by Gwen Moffat
‘Understaffed and overworked,’ she murmured.
‘The story of my life. Fine for – er, you retired, ma’am?’
‘Not exactly. I write stories for women’s magazines, and travel articles, that kind of thing.’
He nodded; he had guessed it was something like that. ‘So, you going to leave us now?’
‘I’m staying in Regis for a day or two. I like the people and I love the country. I shall go out with Pearl.’
‘If you find anything else, like more bones, you’ll call me?’
‘Or the other boot. Of course.’
He looked startled. As she walked across the bright car park she thought: if the other boot is mended with duct tape he’d like me to put it down a hole. A few anonymous bones he can forget about, but Gregorio Ramirez means problems.
She shopped for Pearl and paid her bill at the motel and by eleven o’clock she was heading out of town for the interstate. Palomares had been quiet; what traffic there was drifted gently along the wide streets, and there was always room to park, and as she crossed a bridge that gave access to the slip road she was amazed to see an almost empty interstate. Some two miles distant one vehicle was approaching down the ribbon of concrete. She turned left, picked up speed and joined the interstate at fifty miles an hour. She reached fifty-five, flicked the cruise control and the stereo and settled back to revel in the warm breeze and Paganini.
‘Ada Scott wants to meet you,’ Pearl said, unpacking the groceries. ‘You’ll be good for her, she sees no one in this place; no one ever comes except hunters, and Ada’s not a lady who’s into killing. We’ll go along there after we’ve eaten if that’s all right with you.’
‘I shall enjoy it. Is she confined to her bed?’
‘Depends. Sometimes she’s in bed for days, others she’s as right as rain, cooking and stuff – and in case you’re thinking she drinks, it definitely isn’t that, I promise you. We got our share of alcoholics here, or we have had: Herb Beck and poor old Sam, but that’s it. Not too bad a percentage actually, just two drunks in a community of fifteen souls.’
The Scott place was down the street from Pearl’s and on the same side. Between them were two houses on bushy plots stretching back to the creek. Both houses were unoccupied, one being for sale (‘Fat chance they have of selling,’ Pearl observed), the other used by the owners for hunting in the fall. On the other side of the street and beyond Marge Dearing’s adobe was a sagging barn with the just discernible legend: Regis Hay and Grain Store. The building stood on several acres of wasteland. ‘Probably full of rattlers,’ Pearl said. ‘It hasn’t been used for years, but the snakes’ll keep the rodents down. You don’t see many rats in Regis.’
After the barn came the Voskers’ neat frame-house in its well-kept garden, and opposite was the Scotts’ adobe backing on the street. An ochre-coloured wall was set with small windows and a wooden door. This was slatted in its upper half and between the slats sunlight was visible at the end of a dark passage.
Pearl and Miss Pink went along the passage to emerge on a patio of baked earth. A thicket of bamboo cut off any view from the house which on this, the intimate domestic side, consisted of a shaded veranda with rooms opening onto it. The veranda itself was used as a room with tables and chairs and chests, and here they found Ada Scott, sitting in a rocking-chair with Kristen behind her, evidently putting the finishing touches to her mother’s hair. The girl palmed the comb smoothly and stood back while Pearl made the introductions.
Miss Pink saw a woman who initially impressed her as being singularly beautiful, yet later she was unable to recall one remarkable feature, except for her hair which was thick and long, drawn back to a high chignon encircled by a narrow band of beads like pearls. Ada smiled at Miss Pink as if she had been waiting a long time for the pleasure of meeting her. She had large eyes with heavy lids; the effect was patrician: serene and elegant, and Miss Pink relaxed in an ambiance that bore no relation to the fierce August heat.
‘You’re looking great today,’ Pearl observed, in the cheery tone used for invalids.
‘Kristen likes doing my hair.’ Her upward glance was proud and Kristen was obviously embarrassed. ‘I’ll bring the tea,’ she muttered, and went into the house. ‘It’s feminine,’ Ada explained, ‘dressing hair – and Kristen’s a tomboy. I am glad you came to see me,’ she told Miss Pink. ‘Pearl says you write stories. That must be exciting.’
She had been prepared to be agreeable but now Miss Pink found herself admitting that, yes, it was exciting, and feeling that this was truly so, not merely an effort at politeness. She started to talk about field-work, about travel, locations, the concept of allowing stories to find her rather than probing in dark corners to find plots. Kristen came back with glasses of iced tea and, glancing at Pearl, said diffidently that she wanted to take her horse out: just an hour, would that be all right?
‘You don’t have to be back in an hour,’ Ada said. ‘Away you go and have fun.’
They watched her cross the patio and enter the bamboo thicket and no one suggested that it was too hot for horses. ‘I’m getting better every day,’ Ada said, staring at the place where Kristen had disappeared. ‘She always was too protective.’ She changed the subject. ‘I would like to read something by you,’ she told Miss Pink. ‘Are you realistic or traditional?’
Miss Pink hesitated, stumped for a moment. ‘Can you be more specific?’
‘Ada doesn’t like violence,’ Pearl explained. ‘Me, I don’t read much but there’s this guy Elmore Leonard, you heard of him? I got a book of his from the thrift store and it’s pretty steamy. Ada’d hate that.’
‘I have some of my mother’s books,’ Ada said. ‘Do you know Gene Stratton-Porter? I love Laddie. I was raised on that book and I read it over and over.’
‘I don’t write like either of them,’ Miss Pink admitted. ‘But I don’t shock gratuitously and I’m all in favour of keeping private acts behind closed doors.’
‘Quite right too,’ Pearl said.
Ada, politely attentive, asked, ‘Is your home village like Regis? Or maybe you don’t live in a village?’
‘Outside one, actually, but it’s a world away. And yet’ – she pondered – ‘people are the same wherever you go; the same emotions: love, hatred, fear, jealousy. Rural Cornwall and New Mexico will be no different beneath the surface. Isn’t that odd?’ She was asking them to share in this revelation.
‘Behaviour will be more extreme here,’ Ada said. ‘Space makes a difference. Remoteness. People turn in on themselves.’
Pearl swallowed. ‘You’re thinking of people like Marge Dearing.’
Ada’s eyes were shadowed. ‘I was speaking generally. I wasn’t thinking specifically of Regis.’
‘The West is still frontier country?’ suggested Miss Pink.
Ada was considering that, and Miss Pink was wondering if perhaps it was not frontier country but something other, when Tammy Markow flashed out of the passage on her bicycle, her long brown legs extended as she braked. She got off and dropped the bike on the ground. Her bare head gleamed like gold in the sunlight and she was wearing skimpy shorts and a tank top that exposed bony ribs. She looked amusing and delightful: half-child, half-woman. ‘Hi,’ she called. ‘Where’s Kristen?’
‘She’s in the corral,’ Ada said. ‘You’ll just catch her.’
Tammy whirled away and Pearl shot a helpless look at Miss Pink who said easily: ‘Does your husband ranch, Mrs Scott?’
‘We have a farm on the river and a man looks after it. He lives there, and we employ seasonal labour when we need it. That’s where Mr Scott is this afternoon. We don’t have any animals up here, just the two horses.’
Pearl said quickly: ‘Clayton’s one of the workers. We’re mainly retirees in the village: out to grass.’
‘We’re evenly divided,’ Ada corrected. ‘The Markows have two hands, and Avril has – one.’ Her eyes clouded and the visitors cast about for something to say that would avoid delicate subject
s like ranch-hands and daughters. So far they hadn’t touched on Miss Pink’s gruesome discovery in the Indian ruin, and she was increasingly aware that the bones could be those of the man responsible for the death of Ada’s daughter. God, she thought, why on earth did I agree to come here?
‘Those remains you found in the canyon,’ Ada said calmly. ‘Do you think they belonged to Gregorio, the man who worked for Avril Beck?’
Miss Pink’s mouth opened but it was a moment before the words came. ‘I can have no idea,’ she said, her tone almost treacly in an effort at reassurance. ‘Wayne Spikol is inclined to think it’s a stranger.’
Pearl’s features were set in a glare; nothing she could say would alleviate the situation. Miss Pink licked her lips.
‘Poor Greg,’ Ada said. ‘I was fond of him.’
‘We all were,’ Pearl said, and closed her eyes in horror at the slip.
Tammy came through the bamboos and loitered across the baked earth. The visitors regarded her eagerly: an interruption.
‘She’s gone,’ she said dolefully. ‘Where’d she go?’
‘Oh dear.’ Pearl was lugubrious. ‘You got nothing to do? You can come out with me and Miss Pink later. We’re going up Scorpion,’ she added wildly, improvising.
‘Kristen will be back soon,’ Ada said. ‘She just took Jack out for a while. Go fetch yourself a Coke.’
‘Jack’s in the corral,’ Tammy said. ‘She wouldn’t ride in this heat.’ She pouted and looked as if she would like to say more but was intimidated by numbers. She slouched indoors and the others exchanged indulgent smiles and resumed the investigation of the guest’s background.
The effect of Ada’s interest was first to stop Miss Pink dead, and then to divert her into new channels. She was no longer describing her journeys but investigating motivation. When Ada asked her what kind of people she respected and she cited old women living alone, in particular a rancher in Arizona, Ada wondered if she had remained mentally stable. Miss Pink recalled that the woman had shared a boundary with a man who had murdered his neighbour fifty years ago; everyone knew but there was no proof, and the woman sustained neighbourly contact with the killer all that time. ‘There was nothing else she could do,’ Miss Pink pointed out. ‘She could move away, go mad, or accept him. She was a survivor so she stayed there, and stayed sane.’
‘Why did she tell you?’ Ada asked.
‘Because she had to tell someone and she knew no one would believe me, they’d dismiss the story as a traveller’s tale.’
‘You’re full of surprises,’ Pearl said. ‘Shocks, is more like it. You were visiting with a woman lived next door to a murderer!’
Miss Pink didn’t add that she’d stayed the night there.
Ada said, ‘You weren’t curious enough to invent an excuse to call on the man?’
‘No.’ Miss Pink fidgeted in her chair, intrigued and disorientated. ‘Curiosity has to stop somewhere. There’s a point where you ask no more questions and you move on.’
‘What do you do with what you’ve found out?’
‘Sometimes you use it, heavily disguised and with the location changed. Sometimes’ – Miss Pink bit her lip, remembering instances – ‘sometimes you forget.’
‘Can you do that?’
‘What I mean is: you lock it in some kind of mental back-room and throw away the key. The secret will die with you.’
‘Does it affect you? Do you dream about it?’
‘You learn to deal with it, like grief. Like the old rancher did.’
‘What is Tammy doing?’ Pearl exclaimed in a flurry of concern. ‘I better go and see if she’s trying on Kristen’s clothes—’
‘I have to read your stories,’ Ada said as the younger woman went in the house. ‘Will you send me something when you go home?’
‘I’ll do that. You never thought of writing yourself?’
‘No.’
Miss Pink looked away, disturbed at what she saw in the other’s eyes, something powerful, like passion, or terror, but knowing that eyes are only coloured tissue and a black hole, incapable of expression, of reflecting emotion. There was nothing in Ada’s eyes; they were like windows: screened and hiding what appeared to be an empty house. ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured.
Ada inclined her head and Miss Pink remembered her mother who employed the same grave gesture when she accepted an apology. Then the woman’s face softened. Kristen was crossing the patio.
The atmosphere was heavy as the earth relinquished the stored heat of the day and as the girl approached slowly, her arms loose, her body languid in the bright sun, she was a dream figure. Miss Pink wondered how she could ever have thought the child plain.
Ada said quietly: ‘Tammy’s here.’
Kristen was suddenly alert. ‘Where?’
‘Inside. Pearl’s with her.’
‘What’s the time?’ Neither wore a watch.
‘It’s a quarter-past four,’ Miss Pink said.
Kristen went quickly indoors. ‘It’s hot today,’ Ada said. ‘We’re building up for storms. We should have had rain before now.’
‘Yes.’ Miss Pink was listening for voices but what she heard was the sound of an engine. Ada had heard it too and started to struggle in her chair. ‘Can I help you?’ Miss Pink asked. ‘Do you want to get up?’
‘No. I – I’m just wondering—’ The dark eyes observed the windows along the veranda. ‘Nothing.’ She sank back, now staring at the entrance to the street passage. Clayton Scott appeared and strode across the patio.
‘No!’ came Tammy’s voice, loud and clear. ‘My bike’s out back.’
A curious little struggle was taking place in a doorway: Tammy trying to shake off Kristen who held her by the arm, Pearl stepping back with a yelp as someone trod on her foot. In the patio Scott picked up the bicycle and leaned it carefully against a tree. The figures on the veranda were momentarily still, then Kristen pushed past Tammy and, still holding her arm, pulled her towards the bike.
‘Good afternoon, Tammy.’ Scott was stern.
The girls halted. ‘Hi, Mr Scott.’ Tammy dimpled. Kristen dropped her arm and waited, looking sullen. Scott’s face darkened and Miss Pink’s heart sank. She heard someone sigh.
‘That’s no way to dress when you come visiting,’ Scott said.
Tammy appeared astonished. ‘My dad didn’t say nothing. My mom bought me this top. What’s wrong with it?’ She was teasing him.
‘When you come to this house you cover yourself.’ His voice had risen and there was a shake in it. ‘You cover yourself, you look respectable, d’you hear?’
‘Oh, come on!’ The child was grinning. ‘You expect me to wear a skirt? I’m only twelve. If you—’
‘And time you stopped rapping and got down to work,’ Pearl shouted. ‘You got three horses to groom, there ain’t no free lunches at Slocum’s, miss. We’re going to show Miss Pink Scorpion Canyon,’ she announced generally. ‘Tammy has to go and get the horses ready. You too, Kristen: away you go.’
Clayton Scott advanced to the veranda while the girls picked up the bicycle and disappeared through the passage.
‘No problems at the farm?’ Ada asked.
‘No. I wouldn’t expect any. That child’s getting out of hand, coming here like that when you got company. You’ll have to speak to her mother.’
‘Kristen has everything under control.’
‘I’m sure. Good day, Miss Pink, Pearl. My, we could do with rain.’ He sat down. ‘I must apologise,’ he told Miss Pink, ‘I can’t abide the way of raising kids these days. Our problem here is that there aren’t enough folk who can have an influence on the youngsters. Only two families, and you can see what kind of parental control there is in the other one.’ He stared moodily towards the passage.
‘Maybe you’d fetch Clayton a glass of lemonade,’ Ada suggested to Pearl, who got up with alacrity.
‘Dusty work,’ Scott told Miss Pink. ‘We’re hay-making. Did Ada tell you we have a farm on the river? Some of the
best land in the county, we get top prices for our hay. You don’t look comfortable, honey; can I fetch you another pillow?’
‘I have to go indoors.’ Ada was plainly embarrassed and Miss Pink stood up, knowing she had stayed too long. ‘Oh, don’t go,’ Ada protested, and Scott smiled warmly. ‘Sit down, ma’am; you can’t leave just as I come home. I’ll be back directly.’
With practised ease he helped his wife to her feet and supported her to the doorway. She hesitated at the sill and, ‘Watch the rug,’ Miss Pink heard him murmur.
She sighed and leaned back in her chair. She’d outstayed her welcome but Ada had appeared to enjoy the visit. She wondered what Scott wanted from her; surely he couldn’t revert to an inquisition concerning the whereabouts of his daughter on that afternoon two days ago? It was possible; the man was unpredictable, he’d been knocked off-balance by Tammy’s dress which, after all, was no more revealing than any child might wear on a hot day and, as Tammy said, she was only twelve.
He came back. ‘Pearl’s taken over,’ he said, smiling down at her. ‘Can I bring you another glass of tea?’
‘No thank you; we have to be going as soon as Pearl’s ready.’
‘How are you liking Regis?’ He sat down: affable, even charming, and as if to emphasise the benign mood, his social sense, he had removed his hat revealing thick grey hair and, as she had suspected, a high forehead.
‘I’m used to small communities,’ she said. ‘I live in one myself, and basically I don’t find Regis very different.’
‘English villages are as small as Regis?’
‘This would be called a hamlet in England, but then it would have been much larger at one time, when the mines were operating. Do you lease any mines, Mr Scott?’
‘No, I’m not interested in mining. All my time’s occupied with the farm. You must come and see it; there’s a lot of wildlife on the river banks.’
‘I can imagine. Water and sunshine – and there’ll be plenty of shade with all those cottonwoods: ideal conditions.’
‘You’re a birder, I take it.’
‘Yes, yes I am.’ Where was he trying to take this stilted conversation? ‘You’re interested in wildlife yourself?’