"Yeah, you can't spit without hitting a Lumpton. They're in pizza, furniture, hardware, everything. They've been here for generations. Some moved to the valley and made good, and some are still Taters. For a long time we had a popular sheriff who was a Lumpton. He was jolly and sort of easy-going. Who says cops have to go around looking fierce and rattling handcuffs? Josh Lumpton was too independent for the Old Buzzard, and he finally got him defeated. Now the sheriff is a guy named Wilbank."
"Did Wilbank take the stand at the trial?" Qwilleran asked.
"Yeah, he told how Sherry Hawkinfield came running down the hill to his house and said her dad was missing, and how they found the body at the foot of the cliff, and how the front hall was wrecked. The worst was Sherry's testimony—a bare-faced lie! How can they get away with that? It was her word against a Tater's, so you know who they believed. And then there were other trumped-up lies."
"I heard something about a death threat."
"Are you kidding? Forest wouldn't be stupid enough to send an anonymous threat through the mail!"
"Was it produced as evidence?"
"No, that was another fishy thing. It had disappeared, although Robert Lessmore testified he'd seen it."
"This is all very interesting," Qwilleran said. "How about another beer?"
"Thanks, but I'm bowling tonight. Just give me the papers you want faxed, and I hope your ankle gets better soon—okay?"
Bill Treacle left, and Qwilleran relented and gave the Siamese some turkey for their good behavior. For his own dinner he thawed some beef pepper steak. As he ate his meal at the kitchen table, Koko sat on a chair opposite with his chin barely clearing the edge of the table, his bright eyes watching every move intently.
"Don't just sit there looking omniscient," Qwilleran said to him. "Come up with an idea. What do we do next?"
With a grunt Koko jumped from the chair and ran from the kitchen. His exodus was so abrupt, so urgent, that Qwilleran limped after him, first taking care to cover his plate of beef. He found the cat rolling on the carpet at the foot of the telephone chest, stretching to his full length and muttering to himself.
Qwilleran placed his hand on the telephone. "Do you want me to make a call?" he asked. "Are you on the phone company's payroll?"
Koko scrambled to his feet and raced wildly about the foyer while Qwilleran called Osmond Hasselrich at his home in Pickax. It was his first contact with the attorney since leaving Moose County, and they had a long conversation.
As later events indicated, that was probably not what Koko wanted at all.
CHAPTER 14
On Thursday morning the trees were still dripping, but the sun shone intermittently and Qwilleran's ankle was gradually responding to treatment. Drinking his breakfast coffee in the kitchen he recalled how his conversations with the friendly telephone installer, the saturnine veterinarian, the flaky Gazette columnist, and the overly energetic grocer had left him with no answers, only conjectures. He guessed that the "death threat" was not received by Hawkinfield in his lifetime but was forged following his murder and shown to Robert Lessmore (a golf buddy of the prosecutor), who thereby testified to seeing such a document, overlooking the discrepancy in timing. Meanwhile, it had been conveniently destroyed by the same hand or hands that forged it. If the instruments of law and order in Spudsboro were as corrupt as Treacle intimated, a veritable network of collaborators could be involved in the frame-up of a Tater, including Sherry Hawkinfield, and all of this was done to protect the actual perpetrators of the crime, there being more than one, Qwilleran surmised.
It occurred to him that Wilson Wix may have been enlisted against his better judgment, and the stress of committing what he knew to be perjury triggered his heart attack. One could not lay the whole blame on caffeine. Qwilleran poured a third cup.
He had a strong urge to visit the Old Buzzard's office once more in search of clues if not answers. The obstacle was the heavy desk concealing the door. Then Dewey Bee-chum arrived to work on the gazebo, and the problem was solved. The dampness of the season had caused his historic hat to grow moss, and his beard was curling and looking wilder than ever.
Qwilleran called to him from the veranda and beckoned him up the steps. "It's hard for me to leave the house," he explained to the carpenter. "I've hurt my ankle. How's the job progressing? It's impossible to see from here."
"Finish up today, like as not. Built the screens in my barn. Aimin' to save time."
"Good idea! I'll be around here all day. Just add up your bill, and I'll write you a check. Do you think we're going to have any flood damage?"
"Iffen it don't stop rainin'."
"We could use a few hours of sunshine and a little breeze to dry things up," said Qwilleran, who had learned the banal art of weatherspeak in Moose County.
