As Gravy talked, Vicki visualized a map of California in her mind and tried to fix the locale. “Isn’t the Mother Lode country where they first discovered gold in 1848?” Vicki asked.
“Right. That was gold-rush country. They’re still mining a little gold in them thar hills,” Gravy said with a grin.
Vicki asked him what that stretch of hills was like.
“It’s high, about fifteen-hundred to two-thousand-feet elevation, and Lucy talked about the pine trees. There are a few little towns scattered trough there, and a lot of small two-to five-acre pear farms and almond farms. Lucy said it was really pretty, kind of quiet and peaceful, not too many people around.”
“Isolated?” Vicki suggested.
“Well”—Gravy thoughtfully rubbed his chin—“I suppose if this Mrs. Heath wanted to find a real private location to hole up and write her book, she wouldn’t have too many neighbors to bother her in the Sierra foothills. Especially if she didn’t stay at inns, if she rented a house—”
So Lucy and Mrs. Heath were somewhere in the Sierra foothills, around the pear-growing towns! Gravy had said that was about three hours’ driving time from San Francisco. By private plane, Vicki figured, it would take much less time. If she visited and inquired at the main villages in the area, she probably would learn something about the two women. Strangers in a rural area would surely be noticed.
“That’s what I could do,” Vicki thought. “It’s not much of a trip, and it shouldn’t be too difficult to look around a bit. I did promise Mrs. Bryant I’d do my best.”
She noticed Gravy glance, with embarrassment, toward the large clock on the wall.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Graves,” said Vicki. “Mr. Hall told me I mustn’t detain you too long.”
“Gosh, I’m sorry. Guess I told you everything I could about Lucy. Maybe Maggie could’ve remembered something more—”
Vicki said she hoped to meet his wife another time, thanked the painter, and went to the door.
“If you see Lucy,” said Gravy, letting her out, “tell her one more sitting will finish up the portrait. So long, now.”
If she saw Lucy! She wanted to try.
Vicki found a drugstore, ordered a coke, and took her bid sheet out of her purse. The bid sheet showed her scheduled flying days and her days off.
She had three rest days—today, tomorrow, and Saturday. Her next assigned flight, with Jean Cox, was not until nine A.M. on Sunday. That was fine.
This afternoon she could arrange to rent a private plane and study maps. Tomorrow, and if necessary Saturday, she could search for Lucy. That should be enough time.
Vicki had one misgiving. Suppose Lucy and Mrs. Heath were no longer in the Placerville region, where Lucy had mailed the post card? Suppose Mrs. Heath had decided to move on, or—a fleeting suspicion occurred to Vicki—suppose Mrs. Heath had never intended to settle in that region? The whole story of the sudden job offer disturbed Vicki as much as it had the minister.
“There’s only one way to find out,” Vicki decided, “and that’s to go look for Lucy Rowe.”
CHAPTER VI
Vicki Searches
The next morning Vicki went to Novato airport, in Marin County, forty minutes from San Francisco. Having been out there late yesterday afternoon, she was briefed for her flight. Placerville, her first stop, was about a hundred and twenty-five miles away. Joe and Ed Foster, the men from whom she was renting a Cessna 150, had marked on her air map the routes, landmarks, and sites of small airports in and near Placerville and surrounding villages.
The trim little Cessna 150 was a single-engine, two-place airplane, with landing lights, wing lights for navigation, and a two-way radio. Vicki carefully went over the plane, making a line check. It was in A-1 condition and fully fueled. She climbed in, with a lift up from Joe Foster.
“All okay?” he asked. Vicki smiled and nodded. “Now remember, this plane has a fast rate of climb. Watch it.”
“I’ll remember.” Yesterday afternoon she had taxied the Cessna around a little, to see how the plane handled, and had fallen in love with the instantly responsive aircraft. Vicki said:
“I’ll bring her back late this afternoon, Mr. Foster.” She would rather not do night flying in an unfamiliar airplane over country which was new to her.
Foster waved. “Happy landings.”
“Thanks. See you.”
Vicki closed the door, put her feet on the pedals, cracked the throttle forward slightly, released the brakes, and pressed the starter button. The plane went skimming along the airstrip. As the Cessna left the ground, Vicki felt she was simply floating up into the air. While she was figuring how rapidly to reach the altitude and air speed she wanted, the Cessna reached these and almost flew off by itself.
“Whoa, there!” Vicki exclaimed aloud. This was exhilarating! She put the nose down a little, leveled off, and turned northeast.
Once across the comparatively low Coast Range mountains, Vicki looked down on the Sacramento River flowing through rich farms and cattle prairie. Vicki bypassed the city of Sacramento, capital of California, and went sailing along over the Great Valley. Her cockpit was full of sunshine, and the plane flew quietly, smoothly. She was making sixty miles an hour. The plane could do eighty or more, but Vicki had landmarks to watch for.
Another hour passed. Vicki saw the towns below grow smaller and farther apart, and the land begin to roll slightly. Blue outlines of hills appeared on the horizon. Vicki climbed to a higher altitude. The temperature grew much cooler. Vicki buttoned her jacket. A few minutes later she saw much higher outlines on the horizon—the immense, distant peaks of the Sierra Nevadas loomed up like a great wall. Vicki consulted her air chart, and looked down to locate Placerville. It was the first of the villages, nestled low on this side of the distant mountains.
Vicki found the local airstrip and made a neat landing. A mechanic at work in the hangar told her it was ten minutes’ walk into town.
“Or you can hitch a ride, miss.”
“Thanks, I’ll walk.” She was wary of driving with strangers; and besides, the countryside of nut and fruit ranches offered a beautiful walk.
In the village Vicki inquired first at the small hotel. The owner put down his newspaper and obligingly looked through the register. It had just a few guests listed; Lucy and Mrs. Heath were not among them.
“Did you see any older woman with a young, brown-haired woman?” Vicki asked the hotel owner.
“No, miss. Why don’t you ask at the Pines Motel? You can ’phone from here.”
Vicki telephoned. The motel had no record, no recall of the two women. She went to the Placerville restaurants, garage, police office, and asked. No news.
Vicki flew on to the next town, Auburn. She talked with friendly tradesmen and local people at a roadside stand heaped with cherries, almonds, grapes, walnuts, and apples. No one, not even the motel keeper or the gas-station owner, had seen the woman and the girl Vicki described. Neither had Auburn’s police officers.
In the next town, Marysville, Vicki inquired again, with no results. In each village—a few of them were almost ghost towns of gold-rush fame—she got the same story. No one had seen the two women. By midafternoon Vicki felt badly discouraged.
“Well, shall I give up?”
Vicki thought it over. So far she had tried only the villages. The minister and the painter had mentioned the possibility that Mrs. Heath might rent a house in the Sierra foothills. “A house off by itself in the hills—that’s the next thing to look for and ask about.”
Vicki took the Cessna up again, thinking hard about the best way to locate such a house. She had been aloft fifteen minutes when she decided it would be a wise precaution to replenish her gas supply. The air chart showed a small airport off to the northeast. Vicki hoped she could buy gas there. She turned, reduced speed, and watched for an airport.
Just off the highway, she spotted a meadow with airstrips mowed in the grass. Three or four planes and cars were parked outside a barn, which must be the hangar.
She circled low over the meadow twice, to let the people below know she wanted to land. Two men in coveralls came out of the hangar. They motioned to her how to come down, pointing to the windsock atop the barn. Vicki waggled the plane wings in reply, flew into their air pattern, and coasted in for a landing. By this time, three other men wearing coveralls had come out to watch her. They gave Vicki friendly smiles as she stepped out of the plane.
“Hello, anything we can do for you?” one asked her. They were all young men, deeply tanned, with sun squint lines around their eyes, and immediately interested in Vicki’s Cessna 150.
“Thanks, I’d like to buy some gas here,” Vicki said. “And maybe you’ll advise me how to find a place I’m looking for.”
“Glad to do both,” said one young man. “I’m Wes Clark.”
He introduced the four others—the two McKee brothers, a redhead called Red Jones, and the tall man who had spoken first, Jack Whiting. Vicki told them her name, and said her home was in Fairview, Illinois.
They all said hello, and invited Vicki to see their airplane. She was interested in their heavy plane and special equipment, and asked what they were doing.
“We’re prospecting from the sky,” Wes Foster said. “We search for ore buried in the ground. Mostly for mineral pockets. Want to see how we aerial miners work?”
“I certainly want to know what that long torpedolike thing tied to the back of your plane is,” Vicki admitted.
The McKee brothers said, “That’s ours.” They were electronic experts, and at work they sat inside the big instrument to watch for the telltale jump of dial needles, as the “snooper” plane flew over mountains, lakes, and valleys. The young men explained to Vicki that a strong radioactive source—such as uranium—showed on the detectors.
“Do you need maps?” Vicki asked. She was thinking of her own search for a secluded house in the hills.
“Sure, we use maps. Whiting here is our aerial photographer. He makes an aerial survey with a movie camera that’s co-ordinated with the electronic needles. Then he pieces the photographs together into one big map, and that gives us and our geologist an over-all picture of the region we’re exploring.”
Red Jones, stammering slightly, told Vicki he was the geologist of the team. She asked if she might see the map he used.
“We were just looking at it in the hangar. Come on in, Miss Barr.”
They all went into the hangar where equipment and a large photographic map were spread out on a table. Jack Whiting and Wes Clark started to explain the map to Vicki. They said it showed the contours of the dips and peaks of the rugged terrain around there. The photo-map resembled a complicated diagram; it was not easy for Vicki to read.
“Well, are you looking for anything in particular?” Whiting, the aerial photographer, asked her.
“Yes. An isolated house,” said Vicki.
“Hmm. That’s a tall order. There are several houses and buildings off by themselves, way up in the hills.”
Wes Clark suggested that they start by locating such houses on the photo-map. They located several small marks on the map which were houses. However, Whiting remembered that two of the buildings were power stations, one a sportsman’s hunting lodge, one a house they knew to be boarded up.
“What’s this?” Vicki put her finger on a blurred spot on the photo-map. It was the size of a pinhead.
“That’s half a dozen houses and a general store, too small even to be a village,” the younger McKee brother said. “No post office or anything. The ranchers around there call the place Pine Top.”
“No, I don’t mean the cluster of houses,” Vicki insisted, “I mean this tiny dark spot. Could it be a hidden house?”
The young man peered at the blur. “Could be,” the aerial photographer finally said. “Lots of forest and high, winding roads at that point. If it’s a house, it’s hidden, all right. The camera doesn’t tell what that blur is, I’m afraid.”
Vicki looked searchingly at the map. She could not see any other mark which suggested a private house. Only the one above Pine Top.
“I think,” she said slowly, “I’ll gamble on it and fly to Pine Top.”
“Maintain enough altitude,” Wes Clark advised her. “You can get gas from someone at Pine Top, if necessary.”
“Gas!” Vicki remembered. “I need some right now, if you can spare it.”
The airfield had a commercial, self-service gas pump. Wes Clark said with a grin, “Our advice is free, but you have to pay for the gas.”
“I’m glad to have both,” said Vicki.
The young men helped her to refuel her plane, and watched her climb in. Wes Clark looked at his wrist watch and said:
“It’s pretty late in the afternoon to head for Pine Top. I wouldn’t try it for the first time at dusk, if I were you.”
They were right. To explore half-mountainous terrain, by air, in fading light would be foolhardy. Besides, she was growing tired, and there was still the return flight to San Francisco to make.
“All right, I’ll try for Pine Top tomorrow,” she said. She smiled and waved at the five young men.
“Thanks a lot for everything. I hope to see you all again sometime.”
“See you,” they repeated. “Get home safely. Happy landings.”
* * * *
That night Vicki dreamed of Pine Top and of a dark, fantastic house clinging to a wooded mountainside. Those troubled pictures were the reflection of her worry about Lucy.
Actually, when she was wide awake on Saturday noon, and looking down from the Cessna 150 in the bright sky, Pine Top turned out to be a cheerful place. There wasn’t much of Pine Top, just a few houses clustered together in the refreshing green of forests and hilly grazing lands.
She looked down and circled, losing altitude, searching for an area to land. The one level place she could see was a back road—a wide, empty, dirt road. Vicki came down bumpily, then staked down the plane at the side of the road, and hiked toward the houses.
No one was in sight, only a yellow hound-dog. The general store seemed the likeliest place to make inquiries. Going in, Vicki found it deserted. She looked around at the shelves, counters, boxes, and barrels piled with provisions for living deep in the country. She noticed a bell on the counter, rang it, then waited.
Presently a man and woman came in, carrying baskets of garden produce. They said good morning to Vicki, and looked at her curiously.
“Was that you flying around here a while ago?” the man asked. Vicki smiled and nodded.
“Well! What’re you doing in these parts, young lady?”
“We don’t often see strangers,” the woman put in. She said their names were Carl and Angie Potter. “My, that’s a handsome jacket you’re wearing.”
“Thank you,” said Vicki. “I wonder if you’d give me some advice?” The couple were eager to help. “I wonder if you’ve seen an elderly lady and a brown-haired girl about my age with her?”
“Why, sure enough, we have,” the man said. Vicki’s hopes leaped up. “They came here in a car about two weeks ago.”
“The lady’s name is Mrs. Elizabeth Heath,” the woman said importantly. “I saw her name on an identification tag tied on her suitcase—I noticed it when I carried some of the groceries out to her car. I can’t figure out whether the girl is her daughter or niece or exactly what. They bought a whole carload of groceries from us, same day they got here, and went on up to the old Glidden place.”
“The house up in the hills?” Vicki asked.
“Uh-huh. Nobody’s seen hide nor hair of them since,” said the man. “Bill Jenkins from the telephone company strung up a wire to their house, so we know Mrs. Heath has the phone working again. But except
for phoning me to bring more groceries, she hasn’t called up nobody here.”
The woman sniffed. “That Mrs. Heath was uppity when she bought her groceries from us. The girl seemed real nice, though.”
“It’s the girl I want to see.” Vicki felt a great sense of relief at actually having located Mrs. Heath and Lucy. “How far is the Glidden place from here?” she asked.
“Oh, about twenty minutes up an awfully curvy, narrow piece of road. We could drive you up there.”
They all piled into the couple’s jalopy. The narrow road up to the house climbed and wound. “On a wet day,” said Mr. Potter, “anyone who drives on this road’ll break his neck.”
At the top of the road the land leveled off, and they reached a high stone wall. Behind it, Vicki could see only treetops and the second floor of a house. The Potters said the wall completely enclosed the Glidden place.
Mr. Potter stopped the car before a large wooden door in the wall. “We’ll have to honk,” he said. When there was no answer, he tried the door. “Locked,” he said.
Angie Potter raised her voice. “Oh, Mrs. Heath! Mrs. Hea-ea-eath!” Still no answer. “Maybe nobody’s home.”
Vicki said, “The upstairs windows are open, and the curtains are open, too. Someone’s probably at home.”
Mr. Potter honked, Mrs. Potter called, Vicki knocked on the wooden door in the wall. They made so much noise that a flock of birds swooped out of a nearby tree, and flew away.
“Not very neighborly,” Mrs. Potter grumbled.
Vicki felt discomfited. Granted that Mrs. Heath wanted an isolated place in which to write her book; still, did the two women have to isolate themselves so rigidly?
“Well, we might as well go,” said Mrs. Potter.
They made a cautious descent down the narrow, steep road. The Potters drove Vicki back to the spot where she had parked the plane. They would not hear of accepting the payment she offered, and said good-by.
The Third Girl Detective Page 68
