Mary turned to look at the remarkable animal. Koko was sitting on his spine with one leg in midair as he washed the base of his tail. He paused with pink tongue extended and returned her admiring gaze with an insolent stare. Then, having finished his ablutions, he went on to the ritual of sharpening his claws. He jumped on the daybed, stood on his hind legs and scratched the papered wall where the book pages overlapped and corners were beginning to curl up tantalizingly.
"No! Down! Scram! Beat it!" Qwilleran scolded. Koko obeyed, but not until he had finished the sharpening job and taken his time about it.
The man explained to his guest. "Koko was given a dictionary for a scratching pad, and now he thinks he can use any printed page for a pedicure. Sometimes I'm convinced he can read. He once exposed a series of art forgeries that way." "Are you serious?" "Absolutely…. Tell me, is there much fakery in antiques?" "Not in this country. An unscrupulous dealer may sell a nineteenth century Chippendale reproduction as an eighteenth century piece, or an artist may do crude paintings on old canvas and call them early American primitives, but there's no large-scale faking to my knowledge…. How do you like the fruitcake? One of my customers made it. Robert Maus." "The attorney?" "Do you know him? He's a superb cook." "Wasn't he Andy's lawyer? Quite an important attorney for a little operation in Junktown," Qwilleran remarked.
"Robert is an avid collector and a friend of mine. He represented Andy as a courtesy." "Did his legal mind ever do any questioning about Andy's so-called accident?" Mary gave him an anxious glance. "Are you still pursuing that?" Qwilleran decided to be candid. He was tired of hearing about Andy's superlative qualities from all the women in Junktown. "Are you aware," he said, "that it was Andy who tipped off the police to Cobb's scrounging?" "No, I can't believe — " "Why did he squeal on Cobb and not on Russ or some of the other scroungers? Did he have a grudge against Cobb?" "I don't — " "It may be that Andy also threatened Cobb-threatened to tell Iris about his philandering. I hate to say this, Mary, but your friend Andy was a meddler — or else he had an ax to grind. Perhaps he considered that Cobb was trespassing on his own territory when he visited Cluthra." Mary flushed. "So you found out about that, too!" "I'm sorry," said Qwilleran. "I didn't want to embarrass you." She shrugged, and she was attractive when she shrugged. "I knew that Andy was seeing Cluthra. That's why we quarreled the night he was killed. Andy and I weren't really committed. We had an understanding. Not even an understanding — just an arrangement. But I'm afraid I was beginning to feel possessive." She reached over and clicked off the heat lamp. "That knee has broiled long enough. How does it feel?" "Better. Much better." Qwilleran started to fill his pipe. "After Andy left your house that night — to meet the prospective customers — what route did he take?" "He went out my back door, through the alley and into the back of his shop." "And when you followed, you went the same way? Did you see anyone else in the alley?" Mary gave Qwilleran a swift glance. "I don't think so. There might have been one of those invisible men from the rooming house. They slink around like ghosts." "How much time had elapsed when you followed Andy?" She hesitated. "Oh… about an hour…. More fruitcake, Qwill?" "Thanks. During that time the customers may have come, found the front door locked, and gone away — unaware that Andy lay dead in the back room. Before they arrived, someone else could have followed Andy into his shop through the back door — someone who had seen him enter…. Let's see, how many buildings stand between your house and Andy's store?" "Russ's carriage house, then the variety store, then this house, then the rooming house where Ben has his shop." "That building and your own place are duplicates of this house, aren't they?" Qwilleran asked. "Only narrower." "You're very observant. The three houses were built by the same family." "I know Russ lives upstairs over his workshop. Who's his roommate? Is he in the antique business?" "No. Stanley is a hairdresser." "I wonder where Russ gets all his dough. He owns the carriage house, wears custom-made boots, has twenty thousand dollars worth of sound equipment, stables a white Jaguar…. Is he on the up-and-up? Did Andy think he was simon-pure? Maybe Andy was getting ready to put the finger on him. Where does Russ get his dough? Does he have a sideline?" "I only know that he's a hard worker. Sometimes I hear his power tools at three o'clock in the morning." "I wonder — " Qwilleran stopped to light his pipe. "I wonder why Russ lied to me tonight. I asked him if he'd been scrounging at the Ellsworth house, and he denied it. Yet I could swear that those crutches and those white boots had been through that house." "Dealers are sensitive about their sources of supply," Mary said. "It's considered bad form to ask a dealer where he acquires his antiques, and if he answers you at all, he never feels bound to state the truth. It's also bad form to tell a dealer about your grandmother's attic treasures." "Really? Who decrees these niceties of etiquette?" Mary smiled in a lofty way that Qwilleran found charming. "The same authority who gives newspapers the right to invade everyone's privacy." "Touch!" "Did I tell you about finding the twenty dollar bill?" she asked after they had gazed at each other appreciatively for a few seconds.
"Some people get all the breaks," he said. "Where did you find it?" "In the pocket of my sweater-the one I was wearing on the night of Andy's accident. The sweater dipped in his blood, and I rolled it up in a ball and stuffed it on a closet shelf. My cleaning woman found it this weekend, and that's when the twenty dollar bill came to light." "Where did it come from?" "I picked it up in Andy's workroom." "You mean you found money at the scene of the accident? And you picked it up? Didn't you realize it might be an important clue?" Mary shrugged and looked appealingly guilty. "Banker's child," she explained.
"Was it folded?" She nodded.
"How was it folded?" "Lengthwise — and then in half." "Did Andy fold his money that way?" "No, He used a billfold." Qwilleran turned his head suddenly, "Koko! Get away from that lamp!" The cat had crept onto the table and was rubbing his jaw against the wick regulator of the lamp decorated with pink roses. At the same moment Qwilleran felt a flicker of awareness in the same old place, and he smoothed his moustache with the stem of his pipe.
"Mary," he said, "who were the people who were coming to look at the light fixture?" "I don't know. Andy merely said a woman from the suburbs was bringing her husband to approve it before she bought it." Qwilleran leaned forward in his Morris chair, "Mary, if Andy was getting the chandelier down from the ceiling when he fell, it means that the customers had already okayed it! Andy was getting the thing down so they could take it with them! Don't you see? If the accident was genuine, it means the suburban couple were in the store when it happened, Why didn't they call the police? Who were they? Were they there at all? And if not, who was there?" Mary looked guilty again. "I guess it's all right to tell you — now…. When I went to Andy's shop to apologize, I went twice, The first time I peeked in and saw him talking with someone, so I made a hasty retreat and tried again later." "Did you recognize the person?" "Yes, but I was afraid to let anyone know I had seen anything." "What did you see, Mary?" "I saw them arguing — Andy and C. C. And I was afraid C. C. might have seen me. You have no idea how relieved I was when I heard about his accident this morning. That's a terrible thing to say, I know." "And you've been living in fear of that guy! Did he give you any reason to be?" "Not actually, but… that's when the mysterious phone calls started." "I knew it!" Qwilleran said. "I knew there was something fishy about that call the other night. How of ten — ?" "About once a week — always the same voice — obviously disguised. It sounded like a stage whisper — raspy — asthmatic." "What was said?" "Always something stupid and melodramatic. Vague hints about Andy's death. Vague predictions of danger. Now that C. C. is gone, I have a feeling the calls will stop." "Don't be too sure," Qwilleran said. "There was a third person in Andy's shop that night-the owner of that twenty dollar bill. C. C. used a billfold and filed his currency flat. Someone else… I wonder how Ben Nicholas folds his money?" "Qwill — " "Would a woman ever fold a bill lengthwise?" "Qwill," she said earnestly, "you're not serious about this, are you? I don't want any official interest to be revived in Andy's death." She said it bluntly and confronted him squarely.