The Cat Who Saw Red (15 page)

He congratulated the grandmotherly creator of the inside-out marble mocha whipped cream cake, the vivacious young matron with her brazil nut caramel angel cake, the delicate young man who was so proud of his sour cream chocolate velvet icebox cake, and finally the winner in the teenage class. She was a tiny girl with long straight hair and a wistful smile, and she had concocted a psychedelic cake. Qwilleran stared at the conglomeration of chocolate, nuts, marshmallows, strawberries, and coconut — the banana split cake of twenty-five years ago. He looked at the girl and saw Joy.

“Let’s get out of here,” he whispered to Rosemary. “I’m seeing ghosts.”

They drove home in the late evening — both of them relaxed and content to talk or not to talk as the mood prevailed — and it was midnight when they walked into the Great Hall at Maus Haus.

“When can I take you out to dinner again?” he asked Rosemary. “How about Tuesday evening?”

“I’d love to,” she said, “but I have to attend a recital. One of my grandsons is playing the violin.”

“You have a grandson?”

“I have three grandchildren.”

“I can’t believe you’re a grandmother! This violinist must be an infant prodigy.”

“He’s twelve,” said Rosemary as they started to climb the stairs. “He’s the youngest. The other two are in college.”

Qwilleran gazed at the grandmother-of-three with admiration. “You’d better get me some of that wheat germ,” he said. She smiled sweetly and triumphantly, and Qwilleran dropped the suitcases and kissed her.

At that moment they heard an outcry. Mrs. Marron came running from the kitchen corridor. She burst into tears.”

Rosemary ran downstairs and put an arm around the housekeeper. “What is it, Mrs. Marron? What’s wrong?”

“Something — something terrible,” the woman wailed. “I don’t know how to tell you.”

Qwilleran hurried down the stairs. “Is it William? What’s happened?”

Mrs. Marron gave him a terrified glance and launched another torrent of tears. “It’s the cats!” she wailed. “They took sick.”

“What!” Qwilleran started to bolt up the stairs three at a time but suddenly stopped. “Where are they?”

Mrs. Marron groaned. “They were — they were taken away.”

“Where?” he demanded. “To the vet? Which one? To the hospital?”

She shook her head and covered her face with her hands. “I called… I called the… Sanitation Department. They’re dead!”

“Dead! They can’t be! Both of them? They were perfectly all right. What happened?”

The housekeeper was too shaken to answer. She could only moan.

“Were they poisoned? They must have been poisoned! Who went near them?” He took Mrs. Marron by the shoulders and shook her. “Who got into my apartment? What did you feed them?”

She moved her head miserably from side to side. “By God!” Qwilleran said, “If it was poison, I’ll kill the one who did it!”

Qwilleran paced the floor of his apartment. Rosemary had offered to sit with him, but he had sent her away.

“My God! The Sanitation Department!” he said aloud, slapping his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Not even a chance to — I could have — at least I could have buried them with some kind of dignity.” He stopped, aware that he was talking to the four walls. He was accustomed to an audience. They had been such attentive listeners, such satisfactory companions, always ready to supply encouragement, entertainment, or solace, depending on his mood, which they had been able to sense unerringly. And now they were gone. He could not come to terms with the idea.

“The Sanitation Department!” he said again with a groan. Now he remembered: Koko had not wanted him to take the weekend trip. Perhaps the cat had an intimation of danger. The thought made Qwilleran’s grief all the more painful. His hands were clenched, his forehead damp. He was ready to destroy the beast who had destroyed those two innocent creatures. But where could he pin the blame? And how could he prove anything? Without the two small bodies he could never prove poison. But someone must have entered his apartment during his absence. Who? The only tenants in the house over the weekend, besides Mrs. Marron, were Max Sorrel, Charlotte Roop, Hixie, and Dan Graham. And perhaps William, if he had returned.

Qwilleran picked up the cat’s empty food plate and sniffed it. He took a sip from their water dish and spit it out. He smelled nothing unusual, tasted nothing suspicious. But he heard footsteps coming up the stairs. It would be Maus, he decided, returning from his weekend in Miami.

Qwilleran threw open his door and stepped into the hall to confront his landlord. It was not Maus; it was Max Sorrel.

“Man, what’s wrong with.you?” Sorrel said. “You look like you’ve got the d.t.’s.”

“Did you hear what happened to my cats?” Qwilleran bellowed. “I went away overnight, and they took sick and died. At least, that’s the story I got.”

“Damn shame! I know how you felt about those little monkeys.”

“I’ll tell you one thing! I’m not satisfied with the explanation. I think they were poisoned! And whoever did it is going to regret it!”

Sorrel shook his head. “I don’t know. I think there’s a jinx on this house. First the housekeeper and then me and then —”

“What do you mean? What about the housekeeper?” Qwilleran demanded.

“Tragic! Really tragic! Her grandson came to visit — little kid this high — and he fell in the river. Loose board in the boardwalk, they think… Look, Qwilleran, you need a slug of whiskey. Come on in and have a shot.”

“No, thanks,” said Qwilleran wearily. “I’ve got to work it out in my own way.”

He returned to Number Six and gazed at the emptiness. He wanted to move out. He would leave tomorrow. Go to a hotel. He made note of the things he would no longer need: the harness and leash hanging on the back of a chair; the blue cushion; the brush he had bought and forgotten to use; the cats’ commode in the bathroom with the gravel neatly scratched into one corner. They had been so meticulous about their housekeeping. Qwilleran’s eyes grew moist.

Knowing he would be unable to sleep, he sat down at his typewriter to turn out a column for the paper — a requiem for two lost friends. Putting it down on paper would relieve the pain, he knew. Now would be the time to reveal to the public Koko’s remarkable capabilities. He had solved three mysteries — homicide cases. He was probably the only cat in the country who owned a press card signed by the chief of police. Qwilleran rested his hands on the typewriter keys and wondered how to start, and as his mind swam in an ocean of words — none of them adequate — his eyes fell on the sheet of paper in the machine. There were two letters typed there: pb.

The newsman felt a chill in the roots of his mustache: poisoned beef!

Just then he heard a distant cry. He listened sharply. It sounded like a child’s cry. He thought of the drowned boy and shuddered. The cry came again, louder, and in the darkness outside the window there was a pale form hovering. Qwilleran rubbed his eyes and stared in disbelief. There was a scratching at the window.

“Koko!” the man yelled, yanking open the casement.

The cat hopped down onto the desk, followed by Yum Yum, both of them blinking at the lamplight. They made no sign of greeting but jumped to the floor and trotted to the kitchen, looking for their dinner plate. Avidly they lapped up water from their bowl.

“You’re starved!” Qwilleran said. “How long have you been out there?… Sanitation Department! What’s wrong with that woman? She was hallucinating!” He hurried to open a can of red salmon and watched them as they gobbled it. There was no observation of feline protocol this time, no nonsense about males before females; Yum Yum fought for her share.

Now Qwilleran dropped into his armchair, feeling an overwhelming fatigue. The cats finished eating, washed their faces, and then climbed into his lap together — something they had never done before. Their feet and tails were cold. They crawled up Qwilleran’s chest and lay on their bellies, side by side, looking into his face. Their eyes were large and anxious.

He hugged them both. He hugged Yum Yum tightly because he remembered how — in his first frenzied reaction to the bad news — his concern had been chiefly for Koko. He reproached himself now. He cherished them both equally, and if he valued Koko for his special talents, he also valued Yum Yum for her winning ways and the heartbreaking way she looked at him with slightly crossed eyes. In apology, he hugged her more tightly.

To Koko he said, “And I don’t care if you never solve another case.”

There was a definite odor about the cats. He sniffed their fur. It smelled earthy.

After a while they warmed their extremities and felt contented enough to purr, and eventually they dozed, still huddled on Qwilleran’s chest. He fell asleep himself and woke at daybreak, his shoulders stiff and his neck virtually paralyzed. The cats had moved to more comfortable berths elsewhere.

At first he had difficulty convincing himself that the panic of the night before had not been a nightmare, but as he took a hot shower he remembered the pleasures of the weekend as well as the pain he had felt upon arriving home. On his way down to breakfast he slipped a note under Rosemary’s door: “False alarm! Cats are home. Just wandered away. Mrs. M. is crazy.”

In the kitchen he found only Hixie, scrambling eggs and toasting split pecan rolls.

“Have you heard the news?” she asked with glee. “Mickey Maus is in Cuba. His plane was hijacked. And Mrs. Marron has quit, so we’re all on our own this morning.”

“She’s quit her job?”

“She left a note on the kitchen table saying she couldn’t stay after what happened this weekend. What happened? Did she get raped or something?”

“I don’t know exactly what happened or how,” Qwilleran said, “but she told a fib. I don’t know why, but she told me the cats got sick and died. Actually they’d climbed out the window, and they came home after midnight.”

“She was acting funny all day yesterday,” Hixie said. “Why would she say they were dead?”

“Do you know how to get in touch with her? I’d like to tell her to come back.”

“She has a married daughter somewhere in town… Oh, brother! This was the weekend that shouldn’t! Yesterday the hot water heater conked out; Mickey Maus was out of town; a delegation from the tennis club came over with a complaint; William never showed up; Max was working; Charlotte had the pip; so little me had to cope with everything, as if I didn’t have enough troubles of my own. Want some scrambled eggs?”

After breakfast Qwilleran telephoned Mrs. Marron’s daughter. “Tell her everything is all right. Tell her the cats have come back. Ask her if she’ll come to the phone and speak to Mr. Qwilleran.”

After some delay, Mrs. Marron came on the line, whimpering.

“Don’t worry about anything,” Qwilleran reassured her. “There’s no harm done, except that you gave me some anxious moments. The cats apparently got out on the roof. Did you open the window when you cleaned my room Saturday?”

“Just for a minute, when I shook the dust mop. They were asleep on that blue cushion. I looked to see.”

“Perhaps you didn’t latch the window completely; Koko is expert at opening latches if they’re halfway loose. But why did you invent that story about the Sanitation Department?”

Mrs. Marron was silent, except for moist sniffing. “I’m not angry, Mrs. Marron. I just want to know why.”

“I knew they had gone. When I went in to feed them on Sunday morning, I couldn’t find them. I thought — I thought they’d been snatched. You know what Mr. Graham always says —”

“But why did you tell me they were dead?”

“I thought — I thought it would be better for you to — think they were dead than not to know.” She started to sob. “My little Nicky, my grandson, he was missing for two weeks before they found him. It’s terrible not to know.”

Gently Qwilleran said, “You must come back, Mrs. Marron. We all need you. Will you come back?”

“Do you mean it?”

“Yes, I mean it sincerely. Hurry back before Mr. Maus returns, and we won’t say a word about the incident.”

Before leaving for the office, Qwilleran groomed the cats’ fur with the new brush. Koko took a fiendish delight in the procedure — arching his back, craning his neck, gargling throaty comments of appreciation. Then he flopped down on his side and made swimming motions.

“You’ve got a pretty good sidestroke,” Qwilleran said. “We may get you on the Olympic team.”

Yum Yum, however, had to be chased around the apartment for five minutes before she would submit to the brushing process, which she obviously adored.

“Typical female,” Qwilleran muttered, breathing heavily after the chase.

Their fur still smelled strongly of something. Was it clay? Had they been in the Grahams’ clay room? They could have gone out the window, around the ledge, and through another window. Then Mrs. Marron, coming in to feed them, had latched the casement, locking them out. Had they climbed onto the ledge to look for pigeons? Or did Koko have a reason for wanting to snoop in the pottery? Qwilleran felt an uneasiness in the roots of his mustache.

He opened the window to inspect the ledge. He moved the desk and gave a jump, hoisting himself across the high sill. Leaning far out, teetering across the sill, he could see the entire length of the ledge as it passed under the high windows of the kiln room and the large window of a room beyond, probably the Grahams’ loft apartment. But when he tried to wriggle back into the apartment, the window seemed to have shrunk. Inside the room his legs kicked ineffectually, while the bulk of his weight was outside.

Koko, fascinated by the spectacle of half a man where there should have been a whole one, leaped to the desk and howled.

“Don’t yell at me! Call for help!” Qwilleran shouted over his shoulder, but Koko only came closer and howled in the vicinity of Qwilleran’s hip pocket.

“What are you doing up there?” came a woman’s voice from below. Hixie was on her way to the garage.

“I’m stuck, dammit! Come up and give me a toehold.”

He continued to teeter on the fulcrum of the sill while Hixie ran indoors, ran upstairs to Number Six, ran downstairs to get the key from the kitchen, and ran upstairs again. After a few minutes of pulling, pushing, bracing, squeezing, and grunting — with Hixie squealing and the cats yowling — Qwilleran was dislodged. He thanked her gruffly.