The Cat Who Played Brahms (16 page)

"In New Jersey, probably."

There was more to relate: about the library with four thousand leather-bound books, unread; the four closets filled with Aunt Fanny's spectacular wardrobe; the Staffordshire collection in the breakfast room, the envy of three major museums; the Georgian silver in the dining room. . .

"Stop!" Rosemary cried as they approached the turkey farm. "I'll run in and see if they have a dressed turkey. Then I can cook it for you before I leave."

Qwilleran pulled into the farmyard alongside the inevitable blue pickup. "Make it snappy. It's getting close to seven o'clock."

Alongside the row of poultry coops there was a metal shed with a sign on the door: Retail and Wholesale. Someone was moving about inside.

Rosemary ran into the building and in two minutes flat she was out again, carrying a bulbous object in a plastic sack. She looked green. She tossed the bundle into the back seat. "Get me out of here before I throw up! The odor was incredible!"

"No one said a turkey farm is supposed to smell like a rose garden," Qwilleran said.

"You don't need to tell me about barnyards," she said indignantly. "I grew up on a farm. This was something different."

She was unusually quiet until they reached the parking lot of the cabin. "I want to change clothes before they come," she said. "I feel like wearing something red."

Qwilleran handed her the key. "You go in and start changing. I'll bring the bird. I hope it'll fit in the refrigerator."

She hurried toward the cabin and stepped onto the porch. A moment later she screamed. "Rosemary! What is it?" Qwilleran shouted, running after her.

"Look!" she cried, staring toward the locked door. Dangling there was a small animal, hanging by the neck, the rope looped over one of the porch beams.

"Oh my God!" Qwilleran groaned. He felt sick. Then he said in astonishment: "It's a wild rabbit!"

"At first I thought it was Yum Yum."

"So did I."

It was one of the little brown rabbits that gnawed pine cones near the toolshed. It had been shot and then trussed up in a hangman's noose.

Qwilleran said: "You go down to the beach and calm down, Rosemary. I'll take care of this." He wondered: Is this a threat? Or a warning? Or just a prank? Someone had come out of the woods on the crest of the dune—the thicket that the cats were always watching. Anyone approaching the cabin by stealth would come from that direction.

He left the sad bit of fur hanging there and went to the other side of the cabin to let himself in. Koko and Yum Yum came running in a high state of nervous excitement, dashing about without direction or purpose, Koko growling and Yum Yum shrieking. They had seen the prowler from their favorite window. They had heard the shot. They had smelled the presence of the dead animal.

"If only you could talk," Qwilleran said to Koko. A vehicle was chugging over the roller-coaster terrain of the driveway, and he went out to meet the visitors. His face was so solemn that Nick's happy smile faded instantly.

"Is anything wrong, Mr. Qwilleran?"

"Let me show you something unpleasant."

"Oh, no! That's a dirty trick!" Nick exclaimed. "Lori, come and look at this!"

She gasped. "A poor little cottontail! For a moment I thought it was one of your cats, Mr. Qwilleran." Nick advised calling the sheriff. "Where's your phone? I'll call him myself. Don't touch the evidence."

While Nick was phoning, Lori was on her hands and knees, crooning to the disturbed Siamese. Gradually they responded to her soothing voice and even played games with her golden hair, which she was wearing in two long braids tied with blue ribbons. Rosemary served raw vegetables and a yogurt dip, and Qwilleran took orders for drinks. Lori thought she would like a Scotch. "Watch it, kid," her husband warned her, with one hand covering the mouthpiece of the phone. "You know what the doctor told you."

"I'm trying to get pregnant," she explained to Rosemary, "but so far we haven't had anything but kittens." Nick replaced the phone in the kitchen cupboard.

"Okay. The sheriff's coming. And I'll have a bourbon, Mr. Qwilleran."

"Call me Qwill." They sat on the porch and enjoyed the tranquilizing effect of the placid blue lake. Koko, who was not inclined to be a lap cat, jumped onto Lori's lap and went to sleep.

"I'm not sure I want to stay around Mooseville," Qwilleran suddenly announced. "If I leave the cabin, and the cats are sitting on the windowsill, what's to prevent that maniac from taking a shot through the glass? This incident might be a warning. He might come again."

"Or she," said Lori quietly.

Three questioning faces were turned in her direction, and Qwilleran asked: "Do you have a reason for switching genders?"

"I'm only trying to be broadminded."

"I suppose you know everyone at the Top o' the Dunes Club," he said to her.

"My wife knows everyone in the whole postal district," Nick said proudly, "including how many stamps they buy and who gets stuff in plain brown wrappers."

Qwilleran said: "I know the Hanstables and the Dunfields. Who are the others?"

Lori counted on her fingers. "There are three retired couples. And an attorney from Down Below. And a dentist from Pickax. Don't go to him; he's a butcher. Then there are two cottages for sale; they're empty. Another is in probate, and it's being rented to two very good-looking men." She threw a sly glance at her husband. "I think they're professors from somewhere, doing research on shipwrecks. The school superintendent from Pickax lives in the shingled house, and an antiques dealer lives in the one that looks like a boat."

"That fraud!" Nick interjected. "And how about the people who own the FOO?"

"Their place is up for sale. They lost it. The bank owns it now. . . . By the way," she said to Qwilleran, "the homeowners on the dune are worried about the future of this property. Miss Klingenschoen said she might leave it to the county for a park. That would be good for business in Mooseville, but it would hurt property values on the dune. Do you know what your aunt intends to do?"

"She's not my aunt," Qwilleran said, "and I don't know anything about her will, but if the subject ever comes up, I'll know what the local sentiments are." He was pouring the third round of drinks. "It doesn't look as if the sheriff's coming. He probably thinks I'm a nut. I called him about an owl the other night, and last week I reported a dead body in the lake, which everybody seemed to think was a rubber tire."

Nick turned to him abruptly. "Where did you see this body?"

"I was trolling and brought it up on my fishhook." Qwilleran related the story of the Minnie K with relish, appreciating the rapt attention of his listeners.

Nick asked: "What was the date? Do you remember?"

"Last Thursday."

"How about the voices on the other boat? Could you hear them distinctly?"

"Not every word, but well enough to know what was going on. The engine had conked out, and they were arguing about how to fix it, I think. One guy had a high-pitched unmusical voice. The other guy's name was Jack, and he had what I would call a British working-class accent."

Nick glanced at Lori. She nodded. Then he said: "Englishmen are always called Jack up here. It's a custom that started way back in mining days. Last week one of the inmates went over the wall. He was a fellow with a Cockney accent."

Qwilleran looked at him in amazement mixed with triumph. "He was trying to escape to Canada! Someone was ferrying him across—in the fog!"

"They all try it," Nick said. "It's suicide, but they try it. . . . This is off-the-record, Qwill. Everybody knows about the ferry racket, but we don't want it getting in the papers. You know the media. They blow everything up."

"Do many inmates escape?"

"The usual percentage. They never head south. A poor bastard gives a local skipper good money to ferry him to Canada, and when they're a few miles out. . . splash! Just like you said. The water's so cold that a body goes down once and never comes up."

"Incredible!" Qwilleran said. "That's assembly-line murder. Do you think there are many guys working in the racket?"

"Everything points to one skipper, who happens to have a good contact inside. But so far they've never been able to apprehend him."

"Or her," Lori said softly.

"I see," Qwilleran said, smoothing his moustache. "No bodies—no evidence—no trace."

"Frankly," Lori said, "I don't think the authorities are trying very hard to catch anybody."

Nick snapped at her: "Lori, don't shoot off."

"How about the drug problem inside?" Qwilleran asked.

"No more than what they expect. It's impossible to stop the smuggling entirely."

His wife piped up again. "They don't want to stop it. Pot and pills make the inmates easier to control. It's the liquor that causes trouble."

A car door slammed. "That's one of the sheriff's men," Nick said, jumping to his feet. Qwilleran followed.

Lori said to Rosemary: "Don't you just love the hats the deputies wear-with the two little tassels in front? I'd love to have one."

-13-

When the telephone rang, Koko and Yum Yum were sitting on the polar bear rug, washing up after their morning can of crabmeat. Rosemary was in the kitchen, preparing the turkey for the oven. Qwilleran was having his third cup of coffee on the porch when the phone bleated its muffled summons from the kitchen cupboard.

He was trying to organize his wits. The dead rabbit was one more mismatched piece in the Mooseville Puzzle. Nick's revelation about escaped convicts reassured him, however, that he could still tell a human body from an automobile tire. Now it was clear that the ferry racket—and not wreck-looting—was the focus of Buck's do-it-yourself investigation; if one could identify the cold-blooded skipper, it would undoubtedly solve the mystery of Buck's murder. He (or she, as Lori would say) was someone who was used to killing.

Qwilleran had no way of knowing what clues the police had found in the sawdust or what progress they were making in the investigation. At the Daily Fluxion he could count on the police reporter to tip him off, but in Mooseville he was an outsider who registered alarm over a marauding owl or a dead rabbit or a body snagged by a fishhook. One thing was certain: The voice in the fog matched the voice on the cassette. If he could find that voice in Mooseville, he would have useful information for the investigators. Yet, the message on the cassette seemed to have nothing to do with the premeditated drownings.

Rosemary appeared on the porch. "Telephone for you, Qwill. It's Miss Goodwinter."

He thought at once of perfume and dimples, but the pleasurable tremor subsided when he heard the attorney's grave voice.

"Yes, Miss Goodwinter. . . . No, I haven't had the radio turned on. . . . No! How bad? . . . Terrible! I can't believe it! . . . What is being done? . . . Is there anything I can do? . . . Yes, I certainly will. Right away. Where shall we meet? . . . In about an hour." "What's happened?" Rosemary demanded. "Bad news about Aunt Fanny. Sometime last night she fell down a flight of stairs."

"Oh, Qwill! How terrible! Is she. . . She can't have survived. "

He shook his head. "Tom found her at the bottom of the stairs this morning. Poor Aunt Fanny! She was so spirited—had such a youthful outlook. She enjoyed life so much. She never complained about being old."

"And she was so generous. Imagine giving me a Staffordshire pitcher! I'm sure it's valuable."

"Penelope wants me to meet her at the house as soon as possible. There are things to discuss. You don't have to go with me, but I'd appreciate it if you would."

"Of course I'll go with you. I'll put the turkey back in the fridge."

Before leaving for Pickax, Qwilleran latched all the windows and closed the interior shutters so that the cats could not be seen by a prowler. He locked front and back doors to keep them from the screened porches. "I'm sorry to do this to you guys," he said, "but it's the only safe way."

To Rosemary he said: "Who would think such security measures would be necessary in a place like this?

I'm going to move back to the city next week. Now that Aunt Fanny's gone, the cabin might not be available to me anyway. That's probably what the attorney wants to discuss."

"It was too good to be true, wasn't it?" "It would have been ideal—without the complications. But the simple country life is not all that simple. They'll razz me when I show up at the Press Club next week. I'll never live it down."

When they arrived at the stone house in Pickax, Tom was working in the yard, but his head was bowed and he didn't wave his usual eager greeting.

Penelope answered the doorbell, and Qwilleran introduced his houseguest. "This is Rosemary Whiting. We were both stunned by the news."

Rosemary said: "We lunched with her yesterday, and she was so chipper!"

"One would never guess she would be ninety next month," the attorney said.

"Is this where it happened?" Qwilleran pointed to the staircase.

Penelope nodded. "It was a terrible tumble, and she was such a fragile little person. She had been having fainting spells, and Alex and I urged her to move into a smaller place, all on one floor, but we couldn't convince her." She shrugged in defeat. “Would you like a cup of tea? I found some teabags in the kitchen."

Rosemary said: "Let me fix the tea while you two talk."

"Very good of you, Miss Whiting. We'll be in the conservatory."

They went into the room with the French doors and the rubber plants and Aunt Fanny's enormous wicker rocking chair. Qwilleran said: "Fanny called this the sun parlor."

Penelope smiled. "When she moved back here after years on the East Coast, she took great pains to conceal her sophistication. She tried to talk like a little old granny, although we knew she was nothing of the sort. . . . I phoned Alex in Washington this morning, and he told me to contact you, as next of kin. He can't possibly return until Saturday."

"Fanny and I were not related. She was a close friend of my mother's, that's all."

"But she referred to you as her nephew, and she had great affection and admiration for you, Mr. Qwilleran. She has no other relatives, you know." The attorney opened her briefcase. "Our office handled all of Fanny's affairs—even her mail, to protect her from hate mail and begging letters. She deposited a sealed envelope in our file, detailing her last wishes. Here it is. No funeral, no visitation, no public display, just cremation. The Picayune is running a full-page obituary tomorrow, and we plan a memorial service on Saturday."