CHAPTER 8.
QWILLERAN HAD BECOME accustomed to six-thirty reveille on weekday mornings, sounded by the rumble of Clem’s truck, the whine of the table saw, and the staccato blows of the hammer. On Monday he slept until eight o’clock, however, and only the weight of two cats on his chest caused him to open his eyes.
His doubts about the carpenter’s whereabouts proved to be well-founded; Clem did not appear. Qwilleran kept glancing at his watch and smoothing his moustache anxiously. Finally he telephoned the Cottle farmhouse.
A weary-voiced woman answered-Clem’s mother, he assumed.
“Hello, Mrs. Cottle? This is Jim Qwilleran. I’d like to speak with Clem, if he’s there.”
There was a breathless pause. “You want … to talk to … Clem?”
“Gimme that phone,” said a gruff male voice. “Who is this?”
“Mr. Cottle? This is Jim Qwilleran. Clem is doing some construction work for me, and he didn’t show up on Saturday. I’m wondering when I can expect him.”
“He’s out of town,” the man snapped.
“Do you know when he’ll be back?”
“Don’t know. I’ll tell him to call you.” The chicken farmer hung up.
Here was a situation that called for the moral support of caffeine, and Qwilleran made himself a cup of coffee-weaker than usual, in the wake of his nervous snakes the night before. How long should he wait for Clem to return?
Would Clem ever return? An uneasy sensation on his upper lip was intensifying.
When should he start hunting for a substitute? Would anyone want to finish a job started by another builder? Where would he find anyone to equal Clem? And then the burning question: What had happened to Clem Cottle?
The Siamese had finished their three-hour morning nap and had not yet settled down for their four-hour afternoon siesta. It was their Mischief Hour. Yum Yum was batting a pencil she had stolen from the writing table, and Koko was parading around with a sweat sock that Qwilleran used for biking.
“What shall I do, Koko?” he asked. “You have a lot of good ideas. Tell me what to do.”
Koko ignored him pointedly as he staggered about the cabin, dusting the floorboards with the sock dragging between his forelegs.
“Are you telling me the house is dirty?” Qwilleran noted the fluffballs in the corners and the dust on almost everything. “Well, maybe it is.” He ran the dustmop around the edges and flicked a duster half-heartedly over several table-tops.
The sock brought to mind Cecil’s story about Grandpa Huggins and the loaf of bread. They had a sly wit, those early settlers. Grandpa’s General Store had completely disappeared. Not a stick of it left, Cecil had said. It had been on the Brrr Road at Huggins Corners. The county was dotted with ghostly memories of villages and hamlets that had vanished without a trace, and they held a singular fascination for Qwilleran. He retrieved his sock, found its mate, changed into shorts and T-shirt, and set out on his bike to find the site of Grandpa Huggins’s General Store.
Only a trail bike or a vehicle with four-wheel drive could negotiate the sandy furrows of the Old Brrr Road, and there was not enough traffic to keep the weeds from growing in the ruts. Yet, this had once been the only thoroughfare between Mooseville and Brrr, traversed by wagons, carriages, doctors on horseback, and pedestrians who thought nothing of walking ten miles to exchange a catch of fish for a few dozen eggs. Here and there one could see the remains of a collapsed barn or a stone chimney rising from a field of weeds. A crude bridge crossing the Ittibittiwassee River was nothing more than a collection of rattling planks.
Qwilleran passed a clearing with a circle of charred ashes in the center.
Hunters had made camp here, or Scouts had pitched tents. He saw the rear end of a blue truck ahead, parked off the road with the front end in a shallow ditch. A varmint hunter, he surmised, but when he biked abreast of the pickup, he saw the frantic chicken painted on the door.
He threw down his bike and approached the truck warily, fearful of what he might find. The windows were open, and the cab was empty, but the key was in the ignition-not an unusual circumstance in the north country. When he flipped the key, the motor turned over, so the truck was not out of gas. But where was the driver? Qwilleran touched his moustache tentatively. Clem was not “out of town”
as his father and fiancee had insisted.
After making this mystifying discovery, Qwilleran lost all interest in Grandpa Huggins’s General Store. He turned the bike around and headed back to the dunes, thinking what a coincidence it was-and how fortunate it was-that Koko had stolen his sock. All that remained now was to determine an appropriate course of action.
As he pedaled up the snaking drive to the cabin, a small yellow car was leaving the clearing. He dropped his bike and walked to the driver’s window. “Looking for me, Maryellen?”
“I wanted to talk to you,” she said in a small voice.
“Back up,” he said, “and come into the cabin.”
He wheeled the bike to the toolshed and met her at the door to the back porch.
“Let’s sit out here. It’s a little breezy on the lakeside. May I get you a drink?”
“No, thanks,” she said, studying her hands clenched in her lap.
“What’s the problem?” Qwilleran asked, although he could guess.
“I’m worried about Clem.”
“So am I, but yesterday you told me he was out of town.”
“That’s what Mr. Cottle told me to say.”
“What’s his line of reasoning?”
“He says a young man has to have a last fling before he settles down. He says he did it himself when he was Clem’s age. But Mrs. Cottle doesn’t think that’s what happened to Clem, and neither do I. It’s not like him to go away without letting us know-not like him at all! He’s too thoughtful to do that.”
“From my brief acquaintance with him, I’m inclined to agree, but why did you come to me?”
“I didn’t know who else to go to. I don’t want to upset my parents. Dad has a heart condition, and Mom goes to pieces easily. Clem always said you were an important man in the county, so that’s why I came.” She looked at him appealingly.
“You’re not going to like what I have to say, Maryellen, but … I’ve just been biking on the Old Brrr Road, and I saw Clem’s truck.”
Her face and neck flushed a bright red.
“It’s not wrecked,” he went on. “The keys are in the ignition, and it’s not out of gas. It’s just parked off the road, halfway in the ditch. Would he have any reason for using the old road?”
She shook her head slowly. “He’s not a hunter. Only hunters go back in there.”
Her eyes grew wide. “What do you think it means?”
“It means that Clem’s father should stop kidding himself and report the disappearance to the sheriff.”
In Qwilleran’s early days as a newsman, when he covered the police beat for newspapers Down Below, he had a good rapport with the law-enforcement agencies, and he could always discuss cases with fellow journalists at the Press Club. In Moose County he had no such connections. There was Arch Riker, of course, but his old friend only kidded him about his suspicions. And there was Andrew Brodie, but the Pickax police chief dried up when the case was outside his jurisdiction, and the Cottle farm in Black Creek was on the sheriffs turf.
Under the circumstances, Qwilleran’s only contact was Mildred’s son-in-law, who covered the police beat for the Moose County Something. Having quit a teaching job to join the paper, Roger MacGillivray was hardly a seasoned reporter, but he was a willing listener, and he had enthusiasm.