The Cat Who Dropped a Bombshell Read online

  She said, “We know you’re going to adore these kitties and want to scream in delight, but—please keep your voices to a low murmur. And when our auctioneer makes his bow don’t welcome him with thunderous applause, but . . . remember the kitties!”

  When Qwilleran made his entrance, the enthusiasm threatened to explode. Here was Mr. Q in person! But he held up both hands for silence, and proceeded to thrill them with the depth and warmth of his mellifluous voice.

  “Friends, let’s review the rules of the game. All of you who have bought bidding tickets have also received numbered flash cards. There will be no shouting of bids. Flash cards will be used to make bids in silence. . . . Let me see your flash cards!” A flutter of numbers filled the main hall.

  The eight spotters were women students in MCCC T-shirts, and their delight in this assignment was reflected in their happy faces. Those in the aisles would watch for the flashing of cards when the auctioneer said, “Who’ll give me three hundred?” The spotters would point and say, “Hep!” When the top bid was reached, the spotter would return the lucky kitten to his limousine and escort the winning bidder and his purchase to the cashier in the lobby. The spotters also warned noisy members of the audience, and the auctioneer would halt the bidding until the disturbance ended.

  When the first limousine was brought to the paisley-draped table, Qwilleran read the name tag and said, “We are starting with a member of royalty: Princess Isabella! [General murmur.] She is a white calico with soft gray markings and a distinctive personality. She knows she’ll grow up to be a queen, and she’s going to have fun while she can.” [Wriggle of anticipation in the audience.] Qwilleran opened the lid of the basket slowly and peeked inside, then lifted the kitten gently. [Excited murmur.] Isabella raised her head and looked at the audience with golden eyes.

  “Aw-w-w!” came a murmur from the hall.

  Qwilleran said, “We’re told she has a playful disposition in spite of her royal antecedents.” He shifted his grip on her, and she looked at his hand then opened her pink mouth and rested her sharp little teeth on his finger.

  “Aw-w-w!” was the sentimental murmur, louder this time, and the spotters in the aisles held up warning hands.

  The auctioneer said, “Shall we start with . . . five hundred?” A flutter of flash cards led him to raise the bid to seven . . . then eight-fifty . . . finally a thousand.

  “A thousand, I’ve got! A thousand once . . . a thousand twice . . . Sold to number ninety-three!”

  A spotter led two young women from their seats, and another took Isabella in her limousine to meet them. As they went up the aisle to the cashier, Qwilleran realized that one of them was Clarissa Moore. Her tanned, well-groomed companion, who had just bought Isabella, must be her friend Vicki.

  There were no more thousand-dollar bids that morning but it telegraphed the message that a thousand is not too much to pay for a kitten. Bids didn’t go that high again until late afternoon but anything less than five hundred seemed an affront to a Puck, or an Iago or a Cleopatra.

  No other kitten bit the auctioneer’s finger, but several reached up and touched his moustache with a trembling paw, at which the audience murmured, “Aw-w-w!”

  After twenty kittens had been adopted, there was an intermission, when bidders could eat a picnic lunch on the lower level or buy one from Lois’s Lunchwagon in the parking lot. Backstage everyone was complimenting everyone else, and when the afternoon session opened, Qwilleran complimented the holders of flash cards for their cooperation.

  He conducted swift transactions. If the bidding dragged, he removed the subject from the block, rather than insult a personage of such importance as: Nanki-Poo, Mary Poppins, or Jane Austen.

  Toward the end of the afternoon there was one more high-dollar bid. The kitten was a reddish brown male with a cocky manner and a swaggering walk. “A man’s cat,” the volunteers had written on his name tag.

  When his turn came at the auction table, Qwilleran looked at the name tag and said to the audience, “ ‘If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs . . .’ This is Rudyard Kipling, who also answers to the name of Rudy!”

  He lifted the muscular kitten from the limousine, and there was an appreciative murmur through the audience.

  “To start, who’ll give me five hundred? [Several cards flashed.] Who’ll give me seven hundred? . . . Make it eight . . . Make it eight! . . . Eight I’ve got. Make it nine! Make it a thousand.”

  Only one card flashed. “Hep!” said the spotter.

  Qwilleran saw the white hair. It was Judd Amhurst bidding the high dollar! He must be buying it for one of his married sons out west.

  Backstage the volunteers were ecstatic about the outcome of the auction, and Maggie Sprenkle clasped Qwilleran’s hand in both of hers.

  “We realized over twenty thousand dollars for the shelter! How can we thank you, Qwill, for your tremendous contribution?”

  “The experience is all the reward I need,” he assured her.

  On the way home Qwilleran stopped at the bookstore.

  Polly said, “Clarissa brought her friend into the store today to show me Isabella, the kitten she bought. Is it a fact that the top bid was a thousand? Amazing.”

  “Isn’t it? Remember that the K Fund will match it. Wait till Bart hears about it! It won’t surprise him. Attorneys are surprise proof. I think it’s an oath they take when they’re admitted to the Bar. Judd bought Rudyard Kipling for the same amount—for one of his sons, no doubt.”

  “No, Qwill! Rudyard Kipling is for himself! He says he couldn’t resist the sales pitch, and he liked the idea of getting a literary cat.”

  Polly said, “Now about Vicki. She’s not staying as long as she planned. She starts a new job Tuesday morning, and she wants to get home to help her kitten adjust and prepare herself for a new work challenge. So she’ll have to miss The Big Burning and Monday’s parade.”

  Polly said, “Vicki was sorry she couldn’t stay to meet you, Qwill, but she left a note for you.”

  It was an unusual shade of gray, with her monogram in white on the envelope flap. It was apparently something she had written before leaving home. He slipped it into his coat pocket.

  Late Saturday evening, as Qwilleran was considering a bedtime read for the cats, Koko was more interested in the kitchen window than the bookshelf. He kept jumping on the kitchen counter and staring at the blackness outdoors.

  “Expecting someone?” he asked. Then he realized how long it had been since Andrew Brodie had dropped in for a nightcap. He phoned the police chief at home, and in five minutes the big burly Scot was barging into the kitchen demanding, “Where’s my smart cat? Where’s my little sweetheart?” He dropped on a stool at the snack bar where Qwilleran had prepared a tray of Scotch, ice cubes, and cheese.

  The Siamese frisked about, happy to see him: Andy usually maneuvered a few crumbs of cheese to them.

  To Qwilleran he said, “Been listening to Joe on the air. That storm that’s been stalled over Canada has started moving across the lakes. It might reach us by tomorrow and eliminate our parade on Monday.”

  “We can hardly complain,” Qwilleran said. “We’ve had a spectacularly good summer.”

  “It’s a pity, though. Our granddaughter is supposed to be on the Queen’s float, and my wife is cutting a truckload of peonies in our backyard for the parade.”

  “Joe has been wrong before, Andy.”

  “Yeah, but . . . What kind of cheese is this? It’s good!”

  “It’s domestic. Not all the good stuff comes from Switzerland and France. How’s everything at City Hall, Andy? Who’s watering the pansies?”

  “Ach, mon! We haven’t had trouble with the vandals all summer.”

  “Do you know that woman in Kennebeck who sees into the future, Andy?”

  “She goes to our church. A fine woman. She saw the shooting as a crime, not an accident, but that doesn’t hold up in court.”

  Qwilleran could have told him about Kok
o’s death howl, signifying foul play, but as evidence it lacked credibility, to say the least.

  Suddenly Koko emerged from somewhere and hopped up to the kitchen window, where he stared out with ears alert and tail pointed.

  Both men turned to look at the dark glass.

  In a minute or two, they heard a muffled blast and saw a bright flash in the dark sky.

  Brodie jumped to his feet, talked on his cell phone, hurried to the door. “Crazies! Firebombed the window boxes at city hall!”

  He rushed to his vehicle leaving Qwilleran to reflect: the anti-pansy faction! . . . Too bad. Another idea of Hixie’s ruined but she won’t give up!

  Only then did it dawn on Qwilleran that Koko had been staring out the window into the blackness for half an hour—before the blast.

  That cat! Qwilleran thought. He looks like a cat, walks like a cat, talks like a cat, but he knows what’s going to happen—like that woman in Kennebeck. Is it because he has sixty whiskers instead of the normal forty-eight?

  Baffled, he scooped himself a dish of ice cream.

  SIXTEEN

  Early Sunday morning, two surprised Siamese were stuffed into their cat carrier and loaded into the SUV along with luggage, a food cooler, “Qwill Pen” notes, and desk clutter. Qwilleran had brought the outdoor furniture in from the gazebo and stacked it in the foyer, and Pat O’Dell’s maintenance crew would disassemble the gazebo screens and otherwise storm proof the barn for a short absence.

  They were moving to their condo in Indian Village, which was in a strip of four, called the Willows and shared with Polly, Wetherby Goode, and Dr. Connie, the veterinarian.

  When the refugees from the barn arrived, the village management had already shuttered the large glass window walls and sandbagged the banks of the creek that they overlooked.

  Eliminating the view made for a gloomy interior, but Qwilleran could read and the cats could sleep and Wetherby would find excuses for parties.

  This would be the first time the connecting doors between the underground garages had ever been used.

  Qwilleran notified Wetherby when he arrived. Then they joined Dr. Connie and Polly at the weatherman’s unit for an impromptu lunch.

  As they waited for the wind and rain to strike, conversation about the weather was avoided.

  Polly talked about the success of the “violet” book. Qwilleran said he’d like to write a biography of the late Homer Tibbitt. Connie talked about her new marmalade cat, a litter mate of Dundee. The host played the piano.

  Then the wind came up, and it started to rain hard, and they returned to their respective condos—through the basement tunnel—to be with their pets, who would need comforting. The question of who-comforted-whom was a topic for Qwilleran to cover in his journal that night. He wrote:

  Sunday—I daresay no one is sleeping tonight, least of all Koko and Yum Yum. The wind screeches; the rain slaps against the building. It stops for a while, and the cats crawl out from under the blankets, and then it starts again, with renewed ferocity.

  During the lulls, Joe calls all of us to see if we’re okay. He warns us that it may start again.

  And it does!

  I’m no radio-nut myself, but everyone else in the county tunes in WPKX newbites, especially on weekends and holidays, when the Something doesn’t publish. The station calls their newsbites a public service, but I suspect they’re just trying to scoop the newspaper. Furthermore, why should I listen to the newsbites, when all my friends are addicted and will phone me with the news of the latest fires, thefts, accidents, and other calamities?

  It’s the Moose County Grapevine.

  All night a howling, blasting wind and a drenching, whipping rain took turns in tormenting the residents of the Willows. No one could get any sleep, least of all the six cats.

  On Monday, the second day of the sporadic hurricane, Junior Goodwinter, the managing editor of the paper, called.

  “The way it looks, no paper tomorrow, but a skeleton crew is on call, and we might put out a Hurricane Edition—just a few pages with emergency news. We see it as a collector’s item, a sort of historical document.”

  “Is there anything I can do, Junior?”

  “You might write a short ‘Qwill Pen’ piece about Cool Koko’s reaction to the hurricane—something to make readers smile.”

  Judd Amhurst called from Winston Park. “Lucky to be out there, Qwill. Will you tell Polly that we rescued Dundee from the bookstore, and he’s staying with Peggy? Rudy is with me, keeping his head while all the rest of us are losing ours.”

  Hixie Rice called. “Glad you made it back to the condo, Qwill. Most of us are sitting it out at the clubhouse.” (He thought, Getting sloshed.)

  He said, “Too bad about the parade.”

  Then Polly called to remark that the wind had quieted a little. Qwilleran told her the good news about Dundee.

  “Wait a minute! There’s a death notice on the radio!” In a minute she returned. “Doris Ledfield died tonight! Following a respiratory infection! I’ll hang up in case they broadcast more details.”

  Before she could call back, Maggie Sprenkle phoned.

  “Qwill, I feel awful! I was so elated yesterday after the auction, and now I feel terrible! First I heard about dear Doris’s passing on the radio, and I couldn’t believe it! No one knew she was that ill! But when I called the Old Manse to talk to Nathan, the nurse said he was quite ill himself and couldn’t speak to anyone!” She stopped to sob. “Perhaps I shouldn’t tell you this, Qwill, but I must talk to someone!”

  “I understand, Maggie,” he said. “Consider me a member of the family.”

  After a few more tears she felt the strength to go on.

  “We were very close—the Sprenkles and the Ledfields—and Nathan once told Jeremy and me in our rose garden, when Doris was having one of her setbacks, that he couldn’t live without her. And if anything happened to her, life would have no meaning. He could not go on alone.

  “We mumbled words of sympathy and affection, but I have always been haunted by that recollection. I can’t help wondering if he’ll do something rash. . . .” She burst into tears again.

  “It’s understandable, Maggie. It was right to share it with me. Have a cup of tea, and remember what Jeremy would say.”

  “You’re right, Qwill. Thank you so much.” As she hung up, he could hear one more painful wail.

  Koko had been listening, and he rushed around growling before throwing back his head and uttering what Qwilleran had come to know as his death howl.

  Before the night was over, Qwilleran’s phone rang frequently, as friends felt it their duty to keep him informed:

  “The Road Commission is telling drivers to stay off the highway, Qwill.”

  “The worst is the Bloody Creek Bridge.”

  “The commission has been promising to fix that deathtrap for years. They’ve had five accidents; how many do they have to have before they act? What am I paying my taxes for?”

  That was Junior Goodwinter.

  Qwilleran’s phone rang repeatedly. Everyone wanted to talk. He had a feeling of foreboding. Even the cats were edgy.

  Later Wetherby called.

  “Did you hear about the accident at Bloody Creek Bridge? Name withheld. I called the Station, and one of my buddies told me the name of the driver . . . Liz Hart!”

  “Where was Derek?”

  “They drive separate cars; they work different hours. After working late as maître d’, he’ll sometimes bunk on a cot at the restaurant so he can do early shopping for groceries the next morning.”

  “What was she doing on the Bloody Creek Bridge? That’s north of here?” Qwilleran asked.

  “Interesting question.”

  “Did the newsbite tell whether the car was traveling north or south?”

  “They never give details.”

  Qwilleran speculated, “If she was northbound, she was going to the Lanspeaks. They live in the Hummocks, and they’ve been like godparents to both Liz and D
erek. And Diane Lanspeak is probably Liz’s doctor. . . . If we don’t hear any further details, I suppose we could check with them, Joe.”

  “Liz would want you to know, Qwill. She says you saved her life on Grand Island and were responsible for her coming to Moose County and meeting Derek Cuttlebrink. I understand she comes from a very wealthy family in Chicago, but she was glad to get away from them. Fortunately, she had money from her deceased father.”

  “Is that so?” Qwilleran murmured, although he knew more than Wetherby did. “Liz gave me an antique chair that belonged to her father. Sitting in it is supposed to improve your intelligence.”

  “I should borrow it,” Wetherby said. “Does it sound as if the wind is picking up again? I’d better go and hold Jet Stream’s paw.”

  SEVENTEEN

  After a bad night, Qwilleran prepared breakfast for two nervous cats. They huddled side by side with their legs tucked under their bodies.

  As Qwilleran prepared their food, he entertained them with a few observations from Jerome K. Jerome, whose needs were satisfied with a homely home, small pleasures, one or two friends, a pipe to smoke, a cat, a dog, enough to eat, and enough to drink.

  The Siamese regarded each other questioningly. Then Koko bit Yum Yum gently on the back of the neck. She liked it.

  Next the phone rang. This time it was Clarissa. “Qwill, have you heard the news on WPKX? Doris Ledfield has died! I had no idea she was so ill! I feel I should do something, but I don’t know what.”

  Qwilleran felt uncomfortable himself but could think of nothing comforting to say. “Maggie Sprenkle was Doris’s closest friend,” he said, “and she’s a total wreck. Perhaps you could call her and commiserate. It might help you both.”

  They hung up, and almost immediately Clarissa called again. “I forgot to tell you, Qwill, Vicki called from California this morning. Isabella slept on her pillow. She loves that kitten! Vicki was sorry she didn’t meet you, Qwill. She left a note for Polly to give you.”