Qwilleran said, “You mean, you don’t want me for a flunky this time? I’m fired?”
“You’re fired! I’ll have the services of a housekeeper and houseboy all day. But I’m taking Janice along as official note taker because she’s dying to see the place.
“Now . . . about those photos for the lit club: Are you picking them up from the newspaper today?”
“Want me to drop them off at your house tonight?” Qwilleran asked.
“If you will. I’d pick ’em up but I have an assignment for the paper.”
“You’re working your head off, Bushy! If you didn’t work so hard, maybe you’d grow more hair.”
“And I’m not even getting rich. . . . So I’ll tell Jan to expect you.”
Qwilleran himself was pressed for time. He had a “Qwill Pen” deadline at noon and had not given it a single thought. On such occasions there were a few tricks of the trade he could use: feature a “Readers Write” column, rounding up opinions, ideas, and complaints from the general public . . . or pull a page from his private journal and stretch it to a thousand words.
Another chore Qwilleran faced this week was a speech for the literary club.
He handed in his patchwork column before the deadline, picked up Kenneth’s envelope of Edd Smith photos, and checked out the library’s historical collection of ancient photographs. There were several pictures of the old bookseller and his old building and trusty old book-dusting cat. Winston had several predecessors, but they all looked like the same one: gray, shaggy, and feathery of tail.
Then Qwilleran went home to the barn to work on his address for the literary club. He never read a speech in front of an audience. Rather, he made notes to jog his memory—and ad-libbed.
Now he stretched out in a lounge chair with a pad and pencil. First he had to recollect everything he knew about Edd Smith; they had been friends ever since Qwilleran arrived in Pickax and became addicted to old books. Every time he walked downtown he would swing around behind the post office and visit the quaint store—browsing, buying a book or two, and taking a can of sardines to Winston. Edd came to consider him a “best friend,” confiding in him about his family history. Could his tales be believed? He was descended from pioneers, who were storytellers and jokesters by nature. What they said could be true or invented or whimsical humor, factual or exaggerated.
Now Qwilleran had to decide how much to tell his Thursday audience. The notes he made on his pad included: Old oak tree . . . book scouts . . . Edd’s handgun . . . liver and onions . . . “Call the police” . . . Edd’s old truck . . . and perhaps his grandmother’s scandalous secret, true or false.
As Qwilleran reminisced, he was aware that Koko was sitting nearby in a compact bundle, concentrating, as if helping him to remember. The man was not the first who credited a family cat with helping him find the right word, an elusive idea, or a forgotten detail.
As for the photos of Edd Smith that Bushy would make into slides, there was very little choice. They could be titled “Edd in front of shop with cat” and “Edd in front of shop without cat.” It was always the same wooden pose and solemn expression; the bookseller merely grew older with the years, and so did his clothing.
His reveries were interrupted by a sudden “plop” as Fables in Slang fell off the shelf, while Koko crouched in the open space, looking downward. The book had fallen with covers splayed and pages open to a sketch titled “Sister Mae Who Did As Well As Could Be Expected.”
This meant that Qwilleran had to read the story about Sister Mae aloud. Frankly, he was not enthusiastic about George Ade’s slangy style or racy material, as they were described in 1899, and Koko dozed off before the reading was over.
It was a neat little book, the size of a modern paperback, but the binding was hardback covered in cloth that looked like fine tapestry. One wondered about the price of it in a period when the Sunday New York Times sold for five cents. All that aside, Qwilleran was sure Koko merely liked the book because it was so small. He put the volume back on the shelf and prepared the cats’ evening meal.
After dinner, he took his manila envelope of Edd Smith photos to the house on Pleasant Street. Janice had inherited the mansion from her boss, the late Thelma Thackery, along with four Amazon parrots.
“Go into the aviary,” Janice said, “and I’ll bring a tray. I hope you didn’t eat dessert. I’ve made apricot squares.”
“I cannot tell a lie,” Qwilleran said. “I had dessert, but I’m willing to overlook that fact and apply myself to apricot squares.”
“Thelma always said you had nobility of character, Qwill.”
The aviary occupied what had been the “second parlor” in earlier days. Chicken-wire fencing divided the room in two. On one side were the birds and their perches, toys, and private cages; the rest of the room was devoted to slouchy wicker furniture. “What’s Bushy’s assignment tonight?” Qwilleran asked.
“Scottish Night at the lodge hall.”
“Did you have a good time today?”
“Fantastic! I’ve never seen such a house!”
“No one has!”
“All that carving—everywhere! The grand staircase—the fireplaces—the furniture—the picture frames! The dining table seats ten and was covered with a white cloth and set with fabulous china, crystal, and silver. In the middle were two bowls of flowers and three tall silver candlesticks. There were flowers everywhere, the way Bushy had requested. No matter how old a house, he says, cut flowers make it look new and fresh.”
“Did you meet Miss Hibbard?” Qwilleran asked.
“Not until the afternoon. She was working at the ESP in the morning. I told her I had all the notes I needed and suggested we could just sit and talk for a while. Well! You wouldn’t believe it, Qwill! We talked like a couple of young girls! And she’s at least sixty! But we were both giggling and exchanging secrets. She wanted to know all about Bushy; said balding men are sexy. I told her we were newlyweds—and had a cabin cruiser and would like to take her for an outing some weekend. I said she could bring a date. That’s when she got all flustered and said she also was a new bride!”
Qwilleran, for all his usual poise, almost choked on his coffee.
“I reacted the same way, Qwill, and struggled to stay cool. I didn’t want to pry, and I asked questions all around the subject. She was dying to tell me but said it wouldn’t be announced until Friday’s paper—on the wedding page.”
A whimsical thought drifted through Qwilleran’s head: It would be ironic if Violet’s new husband proved to be her long-ago Italian artist, back in her life. More likely, it was Judd Amhurst, amiable, handsomely white-haired, and a retired engineer. As operator of a large guest house, Violet would do well to have an engineer in the family. Unfortunately, Qwilleran realized he would have no intimate dinners now to discuss Wordsworth and Chekhov at the Grist Mill.
“I know you won’t jump the gun, will you, Qwill? Violet wanted to change her will before the news leaks. She spent this morning at the lawyer’s office—not the ESP.”
He said, “There’s nothing like a little duplicity to add spice to life. . . . Is that Bushy’s car pulling in?”
They went to the back door to meet him, and the photographer unslung his gear.
“Are you full of Scotch and haggis?” Qwilleran asked.
“Nah, I don’t touch that stuff. Got any coffee?”
They sat at the kitchen table with the photos of Edd, eliminating near-duplicates. It was more important, they decided, to have a dozen good shots and flash them on and off as background atmosphere.
Bushy said, “I went to the bookstore and looked at the meeting room. The wall behind the speaker is large and blank. I figure we shouldn’t project slides sharply on a small screen but softly on the back wall, fading one in, holding it awhile, then fading it out. If we repeat a couple—okay. The visuals are for atmosphere only.”
“Can I help at the meeting?” Janice interrupted. “I could follow your script, Qwill, and hand Bus
hy the suitable slide.”
“I don’t use a script,” Qwilleran said. “But I’ll give you a list of topics in sequence.”
Then Qwilleran went home, threatening to take Bonnie and Clyde, who had been sitting on his lap, sniffing his ear, and otherwise making their presence felt.
As he entered the barn, it was nearing eleven P.M., the hour when Qwilleran used to call Polly or Polly used to call him. The pressures of her new job had dampened their camaraderie. He still shopped for her groceries once or twice a week, but she was always too busy or too tired for dinner dates, evenings of good music, or festive weekends.
Their get-togethers in recent weeks had been about inventory selecting and ordering and delivery of books. He had lived through all of Polly’s anxieties about hiring and salaries. As Polly’s best friend, he was expected to advise her about aisle widths and customer comfort. . . . As for classical music on the magnificent stereo system at the barn, she had been in no mood for relaxing moments. And now that the store was open and running, she was too excited to relax. What next?
The phone rang. It was exactly eleven o’clock and he always had the expectancy that it was Polly calling to get their nightly custom back on track.
But it was the police chief. “Got some news for you!” he said.
“Good or bad?”
“Weird.”
“Why don’t you pop over here for a wee dram,” Qwilleran invited.
At the snack bar, where Andy liked to do his imbibing, he laid out a bottle of Scotch, ice cubes, a cheese tray, and a glass of Squunk water for himself. Then on the bar top just above, he put the rare cat book from the locked drawer, hoping Koko would demonstrate his taste in literature.
In a matter of minutes the big, burly Scot in khakis burst through the kitchen door. “Where’s that smart cat? Got an assignment for him!”
“Sit down and pour yourself a nip, Andy. Did you play the pipe at Scottish Night?”
“Aye! You missed some good haggis!”
“So what’s the news?”
“Theft at the ESP. A five-thousand-dollar book. A crook from Down Below, that’s for sure—because of all that publicity on TV. We turned the case over to the state police.”
“What was the title? Who was the author?”
“Death in the Afternoon by what’s-his-name.”
“Who reported it?”
“That new fella—Alden Wade. He works for Mrs. Duncan and volunteers for the Edd Smith outfit downstairs.”
At that moment Koko, as if on cue, rose from the floor to the top of the bar with effortless grace and sat down on his book.
Qwilleran said, “That’s his own book. I bought it for him on the first day they were open for business.” No mention was made of the price; Brodie would have choked on his cheese.
“Good stuff. Tastes like Stilton.”
“That’s what it is!”
FIFTEEN
On Wednesday morning Qwilleran first fed the cats, a performance he repeated about seven hundred times a year. To make the ritual entertaining for himself, he spoke intelligently to them—a device said to raise their consciousness. Koko always listened thoughtfully with a slight inclination of his fine brown head; Yum Yum licked a certain spot on her chest.
On this occasion, Qwilleran tried a little Latin: Sic transit gloria mundi . . . E pluribus unum . . . Tempus fugit. It was not well received. Both cats toppled over on the floor and had a playful wrestling match. So much for higher education, Qwilleran decided.
He received a phone call while he was eating his own breakfast. Kenneth was calling from the newspaper.
“Hey, Mr. Q! Breaking news!” he said in a muffled voice. “Five-thousand-dollar book stolen! Same one Dundee was sniffing in the photo! It’s gonna be on the front page!”
“That’ll sell a few papers,” Qwilleran said. “Lucky it was the book they stole and not the cat.”
“Yeah, well . . . I thought you’d want to know. . . . And I’ve finished your research, Mr. Q.”
“Good! I’ll pick up the trunk this evening.”
“Peggy could drive me over with it. She’s crazy to meet your cats!”
“What time?”
“Right after work.”
“See you then.” He had to chuckle over the hot breaking news. To Koko, who was hanging around waiting for a banana peel, he said, “Your cousin Kenneth is coming over and bringing Dundee’s handmaiden, who wants to meet you.” He wondered how Koko would react to the heavy bangs hanging almost to Peggy’s eyebrows. To a cat they might look menacing, like a certain breed of dog.
He gave the Siamese a good brushing and then read to them from Fables in Slang, which came tumbling off the shelf again. The humor seemed no more captivating than before, and he looked up George Ade in the encyclopedia: “Popular humorist and playwright (1866–1944).”
Next he phoned the county historian. Thornton Haggis had his finger on the pulse of all the old-timers.
“What do you know about George Ade?” he asked Thorn.
“My sons drink it on the soccer field. It renews their energy. Why do you ask?”
“Bad joke, Thorn. . . . Are you and your wife attending the lit club meeting?”
“Wouldn’t miss it. As I said before, she acts like a middle-aged groupie at your lectures. I think it’s your moustache she goes for.”
“I have another question. Did Haggis Monument Works do any gravestones for the Hibbard family?”
“We did ’em all! My grandfather, my father, and myself. They liked their headstones large, elaborate, and expensive. Why do you ask?”
“I’m writing a book about the Hibbard House, Thorn, and thought you might have some input.”
“You can write a whole chapter on the subject. There’s a private cemetery on their property, and I can show you a record book with names, dates, and sketches of the proposed monuments. We carved angels, baskets of flowers, baby lambs, portraits of the deceased, and some lengthy inscriptions, based on so much per letter. There was only one plain marker: a flat slab for a daughter who died in disgrace.”
Qwilleran said, “This is great information, Thorn. I’ll follow through. When the time comes, I’d like to see those account books. . . . Meanwhile, I saw something in the historic collection that only you would appreciate. The front page of an 1899 New York Times! It had been donated by Violet Hibbard’s father. The headlines reported a bank robbery, a murder, a poisoning mystery, a fire in a manhole, and a billion-dollar corporate failure.”
“Which proves,” Thornton said, “that things don’t get worse, they’re only different.”
Qwilleran said, “And just to show you how different, Thorn, the Sunday Times, twenty-two pages, sold for a nickel!”
Later in the day Qwilleran was in Toodle’s Market, picking up fruit and vegetables for Polly and bananas for himself, when a voice said, “Mr. Q in person, I believe.” He turned and saw a clean-cut man of about forty, who introduced himself as Bill Turmeric. He was the Sawdust City teacher of English who wrote entertaining letters to the “Qwill Pen” and the editorial page.
Qwilleran shook the proffered hand. “Glad to meet you! Have a banana. Dr. Diane says they’re good for you.” “My wife is always promoting them, too. Her aunt, by the way, won a dinner date with you in a charity auction a few years ago and has never stopped talking about it.”
“Sarah Plensdorf,” Qwilleran said. “Charming lady!” “How are Koko and Yum Yum? I’m sure my kids would like to know.”
“Koko is cool, and Yum Yum is sassy; sometimes the other way around.” A small crowd of shoppers had gathered, listening and smiling, and he added, “Let’s move out of the way so these good people can buy some bananas.”
Once the two men and their shopping carts were in an open space, Qwilleran asked, “Do you have time for coffee? I’m treating.”
“Best offer I’ve had all week.”
At the coffee bar they sat on uncomfortable stools designed to discourage loitering, and Qwilleran s
aid, “May I seize the moment and ask a question? . . . Is there such a thing as a ‘dangling which’? My housekeeper says, ‘My daughter is coming to visit, which I can’t clean next Wednesday.’ Is that Moose County patois?”
“No, it’s a syntactical curiosity found elsewhere. The relative pronoun ‘which’ is used to introduce a clause that has no antecedent in the previous clause. It’s used as a shortcut for ‘and in connection with that, you might say . . .’ Does that answer your question?”
“In connection with that, you might say . . . more or less” was Qwilleran’s honest reply.
Wetherby Goode was among the callers that afternoon at the barn. He said, “When are you going to move back to the Village so I can give you the hot news over the back fence?”
“What’s the hot news I don’t already know?”
“Unit Two has been purchased—for sure, this time.” “By whom?”
“I’ll drop in at the barn on my way to the station and tell you.”
For the rest of the afternoon Qwilleran racked his brain without answers. Unanswered questions drove him into a quiet frenzy. And when the weatherman drove into the barnyard, he was met by his favorite drink on a silver tray. “Okay! Who is it?”
“Our veterinarian!”
“Dr. Constable? She lives at the Hibbard Guest House! Did you get this information from the same impeccable source that misled you last time?”
“I’m gullible. I even believe my own weather forecasts.”
“What is her presumed reason for leaving the guest house?”
“She can’t have pets there. Taking care of other people’s animals and having none of her own is frustrating, she told the management at the Village. She’ll have five resident patients in the Willows alone. I call that a neat situation, all the way around. We should give a big party for her when she arrives.”
“Don’t overreact, Joe. Not until we find out if she makes house calls in the middle of the night.”
They went indoors and sat at the snack bar. Wetherby asked suddenly, “Are you someone’s first husband?”
The Cat Who Went Bananas Page 10