by Gwen Moffat
‘Why is it important when he died? Is there some suggestion that it wasn’t an accident?’
‘When there’s a long fall involved there’s always the question of whether the victim was pushed.’
Fleur stared at Miss Pink in consternation, then tossed back the rest of her whisky. They were in her sitting-room behind the gallery where the west wall – mostly glass – fronted on the ocean but neither of them was interested in the view. Miss Pink had been telling her about the discovery at the foot of the landslide. It was only now, after a long shower and a lazy bath, at a distance from the events of the day and summarising them, that questions surfaced which had not been apparent at the time.
‘What I really came to ask you,’ she said, ‘was how did they appear when you saw them in the Chevrolet leaving Sundown?’
‘You mean, if he killed her only a few miles north of here, something should have been apparent when I saw them?’
‘Well, could have been apparent. Quarrelling perhaps? Was – did he appear to be angry? You said he was driving too fast. You’re an expert observer; can’t you recall the scene? You’d been painting on Cape Deception. Presumably the rain drove you home.’
‘Not really; the light changed. It was bright early on: a luminescence behind the fog, but that faded so I packed up, came down slowly, reached the road, or rather, their road-end, around four, I seem to remember. They came out of the loop road just as I reached the junction. Andy didn’t stop – the idiot – didn’t even slow for the Stop sign, just pulled out on the highway, burning rubber, and was away. Angry? Could be: driving like that. If anything had been coming he could have killed them both.’ She clapped her hand over her mouth and stared, wide-eyed, at Miss Pink. She lowered her hand. ‘And yet,’ she said, ‘they died quite differently.’
‘Wait a minute. You saw them at Lois’s road-end: the northern junction.’
‘Of course. He wouldn’t come out the south end of the loop if he was going north, would he? Oh, I see: you’re wondering what I was doing up there instead of coming straight home to the village. I went to look at a pool in the forest: Salamander Tarn. There’s a gorgeous maple on the bank and I needed to work out the best time to paint it. That’s why I was at that end of the village – outside it actually.’
‘You were walking along the left side of the road?’
‘Naturally. Why?’
‘So Gayleen was the passenger, and she was on your side, and Andy, who was driving, was on the far side?’
‘What is this? Oh, I get it: you’re trying to make me visualise it as it happened, how they looked, were they quarrelling.’ She thought about it. ‘You can’t see much behind those tinted windows; I think they’re stupid, lethal, they ought to be illegal, specially windshields.’
‘You’re certain Andy was driving, not the other way about?’
‘Oh yes, outlines, you know. You couldn’t mistake her hair and his Stetson – and shades! Shades and tinted glass, can you believe that?’ She considered her own question, then said slowly, ‘You’re not interested in their behaviour, but in their appearance. Why’s that?’
Miss Pink didn’t answer but asked another question: ‘That Tuesday evening, when you came along to the Tattler and Miriam told us Oliver had gone to Portland, you asked if he left with Gayleen and Andy.’
‘Did I? But Oliver left the day before – ’
‘Did you ask that because you thought someone was in the back of the Chevy?’
‘I can’t remember that far back! And why, for heaven’s sakes?’
‘I don’t know.’ And Miss Pink did look bewildered. ‘It’s an extra vehicle we need, not an extra person.’ She caught Fleur’s eye. ‘You didn’t see the body,’ she went on in a more practical tone. ‘Water had been the agent … I thought he couldn’t have fallen after the storm but Hammett pointed out that the stream could have brought down gravel. Can I use your phone?’
‘Sure. Providing you explain what you just said.’
‘Let me get one thing straight first.’ The telephone was beside her on an end-table. She dialled a number. ‘Sadie – Melinda here … Yes, and it appears to be Andy … A key, a room key to the motel in Portland where they were staying … They’re bringing it down this evening, I understand … Oh, no; a long fall like that: he’d be killed instantaneously – tell me, when were you there: rebuilding the trail? … What time did you start work? I see.’ She stared absently at the stacks beyond the windows. ‘I don’t think so; they’ll go to Lois first … Why? Because he was her husband!’
‘What was that about them rebuilding a trail?’ Fleur asked as she replaced the receiver.
Miss Pink told her. ‘They went up the following day, Wednesday, and they got down to work around midday. Andy’s body had to be there already, at the bottom of the slide.’
‘I don’t see— ’
‘Because the body was under all the debris. Whether the water that bound the gravel and stuff together came from rain or from the stream is immaterial; he was under rocks as well. If he’d fallen after Sadie and Leo knocked off the loose blocks, he’d be on top of them.’
‘Meaning he fell before they got up there, before noon on Wednesday – but he had to be at Moon Shell around five the previous day. How did he get back?’
‘That’s what I meant when I said we needed an extra vehicle.’
‘“Not an extra person”; you said that too. But you do need another person for your theory because someone has to drive the other car – ’ Fleur stiffened and held her breath. Miss Pink waited. After a while the younger woman tried to speak, croaked and coughed. ‘Excuse me. May I offer you another drink?’ The tone was artificial.
They sat and looked at the view, Miss Pink sipping, Fleur drinking whisky as if it were lemonade until she said, ‘Well, she’s done nothing seriously wrong, has she? OK, so he called her and she drove up there in her Jeep and fetched him back to Sundown. He could have told her they’d quarrelled and Gayleen drove off in the Chevy. It’s as simple as that. She didn’t have to know he’d killed Gayleen. You can’t be an accessory if you don’t know, can you?’
‘I wouldn’t think so.’
‘Did you say the police are with Lois now? Let’s call Chester.’
‘No.’ Miss Pink was sharp. She went on more gently, ‘Let’s wait a while, allow things to sort themselves out somewhat. You see, your theory of collusion, even innocent collusion, won’t wash. By the time Lois got there the road would be closed, and Andy would have to walk from Moon Shell to meet her. He could walk through the roadworks of course, but she couldn’t drive past them. Suppose he did walk: he couldn’t have left Moon Shell much before five and he had some twenty miles to cover to the roadworks. But Lois came down to the Tattler around – what? Ten o’clock?’
‘If he’d run that twenty miles from Moon Shell … Or even got a lift from a tourist who didn’t know the road closes at six, hadn’t seen the notice … ’
‘There are lots of notices – and would he risk running along the road and have a local see him?’
‘A local could have given him a lift.’
‘If so, he’ll come forward. There’s something else you forgot. Would Lois believe a story that he allowed Gayleen to drive off with all his luggage in the car?’
‘He could have told Lois he stopped at Moon Shell to use the bathroom and Gayleen drove off: they’d quarrelled and she acted impulsively. Look at her; you’d say that was in character.’
‘Your theory depends on too many strokes of luck, or coincidences, or both.’
‘So what’s the police theory – or is that a silly question?’
‘Not at all, I would think everyone’s asking it. I think they’ll be reserving judgment until after the autopsy.’
Fleur gave a sick grin. ‘From what you told me that’s going to be a bummer. How could they tell – anything?’
‘Only if they found, say, a bullet in the skull.’
‘Like a .22? You think he committed suicide?’<
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Miss Pink shrugged. She hadn’t meant that but it was another possibility. Fleur elaborated: ‘He was a guy would do anything for attention, like a naughty kid; you know: even opprobrium is better than no attention at all – and Andy enjoyed being offensive.’ Miss Pink said nothing. ‘There’s the gun,’ Fleur continued thoughtfully. ‘If it was suicide, the gun would have to be nearby, wouldn’t it? Except Sadie and Leo rolled rocks down. You’d almost think— ’
‘Yes.’
‘No!’ Fleur shook her head vehemently. ‘That’s ridiculous! So what if they covered up evidence – it was just a coincidence that they happened to be there the day after he died.’
Miss Pink thought that Fleur might be literally correct, but was it coincidence that Leo and Sadie had covered up evidence?
‘Did you get the impression that the trail had been washed away or – ’ She ground to a halt and regarded her listeners expectantly.
‘No,’ Leo said. ‘There was a kinda gouge right there where the trail should be.’
‘Enormous,’ Sadie said, ‘like a boulder weighing a ton – more, a few tons – had sort of cartwheeled. Didn’t we say there’d been a rockfall? Are you thinking what I’m thinking: that Andy started it, climbing maybe?’
Miss Pink had gone straight from the gallery to Sand Dollar. Sadie and Leo had heard nothing, could discover nothing, and had been avid to learn the result of Miss Pink’s second visit to the bottom of the landslide. Lois, they told her, wasn’t answering the phone. They had been appalled at the news that the body was that of Andy Keller, but they weren’t bothered by the mystery of how he’d covered the ground so quickly from Moon Shell Beach. What did bother them was still the matter of their having trundled boulders down on the body, but Miss Pink was postulating that the earlier rockfall was the one associated with his death; the action of clearing the trail had resulted merely in a kind of interment, no harm done.
‘Except we may have buried the gun,’ Sadie pointed out.
‘So what?’ Leo grunted. ‘Accident or suicide, what’s the odds? My God, am I glad they can’t get a chopper back in there! And people aren’t going to hang around a place a body’s been for ten days, end of August. The owls shouldn’t be disturbed too much, always assuming there are owls in that old-growth. The ones we went up to find yesterday,’ she added meaningly.
Sadie said, ‘Don’t let Mr Laddow hear you talking like that. He may hold the view people are more important than owls.’
‘I’ll argue that with him any time, but there can’t be any argument a pair of owls is more important than Andy Keller’s corpse.’
The telephone rang. It was Chester Hoyle, and he wanted to speak to Miss Pink.
‘I’ve been trying everywhere to find you,’ came his voice. ‘Can you come up here: to Lois’s place? Laddow just left and she needs to talk to you badly.’ His voice dropped. ‘She’s bothered, Melinda, apart from the shock of it all. Laddow’s acting weird. He seems to be implying that she’s involved in what happened – you know: collusion?’
It wasn’t until she was walking along the road to the Keller place that Miss Pink reminded herself that she was about to call on a widow who had only this evening learned that her husband had died a violent death. She was devoutly grateful that Chester would be there but she was also curious to see how Lois, sophisticated, honest, respectable, was responding to the shock. And, belatedly, she wondered where Laddow and Hammett were.
Chester opened the door to her. At the other end of the house, Lois was doing something in the kitchen: ‘Making sandwiches,’ Chester explained on a false note. ‘She won’t relax.’
Miss Pink crossed the parquet firmly but with a certain wariness.
‘Hello, Melinda.’ Lois raised her eyes. ‘Good of you to come. Sit down. Have a drink.’
Miss Pink stood her ground and offered her condolences. Lois, pale and drawn, her eyes huge, thanked her, swallowed and turned to the stove, her spine as stiff as a plank. Miss Pink sat down and accepted a drink from Chester.
‘We’re drinking too much,’ he said on that same false note, with a meaning glance at Lois’s back.
‘Small wonder,’ Miss Pink murmured, and waited to see how the conversation would go, which subjects might be acceptable, but Chester only repeated that he had been trying to find her all over the village.
‘I was with Fleur,’ she explained and, with a glance at the deck where the glass doors were open on the afterglow, added inanely, ‘You all have such magnificent views.’
‘The houses are built that way. The original owners came here for the ocean.’
Lois approached with a tray and he relaxed a little too obviously. ‘We haven’t eaten since lunchtime,’ he said.
‘Laddow,’ said Lois, ‘smelled. Oh, my God!’ She pushed the tray at a coffee table and rushed upstairs.
Chester sighed heavily while Miss Pink sorted out the plates and napkins and poured coffee. ‘How did she take it?’ she whispered.
‘She wouldn’t believe it at first even when they told her they’d found the motel key on the body. But then there were the boots … She believes it now. So you see the – accusation – no, the suggestion from Laddow that she harboured Andy, a killer, doesn’t really bother her. It’s me who’s bothered.’
‘They can’t charge her with being an accessory if she didn’t— ’
Lois returned, her face stiff, bearing herself with the kind of defiance worn by the bereaved who are defying themselves to break down rather than the company to pity them.
‘It doesn’t matter, Chester,’ she said. ‘A good lawyer would make mincemeat of it.’ She sat down, looked to see that her guests had helped themselves, took a sandwich and addressed Miss Pink. ‘I haven’t bothered to call my attorney. Any charge would be ridiculous. What do you think?’
‘There’s the question of how he managed to get back here so quickly from Moon Shell Beach.’ Miss Pink spoke carefully, wondering how far she could go in any discussion of the dead man’s movements, leaving it to Lois.
‘They’ll have to look elsewhere then, because I certainly didn’t bring him here. I didn’t see him again after breakfast that day when he said he was going for a hike because Gayleen was still in bed. By the time he came home I was working, so he left without even saying goodbye.’ She clenched her jaw and looked away.
‘Laddow is sceptical,’ Chester said and then, in a rush: ‘The man’s out of his depth; he’s a policeman; a woman like Lois is a closed book to him – her domestic arrangements too.’ He was embarrassed.
‘Euphemisms, Chester.’ Lois turned to Miss Pink. ‘He means my relationship with – Andy.’ She didn’t like saying the name. ‘What Chester is trying to say is that Laddow can’t understand how people like us can have what he thinks of as permissive attitudes. And it was unusual,’ she added with warmth, ‘and I do feel guilty; it was a form of selfishness. I couldn’t be bothered with— Now, wait a minute’ – she was chiding herself – ‘look who’s going in for euphemisms! Let’s put it this way: my work is the most important aspect of my life – oh, there’s Grace too. Andy came a poor third after work and Grace, so he had to make his own life and I didn’t pay him all that much attention. Now I feel so guilty, and Laddow can’t understand any of it.’
Miss Pink had followed this carefully. ‘How does his incomprehension relate to the – investigation?’
‘Gayleen? He put forward a theory that she was blackmailing Andy – who killed her in a fit of rage, and then he brought me in to clear up the mess, which makes me an accessory. Who cares? About the accessory bit, I mean.’
Chester shook his head. ‘I can’t see her blackmailing him.’
Lois said absently, ‘She was simple, but someone else could have been manipulating her. Laddow has a point there.’
‘Like someone who guessed Lois was rich,’ Chester explained to Miss Pink. ‘And then, if Gayleen could manipulate Andy, he could get money out of his wife, d’you see?’
Miss Pink said,
‘That seems an unusually devious form of blackmail.’
‘Laddow was trying to find an explanation for Andy bringing Gayleen here,’ Lois said. ‘They’ve talked to people, those two; they’ve listened to everyone, and they’ve formed an exalted view of us, all of us: like we’re old money – old for Oregon, cultured, mannered. On the other hand there’s Gayleen: a stripper, uses crack, needs money – apparently was a prostitute. The police can think of no other reason Andy could have brought her to my party except he was blackmailed into it.’
‘It makes sense,’ Chester said.
‘Did he try to blackmail you?’ Miss Pink asked.
‘No – no, not blackmail. He asked me for money; he always does – did, but he didn’t threaten me, offer any kind of ultimatum. I didn’t get the impression that he was forced to bring Gayleen here – and when she talked to me, she had to be a marvellous actress to pull the wool over my eyes although— ’ She stopped.
‘Yes,’ Chester said. ‘She never stopped enthusing over the – opulence in which she figured you live.’
‘She was awed, poor child. Silly child. Although since one doesn’t know how she died, that could be unfair.’ She was still protecting Andy.
‘That’s another thing,’ Chester said. ‘It was the same calibre gun shot Gayleen as is missing from Lois’s bedroom, and the inference is that Andy stole it or— ’
‘Or I gave it to him,’ Lois said.
‘Laddow extended the blackmail theory,’ Chester continued, ‘to include Lois directly. Gayleen had something on them both, he suggested, or Lois involved herself because her husband was being blackmailed, and they plotted to dispose of Gayleen. And that would make her more than just an unwitting accessory.’
Lois smiled coldly. ‘It would make me a conspirator to murder.’
‘It had to be blackmail.’ Miss Pink was cheerful. ‘There can be no motive for your needing to kill Gayleen. You have the ideal life. But then what could she blackmail Andy with?’
Lois shrugged. ‘Laddow was on a fishing expedition. That’s what I’ve been trying to explain to Chester. Like I keep saying: it isn’t worth calling an attorney.’