by Gwen Moffat
‘Where was he?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t see him.’
‘Was the cabin door open when you passed?’
‘I think so. I saw something gleam – whether it was a gun-barrel or a flashlight I couldn’t tell. I was expecting him to shoot and I was going like the clappers and I kept my foot down all the way to the cattle-grid, but there weren’t any more shots –’
‘Where was Vogel’s pick-up?’
Joanne stared at her. ‘His truck? I can’t think. I don’t remember seeing it; it must have been behind a barn somewhere.’
‘Why did you turn up Malachite Canyon? Dogtown was much nearer. The other way you were a sitting duck.’
‘Dogtown didn’t seem a particularly friendly spot at that moment and all I wanted to do was get out of there fast. And I would have if only the Jeep had had a full tank. It was faster than the pick-up and I’m a good driver. But I got to the start of the climb out of Malachite, looked at the gauge and the needle was on Empty! And then as I started up the gradient I saw headlights in the canyon behind me. I knew I could never hope to reach the top, let alone Credit, I had to abandon the Jeep … Did you find the Jeep? Yes, so you know what I did. I thought it would catch fire and he’d assume I was still in it. I couldn’t believe it when it didn’t explode. Of course, I didn’t stop to watch; I scrambled up through the woods, keeping away from the road, and I only stopped when I ran out of breath.
‘I saw the lights come up the track and stop at the first bend. The Jeep’s lights were still burning. I couldn’t see what he did but he didn’t go down to the Jeep – probably afraid it would explode – I saw his lights sweep across the opposite slope as he turned round and went down Malachite. I suppose he went back to the ranch and disposed of poor Timothy. What did he do with the body?’
‘What makes you so certain Timothy was dead when you left the cabin?’
‘Wasn’t he dead? He had to be.’
‘He died later. After he was shot someone dressed the wound. There were bandages on the body.’
‘You mean, I could have saved him if I’d stayed?’
‘No, you’d have been shot as well. It had occurred to me that you could be the person who dressed the wound. Now it seems it was Vogel.’
Joanne laughed in disbelief. ‘He shot him, then regretted it and bandaged him?’
‘Perhaps you were the intended target all along.’
‘So we’re back to that. He certainly followed me up the canyon, and he knew the Jeep was in the gorge and I should be in it, but he never made any attempt to go down there and pull me out. You’re right, it had to be me he was after.’ She shuddered. ‘I’m glad you told me he’s dead. I’d never feel safe again if he was alive.’ She shook her head. ‘I still can’t see Vogel being so attached to me he’d want to kill me. You live with a guy three months and you still don’t know where he’s coming from.’
Miss Pink gave a long sigh. ‘Tea!’ exclaimed Joanne, getting to her feet like a cat. ‘A pot of China, how does that sound?’
‘I take it Oscar was Timothy’s new agent,’ Miss Pink observed politely, squeezing lemon with silver tongs.
Joanne bit her lip, then laughed wryly. ‘It doesn’t matter now. Timothy wanted to stay here and Oscar was going to be his American agent, yes. He didn’t tell James Dorset, something to do with changing publishers, business ethics, stuff like that. None of it matters any longer.’ She looked sad. ‘He knew exactly where he was going to build his house: on a cliff at Big Sur, overlooking the Pacific.’ She sighed, shook herself and went on brightly: ‘Try this cake, it’s made with sherry. Oscar’s away at a conference in Tucson, so I’m cat-and-dog sitting. Did you want to see him? I can call him and tell him you’re here.’
‘There’s no urgency. How much did you tell him?’
‘Everything. I had to, turning up here looking like something the cat brought in. There wasn’t time to pull any clothes out of the Jeep before I sent it off the road. Even if I’d thought about it and had time there was only Timothy’s stuff. I was leaving with Timothy, but you know that. I hadn’t started packing though, and all my gear must still be in the cabin.’
‘Including a bottle of Chanel.’
‘So you saw that. I suppose everywhere was searched after the bodies were discovered. Where were they found? You didn’t say.’
‘A short distance inside the forest, a few yards off the Deadboy trail.’
‘How did you know where to look?’
‘When Granville Green arrived to open his house Vogel wasn’t there but his pick-up was. We followed its tracks back into the forest. Evidently they’d carried his body in his own truck and then driven it back to leave it at the ranch.’
‘And Timothy was in the same place?’
Miss Pink froze in the act of raising her cup to her lips. ‘Not – quite. But the bodies weren’t far apart.’
‘How did you find – the second body?’
Miss Pink told her about Wolf’s German Shepherd. ‘Oh, Hiram.’ Joanne smiled. ‘He’s like a Shepherd himself: doggy, you know? Have some more cake. Isn’t it delicious?’ She cut large wedges for each of them and lay back again, swinging her legs up on the chair. Her feet were brown and slender, and rather grubby.
Miss Pink said: ‘Were you barefooted when you escaped from the cabin?’
‘No – fortunately. I’d have torn my feet to pieces in the forest. But I had no warm clothes, and do you know what it’s like up there, on the Sierras at night, even in summer? But you have to know what I did; you know everything else.’
Miss Pink nodded. ‘You spent the first night at Palmer Meadows and you stole some clothing – and a wire coat hanger – which you used to open the door of a timber lorry. You spent the second night in that. In the morning the driver brought you down to the valley and you left him in Bakersfield.’
‘That’s about how it was.’
‘Oscar Sloat must have been surprised when you turned up on his doorstep. Or was he expecting you to arrive with Timothy?’
‘He wasn’t expecting anyone for another month and he didn’t know about me anyway. He was a bit startled when I showed, but Oscar’s a sweet guy, and he has charming manners. In fact he’s like Timothy – was. I guess that’s why we get on so well.’
‘You say you told him everything?’
‘Everything I knew at the time. Of course, I didn’t know that Vogel was dead –’
‘He was alive until four days ago.’
‘I’d assumed he was alive until this afternoon. I had to, I remembered that gunfire and me roaring out of the yard and the headlights coming up the canyon. Takes a long time to get over: the feeling a killer’s after you. But Oscar said Vogel wouldn’t try to trace me because he’d be working on the assumption that I’d report Timothy’s death to the police, so he’d have cleared out as soon as it was discovered my body wasn’t in the Jeep. He said Vogel would have been gone next day. But he didn’t go, did he?’
‘We didn’t find the Jeep until a week ago.’ Miss Pink gave Joanne no chance to assimilate this but went on smoothly: ‘Why didn’t you report the shooting?’
Joanne was astonished. ‘I’m illegal! I don’t have a work permit. They’d deport me soon as look at me –’
‘I doubt that,’ Miss Pink interposed drily.
‘But Oscar’s going to see I get a work permit. He knows everyone in LA. I’ve had an audition –’ she gestured to the script on the table, ‘– and he says I’ve got the part, so I’m learning my lines. It’s only a TV soap but so what, it’s a start. Oscar wants us to get married but if I can stay in the States without having to get married, I think it’s better to remain single. I’ll live here in the canyon for a while. Oscar’s a very comfortable guy to have around.’
‘If you’d reported the shooting you’d have had to stay here as a potential witness. That is, if the killer came to trial.’
‘Maybe, but I’d have been under surveillance, and they’d go back over my ti
me in the States and make a meal of it. Individual policemen are all right – thick usually but human – but Authority as an institution, with a capital A, that would come down on me like a ton of bricks. Besides, what good would it do Timothy to report his murder? His body would be found soon enough, I reckoned, and it was, wasn’t it?’
‘Rationalisation,’ Miss Pink murmured. ‘Weren’t you concerned about justice?’
Joanne’s eyes widened. ‘I was concerned not to become Vogel’s next victim. Mind you –’ she shifted on her chair, ‘– Oscar put that argument forward too – justice – but he dropped it when I pointed out the first thing they’d do would be deport me. Oscar’s easily influenced. You look doubtful. You haven’t met him.’
‘I’ll take your word for it.’ The conversation lapsed and in the silence the Great Dane walked round the pool, sat, and placed a large foot on Miss Pink’s thigh.
‘He can have a small piece,’ Joanne said, maternal but firm.
Miss Pink gave him a piece of cake and asked: ‘Who looked after the animals before you arrived?’
‘A lady called Isabella: Spanish type, with a trace of Negro blood. Oscar likes exotic women. I never thought of myself as exotic but I suppose he just means having some coloured blood.’
‘What happened to Isabella?’
‘She left a few days after I arrived. We didn’t get on.’
‘You told the logger you had an Algerian father.’
‘Did I?’
‘But Charlotte Semple says your father was an Indian rajah when he wasn’t the chief of an Afghan tribe.’
‘That’s coming closer, but I’m a quadroon, not a half-caste – not that being a quarter-Indian – or Afghan – would make me superior; it’s just to set the record straight. Remember the war?’
‘What? World War Two? Of course I remember it.’
‘My grandmother was Welsh, the wife of a quarry manager in Blaenau Ffestiniog.’ She smiled and dropped into the lilt of rural Caernarfonshire: ‘Very proper, we were: chapel on Sundays, Granpa Parry in his black suit and Nan in her best hat. She’s dead now but I remember a big woman, rather plain and very firm-looking: the pillar of the Mothers’ Union.’ She resumed her English accent, her face sparkling with delight: ‘And a regiment came over from India, a mountain regiment with mules, can you imagine! They were stationed in Nantmor. My real Grandad was a muletier from the Northwest Frontier!’
Miss Pink was smiling too. ‘Did your grandmother leave her husband?’
‘Not a bit of it.’ Joanne sobered. She looked bewildered, as if there were something here she’d never really understood. ‘Curious, isn’t it? In that closed community: claustrophobic, hellfire-and-brimstone religion, they brought my mother up just like one of themselves. Of course, by the time the nine months were up, the Indians had moved on, and my mother says Nan never kept in touch with this guy – my real Grandad. Evidently no one else knew what happened until my mother was born – in hospital. And the story goes that Nan told Granpa Parry that he could have her back with the new baby or neither of ’em, and in that case she’d take the other kids with her too. There were two children besides my mother. Granpa Parry chose to take Nan and the new baby. I always reckoned Nan must have had something going for her that wasn’t obvious to us kids, I mean something that gave her some kind of power over men?’
They exchanged questioning looks, Miss Pink realising with amazement that this seductive creature had no idea that the power had been inherited. ‘What happened to your mother?’ she asked.
‘She went in for nursing, married a doctor and they live terribly dull lives in Liverpool. My father’s white; that’s why I’m not particularly dark. My mother’s very beautiful – but you got to watch it with this Indian blood. We all run to fat in middle-age. Mum has to fight like hell to keep the flab down.’
‘Is your father handsome?’
‘I guess. Men lose their looks with age, don’t they? He’s a type –’ she pronounced it in the French fashion, ‘– like Gary Cooper. Julius Semple has the same sort of blurry good looks, a kind of ghostly presence behind the wrinkles.’
‘And what is Oscar like?’
‘He’s just an ordinary guy to look at, a bit fat, but then he’s old, he’s thirty-nine, although that’s not nearly as old as Timothy. You mean, personality? He’s sophisticated. I like that, it was what attracted me to Timothy. Basically men are all the same – well, with a few exceptions – but superficially there’s this distinction: knowing what’s what, knowing the right places to eat and where to go to buy good clothes and not just the expensive flashy gear. Like guys who can tell you the difference between a Mozart concerto and one of Beethoven’s. At home my folks go in for opera and Lieder and they never get any further. I’ve had Lieder up to here for as long as I can remember. With Oscar I feel I’m evolving.’
‘I’m surprised you didn’t stay in a city, like New York. Concerti must have been somewhat thin on the ground as you came across America.’
‘Oh, this is all new! I was asleep from the neck up. Timothy brought me to life. He taught me to listen, to read, to look properly: see the essence of things. If I’d stayed with him, I mean if he’d lived … but he didn’t. As it is, Oscar fills the gap, sort of.’
‘If you prefer sophisticated men, where did Asa Fortune fit?’
‘I’d forgotten Asa. He’s a sweet guy too. Totally asexual, of course, but we were good friends.’
‘Why didn’t you go to him the night Timothy was shot?’
‘I never thought of him. Perhaps I was so orientated to approaching Asa’s cabin quietly so as not to frighten the animals, that the prospect of exploding up Crazy Mule with a homicidal maniac chasing me, firing shots, was a kind of subconscious taboo. I can’t think of any other explanation.’
‘Asa stole gear from the Jeep.’
‘He would. He scavenged round the crashed plane too. So what? Timothy would have given him anything he could use. What did he take?’
‘A sleeping bag, binoculars, a camera.’
‘There you are: just essentials. The camera he’d sell for food.’
‘You’re fond of Asa.’
‘Anyone would be who knows him. There’s no nonsense about him. I like men who are honest. Timothy was too. With most guys it’s “Hi, babe, your place or mine?” Not Timothy – nor Oscar, come to that. As for Asa: he was one of those exceptions: treated me no different from how he treats his animals. The others are just a load of dogs on heat.’
‘How do you handle them?’
‘I don’t bother – unless I want something.’ She grinned. ‘Like that logger above Credit. My feet were so bloody sore – all that walking, and I was filthy; I needed a bath. No skin off my nose if we go to a motel in Bakersfield. I needed food, drink, lashings of hot water – and money to get to the coast. What’s a few hours with a healthy guy? Cheap at the price. Prostitutes do it all the time.’
‘You inspire remarkable loyalty. All the men in Dogtown assure me you are not a tart.’
‘Really? How sweet. But the women won’t say that.’
‘In fact the women regard you as a kind of crusader.’
‘Now that is surprising. Rose I can believe it of, but Lorraine and Charlotte – never. Lorraine hasn’t an idea in her head beyond clothes and make-up, and Charlotte, that old dike! She may admire me but not because I’m picky about my men.’
‘Are you telling me Charlotte is a lesbian?’
‘Well, maybe that’s going too far –’ she squirmed on her chair, ‘– but she gives me the willies. Gushing, you know? Effusive. Poor old Julius dragged along in her wake, having to agree with her comments on a person’s appearance. I’d run a mile, I mean, I did when I saw her coming.’
‘She says you suggested that the Mafia were after Vogel.’
‘I did? Maybe. I prefer my men to be honest but me, I like to play games with some people. Stupid git.’
Miss Pink frowned. ‘Charlotte’s stupid?’
‘Not really. I just can’t stand the woman. Look –’ she was suddenly incisive, ‘– I’ve been doing all the talking, but you haven’t told me much about what happened back there, in Dogtown, how you found out things. I can see how you could trace Timothy, and everyone would tell you about me, but how on earth did you find out Vogel was smuggling wildlife, had been into drugs? Even I didn’t know, and I was shacked up with the guy.’
Miss Pink gave this her careful attention. ‘Obviously something was wrong because Timothy had dropped out of circulation without a word, so I started looking for clues as soon as I reached his last fixed point. Vogel’s behaviour was suspicious from the beginning but he was even more touchy after the Jeep was found. Then, in the Jeep, there was a pen with the address of a Texas motel on it.’
‘Seeping Springs. Lovely name. It was Vogel’s. But there’s nothing sinister about that. I must have put it in the Jeep, not Vogel. I picked up anything that was lying around. You don’t steal a pen.’
‘That’s not important. What I found curious was that I knew Timothy hadn’t been in Texas, and there was no indication that you’d been that far south, so I acted on the assumption, a hunch if you like, that Vogel was the connection. After all, he was a Texan. So I went to Seeping Springs and found the Texas Ranger who’d been trying to recruit the runner who disappeared in April. I returned to Dogtown convinced Vogel was involved in Timothy’s disappearance, only to find Vogel had been murdered.’
‘You must have thought I was involved.’
‘You have to admit that your behaviour was suspicious. You gave a false name to the logger, there was blood on you, you spun a fantastic story about hitting a deer –’