by Gwen Moffat
‘I guessed,’ Chester said. ‘You wouldn’t answer the phone.’
‘I never heard it ring!’ She continued to address Miss Pink: ‘I keep my phone inside a sleeping-bag in another room.’
‘You should have an answering machine.’ Miriam was heavy with disapproval.
‘Answering machines are rude.’
Fleur giggled and Chester’s eyes gleamed, then the gleam faded and Miss Pink, watching him, saw the softness of his expression and knew that the business of cultivating his garden and watching wildlife were only gloss on his retirement. Chester was in love.
Miriam fiddled with the straw in her margarita. ‘What time did Andy and his assistant leave?’ she asked.
‘Before four. I was at work by then.’ Lois grinned. ‘Well – work; I mean I was in my study at four; it took me a while to get the continuity again. After all, I’d done no work for four days!’ Her voice rose as if she’d only just realised the fact.
‘And you never got to keep your Chevy,’ Miriam said nastily.
‘Oh, Miriam, it’s five years old. Who cares? I’m not possessive.’
‘You can say that again.’ There was a load of meaning in the cliché. Lois stared and the little woman avoided her eye.
Fleur leapt to the breach: ‘I saw them leave; Andy was going like the clappers to make the roadworks.’
‘Really?’ Lois was vague. ‘They don’t close till six.’
‘What are these roadworks?’ Miss Pink asked. ‘People keep mentioning them.’
‘There was a landslip on the coast road north of Sundown,’ Chester told her. ‘The Highways people repaired the damage but now it appears the slope isn’t safe and they’re stabilising it. Seems to be taking longer than the original repairs.’
‘They’ve been at it for weeks,’ Miriam complained. ‘They go home at six and they don’t start work again until eight in the morning, so the road’s closed all night and they put those great earth-moving machines across so there’s no way you can get by.’
‘They’re afraid of people going over the edge,’ Fleur pointed out. ‘But it can be a nuisance; it means if you have business north of the roadworks you have to come home before six. And you can’t go to Portland for the evening.’
‘Unless you stay the night there,’ Chester amended. ‘But it doesn’t really affect us, not in summertime. Concerts and such don’t start until the fall, and who wants to dine in Portland? We’ve got everything we need here.’
Fleur looked round and saw that Carl Linquist was behind the bar. ‘Come and join us,’ she called. ‘Bring a drink.’
‘Eve’s watching television,’ he said as he joined them and, turning to Lois, ‘So it’s back to normal, is it? After all the excitement.’ She nodded; it didn’t need a response. ‘I passed them,’ he continued. ‘Andy lifted his hand’ – his lip curled – ‘Gayleen waved.’
There was a charged silence, broken by Lois. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘if I had her legs I would wear a mini-skirt and high red heels.’ She looked wistful. ‘I’ve always hankered after a pair of shoes like that – and every time I come out of the shoe store with yet another pair of moccasins or kilties.’
‘Oh, come on, Lois!’ Fleur pretended to be shocked. ‘She was— ’ She checked and blinked.
‘No better than she should be,’ Carl completed for her, then thought he’d gone too far. ‘Assistant or whatever,’ he muttered with a bothered glance at Lois.
‘I like her,’ she said brightly. ‘She spent the day at the house and she told me quite a lot about herself.’ She looked round their circle. ‘That child’s had a hard time; she was a change girl in Las Vegas, whatever that is— ’
‘Worked in a casino,’ Chester supplied. ‘Carried change for customers.’
‘So – she’s been everything: short order cook, gas pump attendant; she even auditioned for a showgirl but couldn’t make the grade. She never stays in a job for longer than a few weeks. She’s only eighteen and very immature. I’m sorry for her. I’m afraid she’s not a survivor.’
‘That was obvious,’ Carl said.
Miriam had been thinking. ‘What was Andy doing while you were having this tête à tête?’ she asked. ‘I can’t see him joining in a girlish conversation.’
‘No, hardly.’ Lois smiled. ‘He went for a hike.’
‘Would he have been looking for spotted owls?’ Fleur asked coldly.
‘How he dared!’ Miriam exclaimed. ‘On your car too!’
Lois shrugged. ‘It’s black humour, Miriam; there’s no malice behind it. Andy puts spiders out of the house, and he adores Lovejoy.’
‘I didn’t think the malice was directed towards animals,’ Miriam said, looking hard at her.
Lois smiled and refused to rise to the bait. She turned to Miss Pink. ‘Are you interested in the local wildlife? Did they tell you about our spotted owls?’
Chapter 5
By dawn the storm had blown itself out and there was merely a stiff onshore breeze. Above the strand there was a haze made up of spray and salt and vapour from damp vegetation; through this the sun shone with a soft brilliance and cast black shadows. It was muggy and chill at the same time. Humidity was high.
The breakers rolled shorewards: huge, regular, hypnotic. Miss Pink, walking south towards Fin Whale Head along the fringe of foam bubbles, was reminded of her childhood. The sand was clean and beautiful, matte round her boot as her weight pressed out the moisture, and among the rocks there were pools full of sea anemones and shrimps, while offshore the stacks stood up like benign sentinels. Below Sundown people were beachcombing after the storm, looking for Japanese fishing floats in the weed. The houses behind them resembled toy houses – and where the land started to rise towards the big cliffs of the headland there were caves and arches. Inland the spired conifers deepened the nostalgia: Hans Andersen trees fronting a magical ocean. A string of pelicans came beating past, checked, circled and, one by one, started to fish, plunging like gannets into the heaving sea.
Miss Pink walked to a dry rock, removed her socks and boots, rolled up her jeans and returned to wade through the spent waves.
Within two miles the sand ran into jumbled rocks where the cliffs were crumbling into the sea. She turned back then to find a flock of sanderlings feeding on the ebb, their tiny legs twinkling as they rushed after receding water, to turn and scamper back ahead of the next breaker. The sanderlings were about the only familiar feature of this wild coast, for the feeling that it shared a similarity with the Devon of childhood was, on reflection, ridiculous: she had been misled by the salt spray that permeated everything, and which would be the same the world over: Sundown or Maine or the Isles of Scilly.
Ahead of her one figure stood out from the distant beachcombers, looming large, something else breaking away to one side. The sound of yapping came clearly on the breeze. Oliver Harper was trotting towards her, the schnauzer beside him, racing back and forth in a vain attempt to catch birds. Oliver came up and stopped: young and splendid in skimpy shorts, his chest heaving gently with the exertion.
‘I’ve heard all about you now, ma’am,’ he announced, smiling, knowing he looked marvellous, ‘Miriam filled me in. Enjoying your hike?’
She enthused about the morning, admired the terrier which was waxing hysterical over the behaviour of the sanderlings, and left him to his run. He trotted to the rocks and came back, waving gaily as he passed, shouting something about seeing her this evening. She regarded his brown back with approval and wondered why Miriam wasn’t running with him. Oliver had been to Portland, she recalled, so had Lois’s daughter, Grace – and Lois’s husband and his pretty assistant ‘or whatever’, as Carl Linquist had put it. Portland was, of course, the lodestone for this coast; there was probably nothing curious about all the youngsters – well, Andy Keller wasn’t young, but the other three – all being in the city at the same time. No doubt there was a simple explanation, if it were not a coincidence. Miss Pink liked to know the answers to questions that ar
ose, however idly, in her mind, and it didn’t occur to her at this moment that there were questions of which she was unaware.
Oliver’s remark about seeing her this evening, and Miriam’s absence from the morning’s run, were explained when the lady herself called with an invitation to dine at her house that night; she was cooking, she explained, neatly pre-empting any speculation as to whether she could keep up with Oliver’s pace. Miss Pink had scarcely replaced the receiver before Leo Brant was on the line, asking if she would eat with them the following evening. It would appear that, with the embarrassing Andy Keller out of the way, people were hurrying to return Lois’s hospitality of the previous weekend. No doubt eating out was one of their ways of having fun – and small wonder if the food in private houses rivalled that of the Tattler.
Over the next few days she made the rounds of Sundown society and found the experience interesting and, occasionally, informative. She dined with Miriam in her old and slightly shabby redwood ranchhouse but where the carpets came from Aleppo and the smoked salmon from the Spey. Oliver was present but Willard Smith did not appear. She wouldn’t have been surprised at this anyway but Sadie Locke, whom she had thought of initially as a gentle person, called her attention to Oliver with some remark concerning his youth. Miss Pink, not troubling to mince her words with this ingenuous old soul, had asked what was his position in the household – a distant relative perhaps?
‘He’s the handyman,’ Sadie told her.
Miss Pink said she thought Willard Smith was the handyman.
‘Oliver,’ said Sadie, ‘is the new handyman.’ And Miss Pink turned to find the old lady regarding her with a gleam of amusement.
The other guests at Miriam’s house were Lois and Chester, and Fleur Sanborn. These, forming a kind of inner circle of Sundown society, trooped round to each other’s houses. It was understood that the Linquists were unable to leave the restaurant, and the Sykeses had to attend to their motel, although Jason appeared from time to time, like a cross between a well-trained retriever and a peripatetic butler: opening wine, handing canapés, getting up from the table to turn down the oven or bring fresh butter.
Dinner at Sand Dollar – Leo’s and Sadie’s place – started with a tension that no one appeared to notice other than Miss Pink. Sadie was a nervous cook but after a while she emerged from the kitchen, sparkling and talkative.
‘Leo allows her one martini after the guests arrive,’ Fleur explained to Miss Pink, ‘and shortly before we sit down. But you notice Leo is distrait. I guess there’s something on the stove which has to be attended to. She’ll send Sadie back in a minute. Sadie can’t hold her liquor. Not and cook.’
But the main dish was crayfish as good as any Miss Pink had enjoyed in the Jura. They ate off Portmeirion ware and drank from Dartington crystal. It was evident that Leo and Sadie didn’t have much money to spare but what they had they used well. Their little clapboard house was carefully maintained (they did everything themselves, Fleur said; Leo had even rewired the place); the furniture was old but good and the rooms looked as if they were vacuumed daily.
Chester didn’t cook and his entertaining was done at the Tattler. Miss Pink enjoyed four excellent dinners in a row and had it not been that she starved herself during the day, and went for long tramps, by the following weekend she would have felt like a Strasbourg goose, but each morning saw her setting out diligently to burn off the previous evening’s excess. After Miriam’s party she walked with Lois and Chester from Fin Whale Head to Porcupine Gulch by way of Pandora Ridge. They utilised two cars for that and they saw the pileated woodpecker and three Roosevelt elk.
After the party given by Sadie and Leo she did a dull but strenuous plod to the summit of Lost Peak on her own. This was the culminating point of the ridge on the north side of Bobcat Creek. It was approached by interminable zigzags, hidden in the timber, and there was no view. That evening she grumbled a little as they ate Chester’s dinner in the Tattler, and Fleur said immediately that the following morning they should go to the dunes north of Cape Deception.
The day was a little like a dull summer’s day in England except for the fog which, having retreated by mid-morning, lay in a solid bank a few miles offshore. The sky was cloudy and the air quite cool. The dunes beyond the cape were separated from the highway by a belt of conifers interspersed with myrtle and other hardwoods. Freshwater pools stood in marshy depressions and the grass was alive with frogs and little garter snakes splotched with red.
When they reached the dunes Miss Pink was surprised to find them almost covered with vegetation that was so high and tangled, so impervious to human penetration that it had been necessary to erect posts to mark the trail. ‘You’d be lost without them,’ Fleur said. ‘In fact, people get lost with them – in the fog, at night.’
Miss Pink shivered. They were in a dip and she could see no posts anywhere. Narrow trails made by raccoons or skunks looked no different from the one they should follow. ‘Yes,’ Fleur said, guessing the thought, ‘this is the place gave Gideon the idea for his first book, The Walking Dune.’
‘You’re making it worse. Does Gideon do anything else besides these books?’
‘He doesn’t need to.’
‘I meant, he draws so well— ’ but Fleur had stopped and was squinting northwards. ‘Do you hear something?’ she asked.
‘Only breakers – or is there a train? No, there’s no railway here.’
They resumed walking and shortly they emerged from the scrub to the open strand. There was no one about other than themselves and visibility was about a mile. The tide was nearly at the full, the wet sand dark and hard. Higher up it was the colour of crab shells. Black turnstones were feeding on the edge of the foam and the long, low breakers came rolling in: inexorable, infinitely exciting.
‘There is something,’ Fleur insisted. ‘Can’t you hear it?’
‘I heard it before but it still sounds like a train to me, an engine anyway.’
‘I know! It’s something at the roadworks – but they’re all of ten miles away.’
It wasn’t earth-moving machinery; it was a helicopter. It came along the shore, flying low. They looked up at it without surprise; there were a dozen reasons why a chopper should be here: the Coastguard on call or patrolling, the Highways Department, the Forest Service, a private machine chartered by a professional photographer – but it was none of these. They walked for miles along the strand and went home to discover that the close-knit community was seething with speculation. The helicopter had brought policemen. Lois’s car had been involved in an accident and the driver had run away.
‘Naturally,’ said Lois, ‘they thought it was me driving so they flew down here to take me back to Portland in shackles.’
They were all gathered in the sun-room at the Tattler, this being the evening that Miss Pink had taken it on herself to be the host.
‘I can’t think why they sent detectives at all,’ Jason said. ‘Just for a little hit-and-run, and no one got hurt.’
‘It was the run bit,’ Fleur told him. ‘The running away: it looks suspicious.’
‘They were nice guys though’ – he hadn’t heard her – ‘came in the store and chatted, bought some Louis l’Amours; they stayed a while, told me all about detective work in the city.’
‘What did you tell them?’ Oliver asked.
Jason blinked owlishly and said he couldn’t remember, and what sort of things did Oliver mean?
‘He means, dear,’ Lois said kindly, ‘that they’re checking on me with other people because it was a woman driving.’
Fleur said, ‘But you don’t wear mini-skirts and frequent Portland’s red-light district.’
Lois giggled. ‘The police don’t know that.’
The accident itself had been minor. A van driver had emerged carelessly from a side street and rammed the Chevrolet. The person in the Chevy had tried to extricate her car by reversing, only to find the bumpers of both vehicles locked. She had then jumped out and run – this
despite the fact that she was the innocent party, at least as far as that incident was concerned. This had happened two evenings ago, in the dark, but there had been witnesses. They said the driver of the Chevy was tall and was wearing a mini-skirt and white sandals. The area was one frequented by prostitutes.
‘It had to be Gayleen,’ Fleur said now. ‘But why should she run? Is the Chevy insured only for you and Andy?’
‘The police asked that,’ Lois said, ‘but it’s just ordinary insurance, anyone can drive it.’
‘Oh dear,’ came Sadie’s gentle voice, and Leo confirmed the thought: ‘So Gayleen’s got something to hide; couldn’t face the fuzz.’
Oliver said, ‘Could she have left Andy and taken the car?’
Lois said firmly, ‘Obviously it wasn’t Andy driving so’ – she spread her hands – ‘I just left it to the police, sort of opted out, you know? As Jason said, they were charmers. The younger one even has a cat like— ’
Mabel Sykes interrupted, smiling unpleasantly: ‘But if Gayleen stole the Chevy, why didn’t Andy report it stolen?’
Lois blinked. ‘Has he had time?’ she asked uncertainly, then more firmly: ‘He wouldn’t want to cause trouble for her. Anyway, why should she have stolen it? It could be she was just shopping, using the car; she got a bump and couldn’t face the police.’
‘Because – ?’ Mabel’s smile was now a grin.
Miss Pink said, ‘Perhaps her licence has been suspended. It could be some small infringement, not something criminal.’ She glanced at Eve who was advancing with a cocktail shaker and changed the subject: ‘I’m sure everyone could do with a second martini … ’ Out of the corner of her eye she saw that Leo was framing a question and heard Sadie’s clear response: ‘They have to eat somewhere; you can ask them when they come.’
They could be referring to the police, who seemed to have their own problems. Either the helicopter had been needed elsewhere in a hurry, or they’d allowed it to go, thinking to hire a car, but there were no cars for hire in Sundown and now they were stranded and running up a terrific telephone bill apparently trying to find a car or a chopper to pick them up tomorrow morning. Meanwhile they had booked a room at the Surfbird and Boligard remained up there putting through their telephone calls.
