The Cat Who Went Underground

CHAPTER 13.

ON MONDAY MORNING as Qwilleran was preparing to serve the Siamese their minced beef mixed with cottage cheese and laced with tomato sauce, there was an explosion in the woods, and a rusty pickup with camper top lurched into the clearing.

“Iggy’s back!” Qwilleran proclaimed in a tone of excitement mixed with dread.

“He must have run out of cigarette money.”

Although eager to confront the man with questions and rebukes, he restrained his urges. He waited until the carpenter oozed out of the truck. As Iggy ambled toward the building site at the pace of a tired snail, Qwilleran followed. “Nice day!” he remarked to the prodigal workman.

“Should be able to finish THEM SUCKERS TODAY,” said Iggy.

“To which suckers are you referring?” Qwilleran asked politely.

“Them boards!” He pointed to the siding.

“Good! And I wish you’d dispose of that rubbish.” Qwilleran indicated the scraps of shingles and torn wrappings. “I have business in Pickax today, but I’ll be back in time to pay your day’s wages. See you after lunch.”

He strode back to the cabin to finish working on the cats” breakfast but found them on the kitchen counter, finishing the job themselves. Before leaving for Pickax he glanced automatically around the interior, checking for feline temptations, locking up toothbrushes, hiding copies of the Moose County Something, closing all drawers, hiding the telephone in a kitchen cabinet, and leaving no socks lying around.

“Keep an eye on the carpenter,” he told them. “Don’t let him burn down the house.”

He locked the doors, front and back, as he left. There was no need for Iggy to have access to the cabin.

The business in Pickax was the monthly luncheon meeting of the trustees for the Klingenschoen Fund. He stopped at his apartment to pick up some more books, dropped into the newspaper office to trade comradely insults with the staff in the city room, then reported to the meeting place in the New Pickax Hotel, built in 1935. Since that time it had never been redecorated, and the menu had never changed. The natives of Pickax were creatures of habit and tradition.

At the luncheon table Qwilleran remarked, “I see they’ve warmed up the 1935 chicken a la king again.” His humor brought no response from the bankers, accountants, investment counselors, and attorneys who administered the fund, but the high-spirited Mr. Hasselrich said he thought the chicken was rather good.

Following the luncheon the trustees reviewed the Fund’s philanthropies and considered new applications for grants and loans. It was Qwilleran’s money, in the long run, that they were handling, but his mind wandered from the business at hand. He kept combing his moustache with his fingers; something was calling him home to the lakeshore.

He drove back to the beach faster than usual, with the car windows wide open, and the closer he came to the lake, the fresher and more invigorating the air.

When he started up the driveway, however, the atmosphere changed. His eyes started to itch and smart unaccountably. At the same time he became aware of a foul odor … It was smoke! But not wood smoke! He detected noxious fumes from something burning-something toxic. He took the curves and hills of the drive like a roller coaster and jammed on the brake at the top of the dune. The clearing was filled with black, acrid smoke. Iggy’s truck was there, and the carpenter was behind the wheel, blissfully asleep.

“Crazy fool!” Qwilleran muttered, coughing and choking. He jumped out of his car and banged the door of the pickup. “Wake up! Wake up! I didn’t tell you to burn the stuff!” he yelled between fits of coughing.

Iggy climbed slowly out of the cab. The asphyxiating smoke had no effect on his leather lungs.

“Quick! Help me douse it with sand! I’ll get shovels!” Qwilleran ran to the toolshed and threw open the door. What he saw was too improbable to comprehend.

Staring at him from the darkness were two pairs of eyes.

“YOW!” came a voice from the depths of the shed, accompanied by a female shriek.

“How did you get out here?” Qwilleran shouted.

“YOW!” said Koko in indignation.

Qwilleran grabbed a couple of shovels and slammed the toolshed door shut in the faces of two astonished animals.

Working fast, with an occasional assist from Iggy, he smothered the smoldering pile of asphalt shingles and their waterproof wrappers.

When the job was done, he leaned on his shovel, breathing hard. “How did the cats … get into the shed?” he gasped.

“Cats?’” asked Iggy. “WHAT CATS?’”

“My cats! How did they get out here in the shed?”

“I never seen NO CATS “I’ll show you. Get out there to the shed. Move it!”

With some persuasive shoving Iggy trotted down the narrow path to the toolshed.

Qwilleran threw open the door. “Now what do you call those animals?”

The two elegant creatures were pacing back and forth with resentment, their muscles rippling expressively under their silky fur, their whiskers bristling, their ears swiveling, their tails pointed like rapiers.

“What do you call those?” Qwilleran repeated.

“Funny-lookin” suckers, AIN’T THEY?”

Qwilleran wanted to grab the man by the seat of the pants and throw him out, but he gritted his teeth and paid him for five hours” work, after which Iggy drove away in his snorting, battered truck with a debonair wave of the hand and a toothy grin.

Seizing the two cats about the middle, Qwilleran carried them from the toolshed, opened the rattail latch of the porch door with an elbow, and tossed the two culprits on the redwood chaise. They froze in the position in which they landed and glared at him.

“Don’t give me that insolent stare!” he said. “You two have some explaining to do!”

He unlocked the cabin door, stepped into the mudroom-and yelped! There was a hole in the wall, roughly three feet wide and seven feet high. Below it there was a liberal sprinkling of sawdust, with pawprints clearly defined.

“What? What?” Qwilleran spluttered, in the most inarticulate moment of his entire life.

Gradually the facts became clear. Beyond the opening was the roughed-in skeleton of the east wing. Iggy had cut a hole for the connecting door. After that, the lazy loafer had easy access to the cabin and could have napped on a white sofa or, worse yet, in Qwilleran’s bed. Meanwhile, the cats had access to the east wing. Calmly they had walked through the newly sawed opening; casually they had jumped out an un-framed window. But how did they end their journey in the toolshed?

In whatever way they managed the feat, it appeared that they had enjoyed the experience, because they were now peering between Qwilleran’s legs, toe-deep in sawdust, ready to repeat the adventure. Grabbing them, he locked them up, announcing with a declamatory flourish, “Once more into the guestroom, dear friends!” While they howled their protests, he found a sheet of plywood left over from the subfloor and nailed it across the rectangular aperture with angry blows, smashing his thumb in the process.

Between erratic strokes of the hammer he thought he heard coughing outdoors.

Russell Simms was standing in the backyard with her hand over her nose and mouth. “Something’s burning,” she said in a muffled voice.

“Go around to the lake porch,” he said. “I’ll meet you there.”

On the lake porch the air was fresh and clear, and he inhaled deeply. “Have a chair,” he said to Russell, “and I’ll tell you a story you won’t believe. I came home from Pickax and found that idiot burning shingles! He also cut a hole in the wall of the cabin, and the cats got out.”

“I saw them,” she said quietly.

“You saw them! Where were they?”

“In the yard.”

“Where was the carpenter?”

“I don’t know.”

“He was probably in the cabin, sleeping in my bed-that blockhead! So you’re the one who put the cats in the toolshed! That was smart thinking! But how did you manage it?”

She put a hand in her sweater pocket and drew out a few morsels of the dry catfood that she fed to the seagulls.

“Fishy Fritters!” Qwilleran said in amazement. “You actually lured them into the shed with Fishy Fritters? If I try to feed them Fishy Fritters, they throw a catfit … Well, Russell, it’s a miracle that you happened along when you did.

If I had lost those cats, I would have killed that man!”

“I had a feeling I should come,” she said shyly.

“I don’t know how to thank you. How can I thank you?”

Hesitantly she said, “Will you tell me something?”

“Of course.”

“Honestly?”

“Of course!”

“What’s wrong with my cottage?” She removed her dark glasses and looked at him directly for the first time, her eyes half closed and the pupils contracted. No wonder Mildred said her eyes were weird!

Having paused too long, he said quickly, “I don’t think … that is, I was unaware of anything wrong with the cottage. When the Dunfields lived there, it seemed to be … rather comfortable.”

“Why are they renting it?”

“Mr. Dunfield died, and his wife doesn’t care to live at the beach any more.”

“When did he die?”

“About two years ago.”

“What happened to him?” Her piercing eyes searched his.

“Well … it was most unfortunate, you see. He was a fine man, a retired police chief, a friend of mine …I’m sorry to say, he was murdered.”

“I knew it!” Russell said with a shudder. She jumped up, rushed from the porch and ran down the steps to the beach. He watched her head for home along the shoreline, faster than she had ever traveled before.