Nick said, “I’d better get back to the office and help Lori. I’ll explain to your dinner guest.”
It was not long before the Nutcracker van drove to the back door of Cabin Four, and a porter loaded luggage and numerous cartons of Mrs. Truffle’s belongings.
That was Qwilleran’s cue to call the office. Lori answered.
“Where did you send her?” he asked.
“We were able to get her a suite at the Mackintosh Inn.”
“That’s good. Barry Morghan will know how to handle her. He’ll send flowers to her room. He’ll even take them up himself.”
“She’ll throw them at him! She’s allergic to flowers.”
“I’m sorry Koko created a problem, Lori.”
“Not at all! He came up with a solution! No one else could get rid of her.”
Qwilleran hung up the phone and went looking for Koko. The cat was in the middle of the living room, hunched over a man’s brown shoe—for the left foot. Both shoes had been stowed for safekeeping in the entertainment center, but one drawer had been opened—with a touch of a paw, thanks to the nylon rollers. Yet, only the left shoe had been removed.
Qwilleran tapped his moustache. There was a reason why Koko was interested in it. He had a reason for everything he did—often obscure and sometimes questionable. But the gears were always operative in that small cranium.
Removing the other shoe from the drawer, Qwilleran sat down to study the situation. Both shoelaces had been well chewed at one time or another; that had been Yum Yum’s contribution. The right and left shoes seemed to be perfectly mated, although . . . when hefted, one in each hand, the left seemed just . . . slightly . . . heavier. Could that be a fact? Could Koko have detected it? Or was it happenstance?
As Qwilleran stared at the cat in speculation, a long-forgotten memory came into focus. He was fresh out of J school on his first day—at his first job—facing his first assignment. He was to go to the Superior Shoe Company, get a good feature story and hand in his copy by the three o’clock deadline. There was no limit on length. “Write what it takes,” the editor said.
The longer the piece, the cub reporter felt, the more editorial attention it would command, provided he was not guilty of padding.
The address was in a commercial district—a building occupied by tailors, wholesale jewelers, theater costumers, custom shirtmakers and the Superior Shoe Company. For the first time he took a taxi on an expense account. For the first time he flashed his brand new press card, and the conversation went like this:
“I’m Jim Qwilleran, here to get a feature story. Did the editor notify you?”
“Yep. Have a chair.” He was a leathery man of middle age who obviously worked with his hands. He was surrounded by an assortment of small machines.
“May I have your name, sir?”
“Just call me Bill. Don’t need any publicity. Just glad to see a good story in the paper. . . . I’ve got a nephew workin’ for The New York Times.”
“Interesting shop. How long have you been making shoes?”
The man shrugged. “Twenty years, give or take.”
“Do you have a specialty?”
“Yep.” He brought a shoe from underneath the counter and casually peeled away the heel lining and other inner mysteries, revealing a cavity in the heel.
“What’s the purpose of this kind of construction?” The trick was to ask questions in a matter-of-fact way as if already knowing the answer.
“It’s handy for hiding diamonds, gold coins, spare change,” he said with a grin.
There had been more to the interview, and Qwilleran rushed back to the office in excitement. Although he sweated blood over the story, he handed it in with a cool swagger, and the editor received it with a cool nod. It was never printed, of course, being an initiation ritual for cub reporters. He never mentioned it to anyone, nor did any other victim, but he often wondered how many interviews Bill had given—and whether he really had a nephew at The New York Times.
Now he went to work on Hackett’s left shoe, peeling back the sole lining, removing the heel pad and a metal plate, revealing a heel cavity filled with gold nuggets!
Koko had sensed something abnormal about the shoe. Now, having made his point, the cat was in the kitchen lapping up a drink of water.
Qwilleran reassembled the shoe and hid the pair in his luggage, the only cat-proof enclosure in the cabin—except for the refrigerator. The brown oxfords would have to be turned over to the police as evidence. Should he tell them about the secret heel? Or let them find it themselves?
There were several questions to be asked, and he discussed his puzzlement in his personal journal:
Thursday, June 10—I don’t know the market value of gold, but the mysterious Mister Hackett had a heelful—and who knows what larger rocks were stashed in the trunk of his forty-thousand-dollar car? . . . Was he a gold prospector posing as a manufacturer’s rep—or a roofing salesman whose hobby was gold-digging? . . . Did someone know about his activity? Or was it an incidental encounter? Did he have a partner—or a competitor—who would consider the booty worth killing for? . . . Where did the clobbering take place? Near the creek, no doubt.
Does that mean Hackett was operating in the Black Forest Conservancy? Is that illegal? Is that why he used an alias and falsified his entry on the inn’s guest register? . . . Tune in tomorrow.
chapter eight
It was their first night in the cabin by the creek.
Qwilleran placed the cats’ blue cushion on one bunk. They settled down contentedly, while he retired to the other bunk. Sometime during the night, the arrangement changed; in the morning Qwilleran was sharing his pillow with Yum Yum, and Koko was snuggled into the crook of his knee. So began . . . A Day in the Life of the Richest Man in the Northeast Central United States.
First, he fed the cats and policed their commode.
Next, he phoned the florist in Pickax and ordered an opening-night bouquet to be delivered to Hannah Hawley’s cabin. “Something dramatic—with a few leaves—but none of that wispy stuff that florists love,” he specified. In accord with theatre custom, the card was to read “Break a leg tonight!” He wished no signature. “Let her figure it out!”
Then he walked up the hill for breakfast at the inn, taking his Friday column to be faxed.
Nick Bamba said, “I’ll put it on the machine right away, Qwill.”
“Not so fast! The deadline is noon. If it arrives early, some itchy-fingered editor with a blue pencil will get the urge to change a few words. It’s better for the copy to arrive when they’re beginning to worry about the thousand-word hole on page two. . . . How’s Lori, Nick?”
“Jumping for joy, now that Mrs. Truffle has moved out.”
It flashed through Qwilleran’s mind that Mrs. Truffle had cast the dark shadow over the inn—not the ill-fated Elsa Limburger. He asked, “Who are the quiet people in Cabin Two?”
“The Thompsons. She’s recuperating from an illness. He goes out deep-sea fishing on the charter boats every day. They get big lake trout and have it cleaned, frozen and shipped to one’s home address. At least, he says that’s the way it works. . . . Here’s another postcard, Qwill.”
It was a view of the Governor’s Palace at Colonial Williamsburg. Qwilleran dropped it in his pocket with a show of apathy. “What’s today’s breakfast special, Nick?”
“Frittata with Italian sauce. Very good!”
“As an old friend, would you tell me it was good if it wasn’t?” Qwilleran asked to tease him.
“If you don’t like it, send it back to the kitchen, and you can have corn flakes on the house!”
In the dining room Qwilleran cast a quick glance at Polly’s postcard:
Dear Qwill—The antique dealer took us to lunch today. Charming man. Called home. Cats not eating well. Could you drop in and cheer them up?
Love, Polly
Qwilleran huffed into his moustache. Polly’s male cat had only recently learned to tolerate him, a
nd Black Creek was halfway across the county from Indian Village, where Brutus and Catta lived, but . . .
The server came to take his order, and he asked about the breakfast special.
She shuffled her feet and looked dubious. “Well . . . my last customer thought the sausage was too spicy, and the one before that said the frittata was dry, but that was only their opinion.”
Qwilleran had ham and eggs and left her the usual twenty percent plus something extra for honesty.
Back in Cabin Five, he phoned the official historian for Moose County. Homer Tibbitt, a nonagenarian, lived with his wife, a young eighty-eight, in a retirement village, the Ittibittiwassee Estates.
Rhoda answered the phone and said, “Speak of the devil! . . . We were just talking about you at breakfast. Homer’s having his after-breakfast nap right now—”
“Who’s that? Who’s that?” came a high-pitched voice in the background.
“The media,” she said as she handed Homer the cordless phone.
Affably the two men exchanged derogatory remarks.
“You old rascal! How come you take a nap in the middle of the morning?”
“You sneaky pup! Calling my wife when you think I’m asleep!”
“How do you like this weather?”
“What do I know about weather? She won’t let me go out.”
“I hear your knee replacement was a big success, Homer.”
“So good I’m thinking of having my funny bone replaced, if you’re the donor.”
Only after the required banter did Qwilleran pose the question: Has Moose County ever had a gold rush?
“Well . . .” Homer mused as he retrieved pertinent facts, “there was a Poor Man’s Gold Rush in the nineteenth century before they discovered the real gold: coal and lumber; that’s where the fortunes were made.
“In my own lifetime there’s been periodic hysteria over a gold strike, but it never amounted to anything. If you ask me, there’s more cold cash buried in coffee cans in people’s backyards than was ever—”
Rhoda snatched the phone. “Ask Mr. MacMurchie. He used to sell sluice boxes and panning equipment.”
Homer snatched it back again. “Ask Thornton Haggis. He used to take his boys panning.”
Without delay Qwilleran phoned the retired stonecutter and made an appointment for lunch. Thornton was one of the most savvy natives he had met since coming to the north country. Thorn, as he was called, had attended a university Down Below, majoring in art history before returning to manage the family’s monument works. After retirement he plunged into volunteer work—helping at the art center, assisting the sheriff’s department in spotting brush fires, and now playing the role of saloonkeeper in the forthcoming reenactment. It came as no surprise to Qwilleran that Thorn had been a gold prospector.
They agreed to meet at the Nasty Pasty in Mooseville; only a restaurant serving the best pasties in the county could risk such a name. Meanwhile, Qwilleran and the Siamese sat on the screened porch and enjoyed the sylvan quiet.
Koko chattered at an occasional squirrel who had come too close to his turf and pointed his ears toward the creek when he heard quacking. Qwilleran quickly harnessed him and took him for a shoulder-ride down to the water’s edge. Two ducks were gliding serenely followed by nine ducklings (he counted them) in perfect formation, the entire company turning left or right like a drill team.
A man’s voice said, “Only the females quack; the males go cluck-cluck.” It was Doyle Underhill from Cabin Three. “Is this the cat that got rid of Mrs. Truffle? We should give him a medal.”
The photographer was heading for the boat shed with his camera. “Do you like canoeing, Qwill? You’re welcome to come with me any time.”
“Unfortunately, Doyle, I had a traumatic experience while paddling along the shore of the big lake. A sudden offshore breeze spun the prow around to the north, and I was on my way to Canada a hundred miles away. There was nothing I knew to do until a sepulchral voice from nowhere told me to back-paddle. I made it safely back to shore but lost my taste for canoeing.”
“Sounds supernatural.”
“No, it was only my neighbor on the beach, a retired police chief with a bullhorn. . . . How’s the shooting up the creek?”
“Great! The other day I photographed a huge owl, taking off over my head like a bomber.”
“What do you do with your photos?”
“Sell a few to magazines and photo services.”
“Do you know about the photography show opening Sunday at the Pickax art center? They’re having a reception for the artist, John Bushland.”
“I see his byline all the time! He’s super! I didn’t know he lived around here.”
“You and Wendy should go and meet him, between two and five o’clock. He likes to be called Bushy because he’s losing his hair.”
“We’ll go. Thanks for the tip. Too bad you don’t like canoeing, Qwill. When I’m paddling up this creek I really feel one with nature.”
A few minutes later he was paddling quietly upstream without disturbing the ducks.
When Qwilleran arrived at the Nasty Pasty in Mooseville, Thornton Haggis was waiting in a corner booth, his generous shock of snow-white hair making him instantly visible.
“I see your wife hasn’t let you go to the barber recently.” Qwilleran said, pursuing their usual joke.
“I let her win the battle this time. I’m playing the saloonkeeper in the reenactment, and they think white hair will make the character look like a wholesome father figure.”
“How did you get involved?”
“Funny thing. When my boys were teens, they hated history. Now they’re two grown men with families and an active sand-and-gravel business, and they were the first to join the re-enactors. They talked me into it.”
The two men ordered the café’s famous pasty. Thornton said, “I like it because they make the crust with vegetable oil in the new way instead of lard in the old way, and they dice the meat up the old way instead of grinding it in the new way. They use local potatoes and season the filling with sage and onion and a little butter.”
“Is cooking one of your many skills, Thorn?”
“No, but I like to read cookbooks.”
“Homer tells me you used to go gold prospecting, Thorn.”
“That’s when my boys were about ten and twelve years old. After that, they got interested in soccer and girls, but for one summer, panning for gold was good, clean, family fun. We found a few crumbs, which we had imbedded in plastic for key rings. I still use mine.”
“Where did you go digging—or panning?”
“In what is now the Black Forest Conservancy—and off limits to prospectors. But in those days, you could cut down trees, camp out, shoot deer in season and rabbits all year round. It was called the Black Forest because of the black bears that made their habitat there, but the only one I ever saw is the stuffed specimen at the Black Bear Café. Nowadays, if you were dumb enough to shoot a bear, they’d shoot you and stuff you.”
“The pasties were served, and Qwilleran asked him more questions. “How did you know where to dig for gold?”
“Everyone knew. There was an old belief that three veins of gold ran under the Black Creek, and every generation got excited about it. Then, when no one struck it rich, it would die down until another old codger starting telling stories.”
Forks were not served, and the pasties required two hands and one’s full attention.
Then Qwilleran said, “Should I know about the brawl at the Hotel Booze?”
“It isn’t all rough stuff,” Thornton said. “There’s laughing, kidding around, singing, jigging, and a lot of boasting. Roger MacGillivray has done a pile of research and is coaching them on the slang of the period.”
“Is there a script?”
“It’s all ad lib, but each team has been doing its act over and over again.”
“Do guns figure in the show?”
“It wasn’t a gun culture. Fisticuffs! In the l
umber camps, fighting and drinking were forbidden. The bosses preserved law and order with their fists. However, in the sawdust towns the saloonkeeper would be likely to have a gun for business reasons.”
“Do you know some of the lingo?” Qwilleran asked.
Thornton did. That man knew everything. “We’ve given our members a glossary of slang terms that were common in those days. I’ve brought you a copy.”
Qwilleran glanced at it. If a man was “sluiced,” he was killed. If he had “smallpox,” he’d been in a fight and had been stomped by caulks—the steel pins loggers wore on their boots to keep from slipping off logs. If a lumberjack was “gonna get m’teeth fixed,” he was going to visit a prostitute. There were other expressions, too, all equally colorful.
Thornton said, “When you see the show, bear in mind that lumberjacks in 1860 were young men in their teens and early twenties. One camp had a cook who was only twelve years old. . . . And they lived dangerously. They were killed by falling trees, drowned while riding logs down a rushing stream, and maimed by runaway saw blades in the mills. Undertakers couldn’t make the pine boxes fast enough!”
“Is that why they drank themselves silly on Saturday night?” Qwilleran asked.
“And learned to take death lightly. My great-grandfather cut names and epitaphs on gravestones at two bits a word. If the victim had no money in his pocket, his buddies chipped in to buy him a headstone with the kind of raffish epitaph he would have liked.
“This will explain the finale of the reenactment when you see it. Some of the audience will be disturbed.”
“What is the finale?”
“Wait and see,” Thornton said.
alt="[image]"/>Before leaving the parking lot of the Nasty Pasty, Qwilleran phoned his attorney’s office. G. Allen Barter was his representative in all matters pertaining to the Klingenschoen Foundation, sparing him trips to Chicago, board meetings and routine decisions. The two men were in complete accord about the goals and policies of the K Fund.
Cat Who Went Up the Creek Page 8
