"No complaint," he said, "except for the scorch marks on the back of the shirt."
Her look of horror melted quickly to a smile. "Oh, you're a male chauvinist comic! What can we do for you now?"
"Could you wrap these two articles and deliver them to an address on West Beach Road? Tomorrow will do."
"We'll be happy to. I have a nice box and some seagull giftwrap."
"This is not a gift," he said. "On the other hand, I don't want it to look like a homemade bomb. Here's the note to go with it, and here's the address." He looked over her shoulder to the rear of the room. "Is your cat supposed to be scratching himself in the baby's playpen?"
"No! No! Out! Out!" she screamed, chasing him and slamming a door. "Somebody left the door open. That's Hannibal, one of our resident strays."
"A "resident stray" sounds like an oxymoron," he said.
"Hannibal is foxy, but he's no moron," she quipped. "He knows a good place to eat. How did you like your box lunch?"
"The meatloaf was excellent. Could you deliver a whole one to me, say, every other day? I'd pay in advance."
"Absolutely}" said Shelley. "We'll start tomorrow. Midge makes four-pounders for sandwiches and two-pounders for snacks."
"Two-pounders will be ample."
"Is it for your roommate?" she asked, looking him stead-ily in the eye. "Your roommate is a raccoon, isn't he?"
Shelley looked so triumphant, so pleased with herself, that he said mildly, "How did you guess?"
CHAPTER 10
On Friday morning Qwilleran opened a can of lobster for the cats" breakfast. "This is the last junk food you're going to get for a while. For the rest of our stay here, you'll have homemade meatloaf, delivered fresh, every other day, by bicycle. That's the good news. The bad news is that you are now raccoons."
Through long association with this pair of connoisseurs, he knew their favorites: freshly roasted turkey, homemade meatloaf, and canned red salmon, top grade. Nevertheless, they gobbled the lobster with rapturous slurping, waving of tails, and clicking of fangs on the plate. Yum Yum looked up after each swallow to confirm that Qwilleran was still there. Afterward, she jumped onto his lap while he drank his coffee, stroked her fur, and paid her extravagant compliments. He called it their apres-breakfast schmooz.
Their dinner was served earlier than usual that evening, because Qwilleran wanted to check the post office before it closed. He cubed the meatloaf precisely—five-sixteenths of an inch, he estimated. "Don't say I never do anything for you," he said to the waiting cats. They were quieter than usual, and they were sitting a little farther away. After placing a generous plateful on the floor, he stepped back to enjoy their ecstasy. They approached it stealthily and backed away. He sampled a cube himself. There was nothing wrong with it; in fact, it might be described as ... tasty. "Try it! You'll like it!" They walked away with heads lowered and tails drooping.
"Well, I'm not going to stand here and do catfood commercials for you brats!" He left the plate on the floor and dressed for his trip downtown.
The resort area was gearing up for what everyone hoped would be a busy weekend, although the atmosphere was more wishful than confident. Horse cabs lined up at the ferry dock. Cargo was being offloaded for the deli and general store—mostly beer. In an extra bid for business, the T-shirt studio was hanging choice designs on clotheslines strung across the front of the shop.
In the same spirit of hopeful doubt, Qwilleran checked the post office, but there was no news from Oregon. He assumed Polly was having a rollicking vacation—looking for puffin birds, giggling with her college roommate, and talking about him.
For a while he watched vacationers disembarking with bevies of children, their shouts punctuating the waterfront hush: "Junior, don't hang over the railing! . . , Mom, did you bring my rollerblades?... Lookit all the horses! What are they for?... Hey, Dad, could this island sink?"
Among the arrivals were six backpackers. The size oi their gear suggested they were the crew who had beer camping at the lighthouse on weekends and hang gliding on the dune. They were attractive young people, Qwil-leran thought: the women, healthy; the men, athletic; and all exposed skin, enviably suntanned. Also arriving, with luggage to be loaded into a carriage, was Dr. June Halliburton with a limp-brimmed sunhat shading her white skin and red hair.
In the hotel lobby Qwilleran picked up a copy of Friday's Moose County Something and was surprised to find the following item on page one:
SNAKE-BITE VICTIM
AIRLIFTED FROM ISLAND.
The sheriff's helicopter evacuated a victim of snake bite from Pear Island to the Pickax General Hospital Thursday. Elizabeth C. Appel-hardt, 23, a summer resident of the Grand Island Club, was in good condition today after treatment, according to a hospital spokesperson. This is the third medical emergency handled by the sheriff's airborne division this month.
