The Cat Who Robbed a Bank

Sixteen

Monday, September 21 – ”Tis folly to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.’

AS QWILLERAN TORE OFF yesterday’s page from Culvert McBee’s calendar, he regretted that the month would soon end. On the last Tuesday he would devote his column to the ten-year-olds carefully researched collection of wise sayings. Some were old favorites; others had ambiguous meanings; a few were of foreign origin. All would be printed, having been stowed away in a kitchen drawer, and readers would be encouraged to discuss them over coffee at the Dimsdale Diner, tea at the Ittibittiwassee Estates, and beer at the Black Bear Cafe.

At two o’clock the Moose County Something was routinely delivered to the newspaper sleeve on Trevelyan Road, and Qwilleran strolled down the lane to pick it up. The carrier was late, however, so he went into the art center to kill time.

He found Thornton Haggis in the manager’s office and asked him, “What’s that hearse doing in the parking lot?” Actually it was a very long, very old black Cadillac.

“It’s the Tibbitts’ car. Rhoda’s conducting a workshop in silhouette-cutting. Five women and one man are in the classroom, snipping away. Would you like to join them?”

“No, thanks. I’d rather learn how to turn wood. Your two woodturnings are a big hit: the spalted elm vessel on the coffee table and the spalted maple box in the library. People like to touch them.”

“Yes, they’re sensuous – even sensual,” Thornton said.

“My male cat is fascinated by the splotches on the spalted box. He sniffs them and touches them with his paw. I’d wanted to buy it, you know, but Mildred had already spoken for it. Did you know she was buying it for me?”

“In Moose County everyone knows what everyone is doing, Qwill. You should have learned that by now.”

“Okay. This is a test question: Who is Kirt Nightingale?”

“You got me! Who is he?”

“A rare book dealer who claims to have come from this area.”

“Well,” said the stonecutter, “I never cut a headstone for a Nightingale, and I went through all the old ledgers of the monument works when I wrote that paper for the historical society. There were Wrens and Crowes, but no Nightingales.”

Qwilleran looked out the window. “There’s the newspaper carrier. He’s late today.”

Thornton walked with him to the door. “Anything new about the hijacking?”

“I believe not.”

“Everett, my youngest son, knew Boze Campbell when they both had summer jobs with a forestry outfit. In camp they’d sit around telling jokes and drinking beer, but Boze just sat there whittling and chewing gum. His jackknife was a treasured possession. He’d start with a tree limb and whittle it down to the size of a pencil.”

When Qwilleran left the center, he saw a penny alongside the front path. He left it there, certain that it was one of Mildred’s calculated penny-drops. He now had four lucky pennies in the spalted maple box – all grimy, tarnished, weather-worn examples of genuine lost pennies.

It was too early to dress for dinner and too late to start another serious project, so he sat in a comfortable chair and leafed through the latest newsmagazine. In the large empty silence of the barn the only sound was the turning of pages, until:.. His ear was alert to cat noises, and he heard a special kind of mumbling. Yum Yum never mumbled. It was obviously Koko, talking to himself as he undertook a difficult task. Qwilleran was out of his chair in a flash.

The foyer was the scene of Koko’s investigation. He lay on his left side on the flagstone floor, and extended a long left foreleg under the rug; then he withdrew it and rolled over to stretch the other foreleg under the Oriental – which happened to be very thin, very old, and very valuable. Yum Yum watched with interest from a nearby table; Qwilleran watched with admiration Koko’s diligence and perseverance. The determined animal now tried a frontal attack, flattening himself on his belly and squirming under the carpet nose-first like a snake. His ears disappeared, then his forelegs, then half of his long torso. When he finally backed out, he had a treasure clamped in his mouth.

It was a foil gum-wrapper! Barry Morghan had dropped it into the Chinese water bucket two weeks before. It was Yum Yum’s hobby to scour wastebaskets for collectibles to store in secret places, and this was probably the first gum-wrapper she had ever seen. Why did she want it now? Did Koko know she wanted it? How did he know she wanted it? If he knew, would he be likely to do her a favor? Did cats do favors for other cats?

Questions about cat behavior have no answers, Qwilleran decided. He gave them an early dinner and had time for one more letter before leaving for the Riker party. Date: January 1:

Dear Fanny –

Happy New Year! And thank you so much for your generous check. I thought Dana would be pleased with the thoughtful Christmas gift, but for some strange reason he was angry. Then I said it was a loan, to be repaid after the baby comes, but he raved and ranted. He’d been drinking and was really out of control. He tore up the check and said he wasn’t going to accept charity from his wife’s girlfriend. Oh, dear! What to do? Sometimes I’m at my wit’s end! One minute he’s wonderful, and after a drink he’s not the same person. His masculine pride is hurt because he can’t support us. Yesterday he was yelling, “I’ll support my wife and child even if I have to work the garbage trucks or hold up gas stations!” That’s when he tore up your check. And today he was hung over and filled with remorse. Then he gets suicidal. Today I screamed at him, “Don’t talk like that in front of our baby!” I’ve never screamed at anyone in my life! Have you ever heard me scream, Fanny? I don’t know what’s happening to me.

Love from Annie

Qwilleran threw the letter back in the box. There was something naggingly familiar about the scene Annie had described.

On the way to Indian Village to meet Polly’s “charming” antiquarian, he stopped at the Mackintosh Inn to have another look at Lady Anne – so serene, so poised. That was the way he remembered her. A few minutes later he was at The Willows, greeting Polly, also poised and serene.

They walked to The Birches. He was carrying a bottle of wine and yellow mums for their hosts; she had a jar of honey tied with a ribbon for the guest of honor.

“It’s the traditional house-warming gift,” she explained. “Do you know the line, Qwill, about honey and plenty of money from Edward Lear? Kirt has a book of Lear’s nonsense poems that’s valued at twelve thousand. We were talking about it yesterday.”

“Has he moved in?” Qwilleran asked.

“No. The moving van arrives tomorrow.”

When they arrived at the Riker condo, the vehicle with Massachusetts tags was parked in the visitor’s slot.

“Isn’t that an exciting car?” Polly cried. It was a Jaguar.

They presented their gifts, Polly saying to the book dealer, “Here’s to honey and lots of money!”

He was introduced as Kirtwell Nightingale but said he liked to be called Kirt. Qwilleran sized him up as an ordinary-looking man of ordinary build, with ordinary clothing and haircut and handshake.

Cocktails were served, and Arch proposed a toast. “In your garden of life may your pea pods never be empty!”

Qwilleran asked, “What brings you to Little Arctica, Kirt?”

“I grew up around, here,” the man said, “and at a certain age one has a yearning to come home.”

“Did you live in Pickax?”

“No. Out in the country.” He’s evasive, Qwilleran thought; probably grew up in Mudville or Ugley Gardens.

Mildred said, “Qwill has a fabulous collection of old books in his barn.”

“An accumulation, not a collection,” he corrected her. “I simply wander into Eddington Smith’s place and buy something I’d like to read, or something I’ve read before and never owned.”

“Not all collectors buy for investment,” the dealer said. “Many buy for personal reading pleasure. My only advice is to check the book’s condition. It should have a secure binding and all its pages, with no tears or underlining – and of course a clean cover.”

Qwilleran asked, “What if your cat has a hobby of knocking books off the shelf?”

“You have a problem.”

Polly’s question was: “If I want to collect books, how do I start?”

“First decide whether you want to be a generalist or a specialist. It’s my humble opinion that specialists have more fun. If you focus on one category – zoology, shipwrecks, or Thomas Edison, for example – the hunt can be exciting.”

Polly said she would choose ornithology; Mildred, old cookbooks; Arch, life in early America.

Qwilleran said, “I have an old copy of ‘Domestic Manners of the Americans’ that you can have for twenty bucks.”

“Sure. You bought it for three.”

“Qwill,” said Kirt, “you’re on your way to becoming an antiquarian bookseller. All it takes is one profitable sale, and you get the fever… and by the way, Polly gave me some back copies of your column. You’re a splendid writer! And she tells me that’s a portrait of your mother in the lobby of the inn. A handsome woman!”

Mildred interrupted by announcing dinner: individual casseroles of shrimp and asparagus, green salad with toasted sesame seeds and Stilton cheese, and cranberry parfaits.

On the way home Polly asked Qwilleran what he thought of their new neighbor.

“Not a bad guy!” he said.

It was midnight when the brown van drove into the barnyard, and Qwilleran expected a scolding. Instead, Koko and Yum Yum staged a demonstration in the foyer – prowling back and forth and jumping at the two tall windows that flanked the double doors. Qwilleran floodlighted that side of the building, expecting to see a marauding raccoon. There was no sign of wildlife, but shadowy movement could be seen behind the screens of the gazebo.

A prowler, he thought. Boze Campbell!

Before he could call the police, however, a thin figure materialized out of the shadows and came running toward the barn with waving arms and shouts of “Mr. Q! Mr. Q!”

“Lenny!” Qwilleran shouted back, going out to meet him. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in Duluth!”

“I came back. Do you have any food? I’m starved. I spent my last nickel on breakfast.”

“How did you get here? Where’s your truck?”

“Out of gas on the highway. I walked the rest of the way.”

“Come in! Come in! I’ll make a ham and cheese sandwich. What would you like to drink? Beer? Coffee? Cola?”

“Milk, if you’ve got it.”

Qwilleran put a glass and a plastic jug of milk on the snack bar. “Help yourself while I throw the sandwich together. Mustard? Horseradish?”

“Both.”

“Is rye bread okay?”

“Anything.” Lenny gulped a glassful and poured another.

“Do you know what’s been going on here since you left? The stolen pistol? The hijacking?”

“Everything,” the young man said. “Mom phoned my aunt’s house every night.”

“Why did you decide to come home?”

“I’m worried about Boze. I’m afraid he’ll get himself shot. Some trigger-happy clod will see him in the woods and panic. He’ll think he’s shooting him in self-defense.”

“So you think he’s hiding out in the woods,” Qwilleran said. “That’s my hunch, too, although it’s generally thought he’ll steal another vehicle and disappear Down Below…. Here, try this sandwich. I have ice cream in the freezer, too. Don’t talk until you finish eating.” Sitting on a bar stool Qwilleran filled him in with the latest news: “Osmond Hasselrich died… The Mark Twain Festival is postponed… Amanda Goodwinter is running for mayor… Homer Tibbitt celebrated his ninety-eighth… The Sloans are selling their drugstore and moving to Florida.”

Lenny chewed in silence, obviously more interested in his own crisis than in local news. After he had devoured a chocolate sundae, the two of them went to the library area and stretched out in lounge chairs.

Qwilleran said, “Tell me what you propose to do.”

“Get him out of the woods for his own safety. Under normal conditions he could live off the land. He has his jackknife, and now he has a gun, and he has friends out there in backwoods stores who’d sell him ammo and matches and flashlight batteries and chewing gum. They’d even help to hide him. They’re on his side. He’s their own kind. Besides, he’s a hero.”

“Do you think you can get him to come out of the woods and give himself up?”

“He trusted me, or he wouldn’t have told me what happened. Now maybe he thinks I’m a double-crosser, but that’s a chance I’ve got to take. Mr. Barter told me that no Moose County jury would convict a simple country boy duped by a big-city sharpie. I knew she wasn’t that guy’s niece! I’ve been working in hotels since I was sixteen, and I know a bimbo when I see one. She tried to come on to me at the desk, you know, but I wasn’t having any. If only I could have guessed… She’d be in jail, and the old guy would be alive, and Boze would still be a hero.”

Qwilleran stroked his moustache. “What makes you think you can find him?”

“I’m pretty sure I know where he is,” said Lenny, looking wise. “If we can take your van –”

“Wait a minute, Lenny. Are you expecting me to go out there?”

“We gotta.”

Qwilleran considered it a hare-brained mission, although his professional curiosity and sense of adventure were undermining his better judgment. He hesitated.

“Do you have a couple of flashlights?” Lenny asked.

They drove out Chipmunk Road – in silence until Qwilleran said, “You mentioned that Boze could buy chewing gum from backwoods stores.”

“Yeah, he’s a chain-chewer. Always has a wad in his mouth. At the inn, where gum-chewing isn’t allowed on the job, the housekeeper found gum-wrappers in the wastebasket behind the desk… and wads of gum stuck under the edge of the counter. It was my job to straighten him out. Not easy.”

“The midnight shift must be dull. What does the night clerk do to pass the time – when he isn’t talking to bimbos?”

“On the six-to-midnight I get a chance to study. Boze liked comic books…. All that seems like a long time ago. I’ve lived a year in the past week.”

After a while Qwilleran asked, “Isn’t this the way to the Big B mine?”

“Yep.”

“It was once owned and operated by a woman.”

“Oh?”

Lenny’s mind was somewhere else – not on the conversation – until the Big B shafthouse came in view, silvery in the moonlight.

“Take the next right,” he said. “It’s a dirt road.”

It paralleled the six-foot chainlink fence that marked the limits of the mine property. Like all other mines the Big B was posted as dangerous, and the fence was topped with three courses of barbed wire.

“Okay, Mr. Q. Stop here. Let’s get out and walk.”

They took the flashlights. Although the moon was bright, the rutted lane was shaded by overhanging tree branches. The leaves had not yet begun to fall. As they walked, all was quiet except for the whine of tires on Chipmunk Road behind them – and the occasional scurrying of a small animal in the underbrush. At the northeast corner of the fenced site the lane turned south and became even more primitive.

Lenny said in a hushed voice, “Boze and I used to play around here when we were kids. We knew how to get over the barbed wire without skinning a knee and how to pry a board loose from the shafthouse.”

“You mean you went inside that dilapidated wreck?”

“Crazy, wasn’t it? It was spooky inside – all scaffolding and ladders. We could hear the water sloshing in the mineshaft a zillion feet below. There’s a subterranean lake down there.”

“How do you know?”

“Everybody says so. All I know is, we threw pebbles down and heard them splash. We’d climb to the top platform with a pocketful of pebbles and sit there and eat a candy bar.”

“Didn’t you realize how dangerous it was? Those timbers are more than a century old.”

“Yeah, but fourteen inches square and put together with handmade spikes a foot long! We climbed around like monkeys. We were only nine years old. Our only fear was that Mom would find out. Once we were dumb enough to try smoking on the top platform. Boze had stolen a cigarette somewhere, and I had book matches. We lit it all right, but it didn’t taste as good as a candy bar. We dropped it down the shaft and heard it fizzle out in the water – or imagined we did. That was one of our finer moments.”

“I’ll bet,” Qwilleran said, thinking what a sheltered life he and Arch had lived in Chicago.

“Sh-h-h!” Lenny flashed his light on the ground. “He’s here! There’s a gum-wrapper!” A scrap of foil caught the light.

Qwilleran’s moustache twitched as he remembered Koko’s obsession with the bit of foil under the rug.

“Look, Mr. Q! Here’s where he built a campfire!” There was a charred circle on the ground and some small bones. “He cooked a rabbit! I’ll bet he’s saving the skins to make a blanket!”

Qwilleran looked around uneasily. He felt they were being watched through a knothole in old boards. He could see a pinpoint of light inside. “Let’s get out of here,” he whispered.

But Lenny began to shout. “Boze! It’s Lenny! Are you all right? We came to help you!”

There was no answer.

“I know he’s in there,” Lenny whispered. “I can see pinpoints of light. Flashlight. Or lantern.”

“This is insane!” Qwilleran hissed.

Lenny shouted again. “Boze! Everything’s gonna be all right! Mr. Q’s here! He’s gonna help you!”

All was quiet again, and then they heard a gunshot from the tower. Qwilleran grabbed Lenny’s upper arm roughly and propelled him back along the primitive road.

There was another shot… then sounds of thumping and crashing and splintering of old wood… a splash… and silence again.

Breathless and wordless, they hurried along the dirt lane leading to the highway. In the van Qwilleran phoned 911 and backed the vehicle out to the shoulder of Chipmunk Road. They waited, with headlights beamed on the shafthouse. Lenny sat quietly, shivering.

“Need a sweater?” Qwilleran asked. “There’s one on the back seat…. When the police come, let me do the talking.”

One by one the emergency vehicles appeared: the sheriff’s patrol car, an ambulance, the Pickax police, the rescue squad. Qwilleran’s presence lent credibility and seriousness to the incident. Not only did he have a press card; he was Mr. Q. As he reported it, they had been driving past and saw flickers of light in the tower – barely visible in the chinks between the weathered boards. They drove into the lane for a closer look, heard gunshots, and backed out in a hurry.

Leaving the scene and heading back to Pickax, he said to his passenger, “Do you want to be dropped at Lois’s house? How will you reach your truck in the morning? Is there anything I can do? Let me give you some money for gas, Better not give Lois any of the details.”

Lenny was in a fog. He just wanted to go home. He had lost a brother. He felt guilty His intentions had been good. He should have stayed in Duluth. He should have left everything to fate. He was jinxed.

Qwilleran listened sympathetically, murmuring remonstrance, encouragement, condolences – whatever was needed.