The telephone rang, and it was Arch Riker’s urgent voice.
“Have you heard the news? We have a bulletin on the front page. The mayor’s been arrested.”
“On what grounds?”
“Operating an illegal investment scheme, called a Ponzi scheme…. Amanda will be taking off her clothes and dancing in the street!”
“So will Homer Tibbitt.”
“Amanda will win the election unopposed.”
Qwilleran asked, “Exactly what is a Ponzi scheme?”
“Well, as I understand it,” Arch said, “a broker takes a client’s dough to invest in some promising business that needs cash to get started and will pay big interest. The deal sounds so good that the client’s friends and relatives rush to invest their kids’ college funds and retirement nest eggs. On paper it looks great. They give the broker more dough. … Of course, the crunch is that he never invested it-just used it for his own purposes. It’s sometimes called pyramiding.”
“Pyramiding!” Qwilleran repeated with a look of wonderment. Was that why Koko was always twisting the brown lampshade. Or was he doing it because cats like to twist lampshades?
Qwilleran had a great desire to go downtown, mingle with the crowd, take the public pulse. Driving his van, he thought, Zoller blew the whistle. It takes a special kind of nerve to expose corruption in a small town. He took Maggie along under the guise of an elopement. He sent her back with the documents or whatever evidence he had. She lay low, delivering the papers to Zoller’s attorney, who worked with the prosecutor.
Was it the barometric pressure of the approaching storm? Or was it relief at seeing a dubious character exposed? Hordes of people poured out into the downtown streets-some of them inebriated, all of them giddy with the news. The PPD was keeping an eye on them, although the officers were smiling as broadly as the celebrating citizens. In the post office, the bank, the stores-it was the same.
Qwilleran went to the police station, and Brodie waved him into his office. “What’d I tell ya? Have a cup of coffee.”
“Well, you trapped the rat,” Qwilleran said, “with all due respect to the mayoral office.”
“And we’re charging Nightingale with arson and murder. How did you get the idea he was Omblower?”
“Koko found the evidence. He also suspected Don
Exbridge’s letter in praise of shafthouses and the follow-up letters in opposition-not to mention the leader ads for the video palace.”
“It would do me a lot of good to confiscate the gambling machines. Our people don’t need those. Let them play bingo.”
Qwilleran asked, “How about Don Exbridge? He’s always working against the public good and getting away with it.”
“He’ll be accused as accomplice-before-the-fact, you can be sure. Everything was his idea. Omblower did the dirty work, and he won’t let Exbridge go scot-free… . What was the crash I heard on the tape?”
“Nightingale picked up the martini pitcher by the handle and aimed it at my head like a hammer-throw. I ducked, and it sailed through Exbridge’s cheap glass door, landing rightside-up on the soft cedar deck.”
Brodie said, “A foolish man, Exbridge-using arson as a shortcut to acquiring land for development.”
“No doubt about it, Andy: He wanted Book Alley for a strip mall downtown, and he wanted ten minesites for country estates and high-density condominiums.”
Before leaving downtown Qwilleran visited the library to break the news to Polly. She already knew-through the grapevine.
“It’s hard to believe,” she said, “that Kirt would be involved like that. He seemed like a decent sort, and he loved books.”
“He sold books,” he corrected her.
As he drove to Indian Village, the sky became leaden, and dusk was falling early. He was not surprised to see the interior of Unit Four in a state of confusion. Everything that was not nailed down had been knocked to the floor - almost everything. Strangely, the martini pitcher, bowl of wooden apples and glove box were untouched. But Qwilleran’s desktop was swept clean, two lamps were toppled, and the Danish rug was crumpled like an unmade bed. This was a catfit at its worst - or best, depending on one’s point of view.
Koko was obviously pleased with his performance. He lounged full-length on the mantel and surveyed the clutter with satisfaction. And where was Yum Yum? Huddled in the spectator gallery on the stairs, guarding a treasure that the police had left behind: a stick of chewing gum, probably the first she had ever seen.
Qwilleran had survived enough catfits to know what to do: Stay calm; don’t scold; clean up.
As he worked, he considered the status quo. The catfit marked the advent of the Big One - but also the closure of the Three Bad Apples case. He knew by experience that Koko would now lose interest in apples, robins, carved boxes, and letters to the editor. It proved one of two theories: Either Koko was consciously exposing evil … or he was just a cat, briefly interested in this or that, and the connections were all coincidental. There were no absolute answers. Scientists, having heard of the cat’s aptitudes through a police lieutenant Down Below, had wanted to study Koko’s brain, but Qwilleran flatly refused. He preferred to attribute Koko’s gifts to his sixty whiskers.
For the cats’ dinner Qwilleran diced turkey from Toodle’s deli; for himself he opened a can of soup. Then he read aloud, with Yum Yum curled on his lap and Koko sitting tall on the arm of the chair. At one point, both small bodies tensed, and heads turned toward the front windows. Then both cats raced to the kitchen window. All was silent outdoors, and the night was dark, but light from the kitchen revealed the first few snowflakes fluttering lazily to the parched earth.
A deep gurgling sound came from Koko, and a faint mewing from Yum Yum. It was the prelude to the Big One!
Qwilleran grabbed his jacket and wool hat and went out the front door. The flakes meandered earthward like a gentle blessing. No neighbor was around to share the magical moment. Two delicate snowflakes came to rest on his moustache. And then-why not? He stuck out his tongue.