mail I get.”
“Oh, Qwill! I hope you’re joking and not just being cynical,” Polly protested.
“I was recently shocked,” he said, “to learn that a well-known businessman in Pickax can neither read nor write. He’s gone to great lengths to conceal the fact.”
“Who? Who?” they clamored.
“That’s privileged information.”
A beeper sounded, and the two women jumped up. “Time to start the frittata,” Polly said. “We’ll ring the dinnerbell when we’re ready.” They returned to the bam, laughing and chattering.
The men sat back in their chairs and gazed into the woods, at peace with the world. Neither of them spoke. They had been friends long enough to make silences comforting.
After a while Arch said, “When are we going to fly Down Below for a weekend ballgame?”
“Exactly what was on my mind! We should check the schedules.”
“Do you think the girls will want to go along?”
“They enjoyed it last year - the shopping, that is, and the show Saturday night,” Qwilleran recalled. “Let’s sound them out.”
“I noticed a new baseball book on your coffee table. Don’t tell me you broke down and bought a book that’s less than fifty years old!”
“I didn’t buy it. Polly brought it from the library. My record remains clean… Meanwhile, though, I picked up three interesting World War Two books from Eddington’s dustbin: The Pacific War, Fire Over London, and The Last 100 Days. They came from an estate on Purple Point.”
At that point Koko attracted their attention by raising himself into a long-legged stretch with back humped and tail stiff. Then he lowered his front half and stretched his forelegs against the floor, after which he stretched one hind leg. Finally he confronted the men. “Yow!” he said with a volume and clarity that reverberated through the woods.
“What’s bugging him?” Arch asked.
“He knows the dinnerbell is about to ring.”
In a few seconds it rang.
“See? What did I tell you?” Qwilleran said with a touch of pride. “Can you beat that!” Koko was already standing over the canvas tote bag, and with a little assistance from Qwilleran both cats hopped into it, wriggling into place, and the four of them returned to the barn.
The dinnerbell that had summoned them was standing on the console table in the foyer - a cast brass handbell with a coiled serpent for a handle.
“Dutch Baroque,” said Arch, who had learned about antiques from his first wife, Down Below. “Where’d you get it?”
“Amanda’s studio. She said it came from Stockholm.”
“Could be. There was a lot of sea trade between Holland and Sweden at one time… and that Jacobean table is new! Where’d that come from?” He was looking at a small oval table with an oval stretcher and five sturdy turned legs.
“Exbridge & Cobb,” Qwilleran said. “From Iris Cobb’s personal collection.”
“It’s an English tavern table, eighteenth century,” Arch said. “Top worn thin by two centuries of scouring by conscientious barmaids. Bun feet worn off from dragging across a damp stone floor.”
“How about some soft background music to go with that?” Qwilleran suggested.
“I’m serious! It’s the real thing! You can leave me this table when you die.”
“What makes you think you’ll outlive me, you dirty dog?”
“Because Mildred makes him eat salads,” Polly said.
Brunch was served in the dining area, which was seldom used; guests were always taken out to dinner. It began with fruit soup, a concoction of pear and raspberry. Then came mushroom frittata and a warm salad of asparagus and yellow peppers. If Qwilleran had not later found two small yellow cartons in the trash container, he would never have guessed the eggs in the frittata were cholesterol-free. I might have known, he thought.
When they were having coffee in the lounge area, Mildred said, “This is a great day for the art lovers of Moose County.” She had been one of the founders of the Arts Council and was now chairperson of the new Art Center.
“Are they one big happy family?” Qwilleran asked. “Or do you have cliques and politics?”
“Just between us,” she confided, “there is a certain amount of friction. I suppose we’re a microcosm of the whole community, with the normal amount of jealousy, snobbery, and competitiveness - although outwardly we get along. Among the artists themselves, the differences are in matters of style and taste. Most of them do representational art, and in a group show the abstractionists don’t want their work hung on the same wall with the butterflies and shafthouses.”
“How many of your members are active artists?”
“About twenty percent. Thirty percent, I’d say, are true art lovers. That leaves
fifty percent who join because it’s tax-deductible, or whatever.”
Polly said, “A rumor has been circulating at the library that you’re exhibiting nude drawings in the show today.”
Mildred rolled her eyes in exasperation. “We never include nudes in a public exhibition because some people get upset over what they call ‘naked bodies.’ We show figure drawings only at receptions for members.”
“That explains the fifty-percent fringe membership,” Arch said dryly.
His wife squinted at him briefly and then went on. “Some of our artists do very fine life studies, and the one who calls herself simply ‘Daphne’ has won statewide prizes. She’ll be teaching our class in figure drawing with a live model, of course. She has a wonderful understanding of anatomy: cats, dogs, and horses, as well as humans.”
Arch looked at his watch. “Let’s go to the party before they run out of punch. I don’t suppose it’s spiked.”
“You suppose right,” Mildred said.
The two couples walked leisurely down the lane to the Art Center and heard the buzz of celebration even before they emerged from the woods: traffic noise, excited voices, children’s cries. Qwilleran glanced across the road to see if Maude Coggin might be sitting on her porch, rocking and scowling at the intruders, but there was no activity. Dogs and chickens were no doubt locked up out of harm’s way.
The paving around the new building was a gridiron of muddy tire tracks, and a volunteer on the entrance porch was exhorting visitors to wipe their feet thoroughly or take off their shoes. Several pairs were lined up at the door, prompting Arch to ask his wife, “Do you see any cordovan alligator loafers in my size?”
In the lobby two works donated by local artists were being raffled off to benefit the Arts Counciclass="underline" Duff Campbell’s watercolor, Buckshot Shafthouse by Moonlight, and W. C. Wyckoffs intaglio, The Whiteness of White. The latter was a large square of heavy white paper with a three-dimensional snowflake design pressed into the surface. Recessed under glass and framed in chrome, it looked quite elegant, everyone said, although they bought chances on the watercolor. Qwilleran bought five chances on the intaglio, having a fellow feeling for the neglected artist, whoever he or she might be.
“Aren’t you afraid you’ll win it?” Arch mumbled to him.
For anonymity, Qwilleran signed the raffle stubs with his unlisted phone number and an alias.
The manager, Beverly Forfar, looking snappy in a short-skirted suit and high heels, was much in evidence - greeting guests, directing traffic, and watching the white vinyl floor for possible mud. She flashed special smiles at important visitors; otherwise, she was strictly managerial.
In the galleries there was more talking than viewing of art: “Somebody did a nice job of tracklighting here… What do you think they have in the punch? … My cousin has just bought her fourth shafthouse … How do you like the manager’s haircut?”
Guests were dressed as if they had just come from church, or from hiking. There were civic leaders, students in MCCC shirts, oldsters with walking aids, families with small children, and a few strangers, whose identities were being wildly guessed. They were dealers from Down Below, looking for new talent. They were spies from the Lockmaster Art Center, looking for ideas to copy. They were undercover detectives, looking for offensive art or photography.