The Cat Who Went Underground (24 page)

A few balls of cat hair.

A toothbrush with a red handle.

Two felt-tip pens and one gold ballpoint.

Three pencils.

A postcard from Polly Duncan, perforated with fang-marks.

A cheap lipstick case, evidently Joanna’s.

A white sock with green sports stripe.

Qwilleran assuaged his own damaged feelings with a cup of coffee and a session with the letter opener. First he read the latest postcard from Polly Duncan. She was having difficulty adjusting to the English climate; she was having respiratory problems. “She thinks she’s got problems!” he said to anyone who cared to hear. Next he opened a letter from the Senior Care Facility:

Dear Mr. Qwilleran, I think you will want to know this. Yesterday our dear Emma Wimsey celebrated her birthday. She had a birthday cake with candles and wore a paper hat. As the aide was putting her to bed, Emma said, “I hear scratching under the door.” Shortly after, she passed away quietly in her sleep. She had just turned ninety.

Sincerely, Irma Hasselrich, MCSCF Chief Canary

Emma Wimsey had lived a long life, Qwilleran reflected. She had secured an education, raised a family, performed her farm chores, worshipped her Lord, collected her little stories, and passed her final days among those caring canaries in yellow smocks. Only when he visualized the diminutive woman in a paper hat on her ninetieth birthday did he feel a degree of sorrow. Opening her valentine box, he regretted that none of her family wanted this paltry legacy.

If she had left a grandfather clock and a rosewood piano, they would have fought for their inheritance – a bitter idea for the “Qwill Pen.”

The box contained trinkets and scraps of paper, including one yellowed clipping from the old Pickax Picayune, probably seventy years old:

NUPTIALS CELEBRATED Emma Muggins and Horace Wimsey of Black Creek were united in marriage at the Mooseville Church Saturday at four o’clock. There were six in the wedding party. Refreshments were served in the church basement.

Among the mementos were a buffalo nickel and a Lincoln-head penny; a tiny locket; a blue ribbon won at a county fair for home canning; a thin ring set with a few garnets, one missing; a bit of ivory that could be nothing but a baby tooth, probably that of her firstborn.

The Siamese had come out of seclusion to watch the excitement, and when Qwilleran tackled the contents of Emma’s shopping bag, they wriggled in anticipation. They knew reading material when they saw it, and they liked him to read aloud. In the bag were school notebooks filled with daily thoughts and bundles of hand-written manuscripts on lined paper.

“This appears to be,” Qwilleran told his listeners, “the lifework of a north-country farmwife who attended teacher’s college, taught school for a while, and retired to raise a family. She never forgot how to spell and punctuate and compose a good sentence, and she obviously had an urge to write.”

Leafing through the collection, he found one tale titled “The Face at the Bridge.” It was footnoted, “A true story which I told to my children many times. It always scared them.”

“Here’s a story that will curl your whiskers,” he said to the cats, and he read it aloud.

THE FACE AT THE BRIDGE When I started teaching in a one-room schoolhouse near Black Creek, I lived with a farm family and had to walk three miles to school in all kinds of weather. I always went early because I had to make a fire in the wood stove and trim the lamps and wash the glass chimneys and sweep the floor.

One day in late November before snow had started to turn the brown landscape white, I set out for school in pitch-darkness. There was a covered bridge over the creek, and oh! how I dreaded crossing that bridge in the dark! On this particular day, as I entered the dark tunnel, I saw something that made my knees shake. There was a white object at the far end – small and round and white and floating in the air. I stood stockstill with my mouth open as it came closer, bobbing gently. I wanted to turn around and run, but my feet were rooted to the ground. And then I realized it was a FACE – no body, just a white face! It started to make noises: “U-u-ugh! U-u-ugh!”

I tried to scream, but no sound came from my mouth. Then two white hands reached for me. “U-u-ugh! U-u-ugh!”

As the white face came close to mine, I was about to faint, but then I recognized it. I recognized a pale young girl from our church. She was wearing black garments and a black shawl over her head, and she was trying to tell me not to be afraid. She was a deaf-mute.

Qwilleran smoothed his moustache with satisfaction. This was the kind of stuff his readers would enjoy, and it actually happened in Black Creek; the bridge might still be there. With his interest piqued, he delved into the bagful of manuscripts, reading how Emma’s son had been attacked by a swarm of wild bees who chased him all the way home, and how Emma’s cousin had caught her hands in the wringer of an early electric washing machine. There were local legends, mining and lumbering adventures, and the account of Punkin, the cat who scratched under the door.

The possibilities raced through Qwilleran’s mind. The Moose County Something could feature these country tales with Emma’s by-line on page two alongside the “Qwill Pen”; he would write an introduction for each one. Arch Riker might be able to syndicate them; there was a growing interest in country lore. If the Klingenschoen Fund would publish them in book form, the royalties could establish an Emma Wimsey Scholarship – unless greedy heirs tried to get into the act; Hasselrich would have to deal with that aspect.

“If we publish a book, that little lady will be dancing in her grave,” Qwilleran told the cats, “and I hope her insensitive relatives choke on it!”

As he read on, he was able to identify the early and late periods of Emma’s writing. In the older manuscripts the paper was yellowed and the ink was fading.

Those of a later date were written by a hand that was beginning to shake with age or infirmity. There was one work in poignant contrast to the others in the collection.

Scribbled on the stationery of the Senior Care Facility, it was apparently written after Emma entered the nursing home. The handwriting was almost illegible, and Emma’s story-telling talent had faded. Titled “A Family Tragedy,” it was a mere statement of facts without style or grace or emotion. Qwilleran had no desire to read it aloud.

My husband was a farmer. We had four sons and one daughter. She was beautiful.

Her name was Violet. She could have had a fine young man, but she fell in love with a rough fellow. Her brothers pleaded with her, but she wouldn’t listen, so her father disowned her. Violet’s husband never built her a proper house.

They lived in a shack. Their little girl went to school in rags. My menfolk wouldn’t let me visit them. I used to peek in the school window to look at my granddaughter. I gave the teacher clothes for her to wear. One day the girl went to school crying. Her mother was sick and all black and blue.

The teacher called the sheriff. He arrested Violet’s husband for beating her.

He wasn’t in jail long. Violet was pregnant. She died when the baby came. The older girl had to keep house and tend the baby. The teacher said she changed overnight from a child to a woman. There was a lot of gossip. The baby grew to be a beautiful child. I knew something terrible was happening. When the child was twelve she shot herself with her father’s gun. I prayed that the Lord would punish him. My prayers were answered. The back of a dump truck fell on him and killed him.

Qwilleran lost no time in phoning the hardware merchant, who was related to the Wimseys by marriage. He put a blunt question to Cecil.

“Yes,” was the answer. “Little Joe is Emma’s granddaughter. Her real name is Joanna. Joanna Trupp. She doesn’t have anything to do with the Wimsey or Huggins family – just keeps pretty much to herself. I don’t know why. We’ve never given her any cause. All the relatives feel sorry for her. It’s a sad case. But she’s a pretty good plumber, I hear.”

“Why do you call it a sad case?” Qwilleran asked.

“Well, you know, Big Joe abused both his daughters sexually after his wife died. That’s probably why the younger girl killed herself. She was only twelve. Did it with her daddy’s gun. Big Joe was just no good! Everybody knew that. God knows every family tree has one branch that’s unhealthy and withers away. I hope Little Joe makes it.”

CHAPTER 18.

As SOON AS Qwilleran confirmed that Joanna was Emma Wimsey’s granddaughter, he knew what to do with the valentine box. She might not care about it, but it included two small items of jewelry, and he ought to offer it to her. Adding the lipstick that Yum Yum had hidden under the sofa, he put the box in his bicycle knapsack.

Joanna lived on Hogback, one of the roads officially closed by the swollen river, but with his trail bike he could skirt the inundated areas. He had never experienced a flood. During his career as a newsman he had covered fires, riots, plane crashes, earthquakes, and the fringes of war, but never a flood. It was difficult to imagine the friendly Ittibittiwassee overflowing its banks, going crazy, drowning farms and destroying bridges. Now he could make a firsthand observation, and it might be a subject for the “Qwill Pen.”

He hiked up the paved Sandpit Road and east on the gravel Dumpy and was still a quarter-mile from the riverbed when he noticed a change in the atmosphere. The chirping, rustling, cawing, chattering sounds of dry land were deadened and replaced by the silence of flooded fields under a heavy sky. When the Ittibittiwassee came into view, it was no longer a river; it was a lake with trees and barns and sheds tilting far out on its glassy surface. Hawks were circling over the wetlands, looking for drowned carrion. The scene was unhealthily quiet.

Hogback Road was impassable, but he cut through the woods on the high ground that paralleled it. As he zoomed up over the last sandhill he had a view of the plumbing graveyard. Most of the old plumbing fixtures in the yard were submerged. The animal cages had washed away entirely, and Joanna’s flat-roofed shack was dangerously tilted and about to collapse. The van was not there; neither was she. Still he felt compelled to call her name two or three times, and his voice sounded eerily loud across the counterfeit lake.

A spongy margin at the edge of the flood indicated that the water was beginning to recede or drain into the sandy soil, leaving debris in its wake: sodden papers and rags, bits of wood, food wrappers, beer cans, and a muddied plaid that looked like Joanna’s everyday shirt. He picked up a crude wooden cross that had marked an animal’s grave and lifted a large red rag from the mud. Then he jumped back on his bike and plunged back into the woods, heading for town.

Dumpy Road with its dreary trailer homes surrounded by junk cars was even more depressing on a gray day. It was rutted and treacherous after the rain, and he had to concentrate on the roadbed. Just then something whizzed past his ear, alarmingly close, and he saw a rock as big as a grapefruit hitting the ground. He turned to find its source, and a second rock grazed his shoulder. At the same time he saw two figures ducking behind a shed.

Qwilleran did no more sightseeing that day. He pedaled back to the cabin and telephoned Mrs. Glinko. “Have you seen Little Joe lately?” he asked.

“You got another leak?” she said with her perpetual good humor.

“No, but her house was destroyed by the flood, and I’m worried about her. We wouldn’t want to lose a first-rate plumber, would we?”

“She’s okay. She’s around somewheres. Want me to dispatch her for anything? Ha ha ha!”

“No, thanks.”

Qwilleran turned to the Siamese, who were attending him closely as if concerned – or hungry. “This is not the vacation paradise I envisioned,” he told them. “I’d like to read my horoscope for today.”

He picked up the phone again and called Mildred Hanstable. “Qwill here. How’s Roger?… That’s good. I was worried about him… No, not a thing. No mention of suspects. When Roger gets back on the beat, we may hear something. By the way, do you have any papers from Down Below?… Good! What’s my horoscope for today?” There followed a long wait and a sound of rustling newsprint. He listened and then said, “Well, thanks, Mildred. And let’s have dinner one night next week.”

He tamped his moustache. In the Morning Rampage the forecast read, “Interesting developments are in the offing. Hang in there a little longer.” The Daily Fluxion, on the other hand, advised, “Know when to wash your hands of a bad situation. Cut your losses.”

Qwilleran gave the contradictory counsel some serious thought as he heated two cartons of chili for himself and opened a can of crabmeat for the Siamese, and he was inclined to go along with the Rampage. His ruminations were interrupted by the sound of a vehicle moving up the drive. He went to the back porch to investigate. It was a recreation vehicle of modest size, and the driver in camping attire who jumped out of it was Nick Bamba.

“Hi!” he said. “I’m on my way Down Below to pick up Lori and the baby, and I decided to drop by and see how you’re doing. Hey! What happened to your new addition?”

“It was redesigned by the tornado,” Qwilleran informed him. “Come in and have a bourbon. Have you had dinner?”

“No, I’ll grab something on the road.”

“I’m thawing some packaged chili. How about a bowl? It’s not bad. Even Koko will eat it in a pinch.” Qwilleran poured the drinks and set out some cheese and crackers. “Who’ll take care of your cats while you’re gone?”

“One of our neighbors at the condo. Mighty Lou.”

Qwilleran looked dubious. “You mean the one-and-only original Mighty Lou? Is he reliable?”

“Oh, sure. He’s very good with cats.”

“He doesn’t resemble your average cat-sitter.”

“No, but he’s a good guy – brushes them, talks to them, and everything. The cats like him.” Nick took a sip of his drink, expressed satisfaction, and then said, “You came up with a couple of shockers this week, Qwill. First you’re marooned on a desert island, and then you find a dead body under your house! Are there any suspects?”