Miss Pink Investigates- Part Four

by Gwen Moffat

  ‘I’m fine. You were gone so long I was worried.’

  ‘No, no, nothing happened. I mean, apart from getting it out of the desert: the pick-up. It was mired a bit; we had to put a rope on it, drag it free. Everything takes longer in bad weather. I’m soaked. Shall I have a shower, or am I too exhausted? I think I’ll just fall into my bed. We both should. You’re asleep on your feet.’

  It was the second time that evening that Miss Pink felt she was being driven away. It had been reasonable of Spikol to assume that she would want to question Tammy – he had Miss Pink’s measure and was aware of her insatiable curiosity – and he could feel that, in default of her father he should protect the child – but if Pearl was driving her to bed, was she too protecting someone, and why?

  Chapter 14

  The mockingbird was singing his heart out but the morning light was pale and watery. Miss Pink parted her curtains and saw dim rock rising into cloud. But for the mockingbird she could have been in Scotland.

  She showered and dressed and went along to the kitchen. The coffeepot was on the stove and through the window she could see Pearl in the corral. She stepped out on the veranda and saw that the cloud had retreated until it lay in a long band below the rim of the escarpment. Above the cloud the cliffs rose like fairy castles touched here and there with gold, and glittering wet. The sun was breaking through the overcast.

  ‘Come and see!’ shouted Pearl. ‘Look at the waterfall!’

  White water was pouring over the rim from the mouth of Slickrock, vanishing behind the cloud, reappearing below it to come tumbling down the screes.

  ‘Great, isn’t it?’ Pearl’s face was streaked with dirt and there were ragged plates of mud on her boots. The horses stood stiffly as if stuck to the ground. ‘Monsoon weather,’ she said. ‘I love it.’

  ‘Does this happen every year?’ Miss Pink asked. ‘As bad as this?’

  ‘As good as, you mean. Where would we be without it? What’s a bit of dirt? “Listen to the mockingbird”,’ she sang.

  Miss Pink thought she was a little hysterical. ‘There’ll be no riding today,’ she said in a calming tone. ‘A good thing we were searching the canyons yesterday.’

  ‘Yes.’ Pearl sobered suddenly. ‘This is clean-up day. We seem to be all right but I have to call people, see if anyone needs help. Marge first, I guess; she’s on her own. Ha, someone’s about.’ They heard a truck pass down the street. ‘Markows,’ she said. ‘From the Markow place anyway.’

  On the phone Marge said that she had suffered terribly: all her fuchsias smashed flat, the four o’clocks ruined, Pedro had to be washed before he could be let back in the house … ‘She’s all right,’ Pearl said. ‘And everyone else has men around, so that’s our duty done. Now folk’ll start calling us, see if we need any help. It’s great fun, living in a small community; everyone helps everyone else. Why is it I have this feeling you’re not with us this morning?’

  Miss Pink poured herself a second cup of coffee and took her time replying. She sighed and blinked, aware that she was spoiling the mood but unable to do anything about it. ‘Difficult to say,’ she murmured. ‘Something appears to be not quite in order: out of synch, as they say. How did we change so suddenly – was it too sudden? This time yesterday we were searching for a missing child who – let’s face it – could have been injured, raped, even dead—’

  ‘But we found her—’

  ‘I know, and everything’s all right. The child’s safe and well and with her parents, or one of them at least, so all the terrible hypotheses were just that, and can be forgotten. I saw Tammy, I know she’s all right.’

  ‘Well, don’t sound so doubtful about it.’

  ‘I’m getting old. At my time of life it takes time to recover from traumatic events. And you Westerners, you’re much more accustomed to high drama – like that storm. You have resilience. I thought the storm was terrifying. You liked it.’

  ‘Not all the time. Thunder terrifies me. But it’s over now, no trees fell on the house, the horses weren’t struck by lightning, the creek didn’t top its banks and flood the corral; we’re back to normal.’

  She spoke too soon, and although an hour went by without further communication with the neighbours, when it came it was disturbing. Pearl was tying up damaged plants when the telephone rang and Miss Pink answered to find Kristen on the line. She sounded subdued and apologetic. ‘I don’t want to bother you but I wondered: could Pearl – and maybe you – come down and – er – give me a hand here? I could do with some advice.’

  ‘Of course.’ Miss Pink glanced out of the window but she couldn’t see Pearl. ‘I’m not sure where she is, but I’ll find her. Is someone ill?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t even know if it’s urgent, but the pick-up’s here and not him. We can’t find him. I mean, what could have happened?’

  ‘Who are you talking about?’

  ‘I wish you’d come!’ It was distraught. ‘The road’s clear; you won’t have any trouble.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘At the farm of course. Didn’t I say that? My dad didn’t come home all night and I can’t call Mom and tell her I haven’t found him—’

  ‘Here’s Pearl.’ She was working off her boots on the step.

  ‘Just come!’ The line went dead.

  ‘Who was that?’ Pearl asked, opening the screen.

  ‘Kristen. She sounds frantic. She’s at the farm and can’t find her father. His pick-up’s there but he didn’t come home last night.’

  ‘Jesus! What does Casey say?’

  ‘Casey?’

  ‘The hired hand. He lives on the place.’

  ‘She didn’t mention him. She wants us down there: for advice, she says. And she doesn’t want Ada to know.’

  Pausing only to put on their boots they piled into the truck. ‘But Ada must know,’ Pearl said, as the pick-up slid crabwise round the corner and started down the street. ‘She’d know if he didn’t come to bed all night. Or would she? Maybe not.’ She pursed her lips. ‘Road’s slick,’ she added superfluously.

  There was no sign of life as they passed the Scotts’ house but one could never tell who was watching from behind the screened windows.

  The farm was close by the river and approached along a track that was marked by recent traffic and the hoofs of a horse. It was a small farm, Pearl said, less than two hundred acres, under corn and alfalfa except for a pasture which Scott sometimes let for grazing. The whole place was nothing more than a clearing in the riparian woodland, and so enclosed by trees that for all that could be seen of the desert and mountains, it might have been in an Eastern state.

  At the edge of a cornfield, dwarfed by the trees, were a barn and a cabin with a smoking chimney. Outside the cabin stood a pick-up and an old Army jeep. A man appeared, aged about forty and clean-shaven. He was large and powerful with the blurred features of an old boxer, and he looked nervous.

  ‘Hi, Casey,’ Pearl called, climbing out of the truck. ‘Where’s Kristen?’

  ‘Down by the river, ma’am.’

  ‘What happened? Where did he go?’

  ‘I wasn’t here!’ It burst out of him as if he’d been harbouring a grievance. ‘I never saw him, I was in town. I come home this morning and there’s his pick-up, and that’s all I know. I didn’t even know he’d been here all night until Kristen come and told me! I left before the storm—’

  ‘OK!’ Pearl checked the flow. ‘We’ll find Kristen.’ Miss Pink said nothing. There was nothing to say.

  A track led round the edge of the cornfield and a ragged pasture to a wire gate in a fence. ‘This is his boundary,’ Pearl said. ‘Between here and the river is a kind of no-man’s-land.’

  ‘I wonder why she’s looking here.’ There were prints of shod hoofs in the mud.

  ‘Poor kid, looking for him all on her own.’

  They unclipped the gate and walked along a low dike following the hoofprints. The sun was hot now and the swamp steamed. Vultures were per
ched in a dead tree, all facing west, warming their backs. At water level black and yellow turtles basked on a log.

  ‘This is where Michael Vosker comes,’ Miss Pink said suddenly.

  ‘That’s right; the river banks swarm with wildlife.’

  ‘Why would Scott come here?’

  ‘I guess Kristen has looked in all the likely places.’ Pearl stopped and stared at her companion. ‘It’s Tammy all over again, isn’t it?’

  ‘I was more concerned about Tammy. She was vulnerable.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Clayton can look after himself.’ But the glance she threw at Miss Pink implied doubt.

  They continued until the track ran into water. ‘She turned back,’ Pearl said, glancing sideways. Willows stretched across their line as far as they could see in both directions and beyond the willows the river slid by very fast carrying branches and rafts of sedges and unidentifiable rubbish. A bulging sack swept past and they followed it with their eyes but made no comment. Pearl swung round suddenly. A horse was splashing towards them with Kristen on its back, her jeans soaked to the thighs. She looked drawn and wary.

  Pearl said when she came up, ‘What did he tell you when he left home?’

  ‘I wasn’t there. He told Mom he had to come down, see if anything was wrong. He called Casey after the storm started and couldn’t get any reply. So Dad left to make sure everything was all right: you know, if Casey had gone to town – which he had – to see all the doors were closed and stuff.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘Around seven. I was up at the Markow place.’

  ‘And you heard nothing since. So why didn’t he call you – Ada anyway – from the cabin?’

  ‘Why should he? He’d just make sure the barn was closed and nothing left loose to blow away, then I guess he meant to come straight home.’

  They thought about this. Pearl looked at Miss Pink who said, ‘I suppose you tried the pick-up to make sure it would start?’

  Kristen was surprised. ‘I didn’t, but if it wouldn’t run, he’d have phoned for someone to come and fetch him. The cabin was open and the phone’s working because Casey called us soon’s he got home this morning. After he looked around for Dad, I mean.’

  They went back to the cabin and tried the pick-up. It started at the second attempt. Miss Pink proposed that they search the corn but Kristen said that both she and Casey had been round all the crops, herself riding, and if anyone had walked into the corn or the alfalfa their track would have shown.

  Pearl telephoned Wayne Spikol. He was putting out diversion signs where a bridge had been carried away so she was put through to the sheriff. She didn’t like that because it implied that the situation was serious and as yet no one wanted to admit that it was. The sheriff said that he would send someone down, and had they thought of snakebite or a knock on the head and amnesia?

  ‘A snake?’ Pearl repeated, replacing the phone, turning to Miss Pink who was waiting in the doorway of the cabin.

  ‘No. He’s a healthy fellow; at the least he’d have been able to get to the phone and tell someone. Amnesia?’ She turned and looked across the cornfield. ‘I can’t imagine a man losing his memory and just walking away from an empty truck.’ She looked at the ground. ‘Yesterday’s tracks have been washed out by the rain. A pity. What did he do when he got out of the truck?’

  Kristen rode round the side of the barn and stopped in front of the cabin. ‘Did you cover all the boundary fence?’ Pearl asked, staring fixedly across the corn.

  ‘I said: I rode right round and there’s no one, not even a deer, been in the corn, or the alfalfa.’

  ‘You were looking inwards. Is it my eyesight or is that fence broken on the far side there, at the break in the trees?’

  ‘Could be.’ Kristen was casual. ‘But there’s no way out there, the river’s immediately below and it’s cutting the bank away—’ She stopped.

  ‘Get down!’ Pearl ordered harshly. ‘Give me your horse.’ She moved but she was too slow. Kristen’s horse leapt away and was galloping round the corn towards the gap in the trees. ‘Oh, God!’ Pearl gasped, her hand to her mouth.

  The horse stopped but Kristen didn’t dismount, and she didn’t return. Without speaking they started to run. They came up to her and saw what she was staring at. Two old posts hung down the eroded bank, held there only by strands of wire.

  Casey approached. ‘That’s been like it for months,’ he said calmly. ‘Clayton, he were going to bring some new posts and fix it.’

  They looked at him and back at the river, so close below that they daren’t approach the edge. ‘We drug that fence back twice already,’ he said with a kind of satisfaction. ‘That old river cuts the bank away more every season; it’s not safe to bring a tractor down here no more, the whole lot could fall in.’

  Pearl said, ‘No way would Clayton come down here to move a fence during the storm. This is a cornfield; it’s not like stock in a meadow that are going to fall over the edge if the fence isn’t fixed. We should go home now.’ She glanced at Miss Pink and saw agreement. ‘Ada has to be told,’ she went on. ‘Don’t worry about it, Kristy; your mother’s a lot tougher than you give her credit for. Casey can handle things here; ’fact, there’s nothing for him to do, he just tells the police what he told us. You start back and we’ll overtake you on the road. Do you want me to tell your mom?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Kristen swallowed. ‘I guess I ought to.’

  ‘I don’t like that broken fence,’ Miss Pink said as they drove away. ‘How reliable is that fellow?’

  ‘Casey? He’s speaking the truth, because Wayne told me he reckoned Veronica could have gone into the river at that point. The fence was already broken at the time she died so Clayton never got around to moving it back. I guess Kristen had that in mind when she galloped over there. What made you think he wasn’t telling the truth?’

  ‘I didn’t – necessarily, but why was he away—’

  ‘He said he was in town.’

  ‘The police can check that. It’s a coincidence though, that he should be away, says he was away when Scott disappears.’

  ‘You know something? You have a very suspicious mind. Anybody’d think you were a detective. Clayton came down because Casey was away. Ask me, Casey’s often away nights; who’d spend the evening down here on his own when he’s got wheels, and a town close by? And no way is Casey going to push his employer in the river and do himself out of a job.’

  ‘Ada could be a better employer than her husband.’

  ‘Ada would sell—’ She didn’t complete the sentence.

  ‘Which reminds me,’ Miss Pink was smooth, ‘why would Ada not know that Scott was out all night? Do they have separate bedrooms?’

  ‘How would I know? I assume so, with Ada being sick. Sick people like to sleep alone, don’t they? None of my business.’ It was a mutter.

  Miss Pink stared through the windscreen at the steaming road. There was no sign of Kristen, who was moving fast to judge by the widely spaced prints in the drying mud. They came to the village and only glanced at the Scotts’ house, not wanting to appear inquisitive. No one was abroad in the street. They turned the corner and turned again, stopping the pick-up under the gable-end of the house. The telephone started to ring as they were removing their boots.

  ‘I’ll go,’ Pearl said quickly as Miss Pink opened the screen door. She went back to the bench and started to peel off her socks.

  ‘So what?’ came Pearl’s voice. ‘I’m not responsible for— Oh, come on, Wayne, it floated down from Santa Fe— Albuquerque then, the river’s running high enough— What? You’re out of your mind; she’s a sick woman and to ask her to identify— You do that, Wayne Spikol, and you’ll never set foot in this house again, never!’

  The receiver was slammed down and Miss Pink’s jaw sagged as the screen door crashed open and Pearl stood there, livid and speechless with fury.

  ‘He’s found a body?’ Miss Pink asked. ‘In the river?’

&n
bsp; ‘That’s not the point. He’s going to fetch Ada to identify it. Head blown – well, that’s an exaggeration maybe – gunshot wound in the face. I’m going to speak to the sheriff!’ She swung round and the screen crashed to. Miss Pink listened, her face stony, her eyes bright as a bird’s. ‘You’ll connect me, Tessy Silver,’ Pearl hissed, ‘if it’s the last thing you do— Then I’ll speak to a deputy – any deputy— But I was speaking to Spikol this very minute! He can’t be— Listen Tessy, Ada Scott’s a sick woman—’ She stopped and listened, interjecting: ‘You sure of that?’ and, deflated, sullen: ‘He should have said.’ A few more grumbling remarks and long silences and she rang off. She came out to the veranda and sat down with a sigh. ‘That girl says they’ve gone to pick up the body, but they wouldn’t be asking Ada to identify it, she says, without the head was covered, or they’ll clean it up first. It’s an entry wound in the mouth apparently, and it’s the back of the head is blown’ – she grimaced – ‘isn’t there any longer. Someone who brought it out of the river recognised it as Clayton. Of course it can’t be; why should Clayton commit suicide?’

  ‘Well, if he’s done it at the same spot that Veronica threw herself in the river, there could be a connection.’

  ‘You think so? Anyway, there’s a watch so they won’t be asking Ada to see the body; they’ll take the watch to her first. There’s no other means of identification; his billfold must have been washed away. I reckon it’s a body floated down from Santa Fe. Wayne said it wouldn’t have come as far in the time. That’s rubbish; you saw how fast the river was moving.’

  ‘Where was he found?’

  ‘At San Juan. That’s about five miles downstream. It got caught in a tree at high water. A farmer saw the vultures. Should we warn Ada and Kristen?’

  ‘Spikol meant you to do that or he wouldn’t have called you first. He was probably exceeding his duty; perhaps it was a good thing you didn’t speak to the sheriff.’

  ‘Now why would Wayne do that?’