by Gwen Moffat
‘Of course not. There was no need. Hilton wasn’t accusing me of shooting Charlie, he was on a fishing trip. Actually, he was quite friendly; he asked about the trail rides: where we went, did I screen the dudes for competence, that kind of stuff. He’s a local guy, he knows the canyon, he understood when I said we didn’t stop at the cabin on our way home after clearing the trail; we saw the pack-horse outside, thought Charlie was around and pushed on because I didn’t want Ali behind my string, spooking them. He was making conversation, not really interested. He looks on this business as a chore; he’s close to retirement and he doesn’t want anything getting in the way of a smooth exit. He said so. He’s a dozy bugger, says he hates wilderness deaths; if you can’t land a chopper the only way in is on a horse and he doesn’t like to ride. Ask me, he’s too bone idle to go in the back country.’
‘Cole isn’t,’ Miss Pink said. ‘He’s young, enthusiastic and has bags of energy, I’ll be bound. He could be ambitious. And Hilton’s not as idle as he makes out, otherwise how did he make lieutenant? They know more than they disclosed and I’m afraid they know more now than when they arrived. Did you tell Hilton Jen was at Benefit?’
‘No. Jen wasn’t mentioned except that she’s the chief beneficiary in the will.’
‘I think he knows she’s there —’
‘Why did he want to know about Ali?’ Sophie burst in. ‘Why didn’t he ask Val if he wanted to know?’
‘Know what?’ Val was at a loss.
‘He wanted to know who owned the stud now. I told him, said we were taking him over to Jen soon as he was fit. I didn’t give anything away, did I?’ Sophie appealed to Miss Pink.
‘You told the truth.’
They drifted to the door of the barn and looked out at Ali, his fine neck arched as he nibbled at a foreleg. ‘Scab’s itching,’ Sophie said absently.
Miss Pink was frowning. If Val had it right Hilton hadn’t been much impressed by the cash that Jen stood to inherit, and yet Cole had shown interest in the ownership of the horse. Sophie maintained that no one in the family had talked to the police — but Byer knew the contents of the will. And so did Skinner — ‘Why would they do that?’ came Sophie’s voice.
‘I’m sorry, I was thinking — about Ali. Why would they do what?’
‘They’ve gone to see Edna — on her own —’
‘She’s Charlie’s widow,’ Val said. ‘Of course they have to see her. Clyde’s there, he’ll make sure they don’t bully her. Anyway, what can she tell them?’
‘Why would they need to talk to Edna at all?’ Sophie turned to Miss Pink.
‘As Val says, she is the widow and she was the last person to see —’ She stopped just in time. ‘They’ll want to see all the members of the family, naturally.’ She appeared to be stating the obvious but she was thinking: why detectives? Unless they knew it was a bullet track in Charlie’s shoulder and therefore he had been shot. It could still have been an accident, but when the value of his estate was taken into account then the question was answered. What it came down to in police thinking was that other question: Who benefits? No doubt about the answer to that one.
The police didn’t stay long at Glenaffric. Miss Pink assumed that Edna would phone Val as soon as they left but Val wasn’t leaving that to chance. She posted herself in the paddock from where, ostensibly cutting down thistles, she could keep the start of the Glenaffric track in view. The others sat on the porch, watching and waiting. ‘We should be with her,’ Sophie said, her eyes on Val, glimpsed intermittently beyond the corrals.
‘It would look suspicious: three of us chopping at weeds.’
‘I meant Edna. She’s my sister. She should have support at this moment.’
‘She has Clyde.’
There was no response to this. Miss Pink stared fixedly as Ali came into sight, plodding after Val. ‘You’re thinking Clyde doesn’t have the resources to cope,’ she said.
‘He could panic. Those two are a formidable team.’ There was no need for her to identify which two, certainly she wasn’t referring to Edna and Clyde. ‘If they bully — hell, if they even hint that everything isn’t as it should be, Clyde will go to pieces. He’s nervy.’
‘It’s you who are panicking. Just because Clyde inherits half a million —’
‘And you’re forgetting how close they were to the hunting cabin that day,’ Sophie pointed out.
‘You’re suggesting Val and Clyde — together — that they went to the cabin —’
‘Police thinking. You know how their minds work.’
Miss Pink was silent. A gate clanged. Val was coming through the corrals. ‘Now we’ll know,’ Sophie said, getting to her feet. ‘Come along, you’re with us. We could need you.’
Needed for what? To protect Clyde? Val and Clyde? Ridiculous, the police weren’t even sure that it was a bullet track.
*
‘They’ve taken Byer away,’ Edna said when Val asked why his pick-up had followed the police car towards Ballard. ‘They want him to take them to the place where the accident happened.’
Val grinned. ‘Not today, he won’t. The cloud’s dropping; it’ll be raining by nightfall.’
‘Is that so, dear?’ Edna fussed with paper napkins although they were in the kitchen, drinking coffee from mugs.
Clyde looked genuinely amused. Far from being in a panic, he appeared excited and eager. Miss Pink remembered his head bowed on his saddle and Val trying to comfort him after they found his father’s body. He was the type who went quiet in a panic. ‘What do they hope to find up there?’ she asked, not expecting an answer.
‘His rifle,’ Clyde told her. ‘And tracks.’ His eyes shone.
Looking round the circle she saw that, without actually smiling, they all had this air of quiet amusement, except for Edna, struggling to open a packet of cookies. And Miss Pink, the countrywoman, knew why they were amused. It was going to rain and rain washed out tracks. ‘Is that what they came for?’ she asked ingenuously. ‘To find Byer to act as guide?’
‘They wanted to know about Charlie’s will,’ Edna said, sitting down, glancing at their mugs, concerned to be hospitable. ‘I told them as much as I knew, bearing in mind Charlie could have drawn up another. We’ll know tomorrow, after the funeral.’
Miss Pink had forgotten the funeral. ‘So that’s why they’re taking Byer,’ she said. ‘Everyone else who was on the search will be at the funeral.’
‘No,’ Clyde said. ‘They took him because he’s the only guy who isn’t family. There’s yourself, ma’am, but he’ll be classing you with us.’
‘Possibly, but surely, with the cloud down, Hilton knows they can’t go in today, not with a chopper, and it’ll soon be dark. They’ll go tomorrow. Why take Byer this afternoon?’
‘They took him because they want information.’ Edna’s eyes went to her daughter. ‘The fellow’s been talking.’
Val licked her lips and looked dubious.
‘What has he said?’ Miss Pink asked.
‘You don’t have to ask,’ Sophie cut in harshly. ‘You said yourself: the police know everything, someone must have talked. It’s obvious. It was Byer.’
‘And now he’s to take them to the site of the accident.’ Miss Pink put no emphasis on the word ‘accident’. She turned to Val. ‘And the night before, when you sent him through the canyon to find out what was keeping your father, he turned back at the landslide, or so he said. Would he have had time to reach the cabin?’
Val said slowly, ‘I have to think about that one… He didn’t report back to me in person, he called from his house — quite late as I remember. But we were in such a state that evening, times and sequences just passed me by.’
Clyde was frowning. ‘You’re suggesting Byer could have had a hand —’ He glanced at his mother, then back to Miss Pink. There was no need for him to complete the sentence. ‘What would his motive be?’ he asked.
‘I can think of one.’ She smiled. ‘It springs to mind, however far-fetched. If Bye
r were a petty criminal, an opportunist, he could never have made any money out of Charlie, who had a reputation for being — thrifty with his employees. On the other hand, the family, Charlie’s beneficiaries, would appear to be a soft touch. And everyone has secrets they’d prefer not to be publicised.’
‘Call him a blackmailer and be done with it,’ Sophie said. ‘But in that case he’d want to steer clear of the police. Val said he was off like a shot this morning —’ She bit her lip. Unfortunate choice of words. ‘Now he’s working with them.’
The next move was for Edna to say she would fire him and for Sophie to follow suit, stating she wouldn’t have him at the homestead. Val looked uncomfortable. Edna said, ‘I shall be sorry to lose him. I’ll advertise, maybe outside the state.’ She nodded at her son. ‘Someone has to be here when you’re helping Val with the trail rides.’
‘Jen and Bret will run the ranch, Mom.’ He was gentle with her.
‘I guess I’m jumping the gun, the will not probated yet an’ all.’ She made an apologetic gesture towards Miss Pink. ‘We’re going to make some changes around here,’ she explained superfluously. ‘Going to have our hands full for a while. We have to think where Jen and Bret are going to live. I can’t picture them here, not as it is; I’ve been wondering how we could make the place into apartments: for Jen, Clyde, me; that is, if that’s what they would like.’ She sparkled happily at them.
‘My sister’s lost it,’ Sophie said viciously as they drove away, leaving Val at Glenaffric. ‘She’s blocked out Charlie’s death and the significance of detectives coming here; all she can think about is plumbing and extra bathrooms.’
‘Displacement activity,’ Miss Pink murmured.
11
The weather broke in a fierce summer storm. Through the evening and for much of the night thunder crashed above the town, raged away through the mountains and came rolling back, heralded by lightning flashes that were momentarily blinding. When the onslaughts were at their most sensational, sleep was impossible. Miss Pink stood at her window, amazed that the town lighting should still be working. With the rain at its heaviest, it was like being on the inside of a waterfall, but fascinating so long as you were safe indoors. They were to learn that three calves had been killed by hail the size of golf balls.
By dawn the rain had stopped and everything steamed: water, trees, the roofs of Ballard. Long wraiths of cloud layered the slopes and the Thunder river came roaring through its narrows with a force that threatened to bring down rock.
Asked out of courtesy if she would care to attend the funeral, Miss Pink had declined. She was putting the finishing touches to Sophie’s outfit — a stunning suit in black and rose — when the doorbell rang.
‘Russell?’ Sophie murmured in surprise. But it was Hilton, dressed, like yesterday, as if his horse were waiting downstairs, which was almost literally so. He apologised for the untimely intrusion, his eyes absorbing Sophie’s appearance with frank admiration, looking past her to Miss Pink, in slacks and shirt. Would she accompany him on a little trip?
Anticipating that she was being asked to assist them in their inquiries (a phrase as loaded as ‘the usual suspects’) she was wary. ‘Tell me more,’ she commanded.
Sophie was hesitating at the door, reluctant to leave without knowing the reason for this call.
Hilton said, ‘You’ll be away to the funeral, ma’am.’ It was a hint.
Her nostrils flared. ‘Miss Pink is my guest.’
He looked abashed. ‘I know, and she’s not used to our ways but’ — turning to the visitor — ‘you’ve ridden in the back country. D’you think you could go in there again, start from Benefit? Someone has to show us where the body was found.’
‘What happened to Byer?’ It was jerked out of Sophie. Miss Pink closed her eyes in despair.
A smile touched Hilton’s lips — but he’d know that the family would discuss every new development, every nuance; they’d all know that Byer was to have guided the police to the site of the accident. ‘He’s gone missing,’ he said.
Miss Pink wasn’t surprised; the news confirmed her belief that Byer had a lot to hide, possibly more than blackmail — ‘There’s only yourself, ma’am,’ Hilton was saying, ‘Everyone else who was on the search will be at the funeral.’
He was right. Someone had to go. After all, with a mountain rescue, investigators have to be shown the site of the accident — incident, whatever — and that by one of the rescue team. ‘Of course I’ll come,’ she said. ‘What do I do about a horse?’
Hilton supplied the horse. He had arranged everything. He had a trailer waiting outside the sheriff’s office, four horses already loaded, Cole and an elderly man called Breslow completing the party. Breslow was introduced as a former policeman. Blandly regarding the lean body, the worn chaps and thick shirt, Miss Pink thought: hunter, horseman, tracker; Hilton wasn’t leaving anything to chance.
They drove to Benefit where the Ryans’ cabin was closed and their pick-up absent. They unloaded and Miss Pink was mounted on a chunky grey with black points, whose movement was as neat as his appearance. Cole, she noted, looked a trifle strained but he should be all right on the relatively easy ground. It was fortunate they weren’t going to ride through the canyon.
By the time they came out on the rim above the lake all the long cloud wraiths had evaporated and the world sparkled. New flowers had appeared after the rain: the big pale stars of bitterroot leafless on the drying soil, prickly pear with blooms of yellow tissue and always the haze of lupins drifted with Indian paintbrush. They halted on the lip of the escarpment and the lake below was gentian-blue, junipers deep green. A wren trilled bravely among the rocks.
They turned to her. At least, Hilton and Breslow turned, Cole seemed fascinated by the steep slope below their feet.
‘Further on,’ she said, and checked. ‘No, it was the horse that was to the south, the body was below here, a little way back perhaps, in trees. We didn’t see the body from this point, only the horse.’
‘We’ll start with the horse,’ Hilton said.
They descended, Miss Pink now in the lead, the grey happy on steep ground, hopping neatly down rocky steps. The older men followed closely but Cole trailed behind, both hands clutching the horn, unable to straighten out his mount’s lazy zigzags.
The night’s torrential rain had removed nearly all signs of tracks; they had to look closely to see that horses had been here before today, particularly since the ground had been so dry that hoofs had made only shallow prints, now washed away. In fact, Miss Pink couldn’t be sure at which cluster of boulders they’d found the stallion.
‘So we’ll leave the stud,’ Hilton said comfortably after she’d described how they’d found the animal, with the saddle under his belly. ‘And no rifle?’ he prompted. No, there had been no sign of a rifle.
‘Then where did you go?’
That was easy because she’d been leading Ali who was lame and didn’t want to go downhill so they’d contoured the slope, staying on a thin game trail. That showed clear enough, marked by deer who had passed along it this morning while it was muddy.
The fresh tracks brought them to the trees and a scatter of sodden horse droppings where the party had waited for Miss Pink and Val to return from the cabin with the blankets. They dismounted and walked the few yards to the place where the body had been found, the location obvious from the trampled vegetation.
Hilton looked further into the trees. ‘Now what?’ he asked Miss Pink.
‘This is as far as I came. It was the others who looked for his clothing while Val and I went to the cabin.’
‘And the rifle. They looked for the rifle.’
She nodded. He knew it all, he was verifying accounts, looking for discrepancies. How much had Byer told him, what had he told him?
They continued on foot. Now Breslow took over and Miss Pink — who thought that the storm would have erased all trace of the stallion’s passage — was astounded at the ease with which the man fol
lowed an apparently invisible trail over pine needles.
The belt of trees was thin and within a couple of hundred yards they emerged to open ground again. Above them was the escarpment, while steep slopes dropped away to meadows below. The ground was rougher here: bedrock on the trail, rocks jutting beside it, scree chutes below the scarp. This was where so much damage had been done to the body.
Here and there they found scraps of rag. Miss Pink came on a dime washed clean and shining. As she stood up, easing her back, she saw that the hunting camp had come in sight way below them, the pale thread of the main trail passing the cabin on a higher level. Ahead of them now was the start of the forest proper and, above, a break in the cliffs where a scatter of conifers climbed to the skyline. The slopes this side of the trees were covered with huckleberries and the trunk of a fir was raked with long claw marks: bear country.
They found his rifle in a patch where brambles hadn’t recovered from being squashed by a heavy body, as if the stallion had reared and fallen over. There was a hat too, a Stetson clearly indented by a horseshoe.
The rifle was loaded. Charlie hadn’t shot himself.
Breslow started to scramble upwards towards the escarpment. The men watched him but Miss Pink turned away, thinking that if there had been a bullet track in the body then there must be a bullet and, given the rest of the pointers, this would be the place to look for it. She considered the brambles and winced. No way was she going to search for it. She became aware that Hilton had turned to her.
‘What did you do last Saturday, ma’am?’
Of course, everyone would be a suspect — well, everyone who was in the vicinity when Charlie died, everyone close to the family. She blinked but it was no good playing the doddery old lady; from her ability to cope with the country they knew she was a tough nut. What they didn’t know was how devious she could be, although on that score she had the feeling Hilton might have suspicions, as she had of him. It took one to know one. ‘I went to Irving,’ she said, reflecting that at least she had an alibi, then, wryly, that the only person for whom she could vouch was Russell Kramer.