Going downstairs, he could hear the hubbub on the lower level; apparently there was a good turnout. He was halfway down when he saw a white head of hair coming up.
“Thornton Haggis!” he said.
“It’s too crowded. You can’t see a thing. Go back up,” said the man from the monument yard.
Qwilleran backed up and, at the top of the flight, said, “Did you notice that Jasper’s gone?”
Thornton nodded gravely. “And now our friend Beverly wants Phoebe to get rid of her butterfly box.” “I know. She offered it to me.”
“You, too? Already my wife thinks I’m on the brink and if I went home with a box of caterpillars, she’d know I’m over the edge. How about you?”
“In my case it might be ink for the ‘Qwill Pen.’ It would be something different, at any rate. But I need to ask some questions.”
They presented themselves in Phoebe’s studio. “You decided?” she asked eagerly.
“It all depends on what it entails,” Qwilleran said. “I may not be qualified to be midwife to a flock of butterflies.”
“It’s simple,” she said. “First you keep the caterpillars supplied with food. There’s a door at the back of the box for putting in green leaves and cleaning out the frass.”
“Frass? What’s that?” he asked. “I’m afraid to ask.
“I’ll give you an instruction booklet. If you watch, you can see them spinning silk. Then they turn into chrysalises, and nothing happens for a few days until suddenly the butterflies struggle to unfurl their wings and get out. It’s magic, Mr. Q! You see them pumping up their wings and then starting to flutter about. At that point you give them some flowers sprinkled with sugar-water. After a few days you take the box outside and open the door and they fly into the great outdoors, so happy to be free! It gives you a wonderful feeling of joy!”
“Do you guarantee that? I’ll have to go and get my van. I walked down here.”
Thornton offered to drive him and the caterpillars home, and on the way to the barn he asked, “Do you know if they ever found out who broke in and stole Daphne’s nudes? My sons and I were having drinks at the Shipwreck Tavern the other night, and the bartender showed us a drawing he had bought from a customer, who’d bought it from another guy in another bar. It sure looked like Daphne’s work, but the signature was blotted out.”
“Did he say how much he’d paid for it?”
“No, and we didn’t ask.”
Thornton had never been to the barn before, and when he saw the ramps spiraling up the octagonal wall to the lofty roof, he said, “Hey! This is the Guggenheim of Moose County! Was it your idea? Wait till my wife hears about this!”
“All the credit goes to a designer from Down Below. It was the last job he ever did.”
“Where are the famous Siamese?”
“Watching you. Don’t make one false move!” They put the butterfly box in the guestroom on the second balcony, away from direct sunlight and away from inquisitive cats. Then Qwilleran served refreshments in the gazebo.
Thornton said, “I see you don’t have any grass to cut. My wife likes a broad green lawn, but she doesn’t have to cut it. No matter how easy they make power-mowing, it’s still something else to do! My two sons used to do the grass-cutting, but now they have houses and lawns of their own. I don’t think you’ve ever met Eric and Shane, have you? I’m proud of them - good family men, good businessmen. If you ever want to write a column on the sand and gravel business, call them; they have all the dirt.”
“It may come to that,” Qwilleran said.
“They sell to the county, you know, and one of the highway engineers tipped them off about a big paving job planned for Trevelyan Road, north of Base Line.” “So that corroborates the rumor we heard from Gary at the Black Bear. It means that a few acres across from the Art Center will look like a slum. Who’s selling the county the land?”
“They’re not buying it; they’re leasing it. The owner of the property doesn’t want to sell, and you can understand why. The value of that tract is going to zoom sky-high in a few years. It backs on the river, and some smart developer like XYZ could build another Indian Village there.”
Qwilleran thought, It’s already owned by XYZ Enterprises, a.k.a. Northern Land Improvement. No doubt the “new feller” who charmed Maude Coggin into selling her land cheap, who “loved the soil,” who was going to plant “taters and beans” was Don Exbridge, the X of XYZ Enterprises. Qwilleran had never liked him.
-12-
Paroxysm, arraign, zealot, catastrophe, aphid, privilege, concatenation, xenophobe. Qwilleran found the compilation of a wordlist irresistible, and he kept adding to it as he drank his breakfast coffee. Octogenarian. nonagenarian, paradigm, heinous, mnemonics, etymology, and, yes, irresistible. To escape from this obsessive collecting of words, he took to his bicycle.
His Silverlight was stabled in one of the stalls of the carriage house, and his janitorial service kept it shining. The copy for his Tuesday column was in his pocket as he biked downtown on Monday morning, the sun shining on his yellow helmet and the gleaming spokes. At least once on every outing someone on the sidewalk would shout, “Heigh-ho, Silver!”
He wheeled it into the lobby of the Something and hung his helmet on the handlebars, knowing there would be a group of fellow staffers around it when he finished his business.
After tossing his copy on Junior Goodwinter’s desk and commenting on the outcome of Sunday’s ballgame in Minneapolis, he went to the business office to pick up his fan mail. The office manager, Sarah Plensdorf, was one of his avid fans; she felt it a privilege to hand him his mail personally. She was an older woman from a good family, well-educated but rather prim. Qwilleran had believed her to be descended from a wealthy shipbuilder on Purple Point, but - no thanks to Thornton Haggis - he now suspected a less respectable heritage. He and Sarah had dined together one evening, under unusual circumstances, and had discovered a shared interest: baseball.
“What did you think of the game yesterday?” he asked.
“Wasn’t it thrilling? If Father had been alive, he would have had a heart attack!”
Briefly he thought of flying Sarah to Minneapolis for a weekend game while Polly was busy with Paul Skumble, but it was only a whim. Everyone in the office would talk, and Polly would go into shock.
“Would you like me to slit the envelopes for you, Qwill?” she asked.
“I’d appreciate it,” he said, knowing that she liked to perform this small service. While waiting, he noticed a trio of butterfly paintings on the wall over her desk. No doubt they had been there right along, before lepidoptera had entered his consciousness. “Those are Phoebe Sloan’s,” he remarked.
“Aren’t they beautiful? A California Dogface, Hungarian Jester, and Queen Alexandra Birdwing, which is an endangered species. I have them allover my apartment, too. They give my spirit a lift whenever I enter a room.”
“How many do you have?”
“Eighteen, and she’s doing an Orange Albatross for me. I was the first to start collecting, and now everyone’s doing it. We’re thinking of starting a Phoebe Sloan fan club and getting together to help the conservation of rare butterflies.”
“Your enthusiasm is commendable,” he murmured. “Well, I’ve known Phoebe since she was a baby, you see, and I’m terribly proud of her. Our families have known each other for generations. We belong to the same church. I was a bridesmaid at her parents’ wedding.”
She spoke happily, and he wondered if she knew about the Sloans’ current family problem. If so, she was too well-bred to mention it. As for himself, he followed Shakespeare’s advice: Give every man thy ear but few thy voice. Nevertheless, he said slyly, “I suppose Phoebe will be spelling for the drugstore team.”