Before going home, he drove out to Fishport to see Doris Hawley—for several reasons.
Beyond the Mooseville town limits he passed a former canning factory that had once supplied half the nation with smoked herring; now it housed an animal clinic, a video store, and a coin-operated laundry . . . Farther along the highway the FOO restaurant had not yet replaced the letter D that blew off its sign in a northern hurricane two decades ago . . . Next came the fisheries, a complex of weathered sheds and wharves; they were silent as death when the fleet was out but a scene of manic activity when the catch came in . . . Beyond the Roaring Creek bridge, on the left, was the trailer home of Magnus and Doris Hawley. A homemade sign on the lawn—a square of plywood nailed to a post—said HOME-BAKES. That meant muffins, cinnamon rolls, and cookies. Mrs. Hawley was watering the extensive flower garden when Qwilleran pulled into the side drive.
“Beautiful garden, Mrs. Hawley!” he called out. “You must have two green thumbs!”
“Oh, hello, Mr. Q.” She turned off the spray and dropped the nozzle. “It’s been awfully dry. Don’t know when I saw such a stretch without rain. What can I do for you?”
“Do you happen to have any cinnamon rolls?”
“Half-pan or whole pan? They freeze nicely . . . Hush!” she said to a barking terrier, who ran excitedly back and forth on his trolley. She was a gray-haired woman with a gardener’s slight stoop and the energy of a much younger person.
When she went into the house, Qwilleran looked toward the rear of the property and saw a picnic bench on a grassy bank, but the dry spell had tamed the Roaring Creek to a gurgle. “Is Magnus working the boats today?” he asked when she returned.
“Oh, you can’t keep that man off the boats!” she said with pride as well as disapproval. “He’s seventy and could retire, but what would he do? Winters are bad enough. He does a little ice-fishing but watches an awful lot of television.”
“And how do you cope with a Fishport winter?”
“Well, I don’t have any garden or any customers for home-bakes, so I read books and write letters to our sons Down Below.”
“If you don’t mind a suggestion,” Qwilleran said, “why don’t you get into the literacy program and teach adults how to read? Pickax has an active program, and I imagine this community could use one.”
Mrs. Hawley was aghast. “I wouldn’t know how to do that! I don’t think I could!”
“They’d give you a training course in tutoring. Think it over. Meanwhile, have you heard anything about the young man you befriended?”
“Not a thing! The police were here twice, asking questions. We’ve told them everything we know! They act as if we’re holding something back. It makes me nervous. And some nasty people are saying my cookies were poisoned. I haven’t sold a one since that rumor started. I worry about the whole thing.”
“You have nothing to worry about, Mrs. Hawley. The nasty people will choke on their own lies. As for the police, they’re trained to investigate in certain ways. I’m sorry your act of kindness boomeranged.”
“You’re very kind, Mr. Q. I’ll tell Magnus what you said.”
“By the way, do you know someone named Mike Zander?”
“Why, yes! He’s on the boats. They go to our church. His wife just had a beautiful baby boy.”
“Did you know he’s quite an artist? I’ve purchased one of his sculptures.”
“That’s nice. They can use the money. I’d heard that he putters around with metal in his spare time. Are you going to the parade tomorrow, Mr. Q? Magnus will be on the float sponsored by the fisheries. I can’t tell you anything about it, because it’s kind of a secret joke.”
“Those fishermen are great jokers when they get their heads together,” Qwilleran said.
“Four generations of our family will be on the sidelines, including my widowed mother-in-law, who’s a great fan of yours, Mr. Q. She’s embroidering a sampler for you!”
“That’s thoughtful of her.” He mustered as much enthusiasm as he could. “What’s a sampler?”
“A motto that you can frame and hang on the wall.”
Devoted readers liked to send him useless knickknacks made by their own loving hands, and it was to his credit that he always sent a hand-written thank-you. During his boyhood, he had written countless thank-you letters to his mother’s friends who sent him toys and books that were three years too young for him. His mother always said, “Jamie, we accept gifts in the spirit in which they were given.”
To Mrs. Hawley he said, “Well, well! A sampler! That’s something to look forward to, isn’t it?”
Driving home, Qwilleran wondered what a fisherman’s widow would chose to embroider for him. Home Sweet Home? Love One Another? He had seen these words of wisdom in antique shops, worked with thousands of stitches and framed in tarnished gilt. He had never seen Slide, Kelly, Slide or Nice Guys Finish Last, or his mother’s favorite maxim: Keep Your Eye Upon the Doughnut and Not Upon the Hole. Growing up in a one-parent household, he had heard that advice a thousand times. Instead of turning him into an optimist, however, it had made him a doughnut addict. What he really liked was the traditional fried-cake with cake-like texture and crisp brown crust redolent of hot cooking oil.
As he drove he watched automatically for the old schoolhouse chimney, then turned left into the long K driveway. Halfway up the twisting dirt lane he could hear Koko yowling; the cat knew he was coming. The noisy welcome could mean that the phone had been ringing, or something had been knocked down and smashed, or the radio had been left on, or there was a plumbing leak.
“Cool it, old boy. Nothing’s wrong,” Qwilleran said after inspecting the premises, but Koko continued to frisk about. When he jumped up at the peg where his harness hung, the message was clear: He wanted to go for a walk. Qwilleran obliged—and recorded the cat’s antics in his personal journal. It was not a real diary—just a spiral notebook in which he described noteworthy moments in his life. This was one of them. The report was headed “Mooseville, Wednesday, July 3.”
Koko did it again! He solved a mystery that was boggling the gossips around here. Nobody but me will ever know. If the media discovered this cat’s psychic tendencies, they’d give us no peace.
What happened, Koko wanted to go for a walk on the beach, meaning that I walk and he rides—on my shoulder. That way, he doesn’t bog down in deep sand or cut his precious toes on sharp pebbles. Smart cat! He wears a harness, and I keep a firm hand on the leash.
All day long he’d wanted to explore the beach. Finally we buckled up and went down the sandladder. I started to walk west toward town, but Koko made a royal ruckus; he wanted to go east. Toward Seagull Point, I imagined. But we hadn’t gone far before a strange growl came from the cat’s innards, and his body stiffened. Then, impulsively, he wanted to get down on the sand. Keeping a taut leash, I let him go.
Well, to watch him struggle through that deep sand would have been comic if it weren’t that he was dead serious. When he reached the sand ridge, he climbed up the slope, slipping and sliding. I was tempted to give him a boost but didn’t. This whole expedition was his idea.
By the time he reached the top he was really growling, and he started to dig. Sand flew! But most of it trickled back into the excavation. Koko wouldn’t give up, though. What was he after? A dead seagull buried in the sand? He dug and he dug, and I started to get suspicious.
“Look out!” I said, pushing him aside. I saw something shining in the hole. The sun was hitting something that glinted. It was the face of a wristwatch! I grabbed Koko and ran back to the cabin.
After calling 911, Qwilleran gave Koko a treat. There was not long to wait. The sheriff’s department knew the K cabin; they checked it regularly during the winter. In a matter of minutes a patrol car came through the woods, and a deputy in a wide-brimmed hat stepped out. Qwilleran went out to meet her—Moose County’s first woman deputy.
“You reported finding a body?” she asked impassively.
“Down on
the beach, buried in the sand. I’ll show you the way.”
She followed him down the sandladder and along the shore to Koko’s excavation. “How’d you find it?”
“Just walking on the beach.”
She examined the hole. “Looks like some animal’s been digging.”
“It seems so, doesn’t it?”
Unhooking her phone, she called the state police post, and Qwilleran said he would go back to the cabin and direct whoever responded.
In the next half-hour the clearing filled with vehicles. Qwilleran met each one and pointed to the sandladder; otherwise, he stayed out of sight.
First, the state police car with two officers.
Second, the ambulance of the rescue squad. They had shovels and a stretcher.
Then, another sheriff’s car with two passengers in the backseat. Magnus and Doris Hawley were escorted down the sandladder by the deputy.
Soon, the helicopter from Pickax, landing on the hard flat sand near the water. That would be the medical examiner, Qwilleran presumed.
Unexpectedly, a blue pickup delivering the railroad tie and copper sculpture. “Hey, what’s goin’ on here?” Kenneth asked.
“A simulated rescue drill. My responsibility is to keep the driveway open. So just drop the stuff and go back down the drive.”
“Hey, this is cool! How old is this cabin?”
“I don’t know,” Qwilleran said. “I’ll take the sculpture. You take the tie around to the lakeside and put it on the screened porch. I’ll lead the way.”
With some prodding, Kenneth positioned the tie in the northwest corner of the porch. “Hey, some view you got here!”
“Yes. This way out . . .”
“Are those . . . cats?”
“Yes. Come on, Kenneth. This drill is being timed to the split second . . . On the double!”
Qwilleran packed him off down the driveway, just as the deputy escorted the Hawleys up the sandladder. Qwilleran ducked indoors. They drove away. Then the ambulance left. The helicopter lifted off, taking a blue body bag on a stretcher. When the state troopers drove away, only Deputy Greenleaf remained, and Qwilleran went out to size her up. Though not bad looking, she was stony-faced, a mask that seemed to go with the wide-brimmed hats worn by deputies.
Glancing at him and getting out her pad, she said, “You must be Mr. Q.”
“Yes, but are you aware of the department’s policy?”
“We don’t release your name.”
“That’s right. You must be Deputy Greenleaf.” It had said in the paper that a woman deputy was needed to escort women prisoners to the Bixby County detention facility. “Glad to have you in the department.”
She nodded, and the tassels on her hat bobbed.
Now Qwilleran knew why Koko had stayed up all night; he knew what was on the beach. If he had not campaigned for an outing on the shore . . . if he had not insisted on going east instead of west . . . if he had not started digging at one particular spot, the backpacker mystery would remain unsolved. Most cats had a sixth sense, but Koko’s perception of right and wrong went beyond catly concerns. He sensed answers to the questions that baffled humans and found ways of communicating his findings. Qwilleran could attribute his talents only to his magnificent whiskers. Yum Yum had the standard forty-eight; Koko had sixty.
Qwilleran had reasons for being secretive about Koko’s special gifts and his own involvement, and he was relieved to hear the six o’clock newscast on WPKX: “Acting on a tip from a beachcomber, the sheriff’s department today found the body of the backpacker missing since Friday. It was buried in the sand near Mooseville. The deceased was identified by Magnus and Doris Hawley as the hiker who had come to their house asking permission to camp on their property. Cause of death has not been determined, according to a sheriff’s spokesperson. Identification was found on the body but is being withheld pending notification of family. The deceased was not from the tri-county area.”
The locals always felt better when the subject of an accident or crime was not one of their own.
Arch Riker would be furious, Qwilleran knew, because the newsbreak had happened on the radio station’s time, and the Something could not cover it until Friday; no paper was published on the holiday.
Qwilleran himself was pleased with the way things had turned out and proposed to reward the Siamese with a session of reading aloud. They always enjoyed the sound of his voice, and he rather enjoyed it, too. He suggested Far from the Madding Crowd. “You’ll like it,” he said. “It’s about sheep and cows. There’s also a dog named George and a cat who plays a minor role.”
His readings for the Siamese were always dramatized by sound effects. His theater training in college had made him an expert at bleating, barking, and meowing—if nothing else—and the cats especially liked the lowing of cattle. He did a two-note “moo-oo” like a foghorn. When he mooed, they looked at him with a do-it-again expression in their alert blue eyes, and he did it again. To tell the truth, he enjoyed mooing.
After the reading, he unpacked the sailboat that Kenneth had delivered. Yum Yum assisted. She had a vested interest in shiny objects, cardboard boxes, and crumpled paper, and the carton was stuffed with crumpled sheets of the Moose County Something.
The sailboat looked larger than it had in the store among all the other merchandise. A foot tall, it was constructed of sheet copper that had been treated to retain color and brilliance, and it was dazzling in the light from the skywindows. The sails, tilted at realistic angles, played with the light and gave added dimension to the sculpture. To stabilize the lightweight object, there was a heavy base of wood, chipped to suggest choppy water, with the keel cemented into a groove. It was a clever and eye-catching piece of work.
Qwilleran carried it to the porch, only to discover that Koko had taken possession of the pedestal, where he posed like an ancient Egyptian cat.
“Jump down,” Qwilleran said foolishly, knowing that Koko never jumped down when told to jump down. So he left the sailboat on the table and went to write some more in his journal.
He had long wanted to keep a journal; some day he might want to write a memoir. He should have started at an early age, but he had always been too busy growing up, playing baseball, acting in plays, sowing wild oats, discovering the work ethic, hanging around press clubs, and making life-threatening mistakes. Now at last he was a journalist with a personal journal.
FOUR
The Fourth of July parade was scheduled to start at one P.M., and Qwilleran reported early to scout around. Never having participated in a parade, he was curious about the preparations behind the scene. He thought it must be a masterpiece of organization, and it was!
The staging area was beyond the town limits, with parade units assigned to specific parking lots or open fields. Marchers were close to the starting point, and mechanized units were farthest away; that made sense. In between, assigned to the parking lot of the FOO restaurant, were the bikers. They were a colorful troupe. Qwilleran himself wore white shorts, a blue-and-white-striped T-shirt, and a red baseball cap. There were trail bikes, school bikes, plenty of racers, and one old-fashioned high-wheeler. He left his recumbent locked in his van and went exploring with a camera hanging about his neck.
The floats interested him most. There were five lined up on the highway—flatbeds skirted with tricolor bunting and identifying banners: “Signing of the Declaration of Independence,” “Dear Old Golden Schooldays,” “Friends of Wool.” A twenty-four-foot sailboat on a dolly, called Smooth Sailing, was sponsored jointly by the private marinas, its sails furled and its deck awash with young persons in skimpy swimwear. The fifth float was the one Mrs. Hawley had mentioned. It was called “Feedin’ the Chickens.” Three commercial fishermen in slickers, boots, and rubber gloves were laughing and clowning as they waited for the signal to move. On the flatbed were a couple of barrels, a weathered table, and stacks of wooden boxes.
Qwilleran signaled to Magnus Hawley, one of the three. “Explain the name o
f your float,” he asked.
“Well, see, soon’s we get rollin’, we start dressin’ the fish in the boxes and throwin’ the guts and heads in the gut barrels. That’s when the gulls come out from nowhere. Chickens, we call ’em. First two or three, then a whole flock, followin’ us down the whole route, catchin’ the heads before they hit the barrel. By the time we get to the end, there’ll be a hunerd!” He roared with laughter. “Some show!”
As parade time drew near, the official starter in his tricolor top hat ran up and down the highway, waving his arms and yelling. His aides in tricolor sashes and baseball caps checked the individual units. Standing by was the sheriff’s car that would precede the parade at four miles an hour to clear the road and order watchers back onto the sidewalks; Deputy Greenleaf was at the wheel. The color guard stood solemnly at parade-rest—the flag-bearers flanked by members of the military, rifles by their sides.
Highly visible was Andrew Brodie, the Pickax police chief. As grand marshal, the Scots bagpiper would lead the parade in full Highland regalia. He was a big man in any uniform but a giant when swaggering in his lofty feather “bonnet” with a shoulderful of plaid and an armful of pipes.
There was an air of frenzy around the marching units, however. Besides the two bands there were three restless groups: the Parade of Pets, Parade of Moms, and Athletes for Peace. To add to the confusion, the high school band was practicing—no two musicians playing the same number—while the middle-schoolers in the fife-and-drum corps were warming up and had reached fever pitch. Nervous parents were cautioning children who would trudge the course with cats and dogs on leashes or in wagons. Moms were trying to quiet their youngest, who would ride in strollers, baby buggies, backpacks, or even wheelbarrows.
As for the Athletes for Peace, their staging area was a madhouse. Young persons, each with a large letter of the alphabet on a pole, were running around in a state of hysteria, shouting and laughing like maniacs. They had discovered they could scramble their letters to spell CHEAT, SHOOT, TREASON, and worse! The coach in charge of the unit blew his whistle and yelled at deaf ears.
Three Complete Novels: The Cat Who Tailed a Thief/the Cat Who Sang for the Birds/the Cat Who Saw Stars Page 4