"D'you think he's the one who broke in?" "I'm getting ideas. Everything's beginning to mesh." He combed his moustache vigorously with his fingertips.
"Okay. We'll take my car. It's got everything we need." Qwilleran said, "Lori, talk to Koko. He's acting like a zombie." The road north from Pickax ran straight, and Nick drove fast. At Ittibittiwassee Road he turned left into the wooded slum, the car bouncing slowly along the rutted road between the trees, the headlights picking up glimpses of shacks and junk vehicles.
"If his car isn't here," Nick said, "we'll try the site of the old mine." At the mention of the abandoned mine, and all it implied, Qwilleran felt nausea in the pit of his stomach.
"There it is! That's the car!" he said. Nick turned off his lights and parked in a patch of weeds behind a junk truck.
"If he's the right one, I can radio the police." "How shall we work this?" "I'll get him to open up. You stand back out of sight, Qwill, until I get my foot in the door." "Let me go first." "No. Your moustache is too well known. Hand me the gun from the glove compartment, in case he gives us any trouble." "Easy with the car door," Qwilleran said, as they stepped out into the weeds. The maroon car was pulled up to a ramshackle travel trailer with a dim light showing through the small window. A radio was playing. By approaching the window obliquely, the two men could see parts of the interior while avoiding the meagre spill of light into the yard. They saw a heavily bearded man lying on a cot, fully clothed, taking swigs from a pint bottle.
Although the face was hairy, red gashes could be seen on the forehead.
Another gash crusted with dried blood trailed from the corner of one eye, which was swollen shut. Qwilleran thought, To get those wounds from glass, he'd have to go through the door headfirst; he was clawed! He whispered to Nick, "I can see my radio and cassettes in there." They crept forward. Then Nick banged on the door and called out in a friendly voice, "Hey, Chuck! I've got some burgers and beer from the diner!" After a slight delay, the door opened cautiously. It opened outward, and Nick yanked it all the way.
"Jeez, man! Wha' happened? You been in a fight--or what?" "Who're you?" the bearded man mumbled.
"You know me--Harry from the diner." Both men barged through the door as the fellow stepped back uncertainly.
"You're cops!" "Hell, no! I'm Harry, don't you remember? This is my uncle Bob." There was a foul odor in the littered trailer, also a large collection of electronic equipment, also a silver pocketknife alongside a small sink.
"Wotcha doin' here?" "Just wanna warn you, Chuck. The cops are on your tail. You gotta get out of here." "Where's the beer?" Qwilleran said with avuncular concern, "Forget the beer, son. You need a doctor... Harry, can we take him to a doctor?
... Yes, son, you could lose an eye if you don't have it taken care of fast. Where'd you get those bloody gashes?" "Uh... in the woods," was his fuzzy-minded reply.
"You must have been attacked by a wildcat! You can get blood poisoning from something like that. We've got to get you to the hospital for a shot, son, or you're dead! Was it a wildcat? ... Or was it a house cat Qwilleran gave it a threatening emphasis. The wounded man looked at him suspiciously. Qwilleran, who had been sniffing the fetid air of the trailer like a connoisseur, suddenly bellowed, "TREAT!" "NOW!" came a piercing shriek from behind a small closed door. He yanked it open. It was a closet-size toilet, and Yum Yum was perched precariously on the rim. She was wet. She had slipped into the rusty bowl. Ripping off his jacket, he wrapped it around her, crooning reassurances in her ear.
"Take her to the car," he said to Nick, "and stay with her. You know what to do. I want to talk to Chuck for a minute." Yum Yum knew Nick, and she was purring as he carried her from the trailer. As an afterthought, he took the gun from his pocket and laid it on the sink.
Casually picking it up, Qwilleran said, "Sit down, son. You look sick.
The poison's getting into your bloodstream. I want to give you some advice before the police get here. They're going to ask a lot of questions, and you'd better be ready with some good answers." The fellow sat down on the cot, looking bewildered.
"Where did you get all these radios and cameras?" Qwilleran began.
"Where did you get that pocketknife? What brought you here from Massachusetts? Do you know someone in Pickax?
Do you have a partner here? Why did you break into my barn and take my cat? Did you think I'd pay a lot of money to get her back? Who told you I had a valuable cat? Was it your partner's idea? What was your name before you changed it to Charles Edward Martin?" Headlights and flashing blue lights were approaching through the woods.
"Here comes the popcorn machine! Better tell the police the whole truth, or you'll be in bad trouble. And tell them the name of your partner, or they'll throw the book at you, and your partner will go scot-free... Here they are! And now, if you don't mind, I'll take my radio and cassettes." On the way back to town, Qwilleran held Yum Yum tightly. Only her nose projected from the enfolding jacket as she looked up with trusting eyes and contemplated his moustache. He said, "That guy's not very sharp.
He has the instincts of a criminal, I think, but not the capabilities." "He's punch-drunk," Nick said, "from booze or drugs or both. I've seen a lot of 'em. What I don't understand--how did he manage to grab Yum Yum? She's always leery of strangers." Qwilleran was not ready to tell the whole story as he perceived it, not even to Nick. He said, "She likes beards. She's a pushover for anything resembling a brush. I think he broke in primarily to abduct one of the cats for ransom. After he had grabbed her and taken her out to the car, he came back for the radio he'd seen on my desk.
That's when Koko sprang on his head from the top of the refrigerator and drew blood." "Mmmmmmmmmm," Yum Yum murmured.
"Yes, sweetheart, we'll soon be home, and you can have a bath." Nick said, "How did you know she was in that john?" "The pervading stink in that place had a distinct overtone of cat--notervous cat! I know it well! And there were cat hairs everywhere. I can imagine her flying around that trailer, shedding hair like a snowstorm and finally seeking refuge in that foul closet.
My poor little sweetheart!" Before the Bambas left the apple barn that night, Lori gave Yum Yum a bath, and Qwilleran supplied warm towels, while Nick nailed something over the broken window in the door.
"I feel guilty about keeping you people out so late," Qwilleran said.
"Do you have a baby-sitter?" "Nick's mother is staying overnight," Lori said.
"Thank God for mothers-inlaw!" "How could you be so sure, Qwill, that Yum Yum's kidnapper was the Boulevard Prowler?" Nick asked.
"Just a hunch." Qwilleran pounded his moustache with his fist. After they had gone, he still had to write a review of the play for the Thursday paper, but the Siamese needed comforting, so he touched a match to the combustibles in the fireplace and made a lap for them.
Both cats climbed aboard, Yum Yum sinking like a lead weight with her chin on his wrist. Even Koko, who was not a lap-sitter, huddled close to his ribcage. Only then could he think objectively. He could visualize the headline in the next day's paper: Goodwinter Heir Alive and in Jail. He tried to recall when he had first suspected the Boulevard Prowler to be Dr.
Hal's son. Absurd though it might seem, it was Yum Yum's cache of emery boards that steered his mind in that direction. Someone had told him-Carol Lanspeak, he thought--that Melinda's brother was named Emory.
Emory spelled with an O was a fairly common name in the Pickax phone book. Every time Qwilleran found a stray emery board on the floor, his mind went to the stray son who was killed in a car crash... Then the old gentleman at the Senior Care Facility had talked about the doctor's monthly payments. Emory wasn't Moose County's first remittance man; local historians wrote that wealthy families had often deported undesirable members to areas Down Below to avoid embarrassment to the family name. As for the payments continuing after Emory's death, Qwilleran could invent several explanations but accepted the most credible: Emory was still alive.. A few days later he met the bearded suspect at the preview of the Goodwinter sale, lingering over a table of family memorabilia: old LP recordings, a much-used piggy bank, the doctor's monogrammed pocketknife, a photo in a silver frame. Upon talking to him, Qwilleran realized that the beard disguised a long narrow face, known in Moose County as the Goodwinter face. Then, Qwilleran tried to recall, when did I first suspect he had a partner?