Lilian Braun - The Cat Who Robbed a Bank

“Here’s to Lady Anne,” Polly murmured.

Carol asked her about her vacation.

“My sister and I went to Toronto, Montreal, and Quebec City and met the most charming French-Canadian professor. He wants to come here to study Canadian influence in our pioneer days.”

Qwilleran said, “I spent my vacation in Mooseville and Fishport.”

“Ah! Fishport!” Larry declaimed in his stage voice. “The home of the covered dish! Where the Hawleys speak only to Scottens, and the Scottens speak only to fish!”

“I didn’t see any covered dishes in Fishport. Should I know what a covered dish is?” Qwilleran asked innocently.

“Why, it’s a dish to pass at a potluck supper!” Carol informed him. “Don’t you go to potluck suppers?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“Once a city boy, always a city boy,” Polly explained.

“How does Delacamp feel about potluck suppers?”

Larry said, “He’s a consummate snob.”

“Let me describe his program,” Carol offered. “He and his assistant arrive on Labor Day by chartered plane. Larry and I greet him at the airport and turn over the Mercedes rental car that he has requested. That evening he’s guest of honor at a dinner at the country club. Tuesday afternoon he gives a tea for prospective customers. Guests view his private collection of jewelry and make appointments to go to his suite and buy. Those who have heirloom jewelry to sell make appointments for him to visit their homes.”

Polly said, “I hear Don Exbridge is furious because his second wife isn’t even invited to the tea, while his first wife is invited to pour.”

Qwilleran said, “I’d like to see what goes on at this affair. Would my press card get me in? I wouldn’t write about it – just look.”

“No no no!” Carol said. “It’s for women only, Even Larry isn’t admitted, and he sponsors the whole thing.”

Her husband said, “Old Campo thinks women are more impressionable when their husbands aren’t around. They’re more likely to spend money.”

Qwilleran listened in amazement. He was not about to give up. “Perhaps you could sneak me in as part of the wait staff.”

“The servers are all young women dressed as French maids, Qwill.”

“If it weren’t for my moustache. I could go in drag.”

Laughter erupted around the blue table.

“Why are you so determined to crash the party?” Carol asked.

“I’m congenitally nosy, and I have a professional curiosity.”

Polly said, “Hell hath no fury like a journalist denied access.”

“You say the jewels are on display at the tea, that do they do about security?”

“Nothing. No one has any fears about a robbery, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“And no one had any fears about bombing last year. Times are changing…. No doubt Delacamp has the stuff insured, but in the case of a theft, would the inn be liable? Would Delacamp’s insurance company sue the inn’s insurance company? I think I should go as a security guard, so that the inn is covered.”

There was a ripple of laughter around the table.

“I’m serious!”

Then Larry said with a grin, “Why not?” He himself had played practical jokes, masquerading as a stony-faced butler to enliven a stuffy dinner party… playing the role of a drunken citizen to stir up a dreary city council meeting.

“Yes. Why not?” Carol echoed.

They looked at each other with conspiratorial merriment.

“We could find him a uniform in the costume department.”

“The cap should be a couple of sizes too large.”

“Dark glasses.”

“His moustache and hair should be darkened.”

“He’d need a sidearm in a holster.”

“There’s a wooden gun in the prop room.”

“How about a German shepherd?”

Suddenly the image of the county’s richest citizen in a guard’s uniform with dark glasses and a wooden gun struck them all as hilariously comic.

Then Polly, with her usual common sense, asked, “How will you explain this caper to Mr. Delacamp?”

Qwilleran was skilled at fabricating fiction on the spur of the moment. “Well… it’s a new inn, with new owners, a new insurance policy. The terms require the inn to have a security guard on the premises when valuables are on exhibit.”

“Sounds good to me,” Larry said.

“I’ll explain it to Barter,” Qwilleran said. “He’ll go along. He has a sense of humor.”

Four

Sunday, September 6 – ‘Without a shepherd, sheep are not a flock.’

IT WAS THE SECOND day of the craft fair. In the afternoon Qwilleran and Polly walked down the lane to the art center. She had a long list and expected to do most of her Christmas shopping. It was Qwilleran’s custom to give edibles and potables for the holidays, but he hoped to find a good-looking pencil-holder for the library table. They saw hand-thrown pots, hand-woven placemats, hand-painted tiles, hand-wrought iron rivets, hand-screened scarves, hand-carved wood salad servers, hand printed notecards, and hand-stitched wall hangings.

Then Qwilleran saw Thornton’s woodturnings: bowls, plates, candlesticks, vases, and such – lathed to a satin smoothness and decorated with nature’s own markings. There were captivating streaks, swirls, wisps, splotches, and squiggles in tints of brown on the pale waxed wood.

“I use spalted wood,” Thornton explained. “Irregularities caused by fungus, worms, faulty growth, or woodpeckers produce these abstract patterns when turned on a lathe.”

Qwilleran pointed to a foot-tall container of classical shape with a marbleized veining, “I like that! Do you call it a vase, um, jar, or what?”

“A vessel, The shape was used in ancient Egyptian times for transporting water or olive oil, It’s turned from a chunk of spalted elm, The small round bowl with a lid is spalted maple.”

“I’ll take both of them.”

“The small one’s sold.” There was a red sticker on the bottom of it with the initials M.R.

Qwilleran huffed into his moustache in frustration, then said, “How do you produce one of these… vessels –”

“First find a good burl.”

“Should I know what that is?”

“It’s an unnatural growth on a tree, You rough out your design, wax it, dry it for a few months, chuck it into place on your lathe, turn it, shape it with gouging tools, sand it, finish it with wax or oil.”

“It obviously takes skill.”

“And patience, And some intelligence, if you’ll pardon my lack of modesty. You learn a lot about trees.”

“Where did you learn how to do this craft?” Qwilleran asked.

“I took lessons from a master woodturner in Lockmaster, one-on-one. Believe me, I regret I’m getting such a late start. Woodturning could be a lifetime study.”

To transport Polly’s numerous purchases – and his own spalted elm vessel – back to the barn, Qwilleran ran back up the lane and fetched his van.

“Where are you going to put the… vessel?” she asked.

“In the center of the coffee table.” It was a low contemporary table, large and square, surrounded by upholstered seating.

“I think it’s an absolutely stunning piece,” she said when she saw it.

“You should have seen the one that got away,” Qwilleran said. “It was smaller but spectacular – about the size of a grapefruit – a bowl with a domed cover and a small knob on top, turned-in-one with the cover. Amazing! But it was already sold”

He had forgotten to look for a pencil-holder. His fat yellow pencils were stuck in a brown coffee mug inscribed “As he brews, so shall he drink.” He offered anyone a dollar who could identify the author. So far, only Polly had collected.

Labor Day, September 7 – ‘When the cat’s away, the mice will play.’