At the hotel they pushed through a phalanx of pickets, tourists, and stray cats. Mildred said it was a mess. In the lobby she said the black flags were too somber. Then she caught sight of Derek Cuttlebrink at the reservation desk. She had taught him in high school and had applauded him in Pickax theater productions. "Derek! What are you doing here?" she cried.
"I'm playing Captain Hook this week. Next week, King Kong." With a flourish he assigned them to a choice booth in the Corsair Room. Unobtrusively he slipped a scrap of paper to Qwilleran, who dropped it in his pocket.
The three old friends had much to talk about after being apart for a whole week: the shooting on the sand dune, the mosquito controversy, and ordinary newspaper shoptalk. Then Riker asked Qwilleran, "Do you consider this boondoggle of yours worthwhile? You're not jamming the fax machine with copy."
"Did you come over here to check up on your hired help?" Qwilleran retorted.
"The paper is paying for your junket, don't forget."
"Well," Qwilleran began cagily, since Riker was not aware of his real mission, "I have a lot of notes and tapes, but I need time to organize them. I've discovered, for example, that Pear Island is not pear-shaped. It may have been pear-shaped when it was surveyed a couple of centuries ago, but erosion has changed it to an isosceles triangle."
"That's a world-shaking discovery," the publisher said dryly. "Let's see you write a thousand words on that profound subject. Do you recommend changing the name again? It'll sound like a Greek island."
The entrees were served. Qwilleran had recommended the Cajun menu, and all three had ordered pork chops etouffee.
"Why, these are nothing but smothered pork chops, highly seasoned," Riker said. "Mildred fixes these all the time. How much are they paying this New Orleans chef?"
When they settled down to serious eating, Qwilleran told them the story behind the story of the snake-bite incident, with hitherto unrevealed descriptions, reactions, apprehensions, and conclusions. "First aid was the only merit badge I ever earned in scouting, and it finally paid off," he said.
Mildred was thrilled. Even Riker was impressed and wanted to know why the facts had been withheld from the newspaper. "It would have made a great feature: everybody's favorite columnist rescuing an heiress."
"There may be more to the story. They're an unusual family, and I'm invited to tea tomorrow afternoon."
"Speaking of tea," Mildred said, "have you been to the tea room? They serve real tea in fat English teapots with thin porcelain cups and all the shortbread you can eat."
Her husband said, "Qwill and I had enough shortbread in Scotland to last a lifetime. It hardly strikes me as tourist fare in this country. They certainly weren't doing any business when we were there."
"Did you go into the antique shop?" Qwilleran asked.
"Yes, and we recognized the woman who runs it," said Mildred. "She's staying at the Island Experience. We saw her in the breakfast room this morning, but she was rather aloof."
"No wonder the prices in her shop are so high," Riker said. "She has to pay for that suite with fresh flowers and champagne. Moreover, her inventory is questionable. She has some reproductions of Depression glass that she represents as the real thing. There's a lot of fraud these days in scrimshaw and netsuke and pre-Columbian figures. Is she uninformed or deliberately falsifying?"
"How would Exbridge react to this information?" Qwilleran asked. "He seems to run a tight ship."
"Well, I'm not going to be the one to tell him. He's been hard to get along with lately. Thinks he can tell us how to run the paper."
Over dessert—the inevitable pecan pie—Mildred askec about the Siamese.
"Koko is learning to play dominoes," Qwilleran said "and he beats me every time."
"That shouldn't be hard to do," Riker said gleefully.
"What do you think of the feral cats on the island?"
Mildred was an activist in humanitarian causes, am she said vehemently, "There are too many! Overpopula tion is inhumane. To maintain a healthy cat colony in ar area like this, they should be trapped, neutered, anc released—the way we're doing on the mainland."
Riker said, "Our editorials finally convinced the bu reaucrats it's not only humane but cheaper in the long rui than wholesale killing."
Qwilleran, who liked to stir things up, made a sly sug gestion. "Why don't you send a reporter over here to dis cuss feral cats with vacationers, businesspeople, and thi chief honcho himself? You could get some good photos."
"Don't assign my son-in-law," said Mildred. "Roge will break out in a rash even before the ferry docks."
After dinner, riding up the beach road in a carriage Qwilleran announced that he was staying at the "hid eous" inn to save the newspaper money. Then he had thi driver wait a few minutes while he showed the Rikers thi four tree trunks in the lounge and the cottage on Pi] Court.
"Don't you get claustrophobia?" Riker asked.
