A Cat Tells Two Tales

by Lydia Adamson

  Finally Charlie Coombs slammed the phone down and said, “Jo, I heard about Harry and Mona Aspen. God, I’m sorry.” He raised both palms as if emphasizing that the world is like that—full of unexplained misery and loss.

  I liked the man immediately. He looked around forty-five or fifty, with a weather-beaten, aggressive face but a very kindly smile. He had thick graying black hair which went every which way, and he was dramatically underdressed considering the cold—a dress shirt without a tie, and over it a kind of hunter’s vest.

  Jo introduced us to each other. He leaned forward and said, “I like Jo’s friends . . . under any circumstances.”

  I could see that he was shorter than I thought—and he was wearing red sneakers. For some reason, that made me feel very good. Imagine a man training million-dollar racehorses wearing red sneakers. It was poetic and crazy, a kind of equine Red Shoes, only Charlie Coombs was obviously no Moira Shearer. He was trying to give us his full attention, but it was obvious that one part of him was outside the office, focused on the horses, listening for trouble signs or whatever trainers listen for.

  Jo said, “We’re trying to locate Ginger Mauch.”

  “But, Jo, she works for you,” he replied.

  “She quit. Suddenly. She just went and quit.”

  “Well, I don’t know where she is, then. Jo, I haven’t seen Ginger in a couple of years.”

  “But she used to work for you,” I said, realizing it was time for me to start leading the conversation.

  “Right. She worked here for about six months. Then she quit. Then I heard she was helping out Mona Aspen on the Island. Then I heard she was working for Harry and Jo.”

  “Do you remember the circumstances under which you hired her?” I asked him.

  My rather pretentious question made Coombs laugh. He leaned over toward me—a bit threatening, a bit flirtatious. “Before I answer that question, I want to know what business you’re in.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, it’s the kind of question an IRS agent would ask.”

  “I’m an actress.”

  He stepped back, looking at me intently; it was obviously not what he had expected to hear.

  Jo intervened apologetically. “Charlie, we just need all the information you can give us about Ginger. We don’t have time to explain.”

  “The circumstances,” Coombs said, skillfully mimicking my pretentious language, “were, if I remember—she came into my office and asked me for a job as an exercise rider. I told her I didn’t need exercise riders, but I did need an assistant trainer to do all the paperwork I couldn’t do . . . and a lot of other stupid tasks around the barn, from ordering hay to dealing with security. I told her that since I had become rich and famous I needed more time for myself. She said okay. I hired her.”

  “Did she tell you anything about herself?”

  “Not really. I did learn eventually that she was born and raised in Vermont, that she usually came to work late on Thursday for some reason, and that she took milk and no sugar in her coffee.”

  I could see that he was making an honest effort to remember. “Did you ask her for references?”

  “No, I didn’t have to. Ginger was an exercise rider in Maryland before she came to New York. And the horse she rode was Cup of Tea. She showed me clippings.”

  “Cup of Tea!” Jo repeated in a startled voice. “She never told me about that.”

  “Who is Cup of Tea?” I asked, bewildered by Jo’s response.

  Charlie Coombs walked back behind the desk and sat down. He grinned wickedly at me in a good-natured way, as if I should be ashamed of myself. “Once upon a time,” he began in a self-mocking, pedagogic tone, “there was an ugly little foal born on a farm in upper Michigan. He was a thoroughbred, but from a very undistinguished family. Nobody ever heard of his momma or papa. They called him Cup of Tea because his color was so murky—not bay, not chestnut. He actually looked like a cow pony, which is why he was auctioned off as a yearling for only nine hundred dollars.

  “The new owner took Cup of Tea around the Midwest circuit—racing him in the cheapest races at the cheapest dirt tracks. He always lost. So he was sold to a trainer in Maryland, who wanted to make him into a track pony. Well, Cup of Tea goes to Maryland and starts accompanying real racehorses out onto the track to keep them calm.

  “One day the little horse accompanies a hotshot allowance horse out onto the track for a grass workout. Cup of Tea, who probably never saw a grass track in his life, spooked, threw his rider, and ran around the grass track about two seconds faster than the world record for that distance.

  “To make a long story short, the next year Cup of Tea wins the three biggest grass stakes in America, including the Budweiser Million. And right now the old boy is the most expensive and sought-after stud in the world, standing in France. It’s the ultimate rags-to-riches story. It’s Hollywood.”

  It was a wonderful story. I could see it as a movie. But who would play Ginger?

  A young Hispanic man burst into the office and yelled something in Spanish to Coombs. The trainer nodded, stood up, and said, “I hope I was of some help.”

  He shook Jo’s hand and kissed her lightly on top of her head. Then he said to me, “I like telling you horse stories. I have plenty of them. I even have some other kinds of stories.”

  I leaned over the desk and wrote my number on his pad.

  “His father was even nicer,” Jo said after he left.

  I mulled over this new information on Ginger as we drove back to Manhattan and double-parked until it was time for the alternate-side-of-the-street parking clock to change. From what I could tell, we were no closer to learning her present whereabouts than we had been before.

  “What do we do now?” Jo asked.

  “Wait until we can park legally and then eat. There’s a Chinese restaurant right up the block, with good lunch specials.”

  “I mean about Ginger.”

  “We keep looking.”

  “But who else can we contact? Who else knows her?”

  “That horse.”

  Jo laughed. “Isn’t it a wonderful story? Cup of Tea is a lovable horse.”

  A car drove by too fast, flinging slush against our windows. Finally we were able to park. When we entered the restaurant, I realized the old woman was tired. She stared at the menu as if in a daze and then ordered exactly what I ordered.

  She ate the sizzling rice soup but left the rest of her meal. I ate everything. I was hungry and cold. And I was still excited by the racetrack, by the proximity of the horses . . . and by Charlie Coombs.

  “I’m just not hungry,” Jo said by way of apology, appalled by the realization that she was wasting food.

  When we paid the bill and stepped outside, we found that a brilliant winter sun had broken through the clouds. Everything was brighter, warmer, cleaner.

  “I’m tired,” Jo said. “I could use a nap.”

  “It’s only two minutes to my apartment,” I assured her.

  As I looked down the street, mentally rechecking where we had parked the car, I noticed a small red pickup truck had already double-parked in front of it. Good, I thought, it would protect the windows from slush.

  I looked at Jo. She was standing contentedly, her face up to the sun.

  The red pickup truck in front of her car started to move. I watched it casually, the sun sparkling along its red sides. Something was wrong, though. The truck crossed to the far side of the street, where no cars were parked—the illegal side.

  It began to accelerate, and one set of wheels squealed against the curb. The little red truck was coming straight at us.

  I grabbed Jo’s arm. I started to run, pulling Jo with me.

  I heard a screaming, grinding noise behind me. Terrified, I tried to run faster. My legs started to wobble like jelly.

  I heard a person scream. Showers of glass rained down. All went dark.

  9

  “Only one more landing to go,” I said to Jo as we both hov
ered on the cusp between the third and fourth landings, exhausted, still dazed. Jo had a large bandage on one side of her face. I had a dressing across the top of my forehead, right at the scalp line.

  Noticing that one of the tenants still had a Christmas wreath on the door, I snarled. Why hadn’t it been removed? Christmas was over and done with. And as I stood there between landings, holding Jo, I remembered some lines from a play I had once appeared in. A woman faces a hated husband and says, “What I’d like on this ominous Christmas Eve is a visitation from Baby Jesus, or at least a Christ in some highly recognizable form.”

  What was the name of the play? The playwright? The character? I could remember nothing, only those lines.

  I touched my thigh gingerly. It hurt very badly. The doctors in the emergency room at Beekman Downtown Hospital had said nothing was broken, just bruised.

  The police had told us the truck had crashed into a lightpost, destroyed a parking sign, smashed the windows of the Chinese restaurant, destroyed a hydrant, spun around twice���and driven off. They told us we were very lucky. Drunk drivers like that one usually ended up killing or maiming people—and both of us had been only inches from death. It was a miracle, they said, that we had escaped with only superficial wounds from the flying glass.

  We started up the final flight to my apartment, Jo in front, my hand lightly on her back to make sure she didn’t fall. Or perhaps my staying behind her was not altruistic. When I had gained consciousness I had seen one side of her face drenched in blood from dozens of tiny glass cuts. And her cropped white hair had been flecked with blood. The sight had made me ill.

  Finally, sanctuary. We both dropped onto the sofa like stones. We didn’t move. We didn’t speak.

  It was already dark outside and there were no lights in the apartment. I realized I should turn on a light, but for the moment I couldn’t intellectually locate the switch.

  When I finally did turn it on and returned to the sofa, I saw Bushy and Pancho sitting calmly, side by side, staring at us. It was a very unusual pose for Pancho. He seemed to be assessing the situation. It must be our bandages, I thought. The white bandages must fascinate him.

  “Can I get you something, Jo?”

  “Nothing.”

  I stared at Pancho. I longed to cuddle with that crazy cat. For a brief moment I contemplated making a grab for him. But I didn’t. Pancho was always too swift for me. He simply didn’t want to cuddle. I smiled at him. His body was less relaxed. His curiosity was almost satiated. He would get back to business shortly—flight from the enemy.

  Jo laughed, and I looked at her. Her hand was feeling her bandaged face. “I was just thinking,” she explained, “how ridiculous it is to come into Manhattan and almost get killed by a drunk driver. I thought all the drunk drivers were on the Long Island Expressway.”

  “How do you know he was drunk, Jo?”

  “Well, the police said he was drunk.”

  “Yes, they did.”

  “You have to be drunk to climb a curb and run your truck into a restaurant window.”

  We were both alive. It was time to deal with the facts. “He wasn’t drunk, Jo. He was trying to kill us.”

  She barked a small, nervous laugh. “Alice, how do you know that?”

  How did I know that? I closed my eyes and re-created the moments before. The driver of the red pickup truck had been idling his vehicle when we came out of the restaurant. He had crossed over from his double-parked position to the empty side to gather speed and then made a straight run toward us. I had seen him. I had known he was coming for us.

  “He was trying to kill us, Jo.”

  “Why would anyone want to kill us?” she asked, skeptical, confused, disturbed.

  I didn’t answer her question. I looked at the cats. Pancho was gone. Bushy was stretched out. My thigh was throbbing as if there was a frog under the skin.

  The little red pickup truck had splintered all my idealistic pretensions. It had made me realize that my life was still precious to me. Sure, I had not become a great actress doing great roles, but there was still my craft, and my cats, and my apartment, and the hundreds of tiny things that constitute a life . . . and which I loved very much.

  The red pickup truck had put the question forthrightly: Was I prepared to sacrifice it all to find out who murdered Harry Starobin?

  No, I was not.

  “Jo,” I said as gently as possible, “they tried to murder us because we wouldn’t let your husband rest in peace.”

  “I don’t believe that, Alice. I have a right to find out who murdered Harry.”

  It was such a naive and ludicrous statement that I reacted sharply. “Don’t be stupid, Jo. I’m not talking about rights. I’m talking about all that cash in your vault and God-knows-what elsewhere. I’m talking about people who murder other people. Do you want to die, Jo? Those people, whoever they are, tried to kill us. And they’ll try again if we don’t stop.”

  She didn’t respond. She leaned her head back against the sofa pillows. A tiny speck of blood was seeping out of her bandage.

  I knew what she was thinking, that her good friend Alice was abandoning Harry. Yes, I was doing that. I was abandoning Harry and saving my life and hers. We had both gotten in too deep. We had both scratched the surface of something that was very dangerous.

  “So you just want us to stop,” she said, “to leave it all to that terrible Detective Senay who doesn’t know a thing about Harry . . . who doesn’t care about Harry.”

  “Yes.”

  “I should just go home and forget all about Harry’s papers and his death and that money, and all about Mona. Is that what I should do?”

  “Just proceed with your life, Jo.”

  “What life?”

  “Any life you can make.”

  “That’s easy for you to say, Alice.”

  She started to get up, but the effort was too much.

  “Please don’t be mad at me, Jo. Please.”

  She flailed her arms in the air and then brought them to her lap. “I’m not mad at you, Alice. I’m . . . it’s just that . . . poor Harry.” And she began to mumble incoherently.

  I covered her with a blanket and sat close to her. She had, I knew, accepted my decision, and I was relieved. I knew she was not capable of carrying on an investigation alone. We would both be safe if we distanced ourselves from Harry’s corpse . . . or rather his gravel-strewn ashes. But along with the relief came no small amount of shame. I had, after all, quit. The role was too difficult for me. The consequences were potentially too dangerous. I was too old for a fling like that. Pancho flew by along the far wall, heading toward the windowsills. I was safe. We were all safe.

  10

  It was the first day of February, a brooding, frigid day. I had just returned from a lunch meeting with my agent and “some people.” As usual, this kind of meeting had agitated me. I was not well-known enough as an actress to be offered parts like pieces of fruit, but I was too experienced and well-thought-of to be asked to read for many parts that I would have been delighted to read for. So, hoisted on that peculiar contradiction, I was always forced to have those strange, frustrating lunches with “some people” who were about to do a play or a movie or a PBS special.

  The whole thing was a sham anyway, because I hadn’t done any straight theater for a long time. I wasn’t interested in that stuff anymore. I was looking for parts that stretched the imagination, that took reality apart, and one didn’t find them with “some people.” I never left a lunch with them without muttering, “God bless cat-sitting.”

  So there I was, sitting on the sofa, indulging my latest bad habit—touching the small crescent-shaped scar which remained on the top of my forehead after they removed the bandage.

  A variant of my usual theatrical fantasy was beginning to form. I was appearing as a guest artist in some exotic foreign company like the Moscow Art Theatre. My role was minor, but as the play unfolded, I spoke my lines and exhibited such awesome stage presence that
my character totally overwhelmed the major characters in the play. At the end, roses were flung at me—large bloodred roses—as if I were a ballerina. It was such an egotistical adolescent fantasy that it always embarrassed me—but it never went away. And the fantasy always afforded me, during its course, intense joy, and why not?

  It was a magical, mystical, lunatic fantasy, and in each reenactment the vehicle changed. It was a Victorian costume drama. It was a sleazy detective drama. It was a Brechtian interpretation of the Theban Cycle.

  “Oh, Bushy,” I said, “how stupid and weary I am . . . and how bizarre my whole life has become—lunches and fantasies and kitty litter.” Bushy understood. That is what cats are all about.

  The phone rang. I figured it was my agent calling to tell me how the lunch had gone, how those “people” were excited by my talents. I let the phone ring a long time because I really didn’t want to talk to her. She was a nice, foolish woman but she had begun to harp on my stopping all that avant-garde nonsense and going back to where I “belonged”—Eugene O’Neill? And I kept saying, “Sure, get me some skinny Colleen Dewhurst parts.” Both of us were lying.

  When it didn’t stop ringing, I picked it up. It wasn’t my agent. It was Charlie Coombs, the trainer.

  He said he had something even better than horse stories to tell me. He said that an exercise rider who works for him lives in my neighborhood and will drive me out to the track in the morning to see how a great—chuckle—trainer like himself really trains racehorses.

  I stared at the phone. For the past few weeks I had thought about Charlie Coombs many times, but only in relation to Jo and her troubles, and I had not heard from Jo since she returned to Long Island, disgruntled at my defection.