Cat Who Saw Red

by Lilian Jackson Braun

  “She hates Florida! She told us so, didn’t she? And she’s always been allergic to sunlight.”

  And then Qwilleran had a second thought. Perhaps his $750 check had financed a vacation with that food buyer—Fish, Ham, or whatever his name was—in the Sunshine State! Once again Qwilleran felt like a fool.

  TEN

  When Qwilleran’s alarm went off on Saturday morning, it was still dark and chill, and he debated whether to fulfill his intentions to forget about the farmers’ market and go back to sleep. Curiosity and a newsman’s relish for an unfamiliar situation convinced him to get up.

  He showered and dressed hastily and diced round steak for the cats, who were asleep in the big chair, stretched out in do-not-disturb postures.

  By six-thirty Qwilleran was downstairs in the kitchen, where Robert Maus was breaking eggs into a bowl. “Hope you don’t mind,” Qwilleran said. “I’ve invited myself to go the farmers’ market with you.”

  “Consider yourself more than welcome, to be sure,” the attorney said. “Please be good enough to help yourself to orange juice and coffee. I am preparing . . . an omelet.”

  “Where’s William?”

  Maus took a deep breath before replying. “With William, I regret to say, it is a point of honor to be late for any and all occasions.”

  He poured the beaten eggs into the omelet pan, shook it vigorously, stirred with a fork, folded the shimmering yellow creation, flipped it onto a warm plate, grated some white pepper over the top, and glazed it with butter.

  It was the best omelet Qwilleran had ever tasted. With each tender, creamy mouthful he recalled the dry, brown, leathery imitations he had eaten in second-class restaurants. Maus prepared another omelet for himself and sat down at the table.

  “I hate to see our friend William missing this good breakfast,” said Qwilleran. “Maybe he overslept. Maybe I should hammer on his door.”

  He found William’s room at the end of the kitchen corridor and knocked once, twice, then louder, without getting any response. He turned the knob gently and opened the door an inch or two. “William!” he shouted. “It’s after six-thirty!” There was no sound from within. He peered into the room. The built-in bunk was empty, and the bedspread was neatly tucked under the mattress.

  Qwilleran glanced around the room. The bathroom door stood open. He tried another door, which proved to be a small, untidy closet. The entire place was in mild disorder, with clothes and magazines scattered in all the wrong places.

  He returned to the breakfast table. “Not there. His bed looks as if he hasn’t slept in it, and the alarm clock hasn’t been set. I took him out to dinner last night, and he was going to his mother’s house afterward. Do you suppose he stayed there?”

  “Basing an opinion on what I know about the relationship between William and his mother,” said Maus, “I would . . . deem it more likely that he spent the night with the young lady to whom he appears to be . . . engaged. I suggest you wear boots this morning, Mr. Qwilleran. The market manufactures an exclusive brand of . . . mud, composed of wilted cabbage leaves, rotted tomatoes, crushed grapes, and an unidentifiable liquid that binds them together in a slimy black . . . amalgam.”

  The men started for the market in the attorney’s old Mercedes, and as they circled the driveway, Qwilleran thought he saw the enormous tail fins of William’s limousine protruding from the carport on the other side of the house.

  “I think William’s car is there,” he remarked. “If he didn’t come home last night, how did his car get back?”

  “The ways of the young,” said Maus, “are incomprehensible. I have ceased all attempts to understand their behavior.”

  It was true about the mud. A black ooze filled the gutters and splashed up over the sidewalks of the open-air market. There were several square blocks of open sheds where farmers and other vendors sold directly from their trucks. Rich and poor streamed through the cluttered aisles, carrying shopping bags, pushing baby buggies loaded with pots of geraniums, pulling red express wagons filled with produce, or maneuvering chrome-plated, rubber-tired shopping carts through the crowded aisles.

  A pickpocket’s heaven, Qwilleran thought.

  There were women with rollers in their hair, children riding piggyback, distinguished old men in velvet-collared coats, Indian girls with tweed jackets over their filmy saris, teenagers wearing earphones, suburban housewives swaddled in fun furs, and more than the average number of immensely fat women.

  Maus led the way between mountains of rhubarb and acres of fresh eggs, past the gallon jugs of honey, the whole pigs, bunches of sassafras, pillows filled with chicken feathers, carrots as big as baseball bats, white doves in cages, and purple cauliflower.

  It was a nippy morning, and the vendors stamped their feet and warmed their hands over coke fires burning in oil drums. The smoke mingled with the aromas of apples, livestock, lilacs, and market mud. Qwilleran noticed a blind man with a white cane standing near the lilacs, sniffing and smiling.

  Maus bought mushrooms, fern shoots, scallions, Florida corn, and California strawberries. It amazed the newsman to hear him haggling over the price of a turnip. “My dear woman, if you can afford to sell a dozen for three dollars, how can you—in all decency—ask thirty cents for one?” asked the man who served a ten-dollar bottle of wine with the jellied clams.

  At one stall Maus selected a skinned rabbit, and Qwilleran turned away while the farmer wrapped the red, stiffened carcass in a sheet of newspaper and the white-furred relatives of the deceased looked on with reproach.

  “Mrs. Marron, I must admit, makes an excellent hasenpfeffer,” Maus explained. “She will prepare the . . . viands this weekend while I attend a gourmet conclave out of town . . . for which I happen to be the . . . master of ceremonies.”

  From the open-air market they went into the general market, a vast arena with hundreds of stalls under one roof and a soft carpet of sawdust underfoot. Hucksters with hoarse voices offered spiced salt belly, strudel dough, chocolate tortes, plaster figures of saints, quail eggs, voodoo potions, canned grape leaves, octopus, and perfumed floor wash guaranteed to bring good luck. A nickel-plated machine ground fresh peanut butter. A phonograph played harem music at a record stall. Maus bought snails and some Dutch mustard seed.

  For a moment Qwilleran closed his eyes and tried to sort out the heady mix of smells: freshly ground coffee, strong cheese, garlic sausage, anise, dried codfish, incense. A wave of cheap perfume reached his nostrils, and he opened his eyes to see a Gypsy woman looking at him from a nearby stall. She smiled, and he blinked his eyes. She had Joy’s smile, Joy’s tiny figure, and Joy’s long hair, but her face was a hundred years old. Her clothes were soiled, and her hair looked as if it had never been washed.

  “Tell the fortune?” she invited.

  Fascinated by this cruel caricature, Qwilleran nodded.

  “You sit.”

  He sat on an upended beer case, and the woman sat opposite, shuffling a deck of dirty cards.

  “How much?” he asked.

  “Dollar. One dollar, yes?”

  She laid out the cards in a cross and studied them. “I see water. You take long trip—boat—soon, yes?”

  “Not very likely,” Qwilleran said. “What else do you see?”

  “Somebody sick. You get letter . . . I see money. Lotsa money. You like.”

  “Don’t we all?”

  “Young boy—your son? Some day great man. Big doctor.”

  “Where is my childhood sweetheart? Can you tell me that?”

  “Hmmm . . . she far away—happy—lotsa children.”

  “You’re phenomenal. You’re a genius,” Qwilleran grumbled. “Anything else?”

  “I see water—so much water. You no like. Everybody wet.”

  Qwilleran escaped from the Gypsy’s booth and caught up with his landlord. “Better fix the roof,” he told him. “There’s going to be another biblical-type flood.” He shook himself, as if he might have picked up fleas.

&nbs
p; When the two men carried their market purchases into the kitchen at Maus Haus, Mrs. Marron said to Qwilleran, “A man from the newspaper called. He said you should call him. Mr. Piper. Art Piper.”

  “Where’ve you been?” Arch Riker demanded when Qwilleran got him on the phone. “Out all night?”

  “I’ve been to the farmers’ market, getting material for a column, and I expect to collect time-and-a-half for getting up at an ungodly hour on my day off. What’s on your mind?”

  “I wish you’d help me out, Qwill. Would you drive to Rattlesnake Lake to act as one of the judges in a contest?”

  “Bathing beauties?”

  “No. Cake-baking. It’s the statewide thing sponsored by the John Stuart Flour Mills. They do a lot of advertising, and we promised we’d send one of the judges.”

  “Why can’t the food editor do it?” Qwilleran snapped.

  “She’s in the hospital.”

  “Been eating her own cooking?”

  “Qwill, you’re crabby today. What’s wrong with you?”

  “To tell you the truth, Arch, I’d like to stick around here this weekend—to see what I can dig up. Joy’s husband invited me in for a drink tonight. I don’t want to talk about it on the phone, but you know what we discussed in the coffee shop.”

  “I know, Qwill, but we’re in a jam. You can take some time off next week.”

  “Can’t the women’s department handle this contest?”

  “They’ve got a lot of spring weddings to cover. You could make a nice weekend of it, take a company car and drive up this afternoon. You could have a nice dinner at the Rattlesnake Inn—they’re famous for their food—and come back tomorrow night.”

  “They’re famous for their bad food, not famous for their good food,” Qwilleran objected. “Besides, how can I enjoy a dinner anywhere and stay on my diet? How can I judge a cake contest and lose any weight?”

  “You’ll figure something out. You’re an old pro,” said Riker.

  “I’ll make a deal with you,” Qwilleran said after a moment’s hesitation. “I’ll go to Rattlesnake Lake if you’ll send me Odd Bunsen on Monday to shoot pictures in the pottery.”

  “You think it’s a story? We’ve done potteries before. They all look alike.”

  “It may not make a story, but I want an excuse to get in there and prowl around.” The newsman smoothed his mustache with his knuckles. “We’ve had another mysterious disappearance, Arch. This time it’s the houseboy.”

  There was silence from Riker as he weighed the alternatives. “Well . . . I’ll requisition a photographer, but I can’t guarantee you’ll get Bunsen.”

  “I don’t want anyone else. It’s got to be a nut like Bunsen.”

  At noon, when Qwilleran reported downstairs for lunch, he asked if anyone had seen William.

  Hixie, who was busy chewing, shook her head.

  Dan said, “Nope.”

  Rosemary remarked that it was unusual for William to miss market day.

  Mrs. Marron said, “He was supposed to wax the floors today.”

  Charlotte Roop was engrossed in her crossword puzzle and said nothing.

  Mrs. Marron was serving home-baked beans with brown bread and leftover ham, and Dan looked at the fare with distaste. “What’s for dinner?” he demanded.

  “Some nice roast chicken and wild rice.”

  “Chicken again? We just had it on Monday.”

  “And a nice coconut custard pie.”

  “I don’t like coconut. It gets in my teeth,” he said, making a sandwich of brown bread and ham.

  “And tomorrow a nice rabbit stew,” the housekeeper added.

  “Ecch!”

  “Mrs. Marron,” Qwilleran interrupted, “these baked beans are delicious.”

  She gave him a grateful glance. “It’s because I use an old bean pot. Forty years old, Mr. Maus says. It was made right here in the pottery, and it’s signed on the bottom—H.M.H.”

  “That must have been about the time the sculptor was murdered,” Qwilleran remarked.

  “It was an accidental drowning,” Miss Roop corrected him, looking up briefly from her puzzle.

  “Nobody really believes that,” said Hixie, and then she recited in a singsong voice:

  “A potty young sculptor, Mort Mellon,

  Fell in love with a pottress named Helen,

  But the pottery gods frowned

  And he promptly got drowned.

  Who pushed him the potters ain’t tellin’.”

  Miss Roop lifted her chin. “That’s very disrespectful, Miss Rice.”

  “Who cares?” Hixie retorted. “They’re all dead.”

  “Mr. Maus would not like it, if he were here.”

  “But he’s not here. By now he’s halfway to Miami.”

  “Miami?” Qwilleran echoed.

  Mrs. Marron brought him some more ham, which he regretfully declined, although he accepted some scraps for his roommates. “By the way,” he said to her, “I’m going to be out of town overnight. Would you be good enough to feed my cats tomorrow morning?”

  “I don’t know much about cats,” she said. “Is there anything special I have to do?”

  “Just dice some meat for them and give them fresh water. And be absolutely sure they don’t get out of the apartment.” To the others at the table he said, “I have an assignment at Rattlesnake Lake. Dan, I’ll have to take a rain check on your invitation, but we might be lucky enough to get a photographer here on Monday.”

  Dan grunted and nodded.

  Qwilleran went on: “I hate the thought of the long drive up to the lake in a company car. The Fluxion seems to have bought a whole fleet of lemons.”

  A soft voice at his left said, “Would you like company? I’d be happy to go along for the ride. You could drive my car.” The newsman turned and looked into the eyes of Rosemary Whiting—the quiet one, the thoughtful one who had brought the cats a ball of yarn. Her brown eyes were filled with an expression he could not immediately identify. He had not realized she was so attractive—her eyes dancing with health, her skin like whipped cream, her dark hair glossy.

  Having hesitated too long, he said hurriedly, “Sure! Sure! I’d be grateful for your company. If we leave right after lunch, we’ll have time for a leisurely drive and a good dinner at the inn. I have to judge a contest, but it doesn’t take place until tomorrow afternoon, so we can sleep late tomorrow and stop somewhere for a bite to eat on the way home.”

  Miss Roop went on working her crossword puzzle with her lips frozen in a thin, straight line.

  ELEVEN

  “Koko didn’t want me to make this trip,” Qwilleran told Rosemary, as they drove away from Maus Haus in her dark blue compact. “As soon as I got out my luggage, he started to scold.”

  He glanced at his passenger. At Maus Haus he had guessed her age to be about thirty, but seeing her in daylight he increased his estimate to forty—a young forty.

  “You look wonderful,” he said. “That wheat germ you sprinkle on everything must agree with you. How long have you had your health food shop?”

  “Two years,” she said. “After my husband died, I sold the house and moved downtown and invested the money in the business.”

  “Any children?”

  “Two sons. They’re both doctors.”

  Qwilleran sneaked another look at his passenger and did some simple arithmetic. Forty-five? Fifty?

  “Tell me,” Rosemary said. “What brought you to Maus Haus?”

  He told her about his new assignment, the invitation to attend a gourmet dinner given by Robert Maus, and his unexpected reunion with Joy Graham, an old friend.

  She said, “I guessed it was more than a casual acquaintance.”

  “You’re very discerning. Joy and I were planning to marry at one time, many years ago.” He jammed on the brakes. “Sorry,” he apologized. “Did you see that stupid cat? It strolled casually across the highway, and as soon as it reached safety, it ran like the devil.”

  “I hope
you didn’t think I was awfully bold to invite myself on this trip, Mr. Qwilleran.”

  “Not at all. I’m delighted. I wish I’d thought of it first. And please call me Qwill. I’m certainly not going to call you Mrs. Whiting all weekend.”

  “I had a reason for wanting to come. There’s something I want to discuss with you, but not right now. I’d like to enjoy the scenery.”

  As they drove through the countryside, Rosemary observed and remarked about every cider mill, gravel pit, corn crib, herd of cattle, stone barn, and split-rail fence. She had a pleasant voice, and Qwilleran found her company relaxing. By the time they reached Rattlesnake Inn, he was experiencing a comfortable contentment. She remarked that it would be nice if they could have adjoining rooms. It was going to be a good weekend, he told himself.

  The inn was a rickety frame structure that should have burned down half a century before. Weeping willows drooped over the edge of the lake, and canoes glided over its glassy surface. Before dinner Qwilleran rented a flat-bottomed boat and rowed Rosemary across the lake and back. During the cocktail hour they danced—Qwilleran’s nameless, formless, ageless dance step that he had invented twenty-five years before and had not bothered to update.

  “I think I’ll celebrate,” he said. “I’m going off my diet tonight.”

  Although Rattlesnake Inn was not celebrated for the quality of its food, it was unsurpassed in terms of quantity. The hors d’oeuvre table presented thirty different appetizers, all of them mashed up and flavored with the same pickle juice. The menu offered a choice of ten steaks, all uniformly tender, expensive, and flavorless. The shrimp cocktails were huge and leathery. An impressive assortment of rolls, biscuits, and muffins came to the table in bun-warmers that were ice cold. The baked potatoes wore foil jackets firmly glued to the skin, except for minute fragments of foil mashed into the interior. The Rattlesnake Inn served asparagus that tasted like Brussels sprouts and spinach that tasted like old dishrags. Individual wooden salad bowls, twelve inches in diameter and rancid with age, were heaped with anemic lettuce and wedges of synthetic tomato. But the specialty of the house was the dessert buffet with twenty-seven cream pies made from instant vanilla pudding.