The Cat Who Wasn't There Read online

  “But Polly’s a good woman. Damn shame to see her wasted.”

  “Wasted! If she knew you called her life wasted, she’d tear up your library card! Polly is living a useful and rewarding life. She’s the lifeblood of the library. And she chooses to be independent. She has her women friends and her bird-watching and a comfortable apartment filled with family heirlooms . . .”

  And she has Bootsie, Qwilleran said to himself as he walked from the police station to the newspaper office. He huffed into his moustache. It was his impression that Polly lavished too much maudlin affection on the two-year-old Siamese. When Bootsie was a kitten, she babied him unconscionably, but now he had outgrown kittenish ways and she still babbled precious nonsense in his ear. In Qwilleran’s household, the Siamese were sophisticated companions whom he treated as equals, and they treated him the same way. He addressed them intelligently, and they replied with expressive yips and yowls. When he discussed problems in their presence, he felt their sympathy. He regularly read aloud to them from worthwhile books, news magazines, and—on Sundays—the New York Times.

  Kao K’o Kung, the male (called Koko as a handy everyday diminutive), was a gifted animal endowed with highly developed senses quite beyond those of humans and other cats. Yum Yum was a female who hid her catly wiles under a guise of affectionate cuddling, purring and nuzzling, often extending a paw to touch Qwilleran’s moustache.

  From the police station it was a short walk to the office of the Moose County Something, as the local newspaper was named. (Everything in mile-square Pickax was a short walk.) The publication occupied a new building made possible by financial assistance from the Klingenschoen Foundation, and the editor-and-publisher was Qwilleran’s longtime friend from Down Below, Arch Riker. In the lobby there were no security guards or hidden cameras such as those employed by the large metropolitan dailies for which Qwilleran had worked. He walked down the hall to Riker’s office and found the door open, the desk unoccupied.

  From the managing editor’s office across the hall Junior Goodwinter hailed him. “Arch went to Minneapolis for a publishers’ conference. He’ll be back tomorrow. Come on in! Have a chair. Put your feet up. I don’t suppose you want a cup of coffee.”

  Recalling the anemic brew he had just swallowed, Qwilleran replied, “I majored in journalism and graduated with a degree in caffeine. Make it black and hot.”

  Junior’s boyish build, boyish countenance, and boyish enthusiasm were now tempered by a newly grown beard. “How do you like it?” he asked as he stroked his chin. “Does it make me look older?”

  “It makes you look like a young potato farmer. What’s your wife’s reaction?”

  “She likes it. She says it makes me look like a jolly elf. What brings you home so soon?” he asked as he handed over a steaming cup.

  “Polly was frightened by a prowler on Goodwinter Boulevard. I didn’t like the sound of it.”

  “How come we didn’t hear about it?”

  “She reported it, but there’s been no further incident, so far as anyone knows.”

  “They’ve got to do something about Goodwinter Boulevard, no kidding,” said Junior. “It used to be the best street in town. Now it’s getting positively hairy with all those vacant mansions looking like haunted houses. The one where Alex and Penelope lived has been up for sale for years! The one that VanBrook rented is empty again, and it’s going begging. Who wants fifteen or twenty rooms nowadays?”

  “Rezoning, that’s what it needs,” Qwilleran said. “It should be rezoned for apartments, offices, good restaurants, high-class nursing homes, and so forth. Why don’t you write an editorial?”

  “I’d be accused of special interest,” Junior said.

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Grandma Gage has bought a condo in Florida and wants to deed the mansion to me while she’s still living. What would I do with fifteen rooms? Think of the heating bills and the taxes and all those windows to wash! I’ll own just another white elephant on Goodwinter Boulevard.”

  Qwilleran’s eyes, known for their doleful expression and drooping lids, roamed over the clutter on the editor’s desk, the crumpled paper that had missed the wastebasket, the half-open file drawers, the stacks of out-of-town newspapers. But he wasn’t looking; he was thinking. He was thinking that the Gage mansion occupied the property in front of Polly’s carriage house. If he lived there, he could keep a watchful eye on her. Also, it would be convenient for other purposes, like dropping in for dinner frequently. He smoothed his moustache with satisfaction and said to Junior, “I could use a winter house in town. My barn is hard to heat and there’s too much snow to plow. Why don’t I rent your house?”

  “Wow! That would be great!” the young editor yelled.

  “But I still think you should run that editorial.”

  “The city will never do anything about rezoning. Tradition dies hard in Pickax.”

  “How about Stephanie’s Restaurant in the old Lanspeak house? It was opened a couple of years when I first came here.”

  “That was the first house on the boulevard,” Junior explained. “It faced Main Street and could be legally used for commercial purposes. Too bad it closed; the building’s still empty . . . No, Qwill, there are still influential families on the boulevard who’ll fight rezoning like tigers. We’ll have to wait for some more of them to die off. Dr. Hal lived on the boulevard, you know.”

  “Do you think Melinda will keep the house?”

  “No way! She has an apartment and intends to sell the house and furnishings. Off the record, her dad didn’t leave much of an estate. He was an old-fashioned country doctor, never charging patients who couldn’t pay and never taking advantage of the insurance setup. And don’t forget the expense of round-the-clock nurses for his wife for all those years! Melinda has inherited more problems than property . . . Have you seen her?” Junior asked with a searching look. He knew about Melinda’s former pursuit of the county’s most eligible bachelor. She was Junior’s cousin. All Goodwinters were cousins to a degree. “She’s changed somehow,” he said. “I don’t know how to pinpoint it.”

  “Three years on the staff of a Boston hospital can do that,” Qwilleran said.

  “Yeah, they worked her pretty hard, I guess. Well, anyway, can we expect some copy from you this week? Or are you too bushed?”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Walking home, Qwilleran recalled his earlier association with Dr. Melinda Goodwinter. He had been a stranger in Moose County at the time, suffering from a fierce case of ivy poisoning. After treating his condition successfully, she offered friendship, flip conversation, and youth. She was twenty years his junior, with green eyes and long lashes and the frank sexuality of her generation. As a doctor, she had convinced him to give up smoking and take more exercise. As a woman, she had been overly aggressive for Qwilleran’s taste, and her campaign to bulldoze him into matrimony resulted in embarrassment for both of them. She moved to Boston after that, telling everyone she had no desire to be a country doctor.

  When he met Polly, it was he who did the pursuing—an arrangement more to his liking. She was not so thin as Melinda, nor were her lashes so long, but she was a congenial companion and a good cook, who shared his literary interests. They liked to get together and read Shakespeare, for one thing. She made no unacceptable demands, and, more and more, Qwilleran found Polly occupying his thoughts.

  On the way home he stopped at Toodles’ Market to buy the Siamese something to eat—always a problem because they had fickle palates. Their preferences changed just often enough to keep him perpetually on his toes. There was only one constant: no cat food! As if they could read labels, they disdained any product intended for the four-legged trade. Sometimes they were satisfied with a can of red salmon garnished with a smoked oyster or a dab of caviar, preferably sturgeon. At other times, they would kill for turkey, but he could never be sure. At Toodles’ he considered a slice of roast beef from the deli or some chicken liver pâté. Better
yet would be a few ounces of tenderloin from the butcher, to serve au tartare, but he would have to hand-mince it; ground meat was somehow objectionable. He settled for the pâté.

  From there he followed the long way home, just for the exercise, trudging along a back road, then up a gravel trail through an old orchard. He was a hundred feet from the apple barn when he heard clarion voices yowling a welcome. The nineteenth-century barn was an octagonal structure four stories high, with large windows cut into the walls at various levels, and he could see two furry bodies darting about indoors, observing him first from one window and then another. They met him at the door, prancing and waving their tails like flags. It was a ritual that gave him a leap of inner joy in spite of his unsentimental greeting. “What have you young turks been doing since you got home?”

  They sensed the liver pâté with quivering whiskers. In spasms of anticipation they dashed up the ramp that spiraled around the interior of the building, connecting the three balconies and ending in narrow catwalks under the roof. Then they pounded pell-mell down the slope to the first balcony, from which they flew like squirrels, landing in the cushioned seating on the main floor. There they washed their paws and whiskers before dinner.

  When Qwilleran spread the pâté on a plate and placed it on the floor, he watched them with fascination as they devoured it. They were masterpieces of design: sleek fawn bodies on long brown legs; incredibly blue eyes in seal-brown masks; expressive brown tails tapered like rapiers. To Qwilleran they seemed to have more elegance than Bootsie, who was being overfed to compensate for the loneliness of his solitary life.

  At seven o’clock he called for Polly at her carriage-house apartment behind the Gage mansion, and as he climbed the narrow staircase, Bootsie was waiting at the top with ears back and fangs bared.

  “Greetings, thou paragon of animals,” Qwilleran said, thinking a phrase from Shakespeare would please Polly.

  Bootsie hissed.

  “You must forgive him,” she apologized. “He sensed danger when the prowler was outside, and he’s been edgy ever since.”

  After a warm, silent, meaningful embrace that would have astonished the library patrons and started the Pickax grapevine sizzling, Qwilleran presented Polly with a tissue-wrapped bundle. “Sorry it isn’t gift-wrapped,” he said. “I brought it from the mountains. It looked like your shade of blue.”

  Polly was thrilled. “It’s a batwing cape! It’s handwoven! Who did it?”

  “One of the mountaineers,” he said, shrugging off the question. “They’re all weavers and potters and woodworkers in the mountains.” He avoided mentioning that the weaver was an interesting young woman whom he had taken to dinner and who had rescued him twice when he was in trouble on mountain passes.

  Polly had shed the drab suit she wore at the library and was looking festive in a summer dress of mixed polka dots, red-on-white and white-on-red. “You’re sure it isn’t too bold for me?” she asked when Qwilleran complimented her. “Irma Hasselrich helped me choose it.”

  They drove to the restaurant in the rental car that had brought him from the mountains. “My own car broke down,” he explained, “and I left it there.” The tale was loosely true; the car had bogged down in mud, and he had given it to the young mountain woman, who would be able to haul it out with her swamp buggy.

  The restaurant called the Old Stone Mill occupied a historic gristmill. There was enough affluence in Pickax—and there were enough educated palates—to support one good eatery, and it was owned by a syndicate of businessmen who needed an unprofitable venture for tax purposes. It paid its chefs handsomely and offered a menu worldly enough for local residents who had dined in San Francisco, New Orleans, and Paris.

  After Qwilleran and Polly were greeted and seated at their usual table, a six-foot-seven busboy, who towered above customers and staff alike, shuffled up to the table with a water pitcher and basket of garlic toast. His name was Derek Cuttlebrink. “Hi, Mr. Q,” he said in friendly fashion. “I thought you were going away for the summer.”

  “I came back,” Qwilleran explained succinctly.

  “I’m taking two weeks in August to go camping.”

  “Good for you!”

  “Yeah, I met this girl, and she has a tent. Blue nylon, seven-by-eight, with aluminum frame. Sets up in five minutes.”

  “Take plenty of mosquito repellent,” Qwilleran advised. “Stay away from poison ivy. Watch out for ticks.”

  Polly asked, “Have you given any more thought to college, Derek?”

  “Well, you know, it’s like this, Mrs. Duncan. I’ve decided to stay in the food business. I’m getting promoted to the kitchen, end of the month—in charge of French fries and garlic toast.”

  “Congratulations!” said Qwilleran.

  When the busboy had sauntered away, Polly wondered, “Do you think Derek will ever amount to anything?”

  “Don’t give up hope,” Qwilleran said. “One of these days he’ll meet the right girl, and he’ll become a famous brain surgeon. I’ve seen it happen.”

  He ordered dry sherry for Polly and, for himself, a local product called Squunk water—from a flowing well in Squunk Corners. He always drank it on the rocks with a twist.

  Polly raised her glass. “Slainte!”

  “Ditto,” Qwilleran said. “What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know exactly. It’s a toast in Gaelic that Irma Hasselrich always uses.” Polly often quoted her new friend.

  Personally, Qwilleran had his doubts about Irma Hasselrich. In her forties, she still lived at home with her parents, her father being senior partner in the law firm of Hasselrich, Bennett & Barter. She was the chief volunteer at the Senior Care Facility, and Qwilleran had met her while interviewing an aged patient. At that time, he thought her a handsome woman. She had a Junoesque figure, a polished appearance, and a charming manner. Since Polly was spending the summer in England, he tried to take Irma to dinner, but his invitation was pointedly avoided. He was not accustomed to being rejected, and his reaction was distinctly negative.

  Recently the two women had discovered a mutual interest: They often went bird-watching with binoculars and notebooks on the banks of the Ittibittiwassee River or in the wetlands near Purple Point. Furthermore, the well-groomed, well-dressed Irma was influencing Polly to wear brighter colors and touch up her graying hair.

  “You’re looking especially young and attractive tonight,” he remarked as they sipped their aperitifs. “Soon you’ll be joining the Theatre Club and playing ingenue roles.”

  “Not likely,” she said with her musical laugh. “But did you hear that the club is doing Macbeth in September?”

  “That’s a surprise!”

  “Why? It’s a highly dramatic play with witches, ghosts, swordplay, a sleepwalker, and some ghastly murders, and it has plenty to say about temptation, human failure, spiritual evil, and compulsive ambition.”

  “But according to superstition, it brings bad luck to the company that stages it.”

  “No one around here is aware of that, so don’t enlighten them,” Polly advised. “Of course, it’s almost certain that Larry will play the title role.”

  “He’ll have to grow a beard again. He won’t like that. Who’s directing?”

  “A new man in town, Dwight Somers, who’s taken a position with XYZ Enterprises. He’s had theatre experience and is said to be very nice. Auditions have been announced, and it’s rumored that Dr. Melinda is going to read for Lady Macbeth.” The Pickax library was a major listening post in the local grapevine.

  Qwilleran wanted to ask: Have you seen Melinda? . . . How does she look? . . . They say she’s changed a lot. He deemed it wise, however, not to exhibit that much interest, so he asked casually, “Would she be any good in that role?”

  “Quite possibly. I saw her at Dr. Hal’s funeral and thought she was looking . . . much older. The Goodwinter face—long and narrow, you know—has a tendency to look haggard. It doesn’t age well.”

  They ordered jellied
watercress consommé and grilled swordfish with pineapple-jalapeño salsa, and Qwilleran asked, “What’s the surprise you have for me tonight?”

  “Well!” she began with evident relish. “Irma and I had dinner one night while you were away, and we were talking about Scotland. She went to art school there and still has connections, whom she visits frequently. I mentioned that I’ve always wanted to see Macbeth country, and that started a train of thought. Why not organize a group tour of Scottish Isles and Highlands, with a percentage of the tour cost going to the Senior Care Facility, tax deductible?”

  “Sounds okay. Who’d manage it?”

  “Irma is plotting the itinerary, and she’ll make the reservations and act as tour guide.”

  “Is she experienced at handling group tours?”

  “No. But she’s in charge of the volunteer program at the facility, and she’s a natural leader, well organized, and certainly knowledgeable about Scotland, especially the Western Isles and Highlands.”

  “How will you travel in Scotland?”

  “By chartered minibus. The Lanspeaks and the Comptons have signed up, and Irma and I will share a room. The price of the tour is based on double occupancy, but singles are available.”

  Qwilleran said to himself, It’s a good idea for Polly to leave the country until the prowler threat blows over. “You’ll like the Highlands. I spent my honeymoon there. As I recall, the food wasn’t very good, but that was quite a long time ago, and when you’re a newlywed, who cares? . . . Would you like me to feed Bootsie while you’re away?”

  She regarded him hopefully. “We were thinking . . . that you might . . . join the tour.”

  The suggestion caught him off-guard, and he stared into space for a few moments before answering. “How long is the trip? I’ve never left the cats for more than a couple of days. Who’d take care of them?”

  “Is there someone you could trust to move into your barn for two weeks? My sister-in-law is going to stay with Bootsie.”

  Qwilleran stroked his moustache with uncertainty. “I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it. But whatever I decide, the K Foundation will match whatever you raise for the Senior Facility. Will it be advertised?”