The Cat Who Sniffed Glue (18 page)

And then she told him something that caused him to wince. "I'm leaving for Chicago Wednesday. A library conference. I'm catching the morning shuttle."
She added a questioning glance. It was customary for him to drive her to the airport, but... he and Fran were also leaving on the Wednesday morning shuttle! He thought fast.
"Wait! I think I heard something!" He jumped out of the car and walked a few paces, stalling for time. Here was a ticklish situation! He and Polly were rediscovering their old camaraderie; they had shared the blanket during the chilly hours before dawn; he had hoped for reconciliation. How would she react to a jaunt to Chicago with her rival? As far as he was concerned, it was a business trip to select furniture. Would Polly accept that explanation graciously? Did Fran - with her "cozy hotel" - contemplate it as a business trip? She had made the hotel and travel reservations and would add the charges to his bill - plus an hourly fee for her professional advice, he surmised.
It was awkward at best. One half of his brain ventured to suggest canceling the trip. The other half of his brain sternly maintained his right to schedule a business trip anywhere, at any time, with anyone.
The sky was beginning to lighten in the east, and he walked back to the car.. "You stay here. I'm going to lookaround," he said. "If they holed up for the night, they'll start getting hungry when the sun rises, and they might come crawling out. Watch for them while I go searching."
"Will the glasses help?" Reaching under the seat, Polly handed him the binoculars she used for birding.
The woods that had been a black, incomprehensible mass in the dark of night were becoming defined: evergreens, giant oaks, undergrowth. He walked along the highway to a spot where five, tall elm trees grew in a straight line perpendicular to the road. They were obviously trees that had been planted many years before, possibly to border a path or sideroad to some old farmhouse long since abandoned. He was right. An unused dirt road, almost overrun with weeds, followed the line of trees. If the Siamese had discovered it the night before, they might have sheltered in the remains of the old farmhouse.
A light breeze rustled the lofty branches of the elms and blew strands of spiderweb across his face. Everything was wet with dew. A faint, rosy glow appeared in the east. He found the site of the house, but it was now only a stone foundation tracing a rectangle among the grasses.
He stopped and called their names, but there was no response. He walked on slowly. Now he was reaching the end of the road. Ahead were the withered trees of a long-neglected orchard, rising in grotesque shapes from a field of weeds. He scanned the orchard with the binoculars, and his heart leaped as he saw a bundle of something on the branch of an old apple tree. He walked closer. The sky was brightening. Yes! The indistinct bundle was a pair of Siamese cats, looking like bookends. They were peering down at the ground, wriggling their haunches as if preparing to leap.
He lowered the field of vision to the base of the tree and his eyes picked up something else, half concealed in the grasses. A ghastly thought flashed through his mind. Could it be a trap? A trap like those that Chad Lanspeak used for foxes? In horror he edged closer. No! It was not a trap. It moved. It was some kind of animal! It was looking up in the tree! The cats were wriggling, ready to jump down!
"Koko!" he yelled. "No! Stay there!"
Both cats jumped, and Qwilleran fled back to the car, shouting to Polly, "I need your car! Radio the sheriff to pick you up! I've found the cats. I'm taking them to the vet!"
"Are they hurt?" she asked in alarm.
"They've had a run-in with a skunk! Don't worry... I'll buy you a new car."
-Scene Eight-
Place: Qwilleran's apartment
Time: The day after the accident on lttibittiwassee Road
QWILLERAN'S car had been towed to the automobile graveyard; Polly's cranberry-red car was at Gippel's garage, being deodorized; the Siamese were spending a few hours at the animal clinic for the same purpose. In his apartment Qwilleran paced the floor, chilled by the realization that they might have been lost forever in the wilderness. They might have suffered a horrible death, and he would never have known their fate. The sheriff's helicopter and the mounted posse and the Boy Scout troop would hardly go searching for those two small bodies. He shuddered with remorse.
It was all my fault, he kept telling himself. He was convinced that it was no drunk driver who ran him off the road; it was someone who was out to get him because he had been asking questions about the murderer of Harley and Belle. Why did he have this compulsion to solve criminal cases? He was a journalist, not an investigator. Yet, he was aware, few journalists accepted their limitations. The profession was teeming with political advisors, economic savants, critics and connoisseurs.
No more amateur sleuthing he promised himself. From now on he would leave criminal investigation to the police. No matter how strong his hunches, no matter how provocative the tingling sensation in the roots of his moustache, he would play it safe. He would interview hobbyists and sheep farmers and old folks in nursing homes, write a chatty column for The Moose County Something, read Moby-Dick aloud to the Siamese, take long walks, eat right, live the safe life.
And then the telephone rang. It was Eddington Smith calling. "I talked to the lawyer, and he said I should check the books against the inventory. You said you'd like to help with the dusting. Do you want to come with me tomorrow?"
Qwilleran hesitated for only the fraction of a moment. What harm would there be in visiting the Fitch library? Everyone said it was an interesting house-virtually a museum.
"You'll have to pick me up," he told the bookseller. "I've wrecked my car." When he turned away from the phone he was finger-combing his moustache in anticipation.
After lunch Mr. O'Dell drove to the clinic in his pickup and brought home two bathed, deodorized, perfumed and sullenly silent Siamese in a cardboard carton punched with airholes. When toe box was opened they climbed out without a glance one way or the other and stole away to their apartment, where they went to sleep.
"A pity it is," said Mr. O'Dell. "The good souls at the clinic were after doin' their best; but sure an' the smell will come back again if the weather turns muggy. It'll just have to wear off, I'm thinkin'... And is there anythin' I can do for you or the little ones, since you're lackin' a car?"
"I'd appreciate it," Qwilleran said, "if you'd go to the hardware store and buy a picnic hamper like the old one that was smashed."
The Siamese slept the sleep that follows a horrendous experience. Every half hour Qwilleran went to their apartment and watched their furry sides pulsating. Their paws would twitch violently as if they were having nightmares. Were they fighting battles? Running for their lives? Being tortured at the animal clinic?
Earlier Fran Brodie had telephoned. "I hear you rolled over last night, Qwill."
"Where did you hear that?"
"On the radio. They said you weren't seriously hurt, though. How are you?"
"Fine, except when I breathe. I get a stitch in my side."
"Now you'll have to drive that limousine you inherited." She enjoyed teasing him about the pretentious vehicle in his garage.
"I got rid of it. It was a gas guzzler and hard to park, and it looked like a hearse. It was only standing in the garage, losing its charge and drying out its tires, while I was paying insurance and registration fees every year. I sold it to the funeral home."
"In that case," Fran said, "we can drive my car to the airport Wednesday. We should leave about eight AM to catch the shuttle to Chicago. I made the hotel reservations for four nights. You'll love the place. Quiet, good restaurant - and that's not all!"
Qwilleran hung up the phone with misgivings. Burdened with other concerns, he had given no thought to this particular dilemma.
Shortly after that, Polly had called to inquire about the cats.
He said, "It's been a blow to their pride. They usually carry their tails proudly, but today they're at half-mast. Gippel is working on your car, Polly, but I want you to have a new one, and I'll drive the red job."
"No, Qwill!" she protested. "That's tremendously kind of you, but you should buy a new car for yourself."
"I insist, Polly. Go over to Gippel's and look at the new models. Pick out a color you like."
"Well, we'll argue about that when I return from Chicago. You can use the 'red job' while I'm away. What time do you want to pick me up Wednesday morning? I'll be staying in town at my sister-in-Iaw's."
Feeling like a coward, he said, "Eight o'clock," Not only had he failed to resolve his dilemma, he had compounded it with his dastardly acquiescence.
-Scene Nine-
Place: The Fitch mansion in West
Middle Hummock
Time: A Tuesday Qwilleran would never forget
WHEN EDDINGTON SMITH'S old station wagon rumbled up to the carriage house Tuesday morning, Qwilleran went downstairs with the new picnic hamper.
"You didn't need to bring any food," the bookseller said. "I brought something for our lunch."
"It's not food," Qwilleran explained. "Koko is in the hamper. I hope you don't object. I thought we could conduct an experiment to see if a cat can sniff out bookworms. If so, it would be a breakthrough for some scientific journal."
"I see," said Eddington with vague comprehension. Those were his last words for the next half hour. He was. one of those intense drivers who are speechless while operating a vehicle. He gripped the wheel with whitened knuckles, leaned forward, and peered ahead in a trance, all the while stretching his lips in a joyless grin.
"My car flipped over in a ditch on Ittibittiwassee Road Sunday night, and it's totaled," Qwilleran said and waited (or a sympathetic comment. There was no reaction from the mesmerized driver, so he continued.
"Fortunately I had my seat belt fastened, and I wasn't hurt except for a lump on my elbow as big as a golf ball and a stitch in my side, but the cats were thrown from the car. They disappeared in the woods. By the time I found them, they'd had an altercation with a skunk, and I had to drive them to the animal clinic. Did you ever spend fifteen minutes with two skunked animals in a car with the windows closed?"
There was no reply. "I didn't dare roll the windows down more than an inch or two, because the cats were loose in the backseat, and I didn't know how wild they'd be after their experience. I couldn't breathe, Edd! I thought of stopping at the hospital for a shot of oxygen. Instead I just stepped on the gas and hoped I wouldn't turn blue."
Even this dramatic account failed to distract
Eddington's concentration from the road.
"When I got home, I took a bath in tomato juice. Mr. O'Dell raided three grocery stores and bought every can they had on the shelf. He had to burn my clothes and the cats' coop. Their commodes were in the car when it flipped, and they rattled around like ice cubes in a cocktail shaker. One of them conked me on the head. I'm still combing gravel out of my hair and moustache."
Qwilleran peered into Eddington's face with concern. He was conscious, but that was all.
"The cats were deodorized at the clinic, but there's no guarantee it'll last. I may have to buy a gallon of Old Spice. I'm trying to keep them downwind."
After a while Qwilleran tired of hearing his own voice, and they drove in funereal silence until they reached the Fitch mansion. Eddington parked the car at the backdoor in a service yard enclosed by a high, stone wall.
If the murderers had parked there, Qwilleran observed, their vehicle would not have been visible from either of the approach roads; on the other hand, if they had stationed a lookout in the vehicle, he could not have seen David and Jill approaching. The lookout may have been patrolling the property with a walkie-talkie, he decided.
Eddington had a key to the back door, which led into a large service hall - the place where Harley's body had been found. Doors opened into the kitchen, laundry, butler's pantry, and servants' dining room. Qwilleran was carrying the wicker hamper; Eddington was carrying a shopping bag, and after groping in its depths he produced a can of soup and two apples and left them on the kitchen table. Then he led the way to the Great Hall.
Although lighted by clerestory windows 30 feet overhead, the hall was a dismal conglomeration of primitive spears and shields, masks, drums, a canoe carved from a log, shrunken heads, and ceremonial costumes covered with dusty feathers. Qwilleran sneezed. "Where is the library?" he asked.
"I'll show you the drawing room and dining room first," Eddington said, opening large, double doors. These rooms were loaded with suits of armor, totem poles, stone dragons, medieval brasses, and stuffed monkeys in playful poses.
"Where are the books?" Qwilleran repeated.
Opening another great door Eddington said, "And this is the smoking room. Harley cleared it out and moved in some of his own things."
Qwilleran noted a ship's figurehead, carved and painted and seven feet tall, an enormous pilot wheel, a mahogany and brass binnacle, and an original print of the 1805 gunboat, signed, and obviously better than his reproduction. There were several sailing trophies. And on the mantel, on shelves and on tables there were model ships in glass cases.
The hamper that Qwilleran was clutching began to bounce and swing.
He said, "Koko is enthusiastic about nautical things. Would it be all right to let him out?"
Eddington nodded his pleasure and approval. " 'Enthusiasm is the fever of reason,' as Victor Hugo said."
It was the liveliest display of spirit that Koko had shown since his ordeal. He hopped out of the hamper and scampered to a two-foot replica of the HMS Bounty, a three-masted ship with intricate rigging and brass figurehead. Then he trotted to a fleet of three small ships: the Ni¤a, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, all under full sail with flags and pennants flying. When he discovered a nineteenth century gunboat with brass cannon, Koko rose on his hind legs, craning his neck and pawing the air.
"Now where's the library?" Qwilleran asked as he returned a protesting cat to the hamper.
It was a two-story room circled by a balcony, with books everywhere. Although there were no windows - and no daylight to damage the fine bindings - there were art-glass chandeliers that made the tooled leather sparkle like gold lace.
"How many of these do we have to dust?" Qwilleran wanted to know.
"I do a few hundred each time. I don't hurry. I enjoy handling them. Books like to be handled."