The Cat Who Sang For The Birds

-7-

Early Wednesday morning, when only farmers and Benjamin Franklin’s disciples were abroad, Qwilleran received a phone call from Rollo McBee. “Are you up?” he asked. “Got somethin’ to show you.”

“I’m never up at this ungodly hour. What have you got?”

“A two-pound coffee can. Found it accidentally when I was fillin’ in the latrine.”

“I’m up!”

In less than ten minutes, the farmer’s pickup came slowly up the lane. Qwilleran went out to meet him and was handed a plastic sack from Toodle’s Market.

“Are you coming in?” he asked.

“No. Got chores to do. Thought your lawyer could put this in his safe, or somewhere.”

“How do you want me to explain it?”

“Well, I was treatin’ the open latrine with lime and diggin’ around to fill up the hole, and my shovel hit metal, and there was this coffee can. Didn’t think I should leave it there for some looter to steal.”

“Well stated!” Qwilleran said. “Did you look at the contents?”

“No. It’s sealed with friction tape. Let the lawyer open it.”

“Suppose it’s filled with rusty nails.”

“Shake it. Doesn’t sound like nails.”

When Qwilleran carried the sack indoors and put the can on the snackbar, the Siamese had to investigate. They sensed it had been underground for a few weeks. As for Qwilleran, he was in no mood to go back to bed, and he astounded them by feeding them three hours ahead of schedule, although they made no objection.

With his coffee and a thawed Danish at the snackbar, he reread the newspaper account of the Coggin fire. Culvert had a twenty-four-point credit line for three photos, the largest of which showed Maude grinning at the wheel of her old truck. Did she imagine that she still drove it? The tires were rotting, and, according to Rollo, her license had been revoked five

years before.

A sidebar to the story itself quoted the fire chief, Roy Gumboldt: “Following a thorough investigation, it’s evident that the fire was caused by an overheated kerosene stove in a room that was littered with flammable objects. The victim apparently fell asleep in her chair and was asphyxiated by smoke before the room burst into flames.” There followed the usual cautions about the prudent use of kerosene stoves and heaters - not that it would do any good. The volunteers were called to fight that kind of fire at least once a week, somewhere in the county.

As soon as the downtown offices opened, Qwilleran drove to Hasselrich Bennett & Barter to deliver the coffee can. In the municipal parking lot he was hailed by Wetherby Goode, who had been his neighbor in Indian Village the previous winter. The WPKX meteorologist was a husky, hearty glad-hander who entertained listeners with quips and quotes as well as weather predictions.

“What kind of weather are you giving

us for the funeral tomorrow?” Qwilleran asked.

“The heavens smile! Did you know it’s getting TV coverage? The network picked up the story from your paper and called us to confirm the time and check the weather. They’re flying a crew up from the state capital.”

Qwilleran said, “Another local-yokel story, I suppose, to entertain big-city viewers. How’s everything in the Village?”

“Nothing new. Long time since we had dinner. How about Friday night?”

“How about Chet’s palace of gastronomy in Kennebeck?”

“I thought you didn’t like barbecue, Qwill.”

“I don’t, but I feel the need to further my education.”

“Okay. Meet me there at seven-thirty? I’ll have to go home and change. In the afternoon I’m speaking to a ladies’ garden club, and that means a suit and tie. At Chet’s anything dressier than a tank top looks pretentious. And be sure to wear a baseball cap. It’s a hats-on dive.”

In the law office the coffee can was stripped of the black tape, and inside were five bundles of bills totaling a hundred thousand.

Qwilleran said, “It should be four hundred thousand. They took advantage of a ninety-three-year-old woman.”

“How did you get involved?” Barter asked.

“She reminded me of the grandmother I never knew, and she was an interesting character. There aren’t many Maude Coggins left, Bart. In fact, I’d like to stir up some well-deserved recognition. Okay if I use your phone to make a few calls?”

Given a phone and a cup of coffee, Qwilleran proceeded to call the offices of the mayor, city council, and county board of commissioners, leaking the news that the Coggin funeral was getting TV coverage and the Something was assigning a battery of reporters and photographers. He hinted that it might be a good idea to send flowers. Local reporters always looked at the name tags on such memorial tokens.

Next he called the Pickax police chief and said, “Andy, do you realize there’ll be a massive traffic snarl at the funeral tomorrow, unless you assign a special detail?”

The chief grunted. “Dingleberry didn’t apply for a permit.”

“That’s because there’s no church service and no procession. The obsequies

will be at the graveside, and parking at the cemetery will be chaotic! Hundreds of mourners are expected, including the mayor and other officials.”

“How come it’s so big?”

“The story in the Something touched a lot of hearts and even attracted the attention of the TV network. It would be appropriate if we had a piper.”

Andrew Brodie was a big Scot who looked ferocious in uniform but had a benign majesty when he wore his kilt and feather bonnet and played the bagpipe at funerals.

He was just waiting to be asked. “I could play Loch Lomond, slow tempo, before the service,” he said, “and Amazing Grace after.”

So far so good. Qwilleran knew he was gambling, but it seemed to be working. He called the newspaper and spoke with Junior Goodwinter. “What kind of coverage are you giving the funeral?”

“We’ll send someone to get a shot for the picture page, that’s all. We’ve already done a banner-story.”

“Better think twice about that, Junior. I hear the mayor and all kinds of city and county officials are turning out, and Andy’s assigning a special traffic detail. The network thinks it’s important enough to send a TV crew up here.”

Testily the managing editor said, “Why didn’t we know about this?”

“Apparently it was a spontaneous reaction to your great story on page one. I just happened to hear about it.”

On the way back to his car, Qwilleran passed the florist shop and went in to check up on their funerary business. Besides, he always enjoyed talking with Claudine. She had long silky hair and a dreamy expression in her large blue eyes. Renoir would have painted her. The country music corning from her radio should have been Chopin.

“Getting many orders for the Coggin funeral?” he asked.

“Scads! I had to call for extra help,” she said. “All kinds of important people have ordered. She must’ve been quite a lady!”

“I’d like to order another-a good-sized basket. I’ll write the card.” He wrote: From Maude Coggin’s best friends-Blackie, Spot, Dolly, Mabel, and Li’l Yaller. To Claudine he explained, “They’re the homeless old dogs she rescued.”

“Oh, Mr. Q! You’re making me cry!” she whimpered as tears flooded her eyes.

It was still too early for lunch, so Qwilleran drove out to Sandpit Road to order a tombstone. Next to the extensive H&H Sand and Gravel operation was a small fenced yard with polished granite slabs and tall Celtic crosses - the H&H Monument Works. As he walked toward the building in the rear, a strikingly white-haired man with gold-rimmed glasses came forward to greet him. He was the volunteer who had been on the stepladder at the Art Center, adjusting tracklights.

“You’re Mr. Q,” he said, eyeing the moustache. “We almost met - but not quite - at the Art Center. I’m Thornton Haggis.”

” Qwilleran concealed his surprise; the name was not an alias after all. There really was a Thornton Haggis. He said, “You won Duff Campbell’s watercolor! A nice piece of luck! … Are you the first H or the second H in the H&H enterprises?”

“I’m only the ampersand. My two sons own the business now. Come in and have a cup of coffee.” The office furniture in the anteroom of the shop was gray with age or granite dust. “I’m more or less retired after joining the Zipper Club, although I feel great!”

“You, too? My friend Polly Duncan had bypass surgery, and she’s like a new woman. With a name like Haggis, you must be Scottish.”

“That’s a family joke. My great-grandfather, Eero Haakon, came from Finland to work in the quarries, but he was put on the payroll as Earl Haggis, and we’ve been Haggis for five generations, always in the tombstone business.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Qwilleran said, “to order a stone for the woman who lost her life in yesterday’s fire.”

“Yes… yes… a real tragedy. It’s a miracle that the Art Center didn’t ignite. Beverly Forfar, instead of being thankful, feels guilty because she hated that farmhouse so much. She’s very high-strung, Beverly is.”

“What is your function at the Art Center, Mr. Haggis?”

“Call me Thornton. I’m a volunteer handyman and signwriter.” He kept running his hands through his white hair. “I need a haircut, but my wife likes me to look like a floormop.”

Qwilleran said, “If Beverly wants to ease her conscience, she could help to raise money for the tombstone. I happen to know the inscription Maude Coggin wanted.” He handed Thornton a card: “Maude Coggin. Worked Hard. Loved Animals. Mound Her Own Business.”

“Mound?” the stonecutter questioned.

“That’s it, verbatim. She spoke the Old Moose dialect, and you have to admit that ‘mound’ makes sense as the past tense of ‘mind.’ You don’t say, ‘I finded my watch and winded it,’ do you?”

Thornton laughed. “You should write a column on that subject, Qwill. Mind if I call you Qwill? In fact, you should write one about old tombstones and how the old cemeteries reflect changes in our culture. History was my major in college Down Below, and I enjoy poking among old tombstones.”

“What do you find - besides poison ivy?”

“A lot of interesting things.”

“Okay if I tape this?”

“Sure. It started in pioneer days, when we had mostly hell-raising miners and lumberjacks. When one of them was killed in a brawl, his drinking buddies

chipped in to buy him a tombstone. My great-grandfather recognized a business opportunity. For two bits a word he’d chisel anything they wanted on a thin slab of stone. There’s one that says: STONE PAID FOR BY HIS PALS AT JEB’S SALOON. I have a photograph of it if you don’t believe me.

It’s at Bloody Creek.”

“Where’s that? I’ve never seen it on the map,” Qwilleran said.

“It was a thriving community in the old days. Now all that’s left is a bridge and the burial ground-stones toppled over-some half-buried in sand… Then my grandfather went into the business. He chiseled his own tombstone. Stonecutters had a grim sense of humor, and his epitaph was: A CHISELER ALL HIS LIFE.”

Qwilleran said, “It’s a gag now, but was it funny in those days?”

“Absolutely! ‘Chiseling’ was slang for ‘cheating’ as far back as 1800. I looked it up. I found another kind of humor on an old stone near Dimsdale: HERE LIES A HAPPY MAN. NEVER MARRIED. Want to hear more? I’ve got a million of ‘em. It’s a hobby of mine, and when I get started. .

.”

“Don’t stop. I’d like to visit some of these graveyards.”

“I can tell you exactly where they are-and even go with you if you want a tour director. There’s a curious; one near Trawto that says: HE WAS A FAITHFUL HUSBAND. ONLY ONE I EVER HAD. Make your own interpretation.”

Qwilleran said abruptly, “Let’s drive to the Black Bear Café for a burger. My treat.”

They drove in his van, taking the backroads, while Thornton pointed out abandoned churchyards. He said, “There was a period when inscriptions included the cause of death. I’ve seen DIED OF THE POX AND HIS KIDNEYS DONE HIM IN. My favorite is ET BAD FISH. When prosperity

came, affluent families ordered huge monuments with as many as a hundred words inscribed, listing the names of wives, kids, doctors, horses, and dogs - plus business successes.”

They were driving to the lakeside town of Brrr, so named because it was the coldest spot in the county. On the outskirts they stopped at a weed-choked plot to see what Thornton called the ultimate in his and hers. There were two stones. One said: SHOT BY HER DEAR HUSBAND.

The other said: HANGED FOR KILLING HIS DEAR WIFE.

“Only in Moose County would you find something like that,” Qwilleran said.

A resort town, Brrr was noted for the historic Hotel Booze and its Black Bear Café. Guests were greeted at the entrance by an enormous mounted bear rearing on his hind legs. Splintery wooden chairs and wobbly wooden tables added to the primitive ambience that attracted campers, fishermen, and boaters.

The two men sat in a booth and ordered the so-called bearburger, best chopped-beef sandwich in the county. “Do you see what I see?” Qwilleran remarked. “Gary Pratt has lost half a bushel of hair!”

The proprietor’s shaggy beard and uncut hair, coupled with an ursine physique and lumbering gait, had always given him the personality of an amiable black bear. Now his beard was clipped and his hair tamed.

“Hey, you guys! Haven’t seen you lately,” Gary said, shuffling to their booth with the coffee server. “I thought you were both dead. I thought your cats were writing your column, Qwill. It seemed better than usual.”

“My ghostwriters appreciate the compliment,” Qwilleran said. “But let’s talk about you. What happened? Get caught in a food processor?”

“I’m getting married.”

“No!” the two customers said in unison.

“This is only for the wedding. Then I go back to normal.”

“Who’s the unlucky girl?” Qwilleran asked.

“Nobody you know. She owns the Harborside Marina.”

“Don’t let her redecorate this restaurant,” Thornton warned. “It’s the first thing she’ll want to do.”

“Don’t worry. It’s written in our marriage contract. She doesn’t tell me how to run the café, and I don’t tell her how to run the marina… Say, that was some fire down your way the other night!”

The two men nodded solemnly as they bit into their burgers.

Gary went on. “But it’s an ill wind, as the saying goes. I hear the county’s getting a piece of land for a new facility they’ve needed for years. Centrally located. On Trevelyan Road.”

“They didn’t waste any time, did they?” Qwilleran said tartly, thinking of the promise made by Northern Land Improvement. “Where did you hear this rumor?”

“A guy who comes in here. Engineer for the county.”

“What kind of facility?” Thornton asked with obvious apprehension.

“A parking lot for heavy road equipment: snow-blowers, plows, asphalt trucks, road-rollers-stuff like that.

They’ve had it scattered allover, They want it together on one big lot,” Thornton said, “I don’t know why, Wouldn’t it make more sense to have several stations and deploy equipment to job sites as needed?”

Gary shrugged, “Nobody ever said the county fathers had any sense, They also want to build a repair shop as big as a jet hangar.”

The two men exchanged glances.

“There goes the neighborhood,” Thornton said as Gary moved away. “Beverly will burst a blood vessel if they put it across from the Art Center,” “And Maude will turn over in her freshly dug grave, no matter where they put it on her beloved hundred acres. The purchaser agreed to use them for agriculture.”

“The rumor could be only a rumor - wishful thinking, along with the pickle factory they threatened to start in Pickax.”

They chewed in gloomy silence for a while. Then Thornton said, “I could tell you an interesting tale about the Coggin farm - not for publication.”

“That’s okay. Let’s hear it.”

“This was before I was born, but my dad told me after I started getting interested in local history, After World War One, he said, the stonecutting business wasn’t doing too well. The mines had closed; the county had been lumbered over, and there was an economic bust and general exodus. Thousands were going Down Below to work in factories - and to die there, apparently. At any rate, they weren’t coming north to be buried, He had a Model T truck and did some hauling jobs to make ends meet, but it was rough, People were living on oatmeal and turnips, and families were having to double up.

“Then, one day Bert Coggin came in to order a tombstone for his uncle, who’d been living with them. The old fellow had been struck down by lightning and was being buried on the farm. Dad chiseled a stone and delivered it in his truck - all Bert had was an oxcart - and the two of them set up the stone on a fresh grave by the river. Dad was glad to get the business; his family was in need of shoes, and Bert paid cash.

“In a week or so, Bert was back for another stone; his aunt had died of a broken heart. Dad cut the stone and, while delivering it, wondered about burying somebody on a riverbank. What if there was a flood? . . Anyway, he and Bert set up the stone, and Bert asked to look at the truck; he was thinking of buying one. To Dad’s embarrassment, it wouldn’t start! He tinkered with the motor until the farmbell called Bert in to supper.

“As soon as Bert had left, Dad sneaked back to the graves. He’d only pretended the truck wouldn’t start. Scraping the topsoil away, he found some loose planks, and under the planks he found cases of booze! Old Log Cabin whiskey from Canada.”

“That’s the brand Al Capone drank during Prohibition,” Qwilleran said.

“Exactly! Rum-runners were bringing it across the lake and up the river, where it was stashed on Bert’s farm until it could be delivered Down Below… Well! Dad had three options: report ‘em, ignore ‘em, or join ‘em. Prohibition was bringing prosperity back to Moose County. People were flocking north by the trainload, and everybody was smuggling contraband in from Canada or out by train and Model T. Some of today’s old families who claim to be descended from lumber barons or mining tycoons are really descended from bootleggers.”

“What course did your father take, Thornton?”

“He never told us. He merely explained that there was a lot of tombstone business during Prohibition. We lived in a nice house and always had shoes, and all of us kids went away to college.”

Qwilleran went home with a feeling of satisfaction after a productive morning and enjoyable afternoon. His housemates

obviously felt neglected, however. Their motto was: when unhappy, tear something up. The interior of the bam had been given the confetti treatment, and the front page of yesterday’s Something lay in shreds.

Moreover, Koko was bleating his new lament: aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. To assuage their grievances and bolster their morale, Qwilleran brushed them, gave them an extra treat, and read to them; Koko’s choice was The Day of the Locust. Then they all went to the gazebo for an adventure with the wildlife. While Yum Yum looked for insects, Koko made friends with the crows and mourning doves. He found the squabbling blue jays interesting, but the pileated woodpecker annoyed him with its ratchety cry. Whenever Koko heard the piercing kek-kek- kek-kek-kek, he talked back with a kek-kek-kek-kek of his own.

Once, he turned away from the birds, listened sharply, and yowled. A moment later, the phone could be heard ringing indoors, and Qwilleran ran to the barn.

Dawn McBee was calling. “Sorry to bother you, Mr. Q.”

“That’s all right. Everything checks out A-OK for the funeral. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Well, Culvert has an idea. He wants to take Maude’s dogs to the funeral. He thinks Maude would like it.”

Qwilleran did some swift thinking about propriety, public reaction, logistics. The media, he knew, would gobble it up. “Could he control them?”

“He says he could rig a harness like the ones they use for dogsledding. And the dogs love him. They’d behave.”

Qwilleran okayed the idea, and when he discussed it with Polly later, she agreed. Pickax liked a good funeral. They still told how Ephraim Goodwinter’s casket had been escorted to the grave by thirty-seven carriages and fifty-two

buggies. The length of the procession was considered the measure of public respect for the deceased.

Qwilleran told her, “There’ll be no procession tomorrow - just services at the graveside - but there’ll be a traffic jam at the cemetery requiring the help of police and state troopers. It’ll be a memorable event, with lots of flowers and VIPs and a TV crew from the state capital and Brodie in his kilt and bonnet. He’ll play Loch Lomond in slow tempo.”

“That’s a lovely choice,” she said, “although many won’t realize its significance.”

“Of whom you may count me one - if you’ll pardon the tangled syntax. I’ve never understood that song. There are two unidentified individuals; let’s call them A and B. Apparently A takes the high road and B takes the low road, and B reaches Scotland before A, yet B never sees his true love again. How do you explain that?”

“As I understand it, Qwill, there are two Scottish soldiers who have been captured. One is to be shot; the other set free. The doomed man’s song is based on an old belief that a Scot’s soul always returned to Scotland by an underground route - the low road, in other words. The melody is especially poignant when played at a slow tempo.”

Koko was on the desk close to the mouthpiece. “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaa, ” he bleated.

“What’s that awful noise?” Polly asked.

“Koko is grieving for Maude Coggin.”