Miss Pink Investigates 3

by Gwen Moffat

  He looked up at her with the eyes of a frightened little boy. ‘He’s been like this since he came in yesterday,’ Maxine said, smoothing his hair. She dropped down beside him. ‘What happened, baby? Tell Mommy.’

  He drew back against the door jamb and stared across the valley, his eyes glazed. He shivered.

  ‘What did you see?’ Miss Pink asked.

  Maxine turned astonished eyes on her, then on her son. Myrtle came along the porch from her store. ‘What happened?’ she asked. ‘Good morning, ma’am. What did Shawn see?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he shouted. ‘I never saw nothing!’ His lower lip trembled and he made a tentative move towards his mother.

  ‘Of course he didn’t!’ She pulled him to her, and now she looked even more bewildered than he did. ‘What could he have seen? What’re you talking about?’

  ‘A strange car,’ Miss Pink said in surprise. ‘I came here to ask if Shawn saw any strange cars, or people about – such as a man on a horse whom he didn’t know, or hikers – if he saw anyone like that when he came home last night.’

  He had twisted in his mother’s arms and was regarding Miss Pink, quite still now and his eyes suddenly intelligent, then, without obvious transition, his face was stony again. ‘I never saw nothing,’ he said dully.

  ‘You mustn’t badger him,’ Myrtle chided. ‘You can see how badly shocked he is.’

  She drove to Weasel Creek, bathed and dressed in clean clothes, and it was not until she was sitting in the shade drinking coffee and contemplating the Crimson Cliffs that she remembered she had agreed to spell Dolly. She thought about this. For some time she had been vaguely aware that cars were passing her road-end and had felt relief that she was no part of this busyness. If she returned to the Estwick place she would be drawn in again. She compromised. She got up, meaning to telephone and find out if Dolly was waiting for her, but from her living-room window she recognised a white car that was turning down Forset’s track. She climbed into the jeep and followed.

  ‘I’m not surprised you forgot,’ Dolly said, meeting her in the yard. ‘You must be worn out after last night. No sweat. The doctor’s given Paula a sedative and Sam’s with her.’

  ‘Sam is with her?’

  ‘He can cope. He refused to take any tranquillisers himself, said he’d got to go see to his cattle. That’s a laugh; he’s got about three steers. But if he’s still thinking of going after the killer, he’s got no more idea who it is than anyone else. Anyway, the place is swarming with police and no doubt they’ll be watching to see he doesn’t leave the place armed.’

  ‘But— ’ Miss Pink was nonplussed. ‘After Paula’s outburst in front of those uniformed men, I thought— ’

  ‘You’re behind the times. Some plainclothes men arrived and they’re a lot different than those fat guys. Everyone knows it was just shock and hysteria with Paula. Hi, Sarah – ’ as the girl appeared on the porch. ‘What did you do with John?’ The tone was brittle.

  ‘He’s resting. What happened up the road?’

  Dolly shrugged. ‘They didn’t take me into their confidence, but there are people on the banks of the creek so I guess they’re looking for the place where he – where she was put in the water.’

  ‘And the weapon,’ Miss Pink said. ‘They’ll be searching for that, unless— ’

  ‘Unless what?’ Dolly asked sharply.

  ‘Unless it’s been washed and replaced.’

  ‘So – the police won’t know that. They’ll still be looking.’

  Sarah regarded them thoughtfully, then turned her attention to the valley. The creek was hidden by the near swell of a pasture and only the tops of distant cottonwoods were visible.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ Forset’s voice came from the shadows. ‘Come in, ladies; don’t stand in the yard.’

  They went into the living-room. After the last twenty-four hours Miss Pink felt a sense of shock that the view should be the same. Only the light was different. Forset brought beer and glasses, sat down and studied her face. ‘You’ve had a lot of experience with murder,’ he stated heavily.

  ‘Some.’

  ‘What’s your opinion of this – outrage?’

  She had been afraid of this. ‘You have to keep an open mind at the start— ’ she began.

  ‘Is it Estwick?’

  ‘John!’ Dolly was appalled.

  He turned on her. ‘Paula accused him – and isn’t the first suspect always a member of the family?’

  ‘If the spouse is a victim,’ Miss Pink agreed. ‘But this is different.’ Unhappily she reflected that the difference made it worse, not better for Sam.

  Dolly asked quietly: ‘John, you want it to be Sam?’

  He glowered at her. ‘It’s what the police think.’

  The older women studied his face, trying to read his mind. All Sarah’s attention seemed to be on the view.

  ‘And you, miss,’ he turned on the girl with a joviality that deceived no one: ‘You’ve been very quiet; what do you think?’

  Dolly’s eyebrows rose. Miss Pink thought of Sarah’s age and was deeply puzzled.

  Sarah said: ‘I think it had to be a stranger, some kind of drifter who came down here, looking for work perhaps, and could have been hanging around the Estwick place just when Birdie showed up. Afterwards, of course, he’d get back to the main road as fast as possible, hitch a ride with the first truck. He’ll be over the state-line by now. He may never be found.’

  ‘You got it all worked out,’ Dolly said.

  The others were silent. She had set them thinking. After a while Miss Pink asked: ‘Would you get that kind of person in these parts? Is it possible?’

  Forset nodded. ‘It happens occasionally: people who have opted out, no car, no money; they’ll work a few days, sometimes for a whole season, sleep in a barn, and then they move on again. They’re not normal, of course, but harmless: reclusive, solitary men without family ties. And then there are men who take to the wild, live in caves or shelters, poach deer and steal the odd calf, break into cabins for flour and sugar and tobacco. They’re more of a problem. Sometimes they’re vicious.’

  Sarah said: ‘There’s a theory that it’s better to try to integrate mental patients in the community than keep them shut up in hospitals all their lives. Truth is, cutbacks in health care mean we can’t afford to keep people in institutions; there are too many of them.’

  ‘The same in Britain,’ Miss Pink said. ‘It’s meant to be applied only to people who show no tendency towards violence, but there are always some who will slip through the net.’ She returned their looks of dawning comprehension. ‘The theory has some comfort,’ she told Sarah, ‘but if you’re right, and he’s pushed on, he has to be found, because children are at risk in other communities.’

  ‘He could live off the land,’ Forset pointed out. ‘Keep away from people until the furore dies down.’

  ‘If he keeps hidden,’ Dolly said. ‘And if he comes into a town, the police should pick him up. That is, if they’re convinced the killer is a hobo.’

  ‘You’ve made us feel better, young woman.’ Forset stood up and, indeed, he looked quite happy. ‘Another beer, ladies?’ Dolly was staring at him. ‘It’s not pleasant to think that one of your friends is a monster,’ he told her, evidently thinking his change of mood needed explanation. ‘In fact, it’s incredible. I mean, who? Of the seven others, six – leave out Jerome, of course – there’s Sam, Art Stenbock, Plummer, Erik, the Duvals … it’s madness. They’d have to be mad, and I ask you, I’m asking you: which one of those men is that mad?’

  ‘Dolly said you went to the Brenners to ask Shawn something.’ Sarah had followed Miss Pink out to her jeep. ‘He left the other children about the same time as Birdie. Did he see anyone on the road?’

  ‘It’s peculiar; he’s hiding something, I’m sure of that. He’s a frightened little boy and he’s protesting too much – that he saw nothing.’ She regarded Sarah thoughtfully. ‘Someone should make him talk; if he did see so
mething, or someone, he’s in danger all the time he keeps it to himself. He hasn’t told his mother; she’s more bewildered than he is. As for Myrtle, she maintains he’s in shock. I think he’s lost; he doesn’t know what to do.’

  ‘You think he saw a strange car, or a hobo?’

  ‘He would have been in a position to – or would he? If Birdie was attacked on the way home, around the vicinity of the creek, say, her attacker would have to be there, in position, around the time she left the field, in which case Shawn couldn’t have seen him because by the time the boy reached the road the man would have been already concealed by the Estwick woods.’

  ‘Where was Sam?’ Sarah was unexpectedly vehement. ‘If you rule out Sam as the killer,’ she explained, ‘why didn’t he see something?’ She answered her own question. ‘Either he was at the ranch and Birdie was attacked on the way home, or he was away from the buildings, fencing, something like that, and she was killed when she reached home. Because she saw a bum stealing something? And Sam would have no alibi,’ she murmured.

  Miss Pink was not listening. ‘If he reckoned he couldn’t get home in time,’ she mused, ‘if there’d already been a peal of thunder, a bad one, as he was approaching the Estwicks’ road-end, would he have raced down to their place for shelter? I think he would.’

  ‘Who are you talking about?’

  ‘Shawn, of course. Shelly Olson said he was afraid of thunder.’

  ‘Is he? I didn’t know that.’

  ‘That’s when he could have seen someone.’

  ‘So why didn’t Sam as well?’

  Chapter 8

  Estwick had seen nothing, because, just before the storm struck, he was burying the putrid carcass of a deer which he had found rotting on the bank of the creek upstream of his house. The police accompanied him to the spot and Schaffer and Morgan dug until they uncovered a hoof and a fearful stench, when they were told to fill the hole in again. Estwick, watching, had shown neither amusement nor interest. Miss Pink heard this account from Frankie Gray who, by late Sunday afternoon, seemed to know a great deal that had happened in the community since the discovery of the body.

  ‘The telephone’s a great help,’ she explained. ‘People don’t want to go far from their houses, but they’re bursting to talk.’

  ‘Everyone is?’ Miss Pink asked. They were sitting beside the pool, in the shade of a ramada made of cactus ribs. Jerome had been lounging with his eyes closed. Now he opened them and regarded his wife intently.

  ‘No,’ Frankie admitted. ‘I was talking loosely. You force me to concentrate on my terminology. People were not bursting to talk when they answered the phone; just the opposite, they were wary and suspicious. Their first thought would be that this was the police on the line. However, after I’d gossiped for a space: “How are you? Are the children upset? Have the police been to you?” they opened up. Then they talked. But – everyone?’ She glanced at Jerome. ‘Not everyone.’

  ‘Did you call Lois?’ he asked. ‘She must have been devastated: all her theories of trusting strangers blown sky-high.’

  ‘I didn’t get to speak to her. Art answered and I couldn’t say much to him because he saw the body. I asked after Lois. He said she was all right. He was one of those who didn’t want to talk. He sounded very subdued.’

  ‘Where was he yesterday afternoon?’

  Miss Pink, who had been watching a lizard stalking a grasshopper, turned to Frankie in surprise. ‘You didn’t ask him?’

  ‘Of course I did. The police will. He was cleaning the flues in their cookstove just before the storm.’

  ‘So if you asked him that, presumably you asked him how he could prove it?’

  ‘No, he told me.’

  ‘Oh, come on!’ Jerome protested.

  ‘Really. He said he’d chosen to do it then because it was a filthy job and Lois climbs up the wall if he cleans flues when she’s home, but she’d gone to Nebo with Paula. She was delighted when she got back and found her stove drew properly.’

  ‘He gave you a lot of extraneous information,’ Jerome said drily.

  ‘He was establishing his alibi. He bathed in the creek afterwards.’

  ‘What!’ Miss Pink sat up and the lizard skittered across the tiles.

  ‘He was dirty, covered with soot.’

  ‘Yes, he would be.’ She exchanged glances with Jerome who looked across the pool in the direction of the Stenbocks’ cabin, hidden by the tops of pinyon pines. ‘He’d be over a mile from the Estwicks’ place,’ he mused, ‘and the Olson cabin in between.’

  ‘So Lois went to town with Paula,’ Miss Pink murmured. ‘And Jo was at the Duvals’, incidentally giving them – well, giving Bob Duval – an alibi. Alex was “pulling fence”. What’s that, Jerome?’

  ‘Dragging down the old fence, preparatory to putting up a new one. Where was Alex doing that?’

  ‘I’ve forgotten, if I ever knew. Wherever he was, he has no alibi. He had been with young Mike – Olson?’

  ‘Warman, actually,’ Frankie supplied. ‘It’s immaterial; we call them all Olson, they don’t seem to mind. So Mike was with Alex. No one told me that.’

  ‘Mike went home early and helped Erik mend a henhouse.’ Miss Pink avoided their eyes, recalling Mike’s ambivalent attitude when his stepfather said he came home at three. She said, looking over the pinyons: ‘Mike and Erik alibi each other.’

  ‘And I can’t alibi my old man here because I was asleep.’ Frankie smiled wryly. ‘Do you realise how ridiculous all this is?’

  ‘The police will be taking it seriously enough. It’s better that we should too, then we won’t be shocked when they start asking the kind of questions they ask of suspects.’

  Jerome had relaxed in his chair again. ‘Thank God I’m in the clear; I don’t think they could seriously suspect me.’

  Frankie’s eyes widened. ‘I was not asleep,’ she said firmly.

  ‘You’ll tell the truth, my dear; you couldn’t lie to save anyone’s skin. You were asleep.’

  Miss Pink found the exchange touching and smiled indulgently before she remembered the object of the conversation. ‘They’ll go to Plummer, a man living alone. He must have been in touch with you, Frankie.’

  ‘My dear, he came here. What else could he do? After seeing the body he went home and bathed and had a drink and then he started thinking, and realised that his own position was awkward, to say the least. He tried to get hold of Dolly but he couldn’t get a reply because she – and I – were everywhere this morning except in our own houses. For some reason he wouldn’t talk to Jerome— ’

  ‘I was a suspect.’

  ‘But as soon as I came home (he must have been watching for me to come down the canyon) he was here. By that time he was pretty incoherent. We poured black coffee down him and got him sober, more or less.’

  ‘Did he say anything reasonable?’

  ‘He told me that late yesterday afternoon he was asleep, in his bedroom – it was pretty enervating in the canyon before the storm – and the first he heard of anything untoward was Art Stenbock calling him and asking if he’d go out and help look for Birdie.’

  They were silent, Miss Pink calculating.

  ‘That’s everybody,’ Frankie said, watching her. ‘Alex Duval was fencing, Bob Duval was talking to Jo just before the storm; Art was cleaning flues, Glen was asleep, Jerome was right where he is at this moment – and John Forset was rushing round his buildings trying to stop things blowing away before the gusts.’

  ‘Those are not facts,’ Miss Pink demurred. ‘Apart from Bob Duval, who’s alibied by Tracy and Sandy as well as by Jo – they were at Wind Whistle too – and apart from Erik who must be alibied by countless Olsons, the whereabouts of the rest of them are not known. We only know what they say.’

  ‘Six men have no alibis,’ Jerome explained to his wife.

  ‘Five.’

  ‘No, my dear. I’m innocent but I don’t have an alibi.’

  Frankie stood up. ‘I’m going to fix u
s a meal. You’ll stay, Melinda? Shall I call Glen, sweetie? We can’t leave him to eat alone tonight.’ Jerome was silent. ‘I won’t call him,’ she said easily. ‘Where can Sarah be? She’s been gone ages.’

  Jerome sat up slowly. ‘Where did she go?’

  ‘I don’t know. I saw her riding down the track and I called to her but evidently she didn’t hear me.’

  ‘She may have gone to the Brenners,’ Miss Pink said, and told them of her conviction that Shawn was concealing something.

  ‘Shawn’s like Birdie – like she was,’ Frankie said. ‘Both introverts, and unpredictable.’

  Jerome disagreed. ‘Unpredictable, yes, and I’m not sure what you mean by introverts in this context, but Birdie was a wild little creature; like a young animal, Sarah says: instinctive, impulsive … You could say Shawn is the same superficially: instant gratification, but that boy has nothing of the animal about him.’ He held Miss Pink’s eye. ‘I’ve met him occasionally, and stopped and spoken to him, as one does with all the children. He’s extremely polite and soft-spoken and very, very careful.’ He turned to his wife. ‘He’s the antithesis of Birdie, who was suspicious of everyone she didn’t take a shine to – and she let you know it; she wore her heart on her sleeve. But I’m not surprised that Shawn’s concealing something; he conceals everything.’

  ‘The behaviour expert,’ Frankie said fondly, and bent and kissed him on top of his head. ‘Sun’s over the yardarm, sweetie – ah, I hear a horse!’

  It was galloping. A frisson ran through them; people who care for their horses come home slowly. Through the pines they caught a flash of the blue roan, then the hoofbeats dropped to a walk and Sarah appeared at the gap between the cabin and the pool. She did not dismount.

  ‘The police could be headed this way,’ she told them.

  ‘That’s all right.’ Jerome made a show of reassurance. ‘Did you talk to them yet?’