Cat Who Saw Red Read online

  Opposite him sat the bald brute with the facile smile. The man half rose and bowed across the table with his right hand over his heart. “I’m Max Sorrel.”

  “Jim Qwilleran of the Daily Fluxion. Haven’t I met you somewhere?”

  “I have a restaurant. The Golden Lamb Chop.”

  “Yes, I had dinner there once.”

  “Did you order our rack of lamb? That’s our specialty. We lose money on every one we serve.” As the restaurateur spoke, he was industriously polishing his silverware with his napkin.

  Spoons were raised. Qwilleran tasted the watercress soup and found it delicately delicious, yet he had no overwhelming desire to finish it. A sense of elation had banished his appetite. His thoughts, and his eyes, kept turning to Joy. Now he knew why he had always been attracted to women with translucent skin and long hair. Tonight Joy’s luxuriant brown hair was braided and coiled around her head like a crown. Her dress had the same filmy quality he used to tease her about when she bought curtain remnants and made them into romantic, impractical clothes. What a crazy kid she had been!

  William removed the soup bowls from the right, served the clams from the left, and poured a white wine, while whistling a tune off-key. When he had finished serving, he joined the guests at the table, white coat and all, and monopolized the conversation in his immediate vicinity.

  “Unorthodox arrangement,” Qwilleran mentioned to Hixie.

  “Robert is very permissive,” she said. “He seems stuffy, but he’s a doll, really. May I have some more butter, please?”

  “How do you happen to be living here?”

  “I’m a copywriter at an agency that handles food accounts. You have to have some special interest in food or Robert won’t rent to you. Miss Roop manages a restaurant.”

  “Yes, I manage one of the Heavenly Hash Houses,” said the woman on Qwilleran’s left, twisting her several bracelets. She was a small, sprightly woman, probably nearing retirement age, and she wore an abundance of nondescript costume jewelry. “I went to work for Mr. Hashman almost forty years ago. Before that I was secretary to the late Mr. Penniman, so I know something about the newspaper business. I admire newspaper people! They’re so clever with words . . . Maybe you can help me.” She drew a crossword puzzle from the outer pocket of her enormous handbag. “Do you know a five letter word for love that begins with a?”

  “Try a-g-a-p-e,” Qwilleran suggested.

  Miss Roop frowned. “Agape?”

  “It’s a Greek word, pronounced ag-a-pe.”

  “Oh, my!” she said. “You are brilliant!” Delightedly she penciled the word in the vertical squares.

  The chicken was served, and again Qwilleran found it easy to abstain. He toyed with his food and listened to the voices around him.

  “Do you realize truffles are selling for seventy-five dollars a pound?” Sorrel remarked.

  The redhead was saying, “Mountclemens was a fraud, you know. His celebrated lobster bisque was a quickie made with canned ingredients.”

  “I’m having so much fun in the attic of this building. I’ve found some old letters and notebooks stuffed away in a dusty jardiniere,” Joy told Basil Penniman.

  Rosemary Whiting said, “You can put a sprinkle of wheat germ in almost anything, and it’s so good for you.”

  “Everyone knows shrimp cocktail is déclassé!” Hixie announced.

  The redhead went on talking: “I know of one cassoulet that cooked for thirty years.”

  And Joy added, “You’d be surprised what I’ve found in the attic. It would upset quite a few people.”

  The man with the goatee was revealing a cooking secret: “I always grate cheese by hand; a little grated knuckle in the Asiago improves the flavor.”

  Maus himself, at the head of the table, was speechless in a world of his own making, as he tasted each dish critically, gazing into space and savoring with lips and tongue. Once he spoke: “The croûte, in my opinion, is a trifle too short.”

  “On the contrary, it’s exquisite,” Miss Roop assured him. She turned to Qwilleran. “Mr. Maus is a brilliant cook. He’s discovered a way to roast a suckling pig without removing the eyeballs. Imagine!”

  “Are you people aware,” Qwilleran asked, raising his voice to attract general attention, “that Mrs. Graham also is an excellent cook? She invented a banana split cake when she was seventeen and won a statewide baking contest.”

  Joy blushed attractively. “It was an adolescent’s delight, I’m afraid—with bananas, coconut, strawberries, chocolate, walnuts, marshmallows, and whipped cream.”

  “I don’t know about her cooking,” said Max Sorrel, “but she’s a helluva good potter. She made this dinner service.” He tapped his plate with his fork.

  “It was very generous of Mr. Maus to give me such a wonderful commission,” Joy said.

  Qwilleran looked at the thick-textured plates of silvery gray, flecked and rimmed with brown. “You mean you made all these dishes? By hand? How many?”

  “A complete service for twenty-four.”

  Sorrel flashed his winning smile at her. “They’re terrific, honey. If I were a millionaire, I’d let you make all the dishes for my restaurant.”

  “You’re very sweet, Max.”

  “How long did the job take?” Qwilleran asked.

  “Hmmm . . . it’s hard to say—” Joy began.

  “That’s nothing,” Dan Graham interrupted in a voice that was suddenly loud. “Out on the Coast I did a six-hundred-piece set for one of the movie big shots.”

  His pronouncement had a dampening effect on the conversation. All heads immediately bent over salads. Suddenly everyone was intent on spearing romaine.

  “Tell you something else,” Graham persisted. “Wedgwood made nine hundred and sixty-two pieces for Catherine of Russia!”

  There was silence at the table until William said, “Anyone for bridge after dinner? It’ll take your mind off your heartburn.”

  THREE

  When Qwilleran went home and told his widowed landlady he was moving, she cried a little, and when he gave her a month’s rent in lieu of notice, Mrs. Cobb shed a few more tears.

  The rent at Maus Haus was higher than he had been paying on Zwinger Street, but he told himself that the sophisticated cuisine was appropriate to his new assignment and that the cats would enjoy the bearskin rug. Yet he was fully aware of his real reason for moving.

  The cats were asleep on the daybed when he went into his old apartment, and he waked them with stroking. Koko, without opening his eyes, licked Yum Yum’s nose; Yum Yum licked Koko’s right ear; Koko licked a paw, which happened to be his own; and Yum Yum licked Qwilleran’s hand with her sandpaper tongue. He gave them some jellied clams from Maus Haus, and then he phoned Arch Riker at home.

  “Arch, I hope I didn’t get you out of bed,” he said. “You’ll never guess who walked back into my life again tonight . . . Joy!”

  There was an incredulous pause at the other end of the line. “Not Joy Wheatley!”

  “She’s Joy Graham now. She’s married.”

  “What’s she—? Where did you see—?”

  “She and her husband are artists, and they’ve come here from California.”

  “Joy’s an artist?”

  “They do ceramics. They live in a pottery on River Road, and I’m taking an apartment in the same building.”

  “Careful,” Arch warned.

  “Don’t jump to conclusions. It’s all over as far as I’m concerned.”

  “How does she look?”

  “Fine! Cute as ever. And she’s the same impetuous girl. Act now, think later.”

  “Did she explain what—or why—?”

  “We didn’t have that much time to talk.”

  “Well, that’s a bombshell! Wait till I wake up Rosie and tell her!”

  “See you tomorrow around noon,” Qwilleran said. “I want to stop at Kipper and Fine on my way to the office and look at their spring suits. I could use some new clothes.”

&nb
sp; He whipped off his tie and sank into an easy chair and dredged up whimsical memories: Joy baking bread in her aunt’s kitchen and losing a Band-Aid in the dough; Joy getting her long hair caught in the sewing machine. As a boy he had written poems about her: Joy . . . coy . . . alloy. Qwilleran shook his head. It was incredible.

  On Tuesday morning—a day that smelled joyously of spring—he spent some of his prize money on a new pair of shoes and a suit in a cut more fashionable than he had owned for some time. At noon he lunched with Arch Riker, reminiscing about old times in Chicago when they were both cub reporters, double-dating Joy and Rosie. In the afternoon he borrowed a station wagon from an antique dealer and moved his belongings to Maus Haus.

  Koko and Yum Yum traveled in a canned soup carton with air holes punched in the sides, and all during the journey the box rocked and thumped and resounded with the growls and hisses of feline mayhem. Koko, a master of strategy, went through the motions of murdering Yum Yum whenever he wanted to attract urgent attention, and the little female was a willing accomplice, but Qwilleran knew their act and was no longer deceived.

  Mrs. Marron, the housekeeper, admitted Qwilleran and the soup carton to Maus Haus. She was a sad-faced woman with dull eyes and a sallow complexion. With weary step she led the way across the Great Hall, now flooded with daylight from a skylight three stories overhead.

  “I gave Number Six a good cleaning,” she said. “William washed the walls last week. He’ll bring your things up when he comes home from school.”

  The afternoon sun was streaming through the huge studio window as if to prove the spotlessness of the premises. The floor of brown ceramic tile gleamed with an iridescent patina; the dark oak furniture was polished; the windowpanes sparkled. Mrs. Marron lowered the Roman shade—a contraption of pleated canvas favored by artists in earlier days—and said, “Mr. Maus didn’t tell me what meals you’d be taking. Everybody works different hours. They come and they go. They eat or they don’t eat.”

  “I’ll have breakfast and notify you from day to day about the other meals,” Qwilleran said. “Count me in for dinner tonight . . . How about this telephone? Is it connected?”

  “I’ll tell the phone company to start service.” She suddenly jumped back. “Oh! What’s in that box?”

  The soup carton, which Qwilleran had placed on the desk, had gone into convulsions, quaking and rocking and emitting unearthly sounds.

  “I have two Siamese cats,” the newsman explained, “and I want to be sure they don’t get out of the apartment, Mrs. Marron.”

  “Are they expensive?”

  “They’re extremely important to me, and I don’t want anything to happen to them. Please be careful when you come in to clean.”

  When the housekeeper left, Qwilleran closed the door, first testing the lock and the latch. He also investigated the catches on the three small casement windows over the desk. He checked the bathroom window, heat registers, air vents, and anything else that might serve as an escape hatch for a determined cat. Only then did he open the soup carton.

  The cats emerged cautiously, swinging their heads from side to side. Then with one accord they crept toward the white bear rug, stalking it with tails dipped and bellies close to the floor. When the beast made no move to attack or retreat, Koko bravely put his head inside the gaping jaws. He sniffed the teeth and stared into the glass eyes. Yum Yum stepped daintily on the pelt, and soon she was rolling over and over on the white fur in apparent ecstasy.

  Qwilleran’s practiced eye perused the apartment for trouble spots and found it catproof. His inquisitive roommates would not be able to burrow into the box spring; the bed was a captain’s bunk, built in between two large wardrobes. There were no plants for Yum Yum to chew. The lamp on the desk was weighty enough to remain upright during a cat chase.

  For entertainment there were pigeons on the ledge outside the windows, and an oak dining table in a sunny spot would hold the cats’ blue cushion.

  “I think this place will do,” Qwilleran said to the cats. “Don’t you?”

  The answer came from the bathroom, where Koko was crowing in exultation, enjoying the extra resonance that tile walls gave to his normally loud and penetrating voice.

  The man felt exhilarated, too. In fact, his elation had acted as a substitute for calories at lunchtime. Since meeting Joy the night before, his hunger pangs had vanished, and already he felt thinner. He wondered whether Joy was in the pottery—and whether it would be discreet to go looking for her—and whether he would see her at the dinner table.

  Then he remembered the can of boned chicken in his topcoat pocket. He found a can opener in the tiny kitchenette and was arranging morsels of chicken on a handmade stoneware plate when he heard a knock at the door. It was a playful knock. Was it Joy? Hastily he placed the dish on the bathroom floor, summoned the cats, and closed the door on them. Before answering the knock, he took time to glance in the bathroom mirror, straighten his tie, and run a hand over his hair. With his face pleasantly composed, he flung open the door.

  “Hi!” said William, who stood there grinning and carrying a suitcase and a carton of books.

  “Oh, it’s you,” said Qwilleran, his face relaxing into its usual sober lines. “Thanks. Just drop them anywhere.”

  “You’ve got the best setup in the whole building,” the houseboy said, walking around the room with a proprietary swagger. “How much rent is Mickey Maus charging you?”

  “There are some more boxes in the wagon,” Qwilleran told him. “And a scale, and a big wrought-iron coat of arms. Do you mind bringing them up?” He started unpacking books, stacking them in the row of built-in bookcases at one end of the room.

  William walked to the window. “You’ve got a good view. You’ll be able to watch all the wild parties down at the marina . . . Do you play bridge?”

  “I’m no asset to the game,” Qwilleran mumbled.

  “Hey, do you really read all this heavy stuff?” The houseboy had picked up a volume of Toynbee that Qwilleran had bought for a dime at a flea market. “All I ever read is whodunits . . . Jeez! What’s that?”

  An earsplitting shriek came from the bathroom.

  “One of the cats. Their litter pan is in the car, too, and a sack of gravel. Better bring those up first.”

  “Mind if I take a look at them?” William moved toward the bathroom.

  “Let’s wait till everything’s moved in,” Qwilleran said with a touch of impatience. “They might dart out into the hall. They’re edgy in a strange place.”

  “It must be great—working for a newspaper. Do you cover murder trials?”

  “Not anymore. That’s not my beat.”

  “What do you do, then?”

  Qwilleran was half irritated, half amused. The houseboy’s curiosity and persistence reminded him of his own early days as a copyboy. “Look, I’ll tell you the story of my life tomorrow,” he said. “First let’s get my things moved in. Then I’d like to visit the pottery.”

  “They don’t like visitors,” William said. “Not when they’re working. Of course, if you don’t mind getting thrown out on your ear . . .”

  Qwilleran did not see Joy until dinnertime. The meal was served at a big round table in a corner of the kitchen, because there were only six sitting down to dinner. Robert Maus was absent, and Miss Roop and Max Sorrel were on duty at their restaurants.

  The room was heady with aromas: roast beef, cheese, logs burning in the fireplace, and Joy’s spicy perfume. She looked more appealing than ever, having rouged her cheeks and darkened her eyelids.

  Qwilleran merely sampled the corn chowder, ate half of his portion of roast beef and broccoli parmigiana, declined a Parker House roll, and ignored a glob of mush flecked with green.

  “Everything’s good,” he assured Mrs. Marron, who had prepared the meal, “but I’m trying to lose weight.”

  Rosemary, the quiet one, glanced at the untouched glob on Qwilleran’s salad plate. “You should eat the bulgur. It’s highly nutritious.
”

  “Do you cook, Mr. Qwilleran?” Hixie asked.

  “Only a few gourmet dishes for my cats.”

  The conversation at the table was lagging; the Grahams were moody, and William was eating as if he might never have another meal. Qwilleran tried to entertain the group with tales about Koko and Yum Yum. “They can smell through the refrigerator door,” he said. “If there’s lobster in there, they won’t eat chicken, and if there’s chicken, they won’t eat beef. Salmon has to be a nationally advertised brand; don’t ask me how they know. In the morning Koko rings for his breakfast; he steps on the tabulator key of the typewriter, which jerks the carriage and rings the bell. One of these days I think he’ll learn to type.”

  With Joy in the audience he was feeling at his best, and yet the more he talked, the more he sensed her melancholy.

  Finally she said, “I had a cat, but he disappeared a couple of weeks ago. I miss him terribly. His name was Raku.”

  Her husband spoke for the first time that evening. “Somebody probably stole the Blimp. That’s what I called him. The Blimp.” He looked pleased with himself.

  “What kind of cat?” Qwilleran asked Joy. “Did you let him go out?”

  “No, but cats have a way of sneaking out. He was a big smoky brown longhair.”

  Her husband said, “People steal cats and sell them to labs for experiments.”

  Joy gritted her teeth. “For God’s sake, Dan, must you bring that subject up again?”

  “It’s getting to be big business,” he said. “Kit napping.” Dan looked hopefully around the table for appreciation of his bon mot.

  “That’s not funny!” Joy had put down her fork and was sitting with clenched fists. “It’s not funny at all.”

  Qwilleran turned to her husband. “By the way, I’d like to have a tour of the pottery when you have time.”