There was a stunned silence in the vehicle.
Qwilleran was the first one who spoke. “I’m only thankful that the cats are safe at the condo.”
There were murmurs of agreement from the women. Joe said, “Do you think there’ll be something on TV when we get home? I think we all need a stiff drink.”
Barbara voiced everyone’s opinion when she said that the fire was the work of lawless gangs in Bixby. “They torched the Old Hulk and got away with it because it was of little value, but the barn is known around the world for its architecture and beauty.”
Dr. Connie said, “My friends in Scotland had heard about the barn and asked for snapshots of it.”
Qwilleran said, “The problem is to distinguish between pranksters and criminals. The new wildlife museum consists of two buildings filled with millions of dollars’ worth of mounted animals and art. How do we protect it against these irresponsible marauders? And should we be obliged, in the twenty-first century, to protect our heritage against malicious neighbors?”
It was a solemn foursome that arrived at the Willows.
That night the Siamese sensed his feelings; they slept in his bed.
The next morning, Qwilleran walked downtown to the city hall and climbed the back stairs to the police department. Chief Brodie was at his desk, muttering over a stack of papers.
“Well, Andy,” the newsman said, “it looks as if we’ve had our last friendly nightcap at the barn!”
“Ach!” was the dour reply.
“Were they the Bixby vandals again?”
“There was more to it than that! We’ll talk about it later.” He gave Qwilleran a sour look and waved him away.
Qwilleran walked to the auditorium building and climbed the stairs to Daisy’s office.
“Qwill! You’ll never believe it!” (Daisy still had her contacts at the Old Manse.) “A van with a Lockmaster license plate drove away from the Old Manse last night, loaded with Nathan’s treasures!”
“That’s stealing from a city museum!” Qwilleran said.
Daisy said, “The good part is that Alma went with them! I hope they catch her.”
Back at the Willows, Koko was waiting with that look of catly disapprovaclass="underline" Where have you been? Was the trip necessary? Did you bring me something?
Koko had known from the beginning that Alma was up to no good. Qwilleran gave the cats a snack and then read to them from the bookshelf. They had finishedThe Portrait of a Lady.
In the days that followed the barn burning, there was no such thing as business as usual in Pickax. The jollity of the coffee shops was reduced to a subdued murmur, and shoppers clustered in twos and threes on street corners, putting their heads together in serious conversation. Even the bankers were more serious than usual.
At the supermarket, customers filled their shopping carts hurriedly and left the store without exchanging chitchat. Qwilleran and his friends felt the same vague uneasiness.
TheMoose County Something printed editorials, and preachers addressed the subject from the pulpit.
At home, Qwilleran tried to write a trenchant entry for his private journal and was unsuccessful. Strangely, even Koko stalked around on stiff legs, looking nervously over his shoulder.
Reference was often made to “The Bad Boys of Bixby.” This nebulous group of ill-doers had for years—probably generations—been blamed for anything that went wrong in Moose County. It was a joke and sounded like a showbiz act. A few years ago, one of them had sneaked across the county line and painted pictures on the Pickax city hall wall, after which he was dumb enough to sign his name.
One day while Kip MacDiarmid, editor in chief of theLockmaster Ledger, was lunching with Qwilleran, he claimed to have found what was wrong with Bixby.
“Moira was trying to sell a marmalade cat to a respectable family in Bixby, when she discovered that indoor cats are prohibited by law in that county. Did you ever hear of such a thing? I think that explains their whole problem.”
“Moose County gave the country trees, gold mines, and fish. Lockmaster gave the country politicians, movie stars, and racehorses. Bixby County gave us a pain in the…esophagus!”
TWENTY
Following the fire, the arson was the talk of the town, and Qwilleran’s phone rang constantly as townsfolk called to commiserate. They meant well, but—in self-defense—Qwilleran stopped answering and let the message service take over.
He welcomed Barbara’s call and phoned her back.
She said, “Qwill, I’ve been meaning to ask you: Could you help me start a private journal like yours? I think it would be rewarding.”
“It would be a pleasure!” he said. “We can have supper at a new restaurant I’ve discovered—if you like to live dangerously!”
She accepted, and he made another convert to his favorite hobby. He took two of his filled notebooks as examples—plus a new one to get her started.
After being seated, Qwilleran told Barbara that the restaurant had been started by a member of the Senior Health Club and younger members of her family. It was named the Magic Pebble as a joke, because it was across the highway from the Boulder House Inn.
He said, “The latter, as you know, is the grotesque pile of boulders as big as bathtubs, which has been famous since Prohibition days.”
Qwilleran handed Barbara a flat stone. “Do you know what this is?” Without waiting for a reply, he said, “There’s a creek that comes rushing out of the hills into the lake near the Boulder House. The creek bed is filled with pebbles as big as baseballs, but at one point the water swirls them around and flattens them out mysteriously. The natives call them magic pebbles. If you hold one of the flat stones between your palms—and think—you get answers to problems. Even Koko reacts to a magic pebble. He sniffs it, and his nose twitches. Who knows what ideas are forming in his little head?”
During their conference he told her, “I don’t recommend typed pages in a loose-leaf binder. There is something inspiring about the primitive challenge of handwriting in an old-fashioned notebook.”
Barbara said, “I’m going to dedicate my journal to Molasses on the front page. Whenever I’m sitting in a chair and thinking, he jumps onto the back of the chair and tickles my neck with his whiskers. I sign my entries B.H. I have a middle name, but it begins with A and BAH doesn’t make a good monogram. When I was in school, the kids called me Bah Humbug.”
Barbara complimented Qwilleran on his Friday column, in which he had urged parents to be more careful in naming their offspring. He often thought parents naming their newborns should consider what the baby’s monogram would be. He had gone to school with a nice girl named Catherine Williams, but her parents gave her the middle name of her aunt Olive, and she grew up being kidded about her initials. Also, he knew a Pete Greene whose middle name was Ivan, a fact his friends never let him forget.
Qwilleran liked Barbara’s conversation, and they discussed numerous topics.
Barbara asked, “Are you writing another book, Qwill?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact. On the subject of rhyme and rhythm. I’ve been writing humorous verse since the age of nine. We had a fourth-grade teacher that no one liked. I wrote a two-line jingle about her that got me in trouble.”
He recited: “‘Old Miss Grumpy is flat as a pie. Never had a boyfriend, and we know why.’”
“That was precocious for a fourth-grader,” Barbara said.
“I had heard grown-ups talking about her, but I got all the blame. Actually, it solved a problem. The kids went to her class smiling, and Miss Grumpy was less grumpy. Yours truly got reprimanded at school and at home, but I discovered the value of humorous verse. Now I specialize in limericks. There’s something about the “aa-bb-a” rhyme scheme and the long and short lines that can only be described as saucy. Its appeal is universal. I know a newspaper editor who carries one around in his pocket. He says he reads it whenever he needs a boost. And cats love limericks. I tested my theory on them. They don’t even speak the language, but they respond to the lilt of the rhythm and to the repetition in rhymed words.”