The Cat Who Saw Red

by Lilian Jackson Braun

  Wrapped in his thoughts, Qwilleran rode a mile beyond Maus Haus and had to wait for another slow bus traveling in the opposite direction.

  When he finally arrived home, he found some changes in the Great Hall. The long dining table and the high-backed chairs had been moved aside, and the area was dotted with pedestals of various heights. In the center of the room a few railroad ties had been arranged on the floor to form a large square, and Dan Graham was down on hands and knees filling the square with pebbles. Alone in the vast hall, pushing the pebbles this way and that as if their placement mattered profoundly, he made a sad picture of insignificance, Qwilleran thought.

  "How's it going, Mr. Graham?" he asked.

  "Slow," said the potter. "It's not much fun doing the setup alone." He stood up and massaged his back, while viewing the pebbles critically. "My best pieces will be displayed on pedestals in this square. I'm gonna surprise this city, you can betcha boots."

  "How soon are we going to see the new pots?"

  "Maybe Monday or Tuesday. I've got some sweet patooties cooling in the kiln right now. Did you talk to anybody at the paper?"

  "Everything is under control. Don't worry about it," Qwilleran said, although he had forgotten to tell Riker about anything but Joy's disappearance. "Any news from your wife?"

  "Nope. Not a word. But it wouldn't surprise me if she came back in time for the hoopla on Wednesday. We sent out three hundred invitations last week. Should be a swell party. I'm shooting the works — bubble water, horses' duvvers, the right stuff, if you know what I mean. The critics better come, that's all I've got to say. . . Here, let me show you something." Graham reached around to his hip pocket and once more brought forth the yellowed clipping about his past glories.

  When Qwilleran went upstairs to Number Six, he found the cats waiting for him, with anticipation in the cock of their ears.

  "Koko, where is that guy getting the money to buy champagne for three hundred guests," Qwilleran asked him.

  The cat's eyes were like large black cherries in the lamplight — expressionless, yet holding all the answers to all the questions ever asked. Qwilleran arranged his coat over the back of a chair and whipped off his tie. Yum Yum watched the tie with bright, hopeful eyes. He usually switched it through the air for her to jump at and catch, but tonight he was too preoccupied to play. Instead he sat in the big chair, put on his glasses, and opened the packet of clippings from the Fluxion library.

  Robert Maus had not exaggerated. Every five years the Fluxion had resurrected the story of the mysteri- ous deaths at the pottery, most likely to embarrass the Morning Rampage. The rival newspaper was still financed by the Penniman family. It had been old Hugh Penniman who built the strange art center and hobnobbed with its arty residents.

  The stories, written in the old-fashioned Sunday supplement style, related how "a handsome young sculptor" by the name of Mortimer Mellon had fallen in love with "the lovely Helen Maude Hake," a lady potter. She, alas, happened to be the "protegee" of Hugh Penniman, "the well-known philanthropist." Following a "wild party" at the pottery, the body of the "lovelorn sculptor" was found in the river, and a verdict of accidental death was pronounced by the coroner. Not satisfied with the disposition of the case, reporters from the Fluxion attempted to interview other artists at the pottery, but the "slovenly Bohemians" showed "an insolent lack of cooperation." Soon afterward the episode came to "its final tragic end" when "the lovely Helen" took her own life, following Mortimer "to a watery grave." She left a suicide note that was never made public.

  Just as Qwilleran finished reading, he heard a thud at the opposite end of the room, and he turned to see a book with a red cover lying open and facedown on the floor. With a softer thump Koko landed on the floor beside it and started nosing it across the slippery tile floor.

  "Bad cat!" Qwilleran scolded. It was a library book-an old one, none too solid in the spine. "The librarian will have you shot! Bad cat!" Qwilleran repeated.

  As he scowled his displeasure, he saw Koko slowly arch his back and flatten his ears. The cat's brown tail stiffened, and he began to step around the book in a strange long-legged dance. He circled the book once, twice, three times, and Qwilleran felt a chill in the pit of his stomach. Once before, in an icy courtyard, he had seen Koko perform that ritual. Once before, the cat had walked around and around and around, and the thing he circled was a body.

  Now it was a book he was circling — an old red book titled The Ancient Art of Potting. The silence was broken only by the mournful sound of a boat whistle on the river.

  9

  Before going to bed Thursday night Qwilleran telephoned the Fluxion's night man at police headquarters and asked him to check for unidentified bodies dragged from the river in the last forty-eight hours.

  Kendall called back with the information. "There was one," he said. "Male. Caucasian. About sixty years old. Is that your boy?"

  Qwilleran slept fitfully that night, and between his restless moments he dreamed about seaweed — great curtains of seaweed undulating with the motion of the waves. Then it became a head of green hair swirling in dirty brown water.

  When he awoke in the morning he had a feeling; that his bones had turned to jelly. He dressed wearily, ignoring the cats, and they seemed to sense that he was preoccupied; they kept out of his way. It was when he started downstairs for a steadying cup of coffee that he walked into the situation that stiffened his spirit. He met Robert Maus on the stairs.

  The attorney stopped and faced him squarely, and the newsman saw that the black eye had faded to a banana-peel yellow. Maus gave the impression that he was about to say something momentous, and after a few long seconds it came out: "Mr. Qwilleran, do you, by any chance, have a moment of your valuable time to spare?"

  "I guess so."

  They went to Maus's apartment, a comfortable: place done in English antiques and broccoli-green; leather, with much polished brass and steel.

  The attorney bowed and motioned Qwilleran to a Bank of England chair. "The matter I have to discuss," he said, "concerns Mrs. Graham. I find it somewhat, shall I say, painful to approach you in this manner, and you must not, under any circumstance, consider this an accusation or even a reproach. However. . . a matter has been brought to my attention, signifying that a word with you at this time would not be amiss — in consideration of the apprehensions I entertain concerning what I humbly describe as . . . the respectability of this establishment."

  "What the devil is the problem?" Qwilleran demanded.

  The attorney raised a protesting hand. "Nothing that could be termed — in any real and active sense — a problem, I assure you, but rather a situation that has been brought to my cognizance. . . and in apprising you of the fact I am seeking neither confirmation nor denial. . . my only interest being to maintain good relationships. . ."

  "Okay, what's this all about?" Qwilleran snapped. "Let's have it!"

  Maus paused as if counting to ten and then stated slowly and carefully, "Mr. Graham, whom you have met. . . is under the impression. . . that his wife received considerable financial aid from you. . . to make her departure possible. I am not, I repeat — "

  Qwilleran jumped to his feet and walked impatiently across the Oriental rug. "How did I know she was going to run off? She was going to get a divorce. You know that as well as I do. And one of your legal buddies had his hand out for more than she could afford. And if Dan has a complaint, why doesn't he come and see me about it?"

  Maus lowered the pitch of his voice and spoke apologetically. "He fears — whether with or without cause, I do not know, — that a confrontation might, shall we say, impair his chances of favorable comment in the. . . publication you represent."

  "Or — to put it more honestly — he's hoping his accusation will make me feel so guilty that I'll knock myself out to get a picture of his pots on the front page. It's not the first time I've run up against that simpleminded strategy. It's a stupid move, and I may get mad enough to forget the free publicity entire
ly. You can tell him that!"

  Maus raised both hands. "Let us preserve our equanimity, at all costs, and bear in mind that my only motive intervening is to prevent any taint of . . .

  scandal."

  "You're apt to have something worse than scandal on your hands!" Qwilleran roared as he stormed out of the apartment.

  He was still irritable when he arrived at the Fluxion to pick up his paycheck and open his mail. He went through his mail hopefully each day, and his pulse still skipped a beat every time the telephone jangled, although instinct told him there would be no word from Joy.

  In the feature department he said to Riker, "Come on down to the coffee shop. I've got a few things to tell you."

  "Before I forget it," the feature editor said, "would you attend a press luncheon this noon and write a few inches for tomorrow's paper? They're introducing a new product."

  "What kind of product?"

  "A new dog food."

  "Dog food! Isn't that stretching my responsibilities I as gourmet reporter?"

  "Well, you haven't done anything else to earn your paycheck this week — not that I can see. . . Come on. What's on your mind?"

  The Fluxion coffee shop was in the basement, and at midmorning it was the noisiest and therefore the most private conference room in the building. Newspaper deadlines being what they were, the compositors were having their dinner, the pressmen were having their lunch, the advertising representatives were having breakfast, and the clerical workers were having their first coffee break. The concrete-walled room shook with the roar of nearby presses; customers were shouting at one another; counter girls yelled orders; cooks barked replies; busboys slammed dishes; and a radio was bleating without an audience for the reason that it could not possibly be heard. The resulting din made the coffee shop highly desirable for confidential conversations; only mouth-to-ear shouts were audible.

  The two men ordered coffee, and the feature editor asked for a chocolate-frosted doughnut as well. "What's up?" he shouted in Qwilleran's ear.

  "About Dan Graham! That story he told!" Qwilleran shouted back. "I think it's a lie!"

  "What story?"

  "About Joy's hair getting caught in the wheel."

  "Why would he lie?"

  Qwilleran shook his head ominously. "I think something's happened to Joy. I don't think she ran away."

  "But you saw a car — "

  "Max Sorrel's! Fire at his restaurant!"

  The waitress banged two coffees on the counter.

  "This hunch of yours — " Riker yelled.

  "Wretched thought!"

  "Wretched what?"

  "Wretched thought!"

  "You don't mean. . ." The editor's face was pained.

  "I don't know." Qwilleran touched his mustache nervously. "It's a possibility."

  "But where's the body?"

  "Maybe in the river!"

  The two men stared into the depths of their coffee cups and let the deafening cacophony of the coffee shop assault their numb eardrums.

  "Another thing!" Qwilleran shouted after a while. "Dan knows about my check! The seven-fifty!"

  "How'd he find out?" Qwilleran shrugged.

  "What are you going to do?"

  "Keep asking questions!"

  Riker nodded gravely.

  "Don't tell Rosie!"

  "What?"

  "Don't tell Rosie! Not yet!"

  "Right!"

  "Upset her!"

  "Right!"

  Qwilleran survived the dog food luncheon and wrote a mildly witty piece about it for the feature page, comparing the simplicity of canine cuisine with the gustatory demands of catdom. Then he went home to feed Koko and Yum Yum, but first he stopped at a delicatessen. He hungrily eyed the onion rolls, chopped chicken livers, and pickled herring, but he steeled himself and bought only a chub for the cats. He had abandoned once and for all his experiment with canned cat food.

  He had slipped a note under William's door that morning, inviting the houseboy to have dinner with him at a new restaurant called the Petrified Bagel, and now the young man met him in the Great Hall and accepted with glee.

  "Let's leave about six-thirty," Qwilleran suggested. "Is that too early?"

  "No, that's good," said William. "I have to go over to my mother's house after. You don't have a car, do you? We can take mine."

  Qwilleran went upstairs, taking three of the stone steps at a time. Suddenly he was filled with an unwarranted exhilaration. The bewilderment was over; he had a job to do. Now that he felt certain his hunch was correct — now that he could proceed with his unofficial investigation — his spirit rose to the challenge. Instead of grief for Joy he felt a fierce loyalty to her memory. And it was the memory that he loved, he had to confess. It was Joy Wheatley, age nineteen, who had made his heart beat fast on Monday night — not Joy Graham. Two decades of separation made a difference, he now admitted, even though he had convinced himself for a few days that nothing had changed.

  The cats caught his high-key mood and raced about the apartment — up on the bookcase, down to the floor, around the big chair, under the table, up on the captain's bunk — with Yum Yum in the lead and Koko following so close behind that they made a single blur of blond fur. Rounding a curve, she slowed for a fraction of a second, and Koko ran over her. Then she was chasing him.

  Qwilleran dodged the hurtling bodies, removed his shoes, and stepped on the scale. He stepped off with a smile of satisfaction. It was a fine spring night. The ventilating panes in the big studio window were open, and the breeze was gentle. Somewhere in or around the building a man's voice could be heard, singing "Loch Lomond," and it gave Qwilleran a moment of nostalgia; it had been his father's favorite.

  He met William in the Great Hall; the houseboy had dressed for the occasion in a wrinkled sports coat the color of gravy. A long black limousine of ancient vintage stood quietly rumbling at the front door.

  "Looks like a hearse," Qwilleran remarked.

  "Best I could get for fifty dollars," William apologized. "I've been warming her up, because she takes a little coaxing before she starts to roll. Open the door easy, or it'll come off."

  "Must cost you a fortune in gas."

  "I don't use her that much, but she comes in handy for dates. Would you like to drive? Then I can hold the passenger door on."

  With Qwilleran behind the wheel, Black Beauty moved majestically down the drive with the authoritative rumbling of a car with a defective muffler. Several times when he glanced in the rearview mirror, he thought he was being followed, but it was only the tail of the limousine looming up in the distance.

  The restaurant was in that part of the city known as Junktown, a declining neighborhood that a few enterprising preservationists were trying to restore. A former antique shop on Zwinger Street was now making a brave comeback as a restaurant, and the Petrified Bagel was furnished, appropriately, with junk. Old kitchen chairs and tables, no two alike, were painted in mismatched colors, and the burlap- covered walls were decorated with relics from the city dump, while the waiters appeared to be derelicts recruited from Junktown's bars and alleys.

  "The food may not be the greatest," Qwilleran told William, "but it should make a colorful story for my column."

  "Who cares, when it's free?" was the houseboy's attitude.

  They took a table against the wall, beneath an arrangement of rusty plumbing fixtures, and hardly had they pulled up their chairs when their waiter was upon them.

  "What wudjus like?" he asked. "Wudjus like a drink from the bar?" He wore a black suit, a few sizes too large, and a crooked bow tie, and if he had shaved, he had done so with a butter knife.

  William said he'd like a beer, and Qwilleran ordered a lemon and seltzer.

  "Wudjus say that again?"

  "A beer for the gentleman," Qwilleran said, "and I'll have some soda water with a squeeze of lemon." To William he said, "I know this neighborhood. I used to live in the old Spencer mansion on this block — a historic house with a ghost
."

  "Honest? Did you ever see the ghost?"

  "No, but some strange things happened, and it was hard to sort out the pranks of the disembodied lady from the pranks of my cats."

  The waiter returned empty-handed. "Wudjus like sugar in that?"

  "No, just lemon and soda water."

  William said, "How are the cats doing with their typing lessons?"

  "You'd never believe it, but Koko actually typed a word the other day. A rather elementary word, but. . ." Qwilleran looked up and caught the Irish twinkle in the houseboy's eye. "You dog!" Qwilleran said. "Is that what you were doing in my apartment Wednesday night? My spies saw you sneaking in."

  William guffawed loudly. "I wondered how long it would be before you got the picture. I found some caviar in Mickey Maus's refrigerator and took it up to your cats. They liked it."

  "Who wouldn't?"

  The waiter brought the drinks. "Wudjus like something to go with it?"