The Cat Who Tailed a Thief (19 page)

Carter Lee’s jaw clenched and he stared wordlessly at Qwilleran, who said amiably, “Did you enjoy that? Would you like to hear it again?”

The man on the sofa turned to his companion and thundered, “Go to the car!”

“Why?” she whined, pouting at her unfinished drink.

“Go and get in the car! Do as I say!”

Reluctantly she went to the foyer to put on her boots.

“Forget the boots! Get out of here!”
Then, as the door slammed, he said to Qwilleran, “Very funny! What kind of game are you playing?”

There was a click overhead as the levered door handle of the cats’ apartment unlatched. The other door squeaked.

“An old Moose County game known as ‘Call the Prosecutor.’”

With one swift movement Carter Lee was on his feet and reaching for the dirk.

Qwilleran jumped out of his chair. “Hold it! There’s a witness up there!” He pointed to the balcony. Koko was teetering on the railing. Wetherby was coming out of the bedroom.

In the split second that Carter Lee hesitated, a flying object dropped down on him like an eagle on a rabbit. He screamed as claws gripped his head. Half blinded by trickles of blood, he staggered toward the foyer, falling over furniture, groping for the front door, with Koko still riding on his head and howling. Qwilleran was yelling at him to get down; Yum Yum was shrieking in alarm; Wetherby was bellowing as he pounded down the stairs. It was one minute of chaos until Koko swooped to the floor and Carter Lee made it out the front door.

“Let’s follow him!” Qwilleran shouted.

“We’ll take my van! It’s in the drive!”

They grabbed their jackets and left Koko licking his claws.

The Land-Rover splashed down River Lane and turned left to the gatehouse, then left again on Ittibittiwassee with Wetherby’s vehicle not far behind.

“Where do they think they’re going?” Qwilleran said as he reached for the car phone.

“She’s driving. Look at that van weaving!”

On the phone he said, “Qwilleran reporting. Suspected murderer and accomplice headed west on Ittibittiwassee in white and red Land-Rover. Male suspect has head injuries. Female driving erratically. Now three miles east of bridge. This report from pursuit car. Over.”

The reply was inaudible as their tires whined through floods. Plumes of spray from the car ahead hit their windshield, and the wipers worked frantically to maintain visibility.

Qwilleran shouted above the racket, “If they get across the bridge, they’ll run right into the police!”

“I’m gonna hang back a bit, Qwill. This is suicide!”

They covered the next two miles without talking. Then Qwilleran shouted, “It worked! The trick worked!”

“I heard every word.”

“Let’s hear it for Koko!”

“The bridge is around the next curve,” Wetherby said.

“Stop on the hill.”

On the crest they pulled over and parked on a muddy shoulder. From there they could see the fugitive vehicle approaching a bridge submerged except for the guard rails. The river was churning and roaring.

“They’ll never make it.”

“They’re gonna try.”

As they watched, a surge came downstream—a huge wave bringing tree trunks, a chunk of concrete from a culvert, and timbers from the shattered mill wheel. It was the kind of debris that would collect at a crook in the river, then suddenly let loose. The surge hit the bridge like a battering ram as the Land-Rover put on speed.

“Stupid!” Wetherby yelled.

The bridge-bed cracked and heaved and pitched the white and red van over the guardrail to be swept along in the turbulent water until it snagged on the branches of a fallen oak. There it hung, trapped between the crotch of the ancient tree and an enormous boulder.

“Can you see them, Joe?”

“No sign of life. I hope their seatbelts were fastened.”

The flashing lights of police vehicles came into view across the river, and the far-off sirens of rescue equipment wailed above the crashing tumult. Qwilleran called his newspaper to send a reporter and photographer. Wetherby said it would take a crane to release the trapped van, but the rescue squad could probably reach the passengers with a cherry picker.

Qwilleran said, “Let’s go home and see if the surge is doing any damage.”

“Yeah. . . and I could use one of those margaritas.”

The water was running high past the condos, but there was still no threat to the buildings.

While Wetherby mixed himself a drink, Qwilleran checked in with Polly.

“Qwill! Where have you been?” she asked anxiously. “I’ve been trying to reach you!”

“I had to go out for a while.”

“They just announced that a surge coming downstream from the Rocky Burn was diverted by a cave-in at the Buckshot mine, at least temporarily. That’s why we’re not flooding.”

“Stay tuned,” he said. “You may hear some more surprising news.”

Wetherby called to him, “Shall I pour you a Squunk water?”

“No, I need something stronger,” Qwilleran said. “Open a ginger ale.”

Moose County’s last square inch of snow melted at 2:07 P.M. on February 15, an all-time record. The rain stopped falling; the flood waters receded; and soon the farmers would be worrying about a summer drought. On the air the weatherman said,
“Come, gentle spring! ethereal mildness, come!”

“Lynette would have loved that quotation,” Polly said to Qwilleran.

“It sounds familiar. Who wrote it?”

“Coleridge. . . I believe.”

Since meeting Wetherby Goode, he had stopped making needling remarks about his literary allusions. The two men now shared a secret. They had agreed not to reveal their role in the entrapment and flight of Carter Lee James. When Brodie questioned him, Qwilleran shrugged it off. “I simply confronted Carter Lee with what I thought was the truth; he threatened me; and Koko chased him out of the house.”

Miraculously the fugitives had survived the rough tumble in the raging river but were still hospitalized under police arrest. The man would be charged with murder and twenty counts of fraud; the woman, an admitted kleptomaniac, would turn state’s witness against him in exchange for immunity. On the gossip circuit the locals were saying:

“That ain’t his real name. Down Below they fake driver’s licenses, credit cards, Social Security numbers—everything.”

“He looked like such a gentleman! All those monogrammed shirts! I can’t believe he’d commit murder!”

“Everybody said she shouldn’t have married outside her clan and not so fast. She hardly knew him!”

“Well, she was forty. She didn’t have time to waste.”

“CLJ must be his real initials, or he’d have to buy a new bunch of shirts every time he changed his ID. That’d cost!”

* * *

One evening Qwilleran and Polly met for their weekly dinner of flattened chicken breast. This time the recipe called for shallots, lemon zest, chopped spinach, and blue cheese.

“Hail, noble Brutus!” he said when the erstwhile Bootsie met him at the door. The cat paraded back and forth with tail erect to demonstrate his nobility.

Polly said, “He can hardly wait to meet his little companion. Her name is Catta. She can’t leave her mother for another two weeks. . . Qwill, whatever happened to all the cat names your readers were sending you?”

“There were thousands of postcards, and I finally hired Wilfred Sugbury and his girl friend to tabulate them. They turned over to me pages and pages of listings, classified according to number of syllables. One-syllable names are in the minority. Apparently two syllables are more effective in getting a cat’s attention.”

“Will you write a column on the subject?”

“Or a scientific paper on Feline Nomenclature in Northern Climates. I just happen to have a few notes with me.” He drew a folded paper from his pocket:

Polly read the notes and asked him to talk on the subject at the next meeting of the Friends of the Public Library. He said he would consider it.

After dinner he asked, “Do you know anything about the dirk that Lynette used to cut her wedding cake?”

“Yes, it was a gift from Danielle. It had the lion rampant of Scotland on the hilt.”

“Well, I happen to know that the light-fingered Danielle stole it from the MacMurchie house when she and Carter Lee were doing their so-called appraisal of the premises. Gil was very much upset. It was the last gift he’d received from his late wife.”

“That’s terrible!” Polly said. “Lynette would have been mortified if she had known. The MacMurchies were such good neighbors. In a plumbing emergency she could call Gil and he’d rush over with a wrench.”

They both fell into silence. Qwilleran was thinking: Did Danielle know she’d get her wedding present back again—after New Orleans? Was she a genuine neurotic with a compulsion to steal? Or was her pilfering intended to focus public attention on minor crimes while Carter Lee committed a major swindle? The latter would explain the “theft” of his own coat, which was not missing for long. As for the heist from the money jar, even a banker’s wife could use a couple of thousand. But what did she do with the bag of old clothes from the church’s donation box?

Polly broke the silence. “I never suspected either of them. Did you, Qwill?”

“Well. . . ” He contemplated what to tell and what not to tell. “Carter Lee’s talk about the official registration of historic buildings aroused my curiosity. How does it work? I found that it involves complicated nomination forms, technically and professionally correct, with photographs and documented information about the architecture, materials, workmanship, and history of the building—all of which had to be approved by the state before going to national headquarters. How could he guarantee his clients anything? Yet, twenty families were convinced, and I was only a doubting Thomas. . . When I discovered he was a fraud, it was too late.”

Polly sighed deeply. “For Lynette’s sake, I wish we could return the dirk to Gil MacMurchie. She would want it that way. You know, Qwill, I have a key to her house. She asked me to keep an eye on the property while they were honeymooning. Do you suppose . . . it would be all right if. . . I went over there and simply—”

“No, it would not be all right!” he interrupted sternly. “That would be stealing—inappropriate conduct for the administrator of the public library. However . . . if you went over there to check up. . . and discovered a leak. . . a mysterious puddle of water under the kitchen sink. . . you could call Gil, and he’d rush over there with his pipe wrench. It’s not stealing if you take something that belongs to you.”

* * *

Another evening, Qwilleran was at home, and his doorbell rang. On his doorstep was a man wearing a respiratory mask and holding a glass jar.

“What—what?” Qwilleran spluttered. From the neck down, the figure was recognizable as Wetherby Goode. “Come in, you screwball! Take that thing off your head! What’s in that jar?”

“Horseradish from my great-uncle in Lockmaster. He grows his own and grates it himself. One whiff is enough to kill a rhinoceros.”

“I’ll take a chance,” said Qwilleran, who was a horseradish addict. “How about a bourbon?”

Koko made an appearance, looking regal, and Yum Yum rippled into the room in the flirty way she had.

“Do they ever catch mice?” Wetherby asked.

“It’s Yum Yum’s secret dream, but Koko is more of a thinking cat. He specializes in thought transference. He’s telling me he’d like to move back to the barn. Is this good weather going to hold?”

“Don’t ask me about the weather. I’m only a meteo-rologist. Ask the fuzzy caterpillars.”

Qwilleran said, “Polly tells me your listeners send you suggestions for your daily quotes.”

“They sure do, and I appreciate it. Polly sends me weather quotes all the time—from Shakespeare and all those other old guys.”

“She knows the Bard forward and backward,” Qwilleran remarked casually, but he was taken aback. Why had she not told him? True, he concealed his investigations and Koko’s collaborations, because she would discourage one and laugh at the other. It came as a surprise, however, that Polly would conceal anything from him.

The garrulous weatherman rambled on. “Fran Brodie is taking over the lead in
Hedda Gabler,
we’re all glad to know. The bad news is that Danielle didn’t pay her decorating bill before all this happened. Dr. Diane says the two fugitives wouldn’t be alive if they hadn’t drunk all those margaritas. They were so relaxed, they were like rubber. . . Have you been to Lois’s since Lenny was cleared and got his job back?”

“I have! And she was so happy she was handing out free apple pie.”

“Everyone in the bridge club thinks it was Danielle who framed Lenny. Did you know Willard very well? I’ve been wondering if he was in on the scam. He brought Carter Lee up here and was pushing his project.”

“That’s because his bank wanted to make restoration loans. It’s my belief that he didn’t know the score. He met Danielle in a nightclub and hadn’t known her long before they married. I’d guess that she and Carter Lee had been longtime partners in the con game and everything else, and they thought a rich husband would be a big plus.”

Wetherby was watching Koko slap the floor with his tail. “What’s he doing?”

“Communicating,” Qwilleran said. “I’ve been trying to read that tail for years!” Then he assumed a confidential tone. “Polly gave me a set of Melville novels for Christmas, and Koko has been obsessed with volume ten. If you want to see something weird, have a look at the title of volume ten.”

Wetherby went to the hutch cabinet and looked at the Melville shelf. “It’s
The Confidence-Man!
Are you kidding me?”

“Not at all.”

“Is that a coincidence—or what?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, Joe.”

After the weatherman had taken his gas mask and gone home, Qwilleran watched Koko lashing his tail—right, left, right, left. He was trying to convey something else; he had not told the whole story. More likely, Qwilleran had failed to read it.

“What’s bothering you, old boy?” he asked.

Koko stopped the tail business and walked across the room with Siamese poise, stopping on the way to give Qwilleran a stare that could only be described as scornful. He walked to the spot where Yum Yum was laying contentedly on her brisket and hit her on the head with his paw.

“Stop that!” Qwilleran shouted. “Stop tormenting her!”

Koko looked at him impudently and hit her again, adding a contemptuous “Yow-ow-ow” in Qwilleran’s direction.

Qwilleran went immediately to the phone and called Andrew Brodie at home. He heard the passive hello of a televiewer who is watching a good show and resents being interrupted.

He asked, “What’s on TV, Andy?”

“Look it up in the paper,” Brodie barked.

“Don’t go away, Andy. I have information. Remember when Willard Carmichael attended that banking seminar in Detroit? Carter Lee was down there at the same time, on business of his own.” Qwilleran pounded his moustache with his fist. “His business, I say, was hiring a hit man to eliminate Willard!”

* * *

The successful prosecution of Carter Lee James would last all spring as preliminary arguments addressed change of venue, conflict of interest, selection of jurors, and TV cameras from Down Below. Newsmedia everywhere called it a bizarre case. Only Qwilleran knew how bizarre it really was, and he took pains to conceal Koko’s input.

One sunny afternoon he was lounging in his big chair and fantasizing about the “smart cat” in the witness box, biting the defense attorney, yowling in spite of the judge’s gavel, flying around the courtroom in a catfit, swinging from the chandelier.

As a matter of fact, both Siamese were busy being ordinary cats—Yum Yum lounging in the sun and Koko prowling, sniffing invisible spots, scratching an ear, grooming a shoulder blade. He was restless. He had lost interest in Herman Melville. He looked at everything and nothing, jerking his head without reason, racing madly, staring into space.

Qwilleran thought, Koko has more whiskers than the average cat and more senses than the average human, but basically he’s just a cat. At that moment, Koko leaped four feet in the air, and Qwilleran looked up. He saw a tiny black speck darting around the room in wild swoops and circles.

“Mosca!” he shouted.