Qwilleran stared at the granddaughter of the phantom Emmaline and searched for the right thing to say. She had paid him a compliment by confiding this personal secret, and he had no desire to spoil her story by asking hard-nosed questions. He was saved by the telephone bell.
Kristi reached for the kitchen phone. "Hello?" Then she turned pale, staring straight ahead as if paralyzed. After listening for a few moments, she hung up without another word.
"Trouble?" Qwilleran asked.
She gulped and said, "My ex-husband. He's back in town."
He sensed from her distracted air that there would be no more interview, no more tea. "Well," he said, standing up, "perhaps I should leave now. It's been an instructive afternoon. Thank you for your cooperation and the refreshments. I may call you again to check on details. And let me know if there's anything I can do for you."
She nodded and moved toward the refrigerator like a sleepwalker. "Here's some cheese to take home," she said in a trembling voice. "And don't forget to take the bible for the museum."
As Qwilleran drove the short distance to the Goodwinter place he had more than goats on his mind. He wondered about the Emmaline story. Kristi was quite emotional about her grandmother; perhaps she only imagined that she saw her walking upstairs in flowing white robes. He would like to be there during the next thunderstorm... But more serious at the moment was the phone call and Kristi's terrified reaction. He hesitated to intrude in her personal affairs, but he was definitely concerned. She lived there alone. She could be in danger.
As he was about to turn into Black Creek Lane he heard a truck approaching from the west, and he looked back in time to see a pickup turning into the Fugtree drive. As soon as he arrived at the museum he dropped the cheese and the bible on the dining table and immediately called Kristi's number. To his relief she answered in a normal voice.
"This is Qwill," he said. "I forgot to ask how much milk a goat can produce in a day."
"Black Tulip is my best doe, and she gives three thousand pounds a year. We always figure annual weight, not volume per day." She was brief and businesslike in her answer. "And you can say that she was a Grand Champion at the county fair."
"I see. Well, thank you. Is everything all right over there?"
"Everything's okay."
"That phone call just before I left seemed to upset you, and I was concerned."
"That's kind of you, Qwill, but my friend is here from Pickax, and everything's under control."
"Good! Have a nice evening," said Qwilleran. Was the phone message really from her ex-husband? he wondered. And who was this "friend" who suddenly appeared and made everything right? He turned back to the table where he had dropped Kristi's two donations. Yum Yum was eating one of them, and Koko was sitting on the other.
-10-
QWILLERAN HAD A reason for inviting Roger's mother-in-law to dinner. He wanted to know more about Kristi Fugtree Waffle - not to flesh out his goat interview but to satisfy his curiosity - and Mildred Hanstable was the one to ask. A lifelong resident of Moose County, she had taught school for almost thirty years, and she knew two generations of students as well as their parents and grandparents, the past and present members of the school board, the county commissioners - in short, everyone.
When Qwilleran phoned her in Mooseville she squealed with her usual exuberance, "Qwill! So good to hear from you! Roger tells me you're house-sitting at the museum. That was such a shock - losing Iris! She always looked so healthy, didn't she? Perhaps she was a little overweight, but I... oh, Lord! so am I! I'm going on a diet right away."
"Start your diet tomorrow," he said. "Are you free to have dinner tonight?"
"I'm always free to have dinner. That's my problem." "I'll pick you up at six-thirty, and we'll go to the Northern Lights Hotel."
Qwilleran thawed some lobster meat for the Siamese, wondering if the waterfront hotel in Mooseville would offer anything half as good. Then he showered and dressed in something he considered commendable for the occasion. When dating Polly Duncan, who was not attuned to fashion, he wore what was readily available, and clean. Mildred, on the other hand, taught art as well as home ec, and she had an eye for color, design, and coordination. For Mildred he tried harder. For Mildred he wore a camel's-hair cardigan over a white open-neck shirt and tan pants, an ensemble that enhanced the suntan he had acquired during recent months of biking. Admiring himself in Mrs. Cobb's full-length mirror, a nicety that was lacking in his Pickax apartment, he noted that the shades of tan flattered his graying hair and luxuriant pepper-and-salt moustache.
In a mood of self-congratulation he drove from the rolling hills and cultivated fields of the Hummocks to the wild, wooded lakeshore, experiencing once again the miraculous change in atmosphere near the lake. Ii was not merely the aroma of a hundred miles of water and a fleet of fishing boats; it was an indescribable element that elevated one's spirit and made Mooseville a vacation paradise.
Mildred greeted him with a platonic hug. "You're looking wonderful! And I love your tan and white combination!" She was licensed to hug platonically, being not only Roger's mother-in-law but Qwilleran's former neighbor and the food writer for the Moose County Something and the loyal wife of an absentee husband.
Qwilleran returned the compliment, admiring whatever it was she was wearing. "Did you design it, Mildred?"
"Yes, it's intended to be a flattering cover-up for a fat lady."
"Nonsense! You are a handsome mature woman with a mature figure," he said with a declamatory flourish.
"I always love your choice of words, Qwill." As they drove toward downtown Mooseville there were signs that the vacation season was coming to a close. They encountered less tourist traffic, fewer recreation vehicles, and, almost no boats on trailers. Summer cottages were boarded up for the winter. There were not many fishing boats bobbing alongside the municipal piers that bordered Main Street, and the seagulls were screeching their last hurrah of the season.
"It's kind of sad," Mildred observed, "but it's pleasant, too. October belongs to us and not to those loud, swaggering tourists from Down Below. Fortunately they throw their money around and keep our economy going. I just wish they had better manners."
The Northern Lights Hotel was a barracks-like building with three floors of plain windows in dreary rows, but it was a historic landmark that had served the community in the nineteenth century when sailors and loggers-likewise lacking in manners - patronized the free-lunch saloon and rented a room for two bits.
As Qwilleran and his guest seated themselves in the dining room at a window table overlooking the docks, Mildred said, "A hundred years ago people looked out this very same window and saw three-masted schooners taking on passengers in bustles and top hats, and new-fangled coal steamers taking on cargoes of lumber and ore." She glanced at the menu. "And a hundred years ago this hotel served slumgullion to deckhands and prospectors, instead of broiled whitefish and petite salads to dieters. What are you having, Qwill? You never have to worry about calories."
"Since the cats are having lobster tonight, I think I'm entitled to French onion soup, froglegs, Caesar salad, and pumpkin pecan pie."
"How do the cats like their new environment?" she asked.
"They've okayed the blue velvet wing chair, the Pennsylvania German Schrank, and the kitchen windowsill. About the General Grant bed, when polled they voted 'undecided.' Gastronomically they're in seventh cat heaven, chomping their way through Iris's twenty-four-cubic-foot freezer."