A young couple at a nearby table waved to Qwilleran, and when Riker said he had to go back to the office, Qwilleran went over to speak with Nick and Lori Bamba.
“Who’s babysitting tonight?” he asked.
“My motherin-law,” said Lori. “Thank God for mothers-in-law. I’ve given up trying to get you to do it, Qwill.”
“Pull up a chair,” Nick invited. “Have dessert with us.”
Lori was Qwilleran’s part-time secretary. Working out of her house, she answered his mail with one hand and held the formula bottle with the other. “Your mail has doubled since you started writing the “Qwill Pen,” ” she said. “I can hardly keep up with it.”
“Start typing with two hands,” he suggested.
“How are the cats?”
“They’re fine. We’ve moved up to the cabin for the summer, and I want to build an addition. Know where I can find a good builder?”
Lori and Nick exchanged significant glances. “Clem Cot-tie?” Nick suggested.
“Perfect! Clem needs the work.”
“And he’s not so busy on the farm since the fire … Qwill, we’re talking about Doug Cottle’s son,” said Nick. “They’re the ones had the big chicken coop fire.”
Lori said, “Clem’s getting married, and he could use some extra money.”
“Is this guy any good?” Qwilleran asked.
“Very good, very reliable,” Nick said. “When would you want him to start? I’ll phone him right away. We’re in the same softball league.”
“For starters I’d like him to build a flight of steps down to the beach.”
“Sure, he can do that with one hand!”
Nick excused himself and went to the phone, and Lori said to Qwilleran, “I wish Nick could find another job that would use his skills and experience-and still allow us to live here-and still pay a decent salary. Being an engineer at the state prison isn’t the most elevating occupation. He sees so much that’s sordid and just plain wrong.”
“But he has a built-in verve that keeps him riding on top. He’s always up.”
“That’s his public posture,” Lori said. “I see him at home … Here he comes.”
“Clem’s interested,” Nick said. “He wants to talk to you.”
The voice on the phone had the chesty resonance of a man who has spent his life on a farm-and on a softball field. “Hello, Mr. Qwilleran. I hear you want a carpenter.”
“Yes,, I have several jobs in mind, but the most urgent is a set of steps down to the beach before my cabin slides down into the lake. Do you know the kind I mean?”
“Sure, I helped Buddy Yarrow build those a couple of years ago for some people at the Dune Club. I know what lumber to order without any waste.”
“When could you start?”
“How about tomorrow?”
“I couldn’t ask better than that. Do you know where to find me?”
“It’s the drive with a K on a post. I’ve passed it a million times.”
“See you tomorrow then.” Qwilleran tamped his moustache with satisfaction and returned to the Bambas” table. “I’m indebted to you kids,” he said, and picked up their dinner check.
When Qwilleran returned home, the Siamese greeted him with a look of hungry eagerness, and he scouted for a small treat that they might enjoy. Mildred’s tub of homemade cereal was still unopened. “This may look like catfood,” he explained, “but it’s breakfast cereal for humans.” (They normally objected to anything produced especially for cats.) They gobbled it up. Then he sprawled on the sofa with a news magazine, while Yum Yum snuggled on his lap and Koko perched on the sofaback, both waiting to hear him read aloud about the trade deficit and the latest hostile takeover.
At midnight it was time to lock the doors and close the ulterior shutters.
Daybreak came early in June, and unless the louvered shutters were closed, the pink light of sunrise illuminated the cabin and gave the cats the erroneous idea that it was time for breakfast.
The lakeshore could be very dark and very quiet on a calm, moonless night, and Qwilleran slept soundly until two-thirty. At that hour a sound of some kind roused him from sleep. It was alarming enough to cause him to sit up and listen warily. Again he heard it: a deep, continuous, rumbling moan that rose louder and angrier and ended in a high-pitched shriek. Recognizing Koko’s Tarzan act, reserved for stray cats, Qwilleran shouted “Quiet!”
He lay down again. Then he became aware of intermittent flashes of light. He swung out of bed and hurried into the living room. A greenish light so powerful that it filtered through the louvered shutters was coloring the white walls, white sofas, and even Koko’s pale fur with a ghastly tint. The cat was on the arm of the sofa, his back humped, his tail bushed, his ears back, his eyes staring at the front window.
Qwilleran threw open the shutters and was blinded by a dazzling, pulsating light. He rushed to the front door, struggled with the lock, dashed out on the porch shouting “Hey, you out there!’”
But the light had disappeared, and there was not a sound, although a breeze sprang up and swished through the cherry trees. He groped his way back indoors, still blind from the intensity of the flashes.
It was a joke, Qwilleran decided, as he regained his vision, and as Koko’s tail resumed its normal shape, and as Yum Yum came crawling out from under the sofa.
It was that photographer from the Dune Club, he decided. He had been flashing his strobe lights to play a trick on a nonbeliever, and no doubt Mildred was the one who gave him the idea.
CHAPTER 4.
THE WHINING OF an electric saw and the sharp blows of a hammer interrupted Qwilleran’s sleep on Tuesday morning. He looked at his bedside clock with one eye open; it was only six-thirty. He was a late riser by preference, but he realized that the carpenter was on the job and the beach steps were being built.
He pulled on a warmup suit and went out to the top of the dune.
There was a light blue pickup in the clearing-one of five thousand of that color in Moose County according to his private estimate. This one was distinguished by a cartoon on the cab door: a screeching, wing-flapping chicken. On the door handle hung a softball jacket: red with white lettering that spelled out COTTLE ROOSTERS. Lumber was stacked in the clearing, and a table-saw was set up. The carpenter himself was halfway down the sandbank working at top speed, driving home each nail with three economical strokes of the hammer. Bang bang bang.
“Morning,” said Qwilleran sleepily when: the hammering stopped.
The young man looked up from his work. “Hope I didn’t wake you up.”
“Not at all,” said Qwilleran with amiable sarcasm. “] always get up at six o’clock and run a few miles before breakfast.”
The humor was lost on the carpenter. “That’s good foi you,” he said. “Oh, I forgot-I’m Clem Cottle.” He scrambled up the sandbank, holding out a calloused hand.
He was one of five thousand big, healthy, young blond fellows in Moose County-again a private estimate. “Youi face looks familiar,” Qwilleran said.
“Sometimes I help out behind the bar at the Shipwreck.” Clem wasted no time on conversation, but returned to building the steps.
“What kind of wood are you using?” The lumber had a greenish tint like the bilious light that had seeped into the cabin in the middle of the night.
“It’s treated so it doesn’t have to be painted. Everybody’s using this now.”
Bang bang bang.
As one who could smash a finger with the first blow, Qwilleran watched the carpenter with admiration. Every nail went in straight, in the right place, with an economy of movement. “You’re a real pro! Where did you learn to do that?”
“My dad taught me everything.” Bang bang bang. “I’m building a house for myself.