Лилиан Браун - The Cat Who Went Up The Creek

The Siamese were glad to see him—and why not? They had not been served their noon repast of crunchies.

“We’re checking out tomorrow,” he told them as they crunched.

Within minutes Hannah Hawley phoned, as if she had been watching for his van to pull into the lot. She spoke in a hushed and hurried voice. “Qwill! Strange development! Could I come over for a minute?”

“Of course! Take two!”

She had hung up before his quip reached her, and she came along the footpath at a trot. “I left Danny sleeping, and I don’t want him to wake up and find himself alone.” She declined a glass of fruit juice.

Into Qwilleran’s mind flashed the newscast . . . a splash in the creek . . . the unidentified body . . . a young woman. He said, “Calm down, Hannah. Take a deep breath. Start from the beginning.”

“Well . . . about eight o’clock this morning I was just waking up, and did the first thing I always do—I unlock the front door and step out on the screened porch for a few deep breaths. Imagine my surprise when I saw Danny sitting out there, looking at a picture book! I remarked that he was up bright and early, and asked if his mom knew he was here. He said, ‘She’s gone away. She told me to go and see Auntie Hannah if she ever went away. I haven’t had any breakfast.’ He was wearing the blue T-shirt I’d given him, and he showed me something in the pocket.”

She seemed unable to go on, and Qwilleran said, “You’d better have a glass of fruit juice.” He waited until she had taken a few sips before asking her, “What was in the pocket?”

“Some money—and a note. I brought it to show you.”

She handed over a scribbled message on a square of greasy paper that might have come from a box of cookies.

Take care of Danny.

Tell him his mom is sick—

We have no place to go—

I hate my life—

Joe is a bad bad man—

Danny will be better off without me—

Marge

“That poor woman!” Hannah said, clutching her throat to control her emotions. “Homeless! Addicted to alcohol—maybe drugs. Then I heard the newscast, and I knew it was Marge. ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’ . . . Do you know who said that?”

“I’m afraid not.” With a shudder he recalled how close he had come to the same condition . . . once upon a time, eons ago.

Now Hannah had given way to sobs, and he brought her a box of tissues.

“I wanted to help her,” Hannah said, “but she kept to herself always. I think she was afraid of Joe.”

Qwilleran wondered, did Marge know he was a gold-digger and not a deep-sea fisherman? Did she know he’d murdered twice to protect his turf?

Sniffing and dabbing her eyes, she said, “I’d love to adopt Danny! My grandson in Florida is his age. The Scottens and Hawleys have a good family life. I was trained as a teacher. But . . . he’s a ‘John Doe.’ We don’t know his name, or where he’s from. If the county gets hold of him, he’ll spend his life with different foster families. I don’t know anything about the law, but I’ve seen it happen to other orphans—”

Qwilleran interrupted her torrent of thoughts. “Hannah, the K Fund can handle this. They have a battery of investigators and advisers who’ll work this out in Danny’s best interests.”

“Is that a fact?” she asked. “The county—”

“Forget the county. They’re always glad to work with the K Fund. Put on a cheerful face and go home to Danny, and I’ll make a phone call and start the wheels turning.”

She hesitated. “Maybe I should tell you what I did. As soon as Danny fell asleep, I went next door to collect his clothes and things. There was hardly anything to collect. He doesn’t even have a toothbrush or sleeping pajamas! . . . And listen to this, Qwill! There wasn’t a single sign that Joe had ever been there!”

Except fingerprints, Qwilleran thought.

After Hannah had gone back to Cabin One, and after the Good Samaritans had been alerted, Qwilleran phoned Nick. He said, “Tell your friends at the sheriff’s office to get out the yellow tape. One of your cabins down here at the creek should be searched. I suggest you come down here for a conference.”

While waiting for the manager, he made a quick scan of Doyle’s photos—the ones in the box that Bushy had marked “miscellaneous.” They were typical vacation mementos. The Shipwreck Tavern in Mooseville, commercial fishing wharves, the Hotel Booze in Brrr, flower gardens at the state prison, the historic Nutcracker Inn, Wendy feeding squirrels, the picturesque Old Stone Bridge, and picnickers eating hot dogs. That was the one he had been looking for.

“It’s always at the bottom of the pile,” he told Koko, who was watching the process with a superior air. “So why didn’t you tell me to start at the bottom?”

When Nick arrived, Qwilleran offered him a beer, told him to sit on the porch, and gave him an eight-by-ten photo of a picnic group. “Recognize any of these, Nick?”

“Well, the one with a moustache works for the newspaper . . . and I know Mrs. Hawley . . . and I think the one in a baseball cap is Joe Thompson.”

Qwilleran said, “He may have registered under that name, but I suspect it’s an alias . . . and I suspect he’s gone fugitive after killing Doyle Underhill. The police said that Doyle was shot about four o’clock on Wednesday. Shortly after that Joe’s truck drove in, stayed a short time, and drove off—abandoning the woman and child who shared the cabin. . . . Incidentally, did you hear the newscast about a suicide in Black Creek?”

“I heard something—”

“I think the unidentified body will match the scrawny woman in the picnic photo. She left a suicide note in the pocket of her son’s T-shirt, calling Joe a bad bad man.”

Nick, father of three, said, “Where’s the kid?”

“Mrs. Hawley is looking after him and would like to adopt him.”

Nick stood up to leave. “I think Lori was right, Qwill. The Nutcracker is jinxed!”

Now Qwilleran had to shift gears—from the somber reality of the creekside situation to the festive celebration of Scottish Night. His training in theater had taught him how to “make an adjustment,” and a long ride on his Silverlight helped. The steady rhythm of pedaling, the therapy of deep breathing, and the serenity of secondary roads—all combined to put him in a propitious mood.

The Siamese—who had panicked the first time they saw him in kilt and knee socks—were two cool cats when he confronted them in full regalia. He promised to bring them a taste of haggis.

Traffic was heavy in downtown Black Creek, and MCCC students provided valet parking so that guests in Highland dress could enter the building in style.

They were greeted at the door by Ernie Kemple and his partner, Anne Munroe. The red, blue, gold and green of clan tartans moved among the twenty booths of antiques and collectibles. A bagpiper was piping, and a young woman danced the Highland fling with seeming weightlessness. Guests drank punch and Scotch and nibbled bridies and haggis.

Janelle Van Roop presided over the museum exhibit of Elsa’s black walnut furniture and handed out copies of Qwilleran’s tale of the three cracked mirrors. The painting of her great-grandmother, described in the “Qwill Pen,” could be seen in the locked case.

All the prominent Scots were there: MacWhannell, Abernethy, Ogilvie, Campbell, MacMurchie and more. “Where’s Polly Duncan?” was the question that Qwilleran heard on every side.

He was talking with Ernie Kemple when a clock in one of the booths announced the hour.

“Cuckoo! Cuckoo!”

“Excuse me,” Qwilleran said, “I’m being paged.”

He tracked it down to a booth specializing in clocks. It was exactly like the one stolen from the Limburger mansion—or so he thought. It was a masterpiece of carving: a rustic hut nestled in a bower of leaves, with a swinging pendulum and three long weights ending in pinecones. He wanted to demand, “Where did you get it?” Instead, he asked, “Do you know its provenance?”