"All right, we'll playa few innings," Qwilleran said with a sigh. He slapped the book — the starting signal — and Koko dug into the edge with the claws of his left paw.
Qwilleran flipped the pages to the spot Koko indicated — page 1102. "Hummock and hungerly," he read. "Those are easy. Find a couple of hard ones." The cat grabbed again.
"Feed and feeling. Two more points for me." Koko crouched in great excitement and sank his claws.
"May queen and meadow mouse," said Qwilleran, and all at once he remembered that neither he nor Koko had eaten breakfast.
As the man chopped fresh beef for the cat and warmed it in a little canned consomm, he remembered something else: In a recent game Koko had come up with the same page twice. It had happened within the last week. Twice in one game Koko had found sacroiliac and sadism. Qwilleran felt a curious tingling sensation in his moustache.
13
On Monday morning, as Qwilleran and Bunsen drove to Lost Lake Hills to inspect the Noyton house, Qwilleran was unusually quiet. He had not slept well. All night he had dreamed and waked and dreamed again-about interiors decorated in Crunchy Peanut Butter and Rice Pudding, with accents of Lobster and Blackstrap Molasses. And in the morning his mind was plagued by unfinished, unfounded, unfavorable thoughts.
He greatly feared that Cokey was involved in the "practical joke" on the Fluxion, and he didn't want it to be that way; he needed a friend like Cokey. He was haunted, moreover, by the possibility of Tait's complicity in the plot, although his evidence was no more concrete than a disturbance on his upper lip and a peculiar experience with the dictionary. He entertained doubts about Paolo's role in the affair; was he an innocent bystander, clever criminal, accomplice, or tool?
And was Tait's love affair with his jade collection genuine or a well-rehearsed act? Had the man been as devoted to his wife as people seemed to think? Was there, by any chance, another woman in his life? Even the name of the Taits' cat was veiled in ambiguity. Was it Yu or Freya?
Then Qwilleran's thoughts turned to his own cat. Once before, when the crime was murder, Koko had flushed out more clues with his cold wet nose than the Homicide Bureau had unearthed by official investigation. Koko seemed to sense without the formality of cogitation. Instinct, it appeared, bypassed his brain and directed his claws to scratch and his nose to sniff in the right place at the right time. Or was it happenstance? Was it a coincidence that Koko turned the pages of the dictionary to hungerly and feed when breakfast was behind schedule?
Several times on Sunday afternoon Qwilleran had suggested playing the word game, hoping for additional revelations, but the catchwords that Koko turned up were insignificant: oppositional and optimism, cynegetic and cypripedium.
Qwilleran entertained little optimism; and cypripedium, which turned out to be a type of orchid also called lady's- slipper, only reminded him of Cokey's toes wiggling in the luxuriant pile of the goat-hair rug.
Still, Qwilleran's notion about Koko and the dictionary persisted. A tremor ran through Qwilleran's moustache.
Odd Bunsen, at the wheel of the car, asked: "Are you sick or something? You're sitting there shivering and not saying a word." "It's chilly," said Qwilleran. "I should have worn a topcoat." He groped in his pocket for his pipe.
"I brought a raincoat," said Bunsen. "The way the wind's blowing from the northeast, we're going to get a storm.
The trip to Lost Lake Hills took them through the suburbs and into farm country, where the maple trees were beginning to turn yellow. From time to time the photographer gave a friendly toot of the horn and wave of his cigar to people on the side of the road. He saluted a woman cutting grass, two boys on bicycles, an old man at a rural mailbox.
"You have a wide acquaintance in this neck of, the woods," Qwilleran observed.
"Me? I don't know them from Adam," said Bunsen, "but these farmers can use a little excitement. Now they'll spend the whole day figuring who they know that drives a foreign car and smokes cigars." They turned into a country road that showed the artful hand of a landscape designer, and Qwilleran read the directions from a slip of paper. " 'Follow the lakeshore, first fork to the left, turn in at the top of the hill. " "When did you make the arrangements for this boondoggle?" the photographer wanted to know.
"At Lyke's party Saturday night." "I hope they were sober. I don't put any stock in cocktail promises, and this is a long way to drive on a wild-goose chase." "Don't worry. Everything's okay. Natalie wants David to get some credit for decorating the house, and Harry Noyton is hoping our story will help him sell the place. The property's worth a quarter million." "I hope his wife doesn't get a penny of it," Bunsen said. "Any woman who'll give up her kids, the way she did, is a tramp." Qwilleran said: "I got another phone call from Denmark this morning. Noyton wants his mail forwarded to Aarhus.
That's a university town. I wonder what he's doing there." "He sounds like a decent guy. Wouldn't you know he'd get mixed up with a dame like that?" "I don't think you should judge Natalie until you've met her," Qwilleran said. "She's sincere. Not overly bright, but sincere. And I have an idea people take advantage of her gullibility." The house at the end of the winding drive was of complex shape, its pink-brick walls standing at odd angles and its huge roof timbers shooting off in all directions.
"It's a gasser!" said Bunsen. "How do you find the front door?" "Lyke says the house is organic contemporary. It's integrated with the terrain, and the furnishings are integrated with the structure." They rang the doorbell, and while they waited they studied the mosaic murals that flanked the entrance-swirling abstract designs composed of pebbles, colored glass, and copper nails.
"Crazy!" said Bunsen.
They waited a considerable time before ringing the bell again.