“Do you have any questions?” he asked as the evening was coming to a close. The restaurant was emptying. They were lingering over coffee.
“Yes!” she said. “What is a pasty?” She pronounced it wrong, of course.
With her education completed, they drove back to Indian Village, and he dropped her at her doorstep. At his own condo Koko was waiting excitedly; there was a message on the machine. It was a responsibility Koko took seriously.
Polly’s voice said, “Call me when you come home, Qwill. I have things to tell you.”
He suspected she had startling information about the migration of certain species of birds. He decided to wait until morning.
twelve
Qwilleran phoned Polly Tuesday morning at about eight-thirty, when she was preparing to leave for the library. “Good morning! You called last night,” he said with the genial voice of one who has slept well after a good dinner.
Her reply had the frantic tone of one who is a little late for work. “Where were you? I called three times before leaving a message.”
“I took our new neighbor, Jeffa Young, to dinner at Tipsy’s.”
“Oh, really? How did that happen?”
“I ran into her earlier in the day, and she invited me in for a drink.”
“Oh, really? Is she interesting?”
“Very. How was the bird club dinner? Did you have four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie?”
She ignored the quip. “Last night I called to tell you what one of our members heard from a sheriff’s deputy.
The license plate on the killer’s car was not only out-of-state but it was stolen!”
“It could have been stolen by a local boy. Or girl.” Residents of Moose County liked to think that wrongdoers came from somewhere else.
“Well, you’ll have to excuse me. I’m late. Would you be good enough to run over and feed the cats?” “Yellow package or green package?” “Yellow. Thanks. Talk to you later.” Qwilleran said, “I’ll be right back” to Koko and Yum Yum and hurried to Unit One. He had done this service for Polly’s cats many times before, but they always regarded him like a burglar, or a bill-collector at best.
“Are you two gourmands ready for a big bowl of health?” he asked jovially as he poured dry food from the yellow package. They looked at the bowl and looked questioningly at him, as if expecting the green package. “That’s what she ordered, and that’s what you’re getting,” he said as he hurried out the front door.
He arrived home in time to grab the telephone and hear the cheerful voice of the young managing editor saying, “Hi, Qwill! Have you heard that there’s an astrologer in town? You could get her to do your horoscope and then write a column about her.”
Brusquely he replied, “Jill Handley could have her horoscope done and then write a column on it.” “I thought you were hard up for material.” “Not that hard up.”
The snappish tone was nothing new; the two men enjoyed bickering.
Junior said, “This is Tuesday. May I ask when you expect to file your copy for today’s paper?”
“Have I ever missed a deadline?… Is there any news in today’s newspaper?”
“Amanda had a scrap with the mayor at the council meeting last night.”
“That’s not news. They’ve been scrapping for ten years.”
“Homer Tibbitt is in the hospital getting his knees fixed.”
“It’s about time! His bones are very loosely connected.”
“When you’re his age, Qwill, you’ll be loosely connected, too.”
“I’ll rust out long before I’m ninety-eight… . Any suspects in the shooting?”
“Nope.”
“Any inside information on the Big One?”
“It must be on the way,” Junior said. “Cats are getting nervous, and men over fifty are getting crotchety.” There came a long, loud yowl from the foyer that could be heard in downtown Pickax. “I heard your master’s voice, Qwill. Talk to you later.”
Then came an unusual sound from the living room: Shhh … shhh … sshhh… followed by a thud.
Koko was crouched on the coffee table, looking over the edge. The three red apples, along with their overturned wood bowl, were nestled in the deep pile of the Danish rug.
That’s a new wrinkle, Qwilleran thought… . What’s the reason? Where’s the thrill? “No!” he said loudly. “That’s forbidden fruit!”
Nonchalantly the cat jumped to the floor and walked casually to the utility room, where he could be heard scratching in his commode. Could he possibly associate the apples with the delivery man who had brought them? He had howled at the moment of the man’s murder! Even for a cat with Koko’s paranormal propensities, this was too much to expect. Perhaps he sensed that the apples were artificial, and that fact disturbed him. Perhaps he was simply curious. How would a smooth-as-porcelain wooden bowl slide across a smooth-as-glass wooden table? Or he might have been testing the rug; the thud was less satisfying than the thunk of a book on a carpeted floor-or the crash of a clay plant pot dropping thirteen feet.
Qwilleran reflected that the Siamese were living in fairly snug quarters, compared to their domain in the converted apple barn; Koko might be making a subtle suggestion… . Apple barn! Was something wrong at their summer address?
Taking his thousand words for the “Qwill Pen,” he drove first to the hundred-year-old barn on the outskirts of Pickax. He inspected the premises, inside and out. Everything was in order, except for a small mouse, starved to death on the kitchen floor. Had that been Koko’s chief concern?
I’m a fool, Qwilleran told himself. I’m trying to read messages where none exist! Koko pushed that bowl of apples off the table because he felt like pushing a bowl of apples off the table!
He handed in his copy on Misty Morghan’s batiks in time to make the noon deadline. Passing the feature department he was beckoned by Mildred Riker.
“Could you and Polly come over some night to see our new sofa and have a little supper?”
“How little?” he asked. “If it’s too little, I’m not interested.”
“You can have seconds-and thirds,” she said. “This weekend I made my famous Old Shoe Soup, and we’ll have it with crusty bread and a cheese board, then an avocado salad, then pumpkin pie.”
“It all sounds good except the soup,” he said.
“Did you never hear how I got the recipe?” She asked the department secretary to take her calls for a few minutes, and then she told her story:
“When I was very small, I used to visit my grandparents’ farm south of Trawnto. That was before Moose County had tractors. We were always thirty years behind the times. They had horse-drawn farm equipment and lots of hired hands who had to be fed an enormous dinner in the middle of the day. Once a week my grandmother would make bean soup in a big washtub. It was full of carrots, onions, potatoes, and celery, and it smelled so good when it was cooking. My grandmother said it was because she always put an old shoe in with the beans and stuff. She let me stand on a chair and see for myself as she stirred it with a long-handled wooden spoon. Sure enough! There it was! An old farm boot. I asked her if she had to have a different boot each week, and she said yes. All the farmers and farmhands in the community saved their old boots for Grandma’s soup!
“When I went home, I told my mother, and I suffered the first disenchantment of my life. She said it was a large ham bone. I insisted I could see the shoestrings. She said there was a lot of meat left on the bone. Some kids were disenchanted when they learned the truth about Santa Claus, but I was disenchanted when I learned the truth about the old shoe. And I still think of my grandmother every time I make bean soup.”
Qwilleran said, “I dare you to print the recipe on the food page.”