Her gentleness was attractive, Qwilleran thought, yet she had a cultivated sophistication. He was curious about this stunning woman, probably about forty, who had never married, who dedicated her life to helping others, and who still lived with her parents in Indian Village. This much he had gleaned from her father, the jovial attorney for the Klingenschoen Fund.
He said, “You could help a great deal with this project, if you could be good enough to give me some background information on policies of the facility. Perhaps you would be free for dinner some evening.”
“Unfortunately,” she said, “I’ll be on the desk every evening this week, but it’s charming of you to ask.”
“How about Saturday night?”
“I would really love it, but it’s Father’s birthday.”
Before Qwilleran could huff into his moustache, a voice called out, “Mr. Qwilleran! Mr. Qwilleran! I’m glad I caught you.” It was Emma’s canary, waving a shopping bag. “Emma wants you to have these things—to keep.”
“What are they?”
“Just little mementoes, and some stories about her life.”
“Shouldn’t she give them to her family?”
“Her family isn’t really interested, but Emma says you’ll think of something to do with them. There’s a candybox that was a valentine from her husband, probably seventy years ago.”
“Give her my thanks,” he said. “Tell her I’ll write her a letter.”
When he turned back to finish his conversation with the Chief Canary, she had walked away from the desk, replaced by a lesser canary in a yellow smock. “Ms. Hasselrich was needed in a meeting,” she said. “Is there a message?”
There was no message. He carried Emma’s keepsakes to the parking lot, thinking, What am I doing here? I could have been an investigative reporter Down Below.
At the cabin Koko was immediately attracted to the shopping bag and its contents. He took a vital interest in anything new, anything different, any addition to the household, and Mrs. Wimsey’s mementoes—having been on a farm for seventy years—probably retained an enticing scent. Among the notebooks and envelopes and loose papers was the candybox, covered in faded pink brocade that was almost threadbare and topped with a heart outlined in yellowed lace—a pathetic reminder of bygone happiness. Qwilleran stuffed the documents back into the shopping bag and added the candybox to the clutter on the dining table, where Koko applied his inquisitive nose to every inch of the old silk and lace, all the while tapping the table with his tail. Tap tap tap.
THIRTEEN
On Monday morning as Qwilleran was preparing to serve the Siamese their minced beef mixed with cottage cheese and laced with tomato sauce, there was an explosion in the woods, and a rusty pickup with camper top lurched into the clearing.
“Iggy’s back!” Qwilleran proclaimed in a tone of excitement mixed with dread. “He must have run out of cigarette money.”
Although eager to confront the man with questions and rebukes, he restrained his urges. He waited until the carpenter oozed out of the truck. As Iggy ambled toward the building site at the pace of a tired snail, Qwilleran followed. “Nice day!” he remarked to the prodigal workman.
“Should be able to finish THEM SUCKERS TODAY,” said Iggy.
“To which suckers are you referring?” Qwilleran asked politely.
“Them boards!” He pointed to the siding.
“Good! And I wish you’d dispose of that rubbish.” Qwilleran indicated the scraps of shingles and torn wrappings. “I have business in Pickax today, but I’ll be back in time to pay your day’s wages. See you after lunch.”
He strode back to the cabin to finish working on the cats’ breakfast but found them on the kitchen counter, finishing the job themselves. Before leaving for Pickax he glanced automatically around the interior, checking for feline temptations, locking up toothbrushes, hiding copies of the Moose County Something, closing all drawers, hiding the telephone in a kitchen cabinet, and leaving no socks lying around.
“Keep an eye on the carpenter,” he told them. “Don’t let him burn down the house.”
He locked the doors, front and back, as he left. There was no need for Iggy to have access to the cabin.
The business in Pickax was the monthly luncheon meeting of the trustees for the Klingenschoen Fund. He stopped at his apartment to pick up some more books, dropped into the newspaper office to trade comradely insults with the staff in the city room, then reported to the meeting place in the New Pickax Hotel, built in 1935. Since that time it had never been redecorated, and the menu had never changed. The natives of Pickax were creatures of habit and tradition.
At the luncheon table Qwilleran remarked, “I see they’ve warmed up the 1935 chicken à la king again.” His humor brought no response from the bankers, accountants, investment counselors, and attorneys who administered the fund, but the high-spirited Mr. Hasselrich said he thought the chicken was rather good.
Following the luncheon the trustees reviewed the Fund’s philanthropies and considered new applications for grants and loans. It was Qwilleran’s money, in the long run, that they were handling, but his mind wandered from the business at hand. He kept combing his moustache with his fingers; something was calling him home to the lakeshore.
He drove back to the beach faster than usual, with the car windows wide open, and the closer he came to the lake, the fresher and more invigorating the air. When he started up the driveway, however, the atmosphere changed. His eyes started to itch and smart unaccountably. At the same time he became aware of a foul odor . . . It was smoke! But not wood smoke! He detected noxious fumes from something burning—something toxic. He took the curves and hills of the drive like a roller coaster and jammed on the brake at the top of the dune. The clearing was filled with black, acrid smoke. Iggy’s truck was there, and the carpenter was behind the wheel, blissfully asleep.
“Crazy fool!” Qwilleran muttered, coughing and choking. He jumped out of his car and banged the door of the pickup. “Wake up! Wake up! I didn’t tell you to burn the stuff!” he yelled between fits of coughing.
Iggy climbed slowly out of the cab. The asphyxiating smoke had no effect on his leather lungs.
“Quick! Help me douse it with sand! I’ll get shovels!” Qwilleran ran to the toolshed and threw open the door. What he saw was too improbable to comprehend. Staring at him from the darkness were two pairs of eyes.
“YOW!” came a voice from the depths of the shed, accompanied by a female shriek.
“How did you get out here?” Qwilleran shouted.
“YOW!” said Koko in indignation.
Qwilleran grabbed a couple of shovels and slammed the toolshed door shut in the faces of two astonished animals.
Working fast, with an occasional assist from Iggy, he smothered the smoldering pile of asphalt shingles and their waterproof wrappers.
When the job was done, he leaned on his shovel, breathing hard. “How did the cats . . . get into the shed?” he gasped.
“Cats?” asked Iggy. “WHAT CATS?”
“My cats! How did they get out here in the shed?”
“I never seen NO CATS.”
“I’ll show you. Get out there to the shed. Move it!”
With some persuasive shoving Iggy trotted down the narrow path to the toolshed.
Qwilleran threw open the door. “Now what do you call those animals?”
The two elegant creatures were pacing back and forth with resentment, their muscles rippling expressively under their silky fur, their whiskers bristling, their ears swiveling, their tails pointed like rapiers.
“What do you call those?” Qwilleran repeated.
“Funny-lookin’ suckers, AIN’T THEY?”
Qwilleran wanted to grab the man by the seat of the pants and throw him out, but he gritted his teeth and paid him for five hours’ work, after which Iggy drove away in his snorting, battered truck with a debonair wave of the hand and a toothy grin.
Seizing the two cats about the middle, Qwille
ran carried them from the toolshed, opened the rattail latch of the porch door with an elbow, and tossed the two culprits on the redwood chaise. They froze in the position in which they landed and glared at him.
“Don’t give me that insolent stare!” he said. “You two have some explaining to do!”
He unlocked the cabin door, stepped into the mudroom—and yelped! There was a hole in the wall, roughly three feet wide and seven feet high. Below it there was a liberal sprinkling of sawdust, with pawprints clearly defined.
“What? What?” Qwilleran spluttered, in the most inarticulate moment of his entire life.
Gradually the facts became clear. Beyond the opening was the roughed-in skeleton of the east wing. Iggy had cut a hole for the connecting door. After that, the lazy loafer had easy access to the cabin and could have napped on a white sofa or, worse yet, in Qwilleran’s bed. Meanwhile, the cats had access to the east wing. Calmly they had walked through the newly sawed opening; casually they had jumped out an unframed window. But how did they end their journey in the toolshed?
In whatever way they managed the feat, it appeared that they had enjoyed the experience, because they were now peering between Qwilleran’s legs, toe-deep in sawdust, ready to repeat the adventure. Grabbing them, he locked them up, announcing with a declamatory flourish, “Once more into the guestroom, dear friends!” While they howled their protests, he found a sheet of plywood left over from the subfloor and nailed it across the rectangular aperture with angry blows, smashing his thumb in the process.
Between erratic strokes of the hammer he thought he heard coughing outdoors.
Russell Simms was standing in the backyard with her hand over her nose and mouth. “Something’s burning,” she said in a muffled voice.
“Go around to the lake porch,” he said. “I’ll meet you there.”
On the lake porch the air was fresh and clear, and he inhaled deeply. “Have a chair,” he said to Russell, “and I’ll tell you a story you won’t believe. I came home from Pickax and found that idiot burning shingles! He also cut a hole in the wall of the cabin, and the cats got out.”
“I saw them,” she said quietly.
“You saw them? Where were they?”
“In the yard.”
“Where was the carpenter?”
“I don’t know.”
“He was probably in the cabin, sleeping in my bed—that blockhead! So you’re the one who put the cats in the toolshed! That was smart thinking! But how did you manage it?”
She put a hand in her sweater pocket and drew out a few morsels of the dry catfood that she fed to the seagulls.
“Fishy Fritters!” Qwilleran said in amazement. “You actually lured them into the shed with Fishy Fritters? If I try to feed them Fishy Fritters, they throw a catfit . . . Well, Russell, it’s a miracle that you happened along when you did. If I had lost those cats, I would have killed that man!”
“I had a feeling I should come,” she said shyly.
“I don’t know how to thank you. How can I thank you?”
Hesitantly she said, “Will you tell me something?”
“Of course.”
“Honestly?”
“Of course!”
“What’s wrong with my cottage?” She removed her dark glasses and looked at him directly for the first time, her eyes half closed and the pupils contracted. No wonder Mildred said her eyes were weird!
Having paused too long, he said quickly, “I don’t think . . . that is, I was unaware of anything wrong with the cottage. When the Dunfields lived there, it seemed to be . . . rather comfortable.”
“Why are they renting it?”
“Mr. Dunfield died, and his wife doesn’t care to live at the beach any more.”
“When did he die?”
“About two years ago.”
“What happened to him?” Her piercing eyes searched his.
“Well . . . it was most unfortunate, you see. He was a fine man, a retired police chief, a friend of mine . . . I’m sorry to say, he was murdered.”
“I knew it!” Russell said with a shudder. She jumped up, rushed from the porch and ran down the steps to the beach. He watched her head for home along the shoreline, faster than she had ever traveled before.
FOURTEEN
“I swear I could kill that guy!” Qwilleran said with vehemence. He was having lunch with Roger and Bushy and relating the events of the previous afternoon—how the underground builder had burned the shingles and allowed the cats to get out of the cabin. “If they had been lost in the woods, I would have clobbered him with a two-by-four—and I mean it!”
The photographer said, “When we were building our addition two years ago, our guy painted the whole thing a sick green while we were away. Our house is white, you understand! He painted the addition green because—he explained afterwards—the green paint was on sale! My wife was so upset, she almost had a miscarriage . . . What’s your guy’s name?”
“Iggy. That’s all I know.”
“Cripes! He’s the one who painted us green! You have to watch him every minute.”
“I know. He started to shingle my roof in a poisonous blue.”
They were having a sandwich at the FOO, a downat-the-heel restaurant on the west side of Mooseville. At some point in recent history the restaurant’s large sign had lost the letter D in a wind storm, and it had never been replaced. Fishermen and boaters patronized the place because it was close to the docks, the food was cheap and plentiful, and the unlicensed establishment served illegal beverages in coffee cups. It also appeared to be popular with the sheriff’s deputies, leading Qwilleran to deduce that the restaurant was under suspicion or the local law enforcers were corrupt.
The three men ate with their hats on, in accordance with FOO custom—Qwilleran in the orange hunting headgear that he liked, Roger in a Mooseville baseball cap, and Bushy with his skipper’s cap at a dapper angle.
“Iggy was on the job when I left this morning,” Qwilleran said, “but this time I’ve taken the precaution of locking up the cats in the guestroom. He’s supposed to start framing the windows today. No doubt it will take him a week, allowing for catnaps and cigarette breaks.”
Bushy nodded wisely. “If you ask me, it’s not only tobacco he smokes.”
“I wouldn’t tolerate him, but he’s my last resort . . . Any news about Clem, Roger?”
“Police are investigating. That’s all I can find out,” said the young reporter.
“That’s what I guessed. Anyway, I’m stuck with Iggy. He’s not only lazy and infuriating; he makes stupid mistakes, but I can’t ride herd on him every minute. I’m glad to get away for a few hours.”
“Have you spent much time on the lake?” the photographer asked.
“Last time was two years ago. I went out on a chartered trawler and hooked something I wasn’t supposed to, and all hell broke loose. What’s on the agenda, Bushy?”
“I thought we’d take off for the island right after lunch and spend a couple of hours over there investigating the situation on the shore, then do some fishing and fry up our catch on the beach. I’ve got a portable stove on the boat and a coffee pot, and we can slice potatoes and throw ’em in the pan.”
“I brought the beer and ginger ale,” said Roger.
“Have you checked the weather?” Qwilleran asked. “I hear they’re having heavy winds in Canada.”
“Luckily they’re going to miss us,” said Bushy, “but it gets cool out there on the island. You might need a sweater under your windbreaker.”
“I brought one,” said Roger.
“So did I,” said Qwilleran.
“Then we’re all set!”
The photographer’s boat was a modest cabin cruiser called Say Cheese, and he was an experienced skipper. As they sped across the water, Qwilleran looked back at the receding shoreline, nestled at the foot of the sandhills and fringed with wharves and the masts of boats. Mooseville looked as quaint as an Italian fishing village, and he experienced a tingl
e of nostalgia for other times, other places, other friends.
It was one of those days when the sky was blue and the clouds were puffy, moving proudly like tall ships. They were moving fast, Qwilleran noted. The skipper had the motor wide open, and no one tried to talk against the roar. Soon the island appeared to rise out of the lake—just the tops of trees at first, then the wide beach, and then the small, flat-roofed fishing shack near the trees. He counted. There were actually three trees on Three Tree Island.
Bushy cut the motor, and they putt-putted toward a prefabricated metal pier. “They take the pier down in winter and store it in the shack,” he explained. “The shack isn’t much, but it’s shelter. Mostly they use it to clean fish, so you won’t want to spend much time inside unless you brought a clothespin.” He pinched his nose.
With the boat tied up at the pier, they walked ashore. It was a low-lying island, and the beach was wide and smooth.
“Good place for a spaceship to land,” Roger said. “The landing site is on the opposite side of the island, the pilot told me. Anyone want a drink before we start exploring?”
He brought a cooler from the boat, and they stretched out on the sand. Bushy and Qwilleran stripped off their shirts, but the white-faced Roger said, “Not me! I burn!”
As Qwilleran lay on the sand he heard a whistling sound high overhead. He sat up and listened, smoothing his moustache as he vaguely remembered hearing it once before when he was vacationing at the cabin. On that occasion it was followed by a violent storm. He said nothing about it; after all, he was a city-bred landlubber, while Roger and Bushy had known this lake all their lives. Since they showed no concern, Qwilleran lay down again.
“Okay, team,” said the skipper after a half hour. “Let’s hit the trail. Better put the cooler back on the boat and take your sweaters. Bring mine, will you, Rog?”
“Do we proceed clockwise or counterclockwise?” Qwilleran asked. They tossed a coin and started westward. It seemed like a small circle of land when viewed from the approaching boat, hardly larger than a cartoonist’s idea of a desert island, but it proved to be a long way around when they trudged along the shore. The beach that appeared so hard and smooth was in actuality an expanse of deep, fine sand, and every step was a slide backward as well as a push forward. After tramping for half an hour there was still no hint of a scorched spot on the beach or even among the beach grass that covered the crown of the island.
The Cat Who Went Underground Page 15