“Only two, Koko and Yum Yum.”
“I believe . . . I’m seeing double,” she said.
“Does the cold water help?” he asked anxiously.
“This coffee . . . I’d better go home.” She stood up and quickly sat down again, her face alarmingly flushed. There were droplets of moisture on her brow and chin.
“Are you sure you’re all right? Do you want to lie down? Try eating a cookie.”
“Just let me . . . get a breath of fresh air,” she said. “Where’s my hat?” She clapped it on her head at a careless angle, and he assisted her from the kitchen to the veranda as well as he could, considering his own unstable condition. What could he do? To drive her home would be an impossibility. She might have to stay. He might have to call a doctor.
Slowly they moved around the long veranda, Qwilleran limping and leaning on his staff, Vonda walking unsteadily and leaning on Qwilleran. In the past he had served liquor to guests who had shown an adverse reaction, but this was the first time it had happened with coffee. He should have served her fruit juice.
By the time they arrived at the front of the house and at the top of the twenty-five steps, Ms. Wix was breathing normally. Her flush had faded, and she seemed to be in control, even to the extent of straightening her hat.
“I’m all right now,” she said, inhaling deeply. “Forgive me for my little spell of nerves.”
“No need to apologize,” he said. “It was my fault for serving such strong coffee. Are you sure you can drive?” She was searching for car keys in her handbag.
“Oh, yes, I’m perfectly all right now, and I know this road very well.”
He watched her drive away. It had stopped raining, and she had forgotten her umbrella—her scarf, too, he later discovered. Returning them would be a good opportunity to ask a few more questions, he thought as he massaged his moustache.
Qwilleran sequestered the cats in the kitchen in preparation for the doctor’s visit. Otherwise they would sense the hospital connection and go flying to the farthest corner of the house. As he climbed upstairs awkwardly to shave and dress, he wondered which of the two doctors would respond. He rather hoped for Inez; a woman might have a more comforting way with the sensitive and high-strung Yum Yum. He also wondered if he should consider reducing his consumption of coffee. Polly had urged him to temper its potency, but the sudden demise of Wilson Wix brought the message home.
It was John Wickes who arrived at five-fifteen, a serious-looking man with large eyeglasses and a thoughtful way of speaking. “Having a little trouble?” he asked soothingly.
Qwilleran described Yum Yum’s latest aberration.
“Where is she?”
“They’re both locked up in the kitchen. Follow me.”
They found the Siamese on the kitchen table, guarding the remains of the Chocolate Whoppers—a mound of nuts and chocolate bits. Everything else had been devoured. When the little black bag appeared, however, Yum Yum rose vertically in space and landed on top of a kitchen cabinet. Koko, knowing instinctively that the thermometer and needle were not for him, moved not a whisker.
“Leave her alone,” Wickes said quietly. “She’ll come down when she’s ready.”
“Then pull up a chair and let’s have some five o’clock refreshment,” Qwilleran suggested. “Whiskey? Wine?”
“A little scotch, I think. It’s been a busy day: vacationers walking in with sick cats and dogs, the usual patients for vaccinations, ear crops, spaying, etc . . . . plus surgical emergencies. Inez did a caesarean on a pregnant cat today, and I had to do a sex change on a male because of blockage. So . . . yes, I’ll have a little scotch—against the weather.”
“Do you always have this much rain in the Potatoes?”
“No, it’s very unusual and a little frightening,” the doctor said, maintaining his unruffled tone of voice. “The river is running so high we’ve had to sandbag the clinic property, and here on the mountain I’m worried about Lake Batata. It was man-made by damming the Batata Falls, and if the heavy downpour continues, it could burst its bounds and flood the mountainside. Inez and I are ready to evacuate if necessary.”
His matter-of-fact comment led Qwilleran to ask, “Are you serious about this, John?”
“Dead serious.”
“Who converted the waterfall into a lake?”
“Hawkinfield, about ten or fifteen years ago.”
“Did he get permission?”
“I doubt whether he thought it necessary.”
“How well did you know him?”
“I bought my lot from him and took care of his dogs. Beyond that I didn’t care to go.”
Qwilleran said, “I suppose Lucy was one of them.”
“The Doberman? She was the last of his dogs. Has she been hanging around?”
“Once she brought me home when I was lost in the woods, for which I was grateful, and another time she came begging for food, although she’s as big as a barrel.”
“Lucy was always obese. I tried to convince Hawkinfield that he was hurting his dog by overfeeding, but it was useless to try to tell him anything, and it was never wise to oppose him too strongly. He had ways of retaliating.”
“Where were you and Inez when you heard about the murder?”
“Where were we?” he mused. “We were spending Father’s Day in the valley with our sons and their families. Someone phoned us the news, and it wasn’t greeted with much sorrow. John Jr. is the gadfly on the board of education, and my younger son runs the county animal shelter. Hawkinfield persecuted both of them in editorials because they wouldn’t dance to his tune. The man was unhinged, but he had power. That’s the worst kind.”
“I assume you’re a native Spud,” Qwilleran said.
“I was born in the valley, but we were all Taters originally. My forebears drifted down out of the mountains and adapted to valley environment—and valley mentality.” He drained his glass.
Since Yum Yum showed no intention of deserting her perch, Qwilleran poured again. “Vonda Wix gave me a brief rundown on the genealogy of your family.”
“Yes, no matter how you spell it, we all stem from a prolific old stud in the fifteenth century. One of his descendents settled here in the early nineteenth and operated a grist mill, chiefly to grind corn for the moonshiners. Making homemade whiskey was traditional among the pioneers as part of family medicine, you know. There’s still a little ‘midnight farming’ being done on Little Potato.”
At that moment there were two soft thumps to be heard, and Yum Yum descended from her lofty perch. She walked slowly and sinuously past the kitchen table, each velvet paw touching the floor like a caress. The doctor picked her up gently and began a leisurely examination while crooning to her in some unknown tongue. She was completely under his spell and reacted not at all when her temperature was taken or when the injection went into her flank. “Here are some tablets,” he said. “Follow the dosage on the label.”
Qwilleran said, “Your bedside manner is admirable, John.”
The doctor shrugged off the compliment with his eyebrows and a flicker of a smile. “How’s your ankle, Qwill?”
“On the mend somewhat. I appreciate your coming up here, though.”
“Glad to do it. Come down the hill and have a drink with us Sunday afternoon, if our house hasn’t washed away.”
The Siamese followed the doctor to the door as if reluctant to see him go.
“Our next visitor,” Qwilleran told them, “comes bearing turkey, so treat him with diplomacy. But don’t expect any dinner from me after stuffing yourselves with my Chocolate Whoppers!”
While they waited for Bill Treacle, Sabrina Peel called to say she had some floor pillows for the living room. Might she drop them off the next afternoon? She would like to arrive late and then take Qwilleran to dinner at the restaurant called Pasta Perfect.
“You’ll have to drive,” he said. “I’ve sprained my ankle.”
“Hope you don’t object to sharing a town wagon with drapery samples and wa
llpaper books.”
Shortly after six o’clock a car pulled into the parking lot and a smiling Bill Treacle—still exuding pep after an eight-hour shift at the market—appeared at the door with two sacks of groceries. “Hey, you weren’t lying!” he said when he saw Qwilleran hobbling with the aid of a stick. “Want me to put this stuff in the refrigerator? Some of it should go in the freezer right away. Okay?”
“First door on the left,” Qwilleran instructed him, pointing down the foyer, “and while you’re there, help yourself to a beer. You can bring me a ginger ale. We’ll sit in the living room.”
“This is some barn of a place,” the young grocer observed as he started down the hall. When he returned with the drinks he was accompanied by the Siamese, walking beside him like an honor guard, their tails rigidly at attention.
“Friendly brutes, aren’t they?” he said.
“Cats are instinctively attracted to a source of energy,” Qwilleran explained. “Have a chair, and excuse me if I keep my foot elevated.”
“What happened to it?”
“I slipped on some wet leaves.”
“There’s plenty of those around. I never saw so much rain in June. Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you while you’re laid up. Okay?”
Qwilleran seized his cue. “There’s one thing you could do, Bill. I noticed that Lumpton’s Hardware has fax service, and if you’ll take some copy and shoot it through tomorrow, I’ll be grateful. It’s a column I write for my hometown newspaper, and they want to run it Friday.”
“Is that your job? Everybody’s been wondering who you are and why you’re here.”
That was another cue. “One reason I’m here is to write a biography of J.J. Hawkinfield.”
“No kidding! I didn’t know he was that important. I can tell you a few things about the Old Buzzard if you want to know. I used to work for him at the Gazette.”
“How was he as a boss?”
“Unbelievable! If there was a mistake made, he’d come storming into the production department or newsroom and yell, ‘Who’s responsible for this stupid error?’ And he’d fire somebody on the spot, or else rage around the department and sweep everything off the desks and dump files out on the floor. He was really nuts!”
“Do you know the Beechums?”
“Sure do! Do you know about Forest and the trial? Have you met Chrys? I used to date her before all this happened. Now Forest is locked up without being guilty; their mother has stopped talking; and Chrys has turned off about everything. Bad news all the way around.”
“Are you the one who printed handbills for Forest?”
“Maybe it wasn’t the smartest thing to do—okay?—but nobody was cooperating, and I had to help somehow. He was a hundred percent right about what was happening to Big Potato. So, being in charge of job printing at the Gazette, I ran off a few flyers between orders. The Old Buzzard caught up with me and not only canned me but blackballed me wherever I applied for another job. But I got back at him!” Treacle said with a grin. “I knew the hospital spent a lot of money to print forms and booklets. They were giving the Gazette jobbing shop $20,000 of business a year. Okay? So I showed the hospital auxiliary how they could set up their own print shop and do the work with volunteers.”
Qwilleran asked, “How did Hawkinfield react?”
“They say he nearly busted a blood vessel. It turned out to be a break for me, too. A guy on the hospital board of commissioners owns Five Points Market, and he was so impressed he gave me this job. So that was another kick in the head for the Old Buzzard . . . Hey, the cats kinda like me, don’t they?”
Koko and Yum Yum were being sociable as cats do when they have an ulterior motive—sniffing shoelaces, rubbing ankles, purring throatily. They knew he was a grocer and not a printer. He also happened to be sitting in Yum Yum’s favorite chair.
Qwilleran said, “If Forest is innocent, it means the real criminal is free and possibly walking around Spudsboro. Have you thought of that?”
“Yeah, but nobody’s ever gonna do anything about it. The public wanted a quick conviction—okay? And they wanted to hang a Tater—okay? The judge and the prosecutor were both coming up for reelection, so what have you got? A beautiful frame-up.”
“How do you explain this prejudice against Taters?”
“Don’t ask me! When the first settlers came to the Potatoes, there were Indians here, and it was whites against redskins. Now it’s valley whites against mountain whites.”
“Did you attend the trial?”
“Sure did. I took time off from my job. I sat with the Beechums.”
“Were you in the courtroom when Wilson Wix collapsed?”
“He dropped dead right in front of me! He was a Hawksman, you know. That’s what they called the Old Buzzard’s cronies on the council, zoning board, school board, and all that. Wix was a nice guy, but he was a Hawksman.”
“Do you remember the day Hawkinfield was murdered?” Qwilleran asked.
“Sure do. My sister and I were taking our parents out to dinner for Father’s Day—okay? First I drove them up to the top of Big Potato, like my dad used to do when we were kids, before the waterfall was dammed. When we got to the top there were a couple of cars in the Tiptop parking lot, and we heard a dog howling, so we turned around and drove down again.”
“What time was it?”
“Two o’clock, I’m pretty sure, because we had a reservation at The Great Big Baked Potato for two-thirty. Later on, after we found out what happened, I remembered the dog was howling like the Old Buzzard was already dead. So what were those two cars doing in the parking lot? . . . Anyway, after Forest was arrested and charged, I went to his attorney with this information. I didn’t have a description of the cars or license numbers. All I knew was that neither of them was the Beechum jalopy, and maybe I could testify to that. He told me I was a known accomplice of Forest and had been fired for dishonesty, so any testimony from me would do more harm than good. That’s what he told me.”
“You’re referring to Hugh Lumpton?” Qwilleran asked. “Did he do a conscientious job of defending Forest in your opinion?”
“That guy? He did a lousy job! I could’ve done better myself. In the first place, the county doesn’t pay much when they assign a lawyer. In the second place, he’s a Spud and he plays golf with the prosecutor. The whole thing was a joke, only it wasn’t funny. At the end, all Lumpton said to the jury was that the prosecution hadn’t proved their case. The jury wasn’t out long enough to get a cup of coffee, and when they came back with a guilty verdict, I was ready to commit murder myself!”
“I’m curious about the Lumptons. I see the name everywhere.”
“Yeah, you can’t spit without hitting a Lumpton. They’re in pizza, furniture, hardware, everything. They’ve been here for generations. Some moved to the valley and made good, and some are still Taters. For a long time we had a popular sheriff who was a Lumpton. He was jolly and sort of easygoing. Who says cops have to go around looking fierce and rattling handcuffs? Josh Lumpton was too independent for the Old Buzzard, and he finally got him defeated. Now the sheriff is a guy named Wilbank.”
“Did Wilbank take the stand at the trial?” Qwilleran asked.
“Yeah, he told how Sherry Hawkinfield came running down the hill to his house and said her dad was missing, and how they found the body at the foot of the cliff, and how the front hall was wrecked. The worst was Sherry’s testimony—a bare-faced lie! How can they get away with that? It was her word against a Tater’s, so you know who they believed. And then there were other trumped-up lies.”
“I heard something about a death threat.”
“Are you kidding? Forest wouldn’t be stupid enough to send an anonymous threat through the mail!”
“Was it produced as evidence?”
“No, that was another fishy thing. It had disappeared, although Robert Lessmore testified he’d seen it.”
“This is all very interesting,” Qwilleran said. “How about
another beer?”
“Thanks, but I’m bowling tonight. Just give me the papers you want faxed, and I hope your ankle gets better soon—okay?”
Bill Treacle left, and Qwilleran relented and gave the Siamese some turkey for their good behavior. For his own dinner he thawed some beef pepper steak. As he ate his meal at the kitchen table, Koko sat on a chair opposite with his chin barely clearing the edge of the table, his bright eyes watching every move intently.
“Don’t just sit there looking omniscient,” Qwilleran said to him. “Come up with an idea. What do we do next?”
With a grunt Koko jumped from the chair and ran from the kitchen. His exodus was so abrupt, so urgent, that Qwilleran limped after him, first taking care to cover his plate of beef. He found the cat rolling on the carpet at the foot of the telephone chest, stretching to his full length and muttering to himself.
Qwilleran placed his hand on the telephone. “Do you want me to make a call?” he asked. “Are you on the phone company’s payroll?”
Koko scrambled to his feet and raced wildly about the foyer while Qwilleran called Osmond Hasselrich at his home in Pickax. It was his first contact with the attorney since leaving Moose County, and they had a long conversation.
As later events indicated, that was probably not what Koko wanted at all.
FOURTEEN
ON THURSDAY MORNING the trees were still dripping, but the sun shone intermittently and Qwilleran’s ankle was gradually responding to treatment. Drinking his breakfast coffee in the kitchen he recalled how his conversations with the friendly telephone installer, the saturnine veterinarian, the flaky Gazette columnist, and the overly energetic grocer had left him with no answers, only conjectures. He guessed that the “death threat” was not received by Hawkinfield in his lifetime but was forged following his murder and shown to Robert Lessmore (a golf buddy of the prosecutor), who thereby testified to seeing such a document, overlooking the discrepancy in timing. Meanwhile, it had been conveniently destroyed by the same hand or hands that forged it. If the instruments of law and order in Spudsboro were as corrupt as Treacle intimated, a veritable network of collaborators could be involved in the frame-up of a Tater, including Sherry Hawkinfield, and all of this was done to protect the actual perpetrators of the crime, there being more than one, Qwilleran surmised.
The Cat Who Moved a Mountain Page 17