The Grub-And-Stakers Move a Mountain Page 6

  “Maybe you’d better put that wig back on before you leave,” Hazel replied in a worried tone. “How did they know you were from the Conservation Committee without knowing your name too?”

  “I mentioned the committee when I was yelling at that Frankland man to get off the Spotted Pipsissewa, and I didn’t tell him who I was until after that arrow had been fired. So the man who shot Mr. Architrave must have been right there on the other side of the ridge where he could hear me but not see me, and ran away as soon as he’d loosed his second arrow. Or she did,” Dittany added, thinking of her meager gleanings from the receptionist’s wastebasket. “The woman in the front office didn’t seem to have done much of anything today. Maybe she was busy elsewhere. I wonder who she is and how heavy a bow she pulls.”

  “That’s a thought, Dittany. She wouldn’t be anybody local. You know McNaster can’t get anybody from Lobelia Falls to work for him because we all hate his guts. I must say I can’t imagine why Jim Streph does, though he’s so wrapped up in his art that he’d design new hinges for the doors of Hell if the Devil asked him to, and never think twice about where the money was coming from. But surely McNaster didn’t admit he’d put somebody up to killing old John?”

  “Naturally not. He blustered around and claimed he didn’t know a thing, about it, but what would you expect? Anyway, this Charlie kept insisting McNaster had better drop the idea of stealing the land. Even if he wasn’t guilty he’d get into trouble because Mr. Architrave’s death would focus public attention on the Enchanted Mountain. But McNaster said he wouldn’t because it’s all sewed up.”

  “How, for goodness’ sake? Not that goodness has anything to do with it, obviously.”

  “You sound like Mae West. That’s the most fantastic part of all, Hazel. You know Sam Wallaby is running for Development Commission, eh?”

  “Is he? I’m afraid I hadn’t paid much attention.”

  “Then you darn well should because he was right there in that office with the rest of them.”

  “Sam Wallaby from the liquor store? That’s impossible. He’s always so nice about donating—”

  “The eggnog for the Old Folks’ Christmas Party. I know. He was laughing his head off about how nobody could run against him because everybody thinks he’s such a fine, public-spirited citizen. And when I think of the two bucks I wasted on that fancy stationery so I could write him a nice thank-you note for the sauterne and Seven-Up we had at the flower show, I could spit!”

  Hazel sat back and shook her head. “I simply cannot believe it.”

  “Then you just sit back and fold your hands and see what’s going to happen as soon as they get him safely planted on the Development Commission. This Charlie’s going to get some gangster lawyer he knows who’s on the lam—I believe it’s the lam—anyway he’s going to do the paper work and escape to Tasmania and bang goes the Heart-leaved Twayblade.”

  “Oh, Dittany!” At last Hazel was forced to grasp the hideous reality of the situation. “They could, you know. They did it before when they passed that emergency ordinance to get around the need for holding public hearings and took over that old chicken farm that was supposed to be the high school annex when any idiot could see it was the worst possible place for a school, and when they got it all graded and blacktopped they went through that farce about the bids and now—”

  “And now that’s where McNaster’s sitting with his cronies cooking up another dirty deal,” Dittany finished for her. “I’ve got a good notion to march straight over to Sergeant MacVicar and tell him what I heard.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Hazel cautioned. “Maybe you don’t remember, but Mrs. MacVicar happens to be Andy McNasty’s mother’s own cousin, though naturally she doesn’t care to have it generally mentioned. And blood’s thicker than water when all’s said and done, and it’s only your word against his and if he’s got Sam Wallaby on his side—Dittany, what are we going to do?”

  “Well, I know one thing we can do because Sam Wallaby himself told me. Not on purpose, naturally, but he was gassing on to this Charlie the lawyer about how he’s an absolute certain shoo-in because nobody filed nomination papers against him and it’s too late now. And he said the only way anybody could possibly defeat him would be through a write-in campaign, which isn’t going to happen because he’s such a sterling character and nobody bothers to vote in town elections anyway. So we’re going to put up a write-in candidate and we’re going to get out that vote and we’re going to lick the pants off that smarmy walrus and spike McNaster’s guns. Look!” She pulled out the twenty-dollar bill. “Andy McNasty gave me this.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “To get rid of me. After I’d heard all this stuff I thought I’d better get a look at who was with him, so I unlocked the door but he came rushing over and held it so I couldn’t see inside. All I could see was his right eye.”

  “That would have been more than enough for me,” said Hazel fervently. “Whatever did you do then?”

  “Pretended I was deaf as a post and couldn’t hear him yelling at me to go away because needless to say I didn’t want him to know I’d been eavesdropping all that time. I started giving him a rigmarole about Mrs. Duckes’s sore leg and my hearing aid’s being broken and was I supposed to clean in there or wasn’t I, and he shoved this money in my hand and slammed the door in my face. Would you call that the act of an honest man?”

  “I certainly can’t imagine Roger doing such a thing. Naturally he’d know the customary rates for maintenance personnel—”

  “Which, whatever they may be, aren’t enough. Hazel, how would you feel about running for Development Commission?”

  “Who, me? Dittany, I couldn’t possibly. I almost fainted dead away when I had to get up at the last annual meeting and read the report of the club’s Ways and Means Committee. Why don’t you run yourself?”

  “Because I’m basically unconvincing. People tend not to take me seriously. I can’t think why.”

  One of Dittany’s false eyelashes had vanished completely, the other was hanging at a rakish angle from her left eyebrow. Her face was an interesting mélange of Maiden’s Blush, Pixie Purple, Tantalizing Tan, Frosted Banana, Sultry Sable, and McNaster grime. Gramp Henbit’s sweatshirt caused her mother’s awning-striped tent to bulge in odd places. Her fine hair was matted into ducktails from being crammed under the wig, her maroon socks rucked down around her well-ventilated sneakers. Oblivious of these facts, she sat licking orange coconut icing off her cake fork. Hazel forbore to comment.

  “Besides,” Dittany added, laying down the now totally de-iced fork with obvious regret, “I’m a marked woman. The more I go barging around making noises in public, the sooner Andy McNasty’s going to identify me as the old bag from the Conservation Committee. I’d have to fly the coop or blow the scene or whatever the correct procedure is in such cases and you’d still be without a candidate. What we need is somebody stately and dignified and poised yet forceful like—”

  “Samantha Burberry!” cried Hazel.

  “Precisely the name I was about to utter. Come on, eh, let’s get cracking.”

  “You mean right this minute? Dittany, we can’t simply pick up our heels and go lippity-lipping over to the Burberrys’.”

  “Why can’t we?”

  “Well,” floundered Hazel, overcome by shyness and not wishing to admit it, “Joshua will be home.”

  “So what? He’s a registered voter, isn’t he? We’ll appeal to his sense of civic responsibility and sign him up as a sponsor.”

  “But he’s a college professor!”

  “Is there something in the election rules about college professors not being sponsors? Hazel, you’re not by any chance weaseling out on me, are you? Think of the Climbing Fumitory. Think of the Hairy Beardtongue. Think of Andy McNasty up on top of the Enchanted Mountain sticking plastic flamingos all over his brand-new Astroturf lawn.”

  “Dittany, he wouldn’t!”

  But Hazel knew in her heart of hea
rts that he would. Sighing, she put on her coat, picked up her house keys, and followed Dittany Henbit out into the night.

  Chapter 7

  “WOULDN’T YOU LIKE TO stop at your house before we go on to the Burberrys’?” Hazel suggested gently.

  “What for?” asked Dittany.

  “Well, for one thing, your eyelashes are molting.”

  “Oh. I expect I could do with a little titivating, eh?” Dittany picked off a small twig that had somehow worked its way through one of the holes in her right sneaker. “Poor Joshua must get enough sartorial shocks in the course of a day without my adding another. Samantha says he almost cried when he heard a rumor that miniskirts were coming back into fashion. He told her there’s nothing in the world so depressing as walking into a class at half past seven on a nasty November morning and finding one’s self staring down at a roomful of panty girdles.”

  “Nobody would believe what teachers go through,” Hazel agreed somberly. “I taught two years before I was married, and I’d rather scrub floors any day.”

  “Speaking of scrubbing floors,” Dittany mused, “I expect I ought to get these keys back to Mrs. Poppy. All things considered, it might not be a particularly brilliant idea for McNaster to find out I have them.”

  “I think it would be an abysmally rotten idea,” Hazel concurred. “Is there any hope whatever of persuading Mrs. Poppy to keep quiet about your having gone in her place?”

  “I can’t imagine Mrs. Poppy’s keeping quiet about anything whatsoever. Besides, her family already know. At least her daughter does, the one who came to the door.”

  “Then you’ll have to appeal to their better natures and you’d better do it right away.”

  “Before I wash my face?”

  “No, after. By all means after.”

  Once they’d ridden the short distance to her own house and she’d got a look at herself in the bathroom mirror, Dittany recognized the wisdom of Hazel’s suggestion. She slathered on a large gob of the former Mrs. Henbit’s Lady Godiva Take It All Off Makeup Remover, disentangled her eyelid from the remaining lashes, and got her face back to what the late U.S. President Warren G. Harding would have termed normalcy. She changed out of the tent dress and sweatshirt into a trim corduroy outfit as befitted a lady of serious purpose and, at Hazel’s prompting, discarded the maroon knee socks and ruined sneakers in favor of neat brown boots.

  Then she put her raincoat back on, picked up her handbag containing the fateful bunch of keys, loaded Hazel aboard, and again headed Old Faithful Poppyward. On this occasion it was not the daughter but the man of the house who answered the door. His wife, he informed Miss Henbit with no appearance of pleasure, was upstairs asleep.

  “I do hope she’ll feel better in the morning,” said Dittany, handing over the keys. “When she wakes up, would you mind giving her these and telling her I managed reasonably well, all things considered. Oh, and—er—would you just mention that I’d rather not have her tell anybody who took her place?”

  “Why not?” he growled, eyeing the keys suspiciously.

  “Well, you see,” Dittany floundered, “I’d—er—as soon not have anybody—er—know.”

  “If you mean your lawful wedded husband why don’t you say so?” Mr. Poppy exploded. “What you mean is, if he was to find out you been goin’ around to other people’s houses instead of stayin’ home where a wife belongs an’ havin’ a hot supper ready for him when he comes off work as was duly stated in the marriage vows when I took Mrs. Poppy for better or worse, which is worse I’m gettin’ these days since she took a notion to have a career like Glorious Sternum an’ the rest of them Commie pinko women’s libbers, he’d be as ticked off as I am and I for one wouldn’t blame him!” Mr. Poppy whacked the ringful of keys on the palm of his other hand for emphasis, sustained a minor flesh wound, and glared at Dittany as though it were all her fault.

  “Well, no, I didn’t mean my husband,” Dittany made the mistake of trying to explain. “I don’t have one, but I do run a business of my own. If word got round that I’d gone out cleaning, my clients might begin to think—well, you know how it is.”

  “I know how it is,” roared Mr. Poppy, “and I DON’T LIKE HOW IT IS!” He glowered at Dittany a while longer, then asked in a slightly less belligerent tone, “What kind o’ business?”

  “I’m a secretarial service.”

  “Blah! I bet my wife makes out better than you do.”

  “I know she does,” Dittany confessed. “I’m one of the people she cleans for.”

  “Not anymore you ain’t. I’ve had it, see? I’m puttin’ my foot down. Goin’ out an’ inhalin’ other people’s germs an’ gettin’ herself laid up when she promised faithful she’d make me a good pot o’ pea soup like my mother used to. Ruinin’ her health for a bunch of ingrates!”

  He started to whack the keys again, thought better of it, and slammed the door in her face instead. Sighing, Dittany went back to the car where Hazel was waiting.

  “How did you make out?”

  “Don’t ask!” Needless to say, Dittany told her anyway. “So I’ve lost a housekeeper on top of everything else. Honestly, Hazel, I don’t know what I’m going to do if Mr. Poppy doesn’t simmer down. I can’t cope with that big place and earn a living too. I couldn’t cope even if I didn’t have to work. Housekeeping to me is as a mystery sealed whence no man knoweth the key thereof.”

  “You’re getting to talk like Arethusa Monk.”

  “Oh yeah? Wait till you hear the kind of language Arethusa uses when she finds out. Mrs. Poppy works for her too.”

  “Don’t borrow trouble, eh? I daresay Mrs. Poppy can straighten out Mr. Poppy once she gets her voice back.”

  “Anyhow, he didn’t have to call me an ingrate,” Dittany muttered. “I only hope Joshua doesn’t come all over male chauvinist, too, and put his foot down on Samantha.”

  “How could he?” Hazel pointed out reasonably. “He’s half a head shorter than she is, so it would be physically impossible. Anyway, he’s probably off in his study pasting together a split atom or whatever it is they do.”

  As to the duties and occupations of a professor of physics, Hazel might be pardoned for showing a certain vagueness. As to his non-interference, she was right on the button. The stumbling block they encountered was Samantha herself.

  “I couldn’t,” she protested. “I simply couldn’t.”

  “Of course you could,” Dittany argued. “You served two terms as president of the Grub-and-Stakers, didn’t you? You were over-all coordinator for the Spring Flower Festival, weren’t you? Did you or did you not do a brilliant job, in both positions?”

  “Well, I—”

  “You were magnificent and you know it. Do you mean to sit there and try to convince us that being on the Development Commission could possibly be more demanding than running a flower show, and still have everybody speaking to everybody else when it was over?”

  “Well, probably not, but—”

  They argued, they pleaded, they appealed to Samantha’s sense of civic duty. They dwelt on the perfidy of McNaster, the peril to the Pipsissewa, the wreckage of their club’s chances of ever capturing the coveted Lady Matilda Leonora Macklesfield Triple Tricolor Ribbon with Euphorbia Cluster for Wildflower Conservation should the Enchanted Mountain become a disenchanted development. They urged, they cajoled, they finally wept. And all they got from Samantha Burberry was, “I can’t do it. I simply can’t!”

  At last Dittany lost her temper. “Why the flaming heck can’t you?”

  “Because I—oh, all right. I might as well come clean. Because this coming Sunday I have to give a golden anniversary luncheon for Joshua’s parents and they sent me a list of all the people they wanted me to invite and there were seventy-five on the list and all seventy-five accepted.”

  “Well, what of it? You had four hundred and sixty-two at the Loyalist Ladies’ Luncheon you chaired two years ago in Ottawa, didn’t you? And they gave you a standing ovation, didn’t they?”r />
  “Four hundred and sixty-three,” Samantha corrected automatically. “The speaker brought an unexpected guest. And the ovation was mainly on account of the chicken mousse. This is an entirely different situation.”

  “How is it different?”

  “There all I had to do was make sure of the hall and hire the right caterer. This time I have to hold the thing right here in our own house and Joshua won’t let me have anybody cater it. He says his parents would have fits if we went to all that extra expense and it would entirely spoil their day.”

  “And what about your day?”

  “Dittany, you’re not a married woman, for which fact I sincerely hope you’re duly grateful. You simply don’t understand about in-laws. Joshua keeps saying it won’t happen again for another fifty years and goes maundering on about buying some paper plates and opening a few cans.”

  “Good heavens, you can’t do that,” gasped Hazel, her housewifely soul shocked to the core. “Not for a fiftieth anniversary.”

  “So I keep telling him. It must be done properly or there’s no sense in doing it at all, but how? This was Father and Mother Burberry’s house before they skipped off and left us holding the tax bills, you know, and they never wanted me to marry Joshua in the first place. They think I’m flighty and frivolous and short in the intellect.”

  “You?” cried Dittany. “That’s ridiculous!”

  “Go tell them that, eh? And when I make a hopeless hash of this parry, as I’m absolutely certain to do, they’re going to look down their noses and sniff and say they might have known and I’m terrified!” Samantha the poised, Samantha the coolly detached, Samantha the unflappable broke down and sobbed. “Whatever am I going to do?”

  “I’ll tell you what you’re going to do,” said Dittany. “You’re going to stiffen your upper lip and shove all this balderdash behind you and start running for office. I’ll manage your campaign and Hazel will handle your party. Right, Hazel?”