“Or you can hitch a ride, miss.”
“Thanks, I’ll walk.” She was wary of driving with strangers; and besides, the countryside of nut and fruit ranches offered a beautiful walk.
In the village Vicki inquired first at the small hotel. The owner put down his newspaper and obligingly looked through the register. It had just a few guests listed; Lucy and Mrs. Heath were not among them.
“Did you see any older woman with a young, brown-haired woman?” Vicki asked the hotel owner.
“No, miss. Why don’t you ask at the Pines Motel? You can ’phone from here.”
Vicki telephoned. The motel had no record, no recall of the two women. She went to the Placerville restaurants, garage, police office, and asked. No news.
Vicki flew on to the next town, Auburn. She talked with friendly tradesmen and local people at a roadside stand heaped with cherries, almonds, grapes, walnuts, and apples. No one, not even the motel keeper or the gas-station owner, had seen the woman and the girl Vicki described. Neither had Auburn’s police officers.
In the next town, Marysville, Vicki inquired again, with no results. In each village—a few of them were almost ghost towns of gold-rush fame—she got the same story. No one had seen the two women. By midafternoon Vicki felt badly discouraged.
“Well, shall I give up?”
Vicki thought it over. So far she had tried only the villages. The minister and the painter had mentioned the possibility that Mrs. Heath might rent a house in the Sierra foothills. “A house off by itself in the hills—that’s the next thing to look for and ask about.”