The Cat Who Talked to Ghosts (21 page)

"I like kitties," she said. "I know you do, but your mother wants you to go home.

She isn't feeling well. Pick up your pail, and we'll walk back to your house."

With a backward look at the kitten as it staggered away on wobbly legs, Baby walked out of the barn and picked up the green pail and yellow spade. Qwilleran closed the barn door, and they started down the ramp.

"That's a nice pail," he said. "Where did you get it?"

"My mommy bought it for me."

"What color is it?"

"It's green!" she said impatiently as if she considered her questioner mentally deficient.

"What do you do with your pail?"

"Dig in the sand."

"There's no sand around here."

"We went to the beach," she said with a two-year-old's frown.

They were walking slowly across the barnyard, and Qwilleran realized that the legs of small children are uncommonly short; it would take half an hour to traverse Black Creek Lane. He doubted that he could maintain a dialogue with Baby for half an hour without insulting her intelligence and sounding like a fool himself.

She broke the silence by saying, "I want to go to the bathroom."

"Can you wait till you get home?"

"I don't know."

Dire possibilities flashed through Qwilleran's mind. This was a situation he had never been called upon to face.

Baby had a solution, however. "Do you have a bathroom?" she asked.

Devious child! he thought; she's determined to get in to see the cats. Thinking fast, he said, "It's out of order."

"What does that mean?"

"It's broken."

They walked on, Qwilleran clutching her hand and dragging her along.

"I want to go to the bathroom," she repeated.

Qwilleran took a deep breath. "Okay, I'll get you home in a hurry. Hang on to your pail." he scooped her up as he had seen Verona do, reflecting that she weighed not much more than Yum Yum. With rapid strides, being careful not to jiggle her, he hurried up the lane.

Verona was waiting on the porch, wearing a shabby robe, her hair uncombed, and her face pale. One eye was swollen shut, and there was a purple bruise on her cheek.

"Thank you, Mr. Qwilleran. I'm sorry to trouble you." Baby tugged at her mother's bathrobe, and a wordless understanding passed between them.

"Excuse me," Verona said.

Qwilleran waited. The black eye aroused his curiosity. When she returned, he said, "Where's Vince?"

"Gone to Lockmaster... to the library? To do some research? He left yesterday noon?" The fascinating lilt had returned to her speech.

"What happened to your eye?" Qwilleran asked.

"Oh, stupid me! I walked into a cupboard door?"

Qwilleran huffed into his moustache. He had heard that one before. "I found your little girl playing with kittens in the barn. They may be wild. She could get scratched or bitten."

"Poor Baby doesn't have anyone to play with," said Verona pathetically.

"Why doesn't your husband make a sandbox for her? She likes to dig."

"I'll ask him, but he works hard and gets so tired? His bad leg, you know, gives him pain?"

"When do you expect him?"

"I think he'll be home for supper?"

Jogging back to the museum Qwilleran thought, Why would Boswell go to the Lockmaster library when the Pickax library has the definitive collection of material on hand-printing? What else might attract him to Lockmaster? The medical center? The race track? Or some covert business in connection with the crates in the barn? His fleeting suspicion about the content of the crates returned, and he thought, I'd like to spend an hour with a crowbar in that barn!

Upon arriving home he found Koko on the telephone table, an indication that it had been ringing. Kristi might have tried to phone. He called the Fugtree farm.

"I've heard the news!" he said to her. "I don't know what to say!"

She spoke with surprising belligerence. "I know damn well what to say. Why didn't someone kill him before he poisoned my goats?"

"Do the police have a suspect?"

"Of course," she said bitterly. "I'm the prime suspect, and Mitch is a close second."

"How do I get on the list?" Qwilleran asked. "I was on the Willoway Sunday morning, and I heard him threatening you. I threw a rock into the stream, but I felt like throwing it at his head."

"Well, I imagine the police will be talking to you as a matter of course."

"I'll keep in touch. Let me know if there's anything I can do."

Soon afterward, Larry Lanspeak phoned. "What the devil is happening in North Middle Hummock, Qwill? First Iris's death, then two thefts in the museum, then a herd of goats poisoned, and now a mysterious dead body." "Not guilty!"

"We've had an application for Iris's job from a woman in Lockmaster who's highly qualified, but she's too old, considering she's already had one heart attack. God knows we don't want another manager dropping dead on the kitchen floor."

"I still think Mitch is your man, Larry," said Qwilleran, "I spent some time with him last evening, and I'm impressed. He has good ideas, and he'd bring some youthful spirit to the job. Old people like him and young people like him."

"I value your opinion," said Larry, "but—taking the long view—I still favor Boswell, and Susan goes along with my thinking. As manager he can continue cataloguing the presses, help us set up a Museum of Handprinting and assume the title of curator. In its scope I dare say it will be unique in the United States, if not the world! Of course, the final decision is up to the board of governors. We're having a meeting this week."

Qwilleran said, "Excuse me, Larry. There's a sheriff's car pulling up at toe door. I'll talk to you later."

The deputy standing on the doorstep was the one who had responded to Qwilleran's call ten days before. "Mr. Qwilleran, may I ask you a question or two?" he asked politely.

"Certainly. Will you step inside? I don't want the cats to run outdoors." Both of them were standing beside him, sniffing the fresh air.

The deputy asked, "Did you see or hear anything suspicious, sir, in the vicinity of Fugtree Road?"

"I can't say that I did. This old house is built like a fort, you know, and the windows were closed. I had friends in during the evening, and we were talking and not paying much attention to the outside world... although... there was one thing I might mention," Qwilleran added as an afterthought. "Sometime after midnight I was reading in bed when the cats alerted me to a faint rumbling sound. I checked the apartment and also the museum and found everything in order."

"Did you look outdoors?"

"Briefly, but everything was quiet so I went back to my reading."

"What time was that?"

"WPKX was signing off." At that moment there was a rumbling sound in the hallway, and both men turned to look for its source. It was coming from the floor at the far end of the hall. One of the Oriental rugs was humped in the middle, and the hump was heaving.

"That's my cat,"Qwilleran explained. "He burrows under rugs and talks to himself."

The deputy produced a photograph of a man, full-face and profile. "Have you seen this person in the vicinity in the last two or three days?"

"Can't say that I've ever seen this face." It was the face of a once—handsome but now debauched thirty-year-old. "Is he the man you're looking for?" Qwilleran asked with feigned innocence.

"This is the victim. We're interested in his movements in the last few days."

"I'll let you know if anything comes to mind." "Appreciate it."

Qwilleran closed the door after the deputy, straightened the crumpled rug, and went to look for Koko. This time he was on the dining table, guarding the bible and twitching his whiskers.

"Aha! Leather!" Qwilleran said aloud. The binding was elaborately embossed cowhide with gold-tooling, and the fore-edges of the pages were gilded. Probably a hundred years old, he guessed. Opening the bible to check the date of publication, he went no farther than the flyleaf. The page was covered with hand-written family records, and some of the names and dates demanded Qwilleran's immediate attention.

-16-

WHILE THE COWHIDE binding of the historic bible may have attracted Koko, it was the flyleaf that occupied Qwilleran's attention for the next few hours. He forgot to have lunch, and the Siamese respected his concentration and refrained from interrupting, although Koko stood by for moral support. This grand book had once rated a place of importance and reverence on someone's parlor table. More recently it had been relegated to the Fugtree jumble of relics, acquiring some of the mansion's moldy aroma. It was this fustiness that had caused Koko's whiskers to twitch, Qwilleran assumed.

Inside the cover was a salescheck from the Bid-a-Bit Auction House dated August of 1959, stating that Mrs. Fugtree had paid five dollars for the "Bosworth Bible." Making a quick check of the Moose County telephone book, Qwilleran found no Bosworths listed, the family had either died out or moved away. Also inside the cover was an envelope of yellowed newspaper clippings, obviously from the old Pickax Picayune. In typical nineteenth-century style the news items, obituaries, and social notes all resembled classified ads, and the typefaces were microscopic, suggesting that readers had better eyesight in those days.

He scanned the clippings and laid them aside, then turned his attention to the flyleaf. Having heard members of the Genealogical Society talk at great length about their adventures in tracing their lineage, he knew it was customary to keep family records in the bible. He knew nothing of his own ancestry except that his mother's maiden name was Mackintosh, yet he found the Bosworth family tree fascinating.

Unfortunately the generations were not charted in the scientific way. Births, deaths, marriages, and calamities were recorded as they occurred, with the year noted. A house burned down in 1908; a leg was amputated in 1911; someone drowned in 1945. It was a chatty journal as much as a family tree. In the early years entries were written with a wide-nibbed pen dipped in ink that had faded somewhat—later, with a fountain pen that occasionally leaked—and finally, it appeared, with a good-quality ballpoint. The handwriting suggested that the same person had kept the records for more than fifty years, and the dainty script led Qwilleran to believe it was a woman. The last entry was dated 1958, a year before the bible was sold at auction, no doubt in the liquidation of her estate. No member of the family had claimed the nostalgic document. He soon guessed her identity and decided that he liked her. She included squibs of news: A bride had a large dowry or tiny feet; a newborn had red hair or big ears; a death notice was followed by a terse comment, "drank." There was no room on the flyleaf for wasted words, but the newspaper clippings enlarged on the vital statistics.

Qwilleran tackled the investigation with the same gusto he applied to a good meal, and Koko knew something exciting was taking place. He sat on the table and watched intently as the clippings were sorted in neat piles: weddings, births, christenings, business announcements, obituaries, accidents, etc., occasionally putting forth a bashful paw to touch, then withdrawing it when Qwilleran said, "No!"

What first flagged his attention was a date. The first name on the page was Luther Bosworth, born 1874. The similarity to Vince's surname was noted and dismissed; the important factor was the date of death—1904. If Luther died on May 13 in that year, he was obviously one of the explosion victims, only thirty years old. But would a miner own such a pretentious bible? The cottages provided for miners were little more than shacks, and the mine owners operated company stores that kept the workers constantly in debt.

A further check showed that Luther married in 1898. His bride, Lucy, was only seventeen. Six years later she was widowed and left with four small children. What did single parents do in those days? Send their children to an orphanage? Take in washing?

"I think Lucy is the one who kept these records," Qwilleran said to Koko. "Damnit! Why didn't she state exact dates? And how did she get this expensive bible?"

"Yow!" said Koko, ambiguously.

"Okay, let's see if we can figure out what happened to Lucy's four kids." The flyleaf provided the following information: One son died in 1918. "France" was the notation, making him a World War I casualty.

A daughter died in 1919. "Influenza." A cross-reference in the Picayune revealed that seventy-three residents of Moose County died in that post-war epidemic, including two doctors who' 'worked until they dropped."

Two children, Benjamin and Margaret, survived to carry on the family lineage, but only Benjamin could carry on the family name. Qwilleran traced his line first, and what he found had him pounding the table with the excitement of discovery. Benjamin Bosworth had three children. One of them, named Henry, died in 1945. "Navy-drowned at sea" was his grandmother's notation. Henry's widow moved to Pittsburgh in 1956, taking her son. The boy had suffered an accident in 1955, and the Picayune file elucidated in its usual terse style: "A farmhand employed by the Trevelyan Orchard fired a shotgun to deter youths from robbing the apple trees Wednesday night, resulting in three scared boys and one broken leg. Vincent Bosworth fell from a tree and sustained a compound fracture."

In obvious glee Qwilleran pounded the table and said, "Well, Koko, what do you deduce from that?"

The cat shuffled his feet self-consciously and made no comment.

"I'll tell you what I deduce! Vincent Bosworth, still suffering from a badly repaired fracture-not polio!-returns from Pittsburgh after many years with his name changed. Why did he come back? And why did he change his name? And why does he blame his limp on polio? Vince is the great-grandson of Luther and Lucy!"

Qwilleran was so elated that he had to get out of the house and walk. He took two turns around the grounds, taking care not to shuffle his feet through the fallen leaves. The damp earth exuded a heady aroma; the garden club's rust and gold mums were still blooming stubbornly; a barn-cat was sunning on the grassy ramp; there was no sign of Boswell and his van. Altogether it was a pleasant day.