Miss Pink Investigates- Part Four

by Gwen Moffat

  She sat on the edge of the mattress and eyed the hollow left by the snake. She retraced events. The miner had died – Herb Beck? Sam Dearing? – and the rats moved in, or had been there all the time scavenging his scraps; they were followed by snakes, and this big gopher inherited the territory. When she left she latched the door, amused to think that the gopher, having accounted for the rodents in the cabin, must now forage abroad for food, and yet it still returned to the cabin to sleep.

  There was no trail leading to the cabin, or if there was it had been overgrown. She had to go back to the open ground, and as she resumed the tiresome progress up the canyon she thought that a snake’s territory would be restricted, that she could soon pass into a rattler’s sphere of influence. She sighed, she was having a hard day: interesting but wearing. She looked ahead and saw that she was coming to the end of the yellow towers. The big cliffs were in view again coming down to the canyon floor, and at last she could see the rim. Excited, she searched for the alligator junipers but from below she couldn’t distinguish them from the common variety; she would have to continue until she found the tracks: Kristen’s and her own. She gave one more glance at the skyline and stepped forward, and stopped. Something had moved on the rim.

  She focused the binoculars, praying that it wasn’t the sorrel, so close to the edge, realising in the next breath that the horse, if it had broken loose, would have run straight home. Deer then, probably deer, or one of those ridiculous pigs. Whatever it was, it had gone and she forgot it in the renewed need for caution as she started forward again.

  She found the escape route quite easily, her tracks obvious on the slope. She was tired now and she took the climb slowly. It was also excessively hot, the wall getting the full force of the afternoon sun, the rock painfully hot to the hands. The lizards were gone and the occasional cactus flower drooped like tired tissue-paper.

  She staggered over the rim and into the shade of the junipers. She drank some water, reserving a few spoonfuls for emergencies (if the horse had gone she would have to walk back to the village) and then she strolled slowly across the mesa to the boulders where she had left the sorrel. From some distance away she saw a glint of red where the sun was catching his hide and she sighed with relief. ‘Good boy,’ she called, picking up speed. The sorrel whinnied but she ignored it. She was staring at a drift of white sand in the lee of a prickly pear, a drift which, side-lit as the sun declined, held the clean mark of a boot, smooth-soled and narrow-heeled, and she remembered that she had chosen to leave the horse at this spot simply because it was secluded, unvisited. There had been no tracks here this morning.

  Chapter 8

  ‘Marijuana?’ Pearl said. ‘Grass? I don’t believe it.’ It was a great joke.

  ‘I’m serious,’ Miss Pink insisted. ‘There were two plots, about twenty plants in each, I’d say, but the peccaries have destroyed half of them already.’

  ‘Javelinas. Wild pigs are javelinas here.’

  ‘Who d’you think is growing it?’ Miss Pink asked, and Pearl sobered, peering intently at a lettuce leaf. They were preparing supper.

  Miss Pink had reached home first, had come back to a village that appeared as abandoned as the mesas. She had seen no further sign of the person who left the print of a cowboy boot, the person who may have been on the rim looking into Slickrock. ‘There was someone on Midnight Mesa,’ she told Pearl now.

  ‘Fletcher Lloyd. Why not? It’s Beck land.’

  Pearl had come home about an hour after Miss Pink who’d had time to attend to her horse and take a shower at her leisure. She was drinking beer at the kitchen table when Pearl came in to report the fiesta a success: ‘Ada enjoyed it. Funny how her turns come and go; maybe it’s the change, she was fine today. You ate already?’ She eyed the bread-board that was smeared with jam and something brown.

  ‘No, I’m starving; I was about to start cooking.’

  Pearl took the bread-board to the sink and rinsed it rather ostentatiously. ‘Peanut butter and jelly,’ she observed. ‘You’re becoming quite American.’

  Miss Pink frowned but she was too tired to protest and too much intrigued by the marijuana. ‘So presumably Lloyd is growing it,’ she observed lightly.

  ‘I doubt that. Why don’t you forget you saw it: two little plots, obvious it’s just being grown for his own use, whoever.’

  ‘Someone from the Markow place then.’

  ‘Naming no names.’

  ‘And if that was Lloyd on Midnight Mesa?’

  ‘So? He found your horse – it would have whinnied when he was near – and he was looking for me; he wouldn’t know you were riding the sorrel.’

  ‘Either he or Avril would have seen me riding past Las Mesas.’

  ‘Not necessarily, but if they did then he was looking to see what you were up to. Nothing sinister about that; out in the sticks we have to know everything that’s going on, not just on our own property but the neighbour’s as well.’ She was smiling.

  ‘What would he have been doing up there in the first place on a Sunday afternoon? Another poaching expedition?’

  ‘Another—? Oh, like Ramirez, you mean.’ Pearl fell silent, abstracted. Miss Pink watched her, wondering if they were both considering those remains in the next canyon to Slickrock, quite close really. She was. ‘There’s no connection,’ she said. ‘The grass wouldn’t have been planted when he died – or would it? How long does it take to mature?’

  ‘If there was a connection, then the marijuana isn’t a joke.’

  Pearl thought about that and then: ‘Ridiculous!’ she exclaimed. ‘Of course there’s no connection.’ She smiled and relaxed. ‘But Fletcher Lloyd now: I might guess what he was doing up there on a Sunday afternoon. Planning a rip-off.’

  ‘A rip-off? Oh, of the marijuana.’

  ‘Of course. It’s an occupational hazard. He’d steal it just as it’s ready for harvest. He could have gone up there to see what stage the crop was at, particularly since he knew Jay and Kristen—’ She stopped.

  ‘Were safely out of the way at the fiesta,’ Miss Pink completed.

  ‘Oh dear. I shouldn’t have said that.’

  ‘I didn’t hear.’

  ‘And the pigs will destroy the whole crop anyway. A shame, I enjoy an occasional joint. They should have fenced it.’ Miss Pink pursed her lips. ‘Did you never smoke?’ Pearl asked. ‘Tobacco?’

  Miss Pink shrugged and changed the subject. ‘Whose cabin is that in the canyon? Was it Sam Dearing’s or Herb Beck’s?’

  ‘I believe Sam’s mine was in Slickrock.’ There was a pause. ‘Of course it was! So many old mines about, one gets confused. You found his cabin? What’s it like?’

  ‘Just a cabin with a bed and cupboard, and some crocks. There was a gopher on the bed.’

  ‘A gopher? Oh, a gopher snake! Yes, there would be. I mean, he used to stay there before Marge put a stop to it. So the place would be swarming with rodents. What else did you find in Slickrock?’

  Miss Pink enthused about the woodland and the yellow towers with their tilted tables, and Pearl listened with a smile that seemed a trifle wistful, as if she were enjoying the canyon vicariously. Miss Pink made no mention of her moments of panic when she thought she was lost, in fact, in retrospect she hadn’t been lost, had merely missed the trail. She admitted as much to Pearl, adding that had she not done so she would never have seen the snake nor that fantastic lunar landscape of yellow clay.

  ‘Yes,’ Pearl agreed, her eyes soft, ‘they—’ and the screen door opened to reveal Kristen looking tired and tense. ‘Hi, sweetie,’ Pearl said. ‘Had fun?’

  The girl nodded. ‘Yes thanks. A good day. Can I come in?’

  ‘When did you ever have to ask? There’s Coke in the fridge, Miss Pink stocked up for us. She had a fun day too.’ Pearl was slicing tomatoes on the draining-board. ‘She climbed down into Slickrock.’

  ‘Neat.’ Kristen perched on a stool and popped a can of Coke.

  ‘D’you know what she found there,
Kristy? You’ll never guess.’ The girl blinked and frowned. ‘Grass!’ Pearl exclaimed. ‘Two plots of grass all ready for harvest.’

  Kristen nodded. ‘Everyone grows a few plants.’

  ‘That’s what I told Miss Pink. Who’s bothered about the odd joint? It’s not as if we’re pushing crack here in Regis. She agrees.’ Pearl scrubbed a radish carefully. ‘Unfortunately,’ she went on, ‘there’s a herd of pigs got into Slickrock, musta got in from the Markow side, and they’ve trampled one plot. They’ll have found the other by now. A shame, I call it.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Well, that’s cool! Someone’s going to be mad as hell.’ The tone was loaded.

  ‘Jesus! What’s a few plants of grass? I’m not bothered. When will Ira be back, d’you know? Did you hear anything?’

  ‘Not yet, they only just got there. What’s with Ira?’

  Kristen was staring at her Coke can. Pearl had turned, unable to hide her surprise. Kristen said suddenly, ‘Tammy hates it up there, she’s climbing the wall. Can’t you have her here?’

  ‘Well, I— That would be rough on Maxine; she’s not fit, and the baby could come early.’

  ‘She can cope. Tammy can’t.’

  ‘That’s different! What d’you mean, Tammy can’t cope?’

  Kristen hesitated. ‘Why don’t I go up there?’ she asked, and answered her own question: ‘That means leaving Mom.’

  ‘Why don’t you have Tammy?’ Pearl asked.

  ‘No room.’

  ‘You have a spare room—’

  ‘We don’t. And Mom can’t look after her—’

  ‘Tammy looks after herself – and other people. She’s my maid!’ Bewilderment turned to anger. ‘For God’s sake, you’d think the kid was retarded—’ She clapped her hands to her mouth and her eyes were wide with the horror of what she’d said.

  Kristen stood up. She said evenly, cool in the face of histrionics, ‘She’s never been without someone to take care of her, so now she feels abandoned and she’s scared. She’s not retarded of course, but she’s very young. Someone has to be responsible for her with Ira so far away.’

  ‘Is she frightened of something in particular?’ They turned to Miss Pink as if a piece of furniture had given tongue. They had forgotten her.

  ‘What would you expect?’ Kristen asked. There was a pause. ‘She’s scared of the dark—’

  ‘Rubbish!’ Pearl exclaimed. ‘She rides this track at night all the time and she never said a word to me about being scared.’

  ‘Her folks were here then.’ Kristen moved to the door. ‘Maybe she infected me with her panic.’ She shrugged, as if relinquishing the problem. ‘She’ll be OK. I’ll see you in the morning, right?’

  ‘Storm in a teacup,’ Pearl grumbled as the screen door slammed. ‘What a fuss to make: Tammy, I mean, not Kristen. The kid’s trying to attract attention because she feels she’s been rejected. She wanted to go to Texas – who wouldn’t – but there was no way they could take her: an old man dying, probably a funeral and all.’

  ‘Kristen was bothered,’ Miss Pink pointed out. ‘Very bothered if she and Gafford are responsible for those plots in Slickrock. She didn’t turn a hair when you said the pigs had destroyed half the crop, let alone the fact that I’d stumbled on it.’

  ‘She doesn’t smoke. I mean, she doesn’t use grass.’

  ‘Yes, but’ – Miss Pink was impatient – ‘she showed no interest. Tammy was far more important.’

  ‘Before Kristen fell for Jay, she was like a big sister to Tammy – oh God, why did I have to say Tammy wasn’t retarded, and remind her of Veronica?’

  ‘Because Tammy does remind you of Veronica?’

  ‘No–o! There’s nothing about Tammy is a bit like Veronica.’

  ‘Youth? Innocence?’

  ‘So?’ It was belligerent.

  ‘I should think that’s enough.’

  She had a corner bedroom with windows on two sides, wide open day and night. In her dream she was galloping hard across a mesa on a straight trail through the pinyons. At the end of the trail was the rim of a canyon, and space. As she plunged towards the abyss the hoofbeats grew louder, the sound mounting with her panic. She knew she should throw herself from the saddle but she couldn’t do it. Perhaps, she thought, since it’s a dream I’ll survive, I always do; there wouldn’t be any pain, and a dream-horse couldn’t die. But she was overwhelmed by compassion and woke in a sweat to hoofbeats that thundered, faltered and took up again to fade in the distance. Her eyelids drooped and she was over the edge and falling.

  She woke to the song of the mockingbird but even as she revelled in the sunshine and tried to identify the species that the bird was imitating, she remembered the dream: one of those odd times when she dreamed that she was awake. The content, of course, was predictable, she had correlated riding on the mesa with the dangers of a canyon rim.

  ‘We’ve got trouble,’ Pearl said as she entered the kitchen. ‘That kid Tammy: didn’t sleep in her bed last night, would you believe it. Have some coffee; you’re still half asleep.’

  Still standing, Miss Pink drank and came to life. ‘Kristen was worried,’ she remembered.

  ‘I guess so. I don’t know about that. She called me earlier to say Tammy didn’t sleep at the Harpers’, and was she here by any chance? She’s not in her own home neither. Daryl went to look.’

  Miss Pink sat down. ‘Have they tried all the other houses: the Voskers, Marge – who else is there?’

  ‘Only Avril Beck. And the bunkhouses; there’s two of those but she couldn’t be in ’em because Fletcher occupies one and Jay’s in the other. They’re searching the barns. Oh, my God, how does that sound? You think of the river – and Veronica.’

  ‘Veronica was pregnant!’ exclaimed Miss Pink, and they stared at each other. ‘Ridiculous,’ she added. ‘Impossible.’

  ‘Twelve,’ Pearl whispered. ‘She’s only twelve.’

  ‘Good morning, girls!’ Miss Pink tried to orientate herself as Marge Dearing entered, immaculate in pink and smelling of talcum powder. ‘Something wrong?’ she asked lightly.

  ‘Tammy,’ Pearl said. ‘She’s missing.’

  ‘Oh.’ Marge pulled out a chair and sat down. ‘May I have some coffee?’ Miss Pink reached for a mug and Pearl filled it in silence. ‘What do you mean, missing?’ Marge asked, her tone flat. ‘When did she go?’ She knew about the sick grandfather, everyone did.

  ‘Last night,’ Pearl said tightly. ‘This morning, who knows? She was supposed to be sleeping at the Harpers’ and her bed – the bed in Maxine’s spare room – hasn’t been slept in. They can’t find her anywhere.’

  ‘Odd,’ Marge conceded. ‘So that’s why Kristen was up with the dawn.’

  ‘Was she?’ Miss Pink asked. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘And in a hurry. She galloped past here as if the devil was after her. You must have heard her. I saw her; she went round the corner of my house like she was competing in a rodeo.’

  ‘What time was that?’ Miss Pink remembered her dream.

  ‘Before seven.’

  ‘Maxine called Kristen,’ Pearl explained. ‘She couldn’t sleep – Maxine, I mean – so she got up early to get a drink and she peeked in the spare room just to see Tammy was OK and she wasn’t there. She sent Daryl up to the ranch house and she wasn’t there neither. She hasn’t taken her pony nor her bike.’

  ‘She went for a walk,’ Marge said with finality, but then she thought better of it. ‘Kristen doesn’t think that. What does she think? Why was she in such a tearing hurry?’

  ‘She holds herself responsible,’ Miss Pink ventured. ‘She was here last evening and she was worried then.’

  Marge said slowly, ‘Tammy was here yesterday.’

  ‘Here?’ Pearl asked. ‘In the village or in this house?’

  ‘In the village.’ Marge was vague. ‘You were at the fiesta.’

  ‘What was she doing here? I don’t have her Sundays.’

 
‘I don’t know.’ Marge was affronted. ‘I didn’t come across to see.’

  ‘Eating,’ Miss Pink said, enlightened. ‘She was eating peanut butter and jelly. It was on the bread-board,’ she reminded Pearl. ‘You thought I’d left the board dirty and I was too tired to argue. In fact, I thought you’d left it like that.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Pearl shrugged. ‘So what? The kid was hungry and came in and fixed herself a sandwich. It doesn’t help us find out where she is now. And who’s going to tell her folks?’

  ‘I think we should go up there,’ Miss Pink said firmly. ‘To the Harper place, I mean. There may be some indication as to where she’s gone.’

  ‘If there is, Kristen will have found it. What makes you think you can do better?’

  ‘A fresh eye? Age, experience? It can’t do any harm and we can lend moral support; they’re all young people up there. She’s probably not far away, just – er – calling attention to herself, like you said, Pearl. It would put people’s minds at rest. You don’t have to worry her parents unduly. Yet.’

  ‘You forgot Jay Gafford,’ Marge said.

  ‘How’s that?’ Miss Pink was sharp.

  ‘You said everyone up there was young.’

  Pearl said, ‘She didn’t forget him.’

  They drove to the Markow ranch, the three of them on the bench seat of Pearl’s pick-up. Miss Pink wondered what was in the minds of her companions. They were silent, preoccupied, forgetful of the visitor between them although she had the feeling that they would have been no more communicative in her absence, which was odd in the light of their being not only neighbours, but friends.

  ‘What do you think?’ she asked Marge.

  ‘My mind’s a blank, dear. Let’s wait to hear what Maxine has to say.’ It was a reproof.