The Cat Who Went Underground (23 page)

“Let’s turn the thing upside-down and shake them out,” Bushy suggested.

They tried it, and the down cushion fell out but not the cats.

“I say we should go back and have another drink,” said Bushy. They did, and Koko and Yum Yum remained riveted to their travel coop for the remainder of the evening.

On the way home Qwilleran tuned in WPKX for the eleven o’clock news and heard this: “Police report that the body of a man identified as Ignatius K. Small, itinerant carpenter, was found buried under a lakeside residence east of Mooseville. According to the medical examiner, death was caused by a blow to the head, and the time of death was established as four o’clock Tuesday. The property is owned by the Klingenschoen estate. James Qwilleran of Pickax is currently living there.”

“Dunderheads!” Qwilleran said. “They make me sound like the number-one suspect!”

CHAPTER 17.

AFTER WPKX HAD broadcast the news of the carpenter’s murder every half hour, Qwilleran’s telephone began to ring and he found himself fielding calls from concerned friends and friendly kidders. “No, I didn’t do it, and if I did, do you think I’d tell you?”… “Thanks, but I’m not ready for an attorney yet; go chase an ambulance.” There were crank calls also, but he had learned how to handle those when he worked for big-city newspapers.

While watching the Siamese eat their breakfast, he reconstructed the murder scene from their viewpoint. They were locked in the guestroom with their water dish and commode. For a while they sat on the windowsill and watched the carpenter, Koko probably tapping his tail in unison with the hammer. They had a couple of drinks of water, scratched the gravel in their commode, and catnapped on the guestbed… Perhaps a vehicle of some kind arrived and alerted them – alerted Koko, at any rate. Had he heard that particular motor before? What did he hear next? Voices? An argument? A fight? Did he see anything through the window? Did he hear the door being unlocked? The trap door being opened? After that there were indistinct noises under the floor. Eventually the trap door banged again and the vehicle drove away… Or did the murderer arrive on foot via the beach? That was a possibility… Everything was quiet, and Koko had another drink of water, after which he slept until wakened by the roar of the tornado and the terrifying crash of the east wing. Both cats scuttled under the bed. Later they heard the rain slamming the roof. It was dark, and they were hungry.

That had happened three days ago. Now they were satiated with white meat of tuna and were perched somewhere overhead, communing with their contented innards.

Koko was on the moosehead, while Yum Yum crouched on a crossbeam overlooking the dining table where Qwilleran often did interesting things with typewriter, scissors, and rubber cement. The cats stayed at their posts even when the two state police officers were admitted to the cabin.

This time the red-haired detective from the Pickax post introduced an inspector from Down Below, evidently a homicide specialist. He explained that they needed a little more information. Qwilleran found it unusual that the state would fly a man four hundred miles north to investigate the murder of an itinerant carpenter, while hundreds of murders in the state capital itself went unsolved.

With a cynical huff into his moustache he suspected that the homicide man wanted to get away from city heat for a while and possibly do a little fishing.

“Have a seat,” said Qwilleran, pushing back some of the clutter on the table.

The inspector pulled up a chair, while the local officer remained standing.

After some repetitious preliminaries the inspector asked, “Was Ignatius Small a good carpenter in your estimation, sir?”

“He seemed to know his craft.”

“Was he recommended to you?”

“No. He was an itinerant carpenter and the only one available. There’s a shortage of carpenters in this neck of the woods during the summer months.”

“How did you find him, sir?”

“These underground builders, as they’re called, hang around the bars. A barkeeper sent him over here.”

“Could you describe his personality?”

“He smiled a lot… and accepted orders and suggestions well enough.”

“Did he always carry out orders?”

“To the best of his ability, I would say. He wasn’t a sharp thinker, and he had very little energy.”

“Would you say he was… lazy, sir?”

“If that denotes falling asleep while shingling the roof, yes, you could say he was lazy, or narcoleptic.”

“How did you feel about that, sir?”

Qwilleran thought, He’s fishing; watch your step… To the inspector he said, “I was grateful to find anyone at all to do my work. Beggars can’t be choosy.”

“Did he ever make mistakes?”

“Occasionally, but it was always something that could be corrected.”

“Did he ever cause you to lose your temper?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you ever threaten him physically?”

Qwilleran looked at the detective with expressionless eyes, mournfully lidded.

“Would you elucidate?”

“Did you ever… threaten to… clobber him with a two-by-four?”

Instantly Qwilleran recalled lunch at the FOO with Bushy and Roger. They had been overheard!

At the same moment the telephone rang, and a fur body dropped from the overhead beam, landed on the table, panicked, kicked wildly, scattered papers and pens, flew past the inspector’s head to a nearby bookshelf, leaped to the bar and collided with another fur body that had swooped down from the moosehead, bounced off the sofaback, whizzed past the dining table, skimmed across the chairbacks, and crashed into a lamp. The phone continued to ring. Fur bodies were flying in every direction. Zip! Whoosh! The three men were ducking. Then the ringing stopped, and the two cats came to rest on the sofa, where they engaged in mutual licking of imaginary wounds.

“Sorry,” Qwilleran said. “They were having a catfit.”

“The phone scared them,” said the local officer.

The inspector stood up. “Thank you for your cooperation, sir. We may want to talk to you again.”

When the detectives had left, Qwilleran said to the cats, “You two have never been scared by the telephone in your lives!” He gave them a few crunchy crumbles for a treat.

After starting a blaze in the fireplace to dispel the gloom of an overcast sky and the dampness of two non-stop rainy days, he sprawled on the sofa with a cup of coffee. The Siamese arranged themselves in cozy bundles on the hearth rug nearby – their backs to the warmth and their blue eyes fixed on his face, waiting for conversation.

“The thought occurs to me,” said Qwilleran, stroking his moustache, “that Mooseville might be in the grip of a serial killer – an out-and-out sociopath.”

There was a decisive “YOW!” from Koko.

“Thank you, sir, for your vote of confidence. Unlike you, the chamber of commerce will resist the idea; it’s a bad image for a tourist town. But I suspect the police are on to something. Otherwise, why would they bring in their big guns? There’s plenty for them to do Down Below. It’s my belief that they suspect, as I do, that several isolated incidents up here are actually serial killings.”

“YOW!” said Koko again, showing an unusual interest in the topic.

“Sorry, old boy,” Qwilleran said to him, “one body is enough. You’ll do no more excavating!” He massaged his moustache intently. “Where will they look for suspects? It could be an ordinary individual with a hidden personality disorder who kills and doesn’t even know he’s killing. That’s happened elsewhere. It could be the superintendent of schools; it could be the president of the chamber of commerce! That’s why it’s hard to catch this kind of criminal. I say the police have a tricky job ahead of them. The killer could be someone who’s had a twisted relationship with a specific carpenter and proceeds to transfer his animosity to all carpenters. Or he could be another carpenter – a monomaniac who wants the field all to himself. If this is the case, where was he when I needed a builder?”

Qwilleran got up to refill his coffee mug. The cats remained where they were.

Returning he said, “It’s the logistics of this latest crime that boggle my mind: how to lower the body through the trap door, convey it to the middle of the crawl space without leaving a distinct trail, and bury it under loose sand – all with only two feet of headroom, or less. Of course, Iggy was as thin as a potato chip; he can’t have weighed more than ninety pounds.”

Qwilleran began to massage his moustache vigorously. “Could it be that Iggy was already in the center of the crawl space when he was attacked? Could it be that the killer lured him down there with the story of the Klingenschoen treasure?… Koko, did you hear two voices under the floor? If the answer is yes, tap your tail three times.”

There was not even a whisker stirring on the hearth rug; both cats were having their afternoon nap.

Qwilleran screened the fireplace without disturbing them and drove to Mooseville to pick up his mail and replace certain items confiscated by the police.

In the post office he found the patrons talking about the murder as they licked their stamps and unlocked their boxes, but they quickly changed the subject when he approached. His mail was plentiful – too plentiful, considering that his secretary had gone on vacation. It always happened that way. And now his narrow escape on Three Tree Island would bring another flood of letters from well-wishers, and the publicity on the murder would result in yet another wave of correspondence.

When Qwilleran entered the hardware store he was aware he was being ogled by other customers. To the proprietor he said, “Thanks for turning off the rain, Cecil.” Huggins was president of the chamber of commerce, and he regarded the weather as one of his responsibilities of office.

“Too late!” he said dolefully. “The tourists are leaving in droves, and the fishermen are giving me hell. We haven’t seen the sun for three days… Say,” he added in a lower voice, “is it true what they said on the radio?”

“Sad but true.”

“Murder is bad for business, you know. Even worse than rain. Tourists don’t like the idea of a killer running around loose. How’d the body get underneath your house, Mr. Q?”

“I wish I knew.”

“Are the police bothering you?”

“I daresay they’re bothering everyone.”

“Do they have any suspects?”

Another customer barged into the conversation – a big man in a flashy cowboy outfit and expensive boots. “Hey, are you the fella with a dead body under the floor?” he asked with a pudding-face smile.

“I’m glad to say,” Qwilleran said politely, “that it’s no longer under the floor.”

“How’d it get there?”

“Lou,” said the storekeeper gently, taking the man’s arm, “look over there in the tool department. There’s a new kind of saber saw that we just got in stock. You’ll like it. I’ll give you a five-percent discount as a good customer.”

The big man drifted away to the other side of the store.

The hardwareman shook his head and said to Qwilleran, “He’s a nuisance sometimes, but he spends a lot of money on tools, so I try not to offend him. Sometimes I feel guilty, because I know he never uses them, but a fella with his money is going to spend it on something, so let him spend it on electric saws. That’s what I say. Am I right?”

“It makes sense,” said Qwilleran. “What do you hear about the flooding?”

“Worst ever! The creeks in three counties are dumping into the Ittibittiwassee. It’s flooding farms and washing out bridges. Very bad! They’re announcing on the radio which roads are closed.”

Qwilleran bought a new flashlight and had another key made. “Do you keep a record, Cecil, of people who buy duplicate keys?”

“Not a chance, Mr. Q. With all the records I have to keep for the government, I can’t keep tabs on folks who lose their keys.” The storekeeper accompanied Qwilleran to the door, and when they were beyond earshot of the clerks and customers he said, “There’s something I should tell you, Mr. Q. Certain local folks are talking about you this morning in a way I don’t like. You’re a great guy when you’re giving the K money away, but get a little mud splashed on your trouser cuffs, and they’re ready to trample you in the gutter.”

“Interesting observation,” said Qwilleran, “but I don’t get the point.”

Cecil glanced hastily around the store and whispered, “A certain element around here – troublemakers and not very bright – would like to think you’re the one who killed the carpenter and buried the body. If they don’t know the truth, they invent it, and they like to do mischief.”

Qwilleran took it lightly. “Perhaps I should call Glinko and requisition a bodyguard.”

“If I were you, Mr. Q,” said Cecil, “I’d go back to Pickax until it blows over. There’s something else, too, that’s being whispered: When Clem Cottle was last seen, he was working for you.”

Qwilleran thanked him for his concern and left the store. This, he thought, is a new slant on Mooseville society – an idea for the “Qwill Pen.”

When he arrived at the cabin, however, he momentarily lost his detachment. The interior was a wreck! Cecil’s words flashed into his mind… until he recognized the nature of the damage and identified the culprits. The dining table had been swept clean, except for his typewriter; all the Indian rugs had been pushed into corners, their fringes chewed; Emma Wimsey’s shopping bag was overturned and the contents scattered.

“Bad cats!” Qwilleran bellowed. Yum Yum went slinking under the sofa; Koko leaped from floor to woodbox to mantel to moosehead in a swift, guilty blur of light-and-dark brown. Scolding would accomplish nothing. This was a Siamese protest against the incarceration and neglect of the last few days. Perhaps the cats were even blaming him for the lack of sunshine.

Patiently Qwilleran collected the desktop clutter from the floor. Patiently he straightened the rugs. Patiently he collected Emma’s papers. “I hope you cats know,” he said, “that I’m bucking for sainthood when I do this with such forbearance.”

Half the pens and pencils were missing, but he knew where they were. With a broom from the mudroom he made several swipes under Yum Yum’s favorite sofa and retrieved the following: