The Cat Who Wasn't There

by Lilian Jackson Braun

  Qwilleran, who was without his car at the moment, jogged to the police station, hoping to catch Brodie in the office, but the chief was striding out of the building. “Do you have a minute, Andy?” Qwilleran asked urgently.

  “Make it half a minute.”

  “Okay. I attended the preview of the Goodwinter sale and saw someone who is undoubtedly Charles Edward Martin.”

  “Who?”

  “The guy I suspect of being the Boulevard Prowler. I tried to get him into conversation, but he was closemouthed. When Polly was threatened three months ago, you checked the registration and came up with the name of Charles Edward Martin. The same car has been spotted three times in the last few days: headed for Shantytown, parked near the Shipwreck Tavern, and pulling out of the parking lot at Indian Village.”

  “Probably selling cemetery lots,” Brodie quipped as he edged toward the curb. “I can’t pick him up for driving around with a foreign license plate. Has Polly been threatened again? Has he been hanging around the boulevard after dark?”

  “No,” Qwilleran had to admit, although he pounded his moustache with his fist. How could he explain? Brodie might accept the idea of a psychic cat, but he’d balk at a moustache that telegraphed hunches.

  “Tell you what to do, Qwill. Get your mind off those damned license plates. Come to the lodge hall for dinner tonight. It’s Scottish Night. Six o’clock. Tell ’em at the door you’re my guest.” Brodie jumped into a police car without waiting for an answer.

  Qwilleran went for a long walk. While he walked, he assessed his apprehensions in connection with the Boulevard Prowler. As a crime reporter and war correspondent he had faced frequent danger without a moment’s fear. Now, for the first time in his life, he was experiencing that heart-sinking sensation—fear for the safety of another. For the first time in his life, he had someone close enough to make him vulnerable. It was a realization that warmed his blood and chilled it at the same time.

  As for Brodie’s patronizing invitation, he was inclined to ignore it. He knew many of the lodge members, and he had passed the hall hundreds of times—a three-story stone building like a miniature French Bastille—but he had never stepped inside the door. True, he had a certain amount of curiosity about Scottish Night, but he decided against it. Brodie’s cheeky attitude annoyed him. And how good could the food be at a lodge hall?

  In that frame of mind he returned to the apple barn, expecting to thaw some sort of meal out of the freezer. The Siamese met him at the door as usual and marched to the feeding station, where they sat confidently staring at the empty plate. Well aware of priorities in that household, Qwilleran opened a can of boned chicken for the cats before checking his answering machine and going up the ramp to change into a warmup suit. And then it happened again!

  He was halfway to the balcony when Koko rushed him. This time he heard the thundering paws on the ramp and braced himself before the muscular body crashed into his legs.

  “What the devil are you trying to tell me?” he demanded as Koko picked himself up, shook his head, and licked his left shoulder.

  In the past Koko had thrown irrational catfits when Qwilleran was making the wrong decision or following the wrong scent. Whatever his present motive, his violence put Brodie’s invitation in another light, and Qwilleran continued up the ramp—not to change into a warmup suit but to shower and dress for Scottish Night.

  He drove to the lodge hall on Main Street, and as he parked the car he saw men in kilts and tartan trews converging from all directions. At the door he was greeted by Whannell MacWhannell, the portly accountant from the Bonnie Scots Tour, who looked even bigger in his pleated kilt, Argyle jacket, leather sporran, tasseled garters, and ghillie brogies.

  “Andy told me to watch for you,” said Big Mac. “He’s upstairs, tuning up the doodlesack, but don’t tell him I called it that.”

  Most of the men gathering in the lounge were in full Highland kit, making Qwilleran feel conspicuous in a suit and tie. As a public figure in Pickax he was greeted heartily by all. “Are you a Scot?” they asked. “Where did you get the W in your name?”

  “My mother was a Mackintosh,” he explained, “and I believe my father’s family came from the Northern Isles. There’s a Danish connection somewhere—way back, no doubt.”

  The walls of the lounge were hung with colorful clan banners—reproductions, MacWhannell explained, of the battle standards that were systematically burned after the defeat at Culloden.

  “What tartan are you wearing?” Qwilleran asked him.

  “Macdonald of Sleat. The MacWhannells are connected with that clan, somewhere along the line, and Glenda liked this tartan because it’s red. Why don’t you order a Mackintosh kilt, Qwill?”

  “I’m not ready for that yet, but I’ve been boning up on Mackintosh history—twelve centuries of political brawls, feuds, raids, battles, betrayals, poisonings, hangings, assassinations, and violent acts of revenge. It’s amazing that we have any Mackin-toshes left.”

  At a given signal the party trooped upstairs to the great hall, a lofty room decorated wall-to-wall with weaponry. Six round tables were set for dinner, each seating ten. At each place a souvenir program listed the events of the evening and the bill of fare: haggis, tatties and neeps, Forfar bridies, Pitlochry salad, tea, shortbread, and a “wee dram” for toasting.

  “We’ll sit here and save a seat for Andy,” said Big Mac, leaning a chair against a table. “He has to pipe in the haggis before he can sit down.”

  Looking around at the ancient weapons on the walls, Qwilleran remarked, “Does the FBI know about the arsenal you have up here? You could start a war with Lockmaster.”

  “It’s our private museum,” said his host. “I’m the registrar. We have 27 broadswords, 45 dirks, 12 claymores, 7 basket hilts, 14 leather bucklers, 12 pistols, 21 muskets, and 30 bayonets, all properly catalogued.”

  Politely Qwilleran inquired about Glenda’s health. “Has she recovered from the stress of the tour?”

  “Frankly, she should have stayed in Pickax. She doesn’t like to travel,” her husband explained. “She’d rather watch video travelogues. I took eight hundred pictures on this trip just for her. She gets a kick out of putting them in albums and labeling them. How about you? Did you stick it out to the end?”

  “All except Edinburgh, but I’d like to go back there with Polly someday.”

  “We spent a couple of days in Auld Reekie before catching our plane. I left Glenda in the hotel and went out taking pictures. You can get some good bird’s-eye views in Edinburgh. I climbed 287 steps to the top of a monument. The castle rock is 400 feet high. Arthur’s Seat is 822 feet. Funny name for a hill, but the Scots have some funny words. How about ‘mixty-maxty’ and ‘whittie-whattie’? Don’t ask me what they mean.”

  Big Mac was more talkative than he had been with the nervous Glenda in tow, and he had statistics for everything: where 300 witches were burned and who died from 56 dagger wounds. He was interrupted by the plaintive wail of a bagpipe.

  The rumble of male voices faded away. The double doors burst open, and a solemn procession entered and circled the room, led by Chief Brodie. Normally a big man with proud carriage, he was a formidable giant in full kit with towering feather “bonnet,” scarlet doublet, fur sporran, and white spats. With the bag beneath his arm and the drones over his shoulder, he swaggered to the slow heroic rhythm of “Scotland the Brave,” the pleated kilt swaying and the bagpipe filling the room with skirling that stirred Qwilleran’s Mackintosh blood. Behind the piper marched a snare drummer, followed by seven young men in kilts and white shirts, each carrying a tray. On the first was a smooth gray lump; that was the haggis. On each of the other six trays was a bottle of Scotch. They circled the room twice. Then a bottle was placed on each table, and the master of ceremonies—in the words of Robert Burns—addressed the “great chieftain o’ the puddin’ race,” after which the assembly drank a toast to the haggis. It was cut and served, and the marchers made one more turn about th
e room before filing out through the double doors to the lively rhythm of a strathspey.

  Brodie returned without bagpipe and bonnet to join them at the table.

  “Weel done, laddie,” Qwilleran said to him. “When a Brodie plays the pipe, even a Mackintosh gets goosebumps. That’s an impressive instrument you have.”

  “The chanter’s an old one, with silver and real ivory. You can’t get ’em like that any more,” Brodie said. “I’m a seventh-generation piper. It used to be a noble vocation in the Highlands. Every chief had his personal piper who went everywhere with him, even into battle. The screaming of the pipes drove the clans to attack and unnerved the enemy. At least, that was the idea.”

  When dinner was served, Big Mac leaned over and asked the chief, “Are you related to the master criminal of Edinburgh, Andy? I saw the place where he was hanged in 1788.”

  “Deacon Brodie? Well, I admit I’ve got his sense of humor and steel nerves, but he wasn’t a piper.”

  Qwilleran said, “We’ve had a lot of excitement on Goodwinter Boulevard this week, with the TV coverage and the mob that turned out for the preview.”

  “It’ll be worse tomorrow,” Brodie said with a dour look.

  “Why is the sale being held at the house?”

  “Too many ways to cheat when it’s trucked away for an auction. I’m not saying Foxy Fred is a crook, you understand, but Dr. Melinda’s a sharpie. Never underestimate that lassie!”

  “Tell me something, Andy—about those break-ins on Purple Point. We never had break-ins when I first came here, but since they’ve started promoting tourism, the picture is changing.”

  “You can’t blame the tourists for Purple Point; that was done by locals—young kids, most likely—who knew when to hit. They knew the cottages are vacant in September except on weekends. Besides, they took small stuff. An operator from Down Below would back a truck up to the cottage and clean it out.”

  “What kind of thing did they take?”

  “Electronic stuff, cameras, binoculars. It was kids.”

  The emcee rapped for attention and announced the serious business of drinking toasts. Tribute was paid to William Wallace, guerrilla fighter and the first hero of Scotland’s struggle for independence.

  MacWhannell said to Qwilleran, “He was a huge man. His claymore was five feet four inches long.”

  Then the diners toasted the memory of Robert the Bruce, Mary Queen of Scots, Bonnie Prince Charlie, Flora Macdonald, Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, and Robert Louis Stevenson, the response becoming more boisterous with each ovation. Qwilleran was toasting with cold tea, but the others were sipping usquebaugh.

  The evening ended with the reading of Robert Burns’s poetry by the proprietor of Scottie’s Men’s Store and the singing of “Katie Bairdie Had a Coo” by the entire assembly with loud and lusty voices, thanks to the usquebaugh. That was followed by a surprisingly sober “Auld Lang Syne,” after which Brodie said to Qwilleran, “Come to the kitchen. I told the catering guy to save some haggis for that smart cat of yours.”

  Many of the members lingered in the lounge, but Qwilleran thanked his host and drove home with his foil-wrapped trophy. When he reached the barn the electronic timer had illuminated the premises indoors and out. “Treat!” he shouted as he entered through the back door, his voice reverberating around the balconies and catwalks. The cats came running from opposite directions and collided head-on at a blind corner. They shook themselves and followed him to the feeding station for their first taste of haggis.

  As Qwilleran watched their heads bobbing with approval and their tails waving in rapture, an infuriating thought occurred to him: Is this why Koko wanted me to go to the lodge hall? The notion was too farfetched even for Qwilleran to entertain. And yet, he realized Koko was trying to communicate.

  Qwilleran wondered, Am I barking up the wrong tree? . . . Am I suspecting the wrong person? . . . Are my suspicions totally unfounded? And then he wondered, Am I working on the wrong case?

  He considered Koko’s reaction to Melinda’s voice on the tapes . . . the licking of photographs in which she appeared . . . the whisker-bristling when she called on the phone . . . his hostile attitude after Qwilleran had spent a mere two minutes with her at the rehearsal. It could be Koko’s old animosity, remembered through sounds and smells. It could be a campaign to expose something reprehensible: a lie, a lurking danger, a guilty secret, a gross error.

  That was when Qwilleran dared to wonder, Did Melinda make a mistake in Irma’s medication? Could it be that she—not the bus driver—was responsible for Irma’s fatal attack?

  FOURTEEN

  ON SATURDAY MORNING, in the hours between midnight and dawn, residents of Goodwinter Boulevard sleeping in bedrooms insulated by foot-thick stone walls became aware of a constant rumbling, like an approaching storm. If they looked out the window, they saw a string of headlights moving down the boulevard. Several of the residents called the police, and the lone night patrol that responded found scores of cars, vans, and pickups parked at the curb, leaving a single lane for moving traffic. The occupants of these vehicles had brought pillows, blankets, and thermos jugs; some had brought children and dogs. The more aggressive were on the front porch of the Goodwinter mansion, lined up on the stone floor in sleeping bags.

  When the officer ordered the motorists to move on, they were unable to comply, being trapped at the curb by incoming bumper-to-bumper traffic. Both eastbound and westbound lanes were clogged with the constant stream of new arrivals, and when the curb space was all occupied, they pulled into private drives and onto the landscaped median. The patrol car itself was unable to move after a while, and the officer radioed for help.

  Immediately the state police and sheriff’s cars arrived, only to be faced with a vehicular impasse. Not a car could move. By this time lights were turned on in all the houses, and influential residents were calling the police chief, the mayor, and Foxy Fred at their homes, routing them out of bed and into the chill of a late September morning.

  First, the police blockaded the entrance to the westbound lane and started prying vehicles from the eastbound lane until the traffic flow was restored. Motorists who had parked in private drives or on the grassy median were ticketed and evicted.

  By that time, dawn was breaking, and legal parkers were allowed to stay, since the city had lifted the ban on curb parking for the duration of the tag sale. As for the evicted vehicles, they now lined both sides of Main Street, while more traffic poured into the city from all directions.

  Qwilleran heard about the tie-up on the WPKX newscast and called Polly. “How are you going to get out to go to work?” he asked.

  “Fortunately it’s my day off, and I’m not leaving my apartment for anything less than an earthquake. Besides, my car is at Gippel’s garage . . . You can imagine that Bootsie is quite upset by the commotion.”

  “What’s wrong with your car?”

  “It’s the carburetor, and the mechanic is sending away for a rebuilt one. It won’t be ready until Tuesday. But that’s no problem; I can walk to and from the library.”

  “I don’t want you walking alone,” he said.

  “But . . . in broad daylight?” she protested.

  “I don’t want you walking alone, Polly! I’ll provide the transportation. Is there anything I can do for you today? Need anything from the store?”

  “Not a thing, thank you. I plan to spend the day cleaning out closets.”

  “Then I’ll pick you up at six-thirty tomorrow night,” he said. “We have a seven o’clock reservation at Linguini’s.”

  Qwilleran lost no time in hiking to the tag sale. It was his professional instinct to follow the action. The action was, in fact, all over town. The overflow from Goodwinter Boulevard and Main Street now filled the parking lots at the courthouse, library, theatre, and two churches, as well as the parking space that business firms provided for customers only.

  On the boulevard excited pedestrians who had parked half a mile away were swa
rming toward No. 180, while others were leaving the area with triumphant smiles, carrying articles like bed pillows, boxes of pots and pans, and window shades. Foxy Fred had organized the crowd in queues, admitting only a few at a time, and the lineup extended the length of the westbound sidewalk and doubled back on itself before doing the same on the eastbound sidewalk. Persons with forethought had brought folding camp stools, food, and beverages.

  Across from the doctor’s residence there was another stone mansion that Amanda Goodwinter had inherited from her branch of the family, and when Qwilleran arrived on the scene she was standing on her porch with hands on hips, glaring at the mob.

  “The city council will act on this at our next meeting!” she declared when she saw him. “We’ll pass an ordinance against disrupting peaceful neighborhoods with commercial activities! I don’t care that she’s my cousin and a doctor and an orphan! This can’t be allowed! She’s a selfish brat and always has been!” Amanda looked fiercely up and down the street. “The first person who parks in my drive or on my lawn is going to get a blast of buckshot!”

  Qwilleran pushed his way through the crowd and around to the back door, flashing his press card, and entered through the kitchen, where he scrounged a cup of coffee. In the front of the house Foxy Fred’s red-coated helpers were expediting sales and handling will-calls. Portable items were carried to the row of cashiers in the foyer, and purchasers of furniture and other large items were instructed to haul them away on Monday, or Tuesday—no later.

  The Comptons were there, and Lyle said to Qwilleran, “If you think this is a mess, wait till the trucks start coming to pick up the big stuff next week.”

  “We’ve got a will-call on that black walnut breakfront,” Lisa said. “I’d love to have the silver tea set.” She glanced at her husband hopefully.

  “At that price we don’t need it,” he said. “There are no bargains here. Melinda’s going to make out like gangbusters on this sale. I saw a lot of vans and station wagons with out-of-county plates, probably dealers willing to pay the prices she’s asking.”