Cat With a Fiddle (9781101578902) (9 page)

Chapter 13

“Why so sad?” Beth asked me.

The others seated at the dining table for our evening meal all turned toward me, faces clouded with fake concern.

“It's nothing,” I said, smiling wanly. But I
was
sad, and tired, and distracted. Why shouldn't I be? I had spent the last few hours again and again picking through the things I'd found in Will's room, trying to understand what the items meant, either separately or together.

“She just misses the big city,” Darcy said. “Some of us is country girls, and some of us just ain't.”

I did chuckle a bit at that. I had no intention of telling her I'd been raised on a farm.

“Well,” Mathew Hazan noted, “she may miss the bright lights, but she certainly couldn't find better food anywhere in Manhattan.” He seemed to have half forgiven me for my prying suspicions. Mat passed me the cruet of Mrs. Wallace's special blue-cheese dressing. He was right about the food: It was the best salad dressing I'd ever tasted.

The cook was serving up “Americana” that night, saluting the basic corn-fed goodness of the heartland. The salad was fantastic. Then came an enormous lean brisket, sliced paper-thin and served with garlicy little potatoes and glazed carrots.

By the time Mrs. Wallace was clearing the plates from the main course, the wind outside had begun to howl. Someone had put on an old recording of the Riverside String Quartet performing Beethoven's opus 59, no. 3, done some years ago in Germany. I got up to raise the volume ever so slightly, and used that as an excuse to look at the worn album cover, which featured a photograph of the women in the recording studio. Yes, they all looked young and fresh, but this photo wasn't from exactly the same period as the snapshots I'd discovered in Will's room.

The cook reentered with her tray, and set before each of us a dish of stewed plums. Stewed plums—talk about comfort food! The meal had been so simple and delicious, I found myself wondering whether difficult Mrs. Wallace was really some renowned gourmet chef, moonlighting during her vacation to raise enough money for daily psychiatric care.

The only problem of any note, as we all turned our attention to the lemon meringue pie and coffee, was that Roz had dropped her spoon on the floor. Ben put such frenzied effort into retrieving it that Roz, obviously embarrassed, said to the rest of us, “He has this knack for making me feel like a baby in a high chair.”

Beth laughed wickedly. “But that's how you prefer it, I always thought.”

Roz's otherworldly blue eyes flashed. And for a moment it seemed as if she really had the power to call the wrath of the gods down upon Beth's head.

“Nice work, Beeswax,” Miranda said through her teeth.

I saw then that Beth genuinely regretted her remark. There were tears in her eyes. She jumped out of her seat and fairly ran to Roz's side. “I'm sorry, sweetie. Please forgive me.” And she kissed the part in Roz's hair.

Roz swallowed hard. “It's all right, Beeswax. Just sit down . . . You, too, Ben . . . please!” He had been standing nearby, the spoon dangling foolishly from his fingers.

As I ate my dessert I surreptitiously watched each of the women, matching them in my mind with the old photos. Had each given Will a photo of herself? And why? Why had he packaged them like so many baseball cards in a little boy's prized collection?

There was no more talk for a long time. We sat listening to the music. These women had the uncanny ability to suddenly tune out the world—not to mention the ability to make the nonmusical guest feel like the fifth wheel. The record ended. Mrs. Wallace brought in more coffee and placed a bottle of Grand Marnier on the table. Most of the women looked at it with distaste—they'd drunk their limit the night before. Only Mat and Miranda helped themselves.

“Mrs. Wallace,” Darcy called out before the cook had swung back through the doorway, “were those fresh plums that you stewed?”

“Of course they were.”

“But where did you get them this time of year?”

“Darcy, you can get fresh anything if you know where to shop,” Roz chided. “I believe Mat when he says your cooking tastes like old sweatbands.”

Darcy waved away the comment and then spoke directly to Beth. “Would your cat eat plums?”

“Lulu? I doubt it. She might play with a plum, though.”

Miranda said testily, “That's about all she could do, play with fruit. She's obviously afraid of mice.”

They all laughed.

Ben then added, “There are so many mice in this house now, they've started their own orchestra.”

Mat picked up on the humor. “
And
a ballet company,” he said. “Last night I saw them do
Swan Lake
with a full corps.”

Beth reached across the table and patted Hazan's hand. “Be patient. Lulu will start to hunt soon, I assure you. She just needs a little time to acclimate.”

“That's nonsense, Beth,” Miranda said analytically, through the clouds of her cigarette smoke. “Your cat may be pretty, but let's face facts: she's a spoiled little house cat.” Then she sat back and said expansively, as if sharing her new theory of evolution with the world, “Besides, that breed are simply not good mousers.”

Her manner irritated me no end. I put my two cents in. “I think the Scottish Fold breed is near the top of the line when it comes to mousing—usually, that is. After all, they're basically farm cats. The line of cats that eventually produced the Scottish Fold earned their keep for hundreds of years on farms. So it stands to reason.”

Miranda exploded in fury—anger so fierce that I instinctively raised a hand to my face as if to block a blow. “Who are you, the feline pope?” she screamed. “Who do you think you are to instruct us about anything? You ridiculous, snooping fool! Roz and I were working in the most exclusive cat shops in Manhattan while you were—Oh, why don't you just get into your cheap little car and go home!”

No one said a word. Beth couldn't bring herself to look at me, though she tried. Miranda, who had gone chalk-white, seemed pinned to her chair, the coffee cup in her hand frozen in time and space.

When I was able to rise, I excused myself and walked grimly upstairs. I entered my small room, closed the door, and lay down heavily on the bed. It had been a long time since I'd felt so humiliated. I was also frightened, in some unvoiceable way.

But Miranda had asked a good question. Why
didn't
I just get into my rental car and drive away from here? This was no vacation, no rural interlude to cure my wounded feelings over a bad review. Why was I dabbling in a murder when my help was not wanted—not by the victim's friends, and not by the police? Why was I still enraged by an automobile accident in which no one had been seriously hurt, and which, though I believed it to have been a murder attempt, the professionals considered only a skid on a wet road caused by a farm dog? And even if it was a murder attempt, surely Roz or Ben had been the intended target. It could have nothing to do with me—I was the stranger here. But for some crazy reason, I seemed to think of myself as the personal one-woman security force for the Riverside String Quartet. When and where had I been given that responsibility?

And why did these people dislike me so much? Was it because they knew I was investigating the murder? It had to be that. People usually like me. Particularly women my own age. Particularly other theater people—and musicians, like it or not, are theater people, performers, just like actors.

What was the matter with that crazy woman Miranda? What had I said to incur her wrath? Nothing. I had made a few mundane remarks about a breed of cats.

I turned toward the wall—a distinctly childish thing to do, almost primal. This house was making me regress into childhood. My loneliness had that helpless, aching quality to it.

I heard a noise outside my door. I tensed. The house was also making a nervous wreck of me. Was someone spying on me now? Or perhaps it was Beth, too ashamed to knock.

I strode silently, quickly across the floor and opened the door suddenly to catch the intruder.

It was only Lulu. Looking up tenderly at me.

“Come on in, kitty,” I said. “The company down there isn't very pleasant, is it? No wonder you can't catch any mice.” I took her in my arms and sat down on the bed with her. We were both fugitives from Miranda's ire.

Why was I so frightened by that ire? I had probably been chewed out worse in drama class. Maybe it was because she had been the first of the group to exhibit the kind of rage that might propel a chisel into a man's chest. Ford Donaldson had said that this kind of murder requires a special kind of violence, and a special kind of strength.

I picked up Lulu and dangled her in front of me for a moment, looking at her lovely face framed by those lovelier ears. “Did what I said about your ancestors offend you, my pet? No, of course not.” So why should it so upset Miranda Bly? I was beginning to feel very uneasy about the whole episode, as if I had stumbled upon something ugly.

I placed the cat on the floor and she amused herself by playing with my shoelace.

God, I was beginning to hate them all—their formal dinners, their self-involvement, their terrible tempers, and above all their almighty talent, which they seemed to think gave them a kind of superiority over the rest of the world.

Why didn't I just leave? They wanted me out. Why didn't I stay somewhere else in the area? I knew why. Because the hunt was more important than the hurt.

“All I said,” I told Lulu in a hushed voice, “was that you Scottish guys are great mousers. Except for you, you little aberration . . . You're just a little aberration, aren't you?”

What did I know about Scottish Fold cats, anyway? Just facts I'd picked up here and there. I knew that they had originated as a spontaneous mutation in Scottish farm cats in the 1960s. I knew they had become very popular in the U.S. in the early seventies, even though the influential cat-breeder associations had refused to recognize them as a breed. I knew the breed was established by outcrossing to British and American shorthairs. I remembered reading that all these cats traced their folded-ear trait to a single cat. And that the color range of Scottish Folds was expanding rapidly, as well as the range of fold on the ears. Certainly I knew they were all, even the ones in litters whose ears did not fold, adorable. And I knew that they all had those beautiful golden eyes. Or did they?

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.