by Gwen Moffat
There had been no occasion to tell them that she had come to the United States specifically to find Timothy Argent. Raistrick had accepted that she was following the Joplin Trail and had seen the crashed vehicle yesterday when Rose Baggott was showing her the country. His immediate interest centred on the Jeep.
He had arrived in Dogtown after breakfast and she had led the way up Malachite Canyon in the Cherokee. When the men had traversed in to the platform, had duplicated the women’s actions of the previous day: peering over the fall, studying the cliff above, searching the interior of the vehicle, finally she had asked the question about tracker dogs, and got the answer.
‘You knew the driver,’ Raistrick went on. ‘What do you think happened?’
‘I never met him, but I can’t imagine any author would deliberately leave his notebook behind. His boots are missing, his sleeping bag, cameras and binoculars. He’d be wearing his boots, of course, but why take the other things, and no rucksack to carry them in?’
Raistrick smiled thinly. His deputy grinned. ‘Valuables disappear from crashes in these mountains, ma’am. There’s people in the woods is a little light-fingered when it comes to items like cameras, and an author would have something expensive, like a Nikon? As for binoculars and sleeping bags, he’d probably have the best of those too. Terrible temptation for a hunter. I’m not surprised at what’s missing. After two months I’d be surprised if those items was still here.’
‘You were thinking of the young fellow in Danger Canyon?’ Miss Pink asked innocently. ‘I met him. He didn’t strike me as the criminal type.’
They had been wryly amused, now their smiles faded and they were more attentive. ‘That’s the caretaker at the Green place?’ Raistrick asked. ‘What’s his name?’
‘Brett Vogel,’ she said.
‘Ah, yes. Vogel.’ The sheriff looked at Padilla whose dark eyes were giving nothing away.
Miss Pink said: ‘There’s gossip in Dogtown that Timothy Argent went off with Vogel’s lady.’ And she told him everything they were saying because he was going to find out shortly, and she needed help to find Timothy. She told him what she had learned in Credit, she kept nothing back except the fact that she had been commissioned to find the author. She did say that she had been asked to take over the book, because that justified her concern about Timothy’s present whereabouts. ‘It’s his book,’ she told them earnestly. ‘If he’s alive, he should complete it. I have to know what’s happened to him.’ Hers was the attitude of an elderly spinster determined to do the right thing by a colleague.
Raistrick nodded, approving her concern. ‘Have you thought maybe he doesn’t want to be found? He’s had plenty of time to get in touch with his publisher – that’s if he’s still alive.’
‘Oh, he has to be. He jumped clear. He wasn’t in this vehicle, was he?’
Everyone stared at the passenger seat, unmarked by even one drop of dried blood. ‘No, no one was in it when it landed,’ Raistrick agreed, and looked up at the cliff. ‘And no one was thrown clear. With a fall of over a hundred feet, there’d have been too many bones broken for anyone to crawl away. This cliff is sheer too: no trees; nothing to catch hold of as he fell. The driver jumped clear before it went over.’
Miss Pink thought about the gears but she said nothing. She’d seen him nudge the gear lever and glance meaningly at Padilla.
They returned to the road. ‘Are you going to start a search?’ she asked, looking towards Breakneck Pass.
He hesitated. ‘You mean, assuming he’s in the mountains? No, ma’am. All the signs here point to him not being injured. He wasn’t in this crash, so he could be anywhere. There’s nothing to show he’s dead, and if he’s alive he’s committed no crime. How do you know he didn’t have another bag, a nice piece of luggage, and he took his camera and stuff before he pushed the vehicle over?’ He saw her surprise. ‘It was in bottom gear, ma’am. You don’t go up or down this road in bottom. That’s the gear people use when they get out of a vehicle and send it off the road.’
‘Why on earth would he do that? And why didn’t he take his notebook?’
‘Ah, but he took the most valuable things, didn’t he? And there could be any number of reasons for ditching the Jeep that we don’t know about, but the one that comes to mind immediately is an insurance scam.’
‘Not Timothy Argent.’
‘Well, I guess you’ll find out eventually if it is insurance. Someone will be claiming. But that Jeep was sent over, ma’am. And if you ask me, your man will surface somewhere, if he hasn’t already, perhaps under another name, a new identity. There’s a woman in the case too. A very lovely lady, so I’ve heard. This gentleman was at a dangerous age and the lady could have been the reason for his disappearance, or wanting to stay disappeared. Did you think of that?’
She looked down the canyon. ‘Brett Vogel knows more than he’s letting on.’ She said it reluctantly, but someone had to question the caretaker.
‘Did he say anything to you that might throw some light on this?’ Raistrick gestured towards the creek.
‘We exchanged only a few words. He was surly. I mentioned Argent and although he didn’t say anything relevant he reacted – with hostility. But then you’d expect that; the relationship between Argent and Joanne wasn’t a secret.’
‘Not now maybe; he might not have known about it at the time.’
‘Maybe no one did,’ Padilla put in. ‘They only know now because those two disappeared together.’
‘Disappeared?’ Raistrick repeated.
‘Joanne reappeared,’ she reminded them. ‘Floyd Bailey at Credit might be able to help you get in touch with the logger involved.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind. Now we have to go and talk to Vogel.’
As they went downhill she allowed the police car to draw ahead and by the time she reached the place where the trail forked for Danger Canyon the only sign of them was some dissipating dust. She rolled on a few yards and turned up Crazy Mule.
The cabin door was closed and there wasn’t an animal in sight when she pulled up at Fortune’s place. She cut the engine and walked down the path and round the back of the cabin. A window was open in the back wall. ‘I go out the back,’ he’d said.
‘Mr Fortune!’ she called. ‘I have to talk to you before the police come.’ Water chuckled in the creek bed. Behind her a small twig snapped. ‘There aren’t any witnesses,’ she added. ‘I need to know where the driver of the Jeep is. I don’t care about the sleeping bag and the cameras.’
There was no response. ‘Look,’ she said desperately, ‘you can bury the stuff as you did everything else. If they can’t find anything, they can’t pin anything on you. You’ve always got away with it. At least tell me who pushed the Jeep off the road. Timothy’s a friend of mine.’
Suddenly he was there, materialising like a phantom, the colouring of skin and clothing a perfect camouflage in the shadowed undergrowth.
‘Where are the police?’ he asked.
‘With Brett Vogel.’
‘They would be. Is there any news of her?’
‘Not so far as I know. Did she send the Jeep over?’
‘I been thinking about that. Why should she? She needed it to get away; they both needed it. I can’t figure that truck in the bottom, whichever way I look at it.’
She studied his eyes. ‘How did you discover it?’
‘I saw it from Sardine Butte. I went down, thought they were inside, but they’d got out.’
‘Before it left the road?’
‘Of course.’ He looked at her slyly. There was no point in scolding him for not having told them yesterday; he’d only shrug and wait for the next question.
‘When you found the Jeep how long was that after Joanne’s last visit to you, when she said goodbye? And when did she say she was going?’
‘That’s a lot of questions.’
‘Only two. And it’s not as if you were a stupid man.’ She was tart, and regretted it immediately, but there
was a gleam of something in his eyes: amusement? Appreciation?
‘I found it a few days after she came here the last time. She said they were leaving shortly, when Vogel was away.’
‘Where did he go?’
‘She never said.’ He hesitated. ‘It wasn’t the first time. He was away quite a bit, several days at a time.’
‘What was he up to?’
‘Joanne didn’t know, or if she did, she wasn’t telling. Drugs probably.’ His casual tone indicated a wild guess. Miss Pink reverted to the question of the Jeep.
‘Which way was it travelling when it left the road?’
‘It was going up, towards the pass.’
‘No skid marks?’
‘No, it were sent over.’
She said carefully: ‘I’m not asking any questions about the cameras and sleeping bag except this: were they in the Jeep when you reached it?’
He thought about that for a long time but finally admitted that they were.
‘A bear’s been there,’ she told him.
‘It’d be after food.’
‘Was there any sign of what had happened to Argent? Did you look?’
‘I didn’t do nothing more than just look around casual like. That wasn’t no accident. No one got hurt is what I’m saying.’
‘What do you think happened?’
‘Maybe someone stole it and ditched it because it ran out of gas.’
‘It wouldn’t be out of gas if they were just starting over the mountains.’
‘You wouldn’t think so.’
She drove down Crazy Mule and turned up Malachite. At the first bend she stopped and traversed in to the Jeep. The keys were still in the ignition but they wouldn’t turn; they must have jammed under the impact. With some difficulty she worked her way under the rear end, grimacing at sharp stones and cold water, and rapped on the fuel tank with her knuckles. Fortune could be right; it did sound empty, and there was no sign of a leak, and no smell.
She returned to the Cherokee and switched on the ignition. She was facing uphill, contemplating Breakneck Pass, and automatically she looked at her fuel gauge to make sure that there was enough petrol for the climb. You always looked at your gauge when about to enter a wilderness area; it was a mark of the seasoned traveller. What was Timothy doing, starting over the Sierras with an empty tank? He wouldn’t, she thought, not unless he was mad, or drunk.
She turned the key, put the Cherokee in Drive and started to climb.
Chapter 9
The distance from the crashed Jeep to the place where timber was being felled on the western slope was more than twenty miles; too far for most people to walk in a night, and Sierra nights were cold. There had been no down clothing in the Jeep, but that didn’t have to mean that the driver had taken it with him; to Asa Fortune a padded parka would be as tempting as a snug sleeping bag. With the thought of frosty nights in mind Miss Pink crossed Breakneck Pass and headed purposefully for the only shelter between Dogtown and Credit: the cabins at Palmer Meadows.
The small community looked no different from when she first saw it: the shuttered dwellings and closed barns, and a few cows grazing in the distance. At the first cabin she was surprised to find that the rear windows, although secured on the inside, were unshuttered. Peering through the panes she saw a table, chairs, bunk beds. Everything looked as it should do after the owners had cleaned and closed it for a long period. The door had an old-fashioned keyhole, it could be locked only from the outside and with a key.
The next cabin was larger, with the same kind of lock on the door and two windows at the front, one of which, to judge by the size of the frame, must be a picture window. The wooden shutters were not secured, only held in place by a long spar on brackets. Removing this she discovered that the shutters consisted of five panels that fitted into grooves. She detached two of them, revealing a big sheet of glass, a solid and unbroken fixture.
The interior of this cabin was more luxurious than the first. She could see a living room with upholstered sofas and chairs, a solid table, books, a stone fireplace with German beer steins on a shelf, a corner with crockery stacked in a wall cupboard. A door in the wooden wall of the living room was ajar, leading to what must be the bedroom. In the far wall were two sash windows, their glass black.
She went to the rear of the cabin and removed the shutters from one of the living-room windows. The swivel that should have clamped the two halves together was broken. She raised the lower half, discovered there was no sash cord, propped it open with a couple of logs and climbed over the sill. She sniffed the air. It smelled faintly like a dustbin.
The living quarters and the corner kitchen were light enough for her to see that there was nothing obviously wrong here. The bedroom was another matter. She went outside again and removed the shutter from its window.
The bedroom was empty, that is, it wasn’t occupied. She told herself that she hadn’t really expected to find Timothy, merely some evidence that he had been here. Once she had recovered from her relief – it was just the kind of place you might expect to find a corpse – she looked first for the source of the smell.
It was easy to find. The last person to use the kitchen hadn’t emptied the garbage. In a pedal bin there were empty cans which had contained a ham, peaches, pineapple chunks. There was a dirty plate and a used mug in the sink. She went to turn the taps and found them open. The water system had been drained, and someone had come along since that precaution was taken against frost, had used one mug and one plate.
There were two single beds in the bedroom, blankets and pillows neatly folded and stacked. Behind a curtain shabby clothes hung on wire hangers, the kind of clothes that are good for nothing other than wilderness living: camouflaged jackets and trousers, faded woollen shirts, slickers, drab anoraks, a pea jacket. They had belonged to big men. Nowhere was there any indication of the identity of the last person to use the cabin.
She replaced the shutters and took the road back to Dogtown. She met no one. She didn’t stop at the bottom bend nor at the junctions of the trails up the side canyons although at Danger Creek she slowed down, deep in thought. She came out of the mouth of Malachite Canyon and turned left. When Dogtown came in sight, tucked between the mountains and the Rattlesnake Hills, she was struck again by its peculiar air of abandonment. This could be attributed to the lack of fences and gardens, to the absence of people in the empty street. There were power poles and swagged cables, cars and the notice outside the Grand Imperial; for all that, the place still looked like a deserted mining camp. A pick-up stood outside the Red Queen.
Brett Vogel was at the bar in conversation with Lovejoy. She greeted them politely. Lovejoy looked flustered. ‘Your dinner will be a little late tonight,’ he told her. ‘Verne went to the dentist and he’s been held up in town.’
She nodded affably. ‘That’s fine. All I want at the moment is a long cold drink. I’ll have a Budweiser.’
Vogel emptied his beer and straightened, making movements to go. She was all embarrassment: the elderly lady apologising for invading a masculine domain. ‘Don’t leave because I’ve come in, Mr Vogel. I was so thirsty! I’ve been up to Palmer Meadows.’
Lovejoy blinked. Vogel scowled at her. ‘Have one yourself, Mr Lovejoy,’ she added quickly, ‘and I’m sure Mr Vogel won’t refuse to join me in a drink. What was Joanne’s last name?’
‘Emmett,’ he said. ‘What’s at Palmer Meadows?’
‘Someone broke into one of the cabins.’
‘How did you find that out?’ Lovejoy was divided between consternation and amusement. ‘Or did you get it from the police?’
‘Were the police up there? I didn’t see them.’ She turned to Vogel. ‘When did Joanne leave? Do you have a date?’
‘The police asked me that.’ He signalled Lovejoy to give him another beer, opened it and drank deeply. When he looked at her again he appeared concerned to get his facts right, his eyes suddenly earnest. He was an attractive fellow when his face wasn’t set
in hard lines. ‘She wasn’t interested in me once Argent came on the scene,’ he said. ‘She was about to split anyways. She spent most of her time with him, in the canyons. I don’t know when she left. I thought she was just away longer’n usual and I come down here after a time and Earl tells me he hasn’t seen Argent for a few days, so we figure they’re gone for good.’
Lovejoy, who had been waiting impatiently to get a word in, asked eagerly: ‘Who was it broke into a cabin? Timothy and Joanne? I thought they’d have come back this way after ditching the Jeep.’
‘We know Joanne didn’t,’ she reminded him.
‘Suppose they quarrelled, and Joanne went on, over the other side, and Timothy came back, thumbed a lift – Why are you looking at me like that, ma’am?’
She sighed. ‘The Jeep was crashed deliberately. Why should Timothy do that?’
‘Insurance?’ Vogel suggested.
‘What company’s going to pay out on a crashed vehicle and no body inside?’
‘No body anywhere.’ Lovejoy looked smug, as if he had just solved a problem in detection.
‘We don’t know –’ The screen door opened and Julius Semple came in. Miss Pink smiled and nodded, and went on: ‘We don’t know that there isn’t a body somewhere.’
Semple gaped at her. ‘Whose body?’
‘Why, Timothy Argent’s.’
‘I thought he was with Joanne!’
‘I expect so.’ Before anyone could react to this volte-face, she added pleasantly: ‘What did the police have to say to you, Mr Vogel?’
The atmosphere was electric; questions like that were not asked in small communities, and by strangers. Miss Pink said gently: ‘The circumstances are not normal.’
Vogel swallowed. ‘Like when I saw Joanne last.’
‘You’re in the clear,’ Lovejoy said angrily. ‘She was seen long afterwards: way down to Credit and beyond, to Bakersfield.’