Kao K'o Kung, the male (called Koko as a handy everyday diminutive), was a gifted animal endowed with highly developed senses quite beyond those of humans and other cats.
Yum Yum was a female who hid her catly wiles under a guise of affectionate cuddling, purring and nuzzling, often extending a paw to touch Qwilleran's moustache. From the police station it was a short walk to the office of the Moose County Something, as the local newspaper was named. (everything in mile-square Pickax was a short walk.) The publication occupied a new building made possible by financial assistance from the Klingenschoen Foundation, and the editor-and-publisher was Qwilleran's longtime friend from Down Below, Arch Riker. In the lobby there were no security guards or hidden cameras such as those employed by the large metropolitan dailies for which Qwilleran had worked. He walked down the hall to Riker's office and found the door open, the desk unoccupied. From the managing editor's office across the hall Junior Goodwinter hailed him.
"Arch went to Minneapolis for a publishers' conference. He'll be back tomorrow. Come on in! Have a chair. Put your feet up. I don't suppose you want a cup of coffee." Recalling the anemic brew he had just swallowed, Qwilleran replied, "I majored in journalism and graduated with a degree in caffeine. Make it black and hot." Junior's boyish build, boyish countenance, and boyish enthusiasm were now tempered by a newly grown beard.
"How do you like it?" he asked as he stroked his chin.
"Does it make me look older?" "It makes you look like a young potato farmer. What's your wife's reaction?" "She likes it. She says it makes me look like a jolly elf.
What brings you home so soon?" he asked as he handed over a steaming cup.
"Polly was frightened by a prowler on Goodwinter Boulevard. I didn't like the sound of it." "How come we didn't hear about it?" "She reported it, but there's been no further incident, so far as anyone knows." "They've got to do something about Goodwinter Boulevard, no kidding," said Junior.
"It used to be the best street in town. Now it's getting positively hairy with all those vacant mansions looking like haunted houses. The one where Alex and Penelope lived has been up for sale for years! The one that Van Brook rented is empty again, and it's going begging. Who wants fifteen or twenty rooms nowadays?" "Rezoning, that's what it needs," Qwilleran said.
"It should be rezoned for apartments, offices, good restaurants, high-class nursing homes, and so forth. Why don't you write an editorial?" "I'd be accused of special interest," Junior said.
"How do you figure that?" "Grandma Gage has bought a condo in Florida and wants to deed the mansion to me while she's still living.
What would I do with fifteen rooms? Think of the heating bills and the taxes and all those windows to wash! I'll own just another white elephant on Goodwinter Boulevard." Qwilleran's eyes, known for their doleful expression and drooping lids, roamed over the clutter on the editor's desk, the crumpled paper that had missed the wastebasket, the half-open file drawers, the stacks of out-of-town newspapers.
But he wasn't looking; he was thinking. He was thinking that the Gage mansion occupied the property in front of Polly's carriage house. If he lived there, he could keep a watchful eye on her. Also, it would be convenient for other purposes, like dropping in for dinner frequently.
He smoothed his moustache with satisfaction and said to Junior, "I could use a winter house in town. My barn is hard to heat and there's too much snow to plow. Why don't I rent your house?" "Wow! That would be great!" the young editor yelled.
"But I still think you should run that editorial." "The city will never do anything about rezoning. Tradition dies hard in Pickax." "How about Stephanie's Restaurant in the old Lanspeak house? It was opened a couple of years when I first came here." "That was the first house on the boulevard," Junior explained.
"It faced Main Street and could be legally used for commercial purposes. Too bad it closed; the building's still empty... No, Qwill, there are still influential families on the boulevard who'll fight rezoning like tigers. We'll have to wait for some more of them to die off. Dr. Hal lived on the boulevard, you know." "Do you think Melinda will keep the house?" "No way! She has an apartment and intends to sell the house and furnishings. Off the record, her dad didn't leave much of an estate.
He was an old-fashioned country doctor, never charging patients who couldn't pay and never taking advantage of the insurance setup. And don't forget the expense of round-the-clock nurses for his wife for all those years! Melinda has inherited more problems than property.. Have you seen her?" Junior asked with a searching look. He knew about Melinda's former pursuit of the county's most eligible bachelor. She was Junior's cousin. All Goodwinters were cousins to a degree.
"She's changed somehow," he said.
"I don't know how to pinpoint it." "Three years on the staff of a Boston hospital can do that," Qwilleran said.
"Yeah, they worked her pretty hard, I guess.
Well, anyway, can we expect some copy from you this week? Or are you too bushed?" "I'll see what I can do." Walking home, Qwilleran recalled his earlier association with Dr. Melinda Goodwinter. He had been a stranger in Moose County at the time, suffering from a fierce case of ivy poisoning. After treating his condition successfully, she offered friendship, flip conversation, and youth. She was twenty years his junior, with green eyes and long lashes and the frank sexuality of her generation. As a doctor, she had convinced him to give up smoking and take more exercise. As a woman, she had been overly aggressive for Qwilleran's taste, and her campaign to bulldoze him into matrimony resulted in embarrassment for both of them. She moved to Boston after that, telling everyone she had no desire to be a country doctor. When he met Polly, it was he who did the pursuing--an arrangement more to his liking. She was not so thin as Melinda, nor were her lashes so long, but she was a congenial companion and a good cook, who shared his literary interests. They liked to get together and read Shakespeare, for one thing. She made no unacceptable demands, and, more and more, Qwilleran found Polly occupying his thoughts. On the way home he stopped at Toodles' Market to buy the Siamese something to eat--always a problem because they had fickle palates. Their preferences changed just often enough to keep him perpetually on his toes. There was only one constant: no cat food! As if they could read labels, they disdained any product intended for the four-legged trade. Sometimes they were satisfied with a can of red salmon garnished with a smoked oyster or a dab of caviar, preferably sturgeon. At other times, they would kill for turkey, but he could never be sure. At Toodles' he considered a slice of roast beef from the deli or some chicken liver pate.
Better yet would be a few ounces of tenderloin from the butcher, to serve au tartare, but he would have to hand-mince it; ground meat was somehow objectionable. He settled for the pate. From there he followed the long way home, just for the exercise, trudging along a back road, then up a gravel trail through an old orchard. He was a hundred feet from the apple barn when he heard clarion voices yowling a welcome. The nineteenth-century barn was an octagonal structure four stories high, with large windows cut into the walls at various levels, and he could see two furry bodies darting about indoors, observing him first from one window and then another. They met him at the door, prancing and waving their tails like flags. It was a ritual that gave him a leap of inner joy in spite of his unsentimental greeting.
"What have you young turks been doing since you got home?" They sensed the liver pate with quivering whiskers.
In spasms of anticipation they dashed up the ramp that spiraled around the interior of the building, connecting the three balconies and ending in narrow catwalks under the roof. Then they pounded pell-mell down the slope to the first balcony, from which they flew like squirrels, landing in the cushioned seating on the main floor.