Nevertheless, the move was always successfully accomplished, and Qwilleran’s household was relocated for another six months.
EIGHTEEN
That night Qwilleran wrote in his private journaclass="underline"
It’s good to get back to the country quiet of the condo. I had Chief Brodie in for a nightcap before leaving, and he said he would keep an eye on the barn. I returned the Ledfield recording to Maggie Sprenkle and had my last nice cup of tea for a while. I’ve decided “nice” is a euphemism for “weak,” bless her soul.
And there was a message from Daisy Babcock on the machine: “Qwill, sorry to bother you but I’ve discovered a disturbing situation at the office, and Fredo said I should ask you to look at it. I don’t want to talk about it on the phone.”
NINETEEN
Unanswered questions always made Qwilleran nervous, and he slept poorly after receiving Daisy’s message. The Siamese slept very well. After living in the round for six months, they gladly adjusted to the straight walls and square corners of the condo. The units were open plan, with bedrooms off the balcony and a two-story wall of glass overlooking the open deck and the creek. In front of the fireplace, two cushiony sofas faced each other across a large cocktail table on a deep shag rug. It would make a good landing pad for an airborne Siamese, dropping in from the balcony railing.
Qwilleran told them to be good, and their innocent expressions convinced him that a naughty impulse never entered their sleek heads.
The distance to downtown Pickax was longer than that from the barn, and so Qwilleran drove, parking behind the auditorium. Walking around to the front of the building, he bowed and saluted to greetings and the usual question: “How’s Koko, Mr. Q?”
When he arrived at Daisy’s office upstairs, the hallway was piled with empty cartons waiting for the trash collection. Her door was open. There were more boxes inside. Daisy was on the phone. She waved him in and pointed to a chair. She was speaking to her husband.
“Fredo, Qwill has arrived, so I’ll talk to you later.”
Qwilleran was reminded of the Box Bank at the Old Manse: cartons, clothing boxes, hatboxes, and shoe boxes.
Daisy’s greeting was “Excuse the mess. Throw something off a chair seat and sit down.” She jumped up and closed the door to the hallway.
“I see you finally moved out,” he said lamely. “It looks as if you raided the Box Bank.”
“I had accumulated so many things—clothing for all seasons, beautiful books that the Ledfields had given me, magazines we subscribed to and couldn’t bear to throw away, and desk drawers full of pens, pencils, cosmetics, all kinds of personal items. The women at the Manse brought me boxes, and I just dumped things in them. It was Alma’s day off, and I wanted to get out to avoid a scene.”
“I can understand,” he murmured.
She handed him a shoe box. “Open this and tell me what you see. Don’t touch.”
He did as told, and asked, “Is it toothpaste?” The fat tube was lying facedown, showing only fine print on the back.
“It’s the missing bee kit! No one else in the Manse had ever had one. Someone must have sneaked it from Libby’s jacket and tossed it into the Box Bank, perhaps expecting to retrieve it later and blame Libby for carelessness. Who knows? Fredo said you’d know what to do.”
“Hand me the phone,” Qwilleran said. “We’ll get George Barter here to look at it. Fingerprints might be the answer.”
He declined coffee and said he wanted to think for a few minutes. Daisy left him alone, and he remembered what he’d heard.
Libby suspected that Nathan’s treasures, being sold for child welfare, were not reaching their intended charity. She wanted to accuse Alma to her face but had been advised not to be hasty. Libby had apparently made the mistake of impetuous youth. She was defending her Uncle Nathan’s wishes, and his memory.
The law office was only a block away, and Barter arrived as Qwilleran was leaving. They saluted and shook their heads in disbelief. Arch Riker had been right: “When there’s too much money floating around, somebody’s going to get greedy.”
Qwilleran went to his parked car to think. Koko was always right—no matter what! The cat had sensed something wrong at the moment of Libby’s death. His gut-wrenching death howl was never mistaken. It meant that someone, somewhere, was the victim of murder. In fact, there were times when Koko sensed it was going to happen before the fact! When Alma visited the barn, Koko tried to frighten her. He tore up her black-and-gold catalog. He staged a scene over the used books that came in a box that originally held a punch bowl sold by Alma. He made a fuss over the pocket-size copy ofThe Portrait of a Lady. Was it because the author was HenryJames ? Not likely, Qwilleran thought, but who knows? And then there was Koko’s reaction to Polly’s accident in Paris—at the Pont d’Alma tunnel.
Qwilleran hoped he would never be asked to state all of this on the witness stand. “They’d put me away,” he said aloud. And yet…
He drove to Lois’s Luncheonette with his New York paper to listen to gossip. Everywhere, there were pedestrians in twos and threes, talking about the scandal; one could tell by their grave expressions.
At Lois’s, the tables were filled. He sat at the counter, ordered coffee and a roll, and buried his head in his paper. From the tables came snatches of comments like:
“Nothing like this ever happened here!”
“They bring people in from Lockmaster, that’s what’s wrong.”
“Nothing’s been proved, but everyone knows.”
“Imagine! It happened in a city museum!”
“Nathan will be turnin’ over in his grave!”
“My daughter-in-law says she has a friend…”
Everyone was talking about the Purple Point Scandal, preferring to associate it with the affluent suburb rather than nature’s useful honeybee. Qwilleran returned home to the Willows and avoided answering the inevitable phone calls. They could be screened by the answering device.
One was from Wetherby Goode: “Qwill, looking forward to theCats show Saturday night. I’ll provide the transportation. The gals will provide the supper. Barbara wants to know if cat food will be appropriate.”
Qwilleran liked Barbara’s sense of humor. When invited in to meet Molasses, he liked her taste in design, too. Replacing Polly’s elderly heirlooms was a roomful of blond modern furniture, accents of chrome, and abstract art. Yet an old paisley shawl with long fringe was draped on a wall above the spinet piano.
Barbara said, “My mother brought that home from India when she was a college student and had it draped over her grand piano all her life. I’d drape it over the spinet, but Molasses is a fringe freak.”
On Saturday night, before driving to the theater for the musical, the Willows foursome gathered at Barbara’s for a light repast.
At the performance, it was the usual happy audience found atCats. The stage was full of furry costumes with tails, and there was a five-piece orchestra in the pit.
Barbara said, “I should have named Molasses Rum Tum Tugger. He will do as he do do, and there’s no doing anything about it.”
Connie cried when Grizabella sang “Memory.”
At intermission Wetherby said he identified with Bustopher Jones, and Qwilleran said Old Deuteronomy would probably write a newspaper column.
And so it went; Qwilleran was pleased with his new neighbors.
They were all exhilarated as they drove home, until they heard the disturbing sound of sirens from speeding fire trucks.
Wetherby phoned the radio station, and the voice that came over the speaker shocked them alclass="underline" “It’s the barn! Your friend’s barn, Joe! Arson!”