by Gwen Moffat
There was a break in the cliffs, another system of ledges, and a dusty trail, graded for horses, threatened at intervals by leaning towers that seemed to be wedged in position only by debris, and that was constantly on the move to judge by chunks of scree on the path. The trail descended to a ranch. It was shaded by cottonwoods and only its corrals were visible. Miss Pink wouldn’t have known it was there but for having passed it this morning and noted the name on the gate: Las Mesas.
The village of Regis lay to the south and that too was an unknown quantity. She had come here on a whim, attracted by the name of Angel’s Roost, having seen from the map that the peak might be approached from Regis. The highway to the north was much closer to the mountain but in that direction there were two miles of forest and no trail: strenuous going and deadly dull; from Regis there was the escarpment, the canyons and the mesas. She had left Palomares, thirty miles away, and arrived here at eight o’clock with the sun high and no one stirring, or at least, no one showing themselves. Regis had impressed her as a place of brilliant light and deep shade, of blind windows and dust and one unpaved street. She had seen no human being since she left the interstate five miles away and it was only the few vehicles parked under trees that told her Regis wasn’t a ghost town.
Now, in late afternoon, as she came down from the plateau by way of the zigzag trail she felt a thrill of anticipation. She was about to enter a new world, however small and innocuous, the introduction to come by way of the first person to grant her the use of a telephone. For although she could have telephoned the police from her motel it was curiosity as much as courtesy that dictated she couldn’t leave Regis without informing the community of her discovery. Somewhere someone was waiting for a body to be found and it was possible that the missing man, if he didn’t actually reside in the village, was known to someone who did.
Chapter 2
‘He’s not from this village; no one’s missing.’
There had been no sign of life at Las Mesas apart from some steers in a corral so, having picked up her car at the foot of the zigzags, Miss Pink continued to Regis and in a window of the first house she came to saw a notice: ‘Hacienda del Sol Apartments to Rent’. Getting no reply at the front door she walked round to the back and found a middle-aged woman with some horses in a corral.
The basic report was contained in a sentence: there were human bones in a canyon. Knowing the West Miss Pink wasn’t surprised that this woman should seem more concerned with hospitality than with some old bones although she noted that when Pearl Slocum went indoors there was an irregular sound of conversation. She was telephoning.
Drinking iced tea under a walnut tree in the patio they took stock of each other, both surprised and both politely disguising the fact. Miss Pink saw a thin woman in her fifties, smelling of horses, sweat and a tangy scent. The southern sun had been unkind to her but under the papery skin she had good bones. Her hair could once have been a vivid red but it had dried and faded until it was no more than a frizzy bush, yet despite the effects of ageing and heat the first impression was of vitality; she had striking eyes, pale grey above high cheek-bones.
For Pearl’s part she saw an elderly and somewhat solid woman dressed like a hired hand but with expertly layered hair and designer glasses with thin mottled frames. She thought that what she could see of the eyes behind the thick lenses was kind but naïve and she was concerned that this old English lady should have been hiking alone in the back-country.
Miss Pink explained that her father had started her climbing in the Swiss Alps and that it was all right if you knew what you were doing, not nearly as dangerous as – sailing, she substituted smoothly. She had been about to say ‘riding alone in the high country’ but so far she had confined her story to the discovery of the rifle and the bones. As she hesitated, wondering why she didn’t mention the solitary rider, Pearl said thoughtfully, showing that her mind wasn’t on the danger to Miss Pink of solo hiking, ‘He wasn’t legal. Whoever he was, he had no right to be there. If there was still flesh on the fingers he hadn’t been dead long, and there’s been no hunting since March and that was for lion. Deer season ended in January. Your man was poaching.’
‘Does it make any difference?’ Miss Pink asked innocently.
‘Around here it does. Who’s bothered about a poacher? He had to be either on Markow land or Avril Beck’s, and neither of them couldn’t care less. Regis folk are possessive about their boundaries. About most everything,’ she added darkly. ‘Funny thing though: he must have been working alone.’
‘I thought of that. There were no search parties? No one looked for him?’
‘I heard nothing. People could have looked and given up – I mean, looked unofficially. If several guys are poaching, even just two, no one’s going to call in the Search and Rescue when one doesn’t come back to camp.’ Miss Pink was silent. ‘Perhaps he wasn’t popular anyway,’ Pearl mused, catching the other’s eye and looking away.
‘I should phone the police,’ Miss Pink said and Pearl, taking this for a request, stood up. ‘Phone’s in the kitchen. You’ll have to excuse the mess, no one’s cleaned the place today.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Actually I’m expecting my little maid to arrive at any moment.’
Miss Pink followed her across the patio reflecting that the police were going to need her to show them the site of the remains. The prospect of driving up the valley of the Rio Grande this evening only to return first thing tomorrow was daunting. Maybe she could stay here? In the kitchen Pearl tapped out a number and asked for someone called Wayne. ‘They’re trying to contact the deputy,’ she told Miss Pink and glanced round abstractedly. There was nowhere to sit and scarcely room to stand; all the surfaces, even the floor, were cluttered with crockery and saucepans, odd shoes, clothing, mail, a recipe book on a wooden stand, a screwdriver and a broken stirrup on one stool, a saddle minus the stirrup on another. Pearl’s eyes sharpened. ‘Wayne, Pearl here; I have an English lady at my house. You should hear what she has to say …’ She held out the phone.
Miss Pink introduced herself and a loud male voice responded. She said that she had found human bones in Rastus Canyon.
‘What makes you think they’re human, ma’am?’ The tone could be thought hostile but was probably only bored, suggesting that people were constantly reporting the discovery of bones.
‘Because the hand was still grasping a branch,’ she said. ‘And there was a rifle near by.’ This elicited a puzzled: ‘No one’s been reported missing. How long had he been there?’
Her eyebrows rose but she said gently, ‘I couldn’t say but there was only a very faint smell.’
‘I’ll have to come out,’ he grumbled. ‘Will you be at Pearl’s place?’
‘At what time?’
‘I’ll try to make it before eight; it’s going to be hot work climbing up that Beck trail. Put Pearl on, willya?’
She handed over the phone and went to stand at the sink under the window just as a slight figure swept into the patio on a bicycle, her coltish legs bare to the crotch. As she propped the machine against the walnut tree it could be seen that she was not, as Miss Pink had supposed, wearing shorts but a flimsy red frock that clung to the gawky body as far as the navel where petal flounces formed the tiniest mini-skirt. The shoes were red too, with extremely high heels. Her straw-coloured hair was cut short and fitted the small skull like a cap. She was about twelve years old and looked like a little girl dressed up in her big sister’s party clothes.
‘Here’s my maid,’ came Pearl’s voice, exasperated and amused at the same time. ‘And whatever has she got on? She can go straight back and tell her dad Wayne wants a horse for tomorrow. No way is that big lump going to get on one of my animals.’ The screen door opened and there was an eloquent silence during which they heard someone call from the front of the house: ‘You home, Pearl?’
‘In back, Kristen.’ Pearl smiled and the child in the red dress, whose mouth had drooped at the silence, perked up like a little dog. ‘M
y,’ Pearl exclaimed, ‘everything’s happening at once. Hi, Kristen.’
A second girl appeared at the inner door, an older girl, although in the gloom common to southern houses Miss Pink could distinguish little more than a slim form in jeans and a white shirt, the hair pulled back, and bright orange trainers on the feet. She had to stop herself from gaping.
‘This is Kristen,’ Pearl was saying. ‘And that’s Tammy, and this lady’s Miss Pink, a visitor from England. I’m going to ask her to stay the night, so we have to get this place organised—’
‘Hi,’ Kristen said and, lifting her hand, switched on a light, emphasising the kitchen’s squalor. She ignored it and stared at the child in the red frock. There was something in her startled eyes that was neither amusement nor exasperation, more like horror. Tammy looked frightened. ‘Don’t you like it?’ she whispered, fingering a flounce.
‘It’s a neat get-up.’ Pearl rushed to the breach. ‘But it’s much too old for – old-fashioned. Minis went out with the dinosaurs—’
‘I saw these girls on television—’
‘You look like a hooker,’ Kristen said.
‘Now, Kristy—’
‘My mom said—’
‘Your mom don’t know what she’s—’
‘Knock it off, you guys, we got company! And Tammy’s going home right now because she has to take a message to her dad, and I can’t get him on the phone’ – Miss Pink’s eyes flickered – ‘so she has to change anyway because you’re going to take the horses out soon’s it cools off. I have to clear up here, fix supper for us.’
‘That’s my job,’ Tammy said sulkily, then: ‘But I’ll ride for you.’
‘After you been home. You get on your bike, tell your dad Wayne Spikol’s going to be needing that old blue roan of yours early tomorrow, OK? Fact, what you do is bring the roan back with you; I’ll run you home tonight.’
Tammy stared. ‘Why me? Jay Gafford can—’
Kristen said quickly: ‘I’ll drive her home now, take your pick-up. Why’s Wayne coming here?’
Pearl hesitated, glancing at Tammy. ‘Miss Pink found some old bones in a ruin in Rastus Canyon. The police have to see them, take them away.’
‘Human bones?’ Tammy breathed.
‘Rastus?’ Kristen repeated on a high note. ‘Old bones?’
‘Very old,’ Miss Pink said quietly.
‘And a rifle,’ added Pearl.
‘How could you— What were you doing— I’m sorry.’ Kristen checked, biting her lip.
‘I was hiking.’ It was uttered with finality as if no further explanation were needed.
‘I didn’t know there were Indian ruins in Rastus,’ Pearl said. ‘Did you, Kristen?’ She turned to Tammy. ‘That’s Beck land, surely, not yours.’
‘We stop at Slickrock,’ Tammy said. ‘Mrs Beck and us both, we stop either side of Slickrock, but there’s ruins in all the canyons.’
Kristen opened her mouth, closed it, then said weakly, ‘I guess.’
‘Everywhere,’ Tammy assured her loftily.
Kristen looked at Miss Pink. ‘You could have got the canyons muddled.’ She had rather plain features, redeemed by her youth but sullen when she was serious. Now, in the glare of the kitchen light she looked quite ugly. ‘That’s possible,’ Miss Pink said cheerfully.
Pearl laughed. ‘You’re going to have fun tomorrow, trailing in and out of those old canyons. I’d better come with you.’ She thought about it. ‘And why not? You’ll be taking one of my horses. Can you ride?’
‘Well enough.’
‘What makes you think the bones are human?’ Kristen asked.
‘There were fingers grasping a branch – and the rifle, of course.’
The girl was fiddling with the broken stirrup, watched by the others. ‘How long had they been there?’ she asked, picking at a rivet with grubby nails.
‘It’s difficult to say.’ Miss Pink considered the point yet again. ‘There’s snow at that altitude in winter? Yes, well I would guess that the accident happened since the snow—’
‘February,’ Tammy put in. ‘The last drifts melted in February, but if he was inside a ruin there wouldn’t be any snow. Unless a lion dragged him in there outa the cold.’
‘He got there under his own steam,’ Miss Pink said. ‘That’s obvious from the branch. He crawled out of the creek: up a slope and into the ruin.’
‘How can you tell all that?’ Tammy asked, not in the least concerned that they were talking about a dead man.
‘His rifle,’ Miss Pink said. ‘It was lying in the stream bed. He must have fallen from the top of the cliff.’
‘What cliff?’ Kristen asked.
Miss Pink thought: The one upstream from where you tether your horse, and then she reflected that there could be more than one person in Regis who owned orange trainers. Aloud she said, ‘At the head of the canyon two streams come together under a little point and there’s a cliff around a hundred feet high. As to when the accident happened’ – she shrugged, then committed herself – ‘perhaps three, four months ago.’
Expressions changed fractionally although they hadn’t been illuminating even as they listened. She knew that Pearl and Kristen were thinking back three or four months, pondering, dismissing – but before dismissal she saw a spark of something like recognition. At that moment her eyes were on Pearl and, alerted, she turned to Kristen, but the girl had taken Tammy’s arm. ‘Come on,’ she said roughly, ‘I’ll drive you home.’ She turned back to Pearl. ‘Will they need a pack-horse?’
‘No,’ Miss Pink said, adding as the girls crossed the patio and disappeared round a corner of the house, ‘a garbage bag will be adequate. I wonder what happened to the rest of the body?’
‘Coyotes. And Wayne Spikol won’t be looking for it, that’s for sure.’
‘Who went missing four months ago?’ Miss Pink’s voice sounded disembodied as she stared through the window screen. Pearl gaped at the broad back, then swallowed. ‘No one. I told you.’
‘I didn’t mean from here.’ Miss Pink turned, her tone placating. ‘But someone has to be missing because there he is, what’s left of him: up in Rastus Canyon. No doubt the police will know something.’
‘We have to clear this mess,’ Pearl exclaimed, picking up the saddle and dropping it on a huge chest. ‘I guess you think Tammy’s too young to be helping out as a maid but school’s out for the whole summer and kids get bored, ‘sides, she likes doing it and her mom doesn’t mind. She won’t lift a finger at home so if it keeps her out of mischief it’s all to the good, isn’t it?’ Miss Pink, who was not above using such methods herself, knew that this was a smokescreen obscuring the subject of the missing man.
‘She was only dressing up,’ she said, smiling. ‘So why did Kristen get upset?’
Pearl blinked and tried to reorientate herself. ‘They’re too close in age, so Kristen doesn’t see it that way. It wasn’t right to say she looked like a – to say what she said, but she was shocked. Like you said. I mean, that dress was—’ She stopped.
‘Sexy?’ Miss Pink was cool.
Pearl swooped on a saucepan and dropped it in the sink with a clatter. ‘She’s spoiled,’ she said. ‘And she probably sneaked out of her home without her mother seeing her. She’s all right now; Kristen will take the frock away from her.’
‘But why did she get so cross?’
‘Why—’ Pearl was running a tap, pouring a flood of liquid soap on dirty dishes. ‘Girlish rivalry!’ she announced with a kind of triumph. ‘Tammy’s pretty, Kristen’s jealous.’ Her glance at Miss Pink was uncertain as if she wasn’t sure how this would be taken.
‘Steamy place,’ Miss Pink said.
‘What! How – steamy?’
‘Hot water. Would there be enough for me to have a shower?’
‘Oh yes, yes. I should have offered.’ She wiped her hands on a dish-cloth, her face suddenly relaxed and almost beautiful. And relieved, thought Miss Pink.
She telephoned her motel a
nd took a shower and went to sit in the dim living-room. She was ensconced under a lamp with a carafe of wine at her elbow and a National Geographic on her lap when there was a gentle tap at the street door, a fluted ‘May I come in?’ and the screen opened to reveal a soft plump woman in pressed white slacks and a richly embroidered smock. Miss Pink’s eyes dropped to the magazine open at a feature on Polynesia. The woman who stepped across the tiles with outstretched hand and a smile of welcome had the flat features and the grey braided hair of a matron from the Cook Islands.
‘I’m Marge Dearing,’ she said. ‘I live across the street.’ Pearl appeared in the doorway. ‘Miss Pink must be the first English visitor for decades,’ the newcomer said pleasantly, revealing the fact that the grapevine was working.
‘Find yourself a glass.’ Pearl indicated her floury hands. ‘Let me finish the biscuits and I’ll join you.’
‘No hurry.’ The woman moved to a sideboard and returned with a glass. ‘You’ll be company for her,’ she said, as if Miss Pink were moving in for a protracted stay. ‘We don’t see many visitors in August, not till hunting starts.’
‘Actually,’ Miss Pink said, ‘that ties in with my presence in a way. I’m staying at Palomares but I came on some old bones in a cliff dwelling. I have to show the police tomorrow.’
Marge blinked once and slowly; everything she did was deliberate. ‘Bones,’ she repeated.
‘Human bones. Fresh. I mean, not old, as bones go. Three, four months old perhaps?’ Miss Pink raised inquiring eyebrows.
The moon face was set. ‘What makes you think they’re human?’
‘A rifle in the creek below and a hand clutching a branch, presumably as a weapon.’
‘Then it wasn’t an accident? He was beating off a bear, or a lion.’
‘That must be it.’
‘No one’s reported missing,’ came Pearl’s voice from the kitchen. ‘I mean, not a local. Wayne doesn’t know of anyone.’
