Leo Urbank robbed valuable time from his golf game to inspect the new structure, predicting that it would never be completed. “Take it from me,” he warned.
“They’re hot at the beginning, but they drop out halfway through.”
The Comptons were unexpected callers. Lisa Compton was a jogger who regularly pounded the shoreline in a green warm-up suit, but her husband considered the beach solely as a place to smoke a cigar. Yet, there he was, plodding through the sand and climbing the steps.
“When the guy finishes your place,” he said, “maybe he could come over and work on our garage.”
“I’ll line him up for you,” Qwilleran said. “I suppose you know Clem Cottle.”
“Oh, sure,” said the superintendent. “We had thirteen Cottles going through the school system at one time. Clem was the brightest. Too bad he didn’t go to college for more than two years. But they were all conscientious-all good stock.
I wish I could say the same for all the old families. There’s a lot of inbreeding in a tight community like this.”
One evening John and Vicki Bushland sauntered down the beach to take pictures of the sunset, and Qwilleran invited them to view the spectacle from the screened porch, minus mosquitoes. “Where’s your studio?” he asked them.
“In Lockmaster. It’s been there for eighty years.”
“I’m not familiar with that town.”
“It’s sixty miles southwest of here-a county seat like Pickax, only bigger,”
Bushy said.
“What kind of work do you do?”
“The usuaclass="underline" portraits, weddings, club groups. When my grandfather started the business he photographed a lot of funerals. At the cemetery they’d open the coffin and prop it up on end, with the mourners gathered around the corpse. You can still see those gruesome group pictures in family albums. He was a great guy, my grandfather. He took two kinds of pictures-what he called vertical-up-and-down and horizontal-sideways.”
Qwilleran asked, “Do you shoot animals?”
“A few. Some people want their kids taken with the family pooch.”
“How about cats?”
“Lockmaster isn’t big on cats,” said the photographer. ”” Mostly dogs and horses.”
“But cats make wonderful models,” said Vicki. “They never strike a pose that isn’t photogenic.”
Qwilleran huffed lightly into his moustache. “I dispute that. Every time I think I’m getting a good snapshot, my cats yawn or turn into pretzels, and nothing is less picturesque than a cat’s gullet or his backside.”
Knowing they were being discussed, the Siamese sauntered onto the porch and posed as a couple-Yum Yum sprawled in a languid posture with chin on paw and ears tilted forward; Koko sitting tall with tail curved gracefully around haunches.
“See what I mean?” cried Vicki.
“Look at those highlights!” said Bushy as he raised the camera to his eye, but before he could snap the picture, both cats dissolved in a blur of fur and were gone. Challenged, he said, “I’d like to get those two characters in my studio and work with them. Could you bring them down to Lockmaster?”
“I don’t see why not,” Qwilleran said. “They’re good travelers.”
“You could bring them down some evening when the studio’s closed, and I could spend time with them. Just give me a ring.” He gave Qwilleran his business card.
“I’d like to enter them in a calendar competition.”
Not all the visitors were dune-dwellers during those exciting days of construction activity. One afternoon Joanna’s van pulled into the clearing.
“Whatcha doin” over there?” she asked.
“Building an addition to the cabin,” Qwilleran said.
She stared at it wordlessly for a while. “No more leaks?” she said finally. “So far, so good.”
“Did you find my lipstick?”
“I beg your pardon?” Qwilleran said.
“My lipstick. I thought maybe it rolled out of my pocket when I was here.”
“I haven’t seen it,” he said, noting that her face had the original washed-out appearance.
“It could be under the house.”
“Feel free to have a look, but don’t let Koko go down there.”
Joanna went indoors, and the trap door slammed twice. She returned, looking disappointed. “I’ll hafta buy another.”
After she had left, Qwilleran wondered why she had waited so long to ask about her missing lipstick. Was it simply an excuse to pay a social call? He felt sorry for the girl-so plain, and with so few advantages. But he was not going to take her to lunch! He had lunched his doctor and his interior designer, but Joanna was getting a ten-dollar tip for every plumbing job; she could buy her own lunch.
By July third the roof trusses had been erected, and the roof boards were in place. Clem had been working fast. “Trying to get it under cover before it rains,” he explained when he collected his tools on Thursday night.
“Are you taking a long holiday weekend?” Qwilleran asked him. “Can’t afford to. I’ll be here bright and early Saturday, but tomorrow I’ll be in the parade. The boss at the Shipwreck came up with a good idea, and I said I’d do it.”
“Are you riding on a float?”
“Nothing like that,” said the young man with a wide grin. “I’m just gonna walk down the middle of the street. Then after the parade there’s a softball game-Roosters against the state prison team. If you like ballgames, you oughta come and see us play.”
Qwilleran liked the young carpenter, and he gave him a parting salute as the Frantic Chicken drove away. It was prophetic. That was the last time he ever saw Clem Cottle.
CHAPTER 5.
THE FOURTH OF JULY dawned with the sunshine of a flag-waving holiday, and Qwilleran was in good spirits, despite some soreness following his last bike ride. The east wing with its roof boards in place was beginning to look like a habitation.
“Well, chums, we’re on our way!” he told the Siamese. “You’ll have your own apartment in a few weeks. What would you like for breakfast? Turkey from the deli? Or cocktail shrimp from a can?”
Koko was not present to cast his vote, but Yum Yum was rubbing against Qwilleran’s ankles in anticipation and curling her tail lovingly around his leg, and he knew she preferred turkey. He began to mince slices of white meat.
“What’s that noise?” He set down the knife and looked up. “Did you hear a tapping noise? … There it is again!”
Tap tap tap.
With a sudden drop in his holiday mood he envisioned another leak or mechanical breakdown. “There it goes again!” Possibilities flashed through his mind: the electric pump; the water heater; the refrigerator. It would mean another emergency call to that laughing hyena in Mooseville.
Tap tap tap.
Qwilleran followed the sound. It led him past the mudroom, past the bathroom, and into the guestroom. The tapping had stopped, but Koko was sitting on the windowsill overlooking the building site, and the morning sun made glistening shafts of every whisker, every alert hair over his eyes.
“Did you hear that, Koko?”
The cat turned his head to look at Qwilleran, and at that moment his brown tail slapped the windowsill three times. Tap tap tap.
Qwilleran uttered a sigh of relief. “Okay, Thumper, come and get your breakfast, and please don’t play tricks like that.”
The parade was scheduled to start at two o’clock, and he dressed in what he considered appropriate garb: white pants and open-neck shirt with a blue blazer.
He was sure the judges would be required to wear some absurd badge of office, and he was prepared for the worst. Mildred, when he picked her up at her cottage, was wearing one of her fluttery sundresses in a blue-and-white stripe.