Miss Pink Investigates 3

by Gwen Moffat

  Miss Pink became aware of a sweet cloying smell. ‘I see well enough— ’ she began.

  Dolly’s voice came from behind her. There was a hiss in it. ‘What did he do, throw something? A rock?’

  Shawn faded into the shadows like a mouse. His mother stepped back and closed a door. She swayed as she turned to face them and put a hand on the door jamb to steady herself. In that position she resembled a beautiful animal defending its young, but the eyes were vacuous. She was breathing hard and the sweet smell seemed to fill the room.

  ‘Why don’t we all sit down and have something to calm our nerves?’ she asked, subsiding in a chair and staring at Dolly. ‘I’ve never been able to understand this thing you have against kids,’ she went on mildly. ‘It’s not natural in a woman, even middle-aged.’

  Dolly muttered an obscenity and turned, then stopped short. ‘You’ve got a customer,’ she said.

  A pick-up was turning in off the road. ‘Sam needs a drink,’ Dolly went on nastily. ‘Has to be that; there’s nothing else on offer.’

  ‘Christ!’ Maxine stared down the track. ‘I can do without him.’

  Sam Estwick was a tall, spare man in his late thirties. He had a brown hatchet face, cool eyes and a drooping moustache. He wore a greasy cap which he did not remove as he stepped into the cabin. He looked round as if he belonged there, nodding to the company, his eyes resting longer on Maxine.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said rudely, focusing on him. ‘This is a neighbour, Sam Estwick,’ she told Miss Pink. ‘He lives in the canyon and his wife won’t let him drink so he comes here. And that makes me popular, as you might expect.’

  ‘Listen, Sam.’ Dolly was urgent, ignoring Maxine, as everyone was doing. ‘Shawn threw a rock at the horses. Can’t you do something?’

  He shrugged. ‘He’s not my boy.’

  Dolly opened her mouth then exhaled audibly. She tried again. ‘So what would you do if it was your horse?’

  ‘I’d beat him.’ He grinned. ‘It was your horse. You beat him.’

  ‘Over my dead body,’ Maxine said. She had found an empty glass and was staring at it vacantly. Now she waved it. ‘Beer’s in the fridge, Sam. Get me one while you’re there. Sorry – Miss Pink, what’ll you have?’

  ‘Nothing for me, thank you.’

  ‘We’re on our way,’ Dolly said. ‘I’ll be back shortly. He put soot on one of my paintings too,’ she told Estwick, ‘but you wouldn’t be interested.’

  Maxine was regarding her pointedly. ‘You’re letting yourself go, Dolly,’ she said, as if she had given the matter considerable thought. ‘You’re putting on weight and your pants are too tight. How about we go to Denver, buy some new clothes, have our hair fixed nice – a facial perhaps?’

  Dolly took a breath but Miss Pink was at her elbow. ‘Let’s go,’ she urged, manoeuvring the younger woman towards the door. Estwick followed them out of the cabin. ‘Is that kosher?’ he asked. ‘He really did throw a rock at the horses?’

  Dolly glared at him. Miss Pink said: ‘I saw it.’

  ‘The bugger! He’s been on at me to get him a pony for months because Birdie’s got one and all the other kids ride. He can ride himself – but I’d trust him with a pony only as long as he was in my sights. He’s never touched my animal, mind. He knows what would happen.’

  ‘Over Maxine’s dead body,’ Dolly said sweetly.

  ‘Yeah, well— ’ He looked away. ‘The kid needs a father.’

  ‘You can’t be that, Sam, but you might try acting as a substitute.’

  ‘No one can control that kid. And the old lady encourages him. She suggested she’d buy him a pony if I found one cheap. He’s got her eating out of his hand, his mother too for that matter. All I can say is: don’t bring an animal up here – ’ his lips stretched, ‘ – and if you come in a car, park where you can keep an eye on it.’

  Miss Pink’s jaw dropped. Dolly said: ‘He means it. We got a budding psychopath on our hands.’ They rode away. ‘And small wonder,’ she went on, when they were out of earshot, picking up the conversation where she had left it. ‘What can you expect with an alcoholic for a mother, and that raddled old witch for a grandma? All the same, he’s a runt: he should have been drowned at birth.’

  Miss Pink said: ‘Estwick didn’t mention Birdie’s coming back.’

  ‘And the part we played in it. He might not know about us. Maybe Sarah didn’t say; she hasn’t got much time for Paula. Anyway, Sam’s used to Birdie going off and he probably thinks it’s a great joke, her jumping her pony out of the paddock. That makes Birdie one up on Paula.’ Dolly glanced sideways at Miss Pink. ‘I shouldn’t think that’s a smooth marriage; everything’s public in a place like this, and Paula has to know where Sam is at the moment, and what he’s doing. It won’t make it any easier for her that. Maxine is bored to tears by Sam; more than that, she wants him out of her hair. Maxine’s set her sights on Glen Plummer.’

  ‘The millionaire?’

  ‘Who else? Maxine’s broke. I know she’s lived on food stamps in the past and – tell you the truth – that’s why I let Myrtle go on selling my paintings after I started selling well in town and didn’t need Myrtle any longer. I felt sorry for them, you know? And Maxine hasn’t always been mean. It’s only lately she feels I’m treading on her toes and she’s gotten real nasty. O.K., I know I’m overweight and my hair’s in a mess but that’s not the kind of thing you make remarks about in public. ’Course, she was drunk – and I guess I’d let Myrtle keep the pictures, but not with that little bastard fouling them.’ Dolly’s voice was rising.

  ‘How are you treading on Maxine’s toes?’

  ‘Oh, that. Why, Glen Plummer comes over to my place now and then, but he’s the kind of guy will visit with any woman who’ll listen to him. He says he’s bored with all that money and no goals. His wife died last year, of hepatitis, and he’s not over it yet. Maxine’s full of sympathy and since he likes a drink himself I’d never be surprised if they drove off to Vegas one weekend and came back married. She could manipulate him that far – but she gets mean when she remembers I might steal him from under her nose. As for Sam Estwick: he’s in the way; she’s afraid he’ll drive Glen off.’ She was thoughtful. ‘I wonder if she sounds off in front of Shawn. If she did, that could be why he mussed up my picture. They’re very close, those two – and that could account for a lot. She didn’t wean him until he was three years old. At least, that’s her story. I’m not sure Maxine hasn’t a rather peculiar mind in addition to everything else.’ Dolly’s attention was not on the road and the horses loitered. Mouse tripped. She was alert immediately, glanced at her watch and said: ‘I want those pictures where I know they’re safe: in my house. Can we go faster? I must get the car and rescue them before young Shawn decides to get his own back because I spoke my mind back there.’

  But the ground was giving up the stored heat of the day and Miss Pink had no desire for speed. ‘You go on at your own pace,’ she said. ‘I shall walk and enjoy being lazy.’

  ‘Right. I’ll see you at John’s – or somewhere. There’s no chance of missing each other in this canyon.’

  She cantered ahead. Miss Pink checked Yaller’s eagerness to follow suit and when they were ambling peaceably in the dust again she saw that they were overtaking Lois Stenbock and a large white goat. Observing Miss Pink’s approach the woman waited: a thickset figure in a tiered skirt of mauve cotton and a green T-shirt with the head of a jaguar on the front. She looked harassed but not self-conscious, even when the goat jerked her backwards as it made a dive for some weeds.

  ‘Quite a handful you have there,’ Miss Pink said pleasantly. ‘I’m John Forset’s new tenant: Melinda Pink. I passed last evening.’

  ‘I’m pleased to meet you,’ Lois said. ‘This animal dragged her tether and I’ve been chasing her up the road. Don’t ever keep goats; they’re untrainable, except they’ll always come for food. Their milk’s good, though; it’s free of tuberculosis. Come down to the house and try some.
My husband wants to meet you.’

  Evidently Lois said what she thought and without following through, the implication here being that she had no interest in the visitor. Miss Pink’s lips twitched with amusement as she dismounted to stroll slowly down the track. At the end a man was splitting logs in the yard. As they approached he took a mighty swing at a log, the blade glanced off, chipped the chopping block and there was a resounding clang of steel on stone. Miss Pink winced. The man was wearing sneakers and he could have chopped off half his foot.

  Lois called: ‘I’ve brought our new neighbour to see you, Art. Here, take Snowball, and drive the peg in real hard this time. You’ve got to use the sledge; she’ll pull the peg out if you just push it home with your hand. No, wait; say “Hello” first.’

  Flustered, dropping the axe, wiping his hands down his jeans, he gave Miss Pink a limp handshake.

  ‘I’ve been hoping you’d come by,’ he told her, his eyes wide and ingenuous. He was a lanky man with thinning grey hair and a grizzled beard, carefully trimmed to a point.

  ‘He’s writing a book,’ Lois said with a proprietorial air. ‘He hopes you can give him some pointers.’

  Miss Pink smiled, sighed inwardly, and went to tie Yaller to a rail. Stenbock pulled the goat round a corner and his wife took the visitor inside.

  The cabin was dim but airy, screens on door and windows keeping insects at bay, and there were many of these on a warm afternoon. As her eyes became accustomed to the gloom Miss Pink made out a sofa covered with flouncy chintz and scattered with small, hard cushions, easy chairs to match, a large, solid table, scrubbed pale and with a bowl of eggs to one side, an oval stove in the centre of the room and another with a square surface in an alcove hung with copper pans and a battery of kitchen implements. The wooden walls were covered with posters: mountains, islands, a marsh with egrets, a baleful wolf, a sleepy puma licking its paw.

  Lois came from an inner room carrying a jug and glasses. Miss Pink sat down and tasted the milk, which was cold and very good. She admired the posters, the stoves, and the cosiness of the cabin, and was given a run-down on the Mormons of Salvation Canyon who had settled here in the nineteenth century, having had such a strenuous time working their way through the country north of the river that, once across the Colorado, they decided to go no further. The intention had been to colonise the empty region further south, but by the time they reached what they were to call Gospel Bottom their cattle were failing, they had lost two mules drowned in the river crossing – and a woman went into labour on the south shore. They looked around and the men decided that they could not do better than settle here.

  Stenbock came in with his hat full of eggs. ‘That little red chicken,’ he told his wife. ‘I found her nest under the old plough back of the apricot trees.’ He was transferring the eggs to the bowl. Lois watched him absently. ‘While they were exploring,’ she went on, ‘a boy rode up Calamity Mesa on a mule and it slipped and rolled down the slope, taking him with it. That’s why it’s called Calamity. Should you be mixing those eggs, Art? How long’s she been using that nest?’

  ‘Why, there’s six eggs, so I guess around a week.’ The couple regarded each other dubiously. Lois looked cross. ‘Now they’re all mixed up.’

  ‘No, I know which were the new ones, but some of them will still be fresh.’

  ‘Don’t touch them, just leave them.’ They argued, handling the eggs, the visitor forgotten.

  Miss Pink sipped her milk. A tortoiseshell cat came to the screen door and mewed. Still talking, Stenbock opened the screen, closed it, opened it again for three kittens to come bouncing in like furry balls. He checked and stared through the mesh.

  ‘Isn’t that Forset’s horse? Were you out with Dolly? I saw her go by.’

  ‘We were looking for the little girl: Birdie.’

  The Stenbocks exchanged glances. The woman’s lips were compressed to a thin line but her husband looked curiously helpless.

  ‘Has she turned up yet?’ Lois asked tightly.

  Miss Pink observed them with interest as she recounted the details of finding Birdie in Rustler Park. They listened with all expression carefully smoothed away. She found herself wanting to arouse some kind of reaction in them. ‘It’s a reflection on the atmosphere in this valley,’ she began, realising that in choosing her words she was sounding pompous, ‘or on the inhabitants, that no one seems the least concerned about the child’s safety, except her mother, or so I’m told.’ She paused.

  ‘There’s a lot of hysteria in this country about the safety of children,’ Lois said.

  ‘In urban areas it’s justified.’ Miss Pink was firm. ‘Not hysteria, but concern. It’s not out of place in many rural areas either.’

  The man’s eyes gleamed. Lois said, as if Miss Pink had not spoken, ‘I don’t hold with teaching children to distrust strangers. What kind of adults are they going to grow into? Frightened parents have paranoid children. I know Art doesn’t agree with me on this but I raised our two girls without fear or prejudice and now they’re afraid of nothing. And of nobody.’

  Miss Pink glanced at Stenbock for his contribution but he appeared merely attentive as if he were listening to someone else’s debate. She said: ‘Fear is not a bad thing.’

  ‘Respect,’ Lois contradicted, ‘not fear.’

  ‘We could be skirting the same ground.’ Miss Pink was equable. ‘I still find it amazing that a small girl can run loose anywhere without people worrying even a little.’

  ‘Except her mother,’ Stenbock reminded her, adding, at last, his own criticism, indirect though it was: ‘And our girls are now in Los Angeles, nursing. I’m only thankful they’re sharing an apartment.’ He stared at his wife who sniffed and said angrily: ‘People are like animals; if you show fear they’ll attack. Ruth and Katherine are more than capable— ’

  A telephone rang, the sound alien in this cabin with its woodstoves, the goat’s milk, the eggs. Lois rose with a swirl of skirts and went to a sideboard.

  ‘Why, it’s for you,’ she said in surprise, holding the receiver for the visitor: ‘It’s Frankie Gray,’ she added in a stage whisper. ‘She must have seen you come down the track.’

  In a pleasant, cultured voice Frankie Gray introduced herself, mentioned the meeting with Sarah that morning, and asked Miss Pink to come and eat with them. Miss Pink, who held that a certain etiquette should attend dinner invitations – some advance warning – declined politely, citing the need to bathe and unpack. Mrs Gray, however, was persistent, and she was forced to compromise, agreeing to come up later, around nine.

  She turned back to the room. Stenbock had disappeared, Lois was shaking eggs to see if they were addled. ‘You must come and eat supper with us when you’re settled,’ she said pointedly. ‘Art has to milk now and we won’t keep you any longer if you’re going up to the Grays. I’ll be in town tomorrow and I’ll go to the library, see if they’ve got any of your books.’

  Miss Pink saw that she was being given to understand that a favour was being conferred on her: she warranted study. They went outside where Yaller, annoyed at the interruptions to the homeward journey, was pawing the dust.

  ‘Would you hold his head?’ Miss Pink asked.

  Lois was suddenly diffident. ‘What do I do?’

  ‘Just grip the bridle firmly – here.’

  Yaller rolled his eyes. ‘I’ll call Art,’ the woman said, wanting nothing to do with it, turning with a flare of skirts under the horse’s nose. Miss Pink muttered as he jumped and flattened his ears. There was nothing to do now but wait for Stenbock. He came and held the bridle.

  ‘Are you going to be all right?’ he asked anxiously as she mounted from the chopping block and before he released Yaller’s head.

  ‘I’m heavy enough to hold him down,’ she responded grimly, and managed to do so over the last two miles to the Forset ranch, trotting at a good clip along the verge and sending the sandpipers screaming down the creek when the road came close to the water.

&nbs
p; Chapter 4

  From the outside the A-frame was raw and lacking in character. There was a balcony at half-height with breeze-block walls below and yellow pine above, except that most of the western wall that opened on the balcony was of glass. The steeply pitched roof lent a cramped air to the structure, dispelled as soon as one approached the main door, which was at the side. Now it could be seen that the accommodation was extensive, stretching back with rooms on two levels. The living-room boasted a mezzanine.

  Sarah, in white bib overalls and a black shirt, had met her at the door and taken her to the main room. Forewarned, remembering the lure of Forset’s picture window, Miss Pink ignored the glass wall and concentrated on the people present.

  Frankie Gray, despite a hospitable welcome, gave an impression of restraint. She was in her fifties, big-boned, with a solidity that suggested exercise and rigid dieting, nevertheless she was clearly not an outdoor type. In this harsh climate she had retained the delicate skin of a girl, and her fine silky hair had been layered and tinted by an expert. She wore a blouson and slacks in pale blue linen with a navy shirt. On anyone else it would have made the wearer appear massive but on Frankie it was chic.

  Her husband, Jerome, was an old man but well preserved. He had the kind of pouchy mobile face, not uncommon among American academics, that is reminiscent of an elderly turtle. From behind large spectacles he observed Miss Pink as if she were a new species, while greeting her in a gravelly Eastern accent and with elaborate courtesy.

  Dolly Creed, in designer denim, stood at a small bar with a stranger who turned out to be the tenant of the third A-frame: Glen Plummer. He was oddly proportioned. Basically a tall man, broad-shouldered with narrow flanks, he had developed a pendulous paunch which, far from making any effort to disguise, he accentuated with a close-fitting shirt decorated with mauve flowers on a white ground. It was hard to relate his taste in clothes with the astuteness required to make millions. No doubt, thought Miss Pink charitably, the old robber barons had their blind spots too.