The Cat Who Sniffed Glue Read online

  Harley graduated from Pickax high school before attending Yale. He maintained a better-than-average scholastic record in high school while playing on the tennis team, participating in student government, and acting in student plays. In college he majored in business administration and continued his interest in the dramatic arts.

  Upon returning to Pickax he was active in the Boosters Club and the Theatre Club, where he was last seen as Dromio in The Boys from Syracuse. He was an avid sailor, who skippered the 27-foot Fitch Witch to several trophies. A builder of model ships since the age of 10, he exhibited his handiwork frequently, winning numerous prizes.

  Harley married Belle Urkle in October of last year in Las Vegas.

  A sidebar carried comments from persons who had known Harley Fitch: the high-school principal, the tennis coach, schoolmates, the president of the Boosters, bank personnel, and Larry Lanspeak, representing the Theatre Club. “A model student . . . always enthusiastic and cooperative . . . fun to be with . . . talented actor . . . a 100-percent team player . . . wonderful to work for . . . always so thoughtful . . . upbeat all the way.”

  Qwilleran read the story three times, massaging his moustache as he read. There were details that aroused his curiosity. Down Below, when he was writing for the Fluxion, such an event would have demanded a bull session at the Press Club, with fellow journalists reviewing the story, analyzing, questioning, circulating rumors, airing suspicions, outguessing the police, exchanging inside information. Unfortunately there was no Press Club in Pickax, but he asked Arch Riker if he would like to have dinner at the Old Stone Mill.

  For an answer Riker unlocked a desk drawer and withdrew a small box. He was looking smug. The box contained an impressive diamond ring. “I’m giving it to Amanda tonight,” he said, his ruddy face virtually bursting with joy.

  Qwilleran was nonplussed. This development accounted for Riker’s uncharacteristically happy mien lately. Divorced after twenty-five years, he had been morose and introspective until he moved to Pickax, and Qwilleran was glad he had found a woman he liked. But Amanda! That was the shock.

  “Congratulations,” he managed to say. “This comes as a surprise.”

  “It will surprise Amanda, too. She’s never been married, and we all know she’s grouchy and opinionated, but what the hell! We’re right for each other.”

  “That’s all that matters,” said Qwilleran.

  Next he asked Junior to stay in town for dinner.

  “I’m not a bachelor any more,” said the managing editor with a happy grin, “and Jody’s parents are up here from Cleveland to celebrate the kickoff. Jody’s having leg of lamb and German chocolate cake.”

  Then Qwilleran broached the subject to Roger MacGillivray and offered to stand treat.

  “Gosh, I’d like to,” said Roger. “I don’t often get a freebie. But Sharon’s going to her cousin’s bridal shower, and I promised to baby-sit. My life has changed a lot in the last couple of months.”

  Once again Qwilleran was the lonely bachelor surrounded by happy couples, and he thought regretfully of his failing friendship with Polly Duncan. There were others he could invite to dinner—Francesca, Hixie, Susan, even Iris Cobb—but none equalled Polly for stimulating conversation over the duck à l’orange. And yet she had been noticeably cool since he joined the Theatre Club and hired a designer. Suddenly there had been no idyllic Sundays at her little house in the country—no berry picking, morel gathering, nutting, birding, reading aloud, or other delights. Her chilliness was made more awkward by the fact that she was head librarian, and he was a trustee on the library board.

  In desperation he telephoned her at the office. “Have you heard the news?” he asked in a somber voice.

  “Isn’t it dreadful? Do they know who did it?”

  “Not that I’m aware. No doubt the police have suspects who are being questioned, but the authorities aren’t giving out any information. You can’t blame them. How have you been, Polly?”

  “Fine.”

  “Could you have dinner with me tonight?”

  She hesitated. “I suppose your rehearsal is canceled on account of . . .”

  “The show is called off altogether, and I’m not getting involved in any more plays. You were right, Polly; they’re too time-consuming. I’d like very much to see you tonight.”

  There was a weighty pause, then: “Yes, I’d like to have dinner. I’ve missed you, Qwill.”

  His sigh of relief was audible. “I’ll pick you up at the library at closing time.”

  He walked home with a light step, stopping at Lanspeak’s store to buy a silk scarf in Polly’s favorite shade of blue, which he had gift-wrapped.

  Returning home to shower and shave and dress for dinner, he bounded up the stairs three at a time, but lost his exuberance when the Siamese did not come to greet him. Where were they? He knew he had not locked them in their apartment. Mr. O’Dell had not been there to clean. He peered into the living room, but Koko was not on the bookshelves with the biographies, and Yum Yum was not curled up in her favorite chair.

  Had someone broken in and stolen the cats? He rushed to their apartment. They were not there! He checked their bathroom. No cats! He called their names. No answer! In a panic he searched the bedroom. They were nowhere in sight. Were they shut up somewhere? He yanked open dresser drawers. On hands and knees he examined the back corners of the closet. He called again, but the apartment was silent as death. Fearfully he approached his writing studio. It was never tidy, but this time there were signs of vandalism: desk drawers open, papers scattered about the floor, desktop ransacked, paper clips everywhere!

  It was then that he noticed two silent figures—one on top of the filing cabinet and the other on a wall shelf with Roget’s Thesaurus and a bottle of rubber cement. Yum Yum was crouched on the shelf in her guilty position—a compact bundle with elevated shoulders and haunches. Koko was on the filing cabinet, sitting tall but without his usual confidence.

  Qwilleran gazed down at the papers on the floor. To his surprise they were all envelopes. New envelopes. His stationery drawer was open. When he scooped up the scattered items he noticed fang marks in the corners, and all the gummed flaps had been licked clean.

  Sitting down in his desk chair he swiveled to face the culprits. He surmised that Yum Yum had opened the drawers with her famous paw, and Koko, who was attracted to any kind of adhesive, had been on a glutinous binge. Once before, he had ungummed a whole sheet of stamps, and had paraded impudently around the apartment with an airmail stamp stuck on his nose.

  “Well, my friends,” Qwilleran began calmly, “do I have to start locking my desk drawers? What’s the mater with you two? Are you bored? Unhappy? Is there something lacking in your life? Is your diet inadequate?”

  Koko, the usual spokesman for the pair, had no comment.

  “You have epicurean food and the recommended daily allowances of vitamins. Do you realize there are cats who have to scrounge for their food in garbage cans?”

  There was no reply.

  “Has the cat got your tongue?”

  Still no answer. Qwilleran doubted that Koko was even listening.

  “You don’t know how lucky you are. Some cats live outdoors all year in snow and sleet and torrential rains. You have a steam-heated apartment with private bath, TV, wall-to-wall carpeting, and . . .”

  Qwilleran huffed into his moustache as the truth dawned upon him. Koko—with a glazed expression in his eyes and a peculiar splay-legged stance—was high on glue!

  “You devil!” he blurted. And then he had a second thought. Koko never did anything unusual without a good reason. But what could this reason be?

  SCENE SEVEN

  Place:

  Tipsy’s Restaurant in North Kennebeck

  Time:

  Later that evening

  Introducing:

  POLLY DUNCAN

  MR. O’DELL, Qwilleran’s part-time houseman

  LORI BAMBA, a friend of Koko and Yum Yum

&nbs
p; When Qwilleran picked up Polly Duncan at the library he asked, “I’m glad you can have dinner with me. Do you mind if we drive out into the country? The bad news has made me restless and uneasy. I need to talk about it.”

  Her voice was soft and gentle, with a timbre that he found both soothing and stimulating. “I understand, Qwill. A tragedy like this makes people want to huddle together.” She gave him a needful glance that was all too brief.

  “I thought we might go to Tipsy’s. Do you know anything about it?”

  “The food is good, and it’s very popular,” Polly said brightly, as if determined to make this a cheerful evening. “Did you know the place was named after a cat? The founder of the restaurant was a cook in a lumbercamp and then a saloonkeeper. During Prohibition he went Down Below and operated a blind pig. After Repeal he came back up here with a black-and-white cat named Tipsy and opened a steakhouse in a log cabin.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Gus. That’s all I know. But he was legendary around here, and so was Tipsy. That was fifty or sixty years ago. The place has changed hands many times, but they always retain the name.”

  They drove through typical Moose County terrain: rolling pastureland dotted with boulders and sheep, dairy farms with white barns, dark stretches of woods, abandoned mines with the remains of shafthouses. At a fork in the road a signpost indicated that it was three miles to West Middle Hummock. The other branch of the road led to Chipmunk (2 miles) and North Kennebeck (10 miles).

  “West Middle Hummock isn’t far from Chipmunk, is it?” Qwilleran observed.

  “A study in contrasts,” Polly said.

  The highway soon ran through a cluster of substandard dwellings: cottages with sagging porches and peeling paint, sheet-metal shacks, trailer homes hardly larger than gypsy wagons, and larger houses advertising rooms to rent.

  “The rooming houses were brothels in the early days of Chipmunk,” she said.

  Youths were hanging around the burger palace and the party store, drinking from cans and blasting the atmosphere with their boomboxes. Qwilleran thought, Are these the rowdies who broke into the school, trashed the dental clinic, and opened the hydrants? Is this where Chad Lanspeak hangs out? Are the Fitch murderers holed up in this town?

  North Kennebeck, on the other hand, was a thriving community with a grain elevator, condominiums, an old railway depot converted into a museum, and Tipsy’s—a log-cabin restaurant that attracted diners from all parts of the county.

  The exterior logs were dark and chinked; the interior was whitewashed and inviting, with rustic furnishings and a casual crowd of diners. Under a spotlight in the main dining room hung a portrait of a white cat with black boots and a black patch that seemed to be slipping down over one eye. It gave her the look of a tipsy matron.

  Polly said, “She also had a deformed foot that made her stagger and added to her inebriated image. How are your cats, Qwill?”

  “Koko is happy that I’ve started collecting old books. He prefers biographies. How he can distinguish Plutarch’s Parallel Lives from Wordsworth’s poems is something I don’t understand.”

  “And how is dear little Yum Yum?”

  “That dear little Yum Yum has developed an unpleasant habit that I won’t discuss at the dinner table.”

  He ordered dry sherry for Polly and, for himself, Squunk water with a dash of bitters and a slice of lemon. (The village of Squunk Corners was noted for a flowing well, whose waters were said to be therapeutic.) Raising his glass in a toast, he said, “To the memory of a promising young couple!”

  “Harley was an admirable young man,” Polly said sadly.

  “Koko took an instant liking to him. No one seems to know much about his wife. The paper said they were married in Las Vegas, and I thought that unusual. The affluent families around here seem to like big weddings at the Old Stone Church—with twelve attendants and five hundred guests and a reception at the country club.”

  “When David and Jill were married, their wedding cost a fortune.”

  “Harley’s wife never came to the Theatre Club, yet the newspaper said both couples were going to the rehearsal and both couples were wearing rehearsal clothes.”

  Polly raised her eyebrows. “Did you ever read a news story that was completely accurate?”

  They consulted the menu. It was no-frills cuisine at Tipsy’s, but the cooks knew what they were doing. Polly was happy that her pickerel tasted like fish and not like seasoned bread crumbs. Qwilleran was happy that his steak required chewing. “I always suspect beef that melts in my mouth,” he said.

  The conversation never strayed far from the Fitch case. Polly worried about Harley’s mother, who was a trustee on the library board. “Margaret has very high blood pressure. I’m afraid to think how she may react to the shock. She’s such a wonderful person—so generous with her time, always willing to chair a committee or captain a fund-raising event—not just for the library, but for the hospital and school. Nigel is the same way. They’re beautiful people!”

  “Hmmm,” Qwilleran mused, unsure how to react to this outpouring of sentiment—so unusual for Polly. “It will be rough on David,” he ventured to say. “He and his brother were so close.”

  “Yes, and David was the more sensitive of the two, but Jill will give him the support he needs. She has a firm grip on her emotions. Did you notice that it was Jill who was quoted in the newspaper? When she and David were married, everyone in the wedding party was nervous except the bride.”

  “Didn’t it surprise you to learn that we’ve had an armed robbery in Moose County?” he asked.

  “It was bound to happen. Firearms are plentiful up here. So many hunters, you know, with rifles, shotguns, handguns. The majority are responsible, law-abiding sportsmen, but . . . these days anything can happen.” She shot him a quick, inquiring glance. “I don’t hunt, but I do have a handgun.”

  Qwilleran’s moustache bristled. Her reserved personality, her gentle manner, her quiet voice, her matronly figure, her conservative dress—nothing suggested that she might have a lethal weapon in her possession.

  “Living alone on a country road, I feel it’s only prudent,” she explained. “What’s happening Down Below is beginning to happen here. I’ve seen it coming. I don’t like it.”

  “Why don’t you move into town?” he suggested.

  “I’ve lived in that little house ever since Bob died. I adore my little garden. I like the wide-open spaces. I enjoy living on a dirt road and seeing cows in a pasture when I drive to work.

  “Sometimes one has to compromise, Polly.”

  “Compromise doesn’t come easily to me.”

  “I’ve noticed that,” Qwilleran said.

  Polly declined dessert, but he was unable to resist the lemon-meringue pie.

  “Have you ever seen the Fitch estate?” he asked.

  “Several times. When Margaret and Nigel lived in the big house, she gave a tea for the library board every Christmas. They have hundreds of acres—beautiful rolling country with woods and meadows and streams and a view of the big lake from the highest hill. The mansion that Cyrus Fitch built in the 1920s is a large rambling place. They say he designed it himself. He was a militant individualist! An avid collector, too. Harley and David grew up there—among big-game trophies, rare books, Chinese-temple sculpture, medieval armor, and all the exotic things that people collected in the twenties if they had money. When David married Jill, his parents built them a modern house on the property. When Harley married, he and his bride moved into the mansion and his parents took a condominium.”

  “Can one drive into the property?”

  “It’s a private road, but there’s nothing to stop anyone from entering.”

  “What is there to attract burglars? I can’t imagine that the thieves were interested in rare books or mounted rhinoceros heads.”

  “There was jewelry handed down in the family. I imagine Harley’s wife received some of it after they were married.”

  Qwi
lleran stroked his moustache thoughtfully. “I have a feeling the killer or killers had been there before.”

  When they left Tipsy’s and started the drive back to Pickax in the first pink of the sunset, he asked, “How do you like the Moose County Something?”

  “I rejoice that we have a newspaper once more, but the name is appalling.”

  “It’s only temporary until the readers cast their ballots.”

  “I was surprised at the size of it.”

  “It will settle down to twenty-four pages as time goes on. They plan to publish Wednesdays and weekends until the new plant is finished, then go to five days a week. I’m going to write a feature column.”

  “What about your novel?” Polly asked sharply.

  “Well, Polly, I’ve reached the painful decision that I’m not geared for producing fiction. For twenty-five years my career was based on ferreting out facts, verifying facts, organizing facts and reporting them accurately. It seems to have stultified my imagination.”

  “But you’ve been working on your novel for two years!”

  “I’ve been talking about it for two years,” he corrected her. “I’m getting nowhere. Maybe I’m just lazy.”

  “You disappoint me, Qwill.”

  “You overestimate me. You were expecting me to be a north-woods Faulkner or a dry-land Melville.”

  “I was expecting you to write something of lasting value. Now you will simply produce more disposable newspaper prose. Your columns in the Daily Fluxion were always well-written and informative and entertaining, but are you living up to your potential?”

  “I know my limitations, Polly. You’re setting a goal for me that’s unrealistic.” He was becoming annoyed.

  “It was your idea to write a novel.”

  “It’s every writer’s idea to write a novel sooner or later, but not all of us have the aptitude. On my desk I have a bushel of notes and a fistful of half-written pages.” Unfortunately his voice was rising. “I need the discipline of a newspaper job! That’s why I’m writing a column for the Moose County Something.” His tone had a finality that implied: Like it or not!