The Cat Who Saw Stars

-11-

r Christopher Smart’s cat always greeted the morning by wreathing his body seven times around with elegant quickness. Qwilleran’s Siamese did a few turns upon waking but never more than three, and , those were done sleepily. The day after the Owen’ Bowen incident he fed them and addressed the two. heads that bobbed over the plates of red salmon: “How come Jeoffrey did seven turns and you do “, only three? You have a gourmet diet and health fo care. He had to catch his own breakfast, and there were no vitamin drops. He never had a vaccination, :, blood test, or dental prophylaxis.” The heads went : on bobbing contentedly.

As Qwilleran thawed the last one of Doris Hawley’s cinnamon rolls, it occurred to him that the closure of the backpacker case would put her back , in the baking business. He telephoned, and she answered cheerily - a good sign. There were cinnamon rolls in the oven, she said.

“Save a whole pan for me,” he requested. “I’ll be there at midday.”

In Mooseville, he picked up a basket of fresh fruit before heading for Fishport. There, the Roaring Creek was reduced to a gurgle by the lack of rain, and the Hawleys’ lawn looked sadly thirsty.

The burlap sack had been removed from the home-bake sign, however. He rapped on the side door, and the Doris Hawley who answered his knock was twenty years younger than the one who had recited her woes at Safe Harbor.

He presented his basket of fruit. “To celebrate the end of a nasty experience! You and Magnus handled it well.”

“He’s really mad! He wants to sue somebody. I’m just glad it’s over… but you haven’t heard the latest, Mr. Q. Come in the kitchen and have a cup of tea.”

The kitchen was heady with the aroma of baking ginger snaps. “Sunday afternoon,” she began, a “woman came to the door wanting to talk to the last ones who saw David alive. She was his partner, she said. She’d come from Philadelphia to claim his body and his belongings.”

“What was she like?” Qwilleran asked.

“I think I saw her at the hotel and walking on the beach.”

Doris’s description matched his. “She was kind of stiff at first but softened up when I talked about David and what a nice young man he was. He worked with computers, she said, but his hobby was UFOs, and he’d heard we had lots of sightings here.”

Qwilleran huffed into his moustache at the thought of traveling that distance for such a purpose.

“She was very unhappy with the SBI and the way they questioned her. They’d taken the film from his camera and wouldn’t give it to her, and they warned her not to discuss the matter - the way they did us … What do you think about UFOs, Mr. Q? Magnus thinks they’re out there over the lake, messing with our weather somehow.”

“I try to keep an open mind,” he said. “I personally have seen no hard evidence, but everyone is entitled to his opinion, and I think official attempts at cover-up are a trifle absurd.”

The truth was that Qwilleran was beginning to find the topic tiresome. When he returned to Mooseville, however, he found the townfolk debating another hot topic: the Owen Bowen incident.

He heard about it at the bank, where he cashed a check… at the post office, where he found more postcards from Polly… at the Nasty Pasty, where he had lunch… at the drugstore where he bought the newspaper at two o’clock.

The druggist drew him aside. “Just between you and me, Mr. Q, I lost a good customer when Owen drowned. The guy was a boozer. Only beer and wine were served at the restaurant, but he bought a lot of liquor - and always in pints. They’ve got the story on page one, but not the whole story.”

A news item on the front page of the Something read:

M’VILLE MAN LOST ON LAKE

The owner of a new Mooseville restaurant was reported missing Monday, following an unexplained incident aboard his cabin cruiser. Owen Bowen, 48, proprietor of Owen’s Place on Sandpit Road, sailed from the municipal pier shortly before noon. With him was his wife, Ernestine, 27, chef at the restaurant. His intention was to do some bass fishing, she said. They anchored at a spot where the bass were said to be running and had a picnic lunch aboard, after which Bowen dropped two lines off the stem. His wife took a nap in the cabin below. She woke to find the craft rolling violently and her husband missing from the open deck. The sheriff’s marine patrol responded immediately to her call for help but found no trace of Bowen. The sheriff’s helicopter continued the search until dark. A spokesperson for the sheriff’s department said, “After an exhaustive search and investigation, the conclusion is that the 25-foot craft was caught in the wake of a larger boat traveling at high speed, and Bowen was thrown off balance while tending his lines. Only a few minutes in the icy water north of the lighthouse can cause death by hypothermia.” Owen’s Place, a summer operation of a Florida restaurant, will remain closed until further notice.

Qwilleran took his newspaper to the Shipwreck Tavern. He knew there would be gossip about the incident, and the tavern was the. fount of controversy on such occasions. The Main Street hangout was constructed like a beached boat, and on a sunny day the interior was, by contrast, as dark as a ship’s hold. He groped his way to the bar and joined an assortment of waterfront loafers.

“What for you, Mr. Q?” asked Fred, the bartender.

“Ginger ale, and also I’d like to know how to mix a mint julep. I’m having a guest who’s hooked on juleps.” It was as good an excuse as any for an eavesdropping mission.

“Mint julep?” Fred muttered vaguely. “Never had a call for one. Could look it up in the barbook.”

While he consulted the dogeared pages, Qwilleran tuned in:

“Always said that guy wouldn’t make a go of it. He didn’t belong here. Never thought he’d drown.”

“You don’t know he drowned. He just disappeared.”

“Sheriff said he fell in.”

“Nobody saw him fall in. They didn’t dredge up a body.”

“Maybe he jumped in for a swim and turned into an instant block of ice.”

“Yep. In this lake a body goes down once and never comes up.”

“I say he’s down there, all right. I say he got crocked and fell overboard.”

“The way I see it, the sheriff knows somethin’ he ain’t tellin’.”

“Something he’s afraid to tell! Another cover-up, like the backpacker case.”

“Or like the Jenny Lee … Sing it, Fred.”

“I ain’t got my guitar.”

“Never mind the verses. Just sing the chorus.” The bartender straightened up from studying the barbook, placed both hands squarely on the bar, and sang in a wavering country voice:

“The waves will pound, and the wind will blow, And folks on this planet will never know The honest fate of the Jenny Lee And her never-forgotten crew of three.”

Customers from the boats, farms, and downtown establishments applauded the oblique reference to interplanetary hocus-pocus. They nodded wisely to each other.

Meanwhile, an older man with a ruddy face and fringe of white hair around a pink bald spot slid onto the barstool next to Qwilleran. He was the head volunteer at the Shipwreck Museum. He said, “Haven’t seen you at the museum this summer, Mr. Q. We have a new exhibit: photos of the petroglyphs on the Ogilvie ranch.”

Qwilleran regarded him sharply. “Should I know about those?”

“Maybe not. They’ve been hushed up in recent years. When they were first discovered, there was national publicity, and sightseers from allover traipsed through the pastures, stressing the sheep. Some of them even chipped off pieces for souvenirs. So Ogilvie clamped down and put a chain-link fence around the whole shebang. But you can see very good photos at the museum.”

“Interesting,” said Qwilleran, who had no real interest in archaeological artifacts. “Are they like Native American pictographs?”

“Well, they’re prehistoric inscriptions on stone but not pictorial - more like chicken scratching. The scientists who came up from the universities called them mathematical symbols that could be a universal language. In age they tested out to about the time of the Egyptian pyramids. Strange thing is, they were etched by some kind of technological method unknown until the twentieth century… Put that in your pipe and smoke it!”

Qwilleran thought, The stones could be old and the inscriptions fake. He asked, “What are they doing on the Ogilvie ranch?”

“The lake was shrunk a couple of miles. The glyphs were on the lakeshore once upon a time,” said the man from the museum. “During the centuries they got buried under tons of silt washed downstream. About twenty years ago we had a great flood that washed the silt away from the glyphs… You should come and see the photos, Mr.Q.”

The lake air was considered salubrious, but there was also something insidious about the atmosphere that affected the brain. Everyone in Mooseville talked about interplanetary visitors, the Sand Giant, the vaporization of the Jenny Lee, the unexplained fate of the backpacker, the mystery of the petroglyphs, and now… Owen Bowen would probably become a legend. Qwilleran huffed into his moustache when he left the tavern and walked around town to work off his ire. Eventually he found himself on Sandpit Road in front of Arnold’s Antiques. In the window was his rusty wheel, and in the glass-paneled door was Phreddie, standing on his hind legs and wagging his tail hospitably. Qwilleran went in.

As he expected, Arnold’s first words were, “Well, we lost our quirky neighbor. I think the place is jinxed. Do you think the Sand Giant got him? I hope I get my Waterford back. What do you think of it all, Mr. Q?”

“I don’t try to fathom the mysteries of this daft community, Arnold. I just came for my wheel.”

Arnold took it from the window. “I could have sold it twice, but I saved it for you.”

“Sure.”

“What are you planning to do with it?”

“Hang it on the wall of my cabin, over the fireplace.”

“Do you need any help?”

“Thanks, but I think not. It’s just a matter of hanging it from a nail, isn’t it?”

“Two nails, a few inches apart.”

Qwilleran said he would bring his van, which was parked behind the bank.

On the way to the bank he realized there were no nails at the cabin - or even a hammer, to his knowledge. Aunt Fanny had left him a fortune but nothing so practical as a hammer. He detoured to the hardware store. They had a revolving, four-standing bin for bulk nails, with prices posted per pound.

“Help you?” asked Cecil, surprised to see Qwilleran at the nail bin.

“Yes, I’m in the market for a couple of nails, but I’m not sure which kind.”

“Two nails ?”

“Yes, I’ve bought an antique wheel to hang over the fireplace.”

“What kind of wheel? How large? How heavy? I’d better talk to our construction specialist. He used to build houses… Unc! We have a serious technical problem.”

The old uncle ambled over to the bin and went into a huddle with Cecil, discussing the kind of wall, thickness of the wall, number of spokes in the wheel, and width of the wheel rim. Meanwhile Qwilleran studied a nail chart and discovered that there are almost fifteen hundred one-inch finishing nails in a pound. With some research and a little wit, he believed, he could hammer out an entertaining “Qwill Pen” column on the subject: Why is a three-inch nail called a three-penny nail? Who first said, “Thou hath hit the nail on the head?”

“How much do I owe you?” he asked when the experts had made their decision.

“No charge,” said Cecil.

“That’s generous of you… but I also need to buy a hammer.”

“Lend him one,” said the old man.

The two storekeepers walked to the door with their customer, and Cecil said, “Can you believe that we’ve lost Owen? They’ve got to put some speed limits on the lake and start slapping traffic tickets on irresponsible skippers.”

The old man said, “If he hadn’t been soaked to the gills, it wouldn’ta happened.”

Qwilleran asked, “How is his wife? Does anyone know?”

“She’s better off without that horse’s tail,” the old man said.

In a flash, an idea struck Qwilleran. As if hit on the head with a hammer, he virtually saw stars!

Koko knew about Owen’s death before and after the fact! Else, why his sudden interest in A Horse’s Tail? The connection between a book title (that Koko couldn’t read) and an epithet bestowed on Owen Bowen (that Koko hadn’t heard) would seem far-fetched to anyone but Qwilleran, who had witnessed the cat’s semantic associations before. Though Koko’s communications were coincidental in the extreme, they always proved to be accurate! Sometimes prophetic!

Then Qwilleran had second thoughts: Could he be succumbing to Mooseville Madness? Everyone around here was over the top! He had to get out!