Cat With a Fiddle (9781101578902)

by Adamson, Lydia

  Why couldn’t I remember that mythical foundress of the line? I definitely remembered laughing when I’d first heard about her, amused that there was an identifiable first lady of the Scottish Folds. There was something so refreshing about it. After all, no one could name the first man or woman to use fire. Or the first domesticated horse. But there really was one lady whom the whole world knew as the first folded-ear cat.

  If only I could have asked Lulu for the name of her great-great-great grandmother. I knew it was something simple and honest, like Betty, or Stella, or . . . Susan—was that it? Not Susan, Suzy! That was the name of the primeval Scottish Fold cat—the foundress.

  Suzy! I began to tunnel feverishly under my pillow. There at the top of one of the papers from Will’s room was the name, the heading on a faded family tree. Was I looking at a feline breeding chart compiled some time in the past, where I would find the foundation cat still perched on the top branch of the tree, where not enough generations had gone by to relegate Suzy to the mythical realm she now inhabited?

  I looked desperately, hopefully, at the second sheet of paper. The letters at the top of that one spelled out BRIT. Could this one be a breeding chart of the British short-haired cats used to establish the Scottish breed by outcrossing?

  I sent up a whoop of triumph, and then clamped my hands to my mouth, afraid the sound might have traveled down to the group. But I heard no footsteps on the stairs.

  I picked up the computer disk from Will Gryder’s stash, praying that it contained the secret of the charts.

  I needed help! On several fronts. And I knew just who I’d turn to for starters. But that would have to wait until morning. I was exhilarated, and just as exhausted. Yes, morning would come soon enough. It even comes after you’re dead, as my grandmother, in one of her darker moods, had once observed.

  Chapter 14

  By seven thirty the next morning I was in a phone booth in Northampton, at a little espresso place fitted out to pass for a coffee bar in Paris.

  I was placing a collect call to John Cerise in Glen Rock, New Jersey. John has nothing to do with either the theater or the music worlds. He’s a cat man, pure and simple. We met years ago when I first started cat-sitting for a rich lady on Central Park South whose passion was English shorthairs. Cerise was then, as he is now, a cat show judge and breeder, whose love for felines is proverbial. We rarely speak to each other more than twice a year, but there is a genuine affection between us. He also has a special spot in his heart for my crazy cat Pancho, who, John once said, is the reincarnation of one of Napoleon’s marshals.

  In his sixties now and extremely well preserved, John has the reputation of being a dandy. He always looks exotic, with his slicked-back ebony hair and, in summer, his elegant white linen suits. He is an ageless relic from another time and place. And it is very fitting that he is a cat man. He seems perfectly and easily androgynous. He exudes a kind of cool sensuality that is quite pleasing to be around, although one can rarely identify the objects of his passion. It is John Cerise I always call when I need feline information of any kind, particularly in matters criminal.

  The phone on the other end kept ringing and ringing. I counted fourteen rings before the dazed voice answered. I knew I’d be waking him. But he accepted the collect call gladly.

  It was too early to make small talk. As soon as I greeted him I asked for my favor: could he spend a few hours making calls and gathering information for me? I needed to know more about the Scottish Fold cats. About the breeding and buying and selling of them in the New York area during the 1970s.

  “What a strange request, Alice,” he said. Then he laughed, and added, “Well, I didn’t have much planned for today, anyway. And I’m not even going to ask you why you need this information, my dear. I know better.” I gave him the phone number at the Covington Center. He told me he’d call about seven that evening.

  I hung up and dialed my friend Amanda’s number. She lived in a cottage outside Northampton and taught at Smith. At least I had thought she still taught there, but when I reached her and offered to meet her before her first class, she told me she was on a year’s involuntary hiatus and was supporting herself doing freelance work. Amanda was bowled over when she heard I was calling from Northampton, only fifteen minutes away by car.

  “What are you doing up here?” she asked. It was Amanda, of course, who’d gotten me the lecturing assignment at Smith all those years ago. We still exchange postcards from time to time.

  “Just took a drive up to visit another friend,” I half lied.

  “Well, get over here immediately!”

  Her renovated cottage looked exactly the same as the last time I’d visited. So did Amanda: a small, strong-featured woman with close-cropped ringlets of gray hair. Her hair had turned irretrievably gray when she was in her early thirties, and that suited her just fine. She dressed like a bohemian sculptor, always sporting mile-long scarves or mufflers and thick, vengeful sandals. Her house was filled to bursting with books, thousands of them. And it seemed that at least half of them had to do with one aspect or another of Virginia Woolf and her times. What Amanda seemed to have done with her portion of passion in life—I’d never known her to have a man, a pet, or a vice—was to study and write about Virginia Woolf. Though she taught drama, not English Lit, she had been working on a manuscript for almost ten years now. It was to be the critical work on Woolf, if it ever got finished and published.

  “But I thought you were a full professor,” I said. “How can they just sort of lay you off that way?”

  “Full professor! Not by a long shot. No tenure, no stability.”

  We sat down amid the books. I felt awkward hiding the reason for my visit, so I just came out with it. I showed her the computer disk. “Do you have a printer . . . or a computer . . . or whatever . . . that can print this for me?”

  She examined the disk for a second. “Oh, sure. The printer’s in my study. I spend twelve hours a day in that damn room. . . . But first, tell me how you are.”

  Briefly, over a cup of dark tea, I told her about the savaging I had received for my role in Beast in the Jungle. Then I answered her questions, when I could, about the people we knew in common in New York. She seemed so lonely, hungry for news of any kind.

  When I said I was staying for a few days at the Covington colony, Amanda looked puzzled. She made a slight face, as if she thought such a place was beneath me. It was an odd response; I’d never thought of Amanda as any kind of snob. But perhaps she disapproved of such places on some principle known only to herself. I didn’t mention the Riverside String Quartet.

  Then she asked if I was still interested in the Virginia Woolf project we had been discussing off and on for years. Amanda had begun work on a one-woman show based on Woolf’s words, taken mainly from her diaries. I would be Virginia, of course. I said that I was still very much interested. She promised that one of these days she would finish it. And she reiterated that I would make a great V.W. “I’m tall enough, at any rate,” I said, “and look good in long dresses.”

  “You have her neck, too, Alice. That’s important. What about some more tea?”

  “Well . . .”

  Amanda smiled at me. She knew I was impatient. She knew that whatever my reason, I wanted that disk printed now. She took it from my hand. I followed her into the study, where the imposing overflow of books from the other room threatened to take over here as well.

  The “hard copy”—I don’t know why they call paper that—was ready in minutes. “There was only a few pages’ worth,” she said as she handed them to me. “Wait!” She did a double take as she looked down at the first sheet. “Alice . . . that name on the first page. Will Gryder. Alice, isn’t he the one who was murdered the other day? My lord, when you told me where you were staying, I thought I recalled reading something about it in the paper! That’s where it happened, isn’t it?�
��

  I nodded. Amanda released her hold on the short stack of papers. I stared down at the cover page, which read:

  OUTLINE OF UNSTRUNG

  A novel by Will Gryder

  The second sheet began:

  When it comes to greed, backstabbing, and sexual promiscuity, the world of the classical music professional takes a backseat to no other entertainment milieu—not even rock ‘n’ roll.

  I could hardly believe what I was reading. I began to giggle. And then I realized it wasn’t funny. I read a little more:

  This novel begins in New York in 1968. Four young women, two studying at Juilliard and two at the Mannes School, become friends.

  I didn’t need to read any more at the moment. I rolled up the sheets of paper. I had it! A big, fat, beautiful, seedy motive for murder. Will Gryder, pianist, composer, gourmet, and lothario, was about to become a trash novelist. He was writing a very thinly disguised “lives and loves” sort of thing about the Riverside Quartet. A pulp synthesis of Mary McCarthy’s The Group and Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon. But why shoot the piano player over that old tune? Sexual exposés are trivial nowadays. There had to be something else Will was going to write about. Something pretty bad. It had to be . . .

  “What’s going on, Alice?” Amanda demanded, obviously worried by the way my face was set.

  I had a reason to get back to the house in Covington—John Cerise was going to call me. But that was many hours away, and I didn’t want to be there if I didn’t have to be. Beth Stimson had invited me up for a vacation. So I was out vacationing, enjoying myself for a change.

  “Listen, Amanda. Do you have any of that project typed-up and handy?” I asked.

  Her eyes grew wide with excitement. “Oh, yes! The first act, taken from the 1915 to 1919 diaries.”

  “May I take a look?”

  “With pleasure.”

  For the next three hours I spoke Virginia Woolf’s diaries, as edited by Amanda Avery. We even rigged up a stage set in her living room, using a piano bench and some knicknacks.

  After the “performance” we drank strong coffee and talked about the possibilities for the script. It was fun. And it killed time. Later in the afternoon she made tuna sandwiches, which we had with some stale potato chips. It wasn’t the kind of meal Mrs. Wallace was turning out back at the house, but it filled me up. I promised Amanda I’d be better about writing to her, and that I’d make an effort to get up to western Mass. more often.

  I was back at Covington by six in the evening. I could hear laughter as I came in the front door.

  Darcy, Mat Hazan, Roz, and Miranda were lounging around, but Ben Polikoff and Beth were nowhere in sight.

  “I’ve got a new crop of viola jokes,” Darcy said. “The last time I had lunch with Judy Nelson she told me a few good ones.” She looked up and greeted me. “Come on in, Alice.”

  I said hello to the group, but stood tentatively near the door.

  “How do you know when you have a viola section on your front porch? . . . You open the front door and none of them knows when to come in.”

  Roz appreciated that one.

  “What’s the difference between a violist and a lawn mower?”

  “You can tune a lawn mower,” Hazan answered. “That used to be a soprano joke.”

  The group, except for Miranda, began to be exceedingly polite to me, questioning me about my day. I told them I had visited friends in town and stopped at a few museums in the area, then I excused myself, saying that I needed to shower and change.

  “Why are violists jokes so short?” I heard Darcy ask as I left. “So violinists can remember them.”

  Some tempting scents were wafting out of the kitchen. I heard Mrs. Wallace whistling as I climbed the stairs.

  The phone rang at six minutes past seven. Beth yelled up the stairs that I had a call. I was already waiting by the telephone in the corridor. I picked up the receiver and waited till the downstairs extension had clicked off.

  John had organized his information very well, and he relayed it to me efficiently and in sequence. I listened with growing awe and excitement, taking notes all the while. He spoke with virtually no interruption in the flow of the narrative for about twenty minutes, then stopped, asking, “Did I do all right, Miss Nestleton?”

  “Beyond my wildest dreams, John.”

  “I bet,” he said, “you say that to all the boys.”

  ***

  “Alice!”

  I was so startled by the sound of someone calling my name that I instinctively thrust the notes I’d taken under my pillow. Beth was standing at the door to my room. “Aren’t you coming to supper, Alice? Mrs. Wallace has outdone herself this time. I think she’s cooked Amish—or do I mean Alsatian?”

  “Thanks, but no, Beth. I’m not hungry.”

  “Well, then, come down for coffee and dessert. “Mathew’s going to play his pirated tapes of Callas in Norma.”

  “I won’t miss that,” I said.

  A few minutes later I could hear them all at table. I went out to the hall and made a hurried call to Ford Donaldson. Nothing could happen without his help.

  Chapter 15

  The room was warm as toast. And the musicians and their men were basking in the afterglow of the last chords in the immolation scene from something Teutonic.

  I had a certain amount of interest in the murky Maria Callas tape—which, I learned, had been secretly recorded in Dallas—but the scary German selections that followed it made my skin crawl.

  The music finally ended.

  I had a midnight appointment with Ford Donaldson. I could barely wait.

  Darcy was fiddling with a crossword puzzle, stopping every once in a while to relate another “lightbulb” joke that insulted violists. Mathew Hazan was scribbling in a spiral note pad. Beth was knitting leisurely with two lethal-looking needles, and the cat was skating around madly, snapping at the strings of purple yarn. Ben and Roz were dozing in facing armchairs, her feet in his lap. Miranda was stretched out on the sofa, entranced, it seemed, by whatever she was listening to on her Walkman. I was looking through a field guide to birds I’d found in the library, but my mind wasn’t on it. I kept watching the clock and counting the thuncks Mrs. Wallace made on her board as she sat coring green apples at the dining room table.

  At last, it was ten minutes to twelve.

  I announced to the drowsy group, “I’m going out for a bit.”

  “What!” Beth looked at me in astonishment. “But it’s freezing outside. And pitch-black! And besides, anybody could be . . . waiting out there.”

  Miranda sat up then. “Let her go, Beeswax,” she said dismissively. “Can’t you see the lady has a heavy date?”

  “I’m sure I’m quite safe outside,” I told Beth, ignoring Miranda. “I won’t be gone long.” I had a sudden desire to say that I was feeling a little “unstrung” and needed some air, using the title of Will Gryder’s secret novel. But I suppressed the impulse.

  I walked into the biting wind, plodding toward the road where I was to meet up with Donaldson. His car was there, the inside light on, motor idling. He reached over and wordlessly opened the door for me.

  “I guess I’ve ruined your evening,” I said apologetically, sliding in next to him.

  “Part of the job description,” he said stoically. “This couldn’t wait till morning, right?”

  “It couldn’t, no. I know why Will Gryder was murdered.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “And who killed him.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out the four-page printout of Unstrung.

  “What is this, Alice?”

  “Read it.”

  He finished two of the four pages, then repeated, �
�What is this, Alice?”

  “Exactly what it says it is!” His purposeful denseness was making me a little crazy. “A fictionalized treatment of the Riverside String Quartet and the people around them.”

  “Uh-huh.” He brushed at some imaginary lint on his coat sleeve. “Are you telling me, Alice, that somebody murdered that man because he was about to tell who was sleeping with who?”

  I took the pages back. “No, that isn’t what he was going to tell—I mean, he was, but that was the least of it. He was going to reveal something much more serious than that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well . . . I can’t tell you that right now.”

  I watched him slowly lower his head until it rested on the wheel. “Then why am I here?” he said weakly.

  “To help me—that is, for me to help you—get the murderer—in the next twenty-four hours. Do you hear what I’m saying? You can clear the case by tomorrow night.” I had used the term my policeman friend Rothwax always employed. Solving a murder was “clearing the case.”

  “Just tell me something,” Ford said after a long minute. “Does this have anything to do with stuffed animals?”

  “Really, Lieutenant! I want you to just tell me something: Do you want that murderer? Do you want to clear this case? In twenty-four hours?”

  He was frightened to accept my offer. But obviously frightened not to.

  “Listen, Alice, why can’t you just tell me what you know, and let me take your murderer in for questioning?”