Miss Pink Investigates 3

by Gwen Moffat

  ‘When he’s got a caretaker there?’

  ‘More so then. To my mind anyways. Mr Green’s too trusting. I never trusted Vogel so I still keeps an eye on the place. ‘’Sides, if he’s using the ranch for running drugs from, why should Mr Green take the rap?’ His tone hardened. ‘I knew there were something going on, and I were right. Smuggling wild beasts! That’s worse’n heroin.’

  He lapsed into silence and she dropped the subject; they had to consider the comfort of the rosy boa anyway. The trees might be changing colour in the Sierras but out in the deserts the September sun was fierce. They opened the front windows and the sunroof (Fortune wouldn’t hear of switching on the air conditioning) and put the boa on its sack behind them where the smoked glass of the rear windows afforded some protection. Salt flats glared in the heat and the mountains were in shades of brown; it was a land that froze in the winter and baked in the summer, and there was no neutral ground. They crossed a plateau where even the trees looked alien: Joshuas presenting sheaves of daggers to a sky that was drained of colour.

  Three hours after they left Dogtown they were ploughing through the sand of Death Valley. Ahead of them was a mountain wall that showed no breach until they rounded a spur and the ruts they were following dived into a stony canyon.

  They drove along the bed of a watercourse until they came to big old cottonwoods above a spring where they continued on foot, Fortune carrying the sack. They found a place where there were rocks and grass and rodents’ holes. He put the boa in the shade of an undercut boulder and they sat down to watch.

  The snake was still for a moment, lying awkwardly as it had been placed, then the muscles started to stretch and contract under the claret-coloured scales, and the tongue flickered, testing the air. It turned and looked into the depths of the undercut – and Miss Pink knew exactly what concerned it: was there a rattler in the gloom? ‘Should we – ?’ she began.

  ‘Wait,’ Fortune said. ‘It will smell it if there is one.’

  The rosy boa travelled the length of the overhang and back, its tongue never still. It turned again and, without hesitation but without haste, it slid from view in a silence so profound they could hear its scales displace the grains of sand. Miss Pink exhaled on a long sigh. Fortune folded the sack and they walked back to the Cherokee without speaking.

  They sat by the spring and drank warm beer. There were no mosquitoes this late in the year and it was pleasant in the shade of the cottonwoods. A covey of quail worked their way along a slope among the pinyons; a little way upstream ducks rose with startled cries. Fortune sniffed. ‘Coyote,’ he said. ‘Thinks we’ll leave some food.’

  ‘You’re like an animal!’

  ‘You get like one, live with ’em long enough. You don’t do so bad yourself. You treat ’em right.’

  She let that go, preoccupied with the problem of extracting information from him.

  ‘Are you still looking for Timothy?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’ He was clairvoyant too? She felt a little uneasy. When he didn’t respond, she added: ‘I think he must be dead.’

  ‘So do I. Joanne wouldn’t have left him.’

  ‘She wouldn’t?’

  ‘I mean, if he was hurt she wouldn’t have; not abandoned him.’

  ‘So you’re thinking that, because she crossed the mountains on her own, she had left Timothy behind, but that he was already dead, is that it?’

  He frowned. ‘He wouldn’t have gone ahead of her and leave the Jeep behind.’

  ‘You saw the Jeep in the stream after Joanne told you she was leaving with Timothy. When did you see Timothy last and what did he say?’

  ‘I saw him the day after she were at my place. He were packing up to go and he said goodbye.’ She waited, not daring to look at him. ‘He camped halfway between my place and the trail-head,’ he went on. ‘Day after that I see his tent is gone, place as neat as a pin. I went to see if there was anything he might have left behind. A day or two later I was up to Sardine Butte and I see the Jeep in the bottom. I went down, took the valuable stuff out, keep it safe for him, ’case the Jeep had been stolen.’

  ‘Didn’t you go to the ranch to see if he was there?’

  ‘’Course I did. Vogel was there, no one else.’

  ‘What did he have to say?’

  ‘I didn’t speak to him. I watched from a place in the forest. There was no sign of anyone ’cept Vogel.’ He spoke hesitantly, his mind a long way off.

  ‘Joanne would know what happened,’ she murmured.

  His eyes came back to her. ‘What do the police think?’

  ‘The sheriff was thinking that Timothy managed some kind of disappearing act for his own ends. Now his wallet’s been found in Vogel’s stove, he’s saying either Vogel or Joanne stole it.’

  ‘You found a wallet today? How long had it been there?’

  ‘How would I know? The money had been taken out.’

  ‘A good thing I didn’t go no further than the door. So that’s why you asked did I go inside.’

  ‘If you didn’t, then you’re in the clear. That was one of the things I had to tell you, about the wallet.’

  ‘You thought I could have stole it.’

  ‘You could have, but you didn’t kill Timothy or Vogel.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘You wouldn’t have killed Vogel that way.’

  ‘What about Timothy?’

  ‘You had nothing to do with that. He liked animals.’ It was an inspired guess but it worked.

  ‘You want to find him, you look round the ranch. Just inside the trees, where you can get a pick-up to. Hiram Wolf’s got a dog with a good enough nose.’

  Chapter 13

  ‘I don’t use her for nothing,’ Hiram Wolf said. ‘I thought she’d make a guard dog but she don’t bark at strangers. She don’t bark, period. I’m going to breed from her.’

  He stood outside his yard and stared morosely at the German Shepherd. On the other side of the fence the dog stared back, wary but intelligent.

  ‘She’s alert enough,’ Miss Pink said. ‘I’d like her services for a few hours, to find something in the woods.’

  ‘What kind of thing?’

  ‘A body.’ He stared at her but said nothing. She elaborated: ‘Vogel probably killed Timothy Argent, and I have to find the body. I represent his publishers.’

  ‘Do you now?’ This excited his interest more than the request to use his dog to find a body. ‘What happens to his belongings?’

  ‘You mean the things in the Jeep? I removed those and I’m taking care of them until we know what’s happened.’

  ‘I didn’t mean his possessions; I meant the Jeep.’

  ‘The Jeep?’ She said slowly: ‘I hadn’t considered that. I assume it will stay there, in the creek. It’s not worth the trouble of recovery, surely? Do you want to get it out?’

  ‘He promised it me, said I could have it cheap when he finished the trip. It’s no good to me now as a vehicle, after that crash, but I could go in there, salvage parts of it didn’t get damaged. Could I do that?’

  She thought about it and reached a decision. ‘The Jeep will belong to his estate but I’ll ask his executors for permission. Then you could retrieve what’s valuable before the snow comes. No doubt they’d accept a nominal sum.’

  ‘I’m beholden to you, ma’am. ’Course, I don’t know but what there’s nothing I can use. That truck has fell a hundred feet.’

  ‘Quite. You’ll have to go and see for yourself, but you can’t remove anything until we have proof of Timothy’s death. That needn’t take more than an hour or so. Suppose I give you a hundred dollars, cash, for your time and the dog’s services? You’ll still have the afternoon free.’ To go and cannibalise the Jeep, was the unspoken corollary. He fell for it. ‘We’d better make a start,’ he said.

  At the ranch Granville Green put up only token resistance: ‘You can’t be serious: buried on my land!’ When Miss Pink pointed out that another man had been brutally murd
ered on that land, he conceded the argument and agreed to their searching, but only in his presence. All the Westerners were at the ranch that morning and, seeing them crowding close at this juncture, Miss Pink said firmly that the bitch wouldn’t work with a lot of people around. Green came with them; the others stayed behind, reluctantly.

  They approached the forest on foot, the bitch leashed, Hiram Wolf carrying a coil of light rope. The Shepherd, untrained and straining ahead, was choking with excitement and Miss Pink wondered gloomily if the animal was so overwhelmed by new scents that she wouldn’t be interested in the one that was most significant.

  As he opened the gate into the forest Green said: ‘Why this way? If you’re right, there were two killers, or sets of killers. Would they both choose the same place for the bodies? It’s too much of a coincidence.’

  ‘Not if trucks were used,’ she said. ‘The alternative is to go down the meadow, towards Dogtown. Psychologically, someone who committed murder at the ranch – anyone – would feel under pressure to dispose of the body away from civilisation, not towards it.’

  He looked unconvinced, as well he might. ‘I don’t see that a mile or so makes much difference. Anyway, why the ranch?’

  ‘We have to start somewhere.’

  Once in the trees Wolf fastened the cord to the bitch’s collar and paid it out. Immediately she went wild, tangling herself among trunks and bushes. When he had brought her under control again they conferred. Wolf couldn’t trust her if she were unleashed; he admitted he had never brought her into the forest before. Privately Miss Pink suspected that the animal hadn’t been outside his yard since he bought her. Aloud she suggested that they return to the meadow where the bitch might be allowed to have her fill of smells, to work off some of her excess energy at the end of a long rope. In the event the three of them took it in turns to hold the rope while the Shepherd, nose to ground, padded back and forth, seemingly at random. When they saw she was starting to flag they returned to the forest, the bitch panting heavily, less alert now, using her eyes rather than her nose.

  ‘I figure she’s past it.’ Wolf was resentful. ‘You kept her too long in the meadow.’

  Green said to Miss Pink: ‘If a pick-up was used, they could carry the – it – a long way back from the trail.’

  ‘Scent travels a long way.’

  ‘She’s wore out!’ Wolf protested

  They came to the creek and the dog drank thirstily. ‘Do we go on?’ Green asked, eyeing the trace of a path that climbed the far bank. Miss Pink said that first they should concentrate on places that were accessible to vehicles. They turned back, the dog in the lead again. She led them to the clearing where they had found Vogel and she made an indecent fuss about the rock below the hanging tree.

  ‘That’s it!’ pronounced Green as Wolf hauled her backwards through the clearing. ‘This scent here has ruled out anything else as far as she’s concerned.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ Miss Pink muttered. ‘The other one would be different.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘It’s been here two months.’

  ‘What makes you so sure it’s here at all?’

  Wolf pushed past, dragging the dog. ‘Asa Fortune told me to look here,’ she said.

  Comprehension dawned in Green’s eyes. ‘He knows something?’

  ‘He said nothing other than that: to look round the ranch – with a dog.’

  ‘Yeah, Asa’s a man drops hints, leaves you to fill in the gaps. I’m surprised he told you that much. You must have –’

  But Miss Pink was staring ahead to where the bitch had again tangled the cord in undergrowth as she tried to plunge away. Wolf sorted them out and shortened the cord but he had to exert himself; the bitch’s hackles were up and bristling, her lips stretched in a terrible snarl, but for all that she made no sound and she wasn’t looking towards the clearing. Her interest had shifted away from the rock below the hanging tree.

  Miss Pink signalled to Wolf who slackened the cord a little. As she felt the tension ease, the bitch’s attitude changed. She was no longer avid to reach the source of the attraction; on the contrary she was wary, but fascinated. She stalked forward, ears flicking at the sound of twigs snapping in the rear, but her eyes fixed on something none of them could see at first. Her head was high and suddenly they knew the reason. The scent wasn’t on the ground. Now they could smell it themselves. They came on small white feathers, and down stuck on branches and tree-trunks, littering the dead pine needles. ‘My God, you were right!’ Green breathed. No one responded.

  Scavengers had been there: bears, coyotes, animals that live on carrion. Miss Pink thought how poignant it was that one who wrote so delicately, who rejoiced in beauty of line and the human form, should have ended so – and reminded herself that this was only a shell, the essence remained in the books.

  ‘Can it be him?’ Green asked, a handkerchief held to his mouth.

  ‘No one could tell,’ Wolf said.

  The smell wasn’t too bad because most of the flesh was gone. There were rags of clothing, rent and filthy, and the depression out of which the remains had been dragged was full of down – ‘Goosedown,’ Miss Pink observed. ‘His parka wasn’t in the Jeep.’

  ‘Would you recognise this?’ Green was holding a boot. It was an Austrian walking boot.

  ‘It’s a Dachstein,’ she said. ‘But I never met Timothy so I don’t know what he wore. Joanne might be able to identify it.’ Her eyes followed Wolf who had moved away with the bitch, which was suddenly docile, even cowed.

  ‘Was he murdered?’ Green asked.

  She thought that this second shock in twenty-four hours must have knocked him off-balance. ‘It’s unusual for a suicide to dig his own grave,’ she said, but without sarcasm.

  ‘I guess so. What’s that pale stuff?’

  ‘It’s goosedown, Granville: from one of those padded parkas –’

  ‘No. That long thing.’

  It was inextricably tangled with what was left of the torso: stained and torn, but seemingly complete. There was a semblance of coils … They stared in amazement as they identified it: familiar yet unexpected, apparently swathing the ribcage.

  Green turned, bewildered. ‘A bandage,’ he told Wolf.

  ‘He were in the Jeep then, and he cracked his ribs? He crawled out of the creek –’ There were broken shafts of ribs poking through the bandage.

  ‘It’s a question for the pathologist,’ Miss Pink said, and turned away. ‘Dozens of questions. This time he has to come to the scene. Not like Vogel. That one was straightforward.’ She considered her own remark. ‘Well, compared with this,’ she added.

  When they returned to the ranch she wanted the dog put in the cabin.

  ‘Should we?’ Green was doubtful.

  ‘The sheriff said you could use it. “It’s all yours”, he said. Remember? Take the dog inside, Mr Wolf.’

  He stared blankly but she opened the door and he stepped over the threshold. She followed and went to close the door but Green shouldered his way inside. ‘You’re up to something,’ he said.

  ‘Unleash the dog, Mr Wolf.’

  He did so. The bitch glanced at him then put her nose down and padded about the cabin. The focal point of interest was a rug between the table and the window. She scratched at it. Miss Pink folded it back to reveal planks that were just planks: dusty, unstained – but the bitch was inhaling deeply, even snorting at the cracks between the boards.

  ‘There’s something under the floor?’ Green wondered. ‘Not another –’

  ‘These planks ain’t been taken up.’ Wolf was studying the nails.

  ‘She’s interested in the cracks,’ Miss Pink pointed out. ‘This could be the place where Timothy was killed.’

  ‘There’s no blood,’ Green said.

  ‘Of course not, the floor’s been scrubbed; the blood will be in the cracks.’

  ‘You suspected this? That’s why you said to bring the dog in the cabin!’

  ‘More
than a suspicion. There’s the bullet hole in the screen.’

  He looked from her to the window. ‘So he didn’t miss,’ he said.

  The ranch became a kind of clearing house. As each newcomer drove up the meadow: the sheriff and his deputies, plainclothes men, people from Forensics and the pathologist (flown in by helicopter), they came to the house to find out where they should go. Green and his friends acted as guides. Miss Pink stayed at the house and Lucy Green, having despatched the other wives in a search for extra provisions, concentrated on looking after the police and her elderly guest. Most people were devoutly grateful for Lucy’s coffee after a session in the forest and they talked without restraint, losing sight of the old lady virtually asleep in a corner, carefully shielded from the sun by a lowered blind.

  ‘The ribs would have been broken by a bear,’ the pathologist said in response to a query from Green. ‘The bandage was put on before they were fractured. The ribs were marked by teeth anyway.’

  ‘So how was he killed?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that until after the autopsy – but that’s one hell of a lot of bandage, probably two or three of ’em, we haven’t unwound it – and there was a big dressing under the body. You got a first-aid kit here?’

  ‘My God! You think –’

  ‘Did you look to see if anything’s missing?’

  Green went to the kitchen and returned with a box with a red cross on the lid. He opened it and extracted a sheet of paper. ‘This is the checklist.’

  The pathologist was sifting through the contents. ‘How many bandages should there be?’

  ‘There should be four one-inch, two two-inch, two three-inch and six triangular.’

  ‘There are no wide bandages. How many dressings? There are only two here.’

  ‘There should be four. Lucy! Come here.’ She came bustling from the kitchen. ‘When did you fill this box last?’

  ‘Last fall when we arrived. I always keep it complete, you know that, Granville. Soon’s we use anything I replace it next time I go to town.’

  ‘She does too. She’s meticulous about the first-aid box.’

  ‘Why?’ Lucy approached, staring at the contents of the box.