabin about six miles down Squaw Creek. It’s a summer home, belongs to a doctor from Sweetgrass. I called from there, same as Shelley did.’ He looked uncomfortable.

  ‘That explains it,’ she said easily. ‘We couldn’t think where she was calling from. She found the key or did she—?’

  He swallowed, then words came in a rush: ‘Ah, shoot! It’s only a busted window! Miz’ Lenhart’ll pay. Shelley wanted to keep it quiet. She broke the kitchen window yesterday to get in to call her Mom, tell her she was all right. So I called from there too.’

  ‘Nothing to bother about. I’ll tell Mrs Lenhart at a convenient moment and make sure she contacts the owner. She’ll want to speak to you too, when she gets over the relief of having her daughter back.’

  She didn’t like dismissing him so brusquely but she had other things on her mind although, when he had ridden away and she walked back to the Jeep, she was amazed to find herself concerned with the trivial problem of seating. Jeeps do not have bench seats and at the moment Edna was behind the wheel. At Miss Pink’s approach she opened the door.

  ‘Isn’t this marvellous?’ she cried. ‘To have her back safe and sound? And I let Luke Stagg go without a word of thanks.’

  ‘I said you’d be in touch.’ Miss Pink looked past Edna to Shelley who sat stiffly in the passenger seat, the base of a bruise visible on her cheekbone below the dark glasses, her lower lip swollen, perhaps cut. ‘It’s a tremendous relief,’ Miss Pink went on. ‘You had a bad time, Shelley.’ She stood back, allowing Edna room to get down. ‘You’ll want to go straight home?’

  ‘If you don’t mind.’ Edna walked round to the passenger side. ‘Now what are we going to do, ducky? I’ll sit in the back.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’ Shelley roused herself and scrambled between the seats into the bed of the Jeep. ‘I can sit on my pack. I’m all right, Mom. It was good of you to come and meet me, Miss Pink. I think Luke had resigned himself to carrying me all the way to Prosper. No one would stop for us. And I never thanked him.’

  ‘I did so on your behalf.’ Miss Pink started the engine, turned and headed back towards the village. ‘And I told him not to worry about the smashed window, that Edna would call the owner and straighten things out.’

  The big tyres purred on the tarmac, the engine note rose and fell as Miss Pink shifted into top gear. For a long moment her passengers neither stirred nor spoke, then Edna said: ‘She called me last evening to tell me she was safe.’

  Miss Pink said pleasantly: ‘She was concerned about you, naturally.’

  ‘It was a great relief.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Again there was silence. Edna’s hands made small involuntary movements. Shelley said: ‘I insisted that Mom shouldn’t tell anyone, even family.’

  Edna swung round. ‘Forget it, sweetie; don’t talk now—’

  ‘She thinks I was responsible for what happened in Sundance,’ Shelley said calmly.

  ‘That’s logical,’ Miss Pink said.

  ‘Don’t say any more, Shelley!’ Edna was frantic. ‘Not ’til you’ve had a rest. You’re in shock.’

  ‘Mom, the police are going to be waiting for us, and I’ve done nothing wrong. You see, Miss Pink, she’s convinced I’m not telling the truth—’

  ‘Shelley! You’re not yourself! You don’t—’

  ‘Just one moment.’ Miss Pink slowed down. ‘You have about twenty minutes before we reach Prosper. The first questions the police are going to ask, the obvious ones, are: why didn’t Edna tell anyone that you were safe? Why did she let the search continue? I might add: why was Gale allowed to suffer? She fainted when she learned you were alive, Shelley.’

  ‘Oh, my God! It was all my fault. Mom did what I told her. I’ll tell the police. I’ve got nothing to be afraid of—now. Last night—when I called Mom—I thought I had, but everything’s changed.’ Shelley sighed deeply. ‘Right, so last night I called her and warned her not to let anyone know it was me on the phone, to talk as if it was a neighbour, you know? I just said I was all right, but I wouldn’t tell her where I was, and I hung up before she could ask any questions. I wasn’t going to answer them anyway; the only reason I called her was to let her know I was safe.’

  ‘All right.’ Miss Pink accepted this provisionally. ‘What were you afraid of?’

  There was a pause. ‘People knowing what had happened,’ Shelley said. ‘Particularly Mom.’

  ‘Shelley!’ Edna was panic-stricken.

  She reached forward and put her arm round her mother’s shoulders. ‘Mom’s conditioned to fighting. She can’t let go. I haven’t done anything. Look, I’ll tell you what happened. He hit me. That’s how I got these bruises. He was hysterical, terrified; he didn’t know what he was doing.’

  ‘You’re talking about Irving?’ Miss Pink asked.

  ‘Who else? There wasn’t anyone else there. I’d left the others.’

  ‘How about telling it from the beginning,’ Miss Pink said. ‘From where you left Gale and Joe and followed Irving up the trail to Sundance.’

  Cha
pter 10

  Shelley spoke urgently, her arm still round her mother, her face turned to Miss Pink: ‘I overtook Irving and we went on together. I tried to stop him climbing Desolation Peak but the more I tried, the more determined he was. It was hopeless, so we crossed Sundance Basin and left our packs, but, really, it was too late to climb anything by then because of the weather. I realized that when we were about halfway up the ridge towards the summit but Irving wouldn’t believe me; he said it would stay fine, and he went on. I had to follow; he’d never have found the way down in a blizzard. I didn’t think I would either, but he stood a slightly better chance with me, none on his own.

  ‘It snowed on the summit and it got worse as we came down. At first Irving wasn’t affected, but he got quieter and quieter and then suddenly he became furiously angry, and said silly things …’ Her voice trailed away.

  ‘Such as?’ prompted Miss Pink.

  ‘Oh, just it was all my fault: misjudging the weather and so on. He was frightened. We got down eventually and found the packs and I pitched the tent and cooked us a meal and we turned in. Irving was all right again; it had stopped snowing and he seemed to have forgotten what happened on the mountain. Then, in the night, a bear came along. We both heard it: making queer snuffling noises—’ She shuddered. ‘I’ll never camp in the back country again!’

  ‘It attacked then?’ Miss Pink was incredulous. ‘When you were in your sleeping bags?’

  ‘No. It didn’t attack. Not in the night, I mean; not while I was there. But it was terrifying all the same. We were both shaking and holding on to each other, and Irving was crying.’

  ‘Crying out, you mean? Shouting?’

  ‘No, sobbing. He must have thought the bear was going to kill us. He remembered the stories …’ She stopped talking. She was breathing hard.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘The bear went away! I don’t know how long we stayed like that: just holding on to each other. I got so I didn’t care, you know? Nothing happened, it didn’t tear down the tent and attack us, it didn’t make any more noise. So I thought it had gone away—but they do come back sometimes, and it’s the second time they come that they take people off, kill them. It was horrible, the waiting. I wanted Irving to get some clothes on and for us to creep out and find a tree we could climb, but I couldn’t get through to him, and then I remembered the pistol and I took it out of his holster and held it in one hand and the other arm round Irving. We must have stayed like that until it started to get light. By that time I was sure the bear wasn’t coming back but I couldn’t convince Irving to leave go—he was still holding me, had been all night. In the end I had to get angry and order him to let me go so’s I could look outside the tent.