Qwilleran thought, Well, anyway, it’s the last time I’ll have to go through this charade for six months.
They consulted the caterer’s menu, orders were placed, and they had aperitifs around the big square coffee table while waiting for the delivery, during which Koko returned to the top balcony and did his flying-squirrel act, landing on a sofa cushion between the two women guests. They screamed; drinks were spilled. Qwilleran said, “Bad cat!” The two men made an effort to keep a straight face.
There was plenty of conversation about Connie’s spring trip to Scotland and Barbara’s annual visit to the Shakespeare Festival in Canada. Wetherby said he never went anywhere but Horseradish.
Dinners were delivered. The decision was made to serve in the gazebo, where it was cool but pleasant.
Connie said, “The residents of Indian Village are agitating to have the open decks screened for summer, if it can be done without darkening the interiors. When are you moving back, Qwill?”
“Tomorrow!” he promised.
Then questions were asked about the barn: Who designed the remodeling? Is there a lot of upkeep? Are you handy with tools?
Qwilleran said, “You probably know Ben Kosley. He takes care of emergencies. I wrote a poem of praise about him in my column. Would you like to hear it? It sums up life in an old apple barn.” He read it to them.
Call 911-BEN-K
The locks don’t lock; the floorboards squeak;
The brand new washer has sprung a leak!
The phone needs moving; the pipes have burst!
You’re beginning to think the barn is cursed!
CALL Ben!
There’s a hole in the floor; the windows stick.
You need some help with the toilet—quick!
The chandelier is out of plumb.
The electric outlets are starting to HUM!
DON’T WORRY…CALL Ben!
The sliding door could use a new lock;
There’s something wrong with the oven clock.
The garbage disposal refuses to grind.
The dryer won’t dry. You’re losing your mind!
NO PROBLEM…CALL Ben!
The TV cable is on the wrong wall.
The bedroom ceiling is threatening to fall.
There’s a great big crack in a windowpane.
A wristwatch fell down the bathroom drain!
OOPS!…CALL Ben!
The porch roof is hanging from two or three nails!
When anyone sneezes, the power fails!
A buzzer just buzzed….
A bell just rang….
THE KITCHEN BLEW UP WITH A TERRIBLE BANG!
DON’T PANIC!…CALL Ben!
Then they asked about the history of the barn—if any happened to be known.
“Yes—if you’re not squeamish. It’s something I’ve never talked about.”
He had their rapt attention.
“The property dates back to the days of strip farms, two hundred feet wide and a mile long. What is now the back road was then the front yard and the location of the farmhouse. Apples were the crop, and this was the apple barn. We knew the name of the family, but we didn’t know what had become of them, and we don’t know why the farmer hanged himself from the barn rafters.”
Qwilleran’s listeners looked around as if searching for a clue.
“The family moved away, and the property was abandoned until an enterprising realtor sold it to the Klingenschoen Foundation. I needed a place to live, and the K Fund had money to invest in the town. We hired an architectural designer from Down Below, who is responsible for the spectacular interior. And we don’t know why he, too, hanged himself from the rafters.”
There was a long pause. Then Barbara jumped up and said she had to go home and feed Molasses. Connie jumped up, too, and said she had to go home and feed Bonnie Lassie.
“Wonderful party!” they both said.
“Let’s do it again!” Wetherby said, and the party ended without the playing of the Ledfield recordings.
The pocket-size gift that Barbara had brought Qwilleran from Cananda temporarily disappeared during the move to the Willows—but reappeared appropriately in a pocket of his coat. It was a tape recording of a jazz combo with swaggering syncopation that churned his blood and revived memories. The Siamese also reacted favorably. Their ears twitched, they sprang at each other, grappled, kicked, and otherwise had a good time.
When Qwilleran checked in at the bookstore that week, Judd Amhurst sermonized on the Literary Club problem: “The time has come for forgetting about lecturers from Down Below who have to be paid and then cancel at the last minute. We can stage our own programs!”
“Good! Never liked Proust anyway! What do you have in mind?”
“More member participation? Remember how Homer Tibbitt liked Lasca? Lyle Compton likes ‘The Highwayman’ by Alfred Noyes, early twentieth century.”
“Favorite of mine, too. He was an athlete, and there’s an athletic vigor in his poetry.”
“Lyle says there’s a cops-and-robbers flavor to the story.”
“And the poet has a forceful way of repeating words.”
Qwilleran quoted: “‘He rode with a jeweled twinkle…His pistol butts a-twinkle…His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jeweled sky.’”
Dundee came running and wrapped himself around Qwilleran’s ankle.
In Pickax, Qwilleran’s annual move from barn to condo was as well known as the Fourth of July parade. The printers ran off a hundred announcements, and students addressed the envelopes. Mrs. McBee made a winter supply of chocolate chip cookies. Friends, neighbors, fellow newsmen, and business associates were properly notified. And on moving day, the Siamese went and hid.
Nevertheless, the move was always successfully accomplished, and Qwilleran’s household was relocated for another six months.
EIGHTEEN
That night Qwilleran wrote in his private journal:
It’s good to get back to the country quiet of the condo. I had Chief Brodie in for a nightcap before leaving, and he said he would keep an eye on the barn. I returned the Ledfield recording to Maggie Sprenkle and had my last nice cup of tea for a while. I’ve decided “nice” is a euphemism for “weak,” bless her soul.
And there was a message from Daisy Babcock on the machine: “Qwill, sorry to bother you but I’ve discovered a disturbing situation at the office, and Fredo said I should ask you to look at it. I don’t want to talk about it on the phone.”
NINETEEN
Unanswered questions always made Qwilleran nervous, and he slept poorly after receiving Daisy’s message. The Siamese slept very well. After living in the round for six months, they gladly adjusted to the straight walls and square corners of the condo. The units were open plan, with bedrooms off the balcony and a two-story wall of glass overlooking the open deck and the creek. In front of the fireplace, two cushiony sofas faced each other across a large cocktail table on a deep shag rug. It would make a good landing pad for an airborne Siamese, dropping in from the balcony railing.
Qwilleran told them to be good, and their innocent expressions convinced him that a naughty impulse never entered their sleek heads.
The distance to downtown Pickax was longer than that from the barn, and so Qwilleran drove, parking behind the auditorium. Walking around to the front of the building, he bowed and saluted to greetings and the usual question: “How’s Koko, Mr. Q?”
When he arrived at Daisy’s office upstairs, the hallway was piled with empty cartons waiting for the trash collection. Her door was open. There were more boxes inside. Daisy was on the phone. She waved him in and pointed to a chair. She was speaking to her husband.
“Fredo, Qwill has arrived, so I’ll talk to you later.”
Qwilleran was reminded of the Box Bank at the Old Manse: cartons, clothing boxes, hatboxes, and shoe boxes.
Daisy’s greeting was “Excuse the mess. Throw something off a chair seat and sit down.” She jumped up and closed the door to the hallwa
y.
“I see you finally moved out,” he said lamely. “It looks as if you raided the Box Bank.”
“I had accumulated so many things—clothing for all seasons, beautiful books that the Ledfields had given me, magazines we subscribed to and couldn’t bear to throw away, and desk drawers full of pens, pencils, cosmetics, all kinds of personal items. The women at the Manse brought me boxes, and I just dumped things in them. It was Alma’s day off, and I wanted to get out to avoid a scene.”
“I can understand,” he murmured.
She handed him a shoe box. “Open this and tell me what you see. Don’t touch.”
He did as told, and asked, “Is it toothpaste?” The fat tube was lying facedown, showing only fine print on the back.
“It’s the missing bee kit! No one else in the Manse had ever had one. Someone must have sneaked it from Libby’s jacket and tossed it into the Box Bank, perhaps expecting to retrieve it later and blame Libby for carelessness. Who knows? Fredo said you’d know what to do.”
“Hand me the phone,” Qwilleran said. “We’ll get George Barter here to look at it. Fingerprints might be the answer.”
He declined coffee and said he wanted to think for a few minutes. Daisy left him alone, and he remembered what he’d heard.
Libby suspected that Nathan’s treasures, being sold for child welfare, were not reaching their intended charity. She wanted to accuse Alma to her face but had been advised not to be hasty. Libby had apparently made the mistake of impetuous youth. She was defending her Uncle Nathan’s wishes, and his memory.
The law office was only a block away, and Barter arrived as Qwilleran was leaving. They saluted and shook their heads in disbelief. Arch Riker had been right: “When there’s too much money floating around, somebody’s going to get greedy.”
Qwilleran went to his parked car to think. Koko was always right—no matter what! The cat had sensed something wrong at the moment of Libby’s death. His gut-wrenching death howl was never mistaken. It meant that someone, somewhere, was the victim of murder. In fact, there were times when Koko sensed it was going to happen before the fact! When Alma visited the barn, Koko tried to frighten her. He tore up her black-and-gold catalog. He staged a scene over the used books that came in a box that originally held a punch bowl sold by Alma. He made a fuss over the pocket-size copy of The Portrait of a Lady. Was it because the author was Henry James? Not likely, Qwilleran thought, but who knows? And then there was Koko’s reaction to Polly’s accident in Paris—at the Pont d’Alma tunnel.
Qwilleran hoped he would never be asked to state all of this on the witness stand. “They’d put me away,” he said aloud. And yet…
He drove to Lois’s Luncheonette with his New York paper to listen to gossip. Everywhere, there were pedestrians in twos and threes, talking about the scandal; one could tell by their grave expressions.
At Lois’s, the tables were filled. He sat at the counter, ordered coffee and a roll, and buried his head in his paper. From the tables came snatches of comments like:
“Nothing like this ever happened here!”
“They bring people in from Lockmaster, that’s what’s wrong.”
“Nothing’s been proved, but everyone knows.”
“Imagine! It happened in a city museum!”
“Nathan will be turnin’ over in his grave!”
“My daughter-in-law says she has a friend…”
Everyone was talking about the Purple Point Scandal, preferring to associate it with the affluent suburb rather than nature’s useful honeybee. Qwilleran returned home to the Willows and avoided answering the inevitable phone calls. They could be screened by the answering device.
One was from Wetherby Goode: “Qwill, looking forward to the Cats show Saturday night. I’ll provide the transportation. The gals will provide the supper. Barbara wants to know if cat food will be appropriate.”
Qwilleran liked Barbara’s sense of humor. When invited in to meet Molasses, he liked her taste in design, too. Replacing Polly’s elderly heirlooms was a roomful of blond modern furniture, accents of chrome, and abstract art. Yet an old paisley shawl with long fringe was draped on a wall above the spinet piano.
Barbara said, “My mother brought that home from India when she was a college student and had it draped over her grand piano all her life. I’d drape it over the spinet, but Molasses is a fringe freak.”
On Saturday night, before driving to the theater for the musical, the Willows foursome gathered at Barbara’s for a light repast.
At the performance, it was the usual happy audience found at Cats. The stage was full of furry costumes with tails, and there was a five-piece orchestra in the pit.
Barbara said, “I should have named Molasses Rum Tum Tugger. He will do as he do do, and there’s no doing anything about it.”
Connie cried when Grizabella sang “Memory.”
At intermission Wetherby said he identified with Bustopher Jones, and Qwilleran said Old Deuteronomy would probably write a newspaper column.
And so it went; Qwilleran was pleased with his new neighbors.
They were all exhilarated as they drove home, until they heard the disturbing sound of sirens from speeding fire trucks.
Wetherby phoned the radio station, and the voice that came over the speaker shocked them all: “It’s the barn! Your friend’s barn, Joe! Arson!”
There was a stunned silence in the vehicle.
Qwilleran was the first one who spoke. “I’m only thankful that the cats are safe at the condo.”
There were murmurs of agreement from the women. Joe said, “Do you think there’ll be something on TV when we get home? I think we all need a stiff drink.”
Barbara voiced everyone’s opinion when she said that the fire was the work of lawless gangs in Bixby. “They torched the Old Hulk and got away with it because it was of little value, but the barn is known around the world for its architecture and beauty.”
Dr. Connie said, “My friends in Scotland had heard about the barn and asked for snapshots of it.”
Qwilleran said, “The problem is to distinguish between pranksters and criminals. The new wildlife museum consists of two buildings filled with millions of dollars’ worth of mounted animals and art. How do we protect it against these irresponsible marauders? And should we be obliged, in the twenty-first century, to protect our heritage against malicious neighbors?”
It was a solemn foursome that arrived at the Willows.
That night the Siamese sensed his feelings; they slept in his bed.
The next morning, Qwilleran walked downtown to the city hall and climbed the back stairs to the police department. Chief Brodie was at his desk, muttering over a stack of papers.
“Well, Andy,” the newsman said, “it looks as if we’ve had our last friendly nightcap at the barn!”
“Ach!” was the dour reply.
“Were they the Bixby vandals again?”
“There was more to it than that! We’ll talk about it later.” He gave Qwilleran a sour look and waved him away.
Qwilleran walked to the auditorium building and climbed the stairs to Daisy’s office.
“Qwill! You’ll never believe it!” (Daisy still had her contacts at the Old Manse.) “A van with a Lockmaster license plate drove away from the Old Manse last night, loaded with Nathan’s treasures!”
“That’s stealing from a city museum!” Qwilleran said.
Daisy said, “The good part is that Alma went with them! I hope they catch her.”
Back at the Willows, Koko was waiting with that look of catly disapproval: Where have you been? Was the trip necessary? Did you bring me something?
Koko had known from the beginning that Alma was up to no good. Qwilleran gave the cats a snack and then read to them from the bookshelf. They had finished The Portrait of a Lady.
In the days that followed the barn burning, there was no such thing as business as usual in Pickax. The jollity of the coffee shops was reduced to a subdued murmur, and shoppers clu
stered in twos and threes on street corners, putting their heads together in serious conversation. Even the bankers were more serious than usual.
At the supermarket, customers filled their shopping carts hurriedly and left the store without exchanging chitchat. Qwilleran and his friends felt the same vague uneasiness.
The Moose County Something printed editorials, and preachers addressed the subject from the pulpit.
At home, Qwilleran tried to write a trenchant entry for his private journal and was unsuccessful. Strangely, even Koko stalked around on stiff legs, looking nervously over his shoulder.
Reference was often made to “The Bad Boys of Bixby.” This nebulous group of ill-doers had for years—probably generations—been blamed for anything that went wrong in Moose County. It was a joke and sounded like a showbiz act. A few years ago, one of them had sneaked across the county line and painted pictures on the Pickax city hall wall, after which he was dumb enough to sign his name.
One day while Kip MacDiarmid, editor in chief of the Lockmaster Ledger, was lunching with Qwilleran, he claimed to have found what was wrong with Bixby.
“Moira was trying to sell a marmalade cat to a respectable family in Bixby, when she discovered that indoor cats are prohibited by law in that county. Did you ever hear of such a thing? I think that explains their whole problem.”
“Moose County gave the country trees, gold mines, and fish. Lockmaster gave the country politicians, movie stars, and racehorses. Bixby County gave us a pain in the…esophagus!”
TWENTY
Following the fire, the arson was the talk of the town, and Qwilleran’s phone rang constantly as townsfolk called to commiserate. They meant well, but—in self-defense—Qwilleran stopped answering and let the message service take over.
He welcomed Barbara’s call and phoned her back.
The Cat Who Had 60 Whiskers Page 10