by Gwen Moffat
‘I got the blood on me when Timothy was shot! I couldn’t tell the logger it was human blood.’
‘Hardly, if that was the way you were going to play it: going to earth, keeping quiet about the shooting – but I wasn’t to know that. And then Hiram Wolf and Julius Semple reacted very strangely when your name was mentioned.’
‘That has to be subjective; they’re all mixed up, fantasising, you know – like the guy, the count in Rigoletto –’ And she burst into a spirited rendering of ‘La donna e mobile’.
‘A good voice too,’ Miss Pink said drily, trying to wriggle out from under the spell.
‘Thank you.’ There was a long pause. ‘So what are you going to tell the police about me?’
‘Do I have to tell them anything?’ Again there was a loaded silence. ‘I would advise you to marry Oscar quickly.’
‘So you are going to the police.’
‘I don’t intend to. And there’s no reason why they should come to me. The official attitude is that the case is closed, or I think it’s moving that way: Vogel shot Timothy and was murdered in his turn by a drugs gang; the killings aren’t connected. Even if some effort were made to find Vogel’s murderers, you’re not involved. Why should anyone ask me where you are? I never met you until this afternoon. All the same, I think you should move on, and keep a very low profile.’
‘What about the animals? They’re my responsibility. How do you keep a low profile hitching with a harlequin Great Dane and a Siamese in tow?’
‘Put them in kennels or engage someone to live here and look after them. Phone Oscar and ask him to come back from Arizona and take you to – say – Mexico. Get married and stay away.’
‘You’re joking! The drugs people come from Mexico.’
Miss Pink said firmly: ‘I’m not thinking of the people who killed Vogel, but the one who shot Timothy.’
‘That was Vogel! You said the police closed the case.’
‘I said that was the official attitude. Do you really think he hated you enough to kill you?’
‘He didn’t hate me at all, or if he did he never showed it.’
‘And he had a very nasty temper. The more you tell me, the more difficult it is to see him as the man who fired at Timothy. Whether the gunman meant to shoot both of you, he certainly meant to get you, otherwise he’d have gone down into the gorge to pull you out of the Jeep. He’d think you were in it. Now if that gunman was Vogel, he might not have approached the Jeep over the next two months, but when it was found with no body in it, meaning you were free, and free to talk, he’d have run then.’
‘He could think that if I hadn’t talked for two months I wasn’t going to. He knew I was an illegal alien.’
‘Too big a gamble. He had everything to lose; the worst that could happen to you was deportation.’
‘How did he react when he heard I wasn’t in the Jeep?’
A blue jay was scolding the Siamese on the other side of the pool. Miss Pink regarded the bird absently. ‘I don’t know how he reacted because he already knew when I met him one night in the Red Queen. He acted naturally then. I thought at the time that he wasn’t worried about your absence. He said you used to go to Timothy’s camp and when you didn’t come back he thought you were merely staying away longer than usual. Eventually he went along with the Dogtown people and assumed you’d gone for good.’
‘And leave all my gear behind? That’s a lie for a start.’
‘It wasn’t worth much – except the Chanel, and he might not appreciate the significance of that.’ Miss Pink’s thoughts were elsewhere. ‘Besides, Timothy had money … That was the night Vogel attacked Julius.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘I have to think.’ She massaged her temples. ‘It was a highly charged discussion right from the beginning; we were speculating on Timothy’s disappearance, on his whereabouts. Vogel mentioned the Mafia, but as a joke. Lovejoy told him it wasn’t a joking matter; Timothy was probably holed up, drinking himself to death, he said. Then Julius brought up the question of drugs, of Texas … no, I mentioned Texas. Vogel didn’t like that; he wouldn’t, it was getting too close to what he wanted to hide, but it wasn’t mention of Texas that precipitated the scene … I remember! It was Julius insinuating that Vogel had killed you. He asked if the police had searched Vogel’s cabin; the implication being that they should be looking for your body, or traces of it. Then Vogel went for Julius – but he didn’t hit him. He merely grabbed his shirt and reminded him forcefully that you’d been seen alive as far away as Bakersfield. Julius was terrified but he did manage to get out that the girl on the Sierras could have been someone else, that the one the logger met wasn’t you at all. At that point all the aggression went out of Vogel and he let Julius go, called him a fool. His attitude was one of contempt, not anger. But then –’ her eyes brightened, ‘– then I asked Vogel what you’d taken with you and he said you’d left everything behind. He looked really puzzled. It confused me because I’d accepted it was you at Bakersfield. There can’t be two people like you. Obviously Vogel hadn’t murdered you, no one had – but why leave in such a hurry that you took nothing with you?’
‘Now you know why, and you still look confused.’
‘I’m thinking. I’m going back to the premise that Vogel didn’t shoot Timothy, that he didn’t come back early from his run, but came back a couple of days later, found Timothy still alive, bandaged him – that’s another odd feature: someone bandaged Timothy – but it was too late. He died and Vogel buried the body. It’s possible that he thought you shot Timothy.’
‘Why on earth?’
‘An accident? A quarrel, a struggle. The first suspect in a murder is always the spouse or lover. By burying Timothy and keeping quiet, Vogel could have thought he was protecting you.’
‘Timothy would have told him it wasn’t me.’
‘If he was conscious. He could have been delirious. Alternatively he could have told Vogel who it was. No, that won’t work because if he’d been conscious when – if – the gunman came in the cabin, he’d have been shot again in order to silence him. Maybe. This scenario: of Vogel coming home to find Timothy alive and bandaging him, never realising that the Jeep was in the gorge, works better than the assumption that he was the killer.’
‘So who did kill Timothy? Who killed Vogel?’
‘That’s why I’m suggesting you find another place to hide.’
‘Who was it?’
Miss Pink sighed. ‘You don’t make it easy, but you have to face facts. If Timothy was shot in mistake for you, who hated you?’
‘No one. Why should they?’
‘That’s what I mean. You treated Hiram Wolf like a dog. Not my words; even you say he was “doggy”.’
Joanne was incredulous. ‘So he’d hate me for that? Oh, come on!’
‘How do you know what he felt, how anyone felt regarding you? Was he your lover?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Did he want to be?’
‘I guess. Are you being polite? I can’t see Hiram as my lover, but he’d probably want to go to bed with me, you could say that.’
‘You said he had fantasies regarding you.’
‘I think Timothy said that originally.’
‘Hiram could be the killer: drunk perhaps, out poaching. Coming to call on you, seeing the Jeep outside, overcome by jealousy, not caring which one of you he shot.’
‘So it could have been Hiram, or Julius, or Asa; it could have been Earl Lovejoy, he had a crush on me. And Verne didn’t like that. You’re surprised? It happens. What are you going to do about it, about any of it?’
‘There’s one thing you can do. Tell me the date of the shooting.’
‘That’s easy. It was July the twentieth, the day before my birthday.’
Chapter 15
‘Where were you?’ Granville Green asked, ushering Miss Pink into his dining room. ‘You missed all the excitement. We had the press here. And now we have the report on the autopsy
on Timothy Argent.’
‘Nice to see you back.’ Lucy Green stood up with the Beck and Bader wives. ‘If you will excuse us, we have to prepare dinner,’ she said, leading the way to the kitchen.
‘They’re squeamish,’ Green explained apologetically. ‘What can I get you? We’re drinking margaritas.’
‘We been wondering what happened to you.’ Beck’s beard fairly bristled with curiosity.
‘I was visiting friends. Tell me about the autopsy.’ She sat down and accepted a margarita although she would have preferred tea. She had spent a comfortable night at Oscar Sloat’s house but the drive back to Dogtown had been hot and dry.
‘There was a bullet close to the body.’ Green was going round with the cocktail shaker, freshening drinks. ‘It must have fallen out of the remains; there were traces of tissue on it. The track’s gone, of course, but it must have missed a vital organ because he was alive after the shot – well, he lived long enough for someone to bandage him up. And then he died. And was buried.’ He looked at Miss Pink as if for approval.
‘He could have died of anything,’ Bader put in. ‘Infection of the wound, pneumonia, whatever. He had no medical attention.’
‘They’re sure of that?’
‘He couldn’t have. The shooting wasn’t reported.’
‘Couldn’t afford to report it.’ Green was sharp. ‘Vogel comes home, finds a dead man in his cabin –’
‘Wait a minute,’ Miss Pink interrupted. ‘Vogel finds him dead? Then who put the bandage on?’
‘That would be Joanne,’ Bader said. ‘Who else? She was there, with Argent. She bandaged him but he was mortally wounded and he died so she cleared out, took the Jeep, couldn’t drive it, and crashed at the first bend.’
‘And Vogel comes home and finds a body, and doesn’t report it.’ She sounded doubtful.
‘With his background no way was he going to bring police into this canyon.’ Green’s grin was not amused.
‘They uncovered his background?’
‘The sheriff did. You told him about Seeping Springs. Vogel had a snake tattooed on his left arm. So did a guy at Seeping Springs called Ed Fisher who the Texas Ranger down there says was smuggling heroin. That’s not all: the prints taken from Vogel’s body correspond with a guy’s called Hudson who’s got a record: for possession. I employed a drugs runner as a caretaker!’
‘And the girl got away,’ Bader said slyly.
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Green didn’t like the insinuation. ‘She could have been under some kind of duress.’
Miss Pink suppressed a smile and said: ‘Joanne joined him shortly before you met them in Carlsbad. She had nothing to do with the drugs. She was just a hitch-hiker.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Vogel told me.’ She was bland. She went on: ‘Do the police think the people who murdered Vogel are still around?’
Green shook his head vehemently. ‘No way. They’d be far too obvious. It was one quick strike: in and out, more like an operation. A terrible thing though, Argent being shot by mistake –’
‘By mistake?’
‘There had to be a mistake. The sheriff – no one can go along with two murderers, or two sets of ’em, and they’re drugs-related crimes anyway, not crimes of passion.’
‘Theories change with the evidence,’ Beck told her gravely. ‘The killers were after Vogel, they saw a man behind the screen in the cabin and shot him. When they realised they’d got the wrong guy, they came back and that time they got the one they wanted.’
Miss Pink shrugged. ‘I’ll go along with that,’ she said neutrally.
Her tone touched a chord in Green. He said persuasively: ‘Why don’t you get away from all of it, come out with us tomorrow? We’re going up to the country west of Palmer Meadows. Make a nice change for all of us, get on the trail of the Joplins again.’
‘Actually I must write a letter to Timothy’s publisher. I’ve spoken to him but one forgets the details on the phone. The following day perhaps.’ She stood up.
‘You’re not leaving? Stay and eat with us.’
‘I promised Rose I’d see her in the Red Queen.’
She drove away, wondering what they’d make of her visit. If they came to the conclusion that she’d gone to the ranch to find out if there were any news that might not be public property in Dogtown, and having obtained it, had left satisfied, did that matter? On reflection she didn’t think so; it was most unlikely that any of them – Green, Bader or Beck – had been in the locality on July 20th. A strange vehicle would have attracted attention immediately.
‘July twentieth,’ Lovejoy repeated. ‘That was the day before Joanne’s birthday, the night it all happened, if it happened at night. Is that why you’re asking?’
Miss Pink had gone over the salient points carefully while soaking in a bath in her cabin. She had come across to the restaurant with Rose and noted the dawning awareness on his face when she asked Lovejoy if he remembered the night of July 20th. Now she said: ‘I’m trying to make sense of things for a letter, a report I have to write for Timothy’s publisher. I spoke to him this morning and he asked me when Timothy was shot. I thought no one could tell – except Joanne and Vogel, and I suppose none of us will see Joanne again. But Rose says it must have been July the twentieth.’
‘It had to be,’ Rose broke in eagerly. ‘Joanne was down the afternoon before her birthday and she was excited about the party next day. The shooting had to be that night, Earl; Joanne and Timothy would never have stood you up, and then not called to apologise. It was special –’ she assured Miss Pink, ‘– lobsters flown in to Endeavor – Timothy was paying; I mean, he left owing all that – but of course he didn’t leave … ’ Her face was stricken.
‘Why did it have to be the twentieth?’ Lovejoy asked. ‘Why not next day?’
‘It almost certainly happened in the dark,’ Miss Pink said, knowing it had, and going on quickly before they called it into question: ‘No one could have sneaked up on Timothy in the daylight.’
Lovejoy frowned. Verne Blair came in and took a bottle of brandy from under the bar. ‘Miss Pink figures it was July twentieth Timothy was shot,’ Lovejoy told him. ‘The night before Joanne’s birthday.’
‘I said so all along,’ Blair said. ‘Except I thought that they’d taken off about that time. I did Timothy an injustice. Did you hear the results of the autopsy, ma’am?’
‘Yes, I was up at the Greens’ place.’
‘It was all Joanne’s fault.’ Blair was harsh. ‘It was bound to happen; you could see it coming miles off. She played around. Timothy was shot in mistake for her.’
Lovejoy and Rose wouldn’t look at him. Miss Pink sipped her beer, thinking that this was obviously not the first time that they had discussed the subject, that there were differences of opinion. ‘Why didn’t you phone them when they didn’t turn up for the party?’ she asked.
‘We did,’ Blair said. ‘There was no reply. We did wonder if maybe the phone wasn’t working –’ He looked distressed.
‘You didn’t think to go up there?’
‘Well, you see –’ Rose began, and stopped. She went on slowly: ‘It wasn’t the kind of situation where you jump in a car, go and drag them down to a party. I mean, if they didn’t come it had to be something important happening up there, didn’t it? We hadn’t known Timothy long – for Heavens’ sakes, they hadn’t known each other long; in theory I guess she was still living with Vogel.’ She spread her hands. ‘We didn’t know what the situation was.’
‘No one wanted to go up there,’ Blair said. ‘None of us three. There was no telling what you might walk into.’
‘You can say that again,’ Rose said darkly.
‘Yes, well, we weren’t to know, were we?’ Blair’s tone cut like a knife.
‘But it was the night before the party that Timothy was shot,’ Miss Pink pointed out, and saw Blair stiffen.
‘The bandage!’ exclaimed Lovejoy. ‘You realised what it meant.’
As if he’d been waiting for a cue Lovejoy plunged in: ‘If it was Vogel he was one hell of a good actor: going along with us for weeks pretending Joanne and Timothy had gone away together. And we knew Vogel; he was laid back, but he wasn’t an actor. He couldn’t have kept it up.’
They were all staring at her. She said thoughtfully: ‘So you think Timothy was shot in mistake for Vogel, that the gunmen thought Vogel escaped and crashed in the Jeep, and later, when they discovered he was still alive, they came back and did the job they’d bungled two months before. You’re saying both murders are the work of one gang.’
‘That’s what the sheriff’s thinking now,’ Rose said.
‘And it’s the best theory we heard yet,’ Lovejoy said. ‘But will it stand up to –’
There were steps outside and all eyes were on the door as it opened to admit Charlotte, very colourful in a pale jumpsuit, an emerald bandana and dangling silver earrings. Carefully groomed, her hair a flaming aureole, in the dim light of the Queen she looked lithe and considerably younger than her years. She greeted everyone gaily, sparkling at Miss Pink and hoping she’d enjoyed a good trip despite the heat. She perched on a stool. ‘My old boy’s coming over,’ she told the partners. ‘Can we eat here? I’m taking the night off.’
‘Sure,’ Blair said. ‘You’ll all have to eat the same; it’s a salmi of duck.’ Over murmurs of appreciation he retired to the kitchen. Miss Pink asked Lovejoy for the wine list, and for sherry in the interim. Rose and Charlotte ordered martinis. They made a convivial group: the three women in their trendy casual clothes (even Miss Pink was in designer denim), Lovejoy attendant and attentive on the other side of the bar. ‘Miss Pink agrees with the police,’ he informed Charlotte. ‘Well, I guess it fits?’ He raised an eyebrow at her. ‘That it was the same gang killed Timothy as killed Vogel.’
Charlotte gave the ghost of a smile. ‘That’s new?’
‘You see?’ He turned to Miss Pink. ‘We all came round to that theory.’