Three officers were milling around, and one of them was Andrew Brodie; it had to be important to bring the chief out. Pedestrians were spilling out into the street, and police were detouring southbound traffic through Book Alley. One lane was kept open for northbound. Qwilleran quickened his pace when he realized the crowd was surging around the post office. They were noisy but not belligerent.
“What’s up, Andy?” he called out.
“Protest about the murals. Peaceful so far.”
There were no picket signs, no photographers, no officials to hear the complaints-just townfolk feeling bad and saying, “Isn’t it terrible?”
The chief said, “We need to bring it to a head, Qwill, so they’ll go home and let traffic get back to normal-before some hothead throws a brick.… Why don’t you go up there and talk to them?”
“Me?”
“You’ve got the gift of gab, and they’ll listen to you.” Without further words, Brodie grabbed his arm and started hustling him through the crowd. “Coming through! Make way! Step back, please!”
Onlookers recognized the moustache. “Is that him? … It’s Mr. Q! … Is he gonna talk to us?”
A flight of four steps on one side, and a ramp on the other, led to the post office doors. Qwilleran mounted the steps to the small concrete stoop and turned to face the assemblage. The babble of voices became a tumult of cheers and applause, until he raised his hand for silence.
Before he could speak, a man’s voice called out, “Where’s Koko?”
There was a burst of laughter.
Koko’s amusing and exasperating antics were chronicled in the “Qwill Pen,” reminding readers of their own unpredictable felines.
Qwilleran, speaking with his theatre voice that required no microphone or bullhorn, said that Koko was at home, devising something special in the way of a catfit to usher in the Big One.
The tension was broken. He surveyed his audience with the brooding gaze that they always construed as sympathetic. “I know why you’re here, and I know how you feel. I feel the same way. Most of you have had a lifelong friendship with these murals. You know the nineteenth-century pioneers as if they were your neighbors. You can see them with your eyes closed: tilling a field with a horse-drawn plow, spinning wool on a wheel, building a log cabin, shoeing a horse, riding a log run down the river, drying fishnets on the beach, carrying a pickax and a lunch bucket to the mine. And you know what he’s got for lunch.”
“A pasty!” everyone shouted.
“But time changes all things. The colors are fading, and the paint is flaking-a serious health hazard. Do we want to board up the murals and paint the walls government tan?”
“No! No!”
“Then let’s commission a new generation of artists to depict pioneer life with understanding and historic accuracy. It’s the kind of people-friendly project that the K Fund believes in-“
Cheers interrupted, and Qwilleran took the opportunity to mop his brow.
“The art studio that painted Moose County landscapes on the bookmobile would find it a challenge to depict primitive landscapes and early settlers with their oxcarts and sailing ships and log cabins. The original murals are being professionally photographed for the historic record and for the guidance of artists who will replicate them… . and in a memorial booklet available without charge to every family in Pickax.”
A news photographer appeared. Qwilleran was mobbed by enthusiasts. Here was the “Qwill Pen” in the flesh-Koko’s godparent-Santa Claus without a beard. Eventually Brodie extricated him and drove him to the antique shop. “Who tipped off the photographer?” Qwilleran asked.
“The paper picked it up from the police radio,” said the chief. “All that guff you gave them-was that the honest truth?”
“You shoved me in front of them. I had to make up something,” Qwilleran said.
Got any coffee?” Qwilleran grumbled as he barged Susan’s shop.
“Darling! What happened? You look … frazzled!”
“Skip the compliments. Just pour the coffee.”
She led him back to her office. “What on earth have you been doing?”
“You’ll read about it in the paper. And in case you’re wondering where your customers are, they’re all down at the post office. But they’ll be here in a few minutes. Meanwhile, I’d like a hostess gift for Mildred Riker. We had dinner there the other night. You were out, whooping it up.”
Susan rolled her eyes. “A customer invited me to a birthday party at the country club, and I had to go because she’d just made a huge purchase. I sat next to the mayor, and I thought it was rather gauche of him to try to sell me some investments between the soup course and the entree.”
“What kind of investments?”
“A special package that pays enormous interest. He had the nerve to give me his card, so I gave him my card and said I buy family heirlooms.”
“Good for you! Now what do you recommend for Mildred?”
“She’d like a bone china teacup and saucer for her collection. I keep them in stock. They’re not old, but collectors come in to buy one and see a Duncan Phyfe table they can’t live without, or an original Tiffany lamp.”
“You’re a crafty one, Susan,” he said, “but you’ll never sell a Duncan Phyfe anything to me!”
“I know, darling, but I love you in spite of it. It’s your moustache! So cavalier! When Polly gets tired of you, I’ll be waiting in the wings… . Now about Mildred’s teacup,” she went on in her businesslike way. “She collects the rose pattern, and I think the yellow rose would be good. Want me to giftwrap it and drop it off at her place on my way home? What do you want on the card?”
Qwilleran was halfway home before realizing he had forgotten his prime mission: fruit for Polly and information on false bottoms. Oh, well…
The Siamese met him with a loud two-part reminder that it was half past treat time. Absently he poured out a dish of crunchies while pondering the mystery of the glove box. Once more he made an attack on the top, bottom, sides, inside, and outside-without a clue.
Then, from the kitchen came a familiar but regrettable sound. One of the cats was “sleigh-riding” or “bottom-sliding” as it was sometimes called. Qwilleran shrugged and said aloud, “Cats will be cats!”
Without stopping to figure the connection, his mind flashed to another wooden box in his life-when he was growing up. It held dominoes. It had a sliding lid, virtually invisible unless one knew about it. The glove box might have a sliding bottom!
Grasping it in both hands and pushing hard with both thumbs, he held his breath. Nothing happened. Turning the box around he pushed from the other end. Ah! A faint crack appeared! It was a tight fit, but gradually the gap opened to a few inches. He could see an envelope inside and could even pull it out without struggling further.
It was addressed to one Helen Omblower in Chipmunk, and the sender was G. Omblower in Pennsylvania; the return address was cryptic. It had been mailed twenty years before, and the envelope was yellow with
age. Both Koko and Yum Yum found it highly sniff-worthy. The enclosed note was equally cryptic. What interested Qwilleran was the unusual name. He looked it up in the phone book, but it was not listed. He would ask the Tibbitts; they knew everyone. Where had Kirt’s mother found the box? In a secondhand shop? It was a handsome piece of carving. Had she tried to open it to retrieve the letter?
His ruminations were interrupted by a phone call from Polly, exclaiming, “My hero!”
“What do you mean?” he asked. “I forgot your pears and oranges.”
“They weren’t all that important. It was your performance in front of the post office that mattered!”
“Somebody had to say something.”