Miss Pink Investigates 3

by Gwen Moffat

  ‘I don’t think we should be looking at her personal possessions.’ Green was uneasy, edging towards the door.

  ‘I do.’ Miss Pink went back to the living room. ‘I don’t like this.’ She was terse. ‘I don’t like any of it.’ She was looking at the windows, one in the back wall, two in the front. They were sash windows, draped with layers of nylon net. Those in front were screened but not the one in the rear wall. ‘He didn’t have a dog?’ she asked, adding sotto voce: ‘No, he wouldn’t have a dog. We have to look for him.’

  ‘We’ll shout –’

  ‘You’ve done that. If he’s near, he can’t hear you.’

  ‘Oh, I see!’ Bader seemed relieved. ‘You mean you figure he’s had an accident, like a stroke?’

  ‘An accident of some kind.’

  Outside the cabin the men hovered uncertainly and she experienced a return of that peculiar resistance to the bright morning, but to them she merely looked stern, determined. This was Green’s property and Vogel was his employee but he seemed not to know what to do next. ‘What was that about a dog?’ he asked.

  ‘A dog might help us find him.’

  ‘He didn’t have one. Of course he might have acquired one since.’

  They searched the outbuildings: a barn with a loft for hay, stabling and a tack-room below. There were two smaller buildings but all were new and as yet uncluttered with the kind of junk that, over the decades, finds its way into such places, and they were soon searched. There was no dog, not even a cat, and nothing untoward except a faint smell. Miss Pink remarked on it.

  ‘That’ll be the timber.’ Green was casual, preoccupied. ‘Planks drying out, probably not seasoned as well as they should have been.’

  ‘That’s not wood,’ Bader said. ‘It’s more like something in a zoo, an animal smell. It’s sour.’

  ‘Dead rat,’ Beck put in. ‘Vogel’s laid down poison.’

  ‘It’s nothing important.’ Green turned and walked out into the sunshine. He caught Miss Pink’s eye. ‘Vogel isn’t here, is what I mean. You suggested this, ma’am, looking for him. Where would you start?’ Under the facetiousness he was at a loss.

  She looked down the gentle incline of the meadow. ‘Let’s assume he walked into the forest. How many trails lead out of this meadow apart from the access from Malachite Canyon, and the route to Deadboy?’

  ‘I don’t know of any more, only game trails. Perhaps we should look at the Deadboy route; it seems the obvious answer. I’ll get the key to the gate.’

  He went into the cabin and reappeared almost immediately. ‘I think we got it,’ he said grimly. ‘The key’s gone. There’s a board –’ But Miss Pink had stepped inside and was studying a pegboard on the wall. There were a number of keys, all labelled.

  ‘Is anything else missing?’

  He looked carefully, turning the labels: ‘House: front door, back; cabin, big barn … Not so far’s I can recall. Just the one to the forest gate.’

  He walked out to the Toyota. ‘Don’t take it!’ Miss Pink was sharp. ‘We’ll walk.’

  ‘Why on earth –’

  ‘We may have to track him. If you take a vehicle, the tyres could cover prints.’

  Bader said in amazement: ‘That’s going over the top, surely?’

  ‘Not at all. Looking for someone in wilderness areas, often all there is to help you is tracks.’

  ‘Not much good if you don’t know what he had on his feet,’ Beck said slyly.

  She ignored him. With Green she started down the knoll on which the house stood, walking on the verge. After one puzzled glance, Green took the opposite verge. The others followed Miss Pink. Everyone studied the dust as they walked.

  There were no footprints, only tyre tracks, those of the Cherokee being the most recent. Under those, particularly where they swerved in from the meadow heading for the house, were the marks of another vehicle – the Toyota – and, turning leftwards up the meadow, the tracks of a third vehicle.

  ‘I drove up to the gate about a week ago,’ she said, ‘but these aren’t my tracks.’

  ‘It’ll be the Chevy.’ There was an edge to Green’s voice.

  The tracks led them to the gate. They didn’t stop there but continued on the other side, into the forest. The chain hung loose from the gatepost, a key in the padlock.

  ‘So maybe this isn’t the Chevy,’ said Green, opening the gate. The others filed through silently.

  Here at the fringe of the forest there were a few canyon oaks under which was an accumulation of leaf mould. No tracks showed in this but a spring was draining down the path and in the mud between washed stones they could discern the marks of tyres.

  ‘Is he draining this section?’ Bader asked.

  ‘Could be if he felt like it,’ Green said. ‘I didn’t employ him as a ranch hand.’ There was no indication that anyone had been draining.

  A squirrel erupted with raucous shrieks above their heads, making them start; a pair of doves took off with a batter of wings. The tyre tracks ended at a creek where old railway ties leaned against the eroded bank. There was no sign of a vehicle other than its tracks. Casting about, they discovered where it had backed into brambles and turned. ‘So what we were following originally,’ Bader said, ‘was the Chevy coming back to the house.’

  ‘Has to be,’ Green said. ‘Unless it’s another truck and that’s still in here somewhere. We better backtrack, two to each side. With four-wheel drive, there are plenty of places he could have pulled off into the trees.’

  About a hundred feet from the creek there was a place where the vegetation had been disturbed. Because they now knew what to look for, they could see that the growth of wild currant and gooseberry had been flattened by wheels that had headed straight for a clump of firs, the branches of which swept low to the ground. There was some granite by the trees, gently convex roches moutonnées. From a distance they could see the striations made by an ancient glacier, and there were tracks running over the first low lump of rock. Not right over, they saw, advancing, staring fascinated at those dark smudges on the pale surface.

  The marks stopped before a magnificent white fir, as if the vehicle had run into the trunk, but there was nothing in the dim cave below the tree.

  Not quite nothing. The searchers held the branches aside, like stagehands making space for an actor to take his curtain call, his last curtain call, for an inner branch came low, but not low enough to conceal a pair of boots, suspended.

  ‘Jesus!’ someone breathed.

  After a moment Green lunged forward as if with speed he might be in time to save life. The others followed warily, Miss Pink last.

  ‘Is it him?’ Bader asked, but Beck was saying: ‘It can’t be him.’ Then, on a rising note: ‘Suicide?’

  They stared. The man’s head wasn’t far above them; they would have preferred it much further away.

  ‘Hanged himself – with barbed wire?’ Green was scathing. He added tonelessly: ‘Should you be here, ma’am?’

  Miss Pink ignored him. She was studying the method that had been used in the hanging. A noose of wire had been attached to the end of a length of rope and this was passed over a limb, the end coming down to a branch near the ground and secured.

  ‘Don’t bandits carry out executions like this?’ Bader asked.

  ‘Mafia?’ Green hazarded. ‘No, there are no Mafia here.’ He looked at Miss Pink helplessly. ‘I don’t understand it –’ then, accusingly, the shock coming out: ‘You seem to be quite at home. So what happened? Who is he?’

  ‘It’s Vogel,’ she said. ‘There’s the tattoo on his forearm; I remember that. We’ll know for sure when they cut him down –’

  ‘Should we do that?’

  ‘No, leave it to the police.’

  ‘It can’t be murder,’ Bader said.

  ‘Of course it’s murder.’ She looked at him sharply. Behind the aviator spectacles his eyes were strained wide. ‘Let’s go back to the ranch,’ she said. ‘There’s plenty of coffee and milk in t
he cabin. We can take it to your house, Granville.’

  ‘What’s that? Coffee. Yes, of course. We’ll go back, nothing we can do here.’ They moved away with relief.

  ‘Who took the pick-up away?’ Bader asked, studying the ground with exaggerated interest. ‘He seems to have turned here –’ He pointed. They were some yards from the gallows tree now and marks in the vegetation showed plainly where the truck had come round in a three-point turn. ‘What happened?’ he asked querulously.

  ‘He backed up to the fir,’ Miss Pink said, ‘and used the pick-up as horses were used. The victim’s hands were tied and the rope thrown over a bough, then the horse was led out from under him. Vogel was on the back of the pick-up.’

  ‘How in hell did you work that out?’ Green asked.

  ‘There’s no other explanation.’

  ‘His hands weren’t tied,’ Beck said.

  ‘No. Could that be significant?’ The question wasn’t rhetorical but no one answered her.

  They walked back to the meadow quietly, only at one point Green said: ‘There was hardly any blood,’ and Miss Pink murmured: ‘I noticed that too.’

  At the ranch Green opened his house while the other men removed coffee and milk from the refrigerator in the cabin. No one paid any attention to Miss Pink who moved about the cabin with apparent aimlessness, but fetching up outside one of the front windows where a neat hole had been punched in the screen, the ragged edges on the inside. She returned to the living room and smoothed a swagged net curtain. The material was new but there was a hole in it, another in the second thin layer of net. Both were in alignment with the hole in the wire screen.

  She lowered the top half of the window. It ran smoothly, on new sashes, as if it were often open: at night, for instance, when it was too cold to do without a fire, but the fire might make the cabin too warm.

  She lifted the cover of the stove and peered inside, then she went to the Cherokee and returned with a torch. Having shone it down the black maw of the stove she lifted the cleaning trap at the bottom and reached inside. When she straightened she was holding a man’s wallet in her hand, but she was holding it by the edges. She took it to the table, brought a knife and fork from the kitchen and opened it without using her fingers.

  There were no currency bills inside but otherwise everything was present that might be expected: driving licence, credit cards, a membership card of The Society of Authors and an Organ Donor card, the contact there listed as James Dorset. All the cards were in the name of Timothy Argent.

  Chapter 12

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ Raistrick said. ‘This is California.’ His listeners regarded him in amazement. ‘We been keeping an eye on him,’ he added easily.

  Miss Pink looked round to see how Padilla had reacted to this but the younger man had slipped out, probably back to the cabin where the fingerprint people were at work – or rather, the sheriff’s men with their fingerprint equipment. Everyone was in uniform.

  The police had arrived at the ranch to find the occupants somnolent in the south-facing sitting room of the big house, drinking coffee and running out of new angles on Vogel’s death, all except Miss Pink who had contributed nothing except the facts of the bullet hole and the wallet. She said she had no idea what these could mean.

  She had accompanied them when Green led the police to the scene of the hanging, had been an intent observer as photographs and measurements were taken, as the body was lowered and the cut rope placed in a plastic bag.

  When the body was on the rock, face upwards – a face that was unmarked and undisturbed (Vogel’s face could never have appeared tranquil) – she expected comments, but there was none from the police. It was Green who said: ‘Hanged men don’t usually look like this, do they?’

  A man with a camera, squatting and squinting in order to get a picture of the back of the head while another held it raised, grunted something inaudible.

  Raistrick stooped and touched the skull where the hair was clotted with dried blood. He pressed gently, looked at Padilla and stood up. The younger man squatted and felt the skull and nodded.

  Green and Miss Pink drifted back to the house. After a while they were joined by Raistrick who accepted a coffee and made his casual but, at least to the men, surprising statement.

  ‘You were expecting it?’ Green asked incredulously. ‘I thought he was straight or I’d never have employed him. You’re saying it was a Mafia killing, an execution?’

  ‘Not Mafia, not here. But it’s an execution. This is how they do it across the border. Your caretaker was probably an informant.’

  ‘You knew that! Why didn’t you call me?’

  ‘I didn’t know. I do now.’

  ‘What was he running?’ Beck’s eyes were snapping above the crew-cut beard. As he emerged from his shock he was assuming a macho role. Miss Pink watched him lazily.

  ‘We’ll find out,’ Raistrick said. ‘I’ll take his truck, get Forensics to work on it. It is his?’

  ‘So she – Miss Pink says.’

  The sheriff said thoughtfully: ‘You found the Jeep too, ma’am.’

  ‘That must have been a coincidence, despite the connection.’ She didn’t miss the flicker of interest in his eyes.

  ‘A connection between your author and a drugs – the murdered informant?’

  ‘The wallet confirms some kind of connection. Vogel was part of an organisation bringing drugs across the border into Texas. A Texas Ranger called Rod Larsen had been trying to induce him to turn informant, but in April a man who had talked – presumably – was hanged on the Rio Grande. After that Vogel disappeared.’ She looked at Green. ‘You must have met him in New Mexico shortly afterwards.’

  ‘And how did you find all that out?’ Raistrick asked silkily.

  ‘There was a pen in Argent’s Jeep; it was from a motel in a place called Seeping Springs in Texas.’

  ‘We didn’t see it.’

  ‘It was pushed to the back of the glove compartment.’

  ‘And you went down to Texas – without informing me.’

  She was astonished. ‘I was looking for Timothy Argent! It was his Jeep. How would I know that Vogel was involved?’

  ‘So how did you figure he was?’

  ‘It’s more a matter of when, not how.’ She told him how she’d been led to Rod Larsen. The others listened avidly. Raistrick was bewildered. ‘You lost me,’ he protested. ‘How can you tie this guy, disappeared in Texas, with one turns up here, in California?’

  ‘First I thought Argent must have been in Texas, but when I talked to the Ranger I saw how the man who disappeared from there could well be the one who turned up here. The pen was the connection: it goes from Vogel to Joanne, to Argent’s Jeep.’

  ‘You’re stretching it. Links as weak as that, you can tie everyone in Dogtown to that Jeep. The driver could have ate at the Queen, got his gas from Hiram Wolf, visited with Rose Baggott and the museum folks.’

  Miss Pink started to tell him to contact Rod Larsen, then thought better of it. ‘And the wallet in the cabin?’ she asked.

  ‘Vogel stole it.’

  ‘When? Before or after the Jeep crashed? If it was before, then they must have met: Vogel and Argent. If it was after the crash –’ She trailed off.

  ‘The girl could have stole it.’

  ‘There could have been a lot of traveller’s cheques inside,’ Bader put in. ‘They’re gone.’

  ‘The wallet does suggest a connection between the two men,’ Raistrick conceded. ‘But you’ll never find out what it was, now Vogel’s dead.’

  ‘No.’ Miss Pink’s mind was elsewhere. ‘Not from Vogel.’ She had been staring through him, now her eyes focused. ‘Did you contact the logger who picked up Joanne Emmett on the other side?’

  ‘The logger? No.’ His tone implied he had far more important things to do than chasing wild geese in Alaska. ‘I told you,’ he said tightly, ‘that’s an insurance scam.’ His eyes sharpened. An ambulance was coming across the meadow. ‘If
you’ll excuse me –’

  He left the room and the others immediately tackled Miss Pink about her trip to Seeping Springs. Green drew his own conclusions: ‘You’re thinking this guy, Argent, saw something he shouldn’t, something dangerous – to him, and Brett got rid of him?’

  ‘It crossed my mind.’

  ‘So when you came up with us this morning you were going to ask him?’

  ‘Well, not as baldly as that. I was hoping he’d give something away, some indication of what had happened. But it’s obvious the sheriff thinks Timothy staged his own disappearance, that someone – Joanne? – would try to claim insurance eventually.’

  Beck shook his head. ‘A moron wouldn’t follow through on that. There’s no body.’

  Green said: ‘What Raistrick may be thinking, privately, is that there was some kind of scam going forward and it went wrong. After all, there was the blood on the girl – on Joanne. Raistrick might think they quarrelled violently and Argent came off worst. Either Joanne killed him, or left him for dead and his body’s up there between Malachite Canyon and Credit. How would you find it? How would you even start to find it?’

  ‘Dogs,’ Miss Pink said.

  ‘After two months?’

  ‘Yes. A body that’s been out for two months at the end of summer is going to be easy for a dog to find.’ She looked round the circle. ‘Who has a hound dog? I can’t think of anyone.’

  ‘Hiram Wolf’s got a Shepherd,’ Green said. ‘But Raistrick’s not going to look for your author, not now he’s got a real body.’

  ‘I don’t think he’s much concerned with that one either,’ she said, and saw no reason to change her opinion when they went outside and found the police getting ready to leave. The cabin door was open and Raistrick emerged. ‘It’s all yours,’ he told Green.

  ‘You mean we can use it?’

  ‘Sure, go ahead. We printed everything.’

  Miss Pink was attentive, waiting for elaboration. It didn’t come. ‘No comparisons?’ she prompted. ‘We all handled stuff in there.’

  ‘But you didn’t string him up, ma’am.’ He smiled indulgently.

  ‘Have you taken the wallet?’