"How are the rehearsals progressing?" Qwilleran asked.
"Situation normal," said the director. "Larry is allergic to green makeup... The prop girl has eloped, and we can't find any of the props... The stage manager broke his thumb. And the donkey head hasn't arrived from Down Below."
"Hee-haw! Hee-haw!" Derek put in for dramatic effect.
Yum Yum scooted up the ramp and looked down from the second balcony, but Koko merely wiggled his ears.
"When is the first dress rehearsal?"
"Monday. The tickets are selling very well. We may not have a show, but we'll have an audience."
"How many intermissions?"
"One. We're cutting after Bottom and Titania are bewitched. It sends the audience out smiling and brings them back ready for more." "Hey! What are those ducks up there?" Derek asked, pointing to the top of the fireplace cube.
Qwilleran said, "From left to right: Quack, Whistle, and Squawk. They're hand- carved decoys that Polly brought from Oregon. Actually, left to right, they're a merganser, a pintail, and a lesser scaup."
Derek tried quacking, whistling, and squawking like a duck before the conversation returned to community theatre: its problems, calamities, and embarrassments.
"Like the time we were doing a romantic costume play," Fran recalled. "Hoop skirts, powdered wigs, and satin breeches! The female lead was in a car crash on opening night, and Larry had to do her whole part, reading from the book, wearing a beard and tattered jeans. Talk about embarrassing! To the audience it was high comedy. They loved it!"
Then Qwilleran remembered, "In my first stage experience, I played the butler and dropped a silver tray with a whole tea service - crash! I felt like cutting my throat with the butter knife."
"The worst thing," Derek said, "is when somebody forgets his lines - freezes - goes blank! For some reason the audience stares at you! And you're standing there with egg on your face."
At that moment, Qwilleran, who was keeping an eye on Koko and the cheese, saw the cat approach the pyramid and cautiously step into.. the so-called electromagnetic field. When he reached the exact center, the hair on his back stood on end! His tail puffed up like a porcupine! Then the lights went out.
"Don't move," Qwilleran warned his guests. "Stay where you are till I find the flashlights." He groped his way to the kitchen, while the others said, "What happened?... There's no storm... Transformer blew, somewhere in the neighborhood, maybe..."
Qwilleran announced that everything was out: refrigerator, electric clock, everything. He distributed flashlights and asked Derek to go to the top balcony and check for lights on Main Street. "If we're the only ones affected, I'll call the power company."
Soon Derek shouted down to the main floor, "The whole county's without power! It's blacked out in every direction."
"We'd better go home," Fran said.
Qwilleran accompanied them to their vehicles and collected the flashlights after they had turned on their headlights. On the way to the parking area, Fran grabbed his arm and said in a low voice, "They found the girl."
"What girl?"
"Trevelyan's secretary, but not him."
"How do you know?"
"My mother got it from Dad when he came off his shift. The girl was in Texas, but not hiding out - just driving around to the mall and the hair-dresser as if nothing had happened."
"Did they pick her up?"
"Not yet. They're checking out her story - that she was fired two weeks before the surprise audit, which she claims to know nothing about."
Qwilleran said, "That sounds like a well-rehearsed explanation. She was on the Party Train with her boss on the day of the audit."
"Well, according to her story, the management had fired her with two weeks' notice. The train ride was her farewell party. After that, she drove to her home state, alone. One thing she volunteered: Her boss always talked about Alaska and might have gone there."
Or Switzerland, Qwilleran thought. Floyd must have known an audit would be inevitable, but how would he know the timing? And then he thought, The person who tipped him off to leave town may have been the one who blew the whistle. It was improbable, but not impossible.
When Qwilleran returned to the barn, he made a cursory search for the Siamese, flashing his battery-operated lantern to left and right. To his surprise, Koko was still in the pyramid, sitting in dead center, looking as large as a raccoon.
"Koko! Get out of that thing!" There was no response.
He likes it, Qwilleran decided. He's getting a treatment.
Then he yelled the word that always got results: "Treat!"
Yum Yum's paws could be heard pelting down the ramp. As for Koko, he stepped calmly out of the pyramid and shook himself until he returned to his normal size and shape. One thing disturbed Qwilleran: the instant that Koko left the center of the pyramid, the lights came on, and the refrigerator started humming. There was a glow above the trees to the west: the lights of Main Street.
Whether his suspicions were right or wrong, Qwilleran immediately went to work with the screwdriver, disassembling the pyramid. He carried the poles gingerly from the barn and pitched them into the jungly remains of the orchard.
"Whoo-hoo-hoo... hoo-hoo," flashed a message from Marconi.
"Same to you!" Qwilleran shouted.
-10-
The morning after the blackout, Qwilleran regretted his impulsive dumping of the pyramid" poles. Was the power failure a coincidence or not? With some experimentation he might be able to write a column about it, if Koko would cooperate. The cat never liked to do anything unless it was his own idea, and any attempt to deposit him bodily in the cagelike contraption would be thwarted by a whirlwind of squirming, kicking, spitting, and snarling. Then... the morning newscast on WPKX affected Qwilleran's decision:
"Police are investigating last night's homicide at the Trackside Tavern in Sawdust City. James Henry Ducker, twenty- four, of Chipmunk Township, was the victim of a knifing during a power failure, while soccer fans held a post- game celebration. The Moose County Electric Cooperative is unable to explain the power outage that blacked out the entire county between eleven-thirty and eleven forty-five. There was no equipment failure, according to a spokesman for the co-op. No storm conditions or high winds were recorded by the WPKX meteorology department. An inquiry is continuing."
The murder changed Qwilleran's thinking entirely. If he even hinted at his conjecture in print, the national media - always hungry for bizarre news from the boondocks - would pounce on it. TV crews and news teams from Down Below would descend on Moose County, and the family of James Henry Ducker would sue Koko for three billion. Forget it! he told himself.
As for the victim, residents of Chipmunk were subject to mayhem, and post-game soccer celebrations were notoriously violent, especially in Mudville, which was known for its roister-doister taverns. Qwilleran could imagine the yelling, table banging, brawling, and bottle smashing prompted by the total darkness. In the resulting bedlam someone could empty a semiautomatic without being heard.
Bedlam was the order of the day as he prepared breakfast for the Siamese. "Feeding time at the zoo!" he shouted above the cacophany of yowls and shrieks. "Let's hear it for Alaska smoked salmon!" he exhorted in his Carnegie Hall voice. "Smoked over alderwood fires! Age-old process!" He was reading from the can, and the louder he projected, the louder they howled. All three of them enjoyed exercising their lungs. On such a day, when the atmosphere was clear and the windows were open, the din could be heard as far as the theatre parking lot. For his own breakfast Qwilleran walked downtown to Lois's Luncheonette and stopped at the library on the way back, to visit with Polly in her fishbowl of an office on the mezzanine.