The Cat Who Knew Shakespeare (6 page)

“Why is she in such a hurry to sell?”

“Well, the money, you know. She needs money. Dad had a lot of debts, you know.”

“Did he carry decent life insurance?”

“There’s a policy, but it’s not all that great. Grandma Gage has been keeping up the premiums for years, just to protect my mother and us… The house is being sold, too.”

“The farmhouse?”

“Isn’t that sad?” Jody put in. “It’s been in the Goodwinter family a hundred years.”

Qwilleran said, “A widow should never make such a quick decision to change her lifestyle.”

“Well, it’s mortgaged, you know,” Junior said, “and she never wanted a big house anyway. She likes condominiums. She wants to unload the house before snow flies – doesn’t want to be stuck with a big place in the country during the winter.”

“That’s understandable.”

“She’s going into an apartment in Indian Village.”

“I thought there were no vacancies out there.”

Jody said, “She’s moving in with a friend,” and Junior scowled at her.

“Can she find a buyer for the house that fast – without selling at a sacrifice?” Qwilleran asked.

“She’s got a buyer.”

“Who? Do you know who it is?”

“Herb Hackpole.”

“Hackpole! What does a single man want with a big farmhouse like that?”

“Well, he’s been wanting a place in the country, you know, so he can run his dogs. He has hunters. There’s no acreage, but he’ll be getting a good big yard and two barns.”

“And what about the furnishings? You said your parents had a lot of family heirlooms.”

“They’re going to be auctioned off.”

Jody said, “Juney had been promised his great-grandfather’s desk, but that’s going to be sold, too.”

In a tone of defeat Junior said, “If they can squeeze in the auction before snow flies, they’ll attract dealers from Ohio and Illinois and get the high dollar.”

“And what about the antique printing presses in the barn?”

Junior shrugged. “They’ll be sold for scrap metal. They figure the price by the ton.”

The three of them fell into three kinds of silence: Junior, depressed; Jody, sympathetic; Qwilleran, stunned. Senior Goodwinter had been killed Friday night and buried Monday, and this was Tuesday.

“When did you hear about these drastic decisions, Junior?”

“My mother called me at the office this afternoon – right in the middle of the shoot. I didn’t say anything to the photographer. Do you think I should have told her? It might kill the story – or take the edge off it. She left an hour ago. I drove her to the airport.”

Suddenly Junior’s beeper sounded. “Oh no!” he said. “That’s all I need! A stupid barn fire! Take Jody home, will you, Qwill?” he called over his shoulder as he raced out of the house. The city hall siren was screaming. Police sirens were wailing.

It was then that Qwilleran realized he had forgotten to pour the coffee. “How about a cup, Jody? If it isn’t too cold.”

The tiny young woman curled up on the sofa, cradling the big mug in her small hands. “I feel so sorry for Juney. I told him to go Down Below and get a job at the Daily Fluxion and forget about everything up here.”

“No one should act on impulse at a time like this,” Qwilleran advised.

“Maybe he could get an injunction to stop her from selling – or postpone it until she’s thinking straight.”

“Won’t work. She’d have to be proved mentally incompetent. It’s her own property now, and she can do whatever she wishes.”

At that moment Mrs. Cobb, in robe and bedroom slippers, made an abrupt appearance in the doorway. “Look out the window!” she said in alarm. “There’s a fire on Main Street! It looks like the lodge hall’s on fire!”

Qwilleran and Jody jumped up, and all three of them hurried to the front windows.

“That’s Herb’s lodge,” Mrs. Cobb said. “This is their meeting night. There could be thirty or forty people in the building.”

“I’ll drive down and see,” Qwilleran said, “Come on, Jody, and I’ll take you home afterward. Out this way… back door… car’s in the garage.”

Downtown Main Street was filled with flashing blue and red lights. Traffic was rerouted, and fire trucks were parked in an arc, training their headlights on the center of the block. The pumpers were working, and fire hoses were pouring water on the roof of the three-story lodge hall. Beyond that building there was an orange-red glow with flames leaping upward – then a hiss of steam – then a cloud of smoke.

Qwilleran parked, and he and Jody walked closer.

“It’s the Picayune!” he shouted. “The whole building’s on fire!”

Jody started to cry. “Poor Juney!” she kept saying. “Poor Juney!”

“They’re hosing down the lodge hall to keep it from catching,” Qwilleran said. “The post office, too. The newspaper plant is going to be totaled, I’m afraid.”

“I think that’s what his father was trying to tell him in the dream,” she said. “Can you see Juney?”

“Can’t recognize anyone in those helmets and rubber coats. Even their faces are black. Dirty job! The white helmet is the fire chief, that’s all I can tell.”

“I hope Juney doesn’t do anything crazy, like running into the building to save something.”

“They’re trained not to take foolish risks,” Qwilleran assured her.

“But he’s so impulsive – and sentimental. That’s why he’s taking it so hard – his mother selling the Pic, I mean.” A sudden look of horror crossed her face. “Oh, no! William Allen’s in there! They always lock him up for the night. I’m going to be sick…”

“Easy, Jody! He may have escaped. Cats are clever… Come on. We can’t stay here. It’s icing up, and you’re shivering. The men will be on the job for hours, mopping up and looking for hot spots. I’ll drive you home. Will you be all right?”

“Yes, I’ll wait up till Juney comes home. He’s been staying at my place since his father died, you know.”

At the K mansion Qwilleran found Mrs. Cobb at the kitchen table, still in her pink robe, drinking cocoa and looking worried. “There’s no news on the radio,” she said anxiously.

“It wasn’t the lodge hall,” Qwilleran told her. “It was the Picayune building. It’s gutted. More than a century of publishing destroyed in half an hour.”

“Did you see Herb?” She poured a cup of cocoa for Qwilleran. It was not his favorite beverage.

“No, but I’m sure he was there, swinging an ax.”

“He shouldn’t be doing such strenuous work. He’s over fifty, you know, and most of the men are much younger.”

“You seem unusually concerned about him, Mrs. Cobb.” He gave her a searching look.

The housekeeper lowered her eyes and smiled sheepishly. “Well, I admit I’m fond of him. We always have a good time together, and he’s beginning to drop hints.”

“About marriage?” Qwilleran’s dismay showed in his brusque question. As a housekeeper she was a jewel – too valuable to lose. She had spoiled him and the Siamese with her cooking.

“I wouldn’t stop working, though,” Mrs. Cobb hastened to say. “I’ve always worked, and this is the most wonderful job I ever had. It’s a dream come true. I mean it!”

“And you’re perfect for the position. Don’t rush into anything, Mrs. Cobb.”

“I won’t,” she promised. “He hasn’t come right out and asked me yet, so don’t you say anything.”

She refilled her cocoa cup and carried it upstairs, saying a weary good-night.

Qwilleran made his nightly house check before setting the burglar alarm and locking up. Then he retired to his own quarters over the garage, carrying a wicker picnic hamper. Indistinct sounds came from inside the hamper and it swung to and fro vigorously as he carried it.

The four-car garage was a former carriage house built of fieldstone – the same masonry that made the main house spectacular. There were four arched doors to the stalls, a cupola with a weather vane on the roof, and a brace of ornate carriage lanterns at each comer of the building.

Upstairs the interior had been refurbished to suit Qwilleran’s taste – comfortable contemporary in soothing tones of beige, rust, and brown. It was quiet and simple, an escape from the pomp and preciosity of the K mansion.

In the sitting room there were easy chairs, good reading lamps, a music system, and a small bar where Qwilleran mixed drinks for guests. He himself had not touched alcohol since the time he fell off a subway platform in New York, an experience that had been permanently sobering. Nor had he ever ridden the subway again.

The other rooms were his writing studio, his bedroom, and the cats’ parlor, which was carpeted and furnished with cushions, baskets, scratching posts, climbing trees, and a turkey roaster that served as their commode. There was also a shelf of secondhand books bought at the hospital bazaar for a dime apiece. There were books on first-year algebra and English grammar simplified. There was a collection of famous sermons. Other titles were The Burning of Rome and Elsie Dinsmore and Vergil’s Aeneid. Koko could push them off the shelf to his heart’s content.

Qwilleran opened the wicker hamper in the cats’ parlor and invited two reluctant Siamese to jump out. Why, he asked himself, did they never want to get into the hamper? And when they were in it, why did they never want to get out? Koko and Yum Yum finally emerged cautiously, a performance they had repeated every night for the last year stalking the premises and sniffing the furnishings as if they suspected the room to be bugged or booby-trapped.

“Cats!” Qwilleran said aloud. “Who can understand them?”

He left the Siamese to their own peculiar occupations – licking each other, wrestling, chasing, biting ears, and sniffing indiscreetly – while he tuned in the midnight news in his sitting room.

“The offices and printing plant of the Pickax Picayune were destroyed by fire tonight. The building is a total loss, according to fire chief Bruce Scott. Twenty-five fire fighters, three tankers, and two pumpers from Pickax and surrounding communities responded to the alarm and are still on the scene. No injuries have been reported. Elsewhere in the county, the Mooseville Village Council voted to spend five hundred dollars on Christmas decorations – “

He snapped off the radio in exasperation. The same fifteen-second news item would be repeated hourly without further details. Listeners would not be told how the fire had started, who reported it, what records and equipment had been destroyed, the age of the building, its construction, the problems encountered in fighting the fire, precautions taken, the estimated value of the loss, the insurance coverage.

Without doubt the county needed a newspaper. As for the fate of the Picayune, it was regrettable, but one had to be realistic. The Pic had been a relic of the horse-and-buggy era. It was Senior’s sentimentality and self-indulgence that had bankrupted his newspaper. Typesetting was his obsession, his reason for living, to quote Junior.

Reason for living? Qwilleran jerked to attention and combed his moustache with his fingertips. If the newspaper had truly been on the brink of failure, could Senior’s accident have been a suicide? The old plank bridge would be a logical place for a fatal “accident.” It was well known to be hazardous. Senior was a cautious, sober man – not one of the Friday-night drunks or speeding youths who usually came to grief at the bridge.

Qwilleran felt a tingling sensation on his upper lip, and he knew his suspicion was valid. There was something uncanny about his upper lip. A tingling, a tremor, or simply a vague uneasiness in the roots of his moustache told him when he was on the right scent. And now he was getting the signal.

If Senior had intended to take his own life, a staged “accident” would avoid the suicide clause, provided the insurance policy had been in effect long enough. Didn’t Junior mention that Grandma Gage had been paying the premiums for years?

An “accident” might pay double indemnity to the widow, or even triple indemnity, although that would be a gamble: There would be a thorough investigation. Insurance companies objected to being fooled.

Perhaps Senior feared something worse than losing the newspaper. He had taken desperate measures to keep the Picayune afloat – selling the farmland, mortgaging the farmhouse, begging from his mother-in-law. Did his desperation lead him into something illegal? Did he fear exposure? How about the man in the black raincoat? What was he doing in Pickax? Senior’s death had occurred only a few hours before the stranger arrived on the plane. Did Senior know he was coming? And why was the visitor hanging around? Were others implicated?

And now the Picayune offices had been destroyed. It was curious timing for such a disaster. Was there something in the basement of the building besides presses and back-copy files? Was it incriminating evidence that had to be eliminated? Who knew what was there? And who threw the match?

Qwilleran roused himself from his reverie and flexed the leg that was going to sleep. He was getting some weird notions. What had Mrs. Cobb put in that cocoa?

From the cats’ parlor down the hall came a muffled but recognizable sound: thlunk! It was followed by another thlunk – then again thlunk thlunk thlunk in rapid succession. It was the sound of books falling on a carpeted floor. Koko was bumping his private collection.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER, THIRTEENTH. “Continued cold, with overcast skies and snow showers accumulating to three to four inches.

“Overcast!” Qwilleran bellowed at the radio on his desk. “Why don’t you look out the window? The sun’s shining like the Fourth of July!”

He turned his attention back to Tuesday’s Daily Fluxion, which had given good space to the story about the Pickax Picayune. It was not entirely accurate, but small towns were glad of any attention at all in the metropolitan press. Then he tried to read about the disasters, terrorism, crime, and graft Down Below, but his mind kept drifting back to Moose County.

Snow or now snow, he wanted to drive out in the country, look at the old plank bridge, visit the Goodwinter farmhouse, meet the widow. He would take flowers, offer condolences, and ask a few polite questions. It was an approach he had always handled well on the newsbeat. Sad eyes and drooping moustache gave him a mournful demeanor that passed for deep sympathy.

In the county telephone book he found Senior Goodwinter listed on Black Creek Lane in North Middle Hummock. On the county map he could find neither. He found Middle Hummock and West Middle Hummock. He found Mooseville, Smith’s Folly, Squunk Corners, Chipmunk, and Brrr, which was not a misprint; the town was the coldest spot in the county. But North Middle Hummock was not to be found. He took his problem to Mr. O’Dell, who knew all the answers.