The Cat Who Talked to Ghosts (24 page)

"I didn't see anyone from Pickax. If they were there, they were all at the track. The races are on this week. Now we must pack our luggage and go home."

Qwilleran produced Bootsie's basket, litterbox, brush, and carrier with alacrity.

"Say goodbye to Uncle Qwill, Bootsie,," said Polly, lifting the kitten's thin foreleg and waving the floppy brown paw. "Look at that lovely paw—just like a beautiful brown flower. Do you think I should clip his claws?"

"Don't do anything rash," said Qwilleran. When they had left, he heaved a sigh of relief, and the Siamese walked around, stretching. The three of them enjoyed a peaceful dinner of chicken cordon bleu from the freezer, and at dusk they settled down in the parlor for some music—the cats on the blue wing chair and Qwilleran on the brown lounge chair opposite, a mug of coffee in his hand. Both telephone bells had been turned off. No matter what the crisis or emergency he was determined to hear Polly's opera cassette without interruption.

As the first three acts unreeled he realized he was actually enjoying this music. Whatever sardonic remarks about opera he had made in the past, he was willing to rescind. The Siamese were listening, too, possibly hearing notes and nuances that escaped his ear. He was following the English libretto, and the suspense was mounting in the fourth act. During the poignant "Willow Song" Desdemona cried, "Hark! I hear a wailing! Hush! Who is knocking at that door?" And Emilia replied, "It is the wind."

At that precise moment a rumbling growl came from the depths of Koko's chest. He jumped to the floor and ran into the hall. A moment later there was a frantic pounding at the front door, the brass knocker clanging and fists beating the door panels.

Qwilleran rushed to open it.

“Help me find Baby!” screamed Verona, wild-eyed with anxiety and gasping for breath. "She got out! Maybe the barn!"

He grabbed a jacket and the battery-operated lantern, and they ran across the barnyard. A mercury-vapor lamp on a high pole flooded the entire yard, but Verona had run all the way down the lane without a flashlight. She had forgotten it in her panic.

"How long has she been gone?" Qwilleran shouted.

"I don't know." She was short of breath. "Where's Vince?"

"Not home yet."

They raced up the grassy ramp to the eye of the needle. "Step inside, but don't go any farther," Qwilleran ordered. "It's dark in there. Too many obstacles. Call her name.”

"Baby! Baby!" Verona called in a terrified voice.

"Louder!"

She started forward.

"Stay back! And I mean it! Call her name!"

"Ba-aby! Ba-aby!"

Qwilleran flashed his light up and down the straw-covered aisles between the crates and presses. There was no movement except for a barn cat darting to cover. In one comer of the barn an industrial palette was leaning against the wall. Qwilleran had seen this wooden platform on his previous visit, flat on the floor, and he had wondered if Boswell used a forklift. Now it was leaning against the wall.

"Stay where you are!" he warned Verona as he went to investigate. "Don't stop calling."

The up-ended palette had been covering a square opening in the threshing floor, and a ladder led down into the stable. Qwilleran flashed his light down the hole and saw a green pail. He climbed down the ladder and quickly up again.

  Putting his arm around Verona he said, "Come back to the house. We have to call the ambulance."

"She's hurt! Where is she? I've got to see her!"

"You can't. Wait till the ambulance comes."

Verona fainted.

Qwilleran carried her back to the apartment and placed her on the bed, where she lay-awake but motionless and staring at the ceiling. He covered her with a blanket and elevated her feet, then called the emergency number and Dr. Halifax.

"Doc, I've got a mother and child here. The baby's unconscious," he said. "I think the mother's in shock. I've called the ambulance. What should I do in the meantime?"

"Keep them both warm. Have the ambulance bring them both to the Pickax hospital. I'll be there. What's the name?"

"Boswell. Verona Boswell."

"Don't know the name. That's not a Moose County name."

The paramedics put Baby on a stretcher and told the sheriff's deputy who was standing by, "Looks like she fell down a ladder and landed on the stable floor. Stone floor. Possible broken neck, looks like."

Such a puny neck, Qwilleran thought. Hardly bigger than Koko's.

After Verona had been carried out on a stretcher, Qwilleran went to the barn again with his lantern and flashed it down into the stable. The green pail was still there. He closed the eye of the needle and returned to the museum. As soon as he opened the apartment door, something whizzed past his feet and disappeared around the comer of the house faster than the eye could discern. He dashed off in pursuit, bellowing, "Koko! Come back here!"

The cat was headed for the barn at a speed four times faster than Qwilleran's fifty-yard dash. Clearing the ramp in two leaps Koko disappeared through the cat-hatch as if he had been a barncat in one of his other lives. Qwilleran swung the great doors open to take advantage of the light-pole and called his name.

A twinge on his upper lip told him that Koko would leap down the ladder. Qwilleran followed. The stable was a low-ceilinged, stone-floored room with more crates and more presses and more straw. He flashed the light around the stalls and listened intently until he heard a familiar rumbling growl ascending the scale and ending in a shriek. He traced it to the far end of the stable, near the back doors where the horses and cows would have been led into their stalls. Koko was there, hovering over something wedged between two crates—a litter of squirming newborn kittens and a mother cat, bedded down on a piece of soiled cloth.

Qwilleran seized Koko about the middle, and the cat seemed quite willing to be seized. As they headed for the ladder he almost tripped over the crowbar that Boswell used to open crates. He flashed his lantern around the floor. In one corner a pile of straw was hollowed as if someone had slept there. He saw beer cans and empty cigarette packs. That fool Boswell! Qwilleran thought. Goofing off and smoking in a bed of dry straw!

The cat under his arm was wriggling to get free, and he let him go. With his nose to the floor Koko followed a scent that led him into the pile of straw, led him to a bundle of something rolled to make a pillow, led him to a patch of dried blood on the pillow and the straw. The bundle was the same dark green Qwilleran had seen on the Willoway, stenciled LOCKMASTER COUNTY JAIL.

Clutching Koko and the lantern Qwilleran hurried back to the apartment and made three phone calls: first to the night desk of the Moose County Something, then to the sheriff's department, and finally to the president of the Historical Society.

-19-

THE EARLY-MORNING newscast on WPKX included this announcement: “A suspect in the bludgeoning murder of Brent Waffle is being sought by police in several northern counties following the discovery of incriminating evidence and the suspect's disappearance from the area. According to the sheriff's department, the name of the suspect will not be released until he is apprehended and charged."

There followed brief reports on a three-car accident at the blinker in downtown Kennebeck and a controversy at the Pickax city council meeting regarding a Halloween curfew. The newscast ended with the following: “A two-and-a-half-year-old child fell and was seriously injured on the property of the Goodwinter Farmhouse Museum last evening. A trapdoor in the barn floor was left uncovered, and the child fell to the stone-paved floor of the stable below."

After that eye-opening news hit the airways, Qwilleran received phone calls from all the usual operators on the local grapevine, one of the first being Mr. O'Dell, the white-haired janitor who serviced Qwilleran's apartment in Pickax. He said, "It's the windows I'm thinkin' of washin' if you'll be comin' back to the city soon."

"I have no immediate plans," Qwilleran said. "I promised to stay here until they find a new manager."

"A pity it is, what's happen in , out there," said Mr. O'Dell. "First Mrs. Cobb, a good woman, God rest her soul! And herself barely cold in her grave when the little one, innocent as a lamb, fell. Sure an' it's a black cloud that hangs over the Goodwinter farm, an' I'm givin' you some advice if you've a mind to take it. No good will come of it if you take it into your head to stay there. The divil is up to tricks for eighty or ninety year since, I'm thinkin'."

"I appreciate your advice, Mr. O'Dell," said Qwilleran. "I'll give it some serious thought."

"An' shall I be washin' the windows?"

"Yes, go ahead and wash the windows." Qwilleran was in no hurry to move back to Pickax, devil or no devil, but he knew it would relieve Mr. O'Dell's mind if the windows were clean.

Arch Riker had other ideas. "Why don't you move back to town and stop playing detective?" the publisher said. "Readers are complaining. They expect to see the 'Qwill Pen' on certain days."

"It's been nothing but emergencies, obstacles, and distractions for the last two weeks," Qwilleran said. "I was all set to write a goat column when the herd was poisoned and the front page got the story. I was planning to do a piece on the antique printing presses, but the so-called expert has left town and will wind up in prison."

"Excuses, excuses! Find an old-timer and rip off some memoirs for Monday," Riker suggested. "Do it the easy way until you get back on the track."

Taking the publisher's suggestion and Mitch Ogilvie's tip, Qwilleran called the Senior Care Facility in Pickax and asked to interview Adam Dingleberry. The nurse in charge recommended a late-morning visit, since the old gentleman was always drowsy after lunch, and she specified a time limit of thirty minutes for the nonagenarian, by doctor's orders.

Arriving at the Facility, Qwilleran found the lobby bright with canaries—those yellow-smocked volunteers wearing "We Care" lapel buttons. They were fluttering about, greeting visitors, wheeling patients, tucking in lap blankets, adjusting shawls, smiling sweetly, and showing that they cared, whether the patients were paying guests like Adam Dingleberry or indigent wards of the county. There was no hint that the cheerfully modern building was descended from the County Poor Farm.

One of the canaries ushered Qwilleran into the reading room, a quiet place equipped with large-print books and cleverly adjustable reading lamps. He had been there on previous occasions to conduct interviews and had never seen anyone reading. Patients who were not confined to their beds were in the lounge, watching television.

"He's a little hard of hearing," said the canary who wheeled the elderly mortician into the room, a wizened little man who had once been the tallest boy in school and a holy terror, according to Homer Tibbitt.

The volunteer took a seat apart from them, near the door, and Qwilleran said in a loud, clear voice, "We've never met, Mr. Dingleberry, but I've seen you at meetings of the old-timers, and Homer Tibbitt tells me he went to school with you."

"Homer, eh? He were younger than me in school. Still is. He's only ninety-four. I'm ninety-eight. How old are you?" His voice had the same high pitch as Homer's, and it cracked on every tenth word.

"I'm embarrassed to say," Qwilleran replied, "that I'm only fifty."

"Fifty, eh? You have to walk around on your own legs. When you're my age, you get trundled around everywhere."

"That gives me something to look forward to."

In spite of his shrunken form and leathery wrinkles, Adam Dingleberry had sharp bird-like eyes that darted as fast as his mind. "The city fathers are tryin' to outlaw Halloween," he said, taking the lead in the conversation. "In the old days we used to wax windows and knock over outhouses till hell-won't-have-it. One year we bricked up the schoolhouse door."

Qwilleran said, "May I turn on my machine and tape some of this?" He placed the recorder on the table between them, and the following conversation was preserved for posterity:

The museum has a deskfrom the Black Creek School, carved with initials. Would any of them be yours?

Nope. I always carved somebody else's initials. Never finished the grades. They kicked me out for smearin' the teacher's chair with cow dung. My paw give me a whuppin' but it were worth it.

Is it a fact that the Dingleberry family has been in the funeral business for more than a hundred years?

Yup. My grampaw come from the Old Country to build shafthouses for the mines. Built coffins, too. When some poor soul died, Grampaw stayed up all night whittlin' a coffin-tailor-made to fit. Coffins warn't like we have now. They was wide at the top, narrow at the foot. Makes sense, don't it? It took a heap o' skill to mitre the joints. Grampaw were mighty proud of his work, and my paw learned coffin-buildin' from him, only Paw started buildin' furniture.

What kind of furniture, Mr. Dingleberry?

Wal, now, he used to build a desk with long legs and a cupboard on top. Sold tons of 'em! The Dingleberry desk, it were called. They was all a bit different: doors, no doors, one drawer, two drawers, false bottom, built-in lockbox, pigeonholes, whatever folks wanted.

Did your father sign his work?

Nope. Folks knowed who built their desk. No sense in puttin' a name on it. Like today, they slap names allover. My grandsons have names on the outside of their shirts! Next thing, they'll be puttin' the Dingleberry name inside the casket!

How did your father become a mortician?

Wal, now, his desk-it were such a good seller, he hired fellas to build 'em and tables and beds and coffins-whatall folks wanted. So Paw opened a furniture store. Gave free funerals to folks that bought coffins. He had a fancy black hearse and black horses with black feathers. Funerals were a sight in them days! When me and my brothers come along—they're all dead now—we opened a reg'lar funeral parlor, all proper and dignified but not high-fallutin', see? Got rid o' the horses when automobiles come in. Folks hated to see 'em go. Then my sons took over, and my grandsons. They went away to school. I never finished.