The Cat Who Played Post Office Read online

  “He’s on top of the refrigerator,” she said. “He’s listening to every word I say. Let me see if the phone cord will reach.”

  There was an interlude in which Mrs. Cobb could be heard making coaxing noises, while Koko’s familiar yowl came through with piercing clarity. Then Qwilleran heard a snuffling sound coming from the receiver.

  “Hello there, Koko old boy,” he said. “Are you taking care of Yum Yum? Are you keeping the house safe from lions and tigers?”

  A throaty purr came over the line. Koko appreciated intelligent conversation.

  “Be a good cat and eat your food. You’ve got to keep up your strength to fight off all those jaguars and black buffalos. So long, Koko. I’ll be home tomorrow.”

  “YOW!” came a sharp cry that stabbed Qwilleran’s eardrum.

  He replaced the receiver and turned to find Mrs. Toodle standing there in wide-eyed astonishment. Her voice was wary. “I came to see . . . if you’d like to have . . . your lunch now, Mr. Q.”

  “If there’s no objection,” he replied, “I’d prefer to go down to the cafeteria. Do you suppose they’re serving consommé with poached plover eggs or a salpicon of mussels today?”

  Mrs. Toodle looked alarmed and hurried out. Qwilleran chuckled. He was feeling euphoric after his brief brush with amnesia.

  Before going in search of food he combed his hair and thought about Mrs. Cobb’s remark: The sheriff found the bicycle in the ditch! The drainage ditch was a good thirty feet from the pavement to allow for future widening of the new highway. If he had blacked out or if he had hit some obstruction, he and his bike would have toppled over on the gravel shoulder. How did the bicycle end up in the ditch? It was a question he might pursue later, but first he needed food.

  Wearing his Mackintosh bathrobe, Qwilleran headed for the elevator, walking with a slow and dignified step dictated by his legful of bandages. He was thankful he had not landed on his bad knee. On second thought, he realized he now might have two bad knees.

  Everyone in the corridor seemed to know him. Orderlies and ambulatory patients greeted him by name—or, rather, by initial—and one of the nurses said, “Sorry about your room, Mr. Q—the color of the walls, I mean. It was supposed to be antique pink, but the painters got their signals crossed.”

  “It’s not very appetizing,” Qwilleran agreed. “It looks like raw veal, but I can live with it for another twenty-four hours.”

  In the cafeteria he was greeted with applause from the nurses, technicians, and doctors who were lunching on cottage cheese salads, bowls of chili, and braised cod with poached celery. He acknowledged their greetings with courtly bows and exaggerated salutes before taking his place in line. Ahead of him was a white-haired country doctor with two claims to fame: He was Melinda’s father, and he had swabbed throats, set bones, and delivered babies for half of Moose County.

  Dr. Halifax Goodwinter turned and said, “Ah! The celebrated cyclist! Glad to see you’re still among the living. It would be a pity if my daughter lost her first and only patient.”

  A nurse standing behind Qwilleran nudged his elbow. “You should wear a helmet, Mr. Q. You could’ve been killed.”

  He carried a tray of chili and corn muffins to a table occupied by three men he had met at the Pickax Boosters Club: the hospital administrator, a genial urologist, and a banker who served on the hospital board of trustees.

  The doctor said, “Planning to sue anybody, Qwill? I can steer you to a couple of ingenious ambulance chasers.”

  The banker said, “You can’t sue the manufacturer. That kind of bike hasn’t been made for fifty years.”

  The administrator said, “We’re taking up a collection to buy you a new bike—and maybe a new bathrobe.”

  Patting the lapels of his ratty red plaid, Qwilleran said in his best declamatory style, “This is a vintage robe with a noteworthy provenance, gentlemen. The distress marks merely add to its associative value.” The truth was that Koko had gone through a wool-eating phase, nibbling chair upholstery, neckties, the Mackintosh robe, and other handy items.

  Qwilleran felt at ease with the hospital badinage. It was the same kind of jocular roasting he had enjoyed at the Daily Fluxion. Everyone in Pickax City seemed to like him, and why not? He was an affable companion, a sympathetic listener, and the richest man in the county. He had no delusions on that score. As a feature writer for the Fluxion he had been courted by lobbyists, politicians, businessmen, and media hounds. He accepted their attentions graciously, but he had no delusions.

  After lunch the lab took blood samples, and Qwilleran had an EKG, followed by another nap and another dream.

  Again it was vivid—painfully so. He was climbing out of a ditch near a lonely highway. His clothing was soaked; his pants were torn, his legs were bleeding. Blood was trickling into his right eye as he stumbled onto the highway and started to walk. Soon a red car stopped, and someone in a blue shirt jumped out. It was Junior Goodwinter, the young managing editor of the Pickax Picayune. Junior gave him a ride back to town and talked incessantly on the journey, but Qwilleran could say nothing. He struggled to answer Junior’s questions, but he could find no words.

  The dream ended abruptly, and the dreamer found himself sitting up in bed, sweating and shivering. He mopped his face and then reached for the telephone and called the newspaper office.

  “Qwill! You pulled through!” shouted Junior into the phone. “When I picked you up yesterday, you weren’t exactly dead, but you weren’t alive either. We had the type all set up to print an obit if you kicked off.”

  “Thanks. That was decent of you,” Qwilleran said.

  “Are you hitting on all eight? You sound okay.”

  “They sewed me together, and I look like the Spirit of ’76. Where was I when you picked me up, Junior?’

  “On Ittibittiwassee Road, beyond the Buckshot mineshaft. You were wandering around in the middle of the pavement in a daze—going in the wrong direction. Your clothes were all ripped and muddy. Your head was bleeding. You really had me worried, especially when you couldn’t talk.”

  “Did you see my bike?”

  “Tell the truth, I wasn’t looking for it. I just concentrated on getting you to the hospital. I hit a hundred ten.”

  “What were you driving?”

  “My Jag, luckily. That’s why I could kick it up to one-ten so fast.”

  “Thanks, Junior. Let’s have lunch next week. I’ll buy.”

  Another dream checked out! Even the color of the car was accurate. Qwilleran knew that Junior’s Jaguar was red.

  He discussed his dreams with Melinda Goodwinter and Arch Riker that evening when they came to the hospital to have dinner with him in the cafeteria. Without her white coat and stethoscope Melinda looked more like the young woman he had been dating for the last two months.

  Qwilleran asked her, “Do you kiss all your bedridden male patients?”

  “Only those of advanced age,” she retorted with a sweetly malicious look in her green eyes.

  “Funny thing,” he said, “but some of the details I couldn’t remember came back to me in dreams this afternoon. There’s only one blank left in my memory—the actual circumstances that caused the accident.”

  “It wasn’t a pothole,” Melinda said. “That’s a brand-new highway, smooth as glass.”

  Riker said, “It’s my guess that you swerved to avoid hitting something, Qwill, and skidded on the shoulder. A skunk or raccoon, perhaps, or even a deer. I saw a lot of dead animals on the road, coming in from the airport.”

  “We’ll never know for sure,” Qwilleran said. “How’s everything at the house? Did you get some sleep? Did Mrs. Cobb give you lunch? Did you see Koko?”

  “Everything’s fine. Koko met me at the front door and gave me a military inspection. I guess I passed muster, because he allowed me to enter.”

  Late that night, when the hospital corridor was silent, Qwilleran dreamed his final dream. It was the missing link between the macaroni-and-cheese and the red
Jaguar. He saw himself pedaling at a leisurely pace along a deserted highway, appreciating the smooth asphalt and the lack of traffic and the gently rolling hills. Pedaling uphill was easy, and coasting down was glorious.

  He passed the abandoned Buckshot Mine with its rotting shaft house and ominous signs: Danger . . . Keep Out . . . Beware of Cave-ins. The deserted mines that dotted the lonely landscape around Pickax City were a source of endless fascination for Qwilleran. They were mysterious—silent—dead.

  The Buckshot was different, however. He had been told that, if one listened intently, one could hear an eerie whistling sound coming from the shaft where eighteen miners had been buried alive in 1913.

  In the dream he pedaled slowly and silently past the Buckshot. Only a tick-tick in the rear wheel and a grinding sound in the sprocket broke the stillness. He turned his head to gaze at the gray ghost of the shaft house . . . the sloping depression at the site of a cave-in . . . the vibrant green weeds that smothered the whole scene. He was staring so intently that he was unaware of a truck approaching from the opposite direction—unaware until its motor roared. He looked ahead in time to see its burst of speed, its sudden swerve into the eastbound lane, a murderous monster bearing down upon him. In the dream he had a vivid picture of the grille, a big rusty thing that seemed to be grinning. He yanked the handlebars and plunged down toward the roadside ditch, but the front wheel hit a rock and he went sailing over the handlebars. For an interminable moment he was airborne.

  Qwilleran wrenched himself from sleep in a fright and found himself sitting up in bed, sweating and shouting.

  An orderly hurried into the room. “Mr. Q! Mr. Q! What’s the problem? A bad dream?”

  Qwilleran shook himself in an effort to dispel the nightmare. “Sorry. Hope I didn’t disturb the other patients.”

  “Want a drink of water, Mr. Q?”

  “Thanks. And will you raise the bed? I’d better sit up for a while.”

  Qwilleran leaned back against his pillow, reliving the dream. It was as graphic as the others. The sky was blue. The weeds around the deserted mine were poison green. The truck had a rusted grille.

  Like the other dreams, it had actually happened, he realized, but there was no one he could phone for verification.

  One thing was clear. What happened on Ittibittiwassee Road was no accident. He thought, I’m well liked in Pickax . . . but not by everyone.

  TWO

  It was midsummer when the richest man in Moose County fell off his antiquated bicycle. Two months before that incident he was far from affluent. He was an underpaid feature writer working for a large midwestern newspaper noted for its twenty-four-point bylines and meager wage scale. As a frugal bachelor he lived in a one-room furnished apartment and was making payments on a used car. He owned a fifty-year-old typewriter with a faulty shift key, and his library consisted of the odd titles found on the twenty-five-cent table in secondhand bookstores. His wardrobe, such as it was, fitted comfortably in two suitcases. He was perfectly content.

  Jim Qwilleran’s sole extravagance was the care and feeding of two Siamese cats who shunned catfood, preferring beef tenderloin, lobster, and oysters in season. Not only did they have aristocratic sensibilities and epicurean appetites, but Koko, the male, showed unusual intelligence. Tales of his extrasensory perception had made him legendary at the Daily Fluxion and the Press Club, although nothing of the cat’s remarkable attribute was mentioned outside the profession.

  Then, without ever buying a lottery ticket, Qwilleran became a multimillionaire virtually overnight. It was a freak inheritance, and he was the sole heir.

  When the astonishing news reached him, Qwilleran and his feline companions were vacationing in Moose County, the northern outpost of the state. They were staying in a lakeshore cabin near the resort town of Mooseville. As soon as he recovered from the shock he submitted his resignation to the Daily Fluxion and made arrangements to move to Pickax City, the county seat, thirty miles from Mooseville.

  But first he had to clean out his desk at the Fluxion office, say goodbye to fellow staffers, and have one last lunch with Arch Riker at the Press Club.

  The two men walked to the club, mopping their brows and complaining of the heat. It was the first hot spell of the season.

  Qwilleran said: “I’m going to miss you and all the other guys, Arch, but I won’t miss the hot weather. It’s ninety-five degrees at City Hall.”

  “I suppose the photographers are frying their annual egg on the sidewalk,” Arch remarked.

  “In Moose County there’s always a pleasant breeze. No need for air-conditioning.”

  “That may be, but how can you stand living four hundred miles from civilization?”

  “Are you under the impression that today’s cities are civilized?”

  “Qwill, you’ve spent less than a month in that northern wilderness,” Arch said, “and already you’re thinking like a sheep farmer . . . . Okay, I’ll rephrase that question. How can you stand living four hundred miles from the Press Club?”

  “It’s a gamble,” Qwilleran admitted, “but those are the terms of Miss Klingenschoen’s will: Live in Moose County for five years or forfeit the inheritance.”

  At the club, where the air conditioner was out of commission, they ordered corned beef sandwiches, gin and tonic for Riker, and iced tea for Qwilleran.

  “If you forfeit the inheritance,” Riker went on, “who gets it?”

  “Some outfit in New Jersey. I don’t mind telling you, Arch, it was a tough decision for me to make. I wasn’t sure I wanted to give up a job on a major newspaper for any amount of money.”

  “Qwill, you’re unique—if not demented. No one in his right mind would turn down millions.”

  “Well, you know me, Arch. I like to work. I like newspapering and press clubs. I’ve never needed a lot of dough, and I’ve never wanted to be encumbered by possessions. It remains to be seen if I’ll be comfortable with money—I mean Money with a capital M.”

  “Try!” Riker advised. “Try real hard. What are the encumbrances that might ruin your life?”

  “Some complicated investments. Office buildings and hotels on the East Coast. A couple of shopping malls. Acreage in Moose County. Half of Main Street in Pickax City. Also the Klingenschoen mansion in Pickax and the log cabin in Mooseville where we spent our vacation.”

  “Rotten luck.”

  “Do you realize I’ll need a housekeeping staff, gardeners, maintenance men, and probably a secretary? Not to mention an accountant, a financial adviser, two attorneys, and a property management firm? That’s not my style! They’ll expect me to join the country club and wear tailor-made suits!”

  “I’m not worried about you, Qwill. You’ll always be your own man. Anyone who’s convinced his cat is psychic will never conform to conventional folkways . . . . Here’s the mustard. Want horseradish?”

  Qwilleran grunted and squirted a question mark of mustard on his corned beef.

  Riker went on. “You’ll never be anything but what you are, Qwill—a lovable slob. Do you realize every one of your ties is full of moth holes?”

  “I happen to like my ties,” Qwilleran countered. “They were all woven in Scotland, and they’re not moth-eaten. Before Yum Yum came to live with us, Koko was frustrated and started chewing wool.”

  “Are those two cats playing house? I thought they were both neutered.”

  “Yes, but Siamese crave companionship. Otherwise they get neurotic. They do strange things.”

  At that moment two photographers from the Fluxion stopped at the table to commiserate with Qwilleran. “Man, do you know what you’re getting into up north?” one of them said. “Moose County is a low-crime area!”

  “No problem,” Qwilleran replied. “They import an occasional felon from down here, just so the cops won’t get bored.”

  He was accustomed to being ribbed about his interest in crime. Everyone at the Press Club knew he had helped the police crack a few cases, and everyone knew that it was K
oko who actually sniffed out the clues.

  Qwilleran applied his attention to his sandwich again, and Riker resumed his questioning. “What’s the population of Pickax?”

  “Three thousand persons and four thousand pickup trucks. I call it Pickup City. The town has one traffic light, fourteen mediocre restaurants, a nineteenth-century newspaper, and more churches than bars.”

  “You could open a good restaurant and start your own paper, now that you’re in the bucks.”

  “No thanks. I’m going to write a book.”

  “Any interesting people up there?”

  “Contrary to what you think, Arch, they’re not all sheep farmers. During my vacation I met some teachers and an engineer and a lively blond postmistress (married, unfortunately) and a couple of attorneys—brother and sister, very classy type. Also there’s a young doctor I’ve started dating. She has the greenest eyes and longest eyelashes you ever saw, and she’s giving me the come-on, if I’m reading the signals right.”

  “How come you always attract women half your age? Must be the overgrown moustache.”

  Qwilleran stroked his upper lip smugly. “Dr. Melinda Goodwinter, M.D . . . . not bad for a Saturday night date.”

  “Sounds like a character in a TV series.”

  “Goodwinter is the big name in Moose County. There’s half a page of them in the telephone directory, and the whole phone book is only fourteen pages thick. The Goodwinters go back to the days when fortunes were being made in mining.”

  “What supports the economy now?”

  “Commercial fishing and tourism. A little farming. Some light industry.”

  Riker chewed his sandwich in somber silence for a while. He was losing his best writer as well as his lunchtime companion. “Suppose you move up there, Qwill, and then change your mind before the five years are up? What happens then?”

  “Everything goes to the people in New Jersey. The estate is held in trust for five years, and during that time all I get is the income . . .”