The Cat Who Sniffed Glue (15 page)

On the way to North Kennebeck Qwilleran visualized Mrs. Toddwhistle as a large woman with football shoulders, wearing army boots. Wally himself always looked hollow-eyed and undernourished, but he was a nice kid - and talented.
He allowed an hour for lunch at Tipsy's and even had time to stop at the Gun Club. The pro shop, open to the public, was stocked with rifles, shotguns, handguns, shells, scopes and camouflage clothes. Here and there were mounted pheasants, ducks, and other game birds.
"Help you, sir?" asked the brisk man in charge.
"Just passing by and stopped for a look," Qwilleran said. "Are the birds Wally Toddwhistle's work?"
"Yes, sir! Certainly are!"
"The sign in the window says you teach the use of firearms."
"Certainly do! We don't sell anything to anybody unless they know how to use it. We have classes for children and adults, ladies included. Safety is what we stress, and care of the firearm."
"Do you sell many handguns?"
"Yes, sir! A lot of hunters are using handguns."
"Do you find people buying them for personal protection?"
"Our customers are sportsmen, sir!"
Qwilleran priced the handguns and then went on his way to the taxidermy studio. There was a neat, white farmhouse with lace curtains in the windows and the usual lilac bush by the door and a modem pole barn in the rear. That was the studio.
He was greeted by Mrs. Toddwhistle, with Wally two steps behind her. She was not what he expected, being short and chunky and aggressively pleasant. "Have any trouble finding us, honey?" she asked. "How about a cup of coffee?"
"Later, thanks," he said. "First I'd like to talk to Wally about his work. I saw the stuffed bear at the Hotel Booze last night."
"Mounted bear, honey," the woman corrected him in a kindly way. "We don't stuff animals any more, except birds and small mammals. Wally buys or builds a lightweight form and pulls the skin over it like a coat. It's more accurate and not so goshdarned heavy... is it, Wally? When they used to stuff animals with excelsior, mice got into them and built nests. My husband was a taxidermist."
"I stand corrected," Qwilleran said. "Be that as it may, the bear looks great! They've got it spotlighted."
"Very bad to have a mounted animal under a spotlight or near heat," she said. "Dries it out... doesn't it, Wally? And all the smoking in Gary's bar is going to ruin the pelt. It's beautiful work. A shame to spoil it! Wally didn't charge half enough for that job."
They were in an anteroom with several specimens on display: a bobcat climbing a dead tree, a pheasant in flight, a coyote raising its head to howl. Qwilleran directed a question to the silent taxidermist. "How long have you been doing this work?"
His mother was relentless. "He probably doesn't even remember... do you, Wally? He was only a few years old when he started helping his daddy scrape skins. Wally always loved animals - didn't want to hunt them - only preserve them and make them look real. I help him with scraping the meat off the hides, getting the burrs and straw out of the pelts - things like that."
"May I ask you a favor, Mrs. Toddwhistle," Qwilleran began amiably but firmly. "I have a problem. I've never been able to interview two persons at the same time, even though I've been a reporter for twenty-five years. I have an unfortunate block. Would you mind if I interviewed your son first? After that I'd like to sit down with you and get your story - and have that cup of coffee."
"Sure, honey, I understand. I'll go back to the house. "Just give me a buzz on the buzzer when you're done." She bustled from the studio.
When his mother had gone, Wally said, "I haven't heard from Fran. What's the club going to do about a summer show?"
"No summer show, but they plan to do a serious play in September, with rehearsals beginning in August. No doubt you'll be called upon to build the sets, although I don't know who'll design them. Jill is taking David to South America for a few weeks. He's having difficulty adjusting, and she wants to get him away for a while."
"I'm having a hard time accepting it, too," said Wally. "After I heard about the murder, I couldn't work for days; I was so nervous. I'm glad it's all over."
"I'm not convinced of that. New evidence may come to light."
"That's what my mother says. She used to work for the family when Mr. and Mrs. Fitch lived in Grandpa Fitch's house."
"She did?" Qwilleran patted his bristling moustache.
"She cooked for them after my dad died. That's why the murder hit me so hard, and then Mrs. Fitch's stroke and Mr. Fitch's suicide! It was terrible!"
Following this revelation. Qwilleran had to struggle to keep his mind on the interview. Wally conducted him into a barnlike area that was a bewildering combination of zoo, furrier's workroom, animal hospital, butcher shop, catacomb, and theater backstage. There were freezers, oil drums, a sewing machine, a wall of bleached animal skulls, a skeletonic, long-legged bird. A shaggy, white wolf, not yet fitted with eyes and nose, lay stiffly on its side, its forelegs wrapped in bandages. A brown bear hide was being stretched on a board to make a rug. Fox, skunk, owl, and peacock, were in various stages of dress and undress.
Some of the animals were alive: dogs with wagging tails, a cage of small fluttering birds, a menacing macaw chained to a perch. An orange cat was curled up on a cushion, asleep.
Wally was eager to show and tell: A box of glass eyes included eleven kinds for owls and twenty-three for ducks. "We have to be authentic," he said... Plastic teeth, tongues, and palates were for animals being mounted with open mouths. Real teeth, Wally explained, would crack and chip... There were ear-liners for deer. He showed how he turned the ears inside out and glued the liners in to stiffen them... Also in evidence were animal forms in yellow plastic foam. "They're manikins." Wally said. "They're good because I can sculpture the foam to fit the skin, then coat the manikin with skin paste, pull the skin over it, fit it and adjust it."
Qwilleran said, "You seem to do a lot with adhesives."
"Yes, it takes all kinds- glue, skin paste, and epoxy for things like putting rods in leg bones. I repaired a damaged eyelid by gluing on a piece of string and painting it. You could never tell anything was wrong."
The young man was an artist at reconstructing animals, making them lifelike, bringing out their natural beauty, but Qwilleran was impatient to see his mother again. The buzzer brought her running from the house with coffee and freshly made doughnuts. He edged into the subject of the Fitch family diplomatically.
"I was their cook for seven years," Mrs. Toddwhistle said with pride. "Practically a member of the family."
"I hear the house is a virtual museum."
She rolled her eyes in disapproval. "Grandpa Fitch was a collector. They have tons of stuff allover the house and it all had to be dusted and vacuumed. They even have a man come in to dust the books."
"Why did you leave their employ?"
"Well!" she said with an emphasis that promised a significant story, "The mister and missus moved to a condominium, and they wanted me to stay and cook for Harley and his bride, but I said no way! Belle was the girl who did the dusting, and I certainly wasn't going to take orders from her! All she liked was pizza! She had eyes set close together. Some men think that's sexy, but I say you can't trust anybody with eyes set close together, Harley only married her to spite his parents. He knew it would embarrass them."
Wally said, "Mother, do you think you should talk about that?"
"Why not? They're all dead. Everybody knows it anyway."
Quickly Qwilleran put in, "Why was Harley antagonistic to his family? He seemed like such an agreeable guy."
"Well, you see, Harley was away for a while, and when he came back he found that David had married his girl! Way back in high school it was always Harley and Jill, David and Fran - football games, proms, sailing and everything, It was quite a shock to everybody when Jill married David."
"How did Mr. and Mrs. Fitch feel about it?"
"It was okay with them! They paid for a big wedding. Jill's folks couldn't have afforded such a blast, although they used to have money. Jill comes from good stock."
"I wonder how Fran reacted to the switch."
"I don't know. She didn't come around any more after that, She's a nice girl, with a lot on the ball, but I guess the missus thought she wasn't good enough for David."
Qwilleran combed his moustache with his fingertips. "I didn't know parents dictated their kids' lives any more. It sounds archaic."
"Money, honey," said Mrs. Toddwhistle, making a "gimme" gesture with her fingers. "Mister and missus got the boys hooked on high living - boats and cars and all - then doled out just enough money so they'd heel and sit up," (One of the dogs trotted over and sat up, expecting a crumb,) "Yes, they gave Harley a big sailboat, but it wasn't in his name. The fancy house that Dayid and Jill live in - it's not theirs, not a stick of it."
"Wally says you don't subscribe to the Chipmunk theory about the murder."
"I sure don't! The police ought to talk to that old boyfriend of Belle's. He was plenty mad when he got jilted."
"The paperhanger?"
She nodded. "He's a quiet kind of fellow, but still watersrun deep... Another doughnut, honey?"
After his third doughnut, Qwilleran thanked them for the refreshments and the interview and left, saying, "That's a beautiful cat you have. I have a couple of Siamese at home."
"Oh, the orange one?" Mrs. Toddwhistle said. "It was killed on the highway, and Wally found it and brought it home. He didn't want to see such a beautiful animal wasted... did you, Wally?"
Later in the afternoon Qwilleran sat at his desk in the studio and tried to organize what he had learned about the art of taxidermy. There was something about salting fresh hides to draw out moisture and tie in the hairs, removing skunk scent with tomato juice or coffee grounds, freezing skins until they could be scraped and tanned. Yet, his mind kept returning to Mrs. Toddwhistle's gossip. It threw some light on the Fitch family and explained Francesca's ruined romance, but it did nothing to further Qwilleran's unofficial investigation. He was hearing conflicting tales from all sides, and he never knew whether his informants were lying or guessing or talking through their hats. Koko, his silent partner in so many previous adventures, seemed to be of no help in pinpointing the truth.
Yum Yum sensed his frustrated mood and sat on the desk with hunched posture and worried eyes. Koko was elsewhere, probably in the living room on the book. shelves.
Qwilleran said to her, "All that cat does is sniff book bindings and hang around waiting for an envelope to lick. I think your friend Koko is hooked! And it's affecting his senses."
"YOW!" came a loud comment from the living room, and Qwilleran went to track it down, Koko was perched on the back of the sofa, tilting the gunboat picture again.
Qwilleran patted his moustache with sudden comprehension, He would visit the decrepit antique shop in Mooseville, where a bogus sea captain had sold him an "original print" that was only a copy!
-Scene Five-
Place: The Captain's Mess, an antique shop in Mooseville
Time: Saturday afternoon
Introducing: CAPTAIN PHLOGG
ON SATURDAY MORNING Qwilleran took the gunboat print off the wall and drove to the resort town of Mooseville to follow up Koko's obvious clue.
The evening before, he had phoned Mrs. Cobb at the museum. "What do you know about The Captain's Mess?" he asked. "What do you know about Captain Phlogg?"
"Oh, dear, I hope you didn't buy anything from that old quack," she said.
Qwilleran mumbled something about wanting to write a column on the shop. "Do you know when it's open? There's no listing in the phone book."
"It's open when he feels like it. Saturday afternoon would be the safest."
"See you Sunday," he said. "I have two friends here who are looking forward to your pot roast."
Driving up to the lakeshore he recalled buying the gunboat print from the fraudulent Captain Phlogg. The living room needed a large picture over the sofa, and the two-by-three-foot print was the best he could find for the money. The captain's asking price was twenty-five dollars, but Qwilleran had talked him down to five, including frame.
The shop occupied an old building that was ready to collapse. Both the fire department and the board of health wanted it condemned, but local history buffs declared it a historic site, and the chamber of commerce considered it a tourist attraction. After all, "the worst antique shop in the state" was a distinction of sorts. Collectors came from miles away to visit the crooked little shop run by a crooked little sea captain. Only a town like Mooseville would take pride in an establishment famous for infamy.
Qwilleran arrived at noon on Saturday, hoping for a chance to talk with Captain Phlogg before customers started dropping in, but it was 1:30 before the proprietor approached the premises with unsteady gait and unlocked the door with shaking hand.
The interior reeked of mildew, stale tobacco, and whiskey. A lightbulb dangling from a cord illuminated : to the collection of dusty, broken, tarnished, water-stained, dirt-encrusted artifacts of marine provenance. Captain the Phlogg himself - with his ancient pipe and stubble of beard and battered naval cap - blended into the mess.
Qwilleran showed him the gunboat. "Do you remember this?"
"Nope. Never see'd it afore."
"You sold it to me last summer."
"Nope, it never come from here." The captain had an all-sales-final, no-money-back policy that caused him to disclaim everything he had ever sold.
Qwilleran said, "You sold it to me for five dollars, and I've just found out it's worth hundreds. I thought you'd like to know." Qwilleran enjoyed fighting falsity with falsity.
The captain took the foul-smelling pipe from his mouth. "Lemme look at it... Give ye ten for it."
"I wouldn't part with it. It's one of two very rare prints, according to art historians. The other is in the Cyrus Fitch collection. Does that name ring a bell?"
"Never heard of it."
"It's in West Middle Hummock. There was a murder there, week before last. A young sailor named Harley Fitch."
"Never heard of 'im."
"His boat was the Fitch Witch."
"Never heard of it."
"He docked around here and hung out at the Shipwreck Tavern."
"Never go there."
"He also built model ships."
"Never heard of 'em."
"Do you know a sailor by the name of Gary Pratt in Brrr?"
"Nope."
"If the model ships come on the market, would you be interested in buying any of them?"