Miss Pink Investigates 3

by Gwen Moffat

  The screen door opened and Semple stepped inside. ‘Why, there you are, sweetie,’ exclaimed Charlotte. ‘We’ve been discussing Timothy and Joanne, speculating what happened. Miss Pink reckons Joanne’s in Hollywood and that she’s ditched Timothy because he’s a liability. She knows he’s an alcoholic but she figures he fell off the wagon. His publishers have lost touch with him.’

  ‘I know all that,’ Semple said.

  ‘Don’t be a bear, sweetie. You’re so transparent, isn’t he, Miss Pink? She saw you were terrified of someone so I had to tell her it was poor Joanne – well, not so poor, just impoverished.’ Semple seemed to have sagged inside his clothes. ‘Don’t look so beaten, honey,’ Charlotte persisted, ‘Joanne’s got other fish to fry now. Movie directors, no less. You’re safe.’ She took his arm and turned to Miss Pink, laughing. ‘This old boy’s personality don’t match his looks,’ she confided. ‘He’s shy as a mule deer where the ladies are concerned; I have to drag him to parties even if the only women present are Lorraine Wolf and Rosie Baggott.’ She gave him a playful push. ‘A good job you’ve got me to look after you. Now you go and fix that faucet. I’m going to show Miss Pink our collection of geodes.’

  Chapter 7

  ‘I can’t believe any of this.’ Rose Baggott reined in her grey at the fork and looked helplessly up the Crazy Mule trail. ‘Timothy had to go over Breakneck, so what are we doing looking for him in Crazy Mule?’

  Miss Pink shifted in her saddle. ‘I haven’t told you everything,’ she confessed. ‘Not what’s in my mind. I told you what the deputy said, and that wasn’t much: Joanne came down to Credit on her own, that is, she was alone when she met the logger above the town. There was blood on her, she called herself Fay. Prostitutes often give false names –’

  ‘She wasn’t a prostitute! I told you that already.’

  ‘All right. Let’s say there could be an innocuous reason for her giving the logger a false name, but the blood bothers me. Nothing about her story rings true; it’s more like something invented on the spur of the moment because she hadn’t realised that the blood had soaked through her outer clothing. And Timothy is an experienced explorer: he’d never have put a deer in the back of his vehicle, all the bother of skinning and butchering … rubbish! Nor would he leave a woman on top of a mountain range. All the same she had blood on her. I’m very disturbed about that. It’s why I felt I had to enlist your help even though his publisher wants me to keep it confidential. I can’t find him on my own.’

  ‘I promised I wouldn’t talk, and I mean that. What’s on your mind then? You think she ditched him –’ Rose’s hand flew to her mouth and it was Miss Pink who looked away. ‘No!’ Rose exclaimed. ‘That doesn’t make sense. She’d have taken the Jeep – and she was on foot when she met the logger.’

  ‘When she came to the wagon,’ Miss Pink amended. ‘She could have abandoned the Jeep close by.’

  ‘If she – stole the Jeep, where would she have left Timothy?’

  ‘I know only as much as you do. That’s why I want to talk to Asa Fortune. According to the Semples he knows the area like his own backyard.’

  ‘He’d talk only if he was innocent.’

  ‘Innocent of what?’

  ‘You know the story about the plane crash and the missing money, jewellery, stuff like that? If he found the Jeep and moved anything, removed it, he’s not going to say so, is he?’ She paused. ‘Suppose Timothy was in the Jeep?’

  ‘That possibility crossed my mind.’

  ‘Is that the real reason for having me with you when you tackle Asa?’ Miss Pink said nothing. Rose sighed. ‘OK. I said I’d help – and you’ll certainly get no help from the police. After two months, and no proof that Timothy’s up there on the mountain, they wouldn’t even send a chopper over.’ She started along the Crazy Mule trail and Miss Pink’s sorrel followed. ‘There’s no proof of anything,’ Rose muttered when the horses were level again.

  ‘It’s his silence worries me, not contacting his publisher.’

  The decision to take Rose into her confidence had not been easy until she reminded herself of the extent of the area involved, and remembered that, although Asa Fortune knew it intimately, he’d be most unlikely to talk to a stranger, and a foreigner at that. When she considered which of the Dogtown residents was best qualified to assist her, and to keep that assistance confidential, Rose was the obvious choice, and Rose owned horses, which could reach places that were inaccessible to vehicles. When the proposition was put to her she’d been intrigued and, although stressing that she was very busy, trying to get her hotel rooms fit for next season, she agreed that if anyone knew what had become of Timothy Argent, Fortune was the best bet. That was last night; this morning her confidence seemed to be on the ebb.

  ‘Are you bothered about Asa?’ Miss Pink asked, holding back her quick-stepping horse.

  ‘He hasn’t got much time for people – particularly now, in the fall.’ Rose smiled thinly. ‘Hunters don’t come up Crazy Mule; word gets around.’

  ‘What word is that?’

  ‘That Asa’s a homicidal maniac.’ Miss Pink stared at her. ‘Of course he’s not,’ Rose went on quickly. ‘He’s been known to shoot over people’s heads though.’

  ‘Why doesn’t he like people coming here?’

  ‘It’s his territory. He figures he owns it. He was born in Dogtown: the bastard son of Nellie Fortune who managed the hotel around 1900. The place was winding down even then but a few miners hung on scratching a living, hoping to strike it rich, and Nellie boarded them at the Grand Imperial. She lived until she was ninety-three, died in the seventies. Asa used to visit her in the old folks’ home at Endeavor; he’d hike out to the highway, thumb a lift with a local. No tourist would stop; he looks like an old Indian scout.’

  ‘What made him take to the woods?’

  ‘I guess nothing else suited. When we get close to his cabin I’ll say the word, you keep quiet and watch.’

  They rode on, each sunk in thought. Hoofs thudded softly in thick dust, leather creaked; the loudest sounds were those of the horses breathing and the chuckle of the creek among its boulders. The sudden drilling of a woodpecker was so explosive that even the horses threw up their heads.

  A deer came out of the trees, observed them calmly, then walked across the trail. Miss Pink glanced at Rose who laid a finger on her lips.

  The deer had gone down the path that led to the old cabin and the horses followed. The cabin door was open today and a man stood there, a rifle held casually in one hand. Two does grazed at the side of the clearing, a fawn slept under the cabin wall, and sitting upright and alert on the chopping block was a grey fox.

  The horses stopped. No one spoke. Asa Fortune and Miss Pink studied each other while the deer went on grazing and the fox watched the scene with interest.

  Miss Pink saw a man from the past; small, old, hard, he was dressed in greys and browns although the brown of trousers and shirt had faded to a non-colour, like soil, like his face – that part of it not obscured by beard and whiskers. He wore a stained felt hat that shaded his eyes. Evidently reassured by the attitude or the smell of the stranger, he stood the rifle inside the door and turned to Rose. ‘Good day for riding,’ he observed.

  ‘This is my friend, Miss Pink.’

  At the sound of her voice a scrub jay erupted through the doorway waking the fawn which blundered towards a doe. The deer slipped away like mist and when Miss Pink looked over at the chopping block nothing was there except an axe.

  ‘Sorry we drove them away,’ Rose said.

  ‘They’ll be back. What can I do for you?’

  They dismounted and tied the horses to trees. Rose explained that Miss Pink was writing a book about the Joplin Trail, that went over Breakneck, she added pointedly. A man had been here, she said, an Englishman, driving a pale blue Jeep. ‘Does that mean anything?’ she asked hopefully. ‘You know everything goes on in this neck of the woods.’

  He thought about this for so long
that Miss Pink decided he wasn’t going to answer, but Rose was waiting so she kept quiet too.

  ‘He came by,’ Fortune said.

  ‘Did he go back down again?’

  ‘Had to.’ He looked at Miss Pink. ‘No Jeep at the trail-head, is there?’

  ‘Not at the trail-head,’ she agreed, ‘but could he have left the trail, taken the Jeep into the forest?’

  ‘He didn’t.’ He contradicted himself immediately: ‘He coulda done.’

  ‘Do you know where the Jeep is?’ Rose asked.

  ‘It’s not in this canyon.’

  ‘Well, is it in Malachite or Danger?’

  ‘I don’t go there.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Asa! You go everywhere!’

  ‘I don’t go up Danger.’

  They studied him. Rose appeared uncertain how to proceed. Miss Pink observed pleasantly: ‘Joanne liked the animals.’

  ‘They was her friends too.’

  In the same tone she went on: ‘They left together.’

  ‘They did?’

  ‘But she came down to Credit alone, that is: not with him. She came down with a logger.’

  He looked surprised. ‘I didn’t know that.’

  Miss Pink said quietly, holding his gaze: ‘So since they started out together and she reached Credit with a different man, people are wondering what happened to the Englishman.’

  ‘What did happen?’

  Rose broke the ensuing silence. ‘How did you get along with her, Asa? You had to like her or she’d never have got near your pets.’

  ‘They aren’t pets.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘We was friends.’ He glared at them. ‘So what?’

  ‘You don’t want her to get in trouble with the police, do you?’

  ‘Are they holding her?’

  Rose hesitated. Miss Pink said: ‘There was blood on her when she met the logger.’ He hadn’t moved much before but now he was tense as the fox had been, and as silent. She went on: ‘If they think she had a hand in the Englishman’s disappearance they’ll find her.’

  ‘If she’s got away they’ll never find her.’ He was harsh. ‘She’ll disappear in LA. I don’t know what happened to the man. I thought he’d gone, I thought they went away together. It’s what they’re saying in town.’

  ‘Did he come here?’ Miss Pink asked.

  ‘I never met him. He come up the trail but I slipped out the back.’ He jerked his head at the cabin.

  ‘He never spoke to you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you were friendly with Joanne.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Why “of course”?’

  ‘You knew, so no need to ask was we friends.’

  Miss Pink suppressed a sigh. ‘Did she say anything that might throw a light on where and how Timothy Argent disappeared?’

  ‘No, she only come once after he arrived, and that were to say goodbye. She was going away with him, she said. She needed him, so she never woulda hurt him. She’d have married him if he was American.’

  ‘It had to be an American,’ Miss Pink said, ‘to get papers? She was illegal. So why didn’t she marry Brett Vogel?’

  He shrugged. ‘He’s probably married already.’

  ‘What was her last name?’

  ‘She never said.’

  ‘What was she doing with Vogel?’ There was a note of desperation in Miss Pink’s question and, like an animal, he caught it. A smile couldn’t show behind that beard but there was amusement in the answer, which was explicit relative to most of his answers.

  ‘Vogel was her man. She was bored with him and the Englishman came along, asked her to go with him, so she went.’

  ‘Just like that,’ Rose said, with a touch of envy.

  ‘Was that any help?’ she asked as they continued up Crazy Mule.

  ‘How much of it was the truth?’ Miss Pink countered. ‘Joanne was in the habit of going there; he wasn’t lying when he said she was friendly with the animals (what a strange fellow he is; that beautiful fox: he must have known it from a cub), but the rest – that he never met Timothy, he thought they’d gone over the mountains? I don’t know. If he were lying to protect someone, who could it be other than Joanne or himself?’

  ‘You mean that if something happened to Tim, either Joanne or Asa must be responsible?’

  ‘Unless Asa has other allegiances.’

  ‘Only to his pets. What are you proposing to do now?’

  ‘The obvious thing to do is to look for the Jeep, so we’ll go to the trail-head, and perhaps we ought to look in the lake.’

  ‘Weren’t you here before?’

  ‘The situation’s changed. I didn’t know about Joanne then.’

  They came to the little lake and rode round it, seeing nothing on its muddy bed but a few cans. On the far shore Miss Pink stopped, her attention caught by a rocky skyline.

  At the head of the canyon a subsidiary ridge ran out from the main divide to form the spur between Crazy Mule and Malachite Creek. The crest of the spur was of pale granite: a broken spine that cleared the timber by a hundred feet or so and was crowned by a neat square butte. To the left, westward, the spur rose in bare scree slopes to the divide.

  ‘Now what are you thinking?’ Rose asked.

  ‘I’m trying to get my bearings. Does that butte have a name?’

  ‘It’s Sardine Butte. The trail to Trouble Pass goes up to that crest; you can see the switchbacks: those light patches on the slope.’

  ‘There’s something shining at the top of the scree.’

  ‘That’s the remains of the airplane, the one that crashed three years ago.’

  ‘Sad. Only a couple of hundred feet higher and it would have got over the ridge. There’d be a fine view from that butte. Why Sardine?’

  ‘A mule fell there in the old days. It was carrying boxes of sardines.’

  ‘Not a way for horses then.’

  ‘I’ve been over it a few times. The mule fell in an early snow, when the trail was drifted. Were you thinking of going up there?’

  ‘Why not? Let’s go.’

  The trail ran level for a few hundred yards and then it started to climb out of the bottom in long zigzags, graded for pack trains. It may have been two air-miles from the trail-head to Sardine Butte but would be more than twice that distance by the meandering path. It was a southern slope and there was little shade despite the dense timber. Occasionally they stopped to give the horses a breather and at the third halt Miss Pink asked what kind of boots Fortune wore. Rose glanced at her, then at the dust of the trail. ‘Climbing boots,’ she said. ‘Not riding boots. You saw a track?’

  ‘I’ve seen the mark of cleated soles. Someone with small feet was here recently.’

  ‘Asa has small hands and feet. Hold my horse, will you?’ Rose got down and walked up the side of the trail. ‘There was only one person,’ she called. ‘He went up and then came back.’ She returned and took her reins. ‘Of course, Asa will go all over the place. He has to eat.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Why, he has to shoot deer, and he’s not going to kill the animals near his cabin.’

  ‘He has a long way to carry the carcass back, or does he cache some of the meat, like hanging it in a tree?’

  ‘He uses a mule to pack it out. He didn’t have a mule here though, so maybe he wasn’t hunting this time.

  ‘He shoots all the year round?’

  ‘You met him. What makes you think he’s a guy would bother about regulations? Open season is when Asa’s hungry.’

  The sun was high by the time the firs thinned enough for them to see something of the surrounding country. On this eastern slope of the Sierras the air was still but thin and clear. In the well of the canyon behind them a red-tail hawk called and then, from a scatter of rocks, a marmot chirped his alarm. They were the only sounds apart from those made by the horses.

  The trail edged left and passed under the south wall of Sardine B
utte. Below, the ground dropped steeply to the timber. ‘That’s where the mule went down,’ Rose said. ‘Give your horse his head, let him see where he’s going.’

  They came to the far side of the butte where there was a depression scattered with the ivory trumpets of alpine gentians. They tied the horses to a juniper and, taking lunch from their saddlebags, moved to a stunted tree to eat in its shade. Rose produced cans of beer.

  ‘Any other time,’ Miss Pink remarked, ‘this would be a perfect day: riding along the crest of the Sierras.’

  ‘It’s still a perfect day.’

  ‘Objectively, yes. But I have a sense of urgency.’

  ‘I don’t see why. After two months, if Timothy did meet with an accident up here, he died a long time ago. As for Joanne – No, I won’t say it.’

  Miss Pink had no such inhibition. ‘If Joanne had a hand in it, you would suggest it’s a matter for the police?’

  ‘Whoever had a hand in it, if there has been foul play it’s a matter for the police. Nothing to do with us.’

  ‘There’s something unethical about inheriting a book from an author without knowing what’s happened to him. As if he didn’t matter: it’s just a commercial enterprise.’

  ‘You mean, you owe him. Like a family connection: you’re not just taking over someone’s house or an office; it’s like adopting his child.’

  ‘And rearing it, sending it out into the world, something like that. But I agree it’s a gorgeous day.’ Miss Pink was suddenly brisk. ‘Nothing much we can do here. So, identify the features for me.’

  Rose shot her a doubtful glance, then decided to go along with the change of mood. ‘You know Breakneck; it’s the lowest point there: the timbered saddle. Trouble Pass is hidden by this scree slope. And the spur the Breakneck road climbs is hiding Danger Canyon and Deadboy Pass. Dogtown’s hidden too: outside the mouth of Malachite, sort of round the corner.’

  Miss Pink looked up the slope to what she could now see was a jagged piece of metal, a part of a wing perhaps. ‘That would be why people in Dogtown didn’t see the aircraft crash. There was a fire? Why wasn’t it seen from the highway?’