On this summer evening he watched and waited, while Qwilleran listened to the tape of Derek's interview; to make an eight-inch think-piece out of it would require all his fictive skills. Only once was Koko lured away from the window, and that was when Derek roared like a lion.
A run-through without the book was always a long rehearsal, and it was dark when Qwilleran's guests arrived. As soon as the car headlights came bobbing along the wooded road, he floodlighted the exterior of the barn to play up its striking features: a fieldstone foundation ten feet high, three stories of weathered shingle siding, and a series of odd-shaped windows cut in the wall of the octagonal building. Visitors were usually awed.
Qwilleran put on his yellow cap and went to meet the two women, and as he opened the passenger's door Elizabeth stepped out and looked around. "You have an owl," she said. "It sounds like a great horned owl. They hoot in clusters. We had one in our woods on the island, and we used to count the hoots. The pattern varies with the season and the owl's personal agenda."
"Shall we go indoors? I'm thirsty," Fran said impatiently.
The interior was aglow. Indirect lighting accented the balconies and the beams high overhead; downlights created mysterious puddles of light on the main floor; a spotlight focused on a huge tapestry hanging from a balcony railing. Appropriately, the design was an apple tree.
As Fran gazed around in admiration, Elizabeth went looking for the cats.
Fran said, "I've been here a hundred times, and I never cease to marvel at Dennis's genius. His death was a flagrant waste of talent. If he had lived, would he have stayed in the north?"
"I doubt it," Qwilleran said. "His family was in St. Louis."
"I can't find Koko and Yum Yum," Elizabeth complained.
"They're around here somewhere, but we have an abundance of somewhere in this place. Shall we go into the lounge area and have a glass of wine or fruit juice?"
Koko, having heard his name, suddenly appeared from nowhere, followed by Yum Yum, yawning and stretching her dainty hindquarters.
"They remember me from the island!" Elizabeth said with delight, as she dropped to her knees and extended a finger for sniffing.
Fran followed Qwilleran into the kitchen to watch him prepare wine spritzers.
"What did you want to tell me?" he asked quietly.
In a low voice she said, "The police have been questioning Floyd's associates, and they've discovered something that I consider bizarre. Have you heard of the Lockmaster Indemnity Corporation? They were supposed to be private insurers of depositors' funds in the Lumbertown Credit Union, but they're broke! They can't cover the losses!"
"How can that be? Sounds to me as if they're part of the scam."
"I don't know, but they'd transferred their assets to their wives' names. They call it estate planning. Dad calls it dirty pool."
"I'd say your dad is right. If they get away with it," Qwilleran said, "there's something radically wrong in this state!"
As he carried the tray into the lounge area two spritzers and one club soda - Elizabeth rose gracefully from the floor. "We've been having a significant dialogue," she said. "They're glad to see me."
All five of them sat around the large square coffee table, where Qwilleran had placed three small bowls of Kabibbles. There was also a copy of that day's Moose County Something. Fran commented on the in-depth coverage of the scandal, and Qwilleran gloated over the journalistic feat, while Elizabeth listened politely. She was known to have a high I.Q. and an interest in esoteric subjects, as well as a sizable trust fund, but she had no idea what was happening in the world. She avoided reading newspapers, finding them too depressing.
After a few minutes the host steered the conversation to her realm of interest. He said, "I hear you're working on costumes for the play. What do you have in mind for the fairies?"
"We call them greenies," she replied, "and the assumption is that they come from outer space. We know, of course, that extraterrestrials have been visiting our planet for thousands of years."
"I see," he said. "For our production they'll wear green leotards and tights, green wigs, and green makeup. We have to get parental approval for the young people to wear green makeup. The effect will be surreal, and Fran is coaching them in body movements that will make them appear amiable and slightly comic."
"How about the king and queen of the... greenies? Oberon and Titania usually wear something regal."
"They'll have glitter: green foil jumpsuits with swirling capes of some gossamer material - and fantastic headdresses. I really love this play," she said with eyes dancing.
Qwilleran remembered how dull her eyes had been when he first met her on the island.
Moose County - or Derek - had a salutary effect. "Do you have a favorite character? If you were to play a role, what would you choose?"
He expected her to choose Titania in green foil. Her reply was prompt. "Hermia."
"Yow!" said Koko, whose ears were receiving the conversation even while his nose was tracking the Kabibbles.
"I can relate to her parent problem," Elizabeth explained, "although in my case it was my mother who insisted on ordering my life."
Fran said, "We'd have the greenies arriving in a spacecraft, if it were feasible, but we don't have the stage machinery. Larry thinks they should appear in puffs of stage smoke. Pickax audiences love stage smoke. But I'd like to see something more high-tech. Elizabeth has an idea, but I can't figure out the logistics. Tell Qwill about your pyramids, Elizabeth."
She turned to Qwilleran. "Do you know about pyramid power?"
"I've read about it - quite a long time ago."
"It's nothing new. It dates back thousands of years, and my father really believed in it. He had little pyramids built for my brothers and me, and we were supposed to sit in them to make wonderful things happen. I thought it was magic, but my mother said it was subversive. She had them destroyed after Father died." Her voice drifted off in a mist of nostalgia and regret.
Fran said, "Wally Toddwhistle can build us a portable see-through pyramid out of poles. For a scene change we'd black out the house briefly, and when the stage lights came on, there'd be a pyramid in the forest. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the poles could be neon tubes?"
Qwilleran questioned whether the audience would understand the magical implications of such a pyramid, and Fran said it would be explained in the playbill.
"How many playgoers read the program notes?" he asked. "Most of them are more interested in the ads for Otto's Tasty Eats and Gippel's Garage. That's been my observation based on preshow chitchat. How does Larry feel about it?"
"He thinks it'll clutter the stage without contributing dramatically, but we haven't given up yet, have we, Elizabeth?"
Qwilleran offered to refresh their drinks, but Fran said it was time to leave. On the way out, she handed him a black felt-tip pen. "Where did you find this?" he asked.
"On the floor near the coffee table." "Yum Yum's at it again! She's an incorrigible cat burglar." He returned the pen to a pewter mug on the telephone table and escorted the women to their car, first putting on his yellow-cap. When they had driven away, he walked around the barn a few times, reluctant to go indoors on this perfect midsummer night. With a little suspension of disbelief one could imagine Puck and the other greenies materializing from the woods in a puff of smoke... A high- pitched yowl from the kitchen window reminded him that he was neglecting his duty.
"Treat!" he announced as he opened the kitchen door.
Yum Yum responded immediately, but... where was Koko? When he failed to report for food, there was cause for alarm. Qwilleran went in search and found him on the large square coffee table - not eating the Kabibbles, not playing with the wooden train whistle, not sniffing the book on the Panama Canal. He was sitting on the Moose County Something with its front-page treatment of the Mudville scandal and two-column photo of the president. It was the same as the portrait hanging in the lobby of the Lumbertown Credit Union.