by Gwen Moffat
A pair of red-tailed hawks were rising on a thermal, calling shrilly. Miss Pink remembered, the red-tail she’d heard when in Glenaffric’s kitchen. The house must be quite close below.
The breeze was from the south-east. Very faintly through the bird calls, she caught the sound of an engine.
She dismounted, knotting the reins and slipping them over her arm. She raised the binoculars and, tracing the far rim of the canyon southwards, the glasses swept past a helicopter in the air to focus on the stretch of meadows about Mazarine Lake. She glimpsed a sliver of water but the distance was too great to distinguish figures. She imagined she could see movement among the rocks of the escarpment but she didn’t need to see people. It was enough to have seen the helicopter; either it had brought men in or was taking them out, or they were working a shift system. Hilton was looking for the bullet. She wondered what he was doing about the gun — but there was nothing he could do until he found a bullet.
On the return, Barb elected to take the direct route of descent rather than the long way round by the Finger Lakes. Miss Pink struggled with her for a few moments, then gave in, rationalising that since she didn’t want to go down past the mines because it was steep, then she should face her fear. They started down.
The descent was frustrating: shuffling gaily along innocuous-seeming spurs that ended in impossible drops, backtracking to the first reasonable gully, hopping down rock steps, dreading a broken leg, coming out on grass to another ridge, another false cast.
By the time they reached the mines Miss Pink was worn out and the thought of wandering through the workings, never knowing when the ground might give way, filled her with horror. She held the mare in as they walked through the area, her attention on the ground in front of the horse, alert for signs of subsidence. Once, passing a shed without a door or windows, there was a scuffle inside which sent Barb leaping sideways. Only the fact that Miss Pink was already gripping hard saved her from a fall. Dragged to death, she thought grimly, and saw how easy it could be — staring at the next drunken ruin, recognising it for the one Sophie had pointed out: the entrance to a shaft, the roof supported by one baulk of timber, and even that was leaning. It looked as if the vibration of a passing horse would bring the lot crashing down.
The mines ended and they picked up a worn trail which entered the forest to drop in wide zigzags towards the valley. With all the dangers behind them they descended quickly and easily, and after a while the trees stopped at a break left by an old rockfall. Below and less than a mile away a vehicle was speeding along a road trailing dust. No houses were visible and if the Black Canyon was in view it was lost in the vastness of the forest. From higher up the trail meadows would have been visible but there were only the conifers and that stretch of road which appeared totally alien. She hadn’t come this way with Sophie last week.
Common sense kicked in, saying that the mare knew she was going home, but when the animal started off again with her fast, shuffling gait and the trees closed in Miss Pink realised that, judging from the position of the sun, they were heading for the high country. And that road was disturbing — a dirt road, certainly, given the dust cloud — with nothing on this side of the canyon other than the track to Glenaffric and no one would take its potholes at the speed that pick-up had been driven. Pick-up? Byer?
They came to a series of short, sharp zigzags and then the trail swung round an elbow, straightened out and the trees ended.
There were railed pastures on each side containing horses and, at the end of the trail, which ran like a drove road between the fences, Glenaffric basked in the sun under its angled roofs.
The loose horses ranged along the fence, keeping pace skittishly as Barb broke into a canter. At the corrals she skidded to a halt, nose to nose with Ali, as excited as only a stallion could be. Miss Pink dismounted, dragged the reluctant mare to the big horse barn and pushed her inside a loose box.
There were two pick-ups in the yard. As she passed it she glanced in the one closest to the back door. He’d been to the supermarket. Two full paper sacks were on the seat — and no rifle on the rack.
In the kitchen a man raised his voice. Frightened? Threatening? He was answered by a murmur. Miss Pink walked in without knocking.
Edna smiled at her and continued with what she was saying: ‘— for a number of reasons. You could say it was a lady you visited. I’m sure you know lots —’
Paul Skinner, red-faced, his eyes bulging, ignored her and glared at the newcomer. ‘Who the hell are you? Oh, Jeez, yeah, you’re the one was with Val when I come… They’re saying you found the bits.’
The remaining Wedgwood fragments were still on the kitchen table. ‘That’s right.’ Miss Pink, breathless after struggling with her horse, tried to sound neutral. ‘They were in Byer’s house.’
‘Byer!’ He spat it out. ‘It’s him they should go after, not me. I didn’t know nothing about it. She says I was in with him.’ He jerked his head at Edna.
‘You go to Seattle,’ Edna said.
He licked his lips and his eyes looked as if they would burst from their sockets. Prudence warred with rage.
‘What does Seattle have to do with it?’ Miss Pink was all innocence. Edna looked at her and smiled.
‘That Cole,’ he hissed. ‘He says that stuff — all the stuff stole from her’ — a venomous glance at Edna — ‘it couldn’t be sold around here. It goes to Seattle. Where was the last lot, he wanted to know. I said he could search my trailer. He didn’t have no warrant, I didn’t have to let him but I did. That shows I got nothing to hide, don’t it?’
‘You go to Seattle,’ Edna repeated.
‘So I go to fucking Seattle — and you know why I go — don’t you? Don’t you?’
He took a step towards her. Miss Pink said quickly. ‘You touch her and you have to kill me —’
‘Kill? Kill? Listen, you —’ He caught himself just in time, dropping his voice but sounding the more menacing for that. ‘Don’t you start about me killing,’ he grated. ‘You and her, and that Cole. I go to Seattle to sell deer meat. I never stole nothing from this house in my life. I’m no thief —’
‘You’re a poacher,’ Edna said calmly.
‘So? I take a deer now and again but them never belonged to Charlie. Them’s wild beasts. I’m no thief, I tell you, and here you are: all of you, trying to pin murder on me.’
‘I didn’t say that.’ Edna looked shocked.
He gaped at her, then turned to Miss Pink. ‘She lost her mind. I’m outa here.’
‘Daddy said —’
He checked on his way to the door. ‘Daddy said I pushed my wife in the river,’ he told Miss Pink in grotesque mimicry. ‘Daddy said I was Jen’s father and I give her a baby. Daddy’s roasting in hell right now and I bet he’s telling the devil I shot him and hung him up in the stirrup so’s Ali drug him to his death.’
‘You did?’ Edna asked, surprised.
*
‘Where was everybody?’ Miss Pink asked. ‘There was no one at Glenaffric except —’
‘We had a problem here,’ Sophie said, running her eye critically over Barb. ‘This animal’s sweating too much. We had a mare dropping her foal early, had to send for the veterinarian. We saved her and the foal but it was touch and go there for a while.’
‘You’ll have to keep better records. Barb’s in season. She came down to Glenaffric rather than here, just to find Ali.’
‘Did they —?’
‘Not yet. She’s all yours. Skinner was at Glenaffric.’
‘He was? Why?’
‘Logical when you think about it. Cole must have gone to him and implied his collusion in the thefts — that is, if he didn’t actually accuse him. Evidently Cole said too much, threw in something about Charlie; Skinner rushed up to Edna to — well, I’m not sure exactly why he went, you know the state she’s in now. He didn’t hurt her, just railed against the family. I arrived and he treated me to a tirade about being accused of theft and murder, and all he
did was take deer meat to Seattle. Maintains he’s no more than a poacher. Oh, he did say that if Byer was the thief then he was in it on his own.’
‘Typical,’ Sophie grunted, pulling off the steaming saddle. ‘Thieves falling out.’
17
Spiro Blair was in the process of seducing his new secretary, the first move being to buy her an expensive lunch at the Riverside Restaurant. Spiro owned and managed the Lonesome Cloud Guest Ranch and Resort, and he went through secretaries as fast as his wife discovered his affairs, which was easy since she looked after the accounts of the business and Spiro’s ladies didn’t come cheap.
Tami Ford was pleased with life. Not euphoric — she would have preferred her host to be young and muscular, but she was enough of a realist to know that in this town a girl was unlikely to find a hunk with money. Tami was the youngest of a family of six: junk food and big sisters’ hand-me-down clothes. At eighteen and with ravishing looks she was revelling in the attentions of a wealthy man.
Beautiful, Spiro thought smugly, observing her profile softened by the umbrella’s shade but illumined by the reflection from the water. The river slid past, smooth as oil with only the occasional dip and swirl of a lazy whirlpool. A pallet drifted by, residual debris of the storm.
‘Isn’t there a leash law in this town?’ Tami asked idly. She was a country girl.
‘What?’ He tore his gaze away from her face. ‘Leash law?’ A German Shepherd and some kind of hound showed on the far bank of the river, slipping through the willows, approaching the water as if they would take to it, retreating, running along the bank.
‘I see,’ Tami said. ‘It’s that log they’re interested in. You don’t think there could be a puppy caught up…?’
It wasn’t a log but a small tree complete with roots now washed clean, but tangled with a raft of sticks and the odd plank, with plastic litter and something that rolled as it came level with the restaurant.
‘It’s a dead cow,’ Spiro said. ‘Drowned in the storm.’ At that moment, out of the wrack an arm appeared and a hand. The hand waved to them.
Tami’s screams heralded a period of frenetic confusion and put paid to Spiro’s peace of mind. For some time he was the only person available for interview and the Press made a meal of him, in lieu of the police. The sheriff was concerned to catch up with the body, although he wasn’t convinced that the couple had seen a hand; stripped twigs could produce the effect, and as for the waving — they’d said it had rolled at that moment, this object that they said was a man. And why did it have to be a man? Given some of the teens that hustled in local bars it might as well be a woman. So by the time his deputy had got around to deciding that some action had to be taken and he’d reported back to the Sheriff’s Department, the body had passed Irving and was among the braided channels and the swamplands below the town. And no way was the sheriff going to call in a chopper because a couple who’d had a skinful of margaritas thought they’d seen a hand. The body floated on, nestled in its raft of debris. It was the dogs that finally revealed its position.
*
At Glenaffric and the homestead they were short-handed at a time when the tourist season was about to start and, as luck would have it, two animals demanded expert attention. Tomorrow Val and Clyde were scheduled to take the first pack-trip into the back country so there was all the sorting and packing to do for that, and now they had a newly foaled mare who must be watched for a while and a decision had to be made regarding Barb. And there was Edna who shouldn’t be left on her own. Fortunately, on the Monday the maids would return after their weekend off.
On Sunday Jen and Bret drove to Glenaffric to confer with Sophie on the ever-present problems of breeding, then Sophie left for Irving and a business lunch with Mr Seaborg, the lawyer. At the homestead Val and her brother worked frantically to cram days of preparation into a few hours, Miss Pink being pressed into service to fetch food and last-minute essentials from Ballard. She arrived back at the homestead as Jen emerged from the barn, carrying a bucket. The woman looked quite at home, as if the years of estrangement had never existed. Had Charlie’s death and the revelation of his lies been the ultimate catharsis that reunited mother and daughter?
‘Mom’s bringing in the herd with Uncle Clyde,’ Jen said. ‘Did you see the foal yet?’
Miss Pink went across to inspect the new arrival. ‘I hadn’t realised your mother was breeding horses,’ she observed, smiling as the creature stopped suckling and collapsed in a tangle of legs.
‘If you have a good mare, you breed. No sense in wasting the opportunity. It means that Val has one less animal for the pack-trips but of course she can have her pick of the others.’
‘The others?’
‘Mine. I find it difficult to come to terms with: that all Glenaffric’s stock belongs to me, barring the colts Sophie chooses. Ali is worth a fortune on his own.’
‘And the animals are only a part of it,’ Miss Pink murmured as the foal’s mother stepped delicately across the loose box to nuzzle her shoulder. ‘How does it feel: being fabulously rich?’
‘It’s a hassle, deciding what to do now that we can do anything. I mean, what do we do about Glenaffric — and this place?’ She gestured at the old cabin. ‘I’ll give Mom the land but she has to let me build her a proper house. She’s being awkward.’
‘She inherits too,’ Miss Pink pointed out.
‘I shall have far more — and I owe her.’
‘I imagine she thinks it’s enough to have you back.’
‘That’s what Sam says.’
‘What does she say?’
‘We don’t talk about that. We carry on as if none of it happened. I guess we’re both embarrassed. Do you think there’s any harm in it… not talking about the past?’
‘Not in the circumstances. You both have confidants, you see; you can talk to Bret and Sam, she can talk to Sophie’ — Miss Pink’s eyebrows rose — ‘and to Sam, of course, so your feelings will permeate as it were.’
Jen looked puzzled. ‘Neither of you is hiding anything,’ Miss Pink insisted. ‘And you’re both fond of each other, right?’
‘I’d die for her,’ Jen said, and her eyes widened as they did when she was startled, or she startled herself. She turned jerkily and Miss Pink followed her over the dusty floor to the head of the ramp.
They looked down the track towards the canyon. ‘Hilton’s a drag,’ Jen said, sounding curiously petulant. ‘He keeps badgering us about Erik Byer. How would we know where the guy is?’
‘It’s because of the new development.’
‘What? What development?’
‘The theft of your grandmother’s antiques.’
‘Oh, that. Yes, they told me. Byer always was a pain…’ She seemed to be waiting for more.
‘And he could have been involved in your grandfather’s death,’ Miss Pink said calmly. ‘If he was shot. Perhaps he wasn’t.’
Jen swallowed. ‘Are you saying he wasn’t shot? So what do the police think happened?’
Miss Pink looked vacuous. ‘A murder rigged to look like an accident? One person to hold Ali, the other to lift an unconscious man and fix his leg in the stirrup?’
‘You’re mad.’
Miss Pink appeared not to have heard. There was no retraction, no apology; there was denial, then deep thought, visualising possibilities. ‘Byer?’ Jen ventured. ‘But then who — oh, Skinner!’ More thought. ‘What would the motive be?’
‘Charlie had discovered the thefts, but there would be revenge as well in the case of Skinner: for the lie about your parentage.’
The colour drained from the younger woman’s face. She took a step and leaned against the door jamb.
Miss Pink glanced at her. ‘All in the past now,’ she said comfortably. ‘You’re reconciled with your mother —’
‘She didn’t know. I didn’t know until after he was dead. How could she have known? I told you a couple of days ago: Sam told me part of it, Edna told me the rest — but only afterward
s. There’s no way it could have been rigged: even with one of them holding his head, even Mom couldn’t have made him stand while Uncle Clyde worked the foot into the stirrup, and Mom can do anything with a horse. I know it couldn’t have been like that, anyone would know. If Hilton’s saying that he’s got some ulterior motive.’
‘No one’s saying it. I was presenting an hypothesis: considering how Byer and Skinner might have worked it. Your mother’s in the clear, Jen. She was trying to incriminate herself but that was only to protect you.’
Jen grinned. ‘Actually I’m the obvious choice — all that money I inherit. That’ll be why Hilton pulled Bret in. The only reason he hasn’t questioned me is that he’s frightened of the money. Wild, isn’t it: Charlie’s money protecting me against an accusation of Charlie’s murder? But Hilton has to be careful; he’s not going to come up against the kind of heavyweight lawyer I can afford — for myself or anyone else.’ She sounded vicious now, looking past Miss Pink, focused on something beyond the corrals.
Sounds became audible: the drumming of hoofs, people’s cries; in the barn the mare neighed.
They moved down the ramp as the horse herd jostled through an open gate into a corral. Behind them Val stared at Miss Pink, slid down from her horse and slammed the gate shut. She strode towards them, pulling her mount, glowering from Jen to Miss Pink. ‘What’s going on?’ she barked.
‘I’m just back from the store,’ Miss Pink said, with only a trace of surprise. ‘We’ve been looking at the new foal.’
‘What have you —’ Val began, turning on Jen.
‘Where’s Uncle Clyde?’ the girl asked wildly.
Val stared at her and blinked. ‘He’s fixing a fence,’ she said distractedly. ‘The horses got into the woods. It’s why we took so long…’ She was trying to smooth out her expression. ‘Who’s with Grandma?’
‘Bret. I gave the mare a bran mash, Mom. She took it all and the foal’s feeding like he was starved.’
