"They had several children and did a lot of entertaining—originally. Then all of a sudden their life went into a tailspin. Three of the boys were killed within a year."
"How?" Qwilleran was always quick to suspect foul play, and since their father had enemies and was a murder victim himself, the possibilities were rife.
"There were two accidents a few months apart, both related to outdoor sports. It was a crushing blow for the parents. After the second incident Mrs. Hawkinfield couldn't cope and had a nervous breakdown. We all felt terrible about it. She was a nice woman, although she let her husband keep her under his thumb. Everyone wished she'd stand up for herself ... I don't know why I'm telling you this, except that it's Tiptop history, and it goes with the house, along with the carpet and draperies."
"I appreciate knowing," he said. "I've been getting negative vibrations."
"Is that true? How interesting!" the designer said, leaning forward. "I'm very sensitive to the aura of a house. When I visit a client for the first time, I get a definite feeling about the family's past and present."
"Mrs. Hawkinfield seemed to be hooked on gray, if that signifies anything."
"Hooked is the right word! We tried to warm it up with antique gold and Venetian red, but she loved gray and always wore it. Actually it was becoming. She had lovely gray eyes—and prematurely gray hair, which we all blamed on her husband."
Qwilleran was about to inquire about the murder, but a chime at the front door announced another customer, and he drained his coffee cup. "I'll look forward to seeing you Monday afternoon, Ms. Peel."
"Sabrina," she corrected him.
"Don't bring anything gray, Sabrina. And please call me Qwill."
Driving away from the design studio with the ottoman in the trunk, he felt a bond of camaraderie with Sabrina Peel. He liked designers, especially those with that particular roseate hair tint, which he thought of as "decorator blond." When he stopped at the Five Points Market to stock his bar for possible guests, he included chardonnay with the usual hard and soft drinks.
The friendly Bill Treacle, who was bustling about the store with managerial urgency, saw Qwilleran loading a shopping cart with scotch, bourbon, vodka, rum, sherry, beer, fruit juices, and mixes. "Having a party?" he asked cheerily. "Looks like you found Tiptop okay."
"No problem," Qwilleran replied. After meeting Sabrina he was feeling too good to quibble about the Snaggy Creek cutoff and the thawed seafood and the melted ice cream.
At the same intersection he went into Lumpton's Hardware and asked for a turkey roaster.
"What size?" asked a man with a nasal twang.
"I thought one size fits all."
"We've got three sizes, top of the line. From Germany. How big a turkey are you talking about?"
"Just a small one," Qwilleran said. He was staggered by the price, but he could afford it, and the cats deserved a second facility. He himself had eight bathrooms at Tiptop; why should they be limited to one commode? He also bought a radio with more features than he really wanted, the control panel having several switches, six knobs, and seventeen buttons. Even so, it cost less than the cats' commode.
Upon leaving the hardware store Qwilleran saw a barn-wood sign advertising mountain crafts and handmade gifts at Potato Cove. He followed the arrow, thinking he might find a gift for Polly and a ceramic mug for himself. The coffee cups at Tiptop had finger-trap handles and limited capacity; he could empty one in two gulps.
The road to Potato Cove was the kind that map makers call "unimproved," meaning that it was gravel with teeth-rattling bumps and ruts. It was marked at every turn and every fork, however, and it wound through a dense forest where the pines stood tall and straight, as close together as pickets in a fence.
On the way to the cove Qwilleran saw a few dwellings, poor excuses for housing, and yet there were more signs of life than he had found around Tiptop Estates. He saw children chasing each other and climbing trees, two women laughing as they hung diapers on a clothesline, cats and dogs sunning, a man chopping wood, a white-haired woman sitting on the porch of a log cabin, peeling apples. There was something poetic about this humble scene: her placid demeanor as she sat in a rocking chair with a bowl cradled in her lap, leisurely wielding the paring knife as if she had all afternoon. Qwilleran's camera was on the seat beside him, and he would have snapped a picture if it had not been for the shotgun leaning against a porch post.
Farther along the road there was an enterprise that called itself "Just Rust." A long, low shed was jammed with rusty artifacts that spilled over into the front yard: bed frames, parts of sewing machines, plows, broken tools, folding metal chairs, wash boilers, scythes, bathtubs, bird cages, bed pans, frying pans, wheelbarrows . . .
