Qwilleran swung open the trap door and flashed the light into the dark hole.
There was nothing in sight but sand. He tried sprawling on the mudroom floor with his head hanging over the edge in order to flash the light in several directions. He saw sand everywhere-a few rocks-a few pipes leading who-knew-where.
Koko had been racing around the mudroom, yikking and yowling at the spectacle of this large man lying on the floor. Now he peered down into the hole with his four feet tightly bunched, teetering on the edge. “No!” Qwilleran commanded.
“Yow!” said Koko defiantly as he jumped down into the crawl space.
“Koko! Get out of there!”
The cat had disappeared into the shadows and failed to reply, much less obey.
Qwilleran tried the magic words, “Cereal! Cereal!” Yum Yum came trotting, but there was no response from Koko, the most obstinate creature he had ever encountered, and that included an ex-wife and two case-hardened editors. He flashed the light again, speculating on the feasibility of following the cat.
There was about a two-foot clearance, in some spots less, between the sand and the floor joists of the cabin. “Dammit, I’m not going after you!” he shouted to the miscreant under the floor. “You can stay there all day! I was marooned on an island; I came close to death; I narrowly avoided pneumonia; and I’ve lost the east wing. I’m not going to belly-crawl in the sand after a cat!”
Qwilleran scrambled to his feet, closed the heavy oak door with a crash and straightened the rug over it, leaving Koko alone in the dark. Then he drove into Mooseville for lunch, first giving Yum Yum some affectionate stroking and a tidbit of bacon salvaged from his breakfast tray at the hospital.
“I hope he can smell this bacon,” he said to Yum Yum. “Let him eat his heart out!”
Qwilleran was in no mood for conversation, and he found a secluded table at the Northern Lights Hotel. Even so, the waitress wanted to know all about his experience on the island. She had heard the news on the radio and had read about it in the Daily Fluxion.
Qwilleran pointed to his throat and mouthed the words, “Can’t talk.”
“You caught cold!” she said.
He nodded.
“It must have been freezing out there, with your clothes all wet and the wind blowing fifty miles an hour!’”
He nodded.
“How about some cream of mushroom soup? That should feel good going down.”
He nodded and also pointed to the half-pound cheeseburger with fries and cole slaw. When he had fortified himself with solid food and three cups of coffee, he felt alive once more.
Back at the cabin the rain was still hammering the roof, soaking the remains of the east wing, drenching the woods, and blotting out the lake view. Yum Yum greeted him nervously. She disliked being alone. She cried piteously.
“Okay, sweetheart,” Qwilleran said, “we’ll give him another chance.”
He opened the trap door, expecting a contrite Koko to bound out of the hole, shake himself, and spend the next hour cleaning his fur, but the cat did not make an appearance. Once more Qwilleran sprawled on the floor, hanging his head over the edge-a maneuver of discomfort as well as indignity. It was then that he heard a distant rumble-the kind of noise that Koko made when he was busy with some engrossing task. He was talking to himself under his breath.
“What are you doing, Koko?”
There was more mumbling, almost a growl.
Qwilleran had been born with the same kind of curiosity that has killed centuries of cats, and he threw off his waterproof jacket and lowered himself into the hole. The opening was about two feet square, and he was a big man. He made several attempts before learning the knack: squat down, slide the legs forward while chinning on the edge, then roll over. Now he could flash the light to all corners of the crawl space. It was, as he had previously surmised, mostly sand, but now he noticed some lumps of concrete or hardened mortar, a sprinkling of acorn shells left there by tunneling chipmunks, and a beer can. He hoped there would be no snakes or skunks. It was dusty, and he sneezed a few times.
Cobwebs tickled his face and were vastly unpleasant when they caught on his moustache.
He had no time to wonder about the beer can. Koko’s behavior was disconcerting.
The cat was in the center of the crawl space, approximately under the dining table, and he was digging industriously.
With Mrs. Ascott’s message ringing in his mind, Qwilleran started a torturous belly-crawl toward him. The chunks of mortar had sharp corners, and the seventy-five-year-old joists were four-by-sixes, hard and unyielding. Ahead of him, sand was flying, propelled by the cat’s frantic paws.
Qwilleran’s moustache prickled as he approached Koko, and he felt a peculiar sensation in his scalp. “What have you found?” he called out.
Koko ignored him and kept on digging. Qwilleran crawled closer, trying to keep the beam of the flashlight on the scene of the excavation. The cat was uncovering something that he could not identify. It was something solid, with a shape that was becoming more defined. Qwilleran inched forward. And then the light went out. He shook the flashlight, joggled the thumb-switch and cursed the thing, but the battery was obviously dead. He threw it aside.
Now he was operating in total darkness. He knew he was within reaching distance of the cat, and he extended his right arm and grabbed a handful of furry hide.
Koko struggled and yowled in protest as Qwilleran hauled him back and used his other hand to feel for the treasure.
It was a shoe-a canvas shoe with shoelaces. Inside the shoe was a foot, and connected to the foot was a leg.
CHAPTER 16.
PON DISCOVERING THE body Qwilleran notified the sheriff, though not until he had tipped off the Moose County Something. Once more two protesting Siamese were locked in the guestroom as police maneuvered Koko’s grisly treasure from its burial place and up through the trap door-no simple operation! There were grunts, shouts, arguments, and muttered maledictions during the process. The rain continued, and the vehicles of the sheriff department, state police, coroner and technicians churned the driveway and clearing into mud.
Unofficial visitors were stopped by a roadblock at the entrance to the K property, Arch Riker being one of these. The editor and publisher of the Something chose to cover the incident himself, since Roger MacGillivray was still in the hospital. Also, Riker thought, Qwilleran might need moral support in his present medicated condition. The night on Three Tree Island and the destruction of the east wing, followed by the discovery of a dead body under the house, would be enough to shake even a veteran journalist if he happened to be taking Dr. Halifax’s potent pills. The editor, showing his press card, was allowed to park on the shoulder of the highway and walk up the long muddy driveway in the rain. Upon arriving at the cabin, he was restricted to the back porch.
Indoors the mudroom was living up to its name, as feet came and went in the course of grim, official business. The atmosphere was one the cabin had never known: the awesome hush of a murder scene under investigation, punctuated by the terse comments and orders of lawmen at work, not to mention the occasional complaints of offended Siamese issuing from the guestroom. Qwilleran was asked to stand by but keep out of the way, as samples of sand were collected and the premises were photographed, measured, and dusted for prints.
Dr. Halifax’s formula notwithstanding, Qwilleran’s energy and alert curiosity were miraculously renewed by the excitement of the crime. When asked to identify the body, he was able to say it was the carpenter known as Iggy, an appellation that tallied with the name on the driver’s license found in the pickup truck. It surprised him that Iggy possessed anything so conventional as a driver’s license, and it disturbed him-now that the man was dead-that he had never known his full name, had never asked, had never needed to ask. Despite obnoxious work habits and unattractive personal habits, Iggy was a fellow human who deserved more than a dog’s name. He was Ignatius K. Small.