It occurred to him that Wilson Wix may have been enlisted against his better judgment, and the stress of committing what he knew to be perjury triggered his heart attack. One could not lay the whole blame on caffeine. Qwilleran poured a third cup.
He had a strong urge to visit the Old Buzzard's office once more in search of clues if not answers. The obstacle was the heavy desk concealing the door. Then Dewey Bee-chum arrived to work on the gazebo, and the problem was solved. The dampness of the season had caused his historic hat to grow moss, and his beard was curling and looking wilder than ever.
Qwilleran called to him from the veranda and beckoned him up the steps. "It's hard for me to leave the house," he explained to the carpenter. "I've hurt my ankle. How's the job progressing? It's impossible to see from here."
"Finish up today, like as not. Built the screens in my barn. Aimin' to save time."
"Good idea! I'll be around here all day. Just add up your bill, and I'll write you a check. Do you think we're going to have any flood damage?"
"Iffen it don't stop rainin'."
"We could use a few hours of sunshine and a little breeze to dry things up," said Qwilleran, who had learned the banal art of weatherspeak in Moose County.
Beechum gave a sour look upward, perhaps searching for a black snake in a tree. "Won't git it," he pronounced.
Having disposed of the amenities, Qwilleran explained his problem. The workman nodded and followed him into the house, trudged through the living room without looking to right or left, lifted the bookcase off the base with ease, pulled the desk away from the wall without asking any questions, and returned to his work on the gazebo.
Taters were strong, silent types, Qwilleran reflected. They worked hard, lived long lives, never worried about being overweight, and did a little midnight farming as a hobby.
Koko was delighted to see the office open again. He immediately went in to sniff Lucy's mattress. Yum Yum, on the other hand, was sleeping off her medication on a down-cushioned chair in the living room. It was the one chair that was more comfortable than all the rest, and with true feline instinct she had commandeered it.
There was something in Hawkinfield's office that Qwilleran expressly wished to examine: a family photograph hanging on the wall. Seated in the center of the group was J.J. with his lofty brow and "important" nose, obviously the master of the house. Standing behind him were three bright-looking boys of graduated heights, and on either side were seated a pretty woman with a shy smile and a teenage girl with a sullen pout. She had the Hawkinfield nose and an exaggerated overbite. Was this the Sherry Hawkinfield, Qwilleran wondered, that he had invited to dinner? He could only hope she had improved with age.
Sprawling in J.J.'s lounge chair and propping his ankle on J.J.'s ottoman, he delved into another of the editor's scrapbooks and read attacks on the county animal shelter, Mother's Day, and the high school football coach. It was prose written by a madman with a passion for exclamation points. In one tirade he aimed his barbs at a sheriff who was running for re-election. This candidate, Hawk-infield pointed out, was three months in arrears on his water bill, regularly had his wife's parking tickets voided, and at one time succeeded in hushing up his own felonious bad-check charge. No name was mentioned, but even a stranger in the Potatoes like Qwilleran could guess that it was Uncle Josh Lumpton, who forthwith lost his post to Del Wilbank.
Koko, tired of sniffing Lucy's mattress and the law books on the shelf, suddenly landed on the desktop with whiskers twitching and paws digging. He wanted desperately to get into the center drawer, the shallow one that is usually a catchall. Qwilleran obliged him, having an avid curiosity of his own. In the compartments at the front of the drawer there were pencils, pens, paper clips, rubber bands, a few pennies, three cigarettes in a squashed pack, two large screws, and one stray postage stamp. Koko pounced on the stamp and carried it away to sniff and lick in some dark corner. Now how did that cat know it was there? Qwilleran asked himself.
At the rear of the drawer the miscellaneous papers and file folders included a large yellow legal pad on which Hawkinfield apparently drafted his editorials in longhand, using a soft lead pencil. The one on the pad was datelined two days after Father's Day of the previous year. It had never been published and had never journeyed beyond the center drawer of Hawkinfield's desk, but before Qwilleran could read it, the doorbell rang.
Beechum had finished the gazebo and was coming to collect payment. Qwilleran knew it was rash to pay for the work without inspecting it, but he trusted the man and even added a bonus for prompt service. He then asked the carpenter to move the desk back against the office doorbut not before he had retrieved the yellow legal pad. After that it was time to shave and dress for dinner with Sabrina Peel, and Qwilleran transferred the pad to his own desk upstairs.
When Sabrina arrived she brought two pillows in bright red and gold, each a yard square, to stack on the living room floor between two windows. "I think they make the statement we want," she said. "They balance the color accents and add some desirable weight at that end of the room . . . How's the ankle, Qwill?"
"The Pain-and-Anguish Scale went down sixteen points when you walked in," he said, admiring the misty green silk dress that complemented her decorator-blond hair. "Shall we have a drink before we leave?"
"Mmmm . . . no," she said. "I've requested a choice booth, and they won't hold a reservation more than fifteen minutes. I hope you don't object to the no-smoking section . . . Where did you find that fabulous burl bowl? At Potato Cove? ... I see you need candles. I could have brought you some."
"I have plenty," he said. "The candle dipper sold me a lifetime supply, but I haven't found time to stick them in the candleholder . . . Let me check out the Siamese before we leave."
The two cats were exactly where he thought they would beperched on top of the new floor pillows, looking haughty and possessive, their cold blue eyes challenging anyone to de-throne them.
With Qwilleran taking one experimental step at a time, he and Sabrina walked slowly down the long flight to the parking lot.
"Do you mind living alone?" she asked.
"I've tried it both ways," he replied, "and I know it can be a let-down to come home to an empty apartment, but now I have the Siamese to greet me at the door. They're good companions; they need me; they're always happy to see me come home. On the other hand, they're always glad to see me go outone of the things that cats do to keep a person from feeling too important."
On the way down Hawk's Nest Drive she pointed out clients' houses. She had helped the Wilbanks select their wallpapers . . . Peel & Poole was re-designing the entire interior for the Lessmores . . . Her partner had done the windows and floors for the Wickes house.
"Are you the only design studio in town?" Qwilleran asked her slyly.
"The only good one," she retorted, flashing an arch smile at her passenger. "I'd give anything to get my hands on Tiptop and do it over, inside and out."