The Cat Who Went Underground (3 page)

They were chased off the porch and locked in the cabin before Qwilleran set out on the half-mile walk to Mildred’s place. A desolate stretch of beach bordered his own property, lapped by languid waves. Next, an outcropping of rock projected into the water, popularly known as Seagull Point, although one rarely saw a gull unless the lake washed up a dead fish. Beyond Seagull Point a string of a dozen cottages perched on the dune – a jumble of styles: rustic, contemporary, quaint, or simply ugly, like the boatlike structure said to be owned by a retired sea captain.

The last in the row was Mildred’s yellow cottage. Beyond that, the dune was being cleared in preparation for new construction. Foundations were in evidence, and framing had been started.

A flight of twenty wooden steps led up the side of the dune to Mildred’s terrace with its yellow umbrella table, and as Qwilleran reached the top she met him there, her well-upholstered figure concealed by a loose-fitting yellow beach dress.

“What’s going on there?” Qwilleran called out, waving toward the construction site.

“Condominiums,” she said ruefully. “I hate to see it happen, but they’ve offered us clubhouse and pool privileges, so it’s not all bad. The lake is too cold for swimming, so… why not?”

Handing the bottles to his hostess, he volunteered to tend bar, and Mildred ushered him into the house and pointed out the glassware and ice cubes. Their voices sounded muffled, because the walls were hung with handmade quilts.

Traditional and wildly contemporary designs had the initials M.H. stitched into the corners.

“These represent an unbelievable amount of work,” Qwilleran said, recognizing an idea for the “Qwill Pen.”

“I only applique the tops,” she said. “My craftworkers do the quilting.” Besides teaching school, writing for the local newspaper, and raising money for the hospital, she conducted a not-for-profit project for low-income handworkers.

Qwilleran regarded her with admiration. “You have boundless energy, Mildred. You never stop!”

“So why can’t I lose weight?” she said, sidestepping the compliment modestly.

“You’re a handsome woman. Don’t worry about pounds.”

“I like to cook, and I like to eat,” she explained, “and my daughter says I don’t get enough real exercise. Can you picture me jogging?”

“How is Sharon enjoying motherhood?” Qwilleran asked.

“Well, to tell the truth, she’s restless staying home with the baby. She wants to go back to teaching. Roger thinks she should wait another year. What do you think, Qwill?”

“You’re asking a childless bachelor, a failed husband, with no known relatives and no opinion!… By the way, I saw Roger on my way up from Pickax. He was hightailing it back to the office to file his copy for the weekend edition, no doubt.”

Mildred passed a sizzling platter of stuffed mushrooms and rumaki. “I liked your column on the taxidermist, Qwill.”

“Thanks. It was an interesting subject, and I learned that mounted animal heads should never be hung over a fireplace; it dries them out. The moosehead at the cabin may have to go to the hospital for a facelift. Also, I’d like to do something with the whitewashed walls. They’d look better if they were natural.”

“That would make the interior darker,” Mildred warned. “Of course, you could install skylights.”

“Don’t they leak?”

“Not if you hire a good carpenter.”

“Where do I find a good carpenter? Call Glinko, I suppose. Has anyone figured out his racket, Mildred? He has a monopoly, and I suspect price-fixing, restraint of trade, and tax evasion. They don’t accept checks, and they don’t seem to keep written records.”

“It’s all in Mrs. Glinko’s head,” said Mildred. “That woman is a living computer.”

“The IRS frowns on living computers.”

“But you have to admit it’s a wonderful convenience for summer people like us.”

“I keep wondering what else they supply besides plumbers and carpenters.”

“Now you’re being cynical, Qwill. What was wrong with your space heater?”

“A dead spider in the pilot light – or so the plumber said; I’m not sure I believe it. Glinko sent me a woman plumber!”

“Mildred nodded. “Little Joe.”

“She isn’t so little. Do you know her?”

“Of course I know her!” Mildred had taught school in the county for more than twenty years, and she knew an entire generation of students as well as their parents. “Her name is Joanna Trupp. Her father was killed in a freak accident this spring.”

Qwilleran said, “There’s a high percentage of fatal accidents in this county. Either people live to be ninety-five, or they die young – in hunting mishaps, drownings, car crashes, tractor rollovers…”

Mildred beckoned him to the dinner table.

“Is Little Joe a competent plumber?” he went on. “I thought of writing a column about her unusual occupation.”

“I don’t know what it takes to be a competent plumber,” Mildred said, “but in school she was always good at working with her hands. Why she decided to get a plumber’s license, I haven’t the faintest idea. Why would any woman want to fix toilets and drains, and stick her head under the kitchen sink, and crawl under houses? I don’t even like to clean the bathroom!”

The casserole was a sauced combination of turkey, homemade noodles, and artichoke hearts, and it put Qwilleran in an excellent frame of mind. The Caesar salad compounded his pleasure. The raspberry pie left him almost numb with contentment.

As Mildred served coffee on the terrace she said, “There’s a party on the dunes tomorrow night. Why don’t you come as my date and meet some of the summer people? Doc and Dottie Madley are hosting. He’s a dentist from Pickax, you know. They come up weekends.”

“Who will be there?”

“Probably the Comptons; you’ve met them, of course… The Urbanks are retired; he’s a chemist and a golf nut and a bore… John and Vicki Bushland have a photo studio in the next county. He’s an avid fisherman. Everyone calls him “Bushy’, which is funny because he doesn’t have much hair… The attorney from Down Below is newly divorced. I don’t know whether he’ll be coming up this summer… There’s a young woman renting the Dunfield cottage…”

“How about the retired sea captain?”

“Captain Phlogg never mixes, I’m glad to say. He’s a stinker in more ways than one.”

“I’d like to write a column on that guy, but he’s a disagreeable old codger. I’ve been in his antique shop a couple of times, and it’s a farce!”

“He’s a fraud,” Mildred said in a confidential tone. “He’s never been to sea! He was just a ship’s carpenter at the old shipyard near Purple Point.”

“What is he doing in a social enclave like the Dunes Club?”

“Want to hear the story that’s circulating? Phlogg bought lakefront property when it was considered worthless. He scrounged lumber from the shipyard and built the house with his own hands, and now lake frontage is up to two thousand dollars a foot! A word of warning, Qwill – don’t ever let your cats out. He has a dog that has a reputation as a cat-killer. The Comptons took him to court when their cat was mauled.”

There was a muffled ring from the telephone, and Mildred excused herself. Just inside the sliding doors she could be heard saying, “Hi, Roger! I hear you’re babysitting tonight… No, what is it?… Who?… Oh, that’s terrible! How did it happen?… What will his family do? They have three kids!… Well, thanks for letting me know, Roger, but that’s really bad news. Maybe we can raise some money for them.”

She returned to the terrace with a strained expression. “That was Roger,” she said. “There’s been a drowning – a young man he went to school with.”

“How did it happen?” Qwilleran asked.

“He went fishing and didn’t come home. They found his body at the mouth of the river. It’ll be in the paper tomorrow.”

“Boat accident?”

“No, he was casting from the bank of the river. I feel awful about it. After being out of work all winter, he’d just been hired for the construction gang at the condo development.”

Mildred offered more coffee, but Qwilleran declined, saying he wanted to be home before the mosquitoes attacked. The true reason was that he felt a peculiar sensation on his upper lip – a twitch in his moustache that, in some inexplicable way, had always presaged trouble.

He covered the half mile along the beach more briskly than before. For the last few hundred yards he felt compelled to run. Even as he climbed up the dune to the cabin he could hear Koko yowling violently, and when he unlocked the door he smelled gas!

CHAPTER 2..

WHEN QWILLERAN RETURNED from Mildred’s cottage and smelled the noxious fumes in the cabin, he telephoned the Glinko number.

“Glinko network!” a woman’s voice said, with emphasis on her new word.

He described the situation quickly with understandable anxiety.

“Ha ha ha!” laughed Mrs. Glinko. “Don’t light any matches.”

“No advice,” he snapped. “Just send someone in a hurry.” He had opened doors and windows and had shut the cats up in the toolshed.

In a matter of minutes an emergency truck pulled into the clearing, and the driver strode into the cabin, sniffing critically. Immediately he walked out again, looking up at the roof. Qwilleran followed, also looking up at the roof.

“Bird’s nest,” said the man. “It happens all the time. See that piece of straw sticking out of the vent? Some bird built its nest up there, and you’ve got carbon monoxide from the water heater seeping into your house. All you have to do is get up there on a ladder and clean it out.”

Qwilleran did as he was told, reflecting that the Glinko network, no matter how corrupt, was not such a bad service after all. Two crises in one day had been handled punctually and responsibly. He found a stepladder in the toolshed, scrambled up on the roof, and extracted a clump of dried grass and eggshells from the vent, feeling proud of his sudden capability and feeling suddenly in tune with country living. Up there on the roof there was an intoxicating exhilaration. He was reluctant to climb down again, but the long June day was coming to an end, the mosquitoes were moving in, and remonstrative yowls were coming from the toolshed.

Settling on the screened porch with the Siamese, he relaxed at last. The yellow birds were swooping back and forth in front of the screens as if taunting the cats, and Koko and Yum Yum dashed to and fro in fruitless pursuit until they fell over in exhaustion, twitching their tails in frustration. So ended the first hectic day of their summer sojourn in Mooseville. It was only a sample of what was to come.

Qwilleran forgot about the drowning of Roger MacGillivray’s friend until he bought a newspaper the next morning. He was in Mooseville to have breakfast at the Northern Lights Hotel, and he picked up a paper to read at the table.

Headlined on page one was Roger’s account:

MOOSEVILLE MAN DROWNS IN RIVER Buddy Yarrow, 29, of Mooseville Township, drowned while fishing in the Ittibittiwassee River Thursday night. His body was found at the mouth of the river Friday morning. Police had searched throughout the night after his disappearance was reported by his wife, Linda, 28.

According to a spokesperson for the sheriff’s department, it appears that Yarrow slipped down the riverbank into the water. There was a mudslide at the location where his tackle box was, found, and the river is deep at that point.

Yarrow was a strong swimmer, his wife told police, leading investigators to believe that he hit his head on a rock when he fell. A massive head injury was noted in the coroner’s report. Police theorize that the strong current following last week’s heavy rain swept the victim, stunned or unconscious, to the mouth of the river, where his body was caught in the willows overhanging the water.

“He always went fishing at that bend in the river,” said Linda Yarrow. “He didn’t have a boat. He liked to cast from the bank.”

Besides his wife, the former Linda Tobin, Yarrow leaves three children: Bobbie, 5; Terry, 3; and Tammy, 6 months. He was a graduate of Moose County schools and was currently employed in the construction of the East Shore Condominiums.

There were pictures of the victim, obviously snapshots from a family album, showing him as a high school youth on the track team, later as a grinning bridegroom, still later as a fisherman squinting into the sun and holding a prize catch.

On page two of the newspaper, in thumb position, was the column “Straight from the Qwill Pen” about a dog named Switch, assistant to an electrician in Purple Point. Switch assisted his master by selecting tools from the toolbox and carrying them up the ladder in his mouth.

Qwilleran noted two typographical errors in his column and three in the drowning story. And his name was misspelled.

He had several ideas for future columns, but the subject that eluded him was the infamous Mooseville antique shop called The Captain’s Mess, operated by the bogus “Captain Phlogg”. The man was virtually impossible to interview, being inattentive, evasive, and rude. He sold junk and, worse yet, fakes. Yet, The Captain’s Mess was a tourist attraction – so bad it was good. It was worth a story.

On Saturday morning – after a fisherman’s breakfast of steak, eggs, hashed browns, toast and coffee – Qwilleran devised a new interview approach that would at least command Phlogg’s attention. He left the hotel and walked to the ramshackle building off Main Street that was condemned by the county department of building and safety but championed by the Mooseville Chamber of Commerce. He found Captain Phlogg, with the usual stubble of beard and battered naval cap, sitting in a shadowy corner of the shop, smoking an odoriferous pipe and taking swigs from a pint bottle. In the jumble of rusted, mildewed, broken marine artifacts that surrounded the proprietor, only a skilled and patient collector could find anything worth buying. Some of them spent hours sifting through the rubble.

The captain kept an ominous belaying pin by his side, causing Qwilleran to maintain a safe distance as he began, “Good morning, Captain. I’m from the newspaper. I understand you’re not a retired sea captain; you’re a retired carpenter.”

“Whut? Whut?” croaked the captain, evidencing more direct response than he had ever shown before.