The Cat Who Saw Red (12 page)

Maus raised both hands. “Let us preserve our equanimity, at all costs, and bear in mind that my only motive in 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 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?”

Qwilleran shook his head. To William he said, “How did you hit it off with Koko and Yum Yum?”

“The little one ran away, but the big one came out, and we had a lengthy conversation. He talks even more than I do. I like cats. You can’t boss them around.”

“And you can’t win, either. You may think you’ve put one over on them, but they always come out ahead.”

“Wudjus like to see the menu?” The waiter was offering a grease-spotted folder covered in burlap.

“Later,” said Qwilleran… “How’s everything going at art school?”

William shrugged. “I’m going to quit. It’s not my bag. My girl’s an artist, and she wanted me to go there, but… I don’t know. After I got out of the service I tried college, but it wasn’t for me. You had to study! I’d sort of like to be a bartender. Or a waiter at a good place where you get king-size tips.”

“Didjus want something?” asked the waiter, who was never out of earshot.

Qwilleran waved him away, but before the man left he rearranged the sticky salt and pepper shakers and whisked an imaginary crumb off the plastic tablecloth.

“What I’d really like,” William went on, “I’d like to be a private operator. I read a lot of detective stories, and I think I’d be pretty good at it.”

“Investigative work fascinates me, too,” Qwilleran confided. “I used to cover the crime beat in Chicago and New York.”

“You did? Did you cover any big cases? Did you cover the Valentine’s Day massacre?”

“I’m not that old, sonny.”

“Didn’t you ever want to be a detective yourself?”

“Not really.” Qwilleran preened his mustache. “But a reporter sharpens his faculty for observation and gets in the habit of asking questions. I’ve been asking myself questions ever since I came to Maus Haus.”

“Like what?”

“Who screamed at three-thirty Wednesday morning? Why was the pottery door locked? How did Maus get his black eye? What happened to Joy Graham’s cat? What’s happened to Joy Graham?”

“You think something’s happened to her?”

The waiter was hovering around the table. “Wudjus like to order now?”

Qwilleran took a deep breath of exasperation. “Yes, bring me some escargots, vichyssoise, boeuf Bourguignon, and a small salade Niçoise.”

There was a long silence, then, “Wudjus say that again?”

“Never mind,” said Qwilleran. “Just bring me a frozen hamburger, gently warmed, and some canned peas.”

William ordered cream of mushroom soup, pot roast with mashed potatoes, and salad with Thousand Island dressing. “Say, is it true you used to be engaged to her?” he asked Qwilleran.

“Joy? That was a long time ago. Who told you?”

William looked wise. “I found out, that’s all. Do you still like her?”

“Of course. But not in the same way.”

“A lot of people at Maus Haus like her. Ham Hamilton was nuts about her. I think that’s why he had himself transferred — to stay out of trouble.”

Qwilleran groomed his mustache; another possible clue was gnawing at his upperlip. “Did you hear anything or notice anything unusual the night she disappeared?”

“No, I played gin with Rosemary until ten o’clock. Then she had to take her beauty treatment on her slant board, so I tried to find Hixie, but she was out. I watched TV for a while. Once I heard Dan’s car pull out of the carport, but I was in bed by midnight. I have an early class on Wednesdays.”

The waiter brought the soup. “Wudjus like some crackers?”

“By the way,” Qwilleran asked the houseboy, “do you know what they mean by a ‘slob potter’? I’ve heard Dan called a slob potter.”

William’s explosive laugh rang through the restaurant. “You mean slab potter, although you’re not so very far off base. Dan rolls out the clay in flat slabs and builds square and rectangular pieces that way.”

“Do you think he’s good?”

“Who am I to say? I’m really a slob potter… This is crummy soup.”

“Is it canned?”

“No, worse! It tastes like I made it.”

“Dan says he’s aiming for big things in New York and Europe.”

“Yeah, I know. And I guess he means it. He got a passport in the mail last week.”

“He did? How do you know?”

“I was there when the mail came. I guess it was a passport. It was in a thick brown envelope that said ‘Passport Office’ or something like that in the corner.”

The waiter served the main course. “Wudjus like ketchup?”

“No ketchup,” said Qwilleran. “No mustard. No steak sauce. No chili sauce.”

William said, “If you want to see Mickey Maus have a cat fit, just mention ketchup.”

“I hear Maus is a widower. What happened to his wife?”

“She choked to death a couple of years ago. They say she choked on a bone in the chicken Marengo. She was a lot older than Mickey Maus. I think he likes older women. Look at Charlotte!”

“What about Charlotte?”

“I mean, the way he butters her up all the time. At first I thought Charlotte was his mother. Max thinks she’s his mistress. Hixie says Mickey Maus is the illegitimate son of Charlotte and that old guy who started the Heavenly Hash business.” William howled with merriment.

“I hear Max is having a rough time at the Golden Lamb Chop.”

“Too bad. I’ve got my theories about that, too.”

“Like what?”

“Like he goes for chicks, you know, on a wholesale scale. And he doesn’t bother to play by the rules.”