“Tell me about the knitting club,” he asked.
“It’s unisex. We get together once a week around our big kitchen table, and we laugh a lot—and learn. Then I have a knitting day-camp for kids every Saturday. We have a picnic lunch, and they get several breaks to run around and blow off steam. Then it’s back to the needles.”
“What do they knit?”
“Socks. Goofy socks. The goofier, the better. They love ’em! Socks are a good way to begin knitting—you learn as you go, and they don’t take much yarn.”
“What makes a sock goofy?”
Barb jumped off the glider. “I’ll show you. I make ’em to sell at Elizabeth’s.”
She returned with a boxful of mismatched pairs in wild mixes of colors and patterns: stripes, plaids, zigzags, and confetti dots—some with cuffs or tassels.
“Do people actually buy these?”
“As fast as I can knit them. Vacationers buy them to save for Christmas presents because they’re different and because they’re knitted of handspun wool from local sheep. Each pair of socks has the name of the ewe that grew the wool.”
He looked at her askance.
She shrugged. “What does it matter? Sheep all look alike if you don’t know them personally. It’s just a gimmick.” She swiveled her eyes mischievously. “I also have nongoofy stuff on display at Elizabeth’s—vests, scarfs, mittens, hats . . . Ready for another drink?”
As she went to the kitchen, he reflected that he had never seen her knits at Elizabeth’s because he always avoided the women’s clothing section. When he bought gifts for Polly, Elizabeth selected them.
“Where have you been hiding your talent in the last few years?” he asked when she returned with her second drink.
“I’ve been living Down Below. I came home a couple of winters ago,” she said with a shrug of dissatisfaction.
“Why did you leave in the first place?” He had a feeling there was a story behind the story here, and she was getting relaxed enough to tell it.
She slouched down on the glider. “You really wanna know? . . . My girlfriend and I decided there weren’t any interesting guys around here, so we went to Florida. But it’s hard to get a job there. They think you’ll quit as soon as snow melts up north. My girlfriend cuts hair, so she can always get work. I didn’t have much luck, though. But then I meet a cool guy who was a balloon-chaser!” Her eyes swiveled pleasurably at the recollection.
“What kind of balloons did he chase? And did he ever catch any?” Qwilleran quipped.
She was not sure how to take it. “Mmmm, you know, hot-air balloons? . . . They lift off and drift away, and the pilot never knows where he’s gonna land. The chaser follows in a truck so he can pick up the passengers and the envelope and the basket. Our envelope was red-and-white stripes. Our basket held four people standing up.”
“Did you become a chaser yourself?”
“I worked weekends in the support crew. Other days I waited on tables.”
Qwilleran said, “It seems to me that the pilot has all the fun, and the chaser does all the work.”
“No, no! It’s exciting! Never knowing where you are—driving miles and miles, zigzagging all over the map, talking to the pilot on the phone, and sort of afraid you’ll end up in a swamp.”
“If you found it so thrilling, why did you come home?”
She lowered her eyes. “My girlfriend got married. My balloon-chaser wasn’t all that interested in a country girl. Then I started dating an older man who really liked me, only . . . I found out he was married. So I came home . . . Why am I telling you all this? I guess it’s because I don’t really have anybody to talk to.”
“How about your mother?”
“Alice is too busy,” she said with a shrug.
“But you should be happy. You’re doing creative work. You’re using your talent. That should be satisfying,” he said sympathetically.
“It isn’t enough. I don’t have anybody I really like—that’s the bummer!”
Another truck turned into the driveway.
“Here’s Alice,” she said. “Gotta empty the ashtray.”
Qwilleran drove back to town thinking that the plight of an ex-balloon-chaser was more interesting than the construction and operation of antique spinning wheels, though less suitable for his column.
In Mooseville, he proceeded to wait for the newspaper truck from Pickax; the Monday edition would carry his theater review, the closure of the backpacker case, and something about the drowned sailor from Grand Island. He was curious to know if his remarks to Arch about twenty-word coverage had made any difference. Probably not, he guessed. The truck from the printing plant was always late on Mondays, a breach he attributed to Monday Morning Flu, which seemed to be epidemic in the workplace everywhere. Fortunately, one could always kill time at the Northern Lights Hotel, open seven days a week and twenty-four hours a day. Its presence was like a beacon shining across a somnolent resort town on Mondays, when most places were closed. One could always buy a magazine in the lobby, chat with the desk clerk, sit on the rear veranda to watch the harbor traffic, or have a meal—not a good one, but adequate. The couple who now owned it did their best. Wayne Stacy was conscientious, and his wife was compassionate; she would rather lose customers than discharge the old cook before his retirement. The ordinariness of the food was a tradition to townfolk; to vacationers it was local color.
Qwilleran, always amazed that the historical building had not burned down or slid into the harbor, mounted the broad flight of wooden steps to the wide porch that overlooked Main Street.
“Coming for lunch?” Mrs. Stacy greeted him in the lobby. She always looked businesslike in a neutral-colored pantsuit, but she had a family-style approach. It convinced Qwilleran that she cared more about his hunger than the selling of a lunch.
“I might have a sandwich,” he said. “What’s the chopper doing over the lake?” The sheriff’s helicopter could be seen in the distance, making wide circles.
“Looks like a boating emergency. I hope it’s nothing serious. By the way, you know that woman you spoke to in the coffee shop yesterday? She’s been in twice more.”
“She must like your food,” he said, a remark with ambiguous connotations.
“I don’t know about that. She eats like a bird.”
Qwilleran had his ham-and-cheese sandwich and a cup of cream of tomato soup, and still the Monday papers had not arrived, so he sat in one of the weathered chairs on the veranda and watched the desultory activity on the waterfront.
The helicopter was still hovering, and after a while he began to have uncomfortable feelings about its mission. He patted his moustache several times, and his suspicions were confirmed when an ambulance drove to the end of the main pier and waited. A cabin cruiser was heading for shore at a fast clip. When it docked, a sheriff’s deputy jumped to the wharf and conferred with the medics. A wheelchair was rolled out, and a young woman in deckwear and a visored cap was helped off the boat. Although not noticeably ill or injured, she was wheeled to the hotel’s side door on the lower level.
At this point, Qwilleran’s curiosity exceeded his interest in Monday’s paper. He returned to the lobby in time to see an elevator door open and a medic hurry to the manager’s office; the other stayed in the elevator with the woman, who was still wearing dark glasses. Mrs. Stacy was brought to the elevator, and a pantomime ensued: questioning, advising, urging, refusing. As a result, she hurried back to her office and the elevator ascended with the patient and the two attendants.
Now captivated by the melodrama, Qwilleran stationed himself where he could see both elevator and office. Mrs. Stacy was making urgent phone calls, to judge by her nervous gestures. The elevator signal indicated that the car had stopped at the second floor. Soon after, Mrs. Stacy left her office and ran up a nearby flight of stairs, whereupon the elevator came down with the emergency personnel and a folded wheelchair.
Still the bundle of newspapers had not arrived, and the desk clerk
explained to Qwilleran with a sly smirk, “The truck drops the first bundle here, the next at the drugstore, and third at the tavern, where the driver has a nip of something. Maybe today he’s doing it the other way around.”
Qwilleran disliked waiting for his newspaper, but the charade piqued his curiosity. Soon he saw Derek Cuttlebrink rushing into the building and bounding up the stairs, after which Mrs. Stacy came slowly down the same flight, looking disturbed.
Qwilleran called to her, “Mrs. Stacy! What’s wrong? Is there anything I can do?” It was the password that always opened the door to confidences.
“Come in the office, Mr. Q, and have a cup of coffee,” she said. “I need one. I feel so sorry for that poor woman.” She peered across the lobby. “There’s my husband. I’m so glad he got back . . . Wayne! Wayne! Come in here!”
The hotelkeeper joined them, nodding to Qwilleran. “Just got back from Pickax. I could smell bad news, soon’s I parked in the lot—people standing around, staring at nothing, looking bewildered. What happened?”
“One of our guests drowned!” his wife said. “Owen Bowen!”
“No! . . . I hope he wasn’t fool enough to jump off his boat for a swim. I warned him! But he was so cocksure of himself. Any details?”
“Nothing much. He and Mrs. Bowen were boating on their day off, and she radioed for help. The sheriff’s marine patrol brought her and the boat in. The helicopter’s been searching for more than an hour.”
“Where is she now?”
“Upstairs. She wouldn’t have a doctor—afraid he’d give her a shot. She’s fussy about what she takes into her body.”
“Does she have any friends in town? They haven’t been very sociable.”
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Stacy said. “She asked me to call their assistant manager. I had a terrible time finding him.”
Wayne Stacy, who was president of the chamber of commerce, said, “I wonder if there’s something the chamber can do for her. The restaurant may never reopen. And after all the work we did! Darn shame!”
Qwilleran spoke for the first time. “The chef is called the kingpin of a restaurant, and this one is dedicated to her profession, so she might decide to carry on. Derek Cuttlebrink has been managing the lunch hour, and he could take over both shifts—after the run of the play, of course; he has a lead role.”
“Yes, but will that poor woman have the heart to carry on?” Mrs. Stacy worried.
“You know what they say,” he reminded her. “Work is a healthy way of coping with grief, and Derek calls her a workaholic. I predict the operation will continue after a suitable hiatus.”
“I hope so. The town needs a place like that. They say she’s a wonderful chef.”
Next he walked to Elizabeth’s Magic on Oak Street. Although it was closed on Mondays, she would be there, rearranging her stock and totaling the previous week’s receipts. Her enterprise was doing well. She brought to it an infectious spirit, off-beat ideas, and a certain shrewdness. He rapped on the glass, and she ran to the door.
Her first breathless words were, “Qwill! Have you heard—?”
“Shocking, isn’t it? How did you find out?”
“Mrs. Stacy was trying to locate Derek, and he happened to be doing some work for me. He rushed over to the hotel.”
“Do you expect him to come back?”
“He’d better come back!” she said firmly. “He can’t leave me with all this sawdust and plaster lying around!” A somewhat tilted rectangle had been cut in the sidewall of the shop. “I own the whole building, you know, and my tenant next door has moved out, so I’m going to use the space for a lending library.”
“Admirable idea!” he said. “But was that lopsided doorway intentional? Or was Derek hung-over?”
Before she could answer, Derek opened the front door with his own key and charged into the shop saying, “Weird accident! You won’t believe it.”
The three of them huddled in the chairs at the rear as he told what he knew:
“They went out in the boat and anchored somewhere and had a picnic lunch. Ernie had some red wine and got tipsy, so she went below for a nap, leaving Owen to do some fishing. Suddenly she woke up because the boat was rocking violently. Also, her hands and feet were numb. She was scared.”
“Awful feeling,” Elizabeth said. “I’ve had it happen after drinking.”
“She called to Owen, and he didn’t answer. She crawled up the ladder on her knees and elbows, and he was gone! Then she really panicked, and the blood rushed back to her extremities. She radioed for help . . . That’s all I know.”
Qwilleran said, “I saw them bring her into the hotel in a wheelchair. How did she seem when you arrived, Derek?”
“In a daze. I had to drag the story out of her.”
“Did she have an explanation of his disappearance?”
“Yeah. He’d been drinking a lot. Booze—not just wine. She thinks they got caught in the wake of another boat, and he lost his balance and fell overboard.”
“Could be,” Qwilleran said, although a nagging sensation in the roots of his moustache was telling him, Not so! Not so!
Derek said, “I imagine she’ll want to sell the boat; it was Owen’s plaything. What she likes is the RV. It has all her cookbooks, and it’s kind of cozy. Sleeps two. Has running water. I think she’d be happy living in the thing.”
“Well, I’ve got commitments to take care of,” Qwilleran said. “I’ll leave you two to clean up the plaster dust.”
TEN
Halfway between the unhappy news about Owen Bowen and the happy prospect of dinner with the Rikers, Qwilleran received a phone call that left him with mixed reactions.
Wetherby Goode, the WPKX meteorologist—whose real name was Joe Bunker—had been his neighbor in Indian Village, and he was good company. An unstoppable extrovert, he announced his weather predictions in song or verse, played cocktail piano at parties, and boasted about being a native of Horseradish in Lockmaster County, once the horseradish capital of the Midwest. Like Qwilleran, a divorced man, he lived alone—with a male cat named Jet Stream.
Earlier in the year Wetherby had talked about his cousin, Dr. Teresa Bunker, a corvidologist at a Southern university. She wanted to produce an animated feature film about crows and was looking for a collaborator. In a weak moment, Qwilleran said he would be interested. Crows were a prominent feature of the environment in Moose County. They strutted around his backyard in Pickax and on the beach in Mooseville; they cawed in the woods incessantly and had flying battles with hawks and blue jays. Unlike pigeons in the city, they were tolerated, however, and Koko was particularly fond of them.
Wetherby had said that his cousin would be coming up to visit her family in the summer and would like to meet Qwilleran and discuss a scenario for the film. Summer had seemed a long way off at the time, but now it was here, and Wetherby was calling to say, “She’s coming! She’s coming!”
“Who’s coming?” Qwilleran demanded, wrested from his speculations about Owen’s drowning and Ernie’s immediate future.
“My cousin Tess! She’s driving up. She’s already left. I don’t know her itinerary, because she has relatives and old schoolmates to visit. Besides, she changes her mind easily. However, I gave her your number at the beach, so you two can plan a meeting that’s convenient. She knows your cabin, by the way. She used to visit a friend at Top o’ the Dunes, and they’d walk on the beach and gawk at the Klingenschoen cabin. That was when the old lady lived there.”
“Tell me something about your cousin,” Qwilleran asked, thinking he should have asked the question a few months earlier.
“Well, she’s a little younger than I am. A big girl. A lot of fun. Likes to do things on the spur of the moment. She was married once, to another academic, but she’s an incorrigible optimist, and he was a card-carrying pessimist, so they drove each other crazy.”
Fighting his compunctions, Qwilleran managed to say, “Okay, I’ll expect her call.” He thought, I can spare an afternoon
, or even a day, for a cousin of Wetherby Goode. Then he added, “It’ll be a challenge. I’ve never met a corvidologist.”
“So how’s the vacation?” his friend asked. “Are you renting your new guest house to Visitors from outer space?”
“Ninety-five percent of sightings,” Qwilleran shot back, “are weather balloons, and the other five percent are low-flying fireflies . . . By the way, what does Dr. Bunker drink?”
“Anything, but she’s crazy about mint juleps . . . And call her Tess. She likes to be called Tess.”
Qwilleran fed the cats early and announced, “I’m having dinner with Uncle Arch and Aunt Mildred. I’ll be home around dark, and we’ll sit on the porch and look at the stars.”
They regarded him with mystification. Yet his mother had always said, “Jamie, it’s common courtesy to tell your family where you’re going and when you expect to return.” Now, after decades of living without a family, he found himself extending this common courtesy to the Siamese. Of course, they had no idea what he was saying, but he felt better for having said it.
He started down the beach carrying a canvas tote bag with the Pickax Public Library logo and marveling at the ever-changing aspect of the lake. This evening, the sky and water were turquoise, and a low cloud bank on the horizon resembled a mountain range. Flirtatious waves made passes at the primly pebbled beach. At Seagull Point, broad wings wheeled over the water. Farther along, cottagers sat on their decks and waved.
At Sunny Daze, Arch was waiting at the top of the sandladder, and Qwilleran handed him two bottles of wine from the canvas bag.
“What else have you got in that thing?” Arch asked with the permissible nosiness of an old friend.
“None of your business,” Qwilleran replied with the same liberty. Then he asked Lisa Compton, who was there without her husband, “How’s life without Lyle?”
“Serene!” she answered promptly.
“What are the superintendents doing in Duluth? Inventing new ways to give teachers a hard time?”
Three Complete Novels: The Cat Who Tailed a Thief/the Cat Who Sang for the Birds/the Cat Who Saw Stars Page 10
