Miss Pink Investigates 3

by Gwen Moffat

  The front door opened on to a pillared vestibule, except that the pillars were tree-trunks roughly rounded and still bearing traces of paint where someone had tried to achieve the effect of marble. The floor was rough but swept, there were three tables, one not merely scarred, but charred, and it looked like mahogany. There was a brassbound counter top and a framed advertisement for a stagecoach line. Above it hung a large and surprisingly good imitation of a Modigliani nude.

  A woman followed Miss Pink through the open door and stopped, silhouetted against the street. The sun had left Dogtown and the interior of the hotel was dim. She was a short woman and she was wearing slacks and boots.

  ‘You were wanting a room?’ The voice was pleasant, cultured.

  Miss Pink smiled and moved towards a window. ‘What do you have on offer?’ She was equally polite. Now she saw that the woman was about forty, fair but deeply tanned, with a wide mouth and pale eyes that observed the newcomer with interest. ‘We have cabins,’ she said. ‘How long would you be staying?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I’m following the Joplin Trail.’

  ‘Not more than one night then. I can let you have a cabin for thirty dollars.’

  ‘Perhaps I could see it?’

  They went out and round the corner of the building where big white poppies bloomed in an alley. Beside the hotel several shacks with tin roofs stood in a staggered row. There were lace curtains at the windows but the windows were askew and doorframes sagged. The woman opened one door and stood aside. Miss Pink mounted a shaky step and saw a clean bare floor, a brass bedstead with a white counterpane, a table and chair in chrome and plastic, a strip light, and a wall lamp above the bed. In the back wall a louvred door was open to show a lavatory, a basin and a bath with a shower fitting. She had seen worse accommodation, although not at thirty dollars, but she took the room; she needed information.

  ‘You won’t get many visitors so far from the highway,’ she remarked as she filled in the registration form.

  ‘I do well enough. “Melinda Pink”.’ She had no difficulty in deciphering the print upside-down. ‘That’s neat. I’m Rose Baggott.’ She observed the Dodges’ address. ‘You live in California?’

  ‘A forwarding address. I’m from England. Didn’t you know?’

  ‘I guess so. There was an English guy here back in the summer: Timothy. You talk like him.’

  ‘Timothy Argent. I keep hearing the name. I’m following him along the trail. Did he stay here?’

  ‘Not at the hotel. I don’t think he slept in a bed’ – the generous mouth stretched, the eyes sparkled – ‘shouldn’t think he slept in a bed all the time he was here. He camped in the canyon someplace. He was writing a book and he needed to be on the spot, go up all the different canyons, find out for himself which way the Joplins went. I told him they went over Breakneck Pass but then he talked to the Semples and they swear it’s Crazy Mule, and then there’s Asa – but you don’t want to hear all that stuff.’

  ‘What conclusion did Argent come to?’

  ‘Oh, Breakneck surely.’

  ‘He didn’t tell you?’

  ‘I guess he was embarrassed. I mean, he talked to everybody, he was a regular guy, and beautiful manners! He wouldn’t tell the others he thought the Joplins had to go over Breakneck because he wouldn’t want to hurt their feelings.’ Her smile was sly. ‘Some people are very possessive about their theories.’

  ‘But you must have discovered which route he’d decided on. I’d like to know so I don’t waste time exploring the wrong canyon.’

  ‘It was Breakneck. It’s obvious. There’s the road, and roads always follow old trails. There had to be a trail before the Joplins came through. It would have been made by Indians and then used by the trappers.’

  ‘That’s what he decided?’

  ‘Like I said: he was too well-mannered to say.’ She saw something over Miss Pink’s shoulder. ‘There’s Verne Blair. I’ll go tell him you’re eating at his place. You’ll be wanting breakfast as well as dinner? The food’s good at the Red Queen,’ she added, seeing Miss Pink’s hesitation.

  ‘I thought you’d provide food. This is an hotel, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s what it was, and that’s what it’s going to be, but I’m still doing it up. That’s what everyone’s doing to their property: the restaurant, the museum, me. We’re functional, but there’s room for improvement. None of us have been here long and we’re doing most things ourselves, and it’s taking time. There’s no money from the state, Dogtown’s all private enterprise. You should have seen this place when I bought it. I’ll go and have a word with Verne and Earl. Take your rig round to the cabin. I’m afraid there’s no key to the door but if you’re worried about cameras and stuff lock them in your vehicle. You don’t need to though, there’s no crime in Dogtown.’

  The restaurant took its name from the Red Queen gold mine. At the peak of its prosperity seven thousand people lived in Dogtown; there had been eleven bars, two brothels, and a row of shacks called cribs occupied by the independent whores. It was all on the back of the Red Queen’s menu, a stylish piece of printing under a logo incorporating the Queen of Diamonds.

  After a good steak (‘Corn-fed Top Sirloin Marinated, Broiled, then Teriyaki Glazed!’) Miss Pink took her coffee at the bar, served by the part-owner who had introduced himself as Earl Lovejoy. He had waited on her too and by now she knew that the chef was his partner. No one else was in evidence, but then she was the only customer. At the bar she ran a practised eye along the rank of bottles. Observing her lack of reaction, Lovejoy reached below the counter and produced a bottle of Cointreau. They exchanged smiles.

  Earl Lovejoy was a pleasing host, and a good advertisement for the cooking. Plump but not flabby, he looked as if he enjoyed his food, and he discussed it with authority. He didn’t have much call to do that, he told her, not with most of the customers. He was a dark man, almost swarthy, with thick black hair, a bullish neck, spaniel eyes. He agreed to join her in a liqueur and as they sipped their Cointreau she reverted to the appreciation of good food.

  ‘In time you’ll build up a clientèle,’ she assured him. ‘There can’t be another good chef within a hundred miles. The persimmon soufflé was superb.’

  He beamed. ‘My partner will be delighted to hear that.’

  ‘You should be in San Francisco.’

  ‘But we came from there! Far too many people for us; we’re neither of us city boys. Verne’s folks were fishermen from Monterey, mine – you’re not going to believe this – mine were immigrants from the Dust Bowl in the thirties: Okies. You know: Grapes of Wrath stuff.’

  ‘Ah, Steinbeck. A great man.’

  ‘You’re like him. I mean –’ seeing her surprise, ‘– there’s an affinity. That’s what Timothy said: your Timothy Argent, the author. He said Steinbeck was following a trail too, although Steinbeck was actually with the Okies, but then Timothy was talking about a trail in the spiritual sense.’

  ‘Searching?’ she wondered aloud. ‘A life-search?’

  He nodded. ‘Aren’t we all? But Timothy, he was – different. He was an alcoholic, did you know that?’ He mistook her hesitation for disbelief and went on: ‘He didn’t say so, but it was obvious – particularly to us. We see a lot of that: too much emphasis in refusing a drink, you know? And of course, the ladies, they have to push it; women don’t see anything significant in that kind of refusal. Ah, here’s Verne. Come and meet a fan of yours; she adored the persimmon soufflé. I still say you put too much cream in it.’

  Miss Pink shook hands with Verne Blair, a thin balding man in spectacles who put her in mind of an anxious heron.

  ‘We do our best,’ he murmured.

  ‘And it’s appreciated.’ She found herself responding with gallantry.

  He sniffed. ‘Not often enough. Europeans know what good food is, and Easterners – but not the locals.’

  ‘Timothy did,’ Lovejoy told her. ‘He went right through the menu. Ate like a woman but he tas
ted everything.’

  ‘Like a woman?’

  ‘Present company excepted, ma’am,’ Blair assured her. ‘Timothy didn’t have a big appetite, he picked at his food. Of course, he smoked heavily.’

  ‘It was instead of liquor,’ Lovejoy pointed out. ‘We were sorry for him.’

  ‘We sympathised.’ His partner was less effusive. He looked across the empty restaurant. ‘Timothy was bored with the West.’

  Miss Pink was astonished. ‘His books don’t read as if he could ever be bored.’

  Blair said: ‘Ah, but he’s a professional. We were talking about motivation one night, about goals. He said something about a man alone on a ship drifting through a warm sea, tying up at islands, exhausting their fruits, and casting off again.’

  Lovejoy was gaping at him. ‘When did he say that? I never heard him talk that way.’

  Blair raised an eyebrow. ‘It was the night George and Clint came by. The time they brought the cognac back from Paris.’

  ‘Oh dear. Yes, I remember.’ He glanced at Miss Pink. ‘Well, French Cognac, what can you expect?’ He addressed his partner: ‘So you reckon Timothy was implying he hadn’t got a goal. But he found one, didn’t he?’

  ‘Not really.’ Blair regarded the other man fixedly. ‘He’d be motivated by the book only as long as it took to write it, then he’d need to find something else to fill the gap.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Lovejoy licked his lips. ‘Is it the same with you, ma’am? Do you write?’

  ‘Romances,’ she admitted. ‘Gothics.’

  ‘Are they popular?’

  ‘They have their followers.’ She smiled. ‘A very different following from Timothy Argent’s, of course, but then we have to be very different people: an elderly spinster, an explorer in his prime …’ When this produced no reaction she changed tack: ‘May I see that postcard, the top one in that rack? I must have some cards of Dogtown.’

  ‘That’s Gabriel, to the north of here,’ Lovejoy said. ‘We don’t have a good one of Dogtown yet. Timothy bought several of Gabriel, that same one in fact. He said it epitomised the myth. Those shacks have collapsed now.’

  ‘Odd, for a wilderness traveller to send postcards home.’ Miss Pink pretended to read the legend on the back of the familiar card.

  ‘Some people buy postcards just for something to do,’ rejoined Lovejoy. ‘He only sent one.’

  ‘Now how do you know that?’ She looked intrigued.

  ‘Because he gave it to me to mail.’

  ‘And you forgot to mail it,’ Blair said. ‘I found it in your cagoule.’

  ‘OK, OK. It was just a day or two late. And it was only a few lines to his publisher, nothing important.’

  ‘How do you know it was to his publisher?’ Miss Pink asked.

  ‘I read it. He’d put Gabriel at the top as if he’d written it there and he said he was leaving “tomorrow”. I forget the name of the recipient but he was at the Something-Press. That would be a publisher.’

  ‘Did he leave here the next day?’ she asked.

  ‘No, I told you he worked right through the menu. He didn’t stay in Dogtown though. He camped in the canyon, came down for his meal most nights.’

  ‘How long did he stay in the area?’

  The partners looked at each other. ‘A week?’ Lovejoy asked.

  ‘Eight days,’ Blair said. ‘We don’t know. One night he was here, the next he was gone. But I guess that’s no more than you’d expect … We won’t see him this way again.’

  Lovejoy looked from his partner to Miss Pink. ‘You will,’ he assured her. ‘You’ll meet in London.’

  ‘I may overtake him yet.’

  They regarded her in silence. They might have been considering the possibility of her catching up with Argent but what Blair said was: ‘You mustn’t leave without visiting the museum.’

  ‘You could spend a day in there,’ Lovejoy said. ‘You could spend a few days in Dogtown itself. This place is something special.’

  Chapter 4

  Despite the Dodges’ warning and that of Endeavor’s librarian, Miss Pink had every intention of following Argent over the Sierras and, rather to her surprise, people in Dogtown seemed to assume that she would do this. At breakfast in the Red Queen Lovejoy told her she had a lovely day for the crossing and assured her that she would have fun, while Verne Blair emerged from his kitchen to tell her to take care, but it was more of a ritual courtesy than a warning.

  Rose Baggott hoped that she would come back to the Grand Imperial and stay longer next time. Only at the museum did she run into controversy, was told unequivocally that the Joplins didn’t go over Breakneck Pass and she couldn’t follow them anyway: ‘Not in a vehicle,’ said Charlotte Semple. ‘You can go up Crazy Mule to the end of the dirt road – that’s the way they went: up Crazy Mule and over Trouble Pass. You might reach Trouble on foot, or on a horse.’ Did she sense opposition? She went on: ‘We’ve known this area for years. I’ve made a specialty of the overland trails; I’ve followed the Joplins clear to Bakersfield. That’s where they settled. It’s all in Permelia’s diary.’

  ‘Miss Pink is writing a book,’ her husband said. ‘She knows.’ Her cover had been accepted here without surprise.

  They were in the dim barn that housed the museum and they moved among the exhibits as they talked, Miss Pink’s expression giving no indication that her interest lay in the Semples rather than the Joplins or nineteenth-century artefacts.

  There was an air of ingenuousness about the couple, a kind of simplicity common among people only a few generations removed from the pioneers who were their forebears. One of her ancestors had come overland from Missouri in the 1850s, Charlotte told Miss Pink, and settled in the Sacramento valley. Julius Semple’s people had been lumber merchants on the Pacific slope for nearly a century. In her fifties now, Charlotte had taken early retirement from teaching, her last position having been in an urban school where violence was endemic. When she retired Julius sold out his share in the family business and they’d taken off for the deserts, gravitating to Dogtown eventually where they founded the museum, a project which they regarded with the kind of proud affection usually reserved for adored children.

  Charlotte was a big-boned woman with a mane of titian hair that was rather too bright to be natural. Her skin had started to sag but the agate eyes in their deep sockets were luminous, the lips full and firm. She was still a striking woman, she must have been sensational in her younger days. Her husband was tall and gangling but well-preserved, resembling an ageing Gary Cooper.

  ‘You might hire a horse,’ Charlotte was saying. ‘That’s the best way to reach Trouble.’

  Miss Pink was admiring an ornate little lamp. ‘Sweet,’ she observed. ‘Why red glass?’

  Julius moved away. Charlotte’s eyes followed him. ‘It hung in the window of a crib,’ she said.

  ‘Oh. They were quite open about prostitution?’

  ‘It was accepted as a necessary evil, and of course, there was no Aids in those days. That makes a difference, doesn’t it? All the same the whores had to be segregated; the red light district was at the lower end of town –’ she smiled wryly, ‘– downstream, on the bank of the creek.’

  ‘The unhealthiest part.’

  ‘You could hardly have them upstream. So –’ she turned away, changing the subject, ‘– Rose Baggott has horses but she’s not going to rent you one for Crazy Mule Canyon. She knows the Joplins went over Breakneck and she’s not wasting good horseflesh on someone maintains the correct route goes up Crazy Mule.’ She was smiling but her tone was contemptuous. Miss Pink couldn’t resist a snort of amusement herself.

  ‘How did Timothy Argent cope – ?’ She was tempted to add ‘with all this?’ but desisted.

  ‘With Rose? He didn’t need a horse. He hiked everywhere.’

  Miss Pink picked up a wooden object from a bench and regarded it absently. ‘That’s a snowshoe for a mule,’ Charlotte told her. ‘It clamps on the hoof, see? Julius is going to re
place the straps.’

  ‘Most ingenious. Which route did Argent decide on?’

  ‘Why, Crazy Mule, of course. It’s obvious once you relate Permelia’s diary to what’s there. Timothy was highly perceptive, a kind of historical detective. That kind of nature is essential if you want to follow the old trails.’

  ‘Did you get to know him well?’

  ‘He came here once or twice and we talked about the trail, but trail buffs are kind of single-minded; I guess it’s like any other obsession: hunting, cars, making money – people with those interests never talk about anything else. So apart from that we didn’t get to know him. He spent most of his time hiking in the canyon anyway and when he came to Dogtown it was just to eat at the Red Queen. He didn’t stay long there. He didn’t drink. And we mostly eat at home so we didn’t see him except when he came over.’

  After a pause Miss Pink said: ‘You’ve been very helpful. I’ll go up there and look at Crazy Mule Canyon, but it does seem as if I won’t get far without a horse–’

  ‘There is one thing.’ Charlotte hesitated and glanced towards the back of the barn. ‘There’s a guy lives in the canyon: a dropout. He’s quite old and he’s never been known to – that is, he’s not violent towards people but – I shouldn’t … Don’t get out of your car and don’t stop at his camp. Are you armed?’

  Miss Pink chose to ignore the question. ‘How does he live?’

  Charlotte was embarrassed. Semple appeared from the shadows. ‘I was telling her not to approach Asa Fortune,’ his wife said. The couple exchanged glances. ‘I haven’t told her about the crash,’ she added.

  ‘Nothing was ever proved.’

  ‘No, nothing was proved.’ She turned to Miss Pink. ‘A plane went into the mountain three years ago, in the middle of winter. They didn’t even locate the site of the crash until the snow melted. When they got there, all the jewellery and cash that should have been on the bodies was gone – there were a few dollars left in billfolds for appearances’ sake – and the credit cards were still there – but anything that could be used or fenced was gone. Someone got there before the rescuers.’