The Cat Who Saw Stars

-3-

Ordinarily, Koko was a feline alarm clock at eleven P.M., reminding the world at large that it was time for a bedtime snack and lights-out, so his behavior on his first night at the cabin made Qwilleran wonder. The three of them had been lolling on the screened porch in the dark, watching the fireflies blink their little flashlights. The porch was furnished with cushioned chairs and a dining set in weatherproof molded resin - white at Fran Brodie’s suggestion, as a foil for the dark logs. While Qwilleran and Yum Yum enjoyed the luxury of cushions, Koko huddled on the dining table, perhaps because it gave him an elevated view of the dark beachfront.

Eventually Yum Yum became restless, leading Qwilleran to consult his watch and announce “Treat!” She scampered after him when he went indoors to serve the Kabibbles, but Koko stayed where he was. Something’s down there, Qwilleran realized - something I can’t see. It was a clear night, the stars were bright, the crickets were chirpring, somewhere an owl was hooting, and a gentle surf splashed rhythmically on the shore. It was a pleasant night, too, with no chill in the air, so Qwilleran left the door to the porch open when he retired to his sleeping cubicle. Koko could come indoors if the scene became boring; he could join Yum Yum on the blue cushion atop the refrigerator.

Qwilleran had a dream that night. He always dreamed after eating pork. In his dream, Moose County had seceded from the state and was an independent principality ruled by a royal family, prime minister, cabinet, and national council - but they were all cats! There was nothing original about the scenario; he had been reading A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, in which a character suggested feline rule as an improvement over the existing system. In Qwilleran’s dream, the royal cat family was shown to be intelligent, entertaining, and inexpensive to maintain. He was sorry to wake up.

He found Koko none the worse for his nocturnal escapade. He ate a good breakfast and then wanted to go for a ride on Qwilleran’s shoulder. He kept jumping at the latch on the screened door of the porch.

“Not now,” Qwilleran told him. “Later! You’ve had your breakfast, and now I’m entitled to mine. This is a democratic family. You’re not the ruling monarch.”

Before setting off for Mooseville in his van, Qwilleran inspected his new guest accommodation. First he had to find it, hidden in the woods - the same size as the tool shed and built of the same green-stained cedar. But the Snuggery had windows, and indoor plumbing. Modular furniture, including a double-deck bunk, made the utmost use of every inch of space. Red blankets, a red rug, and a framed picture of poppies were a trifle overpowering in the small quarters - but cheerful. Qwilleran thought, It’s not a bad place to stay overnight, but I wouldn’t want to stay two nights. Fran knew what she was doing.

From there he drove along the lakeshore to Mooseville, a quaint resort town two miles long and hardly more than a block wide. It was squeezed between the lake and a high wall of sand called the Great Dune. On the lake side of Main Street were the municipal docks, private marinas, bait shops, and the Northern Lights Hotel; on the other side: the bank, post office, hardware store, Shipwreck Tavern, and so on. A few side streets with names like Oak, Pine, and Maple dead-ended at the foot of the Great Dune and were lined with shops, offices, small eateries, and the Shipwreck Museum.

The Great Dune, which had taken an estimated ten thousand years to form, was held in reverence in Mooseville. It rose abruptly and towered protectively over the downtown area, crowned with a lush forest of trees. There were no structures up there. Even if building were permitted, who would dare? The sheer drop of about a hundred feet was formidable - and famous; it could be seen for miles out in the lake.

Only one thoroughfare sliced through the Great Dune, and that was Sandpit Road at the east end of downtown. It was a reminder that sand had once been mined and exported to bolster the country’s failing economy. A chunk of the Great Dune had been shipped Down Below for the construction of concrete highways, bridges, and skyscrapers - like a little bit of Moose County in cities allover the northeast central United States.

On the first day of Qwilleran’s vacation he always made the rounds, renewing his acquaintance with business people - asking about their winter doings and summer prospects. It was neighborly and also good public relations for the newspaper.

On this morning he had breakfast at the hotel and shook hands with the owners. He shook hands with the bank manager and cashed a check. He shook hands with the postmaster and told her he expected to receive mail addressed to General Delivery; three postcards had already arrived. At Grott’s Grocery he shook hands with the whole family and bought some boiled ham for sandwiches. He shook hands with the druggist and stocked up on hard and soft beverages for possible guests.

At the Shipwreck Tavern he shook hands with the bartender. “Still drinkin’ Squunk water?” the man asked. “Have one on the house.”

“I believe in supporting local products,” Qwilleran said. It was a mineral water from a spring in Squunk Comers. “Expecting a lot of business tomorrow?”

“Nah. Parades are family days. Not much serious drinkin’.”

“Any developments in the case of the missing backpacker?”

“Nah. I say it’s a lot of hokum, like the two-headed raccoon a coupla years back. Gives folks somethin’ to talk about.”

Next, Qwilleran went to Huggins Hardware for mosquito repellent and shook hands with Cecil Huggins and his great-uncle, a white-bearded man who had worked in the store since the age of twelve.

“Mosquitoes not so bad this year, are they, Unc?”

“Nope,” said the old man. “Weather’s too dry.” The store had a carefully cultivated old-time country-store atmosphere that appealed to vacationers from Down Below: rough wood floors, old showcases, and such merchandise as pitchforks, kerosene lanterns, fifty-pound salt blocks, goat feed, and nails by the pound.

“What can you tell me about the new restaurant?” Qwilleran asked.

“On Sandpit Road, across from the Great Dune Motel,” Cecil replied. “Same building where the Chinese restaurant opened and closed last summer. A couple came up from Florida to run it for the tourist season. The chamber of commerce ran an ad in Florida papers - business opportunity with special perks. The guy’s name is Owen Bowen. His wife’s the chef.”

“

“Food’s too fancy,” said the old man.

“Perhaps for campers and locals,” Cecil admitted, “but the whole idea is to get summer people from the Grand Island Club to come here on their yachts and spend money.”

“What were the special perks?”

“Pretty generous, we thought. The landlord gave him a break on the rent. The Northern Lights Hotel gave him a suite for the price of a single. Chamber members pitched in and redecorated the restaurant before the Bowens got here.”

“‘T were all red last year,” said Unc.

“Yes, we painted the walls, cleaned the kitchen, washed the windows … You’d think he’d be tickled pink, wouldn’t you? But no! He came to a chamber meeting bellyaching about this, that, and the other thing. Then he wanted us to change the name of the Great Dune to the White Cliffs. He said it was more glamorous, more promotable. He talked down to us as if we were a bunch of hicks.”

“And how did that suggestion go over?” Qwilleran asked.

“Like a lead balloon! Everybody knows a cliff is rock. Our dune is pure sand. Cliffs are a dime a dozen, but where can you find a dune like ours? We voted against the idea unanimously, and he stomped out of the meeting like a spoiled kid.”

“If he ain’t careful,” the old man said with a chuckle, “he’ll get the Sand Giant riled up.”

Qwilleran said he hoped the food was better than Owen’s personality. “Have you tried it?”

“Not yet, but they say it’s good. They say his wife’s nice. Too bad Owen turned out to be disagreeable.”

“He’s a horse’s tail!” said Unc.

“One more thing,” Qwilleran mentioned. “I have a screened door with a rat-tail latch that gets stuck the bar doesn’t drop. I’m afraid the cats could push the door open.”

“Easy,” said Cecil and sold him a can of spray-lubricant.

After the formal handshaking, Qwilleran ambled over to Elizabeth Hart’s boutique on Oak Street at the foot of the Great Dune. Having saved her life once upon a time he felt a godfatherly interest in her well-being. She had belonged to the Grand Island set, and there was something subtly different in her grooming, clothing, speech, manner, and ideas. A Chicago heiress, she had visited Moose County, met Derek Cuttlebrink, and decided to stay. They were good for each other. He had toned down her citified pretensions without spoiling her individuality; she had convinced him to enroll in restaurant management at Moose County Community College, and it was Derek who had renamed her boutique.

It was now called Elizabeth’s Magic. Unlike the surrounding souvenir shops, it featured exotic wearables, crafts by local artisans, and such mystic paraphernalia as tarot cards, rune stones, Ouija boards, and good-luck jewelry. There was also a coffee dispenser in the rear of the shop and a ring of chairs in aluminum and black nylon.

When Qwilleran walked in, Elizabeth was busy with customers but waved an airy greeting and said, “Don’t go away; I have news for you.” For a few minutes he joined the browsers, then gravitated toward the coffee dispensary. After a while, Elizabeth joined him, leaving a husky male assistant to keep an eye on idle sightseers and take the money of paying customers.

Qwilleran asked, “Is your shop sponsoring a football team? Or is he a bouncer?” He was one of the big blond youths indigenous to the north country.

“That’s Kenneth, a rising senior at Mooseland High,” she said. “He’s my stockboy and delivery man, and I’m breaking him in on sales… Are you going to the parade tomorrow, Qwill? I designed the chamber of commerce float - the signing of the Declaration of Independence, based on the John Turnbull painting.”

“I know it,” Qwilleran said. “It’s in Philadelphia. Who’ll play the roles of the signers?”

“C of C members, all in 1776 costumes: wigs, knee breeches, satin waistcoats, jabots, buckle shoes. We’re renting everything from a theater supply house in Chicago.”

“That’s a big investment,” Qwilleran said. “Who’s paying?”

“You!” she said with glee. “Well, not exactly you, but the K Fund. We applied for a grant.”

“Is Derek going to be in the parade?”

“No. The play at the barn opens Friday, and he has the title role. He’s concentrating on that. But the big news is that he has a job! Assistant manager at the new restaurant. They have a sophisticated menu and a good wine list, so he hopes he’ll learn something.”

“Have you met Owen Bowen?”

“Only at a C of C meeting. He’s middle-aged, quite handsome, rather supercilious, and ever so tan,” she said disdainfully. “I consider him a bit of a pill, but Derek can handle him.”

“I believe it.” Derek’s height (six-feet-eight) coupled with his swaggering but likable personality appealed to young girls, bosses, grandmothers, and cats and dogs.

Elizabeth said, “It was Derek who named the new restaurant. The psychology of naming food establishments is something he learned at MCCC. Mr. Bowen planned to name it - ugh! - the Cliffside Café! Derek told him it was too ordinary. ‘Owen’s Place’ has an element of played-down snob appeal that will attract the yachting crowd from Grand Island.”

At this point she was called to the front of the store, and Qwilleran looked at a sailboat in the craft display. It was handcrafted entirely of copper-labeled “Sloop rigged with topsail, mainsail, jib sail, and spinnaker - by Mile Zander.” He was a commercial fisherman whose hobby was metalwork.

“Does the pedestal go with it?” Qwilleran asked Kenneth.

“I dunno, but the guy’d sell it to you, I bet. It weighs a ton. I’ll deliver it if you want.”

When Qwilleran drove away, he had bought a copper sculpture and a railroad tie. He had always liked sailboats, although he had never learned the difference between a sloop, a yawl, and a ketch. He bought yachting magazines and read about the cup races, and the sight of a sailboat regatta breezing along the horizon quickened his pulse. Now he could tell Arch he had bought a sailboat and would watch his old friend’s jaw drop.

Before going home, he drove out to Fishport to see Doris Hawley - for several reasons.

Beyond the Mooseville town limits he passed a former canning factory that had once supplied half the nation with smoked herring; now it housed an animal clinic, a video store, and a coin-operated laundry… Farther along the highway the FOO restaurant had not yet replaced the letter D that blew off its sign in a northern hurricane two decades ago… Next came the fisheries, a complex of weathered sheds and wharves; they were silent as death when the fleet was out but a scene of manic activity when the catch came in … Beyond the Roaring Creek bridge, on the left, was the trailer home of Magnus and Doris Hawley. A homemade sign on the lawn - a square of plywood nailed to a post - said HOME-BAKES. That meant muffins, cinnamon rolls, and cookies. Mrs. Hawley was watering the extensive flower garden when Qwilleran pulled into the side drive.

“Beautiful garden, Mrs. Hawley!” he called out. “You must have two green thumbs!”

“Oh, hello, Mr. Q.” She turned off the spray and dropped the nozzle. “It’s been awfully dry. Don’t know when I saw such a stretch without rain. What can I do for you?”

“Do you happen to have any cinnamon rolls?”

“Half-pan or whole pan? They freeze nicely… Hush!” she said to a barking terrier, who ran excitedly back and forth on his trolley. She was a gray-haired woman with a gardener’s slight stoop and the energy of a much younger person.

When she went into the house, Qwilleran looked toward the rear of the property and saw a picnic bench on a grassy bank, but the dry spell had tamed the Roaring Creek to a gurgle. “Is Magnus working the boats today?” he asked when she returned.

“Oh, you can’t keep that man off the boats!” she said with pride as well as disapproval. “He’s seventy and could retire, but what would he do? Winters are bad enough. He does a little ice-fishing but watches an awful lot of television.”

“And how do you cope with a Fishport winter?”

“Well, I don’t have any garden or any customers for home-bakes, so I read books and write letters to our sons Down Below.”

“If you don’t mind a suggestion,” Qwilleran said, “why don’t you get into the literacy program and teach adults how to read? Pickax has an active program, and I imagine this community could use one.”

Mrs. Hawley was aghast. “I wouldn’t know how to do that! I don’t think I could!”

“They’d give you a training course in tutoring. Think it over. Meanwhile, have you heard anything about the young man you befriended?”

“Not a thing! The police were here twice, asking questions. We’ve told them everything we know! They act as if we’re holding something back. It makes me nervous. And some nasty people are saying my cookies were poisoned. I haven’t sold a one since that rumor started. I worry about the whole thing.”

“You have nothing to worry about, Mrs. Hawley. The nasty people will choke on their own lies. As for the police, they’re trained to investigate in certain ways. I’m sorry your act of kindness boomeranged.”

“You’re very kind, Mr. Q. I’ll tell Magnus what you said.”

“By the way, do you know someone named Mike Zander?”

“Why, yes! He’s on the boats. They go to our church. His wife just had a beautiful baby boy.”

“Did you know he’s quite an artist? I’ve purchased one of his sculptures.”

“That’s nice. They can use the money. I’d heard that he putters around with metal in his spare time. Are you going to the parade tomorrow, Mr. Q? Magnus will be on the float sponsored by the fisheries. I can’t tell you anything about it, because it’s kind of a secret joke.”

“Those fishermen are great jokers when they get their heads together,” Qwilleran said.

“Four generations of our family will be on the sidelines, including my widowed mother-in-law, who’s a great fan of yours, Mr. Q. She’s embroidering a

sampler for you!”

“That’s thoughtful of her.” He mustered as much enthusiasm as he could. “What’s a sampler?”

“A motto that you can frame and hang on the wall.”

Devoted readers liked to send him useless knickknacks made by their own loving hands, and it was to his credit that he always sent a hand-written thank-you. During his boyhood, he had written countless thank-you letters to his mother’s friends who sent him toys and books that were three years too young for him. His mother always said, “Jamie, we accept gifts in the spirit in which they were given.”

To Mrs. Hawley he said, “Well, well! A sampler! That’s something to look forward to, isn’t it?”

Driving home, Qwilleran wondered what a fisherman’s widow would chose to embroider for him. Home Sweet Home? Love One Another? He had seen these words of wisdom in antique shops, worked with thousands of stitches and framed in tarnished gilt. He had never seen Slide, Kelly, Slide or Nice Guys Finish Last, or his mother’s favorite maxim: Keep Your Eye Upon the Doughnut and Not Upon the Hole. Growing up in a one-parent household, he had heard that advice a thousand times. Instead of turning him into an optimist, however, it had made him a doughnut addict. What he really liked was the traditional fried-cake with cake like texture and crisp brown crust redolent of hot cooking oil.

As he drove he watched automatically for the old schoolhouse chimney, then turned left into the long K driveway. Halfway up the twisting dirt lane he could hear Koko yowling; the cat knew he was coming. The noisy welcome could mean that the phone had been ringing, or something had been knocked down and smashed, or the radio had been left on, or there was a plumbing leak.

“Cool it, old boy. Nothing’s wrong,” Qwilleran said after inspecting the premises, but Koko continued to frisk about. When he jumped up at the peg where his harness hung, the message was clear: He wanted to go for a walk. Qwilleran obliged - and recorded the cat’s antics in his personal journal. It was not a real diary - just a spiral notebook in which he described noteworthy moments in his life. This was one of them. The report was headed “Mooseville, Wednesday, July 3.”

Koko did it again! He solved a mystery that was boggling the gossips around here. Nobody but me will ever know. If the media discovered this cat’s psychic tendencies, they’d give us no peace. What happened, Koko wanted to go for a walk on the beach, meaning that I walk and he rides - on my shoulder. That way, he doesn’t bog down in deep sand or cut his precious toes on sharp pebbles. Smart cat! He wears a harness, and I keep a firm hand on the leash. All day long he’d wanted to explore the beach. Finally we buckled up and went down the sandladder. I started to walk west toward town, but Koko made a royal ruckus; he wanted to go east. Toward Seagull Point, I imagined. But we hadn’t gone far before a strange growl came from the cat’s innards, and his body stiffened. Then, impulsively, he wanted to get down on the sand. Keeping a taut leash, I let him go. Well, to watch him struggle through that deep sand would have been comic if it weren’t that he was dead serious. When he reached the sand ridge, he climbed up the slope, slipping and sliding. I was tempted to give him a boost but didn’t. This whole expedition was his idea. By the time he reached the top he was really growling, and he started to dig. Sand flew! But most of it trickled back into the excavation. Koko wouldn’t give up, though. What was he after? A dead seagull buried in the sand? He dug and he dug, and I started to get suspicious. “Look out!” I said, pushing him aside. I saw something shining in the hole. The sun was hitting something that glinted. It was the face of a wristwatch! I grabbed Koko and ran back to the cabin.

After calling 911, Qwilleran gave Koko a treat. There was not long to wait. The sheriff’s department knew the K cabin; they checked it regularly during the winter. In a matter of minutes a patrol car came through the woods, and a deputy in a wide-brimmed hat stepped out. Qwilleran went out to meet her - Moose County’s first woman deputy.

“You reported finding a body?” she asked impassively.

“Down on the beach, buried in the sand. I’ll show you the way.”

She followed him down the sandladder and along the shore to Koko’s excavation. “How’d you find it?”

“Just walking on the beach.”

She examined the hole. “Looks like some animal’s been digging.”

“It seems so, doesn’t it?”

Unhooking her phone, she called the state police post, and Qwilleran said he would go back to the cabin and direct whoever responded.

In the next half-hour the clearing filled with vehicles. Qwilleran met each one and pointed to the sandladder; otherwise, he stayed out of sight.

First, the state police car with two officers. Second, the ambulance of the rescue squad.

They had shovels and a stretcher.

Then, another sheriff’s car with two passengers in the backseat. Magnus and Doris Hawley were escorted down the sandladder by the deputy.

Soon, the helicopter from Pickax, landing on the hard flat sand near the water. That would be the medical examiner, Qwilleran presumed.

Unexpectedly, a blue pickup delivering the railroad tie and copper sculpture. “Hey, what’s goin’ on here?” Kenneth asked.

“A simulated rescue drill. My responsibility is to keep the driveway open. So just drop the stuff and I go back down the drive.”

“Hey, this is cool! How old is this cabin?”

“I don’t know,” Qwilleran said. “I’ll take the sculpture. You take the tie around to the lakeside and put it on the screened porch. I’ll lead the way.”

With some prodding, Kenneth positioned the tie in the northwest comer of the porch. “Hey, some view you got here!”

“Yes. This way out…”

“Are those… cats?”

“Yes. Come on, Kenneth. This drill is being timed to the split second… On the double!”

Qwilleran packed him off down the driveway, just as the deputy escorted the Hawleys up the sandladder. Qwilleran ducked indoors. They drove away. Then the ambulance left. The helicopter lifted off, taking a blue body bag on a stretcher. When the state troopers drove away, only Deputy Greenleaf remained, and Qwilleran went out to size her up. Though not bad looking, she was stony-faced, a mask that seemed to go with the wide-brimmed hats worn by deputies.

Glancing at him and getting out her pad, she said, “You must be Mr. Q.”

“Yes, but are you aware of the department’s policy?”

“We don’t release your name.”

“That’s right. You must be Deputy Greenleaf.” It had said in the paper that a woman deputy was needed to escort women prisoners to the Bixby County detention facility. “Glad to have you in the department.”

She nodded, and the tassels on her hat bobbed.

Now Qwilleran knew why Koko had stayed up all night; he knew what was on the beach. If he had not campaigned for an outing on the shore… if he had not insisted on going east instead of west… if he had not started digging at one particular spot, the backpacker mystery would remain unsolved. Most cats had a sixth sense, but Koko’s perception of right and wrong went beyond catly concerns. He sensed answers to the questions that baffled humans and found ways of communicating his findings. Qwilleran could attribute his talents only to his magnificent whiskers. Yum Yum had the standard forty-eight; Koko had sixty.

Qwilleran had reasons for being secretive about Koko’s special gifts and his own involvement, and he was relieved to hear the six o’ clock newscast on WPKX: “Acting on a tip from a beachcomber, the sheriff’s department today found the body of the backpacker missing since Friday. It was buried in the sand near Mooseville. The deceased was identified by Magnus and Doris Hawley as the hiker who had come to their house asking permission to camp on their property. Cause of death has not been determined, according to a sheriff’s spokesperson. Identification was found on the body but is being withheld pending notification of family. The deceased was not from the tri-county area.”

The locals always felt better when the subject of an accident or crime was not one of their own. Arch Riker would be furious, Qwilleran knew, because the newsbreak had happened on the radio station’s time, and the Something could not cover it until Friday; no paper was published on the holiday.

Qwilleran himself was pleased with the way things had turned out and proposed to reward the Siamese with a session of reading aloud. They always enjoyed the sound of his voice, and he rather enjoyed it, too. He suggested Far from the

Madding Crowd. “You’ll like it,” he said. “It’s about sheep and cows. There’s also a dog named George and a cat who plays a minor role.” His readings for the Siamese were always dramatized by sound effects. His theater training in college had made him an expert at bleating, barking, and meowing - if nothing else - and the cats especially liked the lowing of cattle. He did a two-note “moo-oo” like a foghorn. When he mooed, they looked at him with a do-it-again expression in their alert blue eyes, and he did it again. To tell the truth, he enjoyed mooing.

After the reading, he unpacked the sailboat that Kenneth had delivered. Yum Yum assisted. She had a vested interest in shiny objects, cardboard boxes, and crumpled paper, and the carton was stuffed with crumpled sheets of the Moose County Something.

The sailboat looked larger than it had in the store among all the other merchandise. A foot tall, it was constructed of sheet copper that had been treated to retain color and brilliance, and it was dazzling in the light from the skywindows. The sails, tilted at realistic angles, played with the light and gave added dimension to the sculpture. To stabilize the lightweight object, there was a heavy base of wood, chipped to suggest choppy water, with the keel cemented into a groove. It was a clever and eye-catching piece of work.

Qwilleran carried it to the porch, only to discover that Koko had taken possession of the pedestal, where he posed like an ancient Egyptian cat.

“Jump down,” Qwilleran said foolishly, knowing that Koko never jumped down when told to jump down. So he left the sailboat on the table and went to write some more in his journal.

He had long wanted to keep a journal; some day he might want to write a memoir. He should have started at an early age, but he had always been too busy growing up, playing baseball, acting in plays, sowing wild oats, discovering the work ethic, hanging around press clubs, and making life-threatening mistakes. Now at last he was a journalist with a personal journal.