Лилиан Браун - The Cat Who Sniffed Glue

"And there's always the chance that someone from outside will come into town and reveal it."

"Or some skunk of a newspaper reporter will dig it up and make trouble."

"Please!" Qwilleran protested.

"Maybe I shouldn't have told you."

"In the first place, I don't consider myself a skunk of a reporter, Gary, and in the second place, my only concern is to find a clue to the identity of the killer - or killers."

"Can you make anything out of it - the way it stands now?"

"One possibility comes immediately to mind," Qwilleran said. "The victim's family may have thought Harley paid too small a price for his negligence. They obviously knew he was affluent. So they came gunning for him. An eye for an eye... and a little jewel robbery on the side. I understand the Fitch jewels are missing."

"If you talk to anybody about it," Gary said, "don't get me involved. I can't afford to stick my neck out. When you have a bar license, you know, you have to walk on eggs."

"Don't worry," Qwilleran said. "I protect my sources. Actually, I suspect the police already know about Harley's prison term, but I'm glad you told me... It is a far, far better thing that you do than you have ever done - to paraphrase a favorite author of mine."

"That's from an old movie," Gary said.

"Ronald Colman said it. Dickens wrote it."

The barkeeper became affable. "Do you sail?"

"You're looking at a one hundred-percent landlubber."

"Any time you want to go out, let me know. There's nothing like sailing."

"Thanks for the invitation. What's my tab? I've got to be going."

"On the house."

"Thanks again." Qwilleran slid off the bar stool and then turned back to the bar. "Did anyone ever tell you, Gary, that you look like a pirate?"

The barkeeper grinned. "The thing of it is, I'm descended from one. Ever hear of Pratt the Pirate? Operated in the Great Lakes in the 1800s. He was hanged."

On the way out of the cafe Qwilleran gave the black bear a formal salute. Then he sauntered out of the hotel, pleased with the information he had gleaned. He ambled to the parking lot, unaware that he was being followed. As he unlocked the car door he was startled by the shadow of someone behind him. He turned quickly.

The man standing there was the blond barfly with the star sapphire and the melancholy mood. "Remember me?" he asked sullenly.

"Pete? Is that you? You startled me."

"Wanted to talk to you," the paperhanger said.

"Sure." When Pete made no move to begin, Qwilleran said, "Your car or mine?"

"I walked. I live near here."

"Okay. Hop in." They settled in the front seat, Pete slumped in an attitude of despair. "What's bothering you, fella?"

"Can't get her off my mind."

"Belle?" Pete nodded.

"It will take time to get over that horrible incident," Qwilleran said, going into the sympathy routine that he did so well. "I understand your grief, and it's healthy to grieve. It's something you have to muddle through, one day at a time, in order to go on living." He was in good form, he thought, and he felt genuinely sorry for this hulk of a man whose tears were beginning to trickle down his face.

"I lost her twice," Pete said. "Once when he stole her away from me... and once when he got her murdered. I always thought she'd come back to me some day, but now..."

"The shooting wasn't Harley's fault," Qwilleran reminded him. "Both of them lost their lives."

"Three of them," Pete said.

"Three?"

"The baby"

"That's right. I had almost forgotten that Belle was pregnant."

"It was my kid."

Qwilleran was not sure he had heard correctly.

"That was my kid!" Pete repeated in a loud and angry voice.

"Are you telling me that you were sleeping with Belle after her marriage?"

"She came to me," Pete said with a glimmer of pride. "She said he wasn't doing her any good. She said he couldn't do anything."

Qwilleran was silent. His fund of sympathetic sentiments was not equipped for this particular situation.

"I'd do anything to get the killer," said Pete, snapping out of his dejected mood. "I heard you talking in the bar. I'd do anything to get him!"

"Then tell me anything you know-anyone you suspect. Frankly, it might save your hide. You're in a sticky situation. Were you doing any work for Harley and Belle at the time of the murder?"

"Papering a bedroom for a nursery."

"Were you working that day?"

"Just finishing up."

"What time did you leave?"

"About five."

"Was Harley there?"

"She said he was out sailing, He did a lot of sailing. He had a boat berthed at Brrr - a twenty-seven-footer."

"Who was with him? Do you know?"

Pete shook his head. "He used to go out with Gary from the Booze. Then Gary got his own boat, and Harley stopped coming into the bar. I saw him at the Shipwreck Tavern a coupla times, though- with a woman."

Qwilleran remembered Mildred's tarot cards. A deceitful woman involved! "Do you know who she was?"

Pete shrugged. "I didn't pay that much attention."

"Okay, Pete. I want you to think about this, Think hard! Think like a cop. And if you come up with anything that might throw suspicion in any direction, you know how to reach me. Now I'll drive you home."

Qwilleran dropped the paperhanger at a terrace apartment halfway down the hill and waited until the man was indoors. Then he drove home, wondering how much of the story was true.

That Pete hated Harley for stealing his girl was undoubtedly a fact. That Pete hated Belle for deserting him was a possibility. That Harley proved to be impotent and that Belle turned to Pete for solace might be a wild fantasy in the mind of a disappointed lover. In that case, Pete was a logical suspect. He had the motive and the opportunity, and in Moose County everyone had the means. Belle was the first to be killed, according to the medical examiner. She and Pete might have argued in the bedroom, and he might have shot her in a fit of passion, But he was cool enough to wreck the room and make it look like burglary. One would suppose that he was about to leave the house with the smoking gun and a few jewels in the pocket of his white coveralls, when Harley returned from sailing. They met in the entrance hall. Perhaps they had a few words about the fine weather for sailing and the difficulty of hanging wallpaper in an old house with walls out-of-square. Then Pete presented his bill and Harley wrote him a check. Perhaps Harley offered him a drink, and they sat in the kitchen and had a beer, after which they said" Seeya next time" and Pete pulled out his gun and eliminated Harley.

There was a flaw in this scenario, Qwilleran realized. Harley would be wearing sailing clothes, and the newspaper account stated that both victims were in their "rehearsal clothes." Also, it was 7:30 when David and Jill approached the mansion and saw a vehicle speeding away on the dirt road, creating a cloud of dust.

More likely, Pete was innocent. He left at five o'clock with his ladders and paste buckets. Harley came home and changed into rehearsal clothes while Belle (who was also in rehearsal clothes for some unexplained reason) put a frozen pizza in the microwave. And then the murder vehicle arrived.

Qwilleran was too tired to figure out how the murderers first killed Belle upstairs and then killed Harley downstairs. Furthermore, there was the possibility that Roger's information from the medical examiner had been distorted by the Pickax grapevine. Slowly and thoughtfully he mounted the stairs to his apartment. At the top of the flight the Siamese were waiting for him, sitting side by side in identical attitudes, tall and regal, their tails curled around their toes - counterclockwise this time. He wondered if the direction had any significance.

-Scene Four-

Place: The Toddwhistle Taxidermy