"I don't want to upset you…" "I'm not upset!" "If you feel uncomfortable with contemporary, I know designers Down Below who will undertake the entire commission, including the mansion itself after the garage apartments are finished." "Show me the garage," she said with a scowl. "Where is it? How do we get out there?" He showed her to the rear of the house. As she passed the library she gave a grunt of begrudging approval. She sniffed at the yellow and green breakfast room and called it gaudy. Poking her head into the kitchen, she stared without comment at the top of the refrigerator, where the Siamese were striking sculptural poses on their blue cushion.
In the garage they climbed the stairs to the loft, and Qwilleran pointed out the drab apartment he wanted converted to a studio.
"Hasn't been touched for twenty years," she grumbled. "Plaster's all shot. Needs a lot of work." "If you think this one needs a lot of work," he said, "wait until you see the other suite." Amanda gave one look at the daisy extravaganza groaned. "Don't tell me! Let me guess! It was the Mull girl who did this. What a mess! She came to work here after I let her go." "Did she work for you?" "I paid her wages, dammit, but she didn't work! Her art teacher wanted me to take her on. Big mistake. Cute girl, but not a brain in her head. Her scruffy friends were always hanging around the studio, too. Then she got sticky fingers, so I gave her the sack. Those Mulls! Not a one of them ever amounted to anything… Look at this abomination! It'll take three coats to cover it, maybe four." Koko's tune rang through Qwilleran's mind. Daisy, Daisy. "Hold everything," he said. "Forget this apartment for the time being and concentrate on my studio." "You'll have to come downtown to pick out colors and look at samples," she said irritably.
"Let's make it easy. Just rip out the rugs and furniture and cart the whole shebang to the dump. Then carpet the floor in dark brown, like my shoes." "Hmmm, you're a casual cuss," the designer said. "And paint the walls the color of my pants." "Mojave beige?" "Whatever you call it. And let's have some of those adjustable blinds with thin slats. After that we'll talk about furniture." After the designer had stomped down the stairs, mumbling to herself, Qwilleran had another look at the intricate daisy design and regretted the artist had left town. During his career as a crime reporter he had won the confidence of many characters outside the law — or on the borderline — and this girl, with her talent and her questionable reputation, interested him.
Daisy, Daisy. Fingering his moustache in perplexity, he wondered why and how Koko had touched those particular keys on the piano. True, the cat was fascinated by push buttons, switches, and typewriter keys, but this was the first piano Koko had ever seen, and he had played a recognizable tune.
Returning to the house, Qwilleran found something else to ponder, Koko" guarding the house from his post on the grand staircase, was sitting on the third stair, Out of a flight of twenty-one stairs, he always chose the third.
4
No jets landed at the Pickax airport. There was no VIP lounge in the terrninal — not even a cigarette machine for nervous passengers. Moose County travelers were grateful to have shelter and a few chairs.
While waiting for Mrs. Cobb's plane, Qwilleran recalled that much of his education about antiques had come from the Cobbs' establishment when he was covering the "junk beat" for the Daily Fluxion. What he remembered of the lady herself was a composite of bustling exuberance, plump knees, and two pairs of eyeglasses dangling from ribbons around her neck.
When she stepped off the plane in her travel-weary pink pantsuit, he found her thinner and somewhat subdued, and her glasses had new frames studded with rhinestones.
"Oh, Mr. Qwilleran, how good to see you!" she cried. "What lovely weather you have here! It's suffocating in the city, Isn't this a quaint airport!" "Everything's quaint in Pickax, Mrs. Cobb, Do you have luggage?" "Only this carryon. It's all I need for an overnight." "You're welcome to stay longer, you know." "Oh, thank you, Mr. Qwilleran, but I have to go back tomorrow to close the deal with Mrs. Riker. She's going to live in your old apartment over the shop." "She is going to live there?" Qwilleran repeated, "What about her husband? What about their house in the suburbs?" "Didn't you know? She's getting a divorce." "I had lunch with Arch a few days ago, and he didn't say a word about it… but I remember he looked troubled, I wonder what happened." "I'll let him tell you the story," Mrs. Cobb said, and she pursed her lips with finality.
On a relentlessly straight highway they drove across the lonely landscape of Moose County — through evergreen forests and rockbound wasteland, past abandoned mines and unnatural hillocks that had once been slag heaps.
"Very rocky," Mrs. Cobb observed.
"Pickax is built almost entirely of stone," said Qwilleran.
"Is it really? Tell me about your house. Is it sumptuous?" "It's a big chunk of fieldstone three stories high, I call it Alcatraz Provincial," he began. "All the rooms are huge, The foyer would make a good roller rink if we took up the Oriental rugs… Every bedroom has a canopied bed and its own sitting room, dressing room, and bath… There's an English pub in the basement, and the top floor was supposed to be a ballroom, but it was never finished… The kitchen is so big you have to walk a mile to prepare a meal, It includes a butler's pantry, a food storage room, a laundry, a half bath, and a walk-in broom closet. The whole service area, as well as the solarium, is floored in square tiles of red quarry stone." "Any ghosts?" Mrs. Cobb asked with some of the old twinkle in her eyes, "Every old house should have a ghost.
Maybe you remember the one we had on Zwinger Street. She never materialized, but she moved things around in the middle of the night. She was very prankish." "I remember her very well," Qwilleran said. "She put salt shakers in your bedroom slippers." He also remembered that her ghostly pranks were an ongoing practical joke that C. C. Cobb had played on his gullible wife.
"How's Koko?" she asked.
"He's fine. He's taking piano lessons." "Oh, Mr. Qwilleran," she laughed. "I never know whether to believe what you say." They approached Pickax via Goodwinter Boulevard, lined with the stately stone houses that wealthy mining pioneers had built in the heyday of the city. Then came Main Street, the circular park, and the majestic K mansion.
Mrs. Cobb gave a little scream." Is this it? Oh! Oh! I want the job!" "You don't know how much it pays," Qwilleran said. "Neither do I." "I don't care. I want the job." When they entered the foyer, the amber walls were glowing and the brass-and-crystal chandelier was sparkling.
The furnishings looked almost self-consciously pedigreed.
"Why, it's like a museum!" "It's a little rich for my taste," Qwilleran admitted, "but everything is the real thing, and I have respect for it." "I could do a real museum catalogue for you. That rosewood-and-ormolu console is Louis XV, and I'll bet it's a signed piece. The clock is a Burnap — brass works, moonphase, late eighteenth." "Are you ready for the dining room?" Qwilleran switched on the twenty-four electric candles mounted on two staghorn chandeliers. It was a dark room, richly paneled, and the furniture was massive.
"Linenfold paneling!" Mrs. Cobb gasped. "Austrian chandeliers! The furniture is German, of course." "That's the original furniture," Qwilleran said, "before the Klingenschoens became serious collectors and switched to French and English." When they crossed the foyer to the drawing room, she stared in awed silence. Chandeliers festooned with crystal were ablaze in the afternoon sun. Mellowed with age, the red walls made a handsome background for oil paintings in extravagant frames: French landscapes, Italian saints, English noblemen, and one full-length, life-size portrait of an 1880 beauty with bustle and parasol. On the far wall a collection of Chinese porcelains filled the shelves in two lofty arched niches.