The Cat Who Played Post Office

by Lilian Jackson Braun

  “Never saw nothin’ like what they put on TV these days.”

  “How’s your dad’s arthritis, Joe?”

  “Man, don’t try to tell me they’re not livin’ together.”

  “We need rain.”

  “The woman he’s goin’ with—they say she’s a lawyer.”

  “Ever hear the one about the little city kid who had to draw a picture of a cow?”

  Qwilleran leaned across the table. “Who are these guys?”

  Junior scanned the group. “Farmers. Commercial fishermen. A branch bank manager. A guy who builds pole barns. One of them sells farm equipment; he’s loaded. One of them cleans septic tanks.”

  Pipe smoke and the aroma of a cigar were added to the tobacco haze. Snatches of conversation were interwoven like a tapestry.

  “Durned if I didn’t fix my tractor with a piece of wire. Saved a coupla hundred, easy.”

  “Always wanted to go to Vegas, but my old lady, she says no.”

  “Forget handguns. I like a rifle for deer.”

  “My kid caught a bushel of perch at Purple Point in half an hour.”

  “We all know he’s got his hand in the till. Never got caught, that’s all.”

  “Here’s Terry!” several voices shouted, and heads turned toward the dirty windows.

  One customer rushed out the door. Picking up a wooden palette, he slanted it across the steps to make a ramp. Then a man in a feed cap, who had eased out of a low-slung car into a folding wheelchair, waited until he was pushed up the ramp into the diner.

  “Dairy farmer,” Junior whispered. “Bad accident a few years ago. Tractor rollover . . . Milks a hundred Holsteins an hour in a computerized milking parlor. Five hundred gallons a day. Eighteen tons of manure a year.”

  The talk went on—about taxes, the commodities market, and animal waste management systems. There was plenty of laughter—chesty guffaws, explosive roars, cackling and bleating. “Baa-a-a” laughed a customer behind Qwilleran.

  “We all know who she’s makin’ eyes at, don’t we? Baa-a-a!”

  “Ed’s new barn cost three quarters of a million.”

  “They sent him to college and dammit if he didn’t get on dope.”

  “That which is crooked cannot be made straight, according to Ecclesiastes One-fifteen.”

  “Man, he’ll never get married. He’s got it too good. Baa-a-a!”

  “We need rain bad.”

  “If he brings that woman here, there’s gonna be hell to pay.”

  A sign over the doughnut tray read: “Cows may come and cows may go, but the bull in here goes on forever.”

  “I believe it,” Qwilleran said. “This is a gossip factory.”

  “Nah,” Junior said. “The guys just shoot the breeze.”

  Toward eleven o’clock customers began to straggle out, and a man with a cigar stopped to give Junior a friendly punch in the ribs. He had a big build and arrogant swagger, and he bleated like a sheep. He rode off on the flashy motorcycle in a blast of noise and flying gravel.

  “Who’s that?” Qwilleran asked.

  “Birch Tree,” Junior said. “It’s really Trevelyan, an old family name in Moose County. His brother’s name is Spruce, and he has two sisters, Maple and Evergreen. I told you we’re individualists up here.”

  “That’s the guy who’s supposed to do our repairs, but he’s taking his own sweet time.”

  “He’s good, but he hates to work. Hikes his prices so people won’t hire him. Always has plenty of dough, though. He’s part owner of this diner, but that would never make anyone rich.”

  “Unless they’re selling something besides food,” Qwilleran said.

  On the way back to Pickax he asked if women ever came to the coffee hour.

  “Naw, they have their own gossip sessions with tea and cookies . . . . Want to hear the eleven o’clock news?” He turned on the car radio.

  Ever since arriving in Moose County Qwilleran had marveled at the WPKX news coverage. The local announcers had a style that he called Instant Paraphrase.

  The newscaster was saying, “ . . . lost control of his vehicle when a deer ran across the highway, causing the car to enter a ditch and sending the driver to the Pickax Hospital, where he was treated and released. A hospital spokesperson said the patient was treated for minor injuries and released.

  “In sports, the Pickax Miners walloped the Mooseville Mosquitoes thirteen to twelve, winning the county pennant and a chance at the play-offs. According to Coach Russell, the pennant gives the Miners a chance to show their stuff in the regional play-offs.”

  Suddenly Junior’s beeper sounded, and a siren at City Hall started to wail. “There’s a fire,” he said. “Mind if I drop you at the light? See you later.”

  His red Jaguar varoomed toward the fire hall, and Qwilleran walked the few remaining blocks. On every side he was hailed by strangers who seemed happy to see him and who used the friendly but respectful initial customary in Pickax.

  “Hi, Mr. Q.”

  “Morning, Mr. Q.”

  “Nice day, Mr. Q.”

  Mrs. Cobb greeted him with a promise of meatloaf sandwiches for lunch. “And there’s a message from Mr. Cooper’s office. The person you inquired about terminated her employment five years ago on July seventh. She started April third of that year. Also, a very strange woman walked in and said she’d been hired to clean three days a week. She’s upstairs now, doing the bedrooms. And another thing, Mr. Qwilleran—I found some personal correspondence in my desk upstairs, and I thought you should sort it out. It’s on your desk in the library.”

  The correspondence filled a corrugated carton, and perched on top of the conglomeration of papers was Koko, sound asleep with his tail curled lovingly around his nose. Either the cat was developing a mail fetish, or he knew the carton had once contained a shipment of canned tuna.

  Qwilleran removed the sleeping animal and tackled the old Klingenschoen correspondence. There was no order or sense to the collection, and nothing of historic or financial importance. Mail that should have been thrown into a wastebasket had been pigeon-holed in a desk. A letter from a friend, dated 1921, had been filed with a solicitation for a recent Boy Scout drive.

  What caught Qwilleran’s attention was a government postal card with two punctures in one corner, looking suspiciously like the mark of feline fangs.

  The message read:

  “Writing on bus. Sorry didn’t say goodbye. Got job in Florida—very sudden. Got a lift far as Cleveland. Throw out all my things. Don’t need anything. Good job—good pay.”

  It was signed with the name that had been haunting Qwilleran for the last ten days, and it was dated July 11, five years before. Curiously enough, there was a Maryland postmark. Why the girl was traveling from Cleveland to Florida by way of Maryland was not clear. Qwilleran also noted that the handwriting bore no resemblance to the precise penmanship on Daisy’s luggage tags.

  He ripped the tag from the suitcase in the kitchen and went in search of Mrs. Fulgrove. He found her in the Empire suite, furiously attacking a marble-topped, sphinx-legged table with her soft cloths and mysterious potions.

  “This place was let go somethin’ terrible,” she said, “which don’t surprise me, seein’ as how the Old Lady didn’t have no decent help for five years, but I’m doin’ my best to put things to rights, and it ain’t easy when you’re my age and pestered with a bad shoulder, which I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”

  Qwilleran complimented her on her industry and principles and showed her the luggage tag. “Do you know anything about this?”

  “Course I do, it’s my own writin’, and nobody writes proper anymore, but the nuns taught us how to write so’s anybody could read it, and when the Old Lady told me to put that girl’s things in the attic, I marked ’em so’s there’d be no mistake.”

  “Why did the Old Lady keep Daisy’s clothing, Mrs. Fulgrove? Was the girl expected to return?”

  “Heaven knows what the Old Lady took it in her h
ead to do. She never throwed nothin’ away, and when she told me to pack it all in the attic, I packed it in the attic and no questions asked.”

  Qwilleran disengaged himself from the conference and let Mrs. Fulgrove return to her brass polish and marble restorer and English wax. He himself went back to answering letters. The afternoon delivery brought another avalanche spilling into the vestibule, to be distributed by the two self-appointed mail clerks. Koko delivered a card announcing a new seafood restaurant, as well as a letter from Roger’s mother-in-law. She wrote:

  Dear Qwill,

  Are you enjoying your new lifestyle? Don’t forget you’re only thirty miles from Mooseville. Drop in some afternoon. I’ve been picking wild blueberries for pies.

  Mildred Hanstable

  She had been Qwilleran’s neighbor at the beach, and he remembered her as a generous-hearted woman who loved people. He seized the phone and immediately accepted the invitation—not only because she made superb pies but because she had been Daisy Mull’s art teacher.

  Driving up to the shore the next afternoon he sensed a difference in the environment as he approached the lake—not only the lushness of vegetation and freshness of breeze but a general air of relaxation and well-being. It was the magic that lured tourists to Mooseville.

  The Hanstable summer cottage overlooked the lake and an umbrella table was set up for the repast.

  “Mildred, your blueberry pie is perfection,” Qwilleran said. “not too gelatinous, not too viscous, not too liquescent.”

  She laughed with pleasure. “Don’t forget I teach home ec as well as art. In our school district we have to be versatile, like coaching girls’ volleyball and directing the senior play.”

  “Do you remember a student named Daisy Mull?” he asked.

  “Do I ever! I had great hopes for Daisy. Why do you ask?”

  “She worked for the Klingenschoens a while back, and I found some of her artwork.”

  “Daisy had talent. That’s why I was so disappointed when she didn’t continue. It’s unusual for that kind of talent to surface in Moose County. The focus is on sports, raising families, and watching TV. Daisy dropped out of school and eventually left town.

  “Where did she go?”

  “I don’t know. She never kept in touch, to my knowledge—not even with her mother, although that’s easy to understand. What kind of artwork did you find?”

  Qwilleran described the murals.

  “I’d love to see them,” Mildred said. “In fact I’d like to see the whole house, if you wouldn’t mind. Roger says it’s a showplace.”

  “I think we can arrange that . . . . Didn’t Daisy get along with her mother?”

  “Mrs. Mull has a drinking problem, and it’s hard for a young girl to cope with an alcoholic parent . . . . Please help yourself to the pie, Qwill.”

  He declined a third helping, reminding himself that Mrs. Cobb was planning lamb stew with dumplings for dinner, with her famous coconut cake for dessert.

  He drew a postal card from his pocket. “I found this at the house, dated five years ago. Daisy was on her way to Florida.”

  Mildred looked at the address side of the card, frowning a little. Then she turned it over and read the message twice. She shook her head. “Qwill, this is definitely not Daisy’s handwriting.”

  SEVEN

  Qwilleran sat in a deck chair on the Hanstable terrace overlooking the lake. Clouds scudded across the blue sky and waves lapped the beach, but his mind was elsewhere. Why would anyone forge a communication to Daisy’s employer? He could make a guess or two, but he needed more information.

  “How do you know,” he asked his hostess, “that this card wasn’t written by Daisy?”

  “It’s not her handwriting or her spelling,” Mildred said with assurance. “She’d never put a w in ‘writing’ or an e in ‘goodbye’ or an apostrophe in anything. She could draw, but she couldn’t spell.”

  “You knew her very well?”

  “Let me tell you something, Qwill. For a teacher—a real teacher—the biggest reward is to discover raw material and nurture it and watch it develop. I worked hard with Daisy—tried to raise her sights. I knew she could get a scholarship and go into commercial art. It would have been a giant step forward for anyone with the name of Mull. She had invented an individual style of handwriting—hard to read but pleasing to the eye—so I know that no way did she write that postcard.”

  “Any idea who might have written it?”

  “Not the faintest. Why on earth would anyone . . .”

  Qwilleran said, “Was there any reason why she might want people in Pickax to think she had gone to Florida? Was she afraid of someone here? Afraid of being followed and brought back? Were the police looking for her? Had she stolen something? She may have gone out west but arranged for someone else to mail the card in Maryland. Was she clever enough to figure that out? Did she have an accomplice?”

  Mildred looked distressed as well as bewildered. “She took a rather pricey object from the decorating studio, but Amanda didn’t prosecute. Honestly, I can’t imagine Daisy being involved in a serious theft.”

  “What kind of guys did she go around with?”

  “Not the most respectable, I’m afraid. She started . . . banging out after she left school.”

  “Would her mother know her friends?”

  “I suspect her mother would neither know nor care.”

  “I’d like to talk with that woman.”

  “It might not be easy. The Mulls are suspicious of strangers, and Della isn’t sober very often. I could try to see her when I go to Dimsdale to check on my craft workers. Della does nice knitting and crochet, and she could make items for Sharon’s shop, but she can’t get herself together.”

  “You could tell her I’ve found her daughter’s belongings,” Qwilleran said, “including a valuable piece of gold jewelry. Stress ‘valuable,’ and see how she reacts. Ask if I might deliver Daisy’s luggage to her.”

  “Did she really have some good jewelry?” Mildred asked.

  “It was in her suitcase in the attic. The question is: why did she leave it behind? She disappeared in the month of July and left both summer and winter clothing, including her toothbrush and . . . Did you know she was pregnant?”

  “I’m not surprised,” Mildred said sadly. “She never got any love at home. How do you know she was pregnant?”

  “She’d been buying baby clothes from Lanspeak’s—that is, buying or shoplifting. She left those behind, too. My first hunch was that she was running away to have an abortion.”

  “She could have had a miscarriage. That can unhinge a woman, and Daisy wasn’t the most stable girl in the world—or the healthiest.”

  “To tell you the truth, Mildred,” said Qwilleran, “I’m getting some unsavory vibrations about this case. But I can’t say any more—just yet.”

  Driving back to Pickax he made a detour at the Dimsdale intersection. Just as Roger had said, a dirt road led back into the woods, and among the trees were flat-roofed shacks and old travel trailers. The number of small outhouses suggested a lack of plumbing in this shantytown. Junk was scattered everywhere: bedsprings, an old refrigerator without a door, fragments of farm machinery, rusted-out cars without wheels. The only vehicles that looked operative were trucks in the last stages of dilapidation. Here and there a dusty vegetable garden was struggling to survive in a clearing. Gray washing hung on sagging clotheslines. Flocks of small children played among the rubbish, shrieking and tumbling and chasing chickens.

  Comparing the scene with his own lavish residence, Qwilleran cringed—and put the Dimsdale squatters on his mental list for the K Foundation: decent housing, skill training, meaningful jobs, something like that.

  At the K mansion he was surprised to see a motorcycle parked at the back door. The service drive was usually occupied by a pickup or two. The green jumpsuit was constantly mowing, edging, watering, spraying and pruning, and Amanda’s crew was always coming and going on obscure missions. Th
is afternoon there was a black motorcycle—long in the wheelbase, wide in the tank, voluptuous as to fairings, and loaded with chrome.

  Qwilleran stepped into the entry hall and heard voices:

  “Whaddaya see, Iris baby? Gimme the bad news.”

  “Your palm is very good, very easy to read. I see a long lifeline and—oh my!—many love affairs.”

  “Baa-a-a-a!”

  There was no mistaking the laugh or the motorcycle.

  In the kitchen the scene was casual, to say the least, Birch Trevelyan in his field boots and feed cap sprawled in a chair at the kitchen table, a T-shirt stretched across his beefy chest and a leather jacket with cutoff sleeves hanging on a doorknob. Mrs. Cobb, apparently dazzled by this macho glamour, was holding his hand and stroking the palm. Koko was monitoring the situation from the top of the refrigerator, not without alarm. Yum Yum was under the table sniffing the man’s boots. And on the table were the remains of the three-layer, cream-filled coconut cake that Mrs. Cobb had baked for Qwilleran’s evening meal.

  She jumped to her feet, looking flushed and guilty. “Oh, there you are, Mr. Qwilleran. This is Birch Tree. He’s going to solve all our repair problems.”

  “Howdy,” said Birch in the coffee-shop style, loud and easy. “Pull up a chair. Have some cake. Baa-a-a!” His mismatched eyes—one brown, one hazel—had an evil glint, but he had a disarming grin showing big square teeth.

  Qwilleran accepted a chair that Birch shoved in his direction and said. “That’s some classy animal you’ve got tethered out there.”

  “Yeah, it’s a mean rig. Y’oughta get one. You can hit a hundred-fifty in sixth on the airport road, if it’s clear. Ten miles of straight, there. Ittibittiwassee—you get four straight but you rev up to ten grand and it’s all over.”

  Tactfully Qwilleran slipped into the topic of primary interest. “There’s something wrong with the doors in this house, Birch. They don’t latch properly. Even the cat can open them.”

  “Lotta muscle in one of them small packages,” Birch said with authority.

  “We’ve got about twenty doors that won’t stay shut. What can be done?”