Cat Who Saw Red

by Lilian Jackson Braun

  “You’d better get some legal advice,” Qwilleran suggested. “Why don’t you discuss it with Maus?”

  “I did. His firm doesn’t handle divorces—only very dignified corporate stuff—but he referred me to another attorney. And now I’m stymied.”

  “Why?”

  She smiled her pathetic smile. “No money.”

  “The eternal problem,” Qwilleran agreed.

  “I had a little money of my own before we were married, but Dan has it tied up somehow. You know I was always bored with financial matters, so I didn’t question him about it. Wasn’t that dumb? I was too busy making pots. It’s an obsession. I can’t keep my hands out of clay.” She pondered awhile and then added in a low voice, “But I know where I could raise some cash . . . with a little polite blackmail.”

  “Joy!” Qwilleran exploded. “I hope you’re kidding.”

  “I’d be discreet,” she said coolly. “I’ve found some documents in the attic of the pottery that would embarrass a few people . . . Don’t look so horrified, Jim. There’s nothing sinister about it—simply a business transaction.”

  “Don’t you dare! You could get into serious trouble.” Qwilleran stroked his mustache reflectively. “What, uh . . . how much money would you need?”

  “Probably—I don’t know—maybe a thousand, to begin with . . . Oh, Jim, I’ve got to get out of this suffocating situation. Sometimes I just want to jump into that horrid river!”

  Joy was still sitting on the arm of his chair, but she was straight-backed and tense now. The lamplight, hitting her face in a certain way, revealed wrinkles around her eyes and mouth. The sight of his childhood sweetheart with signs of age in her face filled Qwilleran with sadness and affection, and after a moment’s silence he said, “I could lend you something.”

  Joy showed genuine surprise. “Would you really, Jim? I don’t know what to say. It would save my life! I’d sign a note, of course.”

  “I don’t have much savings,” he said. “I’ve had some rough sledding in recent years, but I won a cash prize at the Fluxion in January, and I could let you have—about seven hundred and fifty.”

  “Oh, Jim! How can I thank you?” She swooped down to kiss him, then jumped up, grabbed Koko from his blue cushion, and whirled around the room with the surprised cat.

  Qwilleran went to the desk to write a check, automatically reaching for his glasses, then changing his mind out of sheer vanity.

  Joy leaned over his shoulder to watch and gave his temple another kiss, while Koko struggled to get out of her enthusiastic embrace.

  “Why don’t you pour yourself another drink—for good luck,” Qwilleran suggested, fumbling with the checkbook and concealing the figure that represented his meager balance. He was lending this money against his better judgment, and yet he knew he could not have done otherwise.

  After Joy had gone back to her own apartment, he deducted the amount of the check and wished he had not bought the new suit or the antique scale. He looked at the note she had signed, written in the absurd hand he remembered so well—all u’s and w’s.

  “I oww Juu Qwwww $750,” it read, and it was signed “Jww Gwww.” She had never been willing to take time to cross t’s and loop h’s. Funny, lovable, exhilarating, capricious Joy, Qwilleran thought. What would the future hold for both of them?

  The cats had behaved themselves, more or less; that was not always the case when Qwilleran had a woman visiting his living quarters. Koko was a self-appointed chaperon with his own ideas of social decorum.

  “Good cat!” said Qwilleran, and in his mood of reckless indulgence he gave them their second dinner. He opened a can of lobster—the last of their Christmas present from the affluent Mary Duckworth. Koko went wild, racing around the apartment and singing in a falsetto interspersed with chesty growls.

  “Do you think I did the right thing tonight?” Qwilleran asked him. “It leaves me right back where I was before. Broke!” And the man was so preoccupied with his own wonderment that he failed to notice Koko’s sudden silence.

  After their feast, the cats went to sleep in the big chair, and Qwilleran spent his first night in the new bed. Lying on his side and staring out of the studio window, he had a full view of the navy-blue sky and a string of lights marking the opposite bank of the river. For several hours sleep evaded him. This time it was not his past that kept him awake but his future.

  He heard and identified all the sounds of a new habitat: the hum of traffic on River Road, a lonely boat whistle, a radio or stereo somewhere in the building, and eventually the crunch of tires on the crushed stone of the driveway. He guessed it would be Maus returning from his gourmet meeting, or Max Sorrel coming home from his restaurant, or Dan Graham in the old Renault, returning from some rendezvous. The garage door creaked, and soon there were footsteps tapping on the tiles of the Great Hall. Somewhere a door closed. After that there was the distant rumble of an approaching storm, and occasionally the sky flashed lavender.

  Qwilleran had no idea at what hour he fell asleep—or how long he had slept when he was startled awake by a scream. Whether it was the real thing or a fragment of his dream, it was impossible to say. He had been dreaming intensely—a silly dream about mountain climbing. He was standing triumphantly on the summit of a snow-white mountain of mashed potatoes, gazing across a sea of brown gravy. Someone shouted a warning, and there was a scream, and he waked.

  He raised his head and listened sharply. Silence. The scream, Qwilleran decided, had been part of the sound effects of his dream. He switched on the bed lamp to check the time, and that was when he noticed the cats. They had raised their heads and were listening, too. Their ears were pointed forward. Both heads rotated slowly as they scanned the soundscape in every direction. The cats had heard something. It had not been a dream.

  Still, the man told himself, it could have been squealing tires on River Road, or the garage door creaking again. Noises magnified themselves on the threshold of waking. At that moment he heard the sound of creaking hinges quite plainly, followed by the rumble of a car engine, and he jumped out of bed in time to see a light-colored convertible pulling away from the building. He glanced at his watch. It was three twenty-five.

  The cats laid their ears back and their chins on their paws and settled down to sleep, and Qwilleran closed the ventilating panes in the big studio window as the first drops of rain splashed on the glass like enormous tears.

  FIVE

  When Qwilleran awoke Wednesday morning, it took him a few seconds to get his bearings in the strange apartment. He looked at the sky through the studio window—a vast panorama of blue, broken only by a single soaring pigeon. He stared up at the beamed ceiling two stories overhead, noted the big plaid chair, remembered the white bearskin rug. Then the events of the previous day came rushing into his mind: his new home in a pottery . . . the nearness of Joy after all the years of separation . . . her marital trouble . . . the $750 loan . . . and the sound he had heard in the night. In daylight the recollection of it seemed considerably less alarming. He stretched and yawned, disturbing Yum Yum, who was huddled in his armpit, and then he heard a bell ring. Koko was standing on the desk with one paw on the typewriter.

  “Coming right up!” Qwilleran said, hoisting himself out of bed. He put on his red plaid bathrobe and went to the tiny kitchen to open a can of food for the cats. “I know you ordered beef Wellington,” he told Koko, “but you’ll have to settle for red salmon. This is two dollars a can. Bon appétit!”

  The prospect of breakfast touched off a joyous scuffle. Yum Yum kicked Koko with her hind leg like a mule, and he gave her a push. They went into a clinch, pummeling each other until Koko played too rough. Then Yum Yum sprang back and started to circle, lashing her tail. Suddenly she pounced and grabbed him by the throat, but Koko got a hug-hold, and they rolled over and over, locked together. By secret signal both cats quit the fight at the same instant and licked each other’s imaginary wounds.

  When Qwilleran dressed and went downst
airs, he followed the aroma of bacon and coffee into the kitchen. At the big round table Robert Maus was solemnly breakfasting on croissants and marmalade and French chocolate, while Hixie waited for Mrs. Marron to make French toast.

  Qwilleran helped himself to orange juice. “Where’s everybody this morning?”

  “Max never gets up for breakfast,” Hixie reported promptly, as she spooned sour cream into her coffee. “William’s gone to an early class. Rosemary always has wheat germ in her apartment. Charlotte came early and had ‘a bit to eat’ big enough to choke a horse, and now she’s gone to the Red Cross to roll bandages, or whatever she does there on Wednesday mornings.”

  “Miss Roop,” Maus explained in his pedantic manner, “devotes a generous amount of time to . . . volunteer clerical work at the blood bank, for which she must be . . . admired.”

  “Do you suppose she’s atoning for something wicked in her past?” Hixie asked.

  The attorney turned to her in solemn disapproval. “You are, to all appearances, a nasty young lady. Furthermore I find the use of . . . sour cream in coffee an extremely . . . revolting habit.”

  “Hurry up with the toast, Marron baby,” said Hixie. “I’m starving.”

  “Do the Grahams come down to breakfast?” Qwilleran asked.

  “They haven’t shown up this morning.” She was heaping gooseberry jam on a crusty French roll. “I wish I had a job like theirs, so I could be my own boss and set my own hours.”

  “My dear young woman,” Maus told her gravely, “you would be bankrupt within six months. You are entirely without . . . self-discipline.” Then he turned to Qwilleran. “I trust you are sufficiently . . . comfortable in Number Six?”

  As he spoke, Qwilleran noticed for the first time a slight discoloration around the attorney’s left eye. “Everything’s fine,” the newsman said, after a barely perceptible pause, “but I heard something strange in the night. Did anyone else hear an outcry about three-thirty this morning? It sounded like a woman’s scream.”

  There was no reply at the table. Hixie opened her eyes wide and shook her head. Maus calmly went on chewing with the kind of concentration he always gave to the process.

  It was characteristic of members of the legal profession never to show surprise, Qwilleran reminded himself. “Maybe it was the garage door that I heard,” he suggested.

  Maus said, “Mrs. Marron, kindly ask William to . . . lubricate the garage doors when he returns.”

  “By the way,” said the newsman, pouring himself a cup of the excellent coffee, “I’d like to write a column on your cooking philosophy, Mr. Maus, if you’re agreeable.” He waited patiently for the attorney’s response.

  After a while it came, accompanied by a gracious nod. “I cannot, at this time, see any . . . objection.”

  “Perhaps you could have dinner with me tonight at the Toledo Tombs—as the guest of the Daily Fluxion.”

  At the mention of the epicurean restaurant Maus brightened noticeably. “By all means! We shall have their . . . eels in green sauce. They also prepare a superb veal dish with tarragon and Japanese mushrooms. You must allow me to order.”

  They set a time and place to meet, and Maus left for his office, carrying an attaché case. Qwilleran had seen Mrs. Marron stock it with some small cartons, a thermos bottle, and a cold artichoke. Hixie left soon afterward, having finished a plate of bacon and French toast, swimming in melted butter and maple syrup and sprinkled with chopped pecans. Qwilleran remained alone, wondering about his landlord’s black eye.

  When Mrs. Marron came to the table to remove the plates, she said, “You should eat something, Mr. Qwilleran—something to stick to the ribs.”

  “There’s too much sticking to my ribs already.”

  The housekeeper lingered at the table, slowly piling dishes on a tray and slowly rearranging them. “Mr. Qwilleran,” she said, “I heard something last night, and it wasn’t the garage door.”

  “What time did you hear it?”

  “It was after three o’clock. I know that much. My room is in the back, and I don’t sleep very good lately, so I watched television in bed. I use the earphone, so I don’t disturb anybody.”

  “Exactly what did you hear?”

  “I thought it was tomcats scrapping down at the boat docks, but it could’ve been somebody screaming.”

  “I hope everyone in the house is all right,” Qwilleran said. “Why don’t you check on Mrs. Whiting and the Grahams?”

  “Do you think I should?”

  “Under the circumstances, Mrs. Marron, I think it would be advisable.”

  I’m beginning to sound like Robert Maus, he told himself as he sipped black coffee and waited for the housekeeper’s return.

  “Mrs. Whiting is all right; she’s doing her exercises,” Mrs. Marron reported. “But I couldn’t get ahold of the Grahams. The door to the pottery is locked. I knocked three, four times, but nobody answered. If they’re upstairs in their apartment, they can’t hear.”

  “You don’t have a key to the pottery?” He glanced at a key rack on the kitchen wall.

  The housekeeper shook her head. “Those are only the apartment keys, so I can clean. Shall I go around the backyard and up the fire escape?”

  “Let’s try telephoning,” Qwilleran suggested. “Do you know the Graham’s number?”

  “What shall I say to them?”

  “I’ll do the talking.”

  Mrs. Marron dialed a number on the kitchen phone and handed the receiver to Qwilleran. A man’s voice answered.

  “Mr. Graham? Good morning! This is Jim Qwilleran, your new neighbor. Is everything under control at your end of the building? We thought we smelled smoke . . . That’s good. Just playing safe. By the way, you’re missing a fine breakfast. Mrs. Marron is making French toast . . . Can’t tempt you? Too bad. I really wanted to discuss the pottery operation. The Fluxion might run a feature story to tie in with your exhibition . . . You will? Good! I’ll wait.”

  “Smoke?” said Mrs. Marron when Qwilleran had handed back the receiver. “I didn’t smell any smoke.”

  A few minutes later Dan Graham walked into the kitchen, looking thinner and more forlorn than ever. He dropped gracelessly into a chair and said he would have coffee and a roll, that’s all.

  Mrs. Marron said, “I can make some of those cornmeal johnnycakes you like.”

  “Just a roll.”

  “Or a stack of wheat cakes. It will only take a minute.”

  The potter scowled at her, and she went back to the sink and started stacking plates in the dishwasher.

  Qwilleran resisted an impulse to ask the man about his wife. Instead he hinted at vast possibilities for free publicity, and Dan warmed up.

  “The newspapers ought to print some more articles like that,” he said, “instead of tearing us down all the time. Hell, they don’t pan the new model cars or those stupid clothes they design in Paris. Why do they pick on artists? The papers hire some nincompoop as a critic and let him air his private beefs and chase people away from the exhibitions. A lot of people would like contemporary art if the local newspapers didn’t keep telling them how bad it is. They should be explaining to the public how to appreciate what they see.”

  “I’ll speak to our feature editor,” Qwilleran said. “It’s not my beat and I can’t make the decision, but I’m sure Arch Riker will send a photographer over here. He’ll probably want to take some shots of you and your wife, as well as your new pottery. A good human interest story might make a spread in the Sunday supplement. In color!”

  Dan hung his head and looked deep into his coffee cup. “There’s the hitch,” he said finally. “I know you fellows on the paper like cheesecake and all that kind of stuff, but you’ll have to settle for a broken-down he-potter with freckles.” He said it with a twisted smile.

  “Why? Doesn’t Mrs. Graham like to be photographed? She’s very attractive.”

  Dan glanced toward the sink, where Mrs. Marron was peeling apples, and lowered his voice. “Th
e old girl’s cleared out.”

  “She’s what? She’s left you?” Qwilleran had not expected anything to happen so soon, and yet he should have known that Joy would fly into action.

  “Yes, she’s decamped—vamoosed—flown the coop, if you know what I mean. It’s not the first time, either.” Again there was the brave one-sided smile, and Qwilleran realized—partly with pity and partly with scorn—that the grimace was an unconscious imitation of Joy’s appealing mannerism.

  “Once when we were in Florida,” the potter went on, “she ran off. No explanation, no note, no nothing. She really left me standing on my ear that time, but she came back, and everything straightened out. Women don’t know what they want . . . So I’ll just sit tight like a bug in a rug and wait for her to have her fling and get over what’s eating her. She’ll be back, don’t worry. Too bad she had to go right before the exhibition, that’s all.”

  Qwilleran, who was seldom at a loss for words, hardly knew what to say. It was obvious he knew more than the husband about Joy’s intentions. “When did you first realize she’d gone?” he asked, trying to appear sympathetic but not personally involved.

  “Woke up this morning and couldn’t find hide nor hair of the woman! Might as well tell you that we had a little argument last night, but I didn’t think it was anything serious.” Dan stroked his unshaven jaw thoughtfully and looked hurt and dejected.

  Qwilleran noticed that the potter’s right thumb was missing up to the first joint, and for a moment his loyalties were divided. A hand injury would be the worst thing that could happen to a potter; was that the reason for his declining success? He could also sympathize with a husband deserted by an ambitious wife; he had gone through the same humiliating experience.

  “Did she take the car?” Qwilleran asked.

  “No, she left it here. I’d be in a fix if she’d run off with the old jalopy. It’s not much, but it gets me there and back.”

  “Then what did she use for transportation in the middle of the night?”