by Gwen Moffat
‘You’re not suggesting Pearl knows something about Tammy’s whereabouts?’ He smiled, almost teasing.
‘Oh, you’re back to that—’
‘You mentioned Tammy.’
‘By accident. Incidentally, but then everything comes back to her. No, I don’t think Pearl knows anything – about Tammy. I was pondering relationships.’
‘But not idly, I’m sure. How does Pearl explain Marge’s hostility? I’m sure you asked her.’ And now he was definitely teasing.
‘As an old woman’s fantasy.’
‘Exactly. There are people like this in every community: widows, spinsters, you name it. Marge was too dependent on Sam; no children either. And she had no interests. He had his mine, and hunting; Marge had nothing to do except keep house for him. She used to go out with him when she was young, a lot of young wives hunt but as they get older, eat too much, don’t take exercise, they seem to stiffen up.’ He looked surprised, as if something had just occurred to him. ‘I mean, mentally, I guess; they lose their sense of enjoyment.’ He nodded earnestly at her. ‘That’s what Pearl never lost: her sense of fun.’
‘I didn’t? So what?’ They turned at the sound of her voice. She was standing in the doorway, wearing a pale silk robe and holding a red rag. ‘What d’you make of this? I found it pushed down the back of a drawer.’
Vosker didn’t react, he merely waited for an explanation, but Miss Pink stared in dawning recognition as Pearl held out that part of the rag which was still whole: two overlapping flounces. The bodice hung down, ripped from neck to flounce. ‘It’s her frock.’ Pearl stated the obvious. ‘Thank God she was seen afterwards.’
‘I’m not with you,’ Vosker said. ‘Whose frock?’
‘You never saw Tammy wearing this thing? Well, she did; Kristen said it made her look like a hooker and she wasn’t far wrong. She wore red heels with it too. What I’m saying is, if she’d disappeared wearing this, and we’d found it ripped, what would you have thought?’
‘How do you know she wasn’t wearing it when she went?’
Pearl gasped and turned to Miss Pink who said slowly, ‘She was wearing it on Sunday afternoon, and you found your sweatshirt and Levis in her bedroom at the ranch. So she changed here. Why?’
‘Because this got ripped.’
‘How?’
The women stared at each other. Vosker removed the drinks and they spread the dress on the table. ‘There are no stains,’ Miss Pink observed. ‘Just a clean rip as though she’d torn it off in a great hurry. The zip is still closed. If she’d hurt her arm she wouldn’t be able to undo that. No one said anything about her arm being hurt.’
Pearl said quickly, ‘This can’t have anything to do with her disappearance; she was alive and well in the evening.’
Miss Pink wondered if she realised what she’d said. ‘The point is, we can’t find any explanation for her disappearance, apart from her just wanting to make trouble, so we have to consider any unusual behaviour before she went missing, because there could be a link. And this’ – she fingered the rent in the dress – ‘is the most unusual thing yet.’
They stared at what remained of the dress. ‘God!’ Pearl breathed. ‘I hope she just ran away.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Vosker insisted. ‘She was all right hours later.’
Chapter 11
Wayne Spikol arrived in the village at eight o’clock the following morning. He went to the Harpers first and then came down to talk things over with Pearl. Miss Pink was present, eating breakfast in the kitchen, and it was obvious to her that the deputy looked on Pearl as an important source of information, although in this case she could tell him little more than he had gleaned from the Harpers. She did tell him about the discovery of the red dress and the theft of her clothes but as soon as he realised that this must have occurred hours before Tammy vanished he dismissed the incident. For his part he told them that inquiries in Palomares had come to nothing. There were no young girls in the hospital, no reports of accidents, or of a twelve-year-old being picked up by police, and those children in her grade whom he’d managed to trace had seen or heard nothing of her. He was flummoxed and he was looking to Pearl, even to Miss Pink, for inspiration.
‘But you’re the professional!’ Pearl protested. ‘We thought as soon as the police were called in things would start moving. Where are the rest of them: forensics, fingerprint guys and that? Where’s the sheriff?’
He was amazed. ‘You reckon there’s been foul play?’
‘Of course not! Well, I hope not. What makes you say that?’
‘We’ve had too long to speculate,’ Miss Pink put in. ‘By now the possibility of foul play has occurred to all of us.’
He shook his head. ‘She went voluntarily, ma’am. Either Harper or Maxine would have heard if there’d been a struggle.’
‘Granted, but did she stay away of her own free will? Suppose the person she went to meet turned out to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing?’
‘You got someone in mind?’ She sighed. ‘Kristen Scott is riding back in the forest,’ he went on. ‘She says Tammy could be using the old cabin up the head of Scorpion Canyon. She coulda hid in the woods when the men was there yesterday but at night she’d go back there for shelter. So they’re in Scorpion this morning: her and Gafford and Harper, when they done the chores.’
Pearl looked at Miss Pink. ‘Kristen knows how Tammy’s mind works,’ she conceded. ‘And when you think: the Scorpion cabin is the most likely place if she never left the area; we picnic there sometimes so it’s familiar country to her. It’s around five miles to walk but if she was mad with everyone – you know, like feeling rejected, she coulda rushed up there in a temper. If Kristen thinks so that’s good enough for me. Why don’t we ride up to Badblood and work our way across in case she makes a break for it? If she runs ahead of them we might catch her on Midnight, or see her in Slickrock. Give us something to do. If Wayne’s going back to town we can’t sit here all day doing nothing.’
‘You in back?’ came a harsh shout from the front of the house, and Marge appeared in the doorway: an angry Marge in crumpled slacks and a blouse with food stains down the front. ‘Saw your car,’ she flung at Spikol. ‘I been robbed! Someone was in my house last night. He took around three hundred dollars!’
‘No,’ Pearl said flatly. ‘Pedro would have barked.’
Marge hesitated, then came back furiously. ‘So it was someone he knew!’ Her face was dangerously flushed.
‘Sit down,’ Pearl said. ‘Have a cup of coffee.’
Marge said through gritted teeth, ‘Who’s so short of cash they gotta rob their neighbours?’
Pearl drew in her breath sharply but Spikol got there first: ‘Maybe you mislaid it.’
Marge snarled. Miss Pink said brightly, ‘Tammy?’ They were silenced. ‘Tammy needs money,’ she went on. ‘She doesn’t know Thelma’s coming home today; she could be taking money in order to buy a plane ticket to Houston.’ Marge subsided a little. ‘If your dog didn’t bark,’ Miss Pink prompted.
‘Had to be someone the dog knew.’ Spikol picked up his cue. ‘Dog’s all right, is he? Not drugged nor nothing?’
‘He’s all right.’ Marge was grudging.
‘Little devil,’ Pearl said thoughtfully. ‘I wonder if anyone else suffered. Better look in your billfold,’ she told Miss Pink.
But their cash seemed to be intact, at least, no large sums had vanished. They rang round. Marian, who had left her handbag in the Vosker living-room, had lost a hundred and fifty dollars. The Voskers hadn’t closed their patio door and the thief had only to unhook the screen and walk in. Ada had lost nothing. She told them incidentally that Scott had gone up on the mesas today; both Kristen and her father thought Tammy could be hiding out in the forest. She seemed relieved to hear that Pearl and Miss Pink proposed to go on the plateau as well. ‘She needs to be found,’ she said, ‘before any harm comes to her.’
‘Were you thinking of something in particular?’ Pearl a
sked carefully.
‘I was thinking of the dangers up there, and of Gregorio. Accidents happen so easily.’
‘If Tammy did steal that money – and it has to be her, who else could it be? – did she come all the way down from Scorpion and go back there to sleep?’ Pearl was incredulous. ‘That doesn’t sound like Tammy. No one round here hikes – all except Michael Vosker, and you. Everyone else rides.’
They were on the Las Mesas road, the horses moving slowly as the riders talked. ‘Perhaps she didn’t go back.’ Miss Pink looked about her as if she might catch sight of Tammy dodging behind a bush. ‘With such a huge expanse to search, so many places where a youngster can hide, she could be anywhere, and moving around at that.’
‘You think we’re wasting our time going on top?’ Pearl looked up at the sunlit rim.
Miss Pink didn’t say anything for a few moments but when she spoke her voice was firm. ‘No, I don’t think we’re wasting our time.’
‘So who else was robbed?’ Avril asked, coming to meet them as they approached her house. They had telephoned her earlier but after the theft of her diamond ring she locked her doors when she went to bed. She had lost no money.
‘Only Marian and Marge,’ Pearl said, looking round. ‘What happened to Fletch?’
‘He’s up in Badblood again. He left about an hour ago. And Clayton Scott went up after him. What’s with this sudden interest in my land? I take it you’re going up there too. Lloyd said he had to go and see if there was pink-eye among the cows. Herefords don’t get pink-eye, do they?’
‘I wouldn’t be surprised.’ Pearl was staring absently at the trail climbing the escarpment. ‘People are more interested in Markow land than yours; Kristen thinks Tammy’s holed up in the old cabin in Scorpion.’ She looked at Miss Pink, hesitated, then went on lamely, ‘We’ll cut her off if she makes a break for it this way.’
‘You sound as if you’re hunting the kid!’ Avril protested. ‘And she’s on foot, she can’t cross Slickrock; there’s a precipice on my side.’
‘You reckon?’ Pearl grinned. ‘The only way she can cross Slickrock is on foot.’
‘That woman don’t know where she’s at,’ she observed once they were out of earshot. ‘If anything happened to Fletch she’d have to sell up.’
‘She could get Mexican labour.’
‘She wouldn’t trust ’em. She thinks all Mexicans are out to rip her off.’
‘Why did she employ Ramirez then?’
‘Oh, Greg was all right; she got on well with him. Everyone loved Gregorio. There I go again! Suppose I’d said that to Ada!’
They were crossing Midnight Mesa when Pearl remarked that for all the signs they could be alone up there. ‘Do you think we missed the men?’ she asked. ‘They went up Badblood or Rastus?’
‘You reckon they’re together?’
‘You mean, if Clayton caught up with Fletch? I’d expect them to stay separate: they’d cover more ground that way.’
‘How do they get on usually: Lloyd and Clayton Scott?’
‘Fletch keeps clear of him; he had a very strict daddy himself. Ask me, Clayton frightens Fletch, but then Fletch is frightened of most people, except me maybe. Funny thing,’ she mused, ‘so is Clayton. What a lot of fear there is around.’
‘What’s Scott frightened of?’
‘Women.’
They parted at a grove of pinyons and when they came together again Miss Pink said, ‘Yes, that makes sense, but how did you discover it?’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Pearl was surprised.
‘I wouldn’t have said so. It wasn’t obvious to me, but you know him much better than I do.’
They rode on, through the glaring sunlight and the deep shadows. The heat seemed to shrivel the brain and their thought processes were slowed down as they conserved their mental energy.
‘Why do I keep thinking Tammy is his daughter?’ Miss Pink asked.
‘Whose daughter?’
‘Clayton Scott’s. Who are we talking about?’
‘Tammy’s Ira’s kid. Tammy Markow.’
‘I know.’
‘It’s because I told you Kristen acts like she’s Tammy’s big sister. You think of Tammy as being family: Scott family.’
‘But Ada doesn’t like her.’
Silence. Click, went the hoofs on bedrock, slap, went big feet in the sand. A scrub jay watched them from a pinyon, too somnolent to move. A lizard scuttered from one patch of shade to the next.
‘It’s because of Veronica,’ Pearl said. ‘Tammy’s childish, so Ada sees Veronica in her. That makes her miserable so she discourages Tammy. Kristen’s different – and they’re very close: Ada and Kristen, like Kristy was grown up. Of course she is, she’s seventeen. But she never was a kid, never childish.’
‘What’s she going to do?’
‘Find her if she’s here, bring her home. Tammy will come down with her.’
‘I mean, what’s she want to be? Is she going to college?’
‘Kristen? All she wants is Jay Gafford – oh, and horses, nothing else, except for her mom to be happy.’
‘She’s that serious? She means to marry Jay?’
‘Marriage or whatever. She’s still passionately in love; once she calms down a bit, she’ll find a house, move in with him. That’s what she wants and that’s what she’ll have, and no one’s gonna stop her.’
‘Not her father?’
‘Least of all her father—’
A horse neighed. The sorrel threw up his head and answered. They came on two horses tied in the shade. ‘Clayton and Fletch,’ Pearl said. ‘You know where they are?’
‘They’ve climbed down into Slickrock. Are you game? Shall we follow?’
Pearl dismounted and tied her horse to a branch. ‘I’ll have a look at it,’ she said grimly, loosening her cinch.
They stood on the rim and looked down the line of descent into the canyon. So far as they could see there was no one on the wall, nor anywhere else. They could see much of the mesa on the other side but there were innumerable depressions where horses and people might be hidden. As for the canyon, Miss Pink regarded the green canopy absently, not expecting it to reveal any secrets. ‘All the same,’ she murmured, commenting on her thoughts, ‘you should be aware of them; birds would take fright, or those pigs.’ She looked upstream to where she thought the marijuana plots must be. The cottonwoods were bright and immobile and oddly sinister. Pearl licked her lips. She seemed tense. ‘Yes?’ Miss Pink asked gently.
‘I was wondering who was down there.’
‘We hope it’s Tammy. Don’t we?’ Pearl shook her head stiffly. ‘Shall I go down?’ Miss Pink asked.
‘No, we’ll stay together.’
‘What’s the problem?’
She didn’t answer immediately and her eyes wandered. ‘I’m scared of heights,’ she said.
Miss Pink didn’t believe her. ‘How curious’ – she was looking at the ribbon of woodland below – ‘there may be five people down there, six if you were to count Tammy, and not a sign nor sound of them.’
‘What bothers me,’ Pearl said tightly, ‘is are there more, like one or two strangers?’
‘Poachers?’
She shrugged and stepped towards the edge, then held back for Miss Pink to show the way. Whatever was bothering her it wasn’t the descent; she climbed down the wall almost as nimbly as a mountaineer, hampered only by her smooth-soled boots.
As they approached the level of the trees Miss Pink noted again how the canyon, which had seemed so quiet and unpopulated from above, was in fact full of life. Sound increased with the heat, which was steamy where it had been dry, and if you looked closely, there was movement in the canopy, but only in the canopy. If there were people on the ground they were as quiet as deer.
They reached the bottom. ‘Now what?’ Pearl asked.
‘We’ll go to the cabin first.’ Miss Pink stooped to tighten a bootlace, aware that Pearl turned automatically and glanced down-canyon, but as sh
e straightened, the woman said casually, ‘You lead on, you’ve been here before.’
Miss Pink started to work down the canyon outside the trees where the going was rough. After a few yards Pearl said, ‘I wish I’d worn trainers now; surely there must be game trails in the trees?’
‘There was a proper trail once but it’s overgrown.’ There was no response from the rear.
They came to the yellow towers and Pearl’s pleasure was obvious; she might have forgotten the reason for their presence in Slickrock. ‘Fabulous,’ she observed as Miss Pink looked back to see why the other had stopped. ‘Is the cabin near?’
‘Keep your voice down; she may be here.’
They approached the cabin from the side so it wasn’t until they were almost at the entrance that they saw the door was open. Miss Pink stopped short and heard Pearl catch her breath. Nothing moved inside. They could see a corner of the interior; Miss Pink could even see the dark patch that was the gopher’s hole. She couldn’t see the bed or the cupboard, only a shelf with cans on it. There was a flash of reflected light on the wall. She tensed, and knew that Pearl had seen it too. The silence was palpable. Something else was showing now, halfway up the opened door: something long and slim and black. Their eyes were fixed, then Miss Pink exhaled on a long breath and said loudly, ‘It’s Melinda Pink and Pearl. Who’s that?’
Clayton Scott stepped into view, lowering his rifle.
‘Clayton!’ Pearl gasped. ‘Who did you think we were?’
‘You could be anyone.’ He emerged from the cabin, his gaze shifting from one to the other. ‘You seen her? You heard anything?’
‘Nothing.’
Miss Pink stepped forward. ‘May I?’ He was in her way. He stood aside, opened his mouth, and closed it again. Pearl moved up.
‘You’re blocking the light,’ Miss Pink said.