Derek had another beer and finished the meatloaf before leaving with some extra money in his pocket. As they stepped out of the cottage, music was coming from Five Pips, and voices could be heard, a male and a female.
"Sounds like another audition," Qwilleran said.
Derek galumphed up the lane, wielding his flashlight and swinging a sack of pears for his fellow roomers.
Qwilleran went back indoors and immediately stepped on something small and hard. At the same time he caught Koko with his paw in the nutbowl.
"No!" he yelled. "Bad cat!" he scolded as he gathered up the nuts scattered on the floor. It was no great loss; they were all hazelnuts, and he considered them a waste of chewing time. The walnuts, pecans, almonds, and cashews were untouched.
"Smart cat!" Qwilleran said, changing his tone. Ko-ko sat up like a kangaroo and laundered a spot on his underside.
CHAPTER 14
When Qwilleran went to breakfast Monda] morning, he first detoured into the office. Lori, of course was busy in the kitchen, and Nick could be heard ham mering nails somewhere, but Jason and Lovey were play ing with toy telephones. The two youngsters sat on thi floor, three feet apart, holding pink, plastic instruments t< their ears.
The three-year-old said, "Are you there?"
"You're supposed to wait till the phone rings and I sa; hello," her brother said.
"Who's this?"
"We're not connected! You didn't dial!"
"How are you?"
"That's not right, Lovey," the exasperated six-year-oli shouted.
"You look very nice today," she said sweetly into th mouthpiece.
Qwilleran interrupted. "Excuse me, Jason. Would you find your father for me?"
"Okefenokee!" The boy scrambled to his feet and disappeared into the family quarters.
Nick soon walked in, wearing his carpenter's apron. "Hi, Qwill! What's up?"
"I've received a report that's somewhat revealing."
"You did? Sit down . . . Jason, take your sister into the other room."
"Okefenokee!"
"Thanks, Nick, but I'm staying only a minute. I want to get into the breakfast room before it closes. Here's what I heard last night: The guests who were poisoned were not eating Cajun chicken, or chicken etouffee, or chicken Creole. They had all ordered chicken gumbo! It seems to me that an extra ingredient went into the pot, accidentally or on purpose."
"You think Don deliberately twisted the truth when he blamed the poultry farm?"
"Or the kitchen didn't give him the true facts. It may be that chefJean-Pierre Pamplemousse, or whatever his name isdidn't want his reputation besmirched. So that's where we stand at the moment." Qwilleran started toward the door but turned back. "Do you know anything about the woman called Noisette, who runs the antique shop?"
"No. She hasn't attended any of Don's business meetings or get-togethers."
"One more question: What happened to the Hardings? I haven't seen them for the last day or so."
"The old gentleman caught cold," Nick said, "and they wanted to get off the island, so I ferried them across yesterday and put them on a plane."
Too bad, Qwilleran thought. They would have enjoyed hearing about the visit to Buckingham Palace, the eccentricities of the royal family, William's antique carriages, and the fate of the peacocks. The vicar would have had his own sly comments to make, and his wife would have rebuked him gently.
For breakfast he had pecan pancakes with homemade sausage patties, followed by brioches filled with creamed chipped beef. The sausages were particularly good, and he attributed their distinctive flavor to fresh herbs from Elizabeth's garden.
There were things Qwilleran wanted to do that day. He wanted to visit the antique shop once again, have a few words with Dwight Somers, and check the post office for a postcard from Oregonall errands that were better done in the afternoon. Before leaving the inn, therefore, he picked up a couple of their Sunday papers from Down Belowto read in the privacy of his screened porch.
It was warm and humid on the porch, and the Siamese had found a cool patch on the concrete slab: Yum Yum lounging like an off-duty sphinx with forelegs fully extended and paws attractively crossed; Koko with hind quarters sitting down and front quarters standing up. His elongated Siamese body made him look like two different cats with a single spine, and the thinking end of the cat was now alert and waiting for something to happen. Suddenly ears pricked, whiskers curled, and nose sniffed. A few moments later Qwilleran caught a whiff of smoke and turned to see June Halliburton approaching through the weeds.
"Don't invite me in. I'm just enjoying a legal smoke," she said, holding a cigarette gracefully in one hand and a saucer in the other. As usual, a limp Panama drooped over her red hair and white complexion. "The esteemed management will have me shot if I smoke indoors or drop live ashes outdoors."
"I agree with the esteemed management," Qwilleran said. "Today's too warm for anything as uncomfortable as a forest fire."
Peering through the screen at the three of them, she said with an arch smile, "What a touching domestic scene! I suppose the demographers have you classified as an untraditional family: one man, two cats."
"One man, two animal companions," he corrected her.
"And how do you like your cottage?"
"The roof doesn't leak, and the refrigerator works," he said. "What more can one ask?"
"My refrigerator is full of ice cubes, so join me for a drink, any time."
"Yow!" said Koko impatiently, his nose twitching.
"No one invited you," she said. Stubbing her cigarette in the saucer, she walked away at a languid pace, and Koko shook himself so vigorously that the flapping of his ears sounded like a rattlesnake. Then he ran indoors and yowled over the domino box.
"Okay," Qwilleran agreed, "but this is a whole new ballgame. We don't add scores any more; we spell words."
Koko watched with near-sighted fascination as the dominoes were randomly scattered over the tabletop. Instead of standing on the chair with forepaws on the table, however, he elected to sit on the dominoes like a hen hatching eggs.
"What's that all about?" Qwilleran demanded. "Are you getting a gut feeling?"
The cat seemed to know what he was doing. Suddenly he rose and, with a grunt, pushed several pieces onto the floor. Quickly and with high anticipation Qwilleran retrieved them: 0-2, 1-3, 3-4, 2-6, and 5-6. By adding the pips on each piece he got 2, 4, 7, 8, and 11, which corresponded to B, D, G, H, and K in the alphabet.
"That won't fly," Qwilleran said in disappointment.
We need vowels, the way we did when we played Scrabble." He asked himself, What does a cat know about fowels? And yet ... Koko could read his mind without understanding his speech.
Either Koko understood, or the next draw was a phenomenal coincidence. It produced 0-1, 0-5, 1-4, 2-3, 4-5, and 3-6, all of which corresponded to the vowels, A, E and L
Qwilleran groaned and pounded his forehead with his fists. It was beyond comprehension, but luckily he had earned to take Koko's actions on faith, and he continued the game. Who would believe, he asked himself, that a grown man in his right mind would participate in such a farce? He took the precaution of drawing the window blind.
After that, Koko's efforts were more to the point. Sometimes he swept pieces off the table with a swift flick of his tail, and from the seven or eight designated dominoes Qwilleran was able to spell words like field, beach, baffle and lake. (It could also be leak.) Unfortunately, the operation was limited to the first twelve letters of the alphabet. Nevertheless, he liked the challenge and kept a record: fable, dice, chalk, chick, cackle. Koko pushed dominoes off the table; Qwilleran translated them into words; Yum Yum sat on her brisket and kibitzed.