9
Qwilleran was feeling particularly happy and agreeable on Monday morning. Although he was not given to using affectionate appellations, he started calling Rosemary "honey." As the day progressed, however, his elation gradually deflated. The first setback occurred when Nick arrived to work on the locks before Qwilleran had had his coffee.
"I see you have a Siamese," Nick said after Koko had inspected him at the checkpoint.
"We have three cats, just ordinary ones. My wife would love to see yours." Recalling the engineer's cryptic remark about Buck Dunfield's murderer, Qwilleran said: "Why don't you bring your wife over some evening — to meet Koko and Yum Yum? I must apologize again for disturbing your meal yesterday." "Think nothing of it. Glad to oblige. Besides, nobody ever says no to Miss Klingenschoen." Nick raised his eyebrows in a good-humored grimace.
When he left he was carrying one of Rosemary's catnip toys. "While you're here," he told her, "be sure to visit the flower gardens at the prison. The tulips are out now.
Everything is later here than Down Below, you know." After he had gone Rosemary said: "What a nice young man! I can visit the gardens this afternoon while you're working on your book. I'd also like to get my hair done if I can get an appointment." The Siamese were delighted with their new plaything, catnip tied in the toe of a sock.
Koko was especially dexterous, batting it with a paw, chasing it, tumbling with it, then losing it in some remote nook or crevice.
Qwilleran, on the other hand, was less than delighted with his late breakfast. It consisted of a fresh fruit compote sprinkled with an unidentified powder resembling cement, followed by a cereal containing several mysterious ingredients — some chewy, some gummy, some sandy. He knew it was all the Right Food, and he consumed everything without comment but refused to give up his morning caffeine in favor of brewed herbs.
Rosemary said: "I found some dreadful commercial rolls in your freezer, made with white flour and covered with sugary icing. You don't want to eat that junk, Qwill dearest. I threw them out." He huffed into his moustache and said nothing. After her noisy car had chugged down the drive and headed for Bob's Chop Shop, Qwilleran planned his own day. He set up his typewriter on the dining table, together with writing tools and scattered papers, in a realistic tableau of creative industry. Then he telephoned Mildred: "How are you doing?" "I'm not as hysterical as I was yesterday," she said, "but I feel terrible. Do you realize what it's like to have your next-door neighbor murdered?" "We've all got to start locking our door, Mildred — the way they do Down Below." "Buck and Sarah and Betty were such good friends of mine. We played bridge all the time. He'll be buried in his hometown, and the girls have taken off already, so it's quiet and gloomy. I miss hearing the woodworking machines. Would you like to drop in?
I'll make a strawberry pie." "I have a houseguest," Qwilleran said, "and I was going to suggest that you and your husband come for drinks and then be my guests at the hotel dining room." "You're very sweet," she said, "but he's awfully busy on the farm right now. Why don't you bring your guest down here? I'll read the tarot cards for you." Next on Qwilleran's agenda was a trip into Mooseville. Before leaving the cabin he checked the whereabouts of the Siamese, closed the windows, and enjoyed the familiar ritual of locking the door. Leaving the cabin without locking up was an unnatural act that had made him uneasy ever since coming to Mooseville.
For the last three days he had nursed a desire to take another look at the Minnie K, simply to convince himself that the boat really existed. He headed west, retracing the route taken with the unforgettable Whatleys. Beyond the Cannery Mall and beyond the FOO the landscape was dotted with ramshackle cottages, each with a junk car in the yard, a TV antenna on the roof, and gray laundry on the clothesline. Finally he turned down the lane alongside the trash-filled canal.
There at the end of the rotting wharf was the boat with the torn, gray, spotted canvas chairs on the deck. But it was no longer the Minnie K; it was the Seagull, according to the freshly painted stern board. There was no sign of a crew. Farther down the shore other boats of equal dilapidation were moored in Monday morning lassitude.
From one of those moldy decks, Qwilleran was sure, someone had been thrown into the icy lake.
On the return trip to Mooseville he stopped at the FOO for coffee and the Monday edition of the Pickax Picayune. The news item he sought was buried at the bottom of page five under the Euchre Club scores. It was headlined: Incident on East Shore. Qwilleran read it twice.
Buford Dunfield, 59, retired police officer and long- time summer resident of Mooseville, was found dead in the basement workshop of his posh East Shore cottage Sunday morning, the apparent victim of an unknown assailant, who attacked him with a blunt instrument just a few hours before his wife, Sarah Dunfield, 56, and his sister, Betty Dunfield, 47, returned home from their annual summer visit to Canada, where they attended three Shakespearean plays. Police are investigating.
The restaurant was buzzing with conversation about fishing. Qwilleran suspected the customers switched to that subject automatically whenever an outsider walked in.
His next stop was the tourist bureau. Roger was seated at his desk, bantering with a visitor — a fresh-faced youth who lounged in a chair expertly balanced on two legs, with his feet propped on Roger's desk.
"Qwill! You're just in time to meet the managing editor of the Pickax Picayune," Roger exclaimed. "This is Junior Goodwinter, one of your admirers. We were just talking about you." The young man jumped to his feet. "Wow! The great man in person!" "And yet another of the famous Goodwinters," Qwilleran said. "I knew you were a journalist by the way you balanced that chair. Congratulations on your coverage of the Dunfield murder. That was the most succinct seventy-one-word sentence I've ever read." "Wow! You counted!" "You omitted only one pertinent fact: the titles of the plays that the ladies attended in Canada." "Now you're putting me on," said Junior. "At last I realize why you don't have any crime up here. You have 'incidents' instead. Brilliant solution to the crime problem." "Aw, take the nails out, will you? I know we do things in a different way up here — different from what I learned in J school anyhow. We're country, and you're city. Would you mind if I interview you some day?" "My pleasure. Maybe I'd learn something." "Well, so long. I've got to get out and sell some ads, Junior said.
Qwilleran was shocked. "Don't tell me you sell advertising as well as edit the paper!" "Sure, we all sell ads. My father owns the paper, and he sells ads and sets the type." The managing editor loped out of the office in his jogging shoes, and Qwilleran's face registered amazement and amusement. "Isn't he young for a managing editor?" he said to Roger.
"He's been working at the paper since he was twelve. Worked his way up. Graduated from State last year. Ambitious kid." "I've always wanted to own a small newspaper." "You could buy the Picayune cheap, but it would take a lot of dough to drag it into the twentieth century.
It was founded in 1859 and hasn't changed since… Anything I can do for you today?" "Yes. You have all the answers. Tell me who killed Buck Dunfield." Roger flushed, "That's a tough one, I haven't heard any scuttlebutt. Sharon and I went over to see Mildred yesterday, and she was really shook up." "Was it a random killing? Did Dunfield have enemies? Or was he involved in something we don't know about?" Roger shrugged. "I don't know much about the summer people." "He lived next door to your mother-in-law and made candlesticks to sell in your wife's store. You never met him?" "I guess I met him on the beach a couple of times and had a few words." "You're lying, Roger. Are you practicing to be politician?" Roger raised both hands. "Don't shoot!" Then he gave Qwilleran a mocking grin. "Been doing any fishing from the Minnie K lately?" "Tell you something interesting," Qwilleran said. "I went back to have another look at the old scow this morning, and the name's been changed to Seagull with the S painted backward." Roger nodded. "I can tell you why, if you want to know. The skipper was probably afraid you'd go around blabbing about a body in the lake, and you'd involve the Minnie K.