The voice returned to the line. "Ser-vice will be sup-plied at once, sir. Sor-ry, sir." Qwilleran was still simmering with indignation when he left the house to cover his beat. He was also unhappy about the loss of his red feather. He was sure it had been in his hatband the night before, but now it was gone, and without it the tweed porkpie lost much of its clat. A search of the apartment and staircase produced nothing but a cat's hairball and a red gum wrapper.
On Zwinger Street the weather growled at him, and he was in a mood to growl back. All was gray — the sky, the snow, the people. At that moment a white Jaguar sleeked down the street and turned into the carriage house on the block.
Qwilleran regarded it as a finger of fate and followed it. Russell Patch's refinishing shop had been a two-carriage carriage house in its heyday. Now it was half garage and half showroom. The Jaguar shared the space with items of furniture in the last stages of despair — peeling, mildewed, crazed, waterstained, or merely gray with dirt and age — and the premises smelled high of turpentine and lacquer.
Qwilleran heard a scuffing and thumping sound in the back room, and a moment later a husky young man appeared, swinging ably across the rough floor on metal crutches. He was dressed completely in white — white ducks, white open-necked shirt, white socks, white tennis shoes.
Qwilleran introduced himself. "Yes, I know," said Patch with a smile. "I saw you at the auction, and word got around who you were." The newsman glanced about the shop. "This is what I call genuine junk-type junk. Do people really buy it?" "They sure do. It's having a big thing right now. Everything you see here is in the rough; I refinish it to the customer's specifications. See that sideboard? I'll cut off the legs, paint the whole thing mauve, stripe it in magenta, spatter it with umber, and give it a glaze of Venetian bronze. It's going into a two-hundred-thousand-dollar house in Lost Lake Hills." "How long have you been doing this kind of work?" "Just six months for myself. Before that, I worked for Andy Glanz for four years. Want to see how it's done?" He led the way into the workshop, where he put on a long white coat like a butcher's, daubed with red and brown.
"This rocker," he said, "was sitting out in a barnyard for years. I tightened it up, gave it a red undercoat, and now — watch this." He drew on a pair of plastic gloves and started brushing a muddy substance on the chair seat.
"Did Andy teach you how to do this?" "No, I picked it up myself," said Patch, with a trace of touchiness.
"From what I hear," Qwilleran said, "he was a great guy. Not only knowledgeable but generous and civic-minded." "Yeah," the young man said with restraint. "Everyone speaks highly of him." Patch made no comment as he concentrated on making parallel brushstrokes, but Qwilleran noticed the muscles of his jaw working.
"His death must have been a great loss to Junktown," the newsman persisted. "Sorry I never had the opportunity to meet — " "Maybe I shouldn't say this," the refinisher interrupted, "but he was a hard joe to work for." "How do you mean?" "Nobody could be good enough to suit Andy." "He was a perfectionist?" "He was a professional saint, and he expected everybody to operate the same way. I'm just explaining this because people around here will tell you Andy fired me for drinking on the job, and that's a lie. I quit because I couldn't stand his attitude." Patch gave the red chair seat a final brown swipe and dropped the brush into a tomato can.
"He was sanctimonious?" "I guess that's the word. I didn't let it get under my skin, you understand. I'm just telling you to keep the record straight. Everybody's always saying how honest Andy was. Well, there's such a thing as being too honest." "How do you figure that?" Qwilleran asked.
"Okay, I'll explain. Suppose you're driving out in the country, and you see an old brass bed leaning against a barn.
It's black, and it's a mess. You knock on the farm- house door and offer two bucks for it, and most likely they're tickled to have you cart it away. You're in luck, because you can clean it up and make two thousand percent profit…. But not Andy! Oh, no, not Andy! If he thought he could peddle the bed for two hundred dollars, he'd offer the farmer a hundred.
Operating like that, he was spoiling it for the rest of us." The refinisher's frown changed to a grin. "One time, though, we were out in the country together, and I had the laugh on Andy. The farmer was a real sharpie. He said if Andy was offering a hundred dollars, it must be worth a thousand, and he refused to sell…. You want another example? Take scrounging.
Everybody scrounges, don't they?" "What do you mean?" "You know these old houses that are being torn down? After a house is condemned, you can go in and find salable things like fireplaces and paneling. So you salvage them before the demolition crew comes along with the wrecking ball." "Is that legal?" "Not technically, but you're saving good stuff for someone who can use it. The city doesn't want it, and the wreckers don't give a damn. So we all scrounge once in a while — some more than others. But not Andy! He said a condemned house was city property, and he wouldn't touch it. He wouldn't mind his own business, either, and when he squealed on Cobb, that's when I quit. I thought that was a stinkin' thing to do!" Qwilleran patted his moustache. "You mean Andy reported Cobb to the authorities?" Patch nodded. "Cobb got a stiff fine that he couldn't pay, and he would have gone to jail if Iris hadn't borrowed the money. C.C.'s a loud-mouth, but he's not a bad guy, and I thought that was a lousy trick to pull on him. I got a few drinks under my belt and told Andy off." "Does Cobb know it was Andy who reported him?" "I don't think anybody knows it was a tip-off. Cobb was prying a staircase out of the Pringle house — he told us all he was going to do it — and the cops came along in a prowl car and nabbed him. It looked like a coincidence, but I happened to hear Andy phoning in an anonymous tip." The refinisher reached for a wad of steel wool and started streaking the sticky glaze on the chair seat. "I have to comb this now — before it sets up too hard," he explained.
"How about Andy's private life?" Qwilleran asked. "Did he have the same lofty standards?" Russell Patch laughed. "You better ask the Dragon…. About this other thing — don't get me wrong. I didn't have any hard feelings against Andy personally, you under- stand. Some people carry grudges. I don't carry a grudge. I may blow my stack, but then I forget it. You know what I mean?" After Qwilleran left the carriage house, he made a telephone call from the corner drugstore, where he went to buy a new toothbrush. He called the feature editor at his home.
"Arch," he said, "I've run into an interesting situation in Junktown. You know the dealer who was killed in an accident a couple of months ago — " "Yes. He's the one who sold me my Pennsylvania tin coffeepot." "He allegedly fell off a stepladder and allegedly stabbed himself on a sharp object, and I'm beginning to doubt the whole story." "Qwill, let's not turn this quaint, nostalgic Christmas series into a criminal investigation," the editor said. "The boss wants us to emphasize peace-on-earth and goodwill toward advertisers until the Christmas shopping season is over." "Just the same, there's something going on in this quaint, nostalgic neighborhood that bears questioning." "How do you know?" "Private hunch — and something that happened yesterday. One of the Junktown regulars stopped me on the street and spilled it — that Andy had been murdered." "Who was he? Who told you that?" Riker demanded. "Just a neighborhood barfly, but great truths are spoken while under the influence. He seemed to know something, and twelve hours after he talked to me, he was found dead in the alley." "Drunks are always being found dead in alleys. You should know that." "There's something else. Andy's girl friend is obviously living in fear. Of what, I can't find out." "Look, Qwill, why don't you concentrate on writing the antique series and getting yourself a decent place to live?" "I've got an apartment. I've moved into a haunted house on Zwinger Street — over the Cobb Junkery." "That's where we bought our dining room chandelier," said Riker. "Now why don't you just relax and enjoy the holidays and — say! — be sure to visit The Three Weird Sisters. You'll flip! When will you have your first piece of copy?" "Monday morning." "Keep it happy," Riker advised. "And listen, you donkey! Don't waste any time trying to turn an innocent accident into a Federal case!" That directive was all the encouragement Qwilleran needed. It was not for nothing that his old friend called him a donkey.