The Cat Who Talked Turkey Read online

  It was Tuesday before Polly felt “settled” enough to enjoy a dinner date. She left the library early, had her hair done, splurged on a facial, and went home to put on the summer suit she had bought in Chicago. The color was called “orange sherbet,” and she felt quite daring.

  When Qwilleran arrived to pick her up, he exclaimed, “You look . . . wonderful!” It was the only adjective he knew that meant radiant, well coiffed, and well dressed.

  “And you look handsome,” she murmured. He had trimmed his moustache and coordinated his blazer, shirt, and tie. Dressing carefully was a compliment they paid each other—and the restaurant—when they dined out.

  They went to the Old Grist Mill, which combined country charm with contemporary chic. The owner, Elizabeth Hart, was from Chicago. Her maître d’, Derek Cuttlebrink, was from the town of Wildcat.

  “You guys look spiffy tonight,” he said with the nervy nonchalance of a favorite son who is six-feet-eight. “What’ll it be? One dry sherry and one Q cocktail straight up?” He handed them the cards with a conspiratorial whisper. “Avoid the lamb curry unless you want to live dangerously.”

  When the drinks were served, Qwilleran said, “Now tell me how things are going at the library.”

  “We hired a very nice woman to be my successor, Myrtle Parsons. She was a school librarian in Bixby, and is so happy to be working here. We’re working together on everything that comes up. Last night she attended the monthly dinner meeting with the Dear Ladies, and they were very charming to her.”

  “Dear Ladies” was Polly’s nickname for the white-haired, conventional, wealthy, and charming members of the board of directors.

  Qwilleran said, “You may be able to leave the library sooner than you anticipated.”

  “Oh, I hope so. The people at the K Fund have given me a six-hundred-page book to study. Everything from accounting procedures to zone and cluster plans.”

  The appetizers were served. Qwilleran had french-fried oysters. Polly had tomato consommé. Too lemony, she said.

  “The design of the building is exciting—a long, narrow building with an entrance that’s quite inviting. All windows will be clerestory or skylights; all wall space is devoted to bookshelves. Although there’ll be an elevator to the lower level, there’ll also be a rather grand staircase—the kind people like to walk down.”

  “What will be downstairs?”

  Her answer was interrupted by the arrival of the entrées. Qwilleran had bravely ordered the lamb curry. Polly had poached salmon with yogurt sauce, a twice-baked potato, and asparagus. She said the portions were too large.

  Part of the lower level, Qwilleran knew, would be the Eddington Smith Room, offering pre-owned books donated by local families. It would be staffed by volunteers, and proceeds would go to the Literacy Fund. Then there would be an all-purpose room for book signings and a literary club like the one in Lockmaster. The Lit Club sponsored by the Lockmaster Ledger featured visiting speakers, book reviews, and some lively discussion. Qwilleran was often invited to speak.

  Polly said, “There will also be a display case for exhibiting treasures behind glass: rare books and manuscripts, and collections of things related to reading and writing. These will be loaned by antique shops and private individuals.”

  “No food?” Qwilleran asked.

  “No food, no gifts. Just around the corner are a gift shop and an ice cream parlor.”

  For dessert they ordered blackberry cobbler. Polly said it looked awfully rich.

  “But I have been doing all the talking, Qwill. What has kept you occupied?” she asked absently.

  “Not much,” he said. “What did you bring me from the big city?”

  “A CD recording of Massenet’s piano pieces. They’ll sound wonderful on your big sound system.”

  “Good!” he said. “Shall we go to the barn and listen to music?”

  Qwilleran could have told Polly about his plans for the next day, but Polly was so thrilled about the bookstore and everything concerning it that he had no desire to dampen her enthusiasm. He had never seen her so animated!

  The next evening he would drive to Lockmaster for the first book signing in how many years? Earlier in his life, while a crime reporter Down Below, he had authored a book titled City of Brotherly Crime. Since then, none of his ideas had jelled until he moved to Moose County and discovered the wealth of legends originating from pioneer days, to be published as Short & Tall Tales.

  In Lockmaster, the adjoining county, he had many friends and readers of the “Qwill Pen” column, and Kip MacDiarmid, editor of the Lockmaster Ledger, had arranged for a book signing on the eve of publication. It would be a private preview for members of the local Literary Club and would be held in the community room of the local bookstore.

  The room was crowded with members of the club; the editor’s introduction was flattering, and applause was vociferous, and someone shouted, “Where’s Koko?”

  Qwilleran walked to the lectern, surveyed the audience at length with his brooding eyes, then stroked his oversized moustache. His silence brought a standing ovation.

  Then he began to speak in his mellifluous voice: “This is the story of a woman who put fear into the male population of a small town in Moose County. It is a true tale, as told by Gary Pratt, proprietor of the Hotel Booze in the Scottish town of Brrr.”

  The audience began to wriggle in delight and anticipation. Qwilleran proceeded to bring alive the legend, imitating the high-pitched voice of the hotel proprietor.

  HILDA THE CLIPPER

  My grandfather used to tell about this eccentric old woman in Brrr who had everybody terrorized. This was about seventy years ago, you understand. She always walked around town with a pair of hedge clippers, pointing them at people and going click-click with the blades. Behind her back they laughed and called her Hilda the Clipper, but the same people were very nervous when she was around.

  The thing of it was, nobody knew if she was just an oddball or was really smart enough to beat the system. In stores she picked up anything she wanted without paying a cent. She broke all the town ordinances and got away with it. Once in a while a cop or the sheriff would question her from a safe distance, and she said she was taking her hedge clippers to be sharpened. She didn’t have a hedge. She lived in a tar-paper shack with a mangy dog. No electricity, no running water. My grandfather had a farmhouse across the road, and Hilda’s shack was on his property. She lived there rent-free, brought water in a pail from his hand pump, and helped herself to firewood from his woodpile in winter.

  One night, right after Halloween, the Reverend Mr. Wimsey from the church here was driving home from a prayer meeting at Squunk Corners. It was a cold night, and cars didn’t have heaters then. His Model T didn’t even have side curtains, so he was dressed warm. He was chugging along the country road, at probably twenty miles an hour, when he saw somebody in the darkness ahead, trudging down the middle of the dirt road and wearing a bathrobe and bedroom slippers. She was carrying hedge clippers.

  Mr. Wimsey knew her well. She’d been a member of his flock until he suggested she quit bringing the clippers to services. Then she gave up going to church and was kind of hostile. Still, he couldn’t leave her out there to catch her death of cold. Nowadays you’d just call the sheriff, but there were no car radios then, and no cell phones. So he pulled up and asked where she was going.

  “To see my friend,” she said in a gravelly voice.

  “Would you like a ride, Hilda?”

  She gave him a mean look and then said, “Seein’ as how it’s a cold night . . .” She climbed in the car and sat with the clippers on her lap and both hands on the handles.

  Mr. Wimsey told Grandpa he gulped a couple of times and asked where her friend lived.

  “Over yonder.” She pointed across a cornfield.

  “It’s late to go visiting,” he said. “Wouldn’t you rather I should take you home?”

  “I told you where I be wantin’ to go,” she shouted, as if he wa
s deaf, and she gave the clippers a click-click.

  “That’s all right, Hilda. Do you know how to get there?”

  “It’s over yonder.” She pointed to the left.

  At the next road he turned left and drove for about a mile without seeing anything like a house. He asked what the house looked like.

  “I’ll know it when we get there!” Click-click.

  “What road is it on? Do you know?”

  “It don’t have a name.” Click-click.

  “What’s the name of your friend?”

  “None o’ yer business! Just take me there.”

  She was shivering, and he stopped the car and started taking off his coat. “Let me put my coat around you, Hilda.”

  “Don’t you get fresh with me!” she shouted, pushing him away and going click-click.

  Mr. Wimsey kept on driving and thinking what to do. He drove past a sheep pasture, a quarry, and dark farmhouses with barking dogs. The lights of Brrr glowed in the distance, but if he steered in that direction, she went into a snit and clicked the clippers angrily.

  Finally he had an inspiration. “We’re running out of fuel!” he said in an anxious voice. “We’ll be stranded out here! We’ll freeze to death! I have to go into town to buy some gasoline!”

  It was the first time in his life, he told Grandpa, that he’d ever told a lie, and he prayed silently for forgiveness. He also prayed the trick would work. Hilda didn’t object. Luckily she was getting drowsy, probably in the first stages of hypothermia. Mr. Wimsey found a country store and went in to use their crank telephone.

  In two minutes a sheriff deputy drove up on a motorcycle. “Mr. Wimsey! You old rascal!” he said to the preacher. “We’ve been looking all over for the Clipper! Better talk fast, or I’ll have to arrest you for kidnapping!”

  What happened, you see: Hilda’s dog had been howling for hours, and Grandpa called the sheriff.

  Eventually Hilda was lodged in a foster home—for her own protection—and had to surrender her hedge clippers. The whole town breathed a lot easier. I asked my grandfather why they put up with her eccentricities for so long. He said, “Folks still had the pioneer philosophy: Shut up and make do!”

  Qwilleran was gratified by the cordial welcome of the Literary Club, their response to his reading, and the number of books presented for signing. He regretted only that it could not happen in Pickax at The Pirate’s Chest—as it was destined to be named.

  THREE

  It was Thursday—time to write another thousand words for the “Qwill Pen” column—and Qwilleran’s head was devoid of ideas. That meant resorting to the Koko System. The man yelled “Book!” and the cat came running—leaping onto a bookshelf, sniffing bindings, and nudging a selected title off the shelf. And that became the topic for the “Qwill Pen.”

  Qwilleran would be the first to admit that the system was ludicrous . . . but it was simple, and it worked. It gave Koko pleasure, and it gave Qwilleran a challenge. He boasted that he could write a thousand words about anything—or nothing.

  On this occasion, the chosen book was The Tiger in the House by Carl Van Vechten, one of the last pre-owned classics that Qwilleran had purchased from the late Eddington Smith. Its cover looked rain-soaked, the spine was tattered, and the gold tooling had worn off, but its three hundred pages were intact, printed on India laid paper, in a limited edition of two thousand, dated 1920.

  This copy was signed by the author.

  Qwilleran described it in his column as a superb literary work, a scholarly history of the domestic cat, beginning almost forty centuries ago in Egypt. There were names of famous artists and statesmen who cherished the cat as a household pet. And there were the names of tyrants and murderers who hated or feared the very mention of the animal. Particularly interesting were the myths and superstitions that persisted throughout the centuries.

  Qwilleran himself, living with a cat that seemed to be psychic, was encouraged in his belief by attitudes in the Orient, where cats were considered supernatural. In Siam they were considered to be royalty. He had long wanted to trace Koko’s ancestry. Readers of the “Qwill Pen” knew Koko to be a smart cat, but even close friends like Polly and Arch had not been told the whole story—for the simple reason that they would scoff. A detective lieutenant Down Below did not scoff; the Pickax police chief had been gradually convinced; and a retired police detective from California was ready to be converted. Qwilleran found it a curious fact that they were all members of the constabulary!

  The prospect of doing another one-man show for a Moose County audience filled Qwilleran with elation. He remembered audience reaction to the first one: They were spellbound; they gasped; they cried. In college he had focused on theater training before switching to journalism, and he still relished the idea of using his voice dramatically to influence an audience.

  Now, to refresh his memory, he reviewed the script of the Big Burning. The audience had been told to imagine that radio actually existed in 1869, as he announced the news of the disaster, read bulletins from other parts of the county, and interviewed eyewitnesses by telephone.

  Radio was still in the future at the time of the Great Storm—1913. There were no broadcasting stations, no home receivers using cat whiskers, no commercials for tin lizzies or potbellied stoves. Then he thought, Why not add to the realism with a few commercials? There could be bargains in kerosene and ten-pound bags of oatmeal.

  In 1913 Moose County had no real newspaper—only the Pickax Picayune, with social notes and classified ads. Lockmaster County, to the south, was further advanced. Qwilleran phoned his friend Kip MacDiarmid, editor of the Lockmaster Ledger.

  “Kip! Do me a big favor. Meet me for lunch at Inglehart’s and bring some photocopies of the Ledger of 1913. The lunch is on me!”

  “Good deal!” said the editor. “Which pages and how many?”

  “Just three or four. Inside pages with display ads for groceries, clothing, hardware—whatever.”

  The two newsmen met at the restaurant in a Victorian mansion on Lockmaster’s main thoroughfare and were given a table by a window hung with lace curtains. Kip had a glass of wine; Qwilleran asked for Squunk water on the rocks with a twist but settled for club soda. He knew no one south of the border had ever heard of Squunk water.

  “Your groundbreaking was a great show,” Kip said. “Did you know the chest was empty?”

  “No one had the foggiest idea!”

  “I hope you’re going to call the bookstore The Pirate’s Chest. Is Polly excited about running it?”

  “Rather!” Qwilleran said. “She looks twenty years younger. And by the way, she wants to know how you run your literary club. She wants to start one at the bookstore.”

  “I’ll have Moira get in touch with her; she’s secretary of the Lit Club.”

  Qwilleran asked, “Have you heard about the Bicentennial of the town of Brrr? I’m doing a show on the Great Storm of 1913. That’s why I asked for some 1913 clips of the Ledger.”

  “Did you know it was called the Lockmaster Logger then?”

  They chatted, stopping long enough to order lunch. Kip recommended the turkey potpie, made with bacon and turnips.

  Qwilleran said he’d stick to his favorite Reuben sandwich.

  “Are you going to write another book, Qwill?”

  “Well, off the record, I’m writing The Private Life of the Cat Who . . . Just a series of sketches of my experiences with two Siamese. Don’t tell Polly. She’d think it too frivolous. She wants me to write a literary masterpiece that will win the Pulitzer Prize. How is Moira? We should all have dinner at the Mackintosh Inn sometime.”

  “Good idea! Did you know that Moira is breeding marmalade cats? She wants to know if you’re going to have a bookstore cat. If so, she’d like to present you with a pedigreed marmalade.”

  Qwilleran hesitated. He had known some scruffy, overweight orange cats in his time, and he said warily, “That’s a decision for Polly to make. It’s a good thought, though; books a
nd cats go together.”

  “I’ll tell Moira to phone Polly. I know it’s a little premature, since you’ve only just dug the hole for the building. But Moira has a handsome devil in the cattery, a few months old, and she would save him for you if Polly’s interested. She said he’s a people cat, born to win friends and influence customers. When do you expect the store to open?”

  “Before snow flies.”

  “Meanwhile, have you opened your log cabin yet?”

  “I’ve alerted the janitorial service to get it ready for summer.”

  “I hear there was a murder in the woods near your place. Are you ready with an alibi?”

  They rambled on, and the banter reminded Qwilleran of lunches at the Press Club Down Below, when he was an underpaid hack working for the Daily Fluxion. “Let’s do this again, Kip,” he said when they parted.

  “And let’s not wait so long next time!”

  Only when Qwilleran was driving back to Pickax did he realize he had forgotten to ask about the land-fraud scandal in Lockmaster—and an orphaned daughter who had changed her name and moved to Moose County.