The Cat Who Talked to Ghosts (11 page)

Qwilleran frowned. He could imagine what Pickax Power Problems would charge for a run all the way out to North Middle Hummock. When he unlocked his door and the cats came to greet him, he said, "You heavyweights have got to stop stamping your feet!"

The Siamese were unusually alert and active for mid-afternoon, which was their scheduled naptime, but that was understandable. Koko as chief security officer had been keeping a wary eye on the electrician, and Yum Yum had been inspecting his shoelaces. In addition, Homer Tibbitt had accompanied the repairman, and the cats' had never seen a human who walked like a robot. The chairman of maintenance, remarkably agile for his age, walked briskly with angular flailing movements of arms and legs.

Mr. Tibbitt had returned to the museum, and Qwilleran followed him to apologize. He found the chairman and an elderly brown-haired woman in the exhibit area.

"No need to apologize," said Tibbitt in his high-pitched voice. "It gives me an excuse to come out here and look things over. She drives me," he explained with a nod toward his companion. "They won't renew my license any more. That's the advantage of hooking up with a younger woman. Only trouble with Rhoda is her danged hearing aid. She won't get the blasted thing fixed. Rhoda, this is Mr. Qwilleran. This is Rhoda Finney. She taught English in my school when I was principal."

Qwilleran bowed over Ms. Finney's hand, and she beamed at him with the serenity of one who has not heard a word that has been said.

Tibbitt said, "Let's go into the office and have some coffee. Rhoda, do you want some coffee?"

"Sorry, I don't have any, dear," she said, rummaging in her handbag. "Would you like a throat lozenge?"

"Never mind." He waved her away and led Qwilleran into the bleak office. It was furnished with oak filing cabinets, scarred wooden tables, mismatched chairs, and shelves of reference books. One table was piled with dreary odds and ends under a sign specifying To Be Catalogued. Another table held an array of instant-beverage jars, paper cups, and plastic spoons.

"I'll do a little cleaning," said Ms. Finney, taking a feather duster from a hook and toddling from the room.

The old gentleman heated water in an electric kettle and measured out instant-coffee crystals for Qwilleran and coffee substitute for himself. "This insipid stuff is all Doctor Hal will let me drink since my last birthday," he explained, "but it's greatly improved with a few drops of brandy." He showed Qwilleran a silver hip flask engraved with his initials. "Leftover from Prohibition days," he said. "Comes in handy now and then... What did you think of the funeral? It was a decent send-off, I thought. Even old Dingleberry was impressed. Larry tells me you're living here till they find a manager. Have you noticed anything unusual?"

"Of what nature?" Qwilleran asked, grooming his moustache with a show of nonchalance.

"They say old Ephraim walks around once in a while. Never saw him myself because I've never been here overnight, but he has some kind of secret up his ghostly sleeve. Old Adam Dingleberry knows what it is, but he's not telling. I've twisted Adam's arm five different ways, but he won't budge, for love nor money."

"My cats have been acting strangely since we moved in," Qwilleran said. "I thought they might be searching for Iris Cobb. She invited them here to dinner a couple of times."

"No doubt they're seeing an invisible presence," said Tibbitt in all seriousness.

"Do you know anyone who has actually seen Ephraim's so-called ghost?"

"Senior Goodwinter told me something shortly before his accident. He said the old man came straight through the wall one night, carrying a rope. He was as silent as the grave. That was almost ninety years after Ephraim died, mind you! It gave Senior a suffocating feeling. Then the vision disappeared into the same wall he'd come from, and a few days later, Senior was dead."

"Which wall?" Qwilleran asked as his thoughts went to Iris Cobb and the potato masher. "Do you know which wall?"

"He didn't tell me that." "Did any of the family ever see Ephraim looking in a window at night?"

"No one ever mentioned it, but the Goodwinters were inclined to be hush-hush about the whole matter. I was surprised when Senior confided in me. I'd been his teacher in the early grades, and so I guess he trusted me."

"I get the impression that people up here are strong believers in the spirits of the dead."

"Yes indeed! This is good ghost country—like Scotland, you know. We have a lot of Scots here. Didn't you tell me you're a Scot?"

"My mother was a Mackintosh," Qwilleran informed him with an air of pride, "and she never saw a ghost to my knowledge. Certainly she never talked about ghosts in my presence."

"You need sensitivity and an open mind, of course. Skeptics don't know what they're missing."

"Did you ever see an apparition?"

"I certainly did! Thirty-two of them! You've heard of the explosion at the Goodwinter Mine in 1904? Thirty-two miners blown to bits! Well... twenty years after that disaster I had a curious experience—twenty years to the day, May thirteenth. I'd been visiting a young lady who lived in the country. I lived in Pickax, a distance of six miles, and I was walking home. Not many folks in Moose County had automobiles in those days, and I didn't even have a bicycle. So I was walking home around midnight along North Pickax Road. It wasn't paved in those days. Do you know where that hill rises just north of the mine? It was only a slag heap then, and when I reached it I saw some shadows moving across the top of the heap. I stopped and stared into the darkness and realized they were men-plodding along with pickaxes and lunch buckets and with never a sound. Then they disappeared over the hill. I counted; there were thirty-two of them, and every one had a light on the front of his head. In my mind I can still see those bobbing lights as the column of men trudged along. There was no wind that night, but after they passed by, the leaves of the trees rustled and I felt a chill."

Qwilleran was respectfully quiet for a few moments before he said, "Did you say that was in 1924? Prohibition was in effect. Are you sure you hadn't been taking a nip of white lightning from that silver flask?"

"I'm not the only one who saw them," Homer protested. "And it was always on the anniversary of the explosion—May thirteenth."

"Are they still being seen?"

"Not very likely. Now that the road's paved and cars are whizzing by at seventy miles an hour, who could see anything as ephemeral as a ghost? But I'll tell you what! Next year, on the night of May thirteenth, you and I will go out to the Goodwinter Mine site, park the car, and wait for something to happen."

"I'll mark it on my calendar," Qwilleran said, "but don't forget to take your flask along."

At that moment Rhoda Finney entered the office with her feather duster. Seeing the coffee cups she said, "You naughty men! You didn't tell me you were having coffee!"

Homer glanced at Qwilleran and shrugged hopelessly. Hoisting himself out of his chair, he prepared to measure an instant beverage from the row of jars on the table. "What kind?" he shouted.

Ms. Finney looked at her watch. "Seventeen minutes after two, dear." She whisked a few items of office furniture with the duster before sitting down.

Qwilleran said, "This museum operation seems to be very well organized."

"Yes indeed," said Homer. "Larry runs a tight ship. We have twelve active committees and seventy-five volunteers. I ride herd on the maintenance staff. We have high school students doing the yard work, earning points for community service. We have twenty able-bodied volunteers doing the cleaning, if you count Rhoda with her blasted feather duster.

We hire professionals—like Pickax Power Problems—to do repairs. For window washing the county sends us jail inmates."

"Do you ever find any loose shutters banging in the wind? Any loose shingles on the side of the house?"

"Nothing's been reported, and if it's not broken, we don't fix it."

"Did you know the plaster is cracked in the basement under the west wing?"

Homer dismissed the matter with an angular wave of the hand. "You mean the magpie nest? That's a repository for junk donated to the museum: broken furniture, rusty tools, moldy books, cracked crockery, stained slop jars and potties. "

"The poppies were beautiful this year," Rhoda interrupted. "Too bad they don't have a longer blooming season."

"I said potties—not poppies!" Homer shouted in his reedy treble. "Chamber pots! Thunder mugs! The things they put under beds!"

Rhoda turned to Qwilleran and explained sweetly, "The garden club maintains our flower beds. Don't you think the rust and gold mums are lovely? We haven't had any frost yet."

"I give up!" said Homer, throwing up his bony hands. "She's a sweet woman, but she'll be the death of me!" With disjointed movements of arms and legs he stomped from the room.

Rhoda asked with a radiant smile, "Was he giving his lecture on old barns again?"

"No, he was giving his lecture on ghosts!" Qwilleran replied loudly.

"Oh... yes," she said as she hung the feather duster on a hook behind the door. "They have quite a few at the Fugtree farm, you know."

Qwilleran bowed out quickly, shouting that the phone was ringing in the west wing.

It was Roger MacGillivray, reporter for the Moose County Something, who was calling. "Qwill, I got the info on Iris Cobb's will," he said, "but there's one thing that isn't clear. What is this cookbook she left you?"

Qwilleran, who was adept at extemporaneous prevarication, said, "That is her personal collection of recipes that she wished to have published posthumously." He spoke with the deliberation of one who is authorized to make a statement for publication. "The Klingenschoen Fund will underwrite the printing costs, and proceeds will go to the Iris Cobb Memorial Scholarship. For home economics studies," he added as an afterthought.

"Great!" said Roger. "That wraps it up. Thanks a lot."

Qwilleran dashed off his column for Friday's paper and phoned it in to the copydesk. It was late, therefore, when he started thinking about dinner, but he found one of his favorite dishes in the freezer—lamb shank cooked with lentils—and he thawed a hearty portion in the microwave. It was a large piece of meat, and before sitting down to eat, he sliced off a generous chunk for the Siamese, dicing it and putting it on their plate under the telephone table. Yum Yum attacked it with enthusiasm, but Koko was virtually glued to the kitchen windowsill, staring at the darkness outside.

"We've had enough of this ridiculous performance, young man!" Qwilleran said. "We'll find out what's bugging you!" With flashlight in hand he stormed out of the building, beaming the light around the exterior, in shadowy places not illuminated by the yardlights. He saw nothing unusual, nothing moving. A slight tremor on his upper lip made him wonder, What are cats seeing when they're gazing into space? Koko had left the windowsill, and Qwilleran was ready to give up the search when the flashlight beam picked out some depressions in the ground under the kitchen window. They looked like footprints. That rules out disembodied spirits, he told himself. It could have been some kid from Chipmunk... a juvenile Peeping Tom... a window washer from the county jail.

He hurried indoors and looked up Homer Tibbitt's phone number. He wanted to know when the windows had last been washed.

The maintenance chairman lived at October House, a residence for seniors, and the operator said, "I'm sorry, but I can't ring Mr. Tibbitt at this hour. He retires at seven-thirty. Do you wish to leave a message?"

"Just tell him Jim Qwilleran called. I'll try again tomorrow morning."

Both cats seemed to have enjoyed their portion of lamb; they were washing their masks, whiskers, and ears with satisfaction. Qwilleran popped his own dinner plate into the microwave for another shot of heat and immediately pulled it out again, staring at it in disbelief. All that remained on his plate was a mess of lentils and a shank bone, gnawed clean.

-8-

AS QWILLERAN PREPARED breakfast for the Siamese on Friday morning his mind was still on the footprints outside the kitchen window. If the window washers had been there since last weekend, the footprints could be theirs. If not, the tell-tale depressions had doubtlessly been left in the soft soil Sunday night, when Iris Cobb was making her last phone call. It had rained earlier that evening; since then the weather had been dry.

He placed the plate of tenderloin tips on the floor under the telephone table and once again called October House.

"Mr. Tibbitt," said the operator, "is not available. Would you care to leave a message?"

"This is Jim Qwilleran."

"Oh, yes, Mr. Qwilleran. You called last night."

"Will Mr. Tibbitt return soon?"

"I'm afraid not. He's gone to Lockmaster."

"Is he all right?" Qwilleran asked hastily. Lockrnaster, in the county to the south, had a medical center noted for its geriatric department.

"Oh, yes, he's fine. Ms. Finney drove him down there to—see the autumn color in horse country. They say it's gorgeous."

"I see," Qwilleran mused. "When do you expect them to return?"

"Not until Sunday afternoon. They're visiting friends down there. Shall I have him call you?"

"No. Don't bother. I'll catch up with him at the museum."

Qwilleran now faced an uncomfortable task—packing Iris Cobb's personal belongings in cartons from the basement. He had done it once before, after his mother died, and it was a heart-wrenching chore. He had done it often when he worked in a nursing home during college days, and in that situation it was a routine job. But it was an embarrassingly intimate rite to perform for a woman who had been his former landlady and housekeeper. He felt like a voyeur as he gathered her pink pantsuits, pink robes, pink underwear, and pink nightgowns from closets and dresser drawers. Most painful of all was the invasion of the top drawers with its jumble of smeared lipsticks, broken earrings, used emery boards, pill bottles, a hair brush with stray hairs clinging to the bristles, and the magnifying glass with silver handle that he had given her on her last birthday.