There was another crack of thunder and bolt of lightning directly overhead. "Come on upstairs, Koko," said Qwilleran. "We're having a read. Book! Book!"
The cat ignored the invitation and went on sniffing, pawing, and muttering.
That's when Qwilleran clapped a hand over his moustache. He was beginning to feel a disturbance on his upper lip. Koko never pursued a mission with such singleminded purpose unless there was good reason. The serpentine base of the desk was built down to the floor, so there could be nothing underneath it. That meant that Koko had found something behind it!
Confident that the furniture was in two sections, Qwilleran threw his arms around the bookcase deck and lifted it off, setting it down carefully on the floor. Immediately he realized the object of Koko's quest. The bookcase had concealed the upper half of a door in the wall.
"Of course!" he said aloud, slapping his forehead with the flat of his palm. "What a blockhead!" On his walks around the veranda he had been vaguely aware of a discrepancy in the fenestration on the south side of the building. There were eight windows. Yet, when one was in the living room, there were only six. With other matters on his mind he had failed to make a connection, but Koko knew there was another room back there!
A cat can't stand a closed door, Qwilleran thought; he always wants to be on the other side of it. There was no need to try the large key; he was sure it would fit the lock. But first he had to slide the desk away from the wall. Even after removing the drawers he found it remarkably heavy. It was solid walnut, built the way they built them a hundred years ago.
Koko was prancing back and forth in excitement, and Yum Yum was a bemused spectator.
"Okay, here goes!" Qwilleran told them as he turned the key and opened the door. Koko rushed into the secret room, and Yum Yum followed at her own queenly pace. It was dark, but the wall switch activated three lights: a desk lamp, a table lamp, and a floor lamp. This was J.J. Hawkinfield's office at home, furnished with a desk, bookshelves, filing cabinets, and other office equipment.
The Siamese had little interest in office equipment. They were both under the long library table, sniffing a mattress that had been stenciled with the letters L-U-C-Y.
"You devil!" Qwilleran said to Koko. "Is that what your performance was all about? Is that why I strained my back moving five hundred pounds of solid walnut?"
Nevertheless, he was standing in the private office of a murdered man. The open shelves were empty except for a single set of law books. An empty safe stood with its door open. There was a computer station with space for a keyboard, monitor, and printer, but its surfaces were bare. On the walls were framed diplomas, awards, and certificates of merit issued to J.J. Hawkinfield throughout the years, as well as family photos.
Having checked the scent on the mattress, Koko was now on the library table, industriously exercising his paws on a large scrapbook. Qwilleran pushed him aside and opened its cover. At that moment there was a thunderous crash overhead, followed by a flash of lightning, and the lights went out. Qwilleran stood in total blackness, darker than anything he had ever experienced.
CHAPTER 7
"Now what do we do?" Qwilleran asked his companions. He stood in the middle of a dead man's office in total darkness, listening to the rain driving against the house. The darkness made no difference to the Siamese, but Qwilleran was completely blind. Never had he experienced a blackout so absolute.
"We can't stay here and wait for the power lines to be repaired, that's obvious," he said as he started to feel his way out of the room. He stumbled over a leather lounge chair and bumped the computer station, and when he stepped on a tail, the resulting screech unnerved him. Sliding his feet across the floor cautiously and groping with hands outstretched, he kicked a piece of furniture that proved to be an ottoman. "Dammit, Koko! Why didn't you find this room before I bought one!" he scolded.
Eventually he located the door into the living room, but that large area was even more difficult to navigate. He had not yet learned the floor plan, although he knew it was booby-trapped with clusters of chairs and tables in mid-room. A flash of violet-blue lightning illuminated the scene for half a second, hardly enough time to focus one's eyes, and then it was darker than before. If one could find the wall, Qwilleran thought, it should be possible to follow it around to the archway leading to the foyer. It was a method that Lori Bamba's elderly cat had used after losing his sight. It may have worked well for old Tinkertom, who was only ten inches high and equipped with extrasensory whiskers, but Qwilleran cracked his knee or bruised his thigh against every chair, chest, and table placed against the wall.
Upon reaching the archway, he knew he had to cross the wide foyer, locate the entrance to the dining room, flounder through it to the kitchen, and then find the emergency candles. A flashlight would have solved the problem, but Qwilleran's was in the glove compartment of his car. He would have had a pocketful of wooden matches if Dr. Melinda Goodwinter had not convinced him to give up his pipe.
"This is absurd," he announced to anyone listening. "We might as well go to bed, if we can find it." The Siamese were abnormally quiet. Groping his way along the foyer wall, he reached the stairs, which he ascended on hands and knees. It seemed the safest course since there were two invisible cats prowling underfoot. Eventually he located his bedroom, pulled off his clothes, bumped his forehead on a bedpost, and crawled between the lace-trimmed sheets.
Lying there in the dark he felt as if he had been in the Potato Mountains for a week, rather than twenty-four hours. At this rate, his three months would be a year and a half, mountain time. By comparison, life in Pickax was slow, uncomplicated, and relaxing. Thinking nostalgically about Moose County and fondly about Polly Duncan and wistfully about the converted apple barn that he called home, Qwilleran dropped off to sleep.
It was about three in the morning that he became aware of a weight on his chest. He opened his eyes. The bedroom lights were glaring, and both cats were hunched on his chest, staring at him. He chased them into their own room, then shuffled sleepily through the house, turning off lights that had been on when the power failed. Three of them were in Hawkinfield's office, and once more he entered the secret room, wondering what it contained to make secrecy so necessary. Curious about the scrapbook that Koko had discovered, he found it to contain clippings from the Spudsboro Gazetteeditorials signed with the initials J.J.H. Qwilleran assumed that Koko had been attracted to the adhesive with which they were mounted, probably rubber cement.
The cat might be addicted to glue, but Qwilleran was addicted to the printed word. At any hour of the day or night he was ready to read. Sitting down under a lamp and propping his feet on the editor's ottoman, he delved into the collection of columns headed "The Editor Draws a Bead."
It was an appropriate choice. Hawkinfield took potshots at Congress, artists, the IRS, the medical profession, drunk drivers, educators, Taters, unions, and the sheriff. The man had an infinite supply of targets. Was he really that sour about everything? Or did he know that inflammatory editorials sold papers? From his editorial throne be railed against Wall Street, welfare programs, Hollywood, insurance companies. He ridiculed environmentalists and advocates of women's rights. Obviously he was a tyrant that many persons would like to assassinate. Even his style was abusive:
"So-called artists and other parasites, holed up in their secret coves on Little Potato and performing God knows what unholy rites, are plotting to sabotage economic growth . . . Mountain squatters, uneducated and unwashed, are dragging their bare feet in mud while presuming to tell the civilized world how to approach the twenty-first century ..."