“How long has he been gone?” Qwilleran asked.
“He died peacefully in his sleep fourteen years ago next month. We were in the book business together for almost forty years.”
“A rare privilege.” Qwilleran had never known his own father. He bought the Thomas Hardy book as well as the others and was leaving the store with his purchases when the bookseller called after him. “Where are you going on vacation, Mr. Q?”
“Just up to Mooseville.”
“That’s nice. You’ll see some flying saucers.”
Qwilleran bristled at the suggestion but said a polite maybe. Both he and Arch Riker, professional skeptics, scoffed at the UFO gossip in Mooseville. The chamber of commerce encouraged it, hoping for an incident that would make the town the Roswell of the North. Tourists were excited at the prospect of seeing aliens. Friendly locals referred to them as Visitors; others blamed them for every quirk of weather or outbreak of sheep-fly. Qwilleran, to his dismay, had found several believers in the interplanetary origin of UFOs—among such persons as Riker’s wife, the superintendent of schools, and a sophisticated young heiress from Chicago . . . or else they were playacting to preserve a local tradition, like adults pretending to believe in Santa Claus.
The last stop on his morning round was Amanda’s design studio, where Fran Brodie, second in command, was back from vacation. She was one of the most attractive young women in Pickax, as well as one of the most talented, and now she had the added glamor that seems to come with foreign travel.
He said, “I don’t need to ask if you had a good time. You look spectacularly happy.”
“It was fabulous!” she cried, tossing her strawberry-blond hair. “Have you been to Italy?”
“Only as a foreign correspondent for papers Down Below.”
“You must go there for a vacation and take Polly! The cities! The countryside! The art! The food! The people!” She rolled her eyes in a way that suggested she was not telling the whole story about . . . the people. “Sit down, Qwill, we have things to discuss.”
She had done a small design job for him and was redesigning the interior of the Pickax Hotel, but her greatest passion was the Pickax Theater Club. It had been her idea to do summer theater in a barn near Mooseville. They were opening with a comedy, Visitor to a Small Planet.
“Are you going to review our opening night, Qwill?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“For the first time in club history we’re getting reviewers from neighboring counties: the Lockmaster Ledger and Bixby Bugle! Do you know the play?”
“Only that Gore Vidal wrote it and it opened on Broadway a long time ago.”
“It’s a fun production,” Fran said. “A flying saucer lands in front of a TV commentator’s house, and a Visitor from outer space proceeds to stir things up.”
“Who’s playing the Visitor? Were you able to draw from a pool of small green actors?”
“That’s our big joke, Qwill. We’ve purposely cast actors under five-feet-nine for all the earthlings, so the Visitor comes as a shock. He’s six-feet-eight!”
“Derek Cuttlebrink!”
“Isn’t that a hoot? Larry’s playing the commentator, and Scott Gippel is perfect for the overbearing general . . . Shall I have two tickets at the box office for you on Friday?”
“One will do,” Qwilleran said. “Polly’s vacationing with her sister in Ontario. They’re seeing Shakespeare in Stratford and some Shaw plays at Niagra-on-the-Lake.”
“Oh, I’m envious!” Fran cried.
“Don’t be greedy! You’ve just seen the Pope in Rome, David in Florence, and all those virile gondoliers in Venice.”
She gave him a Fran Brodie glance—half amusement, half rebuke.
“Where did you find a barn suitable for a theater?” he asked.
“Avery Botts is letting us use his dairy barn for nine weekends. Each play will run three weekends.”
“I see,” said Qwilleran thoughtfully. “And what will the cows do on weekends?”
“Are you serious, Qwill? Avery quit dairy farming a long time ago, when the state built the prison. They gave him a lot of money for his back forty, and he switched to poultry. You must have seen his place on Lakeshore just west of Pickax Road: big white frame farmhouse with a lot of white outbuildings. A sign on the lawn says: FRESH EGGS . . . FRYERS. Avery tells a funny story about that. Want to hear it?”
“Is it clean?”
“Well, one summer day,” she began, “a city dude and a flashy blonde drove into the farmyard in a convertible with the top down. The guy yelled that he wanted a dozen fryers. Avery told him he had only three on hand but could have the other nine in a couple of hours. The guy slammed into reverse and yelled, ‘Forget it! Sell your three eggs to somebody else!’ And he gunned the car back down the drive in a cloud of dust. When Avery tells the story, he laughs till he chokes.”
“I don’t get it,” Qwilleran admitted, “but I’m a city dude myself.”
“A fryer, Qwill, is a young chicken—not an egg that you fry!”
“Hmmm . . . learn something every day.”
“We’re going to call our theater the Fryers Club Summer Stage . . . But I’m doing all the talking,” she said. “What’s your news?”
“Only that the cats and I are moving to the beach for a month.”
“Have you seen your new guest house?”
“Not yet. I hope you didn’t make it too comfortable or too attractive. I don’t want to find myself in the motel business.”
“Don’t worry. I did it in bilious colors with lumpy mattresses, flimsy towels, and framed pictures of drowning sailors.”
“Good!” he said. “See you Friday night. Break a leg!”
Driving back to the barn to collect the Siamese for the Mooseville expedition, Qwilleran considered what he would need to pack in his van. For himself it would be, first of all, the automated coffeemaker. Otherwise he would require only polo shirts, shorts, and sandals, plus writing materials and a few books. There was no point in taking the revolutionary high-tech recumbent bike that had been presented to him by the community as a token of their esteem. The rider reclined in a bucket seat, pedaling with elevated feet. Needless to say, it was such a sensation in Pickax that he seldom ventured out on the highway; instead he displayed it in his living room as a conversation piece and even an art object. On this occasion, he decided to leave it where it was; after all, there was a trail bike in the toolshed at the cabin.
The cats’ vacation needs were more complex. He would have to take their blue cushion from the top of the refrigerator; the turkey roaster that served as their commode; several bags of their favorite cat litter that was kind to the toes; grooming equipment; their special dishes for food and water; a month’s supply of Kabibbles, a crunchy treat prepared by a neighbor; and a few cans of their preferred brands of red salmon, crabmeat, lobster, and smoked turkey.
Right now it was time for their midday snack, and they would be waiting for him, prancing on long thin legs, waving eloquent tails, raising eager eyes that were pools of blue in their brown masks. When he unlocked the door, however, both were asleep on the sofa—a tangle of pale fawn fur and brown legs and tails, with heads buried in each other’s underside, except for three visible ears.
“Treat!” he said in a stage whisper.
Two heads popped up!
“Yow!” came Koko’s clamoring response.
“N-n-now!” shrieked Yum Yum.
After the luggage was packed and the van loaded, and after Yum Yum had been chased and captured and pushed into the cat carrier, Koko was found sitting in the bucket seat of the recumbent bike, looking wise.
Oh, well, Qwilleran thought, I might as well take it along. I can practice on the back roads.
TWO
The two passengers in the cat carrier on the backseat complained and jockeyed for position, then settled down as the brown van picked up speed on the open highway. The route to Mooseville lay due north. For Qwilleran, it was
a highway of memories, crowded with landmarks from his earlier experiences in the county:
Dimsdale Diner (bad coffee, good gossip) . . . Ittibittiwassee Road (turn left to Shantytown, right to the Buckshot Mine) . . . old turkey farm (once owned by Mildred Riker’s first husband) . . . abandoned cemetery (poison ivy) . . . state prison (famous flower gardens, infamous scandal).
At the prison gates, the dozing Siamese perked up, stretched their necks, and sniffed. It was not roses they smelled; it was the lake, still a mile away. They detected open water, aquatic weeds, algae, plankton, minnows!
Their excitement increased as the van traveled along the lakeshore road. On the left, Qwilleran saw Avery Botts’s farmhouse and the Fryers Club Summer Stage . . . on the right, glimpses of the lake between the trees . . . on the left, pastureland with cattle ruminating or horses showing off their glossy coats and noble bearing . . . on the right, the rustic gate of Top o’ the Dunes Club, where the Rikers had their beach house . . . on the left, a solitary stone chimney, all that remained of an old one-room schoolhouse . . . on the right, the letter K on a post.
This was the old Klingenschoen property, a half-square mile of ancient forest on ancient sand dunes, with a sandy drive winding among pines, oaks, maples, and cherry trees. After dipping up and down aimlessly, it emerged in a clearing where a cabin overlooked a hundred miles of water. Built of full-round logs interlocking at the corners, the small cabin seemed anchored to the ground by its enormous stone chimney. Eighty-foot pine trees with only a few branches at the top surrounded it like sentinels.
Before bringing the cats indoors, Qwilleran inspected the premises, which had been cleaned and summerized by a youthful maintenance crew called the Sand Giant’s Gnomes. The interior space was limited: a single large room with two cubicles at one end and a stone fireplace spanning the other. What suggested spaciousness and a kind of grandeur was the open ceiling that soared to the peak of the roof and was crisscrossed by log beams and braces. As soon as blinds were opened, the large window facing the lake and the three new skylights in the roof filled the interior with shafts of light.
Only then was the carrier brought indoors, its occupants jostling roughly and yowling loudly. The tiny door was unlatched, and suddenly they were quiet and wary.
“It’s safe!” Qwilleran reassured them. “No lions or tigers! The floor has been cleaned and polished, and you can walk on it with impunity.” The more you talk to cats, he believed, the smarter they become.
Immediately they remembered the back porch with its concrete floor warmed by the sun’s rays. They rushed out to curl and uncurl on its rough surface. Then Koko stretched out to his full length, the better to absorb warmth in every glistening cat hair.
Qwilleran thought, He loves the sun, and the sun loves him. He was quoting another journalist, Christopher Smart, who had written a poem about his cat, Jeoffrey. It was rich in quotable lines, even though Christopher and Jeoffrey had lived in the eighteenth century.
While the Siamese lounged al fresco, Qwilleran unpacked the van—first, the recumbent bicycle. The tough old trail bike was in the toolshed, but the snooty technological freak with basket seat and elevated pedals deserved more respect. He parked it on the kitchen porch. Trial runs on the backroads of Pickax had convinced him that it was safer, speedier, and less tiring than conventional bikes. Whether he would have the nerve to ride such a curiosity in tradition-bound Mooseville was yet to be decided.
Other baggage from the van made itself at home: clothing in the sleeping cubicle, writing materials in the office cubicle, books on shelves in the main room. Two exceptions went on the coffee table: the Thomas Hardy novel because of its impressive leather binding, and Mark Twain A to Z because of its large size. Koko liked to sit on large books.
There was a second screened porch on the lakeside—with a magnificent view and plenty of afternoon sun—but the concrete floor was not good for rolling, the Siamese had discovered. Sand tracked in from the beach or was blown in by prevailing winds.
The cabin perched on a lofty sand dune that had been hundreds of years in the making, its steep slope anchored by beach grass and milkweed. A sandladder led down to the beach; it was simply a framework of two-by-fours filled in with loose sand for treads.
Qwilleran, dressed for dinner in white shorts and black polo shirt, stood at the top of the sandladder, and noticed that the beach had changed. Normally an expanse of deep, dry sand, it was now a hard, flat pebbly surface, while the loose sand had blown up into a ridge at the foot of the dune. It might blow away or wash away in the next storm; that was the fascination of living at the shore. The water itself could change from calm to turbulent in five minutes, while its color shifted from blue to turquoise to green.
He walked along the shore to the Rikers’ beach house. The first half-mile bordered his own property and included the stony Seagull Point. Then came the row of cottages known as Top o’ the Dune Club. This year they had been given names, displayed on rustic signs of routed wood. The golfing Mableys called their place THE SAND TRAP. The old Dunfield cottage, said to be haunted, was now LITTLE MANDERLEY. A little frame house called THE LITTLE FRAME HOUSE was understandable when one knew the owners had a picture-framing business. Then there was BAH HUMBUG, which could belong only to the Comptons; Lyle was superintendent of schools, a grouch with a sense of humor.
Most of the cottagers were on their decks, and they waved at Qwilleran; some invited him up for a drink.
Last in the row was the Rikers’ cottage, a yellow frame bungalow called SUNNY DAZE.
“Is that the cleverest name you could think of?” Qwilleran asked Arch, never missing a chance to needle his old friend. Arch was serving drinks; Mildred was serving canapés. The Comptons were there, and Toulouse sat on the deck railing—a silent bundle of black-and-white fur.
“Does he ever say anything?” Qwilleran asked, comparing his silence with Koko’s electronic yowl.
“He says a polite meow when I feed him,” Mildred said. “For a stray he’s very well-mannered.”
She was wearing a caftan intended to disguise her plumpness. Her husband’s leisure garb did nothing to camouflage his well-fed silhouette, but he was happy and relaxed. By comparison, the superintendent of schools looked underfed and overworked after three decades of coping with school boards, teachers, and parents. Lisa Compton was as pleasant as her husband pretended to be grouchy.
Mildred announced, “Qwill has built a guest house!”
“Expecting a lot of company?” Lisa asked.
“No, it’s strictly for emergency overnights,” he said. “It’s a little larger than a dollhouse and a little more comfortable than a tent. I come up here to get away from it all and don’t encourage guests.”
Lisa asked about Polly Duncan; they were usually seen together at dinner parties.
“She’s traveling in Canada with her sister during July.”
“A whole month? You’ll miss her,” Mildred said.
He shrugged. “She went to England for a whole summer, and I survived.” The truth was: already he missed their nightly phone calls, and he would miss their weekends even more. “Has anyone tried the new restaurant?”
No one had, but they had read about it on the food page of the Something. A couple had come from Florida to run it during the summer months; the wife was the chef, with a bachelor’s degree from a culinary institute. It sounded promising.
Mildred said, “We stressed her training because MCCC will soon have a chef’s school, and we knew our readers would be curious about the curriculum in a school like that. It was a generous feature, but the chef’s husband had the bad taste to phone and complain because we didn’t price the entrées or list the desserts.”
Lisa nodded wisely. “He was jealous because his wife got all the attention, and he wasn’t even in the photo.”
Then they discussed the backpacker mystery (no conclusion) . . . the Sand Giant’s Gnomes (nice kids) . . . the sudden naming of beach houses (someone’s nephew w
as in the sign business).
Qwilleran asked Lyle, “What’s new in the school system? Any conspiracies? Any bloodshed?”
“I’ll tell you what’s happening,” Lyle said crisply. “The K Fund has been so generous with our schools that we’ve gone from the lowest per-student expenditure to the highest in the state! So our share of state funding has been reduced to peanuts. At the same time—they’re telling us what and how to teach!”
“And if we don’t comply,” Lisa put in, “they’re threatening to take over our schools!”
“Over my dead body!” Lyle said. “Our school system will go private! The whole county will secede from the state: the Principality of Moose, 400 miles north of everywhere, with our own government, our own tax laws, our own education system!”
“And my husband as reigning monarch,” Lisa cried. “King Lyle the First!”
“Thank you,” he said. “Qwill can be chancellor of the exchequer, and Arch can be master of the royal cellar.”
“I’ll drink to that,” said the host as he uncorked another bottle.
While he served, Lisa asked Qwilleran about his vacation plans, and Lyle asked if he had brought his weird bicycle.
“If you refer to the recumbent . . . yes, I brought it, but I plan to ride only on back roads. Mooseville isn’t ready for state-of-the-art technology.”
“And what do you intend to read?” Mildred asked.
“Chiefly old editions of Mark Twain that Eddington Smith has found in estate sales. It’s amazing how bookish previous generations were in this remote corner of the country.”
“There was no electronic entertainment,” Lyle said. “Also, there was a lot of affluence in the nineteenth century, and an impressive library gave the family status, whether or not they read the books—probably not. I imagine you run across many uncut pages, Qwill.”
“Yes, but not in Mark Twain’s books; they’re all well thumbed.”
Three Complete Novels: The Cat Who Tailed a Thief/the Cat Who Sang for the Birds/the Cat Who Saw Stars Page 2