A server passed, carrying a birthday cake with a single candle burning. It was en route to a table occupied by three members of the Brodie family. He followed it.
“You’re just in time, Qwill!” cried Fran. “Pull up a chair! It’s Mother’s birthday.”
Police chief Andrew Brodie was looking self-conscious in the suit, shirt, and tie he always wore to church. His wife, a modest north-country woman, looked uncomfortable in a dress obviously chosen by her sophisticated daughter.
“Happy birthday!” Qwilleran said. “This is an unexpected pleasure.” He clasped her extended hand in both of his.
“Oh, it’s such an honor to have you at my birthday party!” she said.
“The honor is all mine. I’ve heard so much about you!”
“I read your column every Tuesday and Friday, Mr. Qwilleran.”
“Please call me Qwill. I don’t know your first name.”
“Martha, but everyone calls me Mattie.”
“Do you mind if I call you Martha? It has a lovely sound, and there are so many famous Marthas in history.”
“Mother! Will you make a wish and blow out the candle before it sets fire to the cake?” Fran gave Qwilleran a look of feigned exasperation.
He chuckled. Anyone as glamorous and successful as Fran deserved to be exasperated once in a while. When Mrs. Brodie made her silent wish, he could guess what it was—that Fran would marry the president of MCCC and settle down, like the other daughters in the family.
“This is the most wonderful birthday I’ve ever had!” she confided to Qwilleran. “Dr. Prelligate sent me a dozen long-stemmed red roses—first time in my life! He would have been here tonight but he had to go out of town.”
“Mother! You’re supposed to cut the cake.”
The cake was lemon coconut, and Andy announced that Mattie could bake a better one.
Fran asked, “What are you doing here?”
“Snooping. Do you know what happened to the cuckoo clock that was here before old Gus died?”
“There was no cuckoo clock when I started the inventory.”
Andy asked, “How do you like staying here?”
“We’re on the third floor, and the cats don’t like being cooped up, but we can’t get into our cabin because the detectives have it sealed.”
“Looking for clues,” Andy muttered.
Qwilleran huffed into his moustache. “They’ve had forty-eight hours! Koko came up with one in five minutes!”
“I always said that smart cat should be on the force!”
“Are you going to the opera Friday night? It’s the one with the famous cop song: A policeman’s lot is not a happy one!”
“You ain’t kiddin’.”
Upstairs, in 3FF, Qwilleran broke the good news to the Siamese. “Soon we’ll be moving to a cabin with a screened porch—and ducks paddling, trout leaping, squirrels squirreling!”
He was feeling in good spirits himself, and he composed a limerick to amuse readers of Friday’s column.
An amazing young fellow name Cyril
Was ingenious, agile and virile.
He ran up and down trees
On his hands and his knees
And eventually married a squirrel.
chapter six
As Qwilleran was going into the dining room for breakfast, Nick Bamba hailed him from the office. “Couple of things for you here, Qwill. One looks like the postcard from Polly you’ve been waiting for.”
To exhibit his nonchalance, he put the postcard in his pocket and borrowed a paper knife to open the envelope. It contained a pair of complimentary tickets, fifth row on the aisle, for the opening of Pirates of Penzance.
At the entrance to the dining room the hostess on duty was Cathy, the MCCC student.
“Would you save me a table for four Sunday evening?”
“In the window as usual?”
“Please. And how are reservations coming in for Friday?”
“Very well! Is there something special?”
“It’s opening night of the Gilbert and Sullivan opera at the auditorium. I’m reviewing it for the paper and have two complimentary tickets. Do you know anyone who could use the other one?”
“I’m quite sure. Is it a good opera?”
“Very clever. Very tuneful.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
He gave Cathy the second ticket, wondering what young innocent would be his seatmate and wishing Polly were in town.
And after taking a table, and after some badinage with the waitress, and after deciding on French toast and sausage patties . . . Qwilleran looked at Polly’s first postcard.
He expected to see a replica of an eighteenth-century village with an oxcart on a dirt road, surrounded by hens pecking in the ruts. Instead he saw an airport motel with a hundred-foot electric sign and a parking lot filled with cars. The message on the reverse side was in minuscule handwriting:
Dear Qwill—Arrived safely. Luggage lost. Delivered in middle of night. Locks broken. Mona went to hospital with rhinitis caused by strong perfume on plane.
Love, Polly
Qwilleran huffed into his moustache. He had asked for more personal news, and Polly always aimed to please.
alt="[image]"/>Around noon Qwilleran set out for his luncheon-interview with Bruce Abernethy. The doctor lived in the village of Black Creek. There were two Black Creeks, one wet and one dry, as the locals liked to say. The former flowed north to the lake and had been a major waterway in pioneer days, when the forests were being lumbered. It was wider and deeper in the nineteenth century and had the advantage of being straight—an important consideration when logs were being driven downstream in the spring. The “dry” half of the metaphor was the village on the east bank of the creek—although not completely dry; the Nutcracker Inn had a bar license, and there was a neighborhood pub behind the gas station. It had a roller-coaster history: a thriving community in the boom years; a bed of ashes after the Big Burning of 1869; a veritable phoenix in the Nineties; a ghost town after the economic collapse. During Prohibition there was a period of prosperity as rum runners brought their contraband from Canada and went up the creek to the railroad.
When Qwilleran first arrived in Moose County from Down Below, the Limburger mansion stood like a grotesque monument to the past, but there was little else. Now Black Creek’s downtown had a post office, fire station and branch bank—plus a drugstore selling hardware, a grocery selling books and flowers, a gas station selling hamburgers, and a barbershop selling gifts.
Qwilleran, on his way to the Abernethy house, stopped to buy flowers, which he handed to the doctor’s wife when she greeted him at the door. “Come in! Bruce is on the phone. . . . Oh, thank you! How did you know that daisies are my favorite? . . . The date of the MCCC luncheon has been set for July 27. That’s a Thursday. Is that agreeable with your busy schedule? Everyone is so pleased you’ve consented to join us!”
“My pleasure,” he murmured. The invitation was more welcome than he revealed.
The MCCC faculty had not crossed paths with the “Qwill Pen” columnist—nor had he pursued them. His fellow journalists considered them cliquish. Actually the college had a limited curriculum, and many members of the faculty commuted from Down Below to teach two or three days a week. Qwilleran had met the college president briefly when the man was escorting Fran Brodie to a reception. Otherwise, his sole contact was Burgess Campbell, who gave a lecture course in American history. A localite, Campbell frequented the men’s coffee shops that were a part of the Moose County culture.