She turned to Qwilleran. “Do you know about pyramid power?”
“I've read about it—quite a long time ago.”
“It's nothing new. It dates back thousands of years, and my father really believed in it. He had little pyramids built for my brothers and me, and we were supposed to sit in them to make wonderful things happen. I thought it was magic, but my mother said it was subversive. She had them destroyed after Father died.” Her voice drifted off in a mist of nostalgia and regret.
Fran said, “Wally Toddwhistle can build us a portable see-through pyramid out of poles. For a scene change we'd black out the house briefly, and when the stage lights came on, there'd be a pyramid in the forest. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the poles could be neon tubes?”
Qwilleran questioned whether the audience would understand the magical implications of such a pyramid, and Fran said it would be explained in the playbill.
“How many playgoers read the program notes?” he asked. “Most of them are more interested in the ads for Otto's Tasty Eats and Gippel's Garage. That's been my observation based on preshow chitchat. How does Larry feel about it?”
“He thinks it'll clutter the stage without contributing dramatically, but we haven't given up yet, have we, Elizabeth?”
Qwilleran offered to refresh their drinks, but Fran said it was time to leave. On the way out, she handed him a black felt-tip pen. “Where did you find this?” he asked.
“On the floor near the coffee table.”
“Yum Yum's at it again! She's an incorrigible cat burglar.” He returned the pen to a pewter mug on the telephone table and escorted the women to their car, first putting on his yellow cap. When they had driven away, he walked around the barn a few times, reluctant to go indoors on this perfect midsummer night. With a little suspension of disbelief one could imagine Puck and the other greenies materializing from the woods in a puff of smoke . . . A high-pitched yowl from the kitchen window reminded him that he was neglecting his duty.
“Treat!” he announced as he opened the kitchen door.
Yum Yum responded immediately, but . . . where was Koko? When he failed to report for food, there was cause for alarm. Qwilleran went in search and found him on the large square coffee table—not eating the Kabibbles, not playing with the wooden train whistle, not sniffing the book on the Panama Canal. He was sitting on the Moose County Something with its front-page treatment of the Mudville scandal and two-column photo of the president. It was the same as the portrait hanging in the lobby of the Lumbertown Credit Union.
Koko's attitude indicated something was wrong—and not just the embezzlement. Qwilleran felt a tingling sensation on his upper lip and tamped his moustache with a heavy hand. Koko was trying to communicate. Perhaps the tipoff had been a hoax. Perhaps the auditors were trying to cover up their own mistake. Perhaps Trevelyan was being, so to speak, railroaded.
As if reading the man's mind, Koko slowly rose on four long legs, his body arched, his tail bushed. With whiskers swept back and eyes slanted, he circled the newspaper in a stiff-legged dance that sent shivers up and down Qwilleran's spine. It was Koko's death dance.
SIX
Following Koko's macabre dance on the coffee table, Qwilleran brooded about its significance. He had seen that performance before, and it meant only one thing: death. And it pointed to Floyd Trevelyan. To Qwilleran's mind it pointed to suicide. The arrogant, self-centered, self-made man would self-destruct rather than suffer the humility of capture, trial, and imprisonment. He was too rich, too cocky, too vain, too autocratic to return to his hometown in handcuffs.
Qwilleran made no mention of his theory to Polly when they had dinner Saturday night. His fanciful suspicions were always politely dismissed by the head librarian, whose mind was as fact-intensive as the World Almanac. He had never told her about Koko's supra-normal intuition either, nor his unique ways of communicating. By comparison her beloved Bootsie was a Neanderthal cat!
They had dinner at Tipsy's restaurant in North Kennebeck without referring to the scandal that had electrified Moose County. Polly had other concerns: Would her house be ready in time for Thanksgiving? Would the fumes of paint and vinyl and treated wood—the “new house smell”—be injurious to Bootsie's sensitive system? Qwilleran's attempts to change the subject were only temporary distractions from the major issues: insulation and roofing.
“Have you met Eddie Trevelyan?” she asked.
“Not formally,” he replied. “When I walk to my mailbox, he looks up and waves, and I say ‘Lookin' good' or something original like that. He has a helper called Benno—short, stocky fellow with a ponytail—and a beautiful chow dog who comes to work with him everyday and sits in the bed of Eddie's pickup or in the shade of a tree. I tell him he's a good dog, and he pants for joy with his tongue hanging out. His name is Zak, I found out.”
There were other details that he thought it wise to omit; Polly would only worry. There were the cigarette butts all over the property. There was the “essence of barroom” that Eddie exuded much of the time.
“At first the men—they're both young—seemed to be enjoying their work, bantering back and forth,” Qwilleran reported. “But now there's an air of tension that's understandable. To see one's parent, a leading citizen, suddenly branded as a thief must be hard to take. Eddie keeps nagging Benno to ‘get the lead out' and pound more nails. It occurs to me that he's rushing the job in order to collect his second payment. When is it due?”
“When the house is weathered-in. Oh, dear! I hope this doesn't mean he'll be cutting corners.”
“If his operating capital is tied up in the credit union, he may be strapped for cash to meet his payroll and pay bills. Has he dropped any hints?”
“No, he hasn't, and I talk to him on the phone every morning, early, before he gets away.”
The next day, after Sunday brunch at Polly's apartment, they drove to the building site. Polly was appalled by the cigarette butts; she would tell Mr. Trevelyan to get a coffee can and pick them up. The future rooms were a maze of two-by-fours; she thought the rooms looked too small. Rain was predicted, and she worried that the roof boards would not be installed in time.
Polly's constant worrying about the house caused Qwilleran to worry about her. “Why don't we take a pleasant break,” he suggested, “and drive to the Flats to see the wildfowl. They might be nidulating, or whatever they do in July.” This was a noble concession on his part; she was an avid bird watcher, and he was not. “We might see a puffin bird,” he added facetiously.
“Not likely in Moose County,” she said with a bemused smile, “but I really should go home and study the blueprints, in order to figure out furniture arrangement.”
After dropping her off, Qwilleran went home to the barn, grateful for the company of cats who never worried. Both were pursuing their hobbies. Yum Yum was batting a bottle cap around the floor, losing it, finding it, losing it again—until she flopped down on her side in utter exhaustion. Koko was standing on his hind legs in the foyer, gazing down the orchard trail. Did he know that a chow came to work with the builder every day? Had Zak ventured up the trail to the barn? In any case, it seemed abnormal for a four-legged animal to spend so much time on two legs.
“Come on, old boy! Let's go exploring,” he suggested. “Leash! Leash!”
Yum Yum, recognizing the word, scampered up the ramp to hide. Koko trotted to the broom closet, where the harnesses were stored, and purred while the leather straps were being buckled. Then, dragging his leash, he walked purposefully to the front door. When it was opened, however, he stood on the threshold in a freeze of indecision. He savored the seventy-eight-degree temperature and the three-mile-an-hour breeze; he looked to right and left; he noted a bird in the sky and a squirrel in a tree.
“Okay, let's go. We don't have two days for this excursion,” Qwilleran said, picking up the leash and shaking it like reins. “Forward march!”
Koko, an indoor cat in temperament and lifestyle, stepped cautiously to the s
mall entrance deck and sniffed the boards, which were laid diagonally. He sniffed the spaces between the boards. He discovered an interesting knot in the wood and a row of nailheads. In exasperation Qwilleran grabbed him and swung him to his shoulder. Koko was quite amenable. He liked riding on a shoulder. He liked the elevation.
Everyone had advised Qwilleran to “do something” about the orchard, a tangle of weeds and vines choking neglected apple trees. Many had lost their limbs for firewood; others had fallen victim to storms.
“Why don't you clean out that eyesore?” Riker had said. “Plant vegetables,” Polly suggested. “Have a swimming pool,” Fran Brodie urged.
At the building site, Qwilleran allowed the excited cat to jump down but held a firm hand on the leash. It was not the skeleton of the house that interested Koko, nor the tire tracks where the builders parked their pickups, nor the spot under a tree where Zak liked to nap in the shade. Koko wanted only to roll on the floor of the future garage. He rolled ecstatically. Both cats had discovered this unexplainable thrill at their Mooseville cabin, where the screened porch was on a concrete slab. They rolled on their backs and squirmed voluptuously. Now Koko was inventing new contortions and enjoying it immensely.
“Let's not be excessive,” Qwilleran said to him, jerking the leash. “If that's all you want to do, let's go home.”
On the way back to the barn he had an idea: He would add a screened porch on a concrete slab for the Siamese, where they could have a sense of outdoor living and roll to their hearts' content. Eddie could build it after he finished Polly's house. It would not be attached to the barn; that would only destroy the symmetry of the octagonal structure. It would be a separate summer house—a pergola—like the one he had visited on Breakfast Island, and like the one he had built in the Potato Mountains.
Yum Yum met them at the door and sniffed Koko with disapproval; he had been out having fun, and she had been left at home.
“That's what happens,” Qwilleran advised her, “when you elect to be asocial.” At any rate, he hoped the jaunt had satisfied Koko's curiosity and there would be no more absurd trail gazing. It was a futile dream. Soon the cat was back in the foyer, standing on two legs at the window, watching and waiting.
Ordinarily Qwilleran would have shrugged off Koko's aberration, but he was feeling edgy. There was the itch of suspicion without the opportunity to scratch. There was the uneasy feeling that Koko knew more than he did. And there was frustration caused by too much of Polly's house and not enough of Polly.
He was still feeling cranky the next day when he walked downtown to hand in his thousand words on the aurora borealis. The colorful phenomenon in the midnight sky was a tourist attraction, although locals took it for granted, and some thought “Northern Lights” was simply the name of a hotel in Mooseville.
Looking more than usually morose, Qwilleran walked through the city room where staffers sat in front of video display terminals and stared blankly at the screens. In the managing editor's office, the slightly built Junior Goodwinter was further dwarfed by the electronic equipment surrounding him.
When Qwilleran threw his copy on Junior's desk, the young editor glanced at the triple-spaced typewritten sheets and said, “When are you getting yourself a word processor, Qwill?”
“I like my electric typewriter” was the belligerent reply, “and it likes me! Are you implying that a word processor would make me a better writer? And if so, how good do you want me to be?”
“Don't hit me!” said the younger man with an exaggerated cringe. “Forget I said it. Have a cup of coffee. Sit down. Take a load off your feet. Will you be at the softball game tonight?”
“I haven't decided” was the curt answer. Polly usually accompanied him to the annual event, but he doubted she could tear herself away from her blueprints.
Junior threw him a copy of Monday's paper. “Read the third bite,” he said.
A new feature on the front page was a column of brief news items of twenty-five words or less, each preceded by a single word in caps: ARRESTED, or HONORED, or LEAVING, or PROMOTED. Other newspapers labeled such a column “Briefs” or “Shorts.” Hixie Rice, who had been responsible for naming the paper the Something, wanted to call the new front-page column “Undies.” The editorial committee decided, however, on “Bites.”
Qwilleran read the third bite:
SHOT: Police are investigating the shooting of a watchdog in West Middle Hummock Sunday night. The animal was penned in a dog-run on Floyd Trevelyan's estate.
“What do you deduce from this?” he asked Junior.
“That victims of the embezzlement are finally transferring their hostility from the government to the embezzler. Roger's been hanging out in Mudville coffee shops, and he says the emotions range from gloomy self-pity to vengeful rage. Someone was trying to get back at Floyd by killing his dog.”
“Stupid!” Qwilleran murmured.
“And now read the first letter on the ed page, Qwill.”
To the Editor:
I am writing in behalf of the Sawdust City High School Summer Camp Fund, which enables seniors to spend a week in the woods, living with nature, studying ecology, and learning to share. For twenty-four years this has been a tradition at our school.
This year forty-seven students have spent their junior year selling cookies, washing cars, chopping wood, and cleaning garages to earn money for the camping experience. They deposited their earnings regularly in the Lumbertown Credit Union and watched them earn interest—a worthwhile lesson in thrift and financial management. Next week they were to shoulder their backpacks, hike into the woods, and pitch their tents.
How can we explain to them that there will be no campout for the new senior class? How can we explain that $2,234.43 of their own money is being withheld by order of the government?
Elda Mayfus-Jones
Faculty Sponsor
SCHSSCF
Qwilleran finished reading and said irritably, “Why doesn't Ms. Mayfus-Jones just tell them their uncle Floyd is a crook, and he spent their $2,234.43 on toy trains to run around his office lobby?”
“You're in a grouchy mood today,” Junior said. “I thought the K Foundation could afford to stake these kids to the money until their deposits are released.”
“The Foundation could afford to send all forty-seven brats on a round-the-world cruise!” Qwilleran snapped. “All they have to do is apply. It's in the telephone book under K. That's between J and L.” He started to leave without finishing his coffee.
“Hey!” Junior called after him with a grin. “If the kids get their money, you can go camping with them for a week and write a ‘Qwill Pen' series!”
Qwilleran stomped from the room. As he passed the publisher's office, Riker beckoned to him. “I've just been talking to Brodie. How come they haven't caught that guy? They nabbed the Florida crooks right away, and they were pros! Floyd is only a small-town conniver. Why haven't they found him?”
“They'll never find him.”
“What makes you think so? Do you know something we don't know?”
Qwilleran shrugged. “Just a hunch.” If he were to mention Koko's input, it would only lead to an argument. Riker thought he took the cat's abstract messages too seriously. “You seem to be giving the scandal a lot of space, Arch.”
“We're trying to keep the public outrage alive, spur the manhunt, and goad the banking commission into action. Our stories are being picked up by major newspapers around the state. We've assigned Roger to the Mudville beat exclusively until something breaks, one way or the other . . . So! . . . Where are you going from here, Qwill?”
“Home.”
“How's Polly's house progressing?”
“Slowly, and that's what concerns me, Arch. She worries about it too much. She worries unnecessarily. I'm afraid she's headed for a nervous collapse.”
His friend nodded sympathetically.
“Polly's so desk-bound that she's not getting any exercise—not even fresh air. She didn't even want
to go bird watching yesterday.”
“Are you bringing her to the game tonight?” Riker asked.
“Are you kidding? That's the last thing in the world she'd want to do!”
* * *
Chatting with his old friend bolstered Qwilleran's flagging spirits somewhat, and walking a few miles helped dispel his gloom. He took the long way home and, in doing so, passed the photo studio of John Bushland. His van was in the parking lot, meaning that the photographer was shooting a subject in the studio or developing film in the darkroom.
Bushy, as the nearly bald young man liked to be called, was a recent transplant from Lockmaster, and it was evident that he was doing well. The van was new. The lobby, it was obvious, had been professionally designed. On the walls were framed photographs from Bushy's prize-winning Scottish series. There was even a receptionist in the lobby, and she was not bad-looking. True, she seemed to be doing invoices and correspondence as well as phones, but she was a pleasant addition to the lobby.
Qwilleran said to Bushy, “Your business seems to be thriving.”
“Yeah, they keep me busy all right: studio portraits Wednesdays and Saturdays by appointment only; commercial work at my own pace; free-lance assignments for the newspaper.”
“Your photo of Trevelyan on the front page—wasn't it the same one that hangs in the Lumbertown lobby? You made him look good!”
“I'll say I did! If the police use it for their Wanted poster, they'll never catch the guy! You see, I was shooting his train layout for a hobby magazine, and the editor wanted a head-shot of Floyd. I tried a candid, but it made him look like the wild man in a carnival. So I got him to put on a shirt and tie and do a formal sitting in the studio. His secretary came along. She's a knockout, but she drove me crazy, telling Floyd to turn his head, or raise his chin, or not look at the camera. Finally I asked her to wait in the lobby while I took the picture. That didn't make points with her boss, but I got a good portrait.”
The Cat Who Blew the Whistle Page 8