Braun, Lilian Jackson - The Cat Who 009

An unusual number of gulls filled the sky to the east, wheeling and diving and screaming. Something special was happening beyond the clump of rocks and willows known as Seagull Point. He walked slowly toward the promontory lest he disturb their fun, and when he reached the willows he saw a woman on the beach, a drab figure in fawncolored slacks and sweater. She was standing at the water’s edge, taking food from her sweater pockets and tossing it to the hysterical birds. He recognized Russell’s dark clipped hair and her dreamlike movements. The gulls were going berserk, skreek-ing and chattering, fighting each other for scraps in midair, swooping in and taking the food from her fingers. And she was talking to them in a language he could not interpret. He watched the spectacle until her pockets were empty and she walked slowly east toward the cottages.

As Qwilleran sauntered back toward the cabin his pique was somewhat soothed by the tranquility of the beach and the performance of the gulls. Climbing the slope of the dune was an awkward exercise. In the fine dry sand he climbed three steps upward and slid two steps backward. Avalanches of sand cascaded down to the beach. Other beach-dwellers had installed steps to combat the erosion. He really would need to find a carpenter …

A familiar van stood in the clearing, and Joanna was in the kitchen repairing the second leak under the sink.

“How did it happen so soon after you fixed it?” he demanded with a hint of accusation.

“You need new pipe. This old stuff is no good.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you install some new pipe?”

“I just did,” she said simply, lying on the floor, propped on one elbow, with her head under the sink.

When Qwilleran saw the bill, he said, “What kind of pipe am I buying?

Gold-plated?”

“It’s plastic,” she said in her humorless way. “Could I have a drink of water?”

He handed her a glass. “Help yourself. I think you know where it is.”

“You gonna be here all summer?” She was wearing lipstick again-a purplish red.

“That’s my intention,” he said with pointed brevity, thinking she might be planning to pay daily social visits.

She looked around the cabin, staring at the Indian throw rugs with their splashes of red. “Pretty rugs.”

A raucous voice was coming from her van. “I believe your short-wave radio wants your attention,” he said.

After she had driven off in her van to the next job, Qwilleran began to suspect the entire Glinko method of doing business. When Joanna fixed the sink the first time, could she have left a fitting loose so that it would start dripping again?

Was this a Glinko technique? Did Mrs. Glinko train her people, like a north-country Fagin?

Suspicious, frustrated, and disgruntled, he needed the therapy of a long lunch hour at the Press Club with half a dozen fellow journalists, but there was no Press Club within four hundred miles of Moose County. There was, however, his old friend Arch Riker. He made a call to the newspaper office in Pickax.

After years without an adequate newspaper, Moose County now had a publication of professional caliber that reached the reading public twice a week, answering their need for local news and local advertising. It was called the Moose County Something, a name that had started as a joke and had persisted. Editor and publisher of the Something was Qwilleran’s lifelong friend from Down Below. He telephoned Arch Riker. “Are you free for dinner tonight, Arch? It’s been a long time.”

“Sure has!” said Riker. Because of his approaching marriage and the pressures of launching a new publication he had not been available for bachelor dinners for many weeks. “I’m free, and I’m hungry. What did you have in mind?”

“I’ve moved up to the cabin for the summer. Why don’t you meet me here, and we’ll go to the Northern Lights Hotel. They have spaghetti on Mondays…

How’s your lovely fiancee?”

“Lovely, hell! We broke it off this weekend,” Riker growled into the phone.

“I’ll see you at six o’clock … Wait a minute! Where’s your cabin? I’ve never been there.”

“Take the main highway north to the lake, then left for three miles until you see a K on a cedar post.”

The editor’s car pulled into the clearing shortly after six, and Qwilleran went out to meet his paunchy, red-faced, middle-aged friend.

“Man, this is my idea of the perfect summer place!” Riker exclaimed as he admired the weathered logs, hundred-foot pine trees, and endless expanse of water.

“Come in and mix yourself a martini,” Qwilleran said. “We’ll relax on the porch for a while.”

The editor entered the cabin in a state of awe and envy as he saw the massive stone fireplace, the open ceiling trussed with logs, the moosehead over the mantel, and the bar top made from a single slab of pine. “You’re one lucky dog!”

He mixed his drink with the concentration of a research chemist while Qwilleran leaned on the bar, watching the process, knowing enough not to interrupt. Then, “What happened between you and Amanda?” he asked with the genuine concern of an old friend.