The Cat Who Went Underground (4 page)

“Is it true that you were a carpenter for a shipbuilder at Purple Point – before you made a killing in land speculation?”.

“Dunno whut yer talkin’ about,” said the man, vigorously puffing his pipe.

“I believe you live in a house on the dunes that you built with your own hands, using lumber stolen from the shipyard. Is that true?”

“None o’yer business.”

“Aren’t you the one who has a vicious dog that runs loose illegally?”

The old man snarled some shipyard profanity as he struggled to his feet.

Qwilleran started to back away. “Have you ever been taken to court on account of the dog?”

“Git outa here!” Captain Phlogg reached for the belaying pin.

At that moment a group of giggling tourists entered the shop, and Qwilleran made a swift exit, pleased with the initial results. He planned to goad the man with further annoying questions until he got a story. The chamber of commerce might not approve, but it would make an entertaining column, provided the expletives were deleted.

Returning to the log cabin, Qwilleran was met at the door by an excited Koko, while Yum Yum sat in a compact bundle, observing in dismay. Koko was racing back and forth to attract attention, yowling and yikking, and Qwilleran cast a hasty eye around the interior. Living room, dining alcove, kitchen and bar occupied one large open space, and there was nothing abnormal there. In the bathroom and bunkrooms everything appeared to be intact.

“What’s wrong, Koko?” he asked. “Did a stranger come in here?” He worried about Glinko’s duplicate key. There was no way of guessing how many persons might have access to that key. “What are you trying to tell me, old boy?”

For answer the cat leaped to the top of the bar and from there to the kitchen counter. Qwilleran investigated closely and, in doing so, stepped in something wet. On the oiled floorboards a spill usually remained on the surface until mopped up, and here was a sizable puddle! The idea of a catly misdemeanor flashed across Qwilleran’s mind only briefly; the Siamese were much too fastidious to be accused of such a lapse.

Opening the cabinet door beneath the sink, he found the interior flooded and heard a faint splash. He groaned and reached for the telephone once more.

“Ha ha ha! A drip!” exclaimed the cheerful Mrs. Glinko. “Allrighty, we’ll dispatch somebody PDQ.”

In fifteen minutes an old-model van with more rust than paint pulled into the clearing – the same plumber’s van as before – and Joanna swung out of the driver’s seat.

“Got a leak?” she asked in her somber monotone as she plunged her head under the sink. “These pipes are old!”

“The cabin was built seventy-five years ago,” Qwilleran informed her.

“There’s no shutoff under the sink. How do I get down under?”

He showed her the trap door, and she pulled open the heavy slab with ease and lowered herself into the hole. Koko was extremely interested and had to be shooed away three times. When she emerged with cobwebs on her doming, she did some professional puttering beneath the sink, went down under the floor again to reopen the valve, and presented her bill. Qwilleran paid thirty-five dollars again and signed a voucher for twenty-five. It made him an accomplice in a minor swindle, but he felt more sympathy for Joanna than for Glinko. He rationalized that the ten-dollar discrepancy might be considered a tip.

“What’s under the floor?” he asked her.

“The crawl space. Just sand and pipes and tanks and lots of spiders. It’s dusty.”

“It can’t be very pleasant.”

“I ran into a snake once in a crawl space. My daddy ran into a skunk.” She glanced about the cabin, her bland face showing little reaction until she spotted Koko and Yum Yum sitting on the sofa. “Pretty cats.”

“They’re strictly indoor pets and never go out of the house,” Qwilleran explained firmly. “If you ever have occasion to come in here when I’m not at home, don’t let them run outside! There’s a vicious dog in the neighborhood.”

“I like animals,” she said. “Once I had a porcupine and a woodchuck.”

“What are those yellow birds that fly around here?”

“Wild canaries. You have a lot of chipmunks, too. I have some pet chipmunks – and a fox.”

“Unusual pets,” he commented, wondering if vermin from the wildlife might be tracked into the cabin on her boots.

“I rescued two bear cubs once. Some hunter shot their mother.”

“Are you allowed to keep wild animals in captivity?”

“I don’t tell anybody,” she said with a shrug. “The woodchuck was almost dead when I found him. I fed him with a medicine dropper.”

“Where do you keep them?”

“Behind where I live. The cubs died.”

“Very interesting,” Qwilleran mused. Eventually he might write a column on Joanna the Plumber, but he would avoid mentioning Joanna the Illegal Zookeeper.

“Thanks for the prompt service,” he said in a tone of farewell.

When she had clomped out of the cabin in her heavy boots, he recalled something different about her appearance. The boots, the jeans, the faded plaid shirt and the feed cap were the same as before, but she was wearing lipstick, and her hair looked clean; it was tied back in a ponytail.

He settled down to work on his column for the midweek edition – about Old Sam, the gravedigger, who had been digging graves with a shovel for sixty years. He had plenty of notes on Old Sam as well as a catchy lead, but there was no adequate place to write. For a desk the cabin offered only the dining table, which was round. Papers had a way of sliding off the curved edges and landing on the floor, where the cats played toboggan on them, skidding across the oiled floorboards in high glee. They also liked to sit on his notes and catch their tails in the carriage of his electric typewriter.

“What I need,” Qwilleran said to Yum Yum, who was trying to steal a felt-tip pen, “is a private study.” Even reading was difficult when one had a lapful of cat, and the little female’s possessiveness about his person put an end to comfort and concentration. Nevertheless, he made the best of an awkward situation until the column was finished and it was time to dress for the beach party.

As the festive hour approached, the intense sun of an early evening was slanting across the lake, and Qwilleran wore his dark glasses for the walk down the beach to Mildred’s cottage. He found her looking radiant in a gauzy cherry-colored shift that floated about her ample figure flatteringly and bared her shoulders, which were plump and enticingly smooth.

“Ooooh!” she cried. “With those sunglasses and that moustache, Qwill, you look so sexy!”

He paid her a guarded compliment in return, but smoothed his moustache smugly.

They walked along the shore to the Madleys’ contemporary beach house, where a flight of weathered steps led up the side of the dune to a redwood deck. Guests were gathering there, all wearing dark glasses, which gave them a certain anonymity. They were a colorful crew – in beach dresses, sailing stripes, clamdiggers and halters, raw-hued espadrilles, sandals, Indian prints, Hawaiian shirts, and peasant blouses. Even Lyle Compton, the superintendent of schools, was wearing a daring pair of plaid trousers. There was one simple white dress, and that was on a painfully thin young woman with dark hair clipped close to her head. She was introduced as Russell Simms.

The hostess said to Qwilleran, “You’re both newcomers. Russell has just arrived up here, too.”

“Are you from Down Below?” he asked.

Russell nodded and gazed at the lake through her sunglasses.

“Russell is renting the Dunfield house,” Dottie Madley mentioned as she moved away to greet another arrival.

“Beautiful view,” Qwilleran remarked.

Russell ventured a timid yes and continued to look at the water.

“And constantly changing,” he went on. “It can be calm today and wildly stormy tomorrow, with raging surf. Is this your first visit to Moose County?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Do you plan to stay for the summer?”

“I think so.” Her dark glasses never met his dark glasses.

“Russell… that’s an unusual name for a woman.”

“Family name,” she murmured as if apologizing.

“What do you plan to do during the summer?”

“I like to… read… and walk on the beach.”

“There’s a remarkably good museum in town, if you’re interested in shipwrecks, and a remarkably bad antique shop. How did you happen to choose the Dunfield cottage?”

“It was advertised.”

“In the Daily Fluxion? I used to write for that lively and controversial newspaper.”

“No. In the Morning Rampage.”

Qwilleran’s attempts at conversation were foundering, and he was grateful when Dottie introduced another couple and steered Russell away to meet the newly divorced attorney.

Everyone at the party recognized Qwilleran – or, at least, his moustache. When he was living Down Below and writing for the Fluxion, his photograph with mournful eyes and drooping moustache appeared at the top of his column regularly. When he suddenly arrived in Pickax as the heir to the Klingenschoen fortune, he was an instant celebrity. When he established the Klingenschoen Memorial Fund to distribute his wealth for the benefit of the community, he became a local hero.

On the Madleys’ redwood deck he circulated freely, clinking ice cubes in a glass of ginger ale, teasing Dottie, flattering the chemist’s wife, asking Bushy about the fishing, listening sympathetically as a widower described how a helicopter had scattered his wife’s ashes over Three Tree Island.

Leo Urbank, the chemist, flaunted his academic degrees, professional connections, and club affiliations like a verbal resume and asked. Qwilleran if he played golf. Upon receiving a negative reply he wandered away.

Bushy, the photographer, invited Qwilleran to go fishing some evening. He was younger than the other men, although losing his hair. Qwilleran had always enjoyed the company of news photographers, and Bushy seemed to fit the pattern: outgoing, likable, self-assured.

The superintendent of schools said to Qwilleran, “Have you heard from Polly Duncan since she escaped from Moose County?”

Qwilleran knew Lyle Compton well – a tall, thin, saturnine man with a perverse sense of humor and blunt speech. “I received a postcard, Lyle,” he replied. “She was met at the airport by the local bigwigs, and they gave her a bunch of flowers.”

“That’s more than we did for the unfortunate woman who came here. I think Polly’s getting the better part of the deal. Since she’s so gung ho on Shakespeare, she may decide to stay in England.”

Qwilleran’s moustache bristled at the suggestion, although he knew that Compton was baiting him. “No chance,” he said. “When Polly airs her theory that Shakespeare was really a woman, she’ll be deported… By the way, do you know anything about that young man who was drowned?”

As superintendent of schools Compton knew everyone in the county, and was always willing to share his information, though taking care to point out that he was not a gossip, just a born educator. “Buddy Yarrow? Yes, he was well-liked at school. Had to struggle to keep his grades up, though. Married the Tobin girl, and they had too many kids too fast. He had a tough time supporting them.”

Mildred overheard them. “I’m applying to the Klingenschoen Fund for financial aid for the Yarrows,” she said. “I hope you’ll put in a good word, Qwill.”

Dottie Madley said, “Buddy built our steps down to the beach, and he was very considerate – didn’t leave any sawdust or nails lying around. Glinko sent him to us.”

“Did someone mention Glinko?” asked Urbank. “We had some plumbing done this week, and Glinko sent us a lady plumber!”

“I suppose she fixes everything with a hairpin,” said Doc.

Qwilleran concealed a scowl. He had long ago curbed his tendency to make jocular remarks about hairpins and bras.

“Doc!” said Mildred in her sternest classroom voice. “That is an outmoded sexist slur. Go to the powder room and wash your mouth out with soap.”

“I’ll stop quipping about hairpins,” Doc retorted, “when you gals stop calling the John the powder room.”

“Objection!” said John Bushland. “Derogatory reference to a minority!”

It was then that Qwilleran made a remark that exploded like a bomb. It was just a casual statement of his summer intentions, but the reaction astonished him.

“Don’t do it!” said the host.

“You’ll be sorry,” his wife warned, and she wasn’t smiling.

“Only mistake I ever made in my life,” said the attorney. “We tried it last summer, and it broke up our marriage.”

“When we did it, my wife almost had a nervous breakdown,” said the chemist.

Bushy added seriously, “For the first time in my life I felt like killing someone!”

Qwilleran had simply mentioned that he would like to build an addition to the log cabin. Everyone at the party, he now learned, had encountered infuriating or insurmountable obstacles while building an addition or remodeling a kitchen or adding a porch or putting on a new roof.

“What seems to be the problem?” he asked in mild bewilderment.

“All the good contractors are busy with big jobs in the summer,” explained Doc Madley. “Right now they’re building the condos on the shore, a big motel in Mooseville, senior housing in North Kennebeck, a new wing on the Pickax Hospital, and a couple of schools. For a small job like yours you have to hire an underground builder.

“If you can find one,” Urbank added.

“Pardon my ignorance,” Qwilleran said, “but what is an underground builder?”

“You have to dig to find one,” said Compton by way of definition.

“What about Glinko? I thought his service was the bright and beautiful answer to all problems great and small.”

“Glinko can send you someone for an emergency or a day’s work, but he doesn’t handle building projects.”

“Do these underground builders advertise in the phone book?”

“Advertise!” Bushy exclaimed. “They don’t even have telephones. Some of them camp out in tents.”

“Then how do you track them down?”

“Hang around the bars,” someone said.

“Hang around the lumberyard,” someone else said. “If you see a guy buying two-by-fours and nails and plywood and being refused credit, grab him! That’s your man.”