by Gwen Moffat
‘Plummer threw up, and Art looked devastated. Sarah told me. But I agree with John: it was no one we know. That’s impossible.’
‘I wish you were right. But if there was a river-runner or a strange motorist, even a hiker, even a tramp, he had to be seen by someone – surely? In any event, I’m afraid the police aren’t going to agree with you.’
Jo said nothing. She turned off the road and started down the Estwicks’ track. Miss Pink studied her surroundings. On the far side of the canyon the Stone Hawk was gilded with light against the needles but after a few yards the pick-up was in the trees. She twisted in her seat. ‘A vehicle couldn’t come down here without running the risk of being seen. The start of the track is overlooked by the Grays’ cabin. It was a gloomy evening certainly, but a car would have had its lights on.’
‘Not necessarily. And how do you know it happened here? She could have gone down the creek for some reason. With Birdie you never knew where she might go, or why.’
‘There are gates on the bank of the creek. It’s all pasture land. Birdie wasn’t big enough to open these wire gates, and she would have had to, because of the pony.’
‘Maybe she came to a gate, couldn’t open it, tied the pony, and it got loose.’
Jo was talking out of character. Gone was the placid earth mother of yesterday morning; this was a desperate woman clutching at straws, one who was suffering from shock, and possessed by the compulsion to shift the site of the attack further away from her own home.
‘The trouble is,’ Miss Pink mused, ‘with the conditions prevailing, and no doubt everyone busy with closing windows, securing things, covering up against the approaching storm, no one would have noticed what other people were doing – at a distance and in poor visibility. I don’t expect your youngsters watched Birdie leave.’
Jo did not respond to that. She brought the truck to a stop in the Estwicks’ yard, which seemed cluttered with vehicles. Frankie appeared in the cabin doorway, came over and looked in the driver’s window, seeing Miss Pink. ‘We’re going to have trouble with Sam,’ she said. ‘He came home, loaded his rifle, and then – thank God – he couldn’t think of where to go.’ She grimaced. ‘Seven men, seven directions – which one should he take?’ Her eyes were anguished.
Miss Pink said: ‘There’ll be a medical man arriving shortly. He’s bound to have tranquillisers.’
‘That will do for a time; then what – oh!’ A black and white police car was nosing into the yard.
Miss Pink felt her bowels lurch as if the police had come for her. She turned back to the others, saw the terror in their eyes and knew that the guilt was real if vicarious. Someone else had seen the police car pass, or would see it shortly, and that person had heard the wind in the hunter’s pinions. Her attitude hardened. She knew that her companions were terrified for their menfolk, and not because they thought their husbands were monsters but because they knew they were not. Suddenly, personally involved, she realised the full impact of one argument against capital punishment: that they might get the wrong man.
‘Where is the father?’ And that tone was a threat in itself.
She watched Frankie turn and observe the speaker and the approach of his partner. They were both overweight: clean khaki shirts strained over fat. She was mesmerised by the guns on their hips.
Frankie said: ‘You are— ’ but the patrician pose slipped as Sam Estwick emerged from the barn, curry comb and brush in his hands. He stood in the sunshine observing the tableau about the cars.
Jo got out of the truck. ‘You’re Clint Schaffer,’ she said pleasantly to the younger of the two officers. ‘You were at school with my two eldest. I’m Mrs Olson.’ She held out her hand and he was forced to take it. The other man watched tight-lipped. ‘Not a good time to meet again,’ Jo went on, including the partner, ‘and you’ll be wanting – information? How can we help?’
It was wasted effort. Estwick asked with undisguised menace: ‘So where are you going to start?’
Miss Pink sighed and met Frankie’s eyes. The police looked as if they were carved out of wood.
‘Where is the deceased?’ asked the second man, and Miss Pink winced. Estwick stared, puzzled despite the circumstances. She said: ‘If you go back to the road and drive down the canyon for about two miles, you’ll come on a parked car. Mr. Stenbock is waiting there. He will show you.’
The young Schaffer gaped at her accent. The other man asked rudely: ‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Pink. And what are you called?’
‘Morgan. Who’s in there?’ He nodded at the cabin. ‘The mother?’
‘Mrs Estwick is severely shocked,’ Frankie said. ‘We’ve sent for a doctor.’
Estwick said: ‘You did?’ He moved towards the cabin, the police close behind him. ‘Oh, no!’ Jo whispered, and the women followed, obstructed by the bulk of the men.
Paula was sitting at a table in the kitchen. Dolly stood beside her, waiting; she would have observed the encounter in the yard. Estwick entered, crowded by the police. It seemed to cost Paula a physical effort to raise her eyes. She looked so exhausted, so drained of emotion, that she had acquired a serenity seldom seen except in death. She blinked slowly, staring at her husband.
‘You?’ she asked, with a kind of wonder. ‘Why?’
And while they were all considering the question, the slender thread of control snapped.
‘Why?’ It was an explosion of rage, not a question, but she still possessed some reason. ‘You could have got it from the whore,’ she shouted. ‘Not good enough? You wanted innocence— ’ She was on her feet, cups rolling across the table spilling liquids, everyone’s eyes drawn to her groping hands, a carving knife by the bread … Dolly was clinging to her arms, buffeted and gasping, and the other women plunged past the police to block her from Estwick and push her through a doorway into a bedroom.
‘Here, wait— ’ shouted Morgan.
‘Go to hell!’ Frankie hurled at him, and Miss Pink had one glimpse of Estwick, standing limply, all the aggression and hatred gone, before Frankie slammed the door and they applied themselves to the job of soothing Paula.
In no time she was retracting. With four women to restrain her physically she could do no harm, neither to others nor to herself. As she regained normality she seemed surprised to find so many people in the room. They had put her on a bed (as the most convenient position to keep her immobilised) and now they allowed her to sit up. Frankie made tea and brought cups to the bedroom.
‘They’ve gone,’ she told the others. ‘All of them.’
‘Did they take Sam?’ Paula whispered.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Because of what I said. I didn’t mean it.’
‘So why did you say those things?’ Jo asked.
‘Because of Maxine Brenner, of course.’ Paula sounded surprised.
Frankie asked helplessly: ‘What’s Maxine got to do with Birdie?’
‘Nothing.’ Paula was listless, calm and eminently reasonable. ‘I were taking it out on him for going to her, drinking and whoring with her for months now, and him with a child needed a father’s guidance. So – you see?’ She looked round their circle, her eyes coming to rest on Miss Pink. ‘You understand,’ she said.
‘You were punishing him for going to Maxine,’ Miss Pink said carefully, ‘so you accused him of the worst thing possible.’
‘They put it in my mind,’ Paula said. ‘If they’d arrested him – if the police thinks he did it, that give me the idea, see. Now I realise how wrong it was. You stand by your man whatever.’
‘What!’ Frankie gasped, but Miss Pink took her elbow and they retreated to the kitchen. ‘I thought she was retracting,’ Frankie whispered angrily, ‘but she does think he did it! They can’t have arrested him solely on her accusation, surely?’
‘I think they’ve probably taken him with them because they had to see the body and couldn’t very well leave him here. Of course, he will be a suspect.’
‘Blo
ody ghouls.’ Frankie had heard only the first part of this. ‘I suppose we can expect swarms of them now.’ She started to pick up the cups that Paula had knocked over. Miss Pink fetched a cloth to wipe the table. She became aware that Frankie was staring at her. ‘I was going to ask you,’ the woman said, ‘whether you thought Sam could have done it, and then I realised, remembered, that if he didn’t, it has to be someone else and really, there’s no one even remotely unlikeable in this canyon; I can’t believe that there’s anyone so depraved … D’you see what I’m getting at? This doesn’t affect just Sam, but everyone. Here we’ve been concentrating on protecting him against hysterical accusations by his wife, and there are seven other guys out there, equally in need of protection. Take that back. Six. My sweet Jerome just isn’t in this at all. So – who? The man we know least is Glen Plummer but – a rapist and a killer, him? Rubbish. Why don’t you say something?’ Miss Pink was looking at the carving knife on the table. Frankie said tightly: ‘He wouldn’t have brought it back.’ Deliberately she picked it up, looked round fiercely, saw the knife rack and placed it in the slot which seemed made for it.
‘I was thinking,’ Miss Pink said equably, ‘that someone else might have brought it back.’
‘My God, fingerprints. Now I’ve smudged them.’
‘Don’t worry. He would have wiped them off.’
‘So what happens now?’
‘I don’t like that pair,’ Miss Pink said quietly. ‘The police. I don’t mean personally, but they’re just uniformed men, ciphers; everything’s done by rote. Detectives will be here shortly but the first impact is what counts, and those men are going to report that the wife accused the husband – and it’s a fact that a close relative often is the murderer. What makes this worse for Sam is that he’s only a stepfather.’ She walked to the door.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to try to find out who saw her last.’
Chapter 7
Miss Pink walked out of the cabin but she did not go to her car. Instead she went to the small barn from which Estwick had appeared when the police arrived. Inside there was stabling for horses and stalls for cows. A ladder went up to a trap door and the hay loft. The pinto was standing in a stall and he turned when her form blocked out the light. She spoke quietly and ran her hands over him but she learned nothing. The animal was unmarked and his shoes were firm. She emerged from the barn, passed through a gate at the far side of the corrals and found herself in a pasture shaded by cottonwoods: more open woodland than meadow. A group of steers stood somnolent in the shade, swishing their tails.
A path meandered through the long grass, its dust caked and unmarked. The storm had washed out all prints except, set as if in concrete, the track of a skunk which must have been made since the rain. The path brought her to the creek, sinister below its green canopy of foliage, to a fence and an open gate. At this point there was a ford and the banks were marked by cattle. The level of the creek had dropped considerably since the storm. She rolled up her jeans and waded to the other side, the water reaching to just above her knees. On the far bank the path turned and followed the creek downstream. She came to another fence and a small wooden gate, just wide enough for a horse to pass. There was a low latch that would be within reach of a six-year-old child. The sand was indented here but the heavy rain had obscured all outlines.
The path continued along the creek bank to the field where the children had held their impromptu rodeo; through tree trunks on her left she could see the oil drums they used in their barrel racing.
‘What did Birdie do when you left the meadow?’
Five other children had been playing with Birdie and four of them were on the front porch with Miss Pink. Some of the others were there too; Tracy, a brilliant redhead, was in the rocking chair with the baby on her lap. Erik Olson was seated on the porch steps. He had raised no objection to Miss Pink’s asking questions. ‘There’s no way you can stop them talking,’ he had said. ‘I’ve not tried. You talk sensible to them, you might be able to find out something. This matter’s got to be cleared up one way or another.’
Predictably it was Debbie who took it upon herself to introduce Mike – the lad who had been away at Wind Whistle yesterday morning – although it was not she who raised the subject that must have been preoccupying the older children. But if Debbie seemed less concerned than they, she was subdued, as were all of them, and seemingly dumbfounded when Miss Pink asked that first simple question about Birdie’s movements. Debbie, of course, had not been there; she had been on Calamity Mesa, so in this context she would not have anything to say. She sat on the step below her father, her hands in her lap, and stared at the track that led to the road.
Shelly, the sister closest to her in age (and Birdie’s age, reflected Miss Pink), said: ‘I didn’t see; I was trying to untie Buster, he’d pulled his knot tight, and he’s frightened of lightning, and I couldn’t undo the knot— ’
‘I went to help her,’ said Steve, the small Olson boy. ‘I never knew Birdie left. I didn’t see her go.’
‘She went home,’ Laurel said. She was the girl twin. ‘She said her mom was gone to town.’ She stopped suddenly.
‘And?’ Miss Pink prompted.
‘Well,’ Debbie said in a remote voice, ‘her dad was on his own so Birdie’d go home. She liked her dad.’
Miss Pink drew in her breath and caught Olson’s eye. For a moment neither could look away. She heard Debbie say something else and forced her mind back to the present.
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ came the angry voice of Robin, the boy twin.
Debbie looked sullen. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘What did you say, Debbie?’ Miss Pink asked, but for once the child would not respond.
‘She asked if Shawn went with Birdie,’ Robin said.
‘Oh.’ Miss Pink was startled. ‘And did he?’
‘No.’ Shelly stared at the visitor. ‘How could he? He couldn’t cross the creek. He was on his bike.’
‘Shawn always went home by the track,’ Laurel explained. ‘Birdie went home across the creek if she had her pony. She did yesterday. I saw her go into the trees.’
‘Going towards the gate upstream?’
‘Of course. She had to, to reach home. There’s no other way.’
‘Would Shawn have left at the same time?’ Miss Pink wondered.
They thought about this. ‘Do you mean exactly?’ Robin asked, frowning, trying to remember. ‘Mom hollered to us to go home ’cause of the storm and we started to break it up … ’
‘Shawn went right away,’ Shelly said. ‘He’s afraid of thunder and he had a long ways to go to get home.’
‘So that means he left before Birdie?’
No one agreed with this or contradicted it. She opened her mouth to ask another question, then checked. She did not want to suggest that Shawn had seen a stranger, to put the idea of homicidal strangers in their heads, but was that any worse than the alternative, a homicidal neighbour? In any event her caution was superfluous. The thirteen-year-old Mike spoke for the first time: ‘Shawn could have seen a strange car,’ he said. ‘Or a rider, or a hiker.’
Miss Pink regarded him: a redhead like his eldest sister, snub-nosed and attractive. ‘When did you come home from Wind Whistle?’ she asked. ‘Did you see anything: a car? Did you pass Shawn?’
‘I didn’t come down the road. I was riding so I came home by the trail this side of the creek.’
‘You can get glimpses of the road from that trail. I was on it yesterday. Did you notice any cars?’
‘Not that I recall – and certainly no strange cars; I’d remember if I had.’
‘He wouldn’t have seen anyone,’ Olson said quickly. ‘He came home not long after three; he was helping me with a chicken-house out back.’
Mike glanced at his stepfather. The lad looked puzzled. ‘Yeah, that’s right,’ he said, scuffing his boot on the boards.
Debbie said wistfully:
‘When’s Mom coming home?’
Sandy jumped up. She was another pretty girl, although less brilliant than her older sister. ‘I’m going to make zucchini bread,’ she exclaimed. ‘Debbie, you come and help. You too, Shelly.’
Miss Pink went back to the Estwick cabin. She found Dolly in the kitchen, drying dishes. ‘Where were you?’ the younger woman asked, making it sound like an accusation.
‘At the Olson place. How is she?’ Nodding towards the bedroom.
‘She’s sleeping. Jo’s in there. Frankie’s gone home; she wanted to be with Jerome. And I have to go down to John. Would you stay here?’
‘Sarah’s with John,’ Miss Pink said absently. ‘Give me half an hour. I’m going to talk to Shawn.’
‘What’s he got to do with anything?’ Dolly’s tone was petulant. Everyone was upset.
‘He could have seen a strange car.’
‘I envy you, putting your trust in strange cars.’
There was nothing to say to that. ‘Tell Jo the children are all right. The older ones are holding the fort. And Erik, of course.’
‘Of course.’ The tone was sardonic.
Miss Pink sighed and went out to her car.
As she emerged from the trees around the homestead, three vehicles were going fast down the road, raising a cloud of dust. The leading car slowed at the road-end, evidently as someone noticed the jeep, but it picked up speed again. Thinking that this convoy would contain the doctor and other forensic experts, she remembered the existence of the press, and the probability of their imminent arrival, and groaned inwardly.
‘He can’t tell you anything,’ Maxine said. ‘We haven’t told him the details – and we’re not going to. He’s only ten. Did you forget that?’ She stood on the porch: beautiful, poised and stone-cold sober. ‘All he knows,’ she went on, ‘is that Birdie had an accident in the storm. He thinks she drowned in a flash flood.’
‘How did you learn what happened?’
‘Erik Olson told me this morning. Shawn had called to ask the children were they riding today, and Erik asked to speak to me. I didn’t tell Shawn of course, but my mother knows. She’s a tough old lady; I guess you come to accept horror as you get older. Me, it makes me want to throw up, what he did.’ Shawn appeared and put his arm round her slim hips. ‘Sweetie, I’m talking to Miss Pink.’
