by Gwen Moffat
‘Bandages and dressings are missing, that’s why.’
‘Who had the keys to this house besides Vogel?’ the pathologist asked.
‘No one. Rosie Baggott in Dogtown used to have a key but when I sent Vogel here as caretaker I phoned her, told her to give him the key when he arrived. There were two more. I had ’em both.’
‘Well, well. It would look bad for Vogel if he was still alive. There’s that bullet hole in the screen, and Vogel wasn’t the guy got shot. He –’
Lucy interrupted excitedly: ‘But if Vogel was the guy who put the bandage on this Timothy –’ she glanced at Miss Pink whose eyes were half-closed, ‘– or whoever that is out there, he couldn’t have murdered him. It doesn’t make sense.’
‘I’m just the pathologist, ma’am.’
‘Hell!’ Green exclaimed. ‘You can’t tell anything about the guy in the grave, the state he’s in. How can you tell the difference between bone was broken by a bullet and broken by … like a bear’s jaws? OK, I guess you can nowadays – or the lab can.’
As if on cue the sheriff entered. ‘Did Vogel own a rifle?’ he asked Green.
‘I don’t know. There’s no gun in the cabin, I mean there wasn’t when we went in there first. Did you go back in there yet?’ The sheriff shook his head. ‘Because we put the dog in there,’ Green went on, ‘and she got interested in the floor under the window, sniffing at the cracks.’
The pathologist and the sheriff exchanged glances. The sheriff went out again.
‘You left the dog there?’ the pathologist asked.
‘No. We thought it could be blood, like he scrubbed the floor but couldn’t get into the cracks. How come a guy is shot, then bandaged?’
‘An accident?’
‘So why bury him?’
‘Guilty conscience? Doesn’t want the police coming around, he’s got a scam going and a guy dying in his cabin is going to complicate matters.’
‘How did he die – Vogel?’
‘He was hit on the back of the head with a shovel. It was in the pick-up the sheriff took in for examination, got blood and tissue on the blade, and there’s matching stuff on the bed of the pick-up, no attempt made to clean that off. He was strung up after he died.’
‘After he was dead! Why?’
The other man shrugged. ‘To show other people who was responsible is my guess. These gangs are medieval.’
‘Was he tortured?’
They squinted into the corner where Miss Pink was a dim shape. ‘I thought you were asleep,’ Green said accusingly.
‘I was. Were there signs of torture on Brett Vogel?’
‘Not physical marks, no burns; is that what you mean, ma’am?’ The pathologist was intrigued.
‘Perhaps they were in a hurry,’ she observed vaguely.
She went outside for a breath of air. The shadows were long in the yard and it was cool at the back of the house. Men were emerging from the cabin carrying floor boards swathed in plastic, loading them on a truck. Hiram Wolf came up the slope to the yard.
‘I’ll be in touch with Mr Argent’s people tonight,’ she told him. ‘I’ll ask them if you can have the parts you want from the Jeep.’
‘I been thinking about that. It’s not worth it. There’s nothing there I need anyways.’ He’d got cold feet.
‘As you wish. Tell me, how were you going to get hold of the Jeep when Mr Argent finished his trip? Was he going to bring it back?’
‘No, I were going over there to fetch it.’
‘Of course. To the place he’d rented for the winter.’
‘I don’t know about that. He said the Jeep would be with his – his agent, I thought he said. I were going to fetch it when he didn’t need it no longer, get the wife to drive me over.’
‘I have to tell his agent what happened. Do you happen to have his number on you?’
‘It’s back in the office someplace. I’m going down now, you like to follow me.’
There was no one in the foyer of the Grand Imperial and no response from the living quarters when Miss Pink called Rose’s name. The telephone was on the counter. There were two numbers on the card Wolf had given her. She dialled the residential one. It was five o’clock; late, she thought, and prayed the man wouldn’t yet have reached home. The name on the card was Oscar Sloat, the address: Portola Canyon. No occupation was given. None of it meant anything to her.
The telephone rang a long time and then the rhythm was broken. She braced herself. ‘Hello,’ a woman said.
‘Hi. Good evening,’ said Miss Pink throatily and in a fair imitation of an eastern accent but one which would hardly have deceived an American. ‘Do you carry insurance on your pets? Of course you do, but are they covered for every contingency, like toxic chem –’
‘Look –’ it was incisive, ‘– I don’t have pets; if I had pets I wouldn’t insure with someone running a hard-sell scam on the phone, and so stupid you don’t realise the approach switches people off. Do you read me?’
The receiver was slammed down. Miss Pink replaced hers gently. She was smiling. The accent had been girlish, classless and unmistakably English.
Rose Baggot came in from the street. ‘I owe you for that call,’ Miss Pink said, placing a bill on the counter. ‘I have to go to LA tomorrow. Do you mind keeping my room for me? I’ll be back.’
Chapter 14
The scent of sun-warmed citrus fruit was languid and sensuous. Not far from the city limits of Los Angeles Miss Pink was reminded of childhood holidays in Spain, which wasn’t surprising, she thought, as the dark rows of trees wheeled past, the fruit like golden lamps in the foliage: California was colonised by Spaniards.
Down here on the flat lands the heat and humidity were oppressive. The humidity arose from irrigation, but that made no difference to the dust. She had come south on the interstate, had left that for a state highway, and now she was on a dirt road and heading for the hills. There was no way she could reconcile this country: half fruit farms, half timbered wilderness, with an American literary agent whose office was in Los Angeles. The only houses visible were at long intervals and set back from the road: a glimpse of roof and a gleam of glass under tall palm trees. There was no traffic on the roads, no one in the citrus groves. She would have turned round but for the fact that three miles back she had stopped and asked directions from a man working on an irrigation channel. He assured her that this road led to Portola Canyon, had indicated a break in the distant hills. There were no turnings, he said; she couldn’t miss it.
Lunch had been a packet of sweet cookies and now she was thirsty. The roof of the Cherokee was a focal point for the heat, and the wind wafting through the interior was hot. Everything was hot. A roadrunner walked out in front of her, turned round and walked back. Even the dust was hot.
The citrus groves ended at the foot of slopes covered with manzanita. Higher, above oak trees, big conifers were a frieze on the skyline. The gradient was steep up there with rock showing through; down here, at the mouth of a canyon, the road deteriorated to a narrow track above a creek.
She came to a mailbox at the foot of an unpaved drive, the legend, ‘1 Portola’, on its side. She drove on, noticing power lines all but hidden in the riot of foliage. She passed two more mailboxes and came to one marked ‘Sloat’. She turned up the drive and entered a kind of tunnel under huge oak trees. After a hundred yards she emerged into a flood of sunshine so brilliant that she was momentarily blinded.
She stopped on level ground in front of a cavern. Squinting below her hat brim she saw that the cavern was in fact the interior of a garage. She put her hand on the door but she didn’t open it. A harlequin Great Dane had appeared. It stalked to the passenger side and put its head through the window space. After one stupefied moment she realised that its front feet must be on the running board. The dog looked at her with interest but without hostility. A Siamese cat walked round the corner of the garage followed by a brown girl dressed all in white. She came up to the dog and put her hand
on its neck.
Her eyes were as they’d said: the colour of asters, and her hair was black, drawn back from a face that held the eye like a fine painting. Miss Pink smiled, not at Joanne, but in appreciation. She wore no make-up and her only attempt at artifice was the way she had caught her hair back, fashionably, in a long, plump plait. Her blouse was a cheap imitation of broderie anglaise, and not particularly clean. Her slacks belonged to someone considerably larger. She was barefooted.
‘I’m Melinda Pink.’ Someone had to say something. ‘Is the dog as friendly as it appears?’
Joanne stiffened at the accent and glanced towards the drive. ‘Are you on your own?’
‘Quite alone.’ She risked it and opened the door. The dog walked round and sniffed at her shoes. ‘Well, this is very nice –’ Miss Pink was beaming fatuously, ‘– I’m from the Dorset Press. You’ll have been expecting me.’ Joanne gave her a cool stare. ‘You were expecting someone,’ Miss Pink gabbled, ‘not necessarily me. Can we sit down? I’ve had a hard morning.’ She glanced at the corner of the garage and moved away from the Cherokee. Joanne moved with her.
There was a broad terrace on the hillside, part natural, part excavated. The garage stood at one end and beyond was the house: an asymmetrical timbered construction that blended so well with the vegetation that its boundaries were indistinct. Vertical and horizontal lines were interrupted by creepers, shrubs, saplings, trees. There was a collage of light and textures, of wooden balconies and glass, shade and sun and glowing blossoms. Terra-cotta pots trailed fuchsias, hummingbirds flashed through the hanging plants, a golden mobile twirled lazily. Behind the glass were signs of the lifestyle she had expected to find, but on the coast, not here on the unfashionable side of Los Angeles. There was a chair covered with a Liberty print, the corner of a carpet that hinted at Bokhara, a pale floor of smooth and slender planks.
They came to the far end of the house and an irregularly-shaped pool at the foot of shallow steps. A pair of amphorae stood in iron frames and there were cushion plants between stone slabs. The water reflected the sky and had none of that acidic blue normally seen in swimming pools. Shade was provided by slatted ramadas more usually found in Arizona deserts. Under the nearest were two long chairs and an iron table on which was an empty glass and what looked like a script.
‘Sit down,’ Joanne said. ‘What would you like to drink?’
‘Not for a moment.’ She was dying of thirst but she wouldn’t let the girl get to a telephone if she could help it. She seated herself with a deep sigh of satisfaction. ‘So you’re Joanne. No one has done you justice.’
The lovely eyes were thoughtful. ‘You’re from the Dorset Press, you said?’
‘From James Dorset, yes.’ Miss Pink waited. ‘My job was to find Timothy Argent,’ she added.
The girl licked her lips. ‘So how far did you get?’
The dog and cat walked along the far edge of the pool to collapse, one by one, in the shade. Miss Pink, observing them idly, came to a decision. She turned to Joanne. ‘Brett Vogel is dead.’
The girl looked away and swallowed. ‘How did it happen?’
‘He was murdered. The skull was fractured – by a shovel from his own pick-up.’ Joanne looked shocked but not surprised. ‘And they found Timothy’s body,’ Miss Pink added conversationally.
That did evoke surprise. ‘They found Vogel, then they found Timothy?’
‘That’s right. You’d expect it to be the other way round.’ It was not a question, and Joanne did not accept it as such. ‘Are the police looking for me?’ she asked.
‘Why should they? The sheriff is of the opinion that Vogel killed Timothy, and that the drugs traffickers caught up with Vogel. That had the mark of an execution.’
‘What? Hitting him over the head?’
‘He was strung up afterwards: hanged. With barbed wire.’ Joanne blinked. ‘He was dead already,’ Miss Pink said quickly, at the same time registering that the girl wasn’t as horrified as might be expected.
‘All right.’ It was belligerent. ‘So he didn’t suffer. But the people who did it are disgusting.’
‘You don’t ask if they are after you.’
‘Why, how would you know? You couldn’t. They’re not bothered about me. I met Vogel afterwards.’
‘But you were involved at Dogtown, even if your job was only to answer the telephone when he was on a run.’
‘Was it drugs?’
‘You’re asking me?’ Joanne was silent.
‘No,’ Miss Pink said, watching her.
‘You said the drugs traffickers caught up with him.’
‘That was some time ago; he was involved in bringing drugs into the country from Texas. An informant was hanged and evidently Vogel, who’d been approached by the authorities to turn informer himself, thought the gang was on to him so he ran. That was in April, as you say: before you met him. He told you he’d been involved with a gang stealing pick-ups.’
‘How did you know that?’ She didn’t wait for an answer but went on: ‘I always suspected it was drugs; he had too much money on him for it to have come from pick-ups. That was another thing made him run: he kept the proceeds from a sale.’
‘How did you meet him?’
‘On the road. He picked me up and we stayed together.’
‘And then you met Granville Green in Carlsbad.’ Joanne was surprised again. ‘How did Vogel persuade Green to employ him?’
‘We pretended we were married and he said he was a Vietnam veteran. He thought it would be a good place to lie low: Danger Canyon, until it was safe, or safer. I went with him because Dogtown was on the way to LA and I’d decided to come here. I’d been bumming around the States for nearly a year, I wanted a proper job, make some bread.’
‘But Vogel didn’t lie low, did he? Wasn’t he bothered about starting a new racket so soon after the informant was murdered in Texas?’
‘Well, that was Texas: a long way away. And it wasn’t soon; it must have been June, the end of May before he went away the first time. The pass wasn’t clear of snow until then.’
‘Which pass?’
‘Breakneck. He used to come back that way.’
‘Then he had to come through Credit. What about people seeing him?’
‘What’s one more beat-up old truck? The roads are swarming with them in summertime: fishermen, loggers, ranchers. And he’d changed his truck so he had one with California plates. And even if he had been stopped, he wasn’t carrying anything on the way back.’
‘Did he go out that way too?’
‘No, he went down the canyon, past Dogtown.’
‘Where did he pick up the – merchandise?’
‘I never knew and he’d probably have lied if I’d asked him. I only know he was away for three or four days and I was to tell anyone who called – anyone local, who we knew, like people in Dogtown – that he was cutting wood in the forest, or fishing, stall ’em somehow. If it was strangers calling I was an English tourist: snooty, not hostile, just very English, and I didn’t know anything, they’d got a wrong number. No one like that ever called. I wonder how they got on to him.’
‘How long was he away for?’
‘I said: three or four days. I reckoned that gave him a day to reach the border, wherever the rendezvous was, a day to get to San Francisco which would be the distribution centre, a day there maybe, and another to come home, over Breakneck.’
‘He never brought anything to the ranch?’
‘Not that I know of, and I drove the truck sometimes. I could have found it, or traces of it.’
‘He did bring one consignment, or part of one, but that would be after you left. Asa Fortune found a rosy boa in the tack-room at the ranch.’
‘A rosy what?’
‘Boa. As in constrictor. It’s a comparatively rare snake, very gentle, makes a good pet.’
‘I’m not with you.’
‘Vogel wasn’t smuggling heroin or marijuana. It was wildlife: rare snakes, Gila monsters
, armadillos, that kind of thing.’
‘No.’ It was an indication of bewilderment rather than denial. ‘I’d have known.’
‘Didn’t you notice a smell in the pick-up?’
‘Why should I? It was open. He wouldn’t carry anything like that in the cab!’ Her voice was rising.
‘They’d be very small cages, boxes really, with a few airholes. All under a tarpaulin.’
‘I don’t believe it. I can’t believe it! The sod.’ Her eyes were fierce. ‘Asa would have killed him’ – she gasped – ‘but he didn’t. He couldn’t have. Strung up with barbed wire? Not that. Asa would have hit him, fracture his skull and leave him where he fell. That business with the wire: that’s not Asa.’
‘That’s what I thought. He reckons it was the drugs gang.’
‘Those who live by the sword … Vogel told me about those wire hangings, he had to impress on me to be discreet around Dogtown, to be careful on the phone.’ She stared at the still surface of the pool. ‘He’d left that morning,’ she said dreamily, ‘I didn’t expect him back for two or three days and by then I’d be gone – with Timothy. Poor guy. Vogel shot him through the window.’
‘I saw the bullet hole.’
‘I would have killed him if I’d had a gun at that moment. I’ve never understood it. Why should he kill Timothy? It was all over between Vogel and me. I mean, he knew; I wasn’t making a secret of it. Pretending to go away, sneaking back to kill Timothy like a jealous husband – it’s so corny!’
‘Perhaps he was more possessive than you gave him credit for. Maybe he looked on you as a valuable possession which he didn’t want to lose. Or he could have had some kind of operation lined up in which you were to play an essential part. On the other hand, he might have meant to kill you; did you think of that?’
‘Instead of Timothy? I never thought that. Both of us, yes, although at the time I didn’t think at all, except that someone was outside and shooting into the cabin and I had to get out of there. When Timothy was shot he fell against me and we knocked the table over, so the lamp fell too and broke, and we were in the dark. I got out from under him and through the back window, which was open, thank God, and not screened, so Vogel didn’t hear me go. And he’d missed seeing the Jeep. Timothy was having starter trouble so he’d parked it above the cabin to get a good run when he left. The keys were in the ignition. I’d driven it a bit so I knew where the lights were. I rolled down the hill and the engine caught and I roared out of the yard. I’d have run Vogel down if he’d got in the way.’
