The Cat Who Went Underground

by Lilian Jackson Braun

  “Two years and one month.”

  “Where did you live before that?”

  “Chicago, New York, Washington, San Francis-co . . .”

  “You moved around, Mr. Qwilleran. What kind of work did you do?”

  “I was a journalist assigned to various bureaus.”

  “What is your occupation now?”

  “Semi-retired, but I write for the Moose County Something.”

  “What are you doing in Mooseville?”

  “My plan is—or was—to spend the summer months here.”

  “Have you changed your plans now?”

  “It will depend on the weather.”

  “When did you arrive?”

  “About three weeks ago.”

  “Is anyone else living here, Mr. Qwilleran?”

  “Two Siamese cats.”

  “Do you own this property?”

  “I’m heir to the property, which is currently held in trust by the Klingenschoen estate.”

  “What was your connection with Ignatius Small?”

  “I hired him to build an addition to the cabin.”

  “How long have you known him, Mr. Qwilleran?”

  “About ten days.”

  They were routine questions designed to put him off-guard, and Qwilleran was waiting for the old one-two. Finally it was delivered:

  “Who buried him under your house?”

  “I have no idea,” said Qwilleran without missing a beat. “I would have preferred Mr. Small to be buried elsewhere, and I imagine your men feel the same way.”

  “When was the last time you saw him, Mr. Qwilleran?”

  “Tuesday morning.”

  “Under what circumstances?”

  “He reported for work shortly before I left to have lunch in town. He said he was going to start framing the windows, and I paid him in advance for the day’s work.”

  “Did you pay him in cash?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was the amount?”

  Qwilleran reached for a notebook on the table. “Fifty-five dollars.”

  “Were you expecting any other workmen on Tuesday?”

  “No.”

  “And where were you between the time you left for the lunch and the time you found the body?”

  “I had lunch with friends—John Bushland and Roger MacGillivray at the FOO. Then we boarded Bushland’s boat and went out to Three Tree Island. For some fishing,” he added. “But a storm came up, and we lost our boat. After being marooned for several hours, we were rescued by the sheriff’s helicopter. All of this is on record in the Morning Rampage and Daily Fluxion.”

  “When did you return to this house?”

  “About four hours ago.”

  “Where were you between the hour of your rescue and your return this morning?”

  “In the Pickax Hospital under the care of Dr. Halifax.”

  “Have you any knowledge of what happened in your absence?”

  “I certainly have! A tornado wrecked the new addition I was building.”

  “How did you happen to find the body?”

  “My male cat was acting suspiciously, scratching the floor and trying to get down into the crawl space. I opened the trap door to see what was bothering him, and he jumped into the hole and refused to come out, so I left him under the floor and went to lunch.”

  There was a sharp cry from the guestroom. Koko knew he was the subject of the discussion.

  “How long were you gone?”

  “About an hour.”

  “And what happened when you returned?”

  “The female was making a fuss about the male being underground, so I opened the trap door and found him digging in the sand and growling. I went after him and discovered he had disinterred a foot.”

  The trooper turned to the sheriff, who exhibited a chrome flashlight in a clear plastic bag. “Have you seen this flashlight before, Mr. Qwilleran?”

  “It’s a common style, but it looks like the one I was using in the crawl space until it suddenly blacked out. Dead battery.”

  The sheriff removed the flashlight from its bag gingerly and pressed the thumb-switch; the light flashed on.

  Qwilleran shrugged. “Well, that’s the way they manufacture everything these days.”

  “When you came home from the hospital, Mr. Qwilleran, did you find the plywood panel nailed up as it is now?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Is that how you left it on Tuesday?”

  “Exactly.”

  “When you left on Tuesday, did you lock the door?”

  “Yes. I always take great care to lock up.”

  “Does anyone else have a key?”

  “I subscribe to the Glinko service, so they have a key. Also, there’s a spare hidden on the screened porch in case I lose my keycase or lock myself out.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Follow me.”

  They trooped out to the porch where Riker was waiting patiently and straining his ears to hear. Qwilleran—with a wink at the editor—reached toward the top of the doorframe.

  “Don’t touch it,” said the sheriff, and he climbed up to look. “It’s not here,” he announced.

  “Look under the doormat,” Qwilleran suggested.

  “Not there either,” said the deputy.

  “That’s unusual.”

  The detective made a note. “Are you going to be around for a while, Mr. Qwilleran?”

  “Around where?”

  “Here at this address.”

  “I may move back to Pickax if the weather doesn’t improve.”

  “Please keep us informed of your whereabouts. You might be able to help us further. And we’d appreciate it if you’d come in for prints, to check against those we’ve found . . . One more thing,” he added, glancing over his shoulder at Riker. “Please don’t discuss this case with anyone.”

  Taking the flashlight, beer can, mudrug, and other evidence in plastic bags, the officers left, only to be intercepted by the editor, who fired questions.

  Meanwhile Qwilleran released the long-suffering animals from their prison. “You’ve lost your rug,” he said to Koko.

  He poured a double Scotch for his friend, a glass of white grape juice for himself, and a saucer of the same for Koko. “Care to wet your whiskers?” he asked as he placed the saucer on the floor.

  The police cars soon pulled away, and the editor shambled into the cabin, dropping disconsolately on a sofa. “They wouldn’t talk.”

  “Just tell your readers that the police are investigating.”

  “You dirty rat! For this I walked half a mile up your drive in rain and mud?”

  “If a dead body turned up in your basement,” Qwilleran told his old friend, “you too would keep your mouth shut.”

  “They don’t suspect you, do they?”

  “They suspect everyone, including the little green men in the UFOs.”

  “I’m your oldest friend,” Riker continued persuasively. “You’ve always discussed cases with me.”

  “Heretofore, I was never personally involved. This is the first time I’ve had a dead body of my own. But I’ll tell you one thing: Someone around here hates carpenters!”

  The editor drained his glass and stood up. “How do you feel about carpenters, Qwill?”

  “The same way I feel about editors. There are times when I’ve wanted to kill them!”

  It was still raining, and Qwilleran drove Riker to his car parked on the highway. “How about having dinner somewhere tonight, scout?”

  “Well, it’s like this,” said Riker. “My horoscope in today’s Rampage said I’d resume relations with an estranged friend, so I’m taking Amanda to dinner tonight.”

  When Qwilleran returned to the cabin, he took care of one small detail. He reached into the lograck on the porch and withdrew a doorkey. After eradicating Mildred’s fingerprints and replacing them with plenty of his own, he returned the key to its niche in a hollow log. Then he telephoned Mildred. “How’s Rog
er?”

  “He’s one sick boy. Sharon is at the hospital now, and I’m keeping the baby. How do you feel?”

  “I’m fine, thanks.” The murder had not yet been announced on the radio, and Qwilleran had no intention of breaking the news. “Do you have today’s papers from Down Below?” he asked her.

  “I have the Fluxion.”

  “What’s my horoscope for today?”

  “Hold the line. I’ll get it.” There was a rustling of newspaper pages. “Here it is. For Gemini it says, ‘Don’t complain about the lack of excitement today. Take a trip! Visit a friend! Do something you’ve been wanting to do.’ How about that?”

  After thanking Mildred and hanging up, Qwilleran pondered the advice for a while and telephoned Bushy, but the answering machine said that he and Vicki had gone back to Lockmaster and could be reached there. He found the photographer’s business card and dialed the number. Bushy answered, sounding none the worse for a night on Three Tree.

  “How are you doing?” Qwilleran asked.

  “I’m so glad to be warm and dry and alive, I’m walking two feet off the ground. How about you?”

  “No more than nineteen inches.”

  “That’s true, you lost part of your house, didn’t you? How were the cats when you got home?”

  “They were in good shape. Mildred had fed them an epicurean menu.”

  “Don’t forget, you’re going to bring them down here for a studio portrait. How about tonight? It’s only an hour’s drive. We can talk about Three Tree. It’ll do us both good to get it off our chests.”

  Qwilleran agreed. After all, his horoscope had suggested it.

  “How would you like to go for a ride?” he asked the Siamese as he thawed two cartons of beef stew for his dinner and theirs. “You can have your picture taken by a professional photographer and entered in a calendar contest. You’ll win hands-down.”

  They approached their share of the feast fastidiously, gobbling the meat and licking up the gravy but leaving the carrot and potato and onion high and dry on the rim of the plate. Then they washed up in perfect unison like a well-rehearsed chorus line: lick-the-paw three four . . . over-the-nose three four . . . over-the-ear three four. When the wicker picnic hamper appeared, they hopped into it and settled on the down-filled cushion as if they knew they were about to pose for calendar art. By the time they reached Lockmaster they were both comfortably asleep.

  The lumber barons’ mansions in Lockmaster had been lavished with turrets, gables, oriel windows, and verandas. Now they housed a funeral home, a museum, two insurance companies, three real estate agencies, a clinic, and the Bushland Photo Studio.

  Bushy and his wife met Qwilleran at the door and clutched him in a triangular embrace as if the ordeal had made them old friends.

  Vicki said, with tears in her eyes, “I was almost out of my mind Tuesday night.”

  “At least you were warm and dry,” Qwilleran reminded her.

  “It’s amazing that you and Bushy pulled through better than Roger, although he’s much younger.”

  Bushy said, “Roger is anemic. He needs a good slug of red wine every day. My mother was Italian, and that was her cure for everything. Why didn’t I rub some on my head?”

  “Bring the cats into the studio, Qwill,” said Vicki.

  The front parlor was furnished in updated Victorian, to provide quaint settings for contemporary photos. Qwilleran set down the hamper in front of the marble fireplace and opened the lid. Everyone was quiet, waiting for the Siamese to emerge, but not so much as an ear appeared above the rim of the hamper. Qwilleran peered into its depths and found both cats curled up like a single fur pillow with heads, legs, and tails tucked out of sight.

  “Wake up!” he shouted at them. “You’re on camera!”

  Two heads materialized from the fur pillow—Koko bright-eyed and instantly alert, Yum Yum groggy and cross-eyed.

  Bushy said, “Let’s go in the other room and have a drink and leave them to get familiar with the place.”

  For the next half hour he and Qwilleran re-lived the horrors of the island experience.

  “Now that I recall,” Qwilleran said, “I pulled through with more fortitude than I showed when there was a dead spider in the Komfort-Heet.”

  Bushy said, “I felt a kind of inner force fighting the cold.”

  The more they talked, the less horrifying it became. The ironic humor of the situation emerged. They could laugh about it and probably would, for years to come. When they returned to the front parlor to start the photo session, the Siamese were still asleep in the bottom of the hamper.

  “Okay, you guys, cooperate!” Qwilleran said. He reached in with both hands and grasped Koko about the middle, thinking to lift him out, but Koko’s claws hooked into the wicker and could not be dislodged.

  “Come on, sweetheart,” he said, putting his hands gently under Yum Yum’s body, but she also had eighteen functional hooks that engaged the open weave of the hamper. “I’m going to need help,” he said.

  Vicki reached into the hamper, murmuring soothing words, and carefully unhooked Yum Yum’s left paw from the wicker while Qwilleran did the same for the right paw. Then they lifted, but her rear claws were firmly anchored. By the time they disengaged the rear end, the front end was again attached to the hamper.

  Qwilleran’s back was beginning to ache. He stood up, stretched his spine, and took a few deep breaths. “There must be a way,” he said. “Three intelligent adults can’t be outwitted by two cats who don’t have university degrees and don’t even have drivers’ licenses.”

  “Let’s turn the thing upside-down and shake them out,” Bushy suggested.

  They tried it, and the down cushion fell out but not the cats.

  “I say we should go back and have another drink,” said Bushy. They did, and Koko and Yum Yum remained riveted to their travel coop for the remainder of the evening.

  On the way home Qwilleran tuned in WPKX for the eleven o’clock news and heard this: “Police report that the body of a man identified as Ignatius K. Small, itinerant carpenter, was found buried under a lakeside residence east of Mooseville. According to the medical examiner, death was caused by a blow to the head, and the time of death was established as four o’clock Tuesday. The property is owned by the Klingenschoen estate. James Qwilleran of Pickax is currently living there.”

  “Dunderheads!” Qwilleran said. “They make me sound like the number-one suspect!”

  SEVENTEEN

  After WPKX had broadcast the news of the carpenter’s murder every half hour, Qwilleran’s telephone began to ring and he found himself fielding calls from concerned friends and friendly kidders. “No, I didn’t do it, and if I did, do you think I’d tell you?” . . . “Thanks, but I’m not ready for an attorney yet; go chase an ambulance.” There were crank calls also, but he had learned how to handle those when he worked for big-city newspapers.

  While watching the Siamese eat their breakfast, he reconstructed the murder scene from their viewpoint. They were locked in the guestroom with their water dish and commode. For a while they sat on the windowsill and watched the carpenter, Koko probably tapping his tail in unison with the hammer. They had a couple of drinks of water, scratched the gravel in their commode, and catnapped on the guestbed . . . Perhaps a vehicle of some kind arrived and alerted them—alerted Koko, at any rate. Had he heard that particular motor before? What did he hear next? Voices? An argument? A fight? Did he see anything through the window? Did he hear the door being unlocked? The trap door being opened? After that there were indistinct noises under the floor. Eventually the trap door banged again and the vehicle drove away . . . Or did the murderer arrive on foot via the beach? That was a possibility . . . Everything was quiet, and Koko had another drink of water, after which he slept until wakened by the roar of the tornado and the terrifying crash of the east wing. Both cats scuttled under the bed. Later they heard the rain slamming the roof. It was dark, and they were hungry.

  That had ha
ppened three days ago. Now they were satiated with white meat of tuna and were perched somewhere overhead, communing with their contented innards. Koko was on the moosehead, while Yum Yum crouched on a crossbeam overlooking the dining table where Qwilleran often did interesting things with typewriter, scissors, and rubber cement. The cats stayed at their posts even when the two state police officers were admitted to the cabin.

  This time the red-haired detective from the Pickax post introduced an inspector from Down Below, evidently a homicide specialist. He explained that they needed a little more information. Qwilleran found it unusual that the state would fly a man four hundred miles north to investigate the murder of an itinerant carpenter, while hundreds of murders in the state capital itself went unsolved. With a cynical huff into his moustache he suspected that the homicide man wanted to get away from city heat for a while and possibly do a little fishing.

  “Have a seat,” said Qwilleran, pushing back some of the clutter on the table. The inspector pulled up a chair, while the local officer remained standing.

  After some repetitious preliminaries the inspector asked, “Was Ignatius Small a good carpenter in your estimation, sir?”

  “He seemed to know his craft.”

  “Was he recommended to you?”

  “No. He was an itinerant carpenter and the only one available. There’s a shortage of carpenters in this neck of the woods during the summer months.”

  “How did you find him, sir?”

  “These underground builders, as they’re called, hang around the bars. A barkeeper sent him over here.”

  “Could you describe his personality?”

  “He smiled a lot . . . and accepted orders and suggestions well enough.”

  “Did he always carry out orders?”

  “To the best of his ability, I would say. He wasn’t a sharp thinker, and he had very little energy.”

  “Would you say he was . . . lazy, sir?”

  “If that denotes falling asleep while shingling the roof, yes, you could say he was lazy, or narcoleptic.”

  “How did you feel about that, sir?”

  Qwilleran thought, He’s fishing; watch your step . . . To the inspector he said, “I was grateful to find anyone at all to do my work. Beggars can’t be choosy.”