Cat Who Saw Red Read online

  “Not before the exhibition,” said the potter, shaking his head gravely.

  “Why not?” his wife snapped.

  “Cripes, you know it’s nerve-racking to have somebody around when you’re working.” To Qwilleran he said, “Can’t afford any interruptions. Busy as a one-armed paperhanger with the itch, if you know what I mean.”

  Joy turned to Qwilleran, her voice icy. “Anytime you want to see the pottery, let me know. I’d love to show you my latest work.” She shot a venomous glance at her husband.

  To cover the embarrassed silence that followed, the newsman addressed Graham again. “You were telling me you didn’t like the Fluxion critic. What’s your complaint?”

  “He doesn’t know beans about pottery, if you know what I mean.”

  “He was a museum curator before he started writing for us.”

  Graham snorted. “Doesn’t mean a thing. He may know Flemish painting and African sculpture, but what he doesn’t know about contemporary pots would fill a book, if you know what I mean. When I had my last one-man show in L.A., the leading critic said my textures were a treat for the eye and a thrill for the fingertips. And I quote.”

  Joy said to Qwilleran with a disdainful edge to her voice, “Dan put a couple of old pots in a group show when we first came here, and your critic was unkind.”

  “I don’t expect a critic to be kind,” her husband said, his Adam’s apple moving rapidly. “I expect him to know his business.”

  William spoke up. “He calls ’em the way he sees ’em. That’s all any critic can do. I think he’s pretty perceptive.”

  “Oh, William, shut up,” Joy snapped. “You don’t know anything about pots either.”

  “I beg your pardon!” said the houseboy with mock indignation.

  “Anyone who gets the cones mixed up and puts cracked biscuit shelves away with the good ones is a lousy potter,” she said curtly.

  “Well, Dan told me to—”

  “Don’t listen to Dan. He’s as sloppy as you are. What do they teach you at Penniman Art School? How to make paper flowers?”

  Qwilleran had never seen that side of Joy’s nature. She had been moody as a girl but never sharp-tongued.

  Hixie said to the houseboy in a bantering tone, “Don’t let it burn you, Willie dear. Your personal charm makes up for your stupidity.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “This bickering,” Rosemary murmured, “is not very good for the digestion.”

  “Don’t blame it on me,” said William. “She started it.”

  Dan stood up and threw his napkin on the table. “I’ve had it up to the ears! Lost my appetite.” He strode away from the table.

  “The big baby!” his wife muttered. “I noticed he finished his apple pie before he made his temperamental exit.”

  “I don’t blame him,” said Hixie. “You were picking on him.”

  “Why don’t you mind your own business and concentrate on stuffing your face, dear? You do it so well!”

  “See?” Hixie said, batting her eyelids. “The skinny ones always have miserable dispositions.”

  “Really!” Rosemary protested in her gentle voice. “Do we have to talk like this in front of Mr. Qwilleran?”

  Joy put her face in her hands. “I’m sorry, Jim. My nerves are tied in knots. I’ve been . . . working too hard. Excuse me.” She left the table hurriedly.

  The meal ended with stilted scraps of conversation. Hixie talked about the cookbook she was writing. Rosemary extolled the healthful properties of blackstrap molasses. William wondered who had won the ball game in Milwaukee.

  After dinner Qwilleran called Arch Riker at home, using the public telephone in the foyer. “I’ve sure walked into something at Maus Haus,” he said, speaking in a low voice. “The tenants are all one big scrappy family, and Joy is definitely upset. She says she’s overworked, but it looks like domestic trouble to me. I wish I could get her away for a visit with you and Rosie. It might do her some good.”

  “Don’t take any chances until you know the score,” Riker warned him. “If it’s marital trouble, she might be using you.”

  “She wouldn’t do that. Poor kid! I still think of her as twenty years old.”

  “How do you size up her husband?”

  “He’s a conceited ass.”

  “Ever meet an artist who wasn’t? They all overrate themselves.”

  “But there’s something pitiful about the guy. For all I know, he may have talent. I haven’t seen his work. Someone said he was a slob potter, whatever that means.”

  “It doesn’t sound good . . . How about your new column? Are you going to do a story on Maus?”

  “If I can pin him down. He’s gone to an MSG meeting tonight.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Meritorious Society of Gastronomes. A bunch of food snobs.”

  “Qwill,” said Riker in a serious voice, “watch your step, will you? About Joy, I mean.”

  “I’m no kid, Arch.”

  “Well, it’s spring, you know.”

  FOUR

  When Qwilleran returned to Number Six, he found Koko and Yum Yum locked in mortal combat with the bearskin rug, which they had chased into a corner. The poor beast, powerless against two determined Siamese, had skidded across the glossy tile floor and was cowering, with back humped and jaws gaping, under the massive carved desk.

  Qwilleran was haranguing the cats and dragging the rug back to its rightful position in front of the captain’s bed when there was a knock on the door, and—despite a promise he had made to himself—his heart flipped when he saw Joy standing there. Her hair was hanging down to her waist, and she was wearing something filmy and apple green. Although her eyes looked puffed, her composure had returned.

  She smiled her funny little smile and peeked into the apartment hesitantly. “Do you have company? I thought I heard you talking to someone.”

  “Just the cats,” Qwilleran said. “When you live alone, it’s sometimes necessary to hear the sound of your own voice, and they’re good listeners.”

  “May I come in? I tried to call you, but your phone isn’t connected.”

  “Mrs. Marron said she’d call the phone company.”

  “Better do it yourself,” Joy said. “There’s been a tragedy in her family, and she’s still in a daze. Forgets to put potatoes in the potato pancakes. Puts detergent in the soup. She may poison us all before she gets back to normal.”

  She and her gauzy gown fluttered into the apartment, accompanied by a zephyr of perfume, suggesting cinnamon.

  “Look at those beautiful cats!” She gathered Koko in her arms, and he permitted it, much to Qwilleran’s surprise and pleasure. Koko was a man’s cat and not used to being cuddled. Joy scratched the sensitive zone behind his ears and massaged the top of his head with her chin, while Koko purred, crossed his eyes, and turned his ears inside out.

  “Look at him! The old lecher!” Qwilleran said. “I think he likes your green dress . . . So do I!”

  “Cats can’t distinguish colors,” Joy said. “Did you know that? Raku’s vet told me.” She sighed and hugged Koko tightly, burying her face in the ruff around his neck. “Koko’s fur smells like something good to eat.”

  “That’s the aroma of the old house we just moved out of. It always smelled like baked potatoes when the furnace was on. Cats’ fur seems to pick up house odors.”

  “I know. Raku’s fur used to smell like wet clay.” Joy squeezed her eyes shut and gulped. “He was such a wonderful little friend. It kills me not to know what’s happened to him.”

  “Did you advertise?”

  “In both papers. I didn’t get a single call—except from one crackpot—some fellow trying to disguise his voice . . . Be sure to keep your cats indoors, won’t you?”

  “Don’t worry about that. I keep them under lock and key. They mean a lot to me.”

  Joy looked out the window. The river flowed black between two lighted shorelines, and she shuddered. “I hate water. I was
in a boat accident a few years ago, and I still have nightmares of drowning.”

  “It used to be a beautiful river, they tell me. It’s polluted now.”

  “In our apartment I’m always dropping the blinds to shut out the river, and Dan’s always raising them.”

  Qwilleran took the hint and lowered the Roman shades.

  Still carrying Koko over her shoulder, Joy moved about the apartment as if looking for clues to Qwilleran’s personal life. She touched his red plaid bathrobe draped over one of the carved Spanish dining chairs. She admired the Mackintosh coat of arms propped on top of the bookcase. She glanced at titles on the shelves. “Have you read all these books? You’re such a brain!” At the desk she examined the antique ebony book rack, the ragged dictionary, the typewriter, and the sheet of paper in the machine. “What does this mean? These initials—BW.”

  “That’s Koko’s typing. He’s ordering his breakfast, I think. Beef Wellington.”

  Joy laughed—a long, musical trill. “Oh, Jim, you’ve got a wild imagination.”

  “It’s good to hear your laughter again, Joy.”

  “It’s good to laugh, believe me. I haven’t done it for so long . . . Listen! What’s the matter with the other cat?”

  Yum Yum had retreated to a far corner and was calling in a piteous voice, until Koko jumped from Joy’s arms and went to comfort her.

  “Jealous,” Qwilleran said.

  The cats exchanged sympathetic licks. Yum Yum squeezed her eyes shut while Koko passed a long pink tongue over her eyes, nose, and whiskers, and then she returned the compliment.

  Joy stopped circling the apartment and draped herself over the arm of the big plaid chair.

  “Where’s Dan tonight?” Qwilleran inquired.

  “Out. As usual! . . . Would you like a tour of the pottery?”

  “I don’t want to cause trouble. If he doesn’t want—”

  “He’s being ridiculous! Ever since we arrived here, Dan’s been mysteriously secretive about our new work. You’d think we were surrounded by spies, trying to steal our ideas!” Joy jumped off the arm of the chair impulsively. “Come on. Our exhibition pots are locked up, and Dan’s got the key, but I can show you the clay room and the wheel and the kilns.”

  They went downstairs to the Great Hall and along the kitchen corridor to the pottery. A heavy steel door opened into a low-ceilinged room filmed with dust. Like a veil, the fine dust covered the floor, worktables, shelves, plaster molds, scrapbooks, broken pots, and rows of crocks with cryptic labels. Dust gave the room a ghostly pallor.

  “What’s the old suicide mystery connected with this place?” Qwilleran asked.

  “An artist was drowned—a long time ago—and some people thought it was murder. Remind me to tell you about it later. I have an interesting new angle on it.” She led the way into a large, dismal area that smelled damp and earthy. Everything seemed to be caked with mud. “This is the clay room, and the mechanical equipment is all very old and primitive. That big cylinder is the blunger that mixes the clay. Then it’s stored in a tank under the floor and eventually formed into big pancakes on the filter press over there . . . after which it’s chewed up by the pug mill and formed into loaves, which are stored in those big bins.”

  “There must be an easier way,” Qwilleran ventured.

  “Every step has its purpose. This used to be a big operation fifty years ago. Now we do a few tiles for architects and some garden sculpture for landscape designers—plus our own creative work.” Joy walked into a smaller room. “This is our studio. And this is my kick-wheel.” She sat on a bench at the clay-coated machine and activated a shaft with a kick-bar, spinning the wheel. “You throw a lump of clay on the wheel and shape it as it spins.”

  “Looks pretty crude.”

  “They had wheels of this type in ancient Egypt,” Joy said. “We also have a couple of electric wheels, but the kick-wheel is more intimate, I think.”

  “Did you make that square vase with the blobs of clay on it?”

  “No, that’s one of Dan’s glop pots that your critic didn’t like. Wish I could show you my latest, but they’re locked up. Maybe it’s just as well. Hixie came in here one day and broke a combed pitcher I’d just finished. I could have killed her! She’s such a clumsy ox!”

  The next room was dry and warm—a large, lofty space with windows just under the ceiling and an Egyptian-style mural running around the top of all four walls. Otherwise, it looked like a bakery. Several ovens stood around the room, and tables held trays of dun-colored tiles, like cookies waiting to be baked.

  “These tiles are bone dry and ready for firing,” said Joy. “The others are bisque, waiting to be glazed. They’ll be used in the chapel that the Pennimans are donating to the university . . . And now you’ve seen the whole operation. We live in the loft over the clay room. I’d invite you up, only it’s a mess. I’m a terrible housekeeper. You should be glad you didn’t marry me, Jim.” She squeezed Qwilleran’s hand. “Shall we have a drink? I’ve got some bourbon, and we can drink in your apartment, if you don’t mind. Is bourbon still your favorite?”

  “I’m not drinking. I’ve signed off the hard stuff,” he told her. “But you go and get your bottle, and I’ll have a lemon and seltzer with you.”

  Qwilleran returned to Number Six and found the cats lounging on top of the bookcase. “Well, what do you think of her?” he asked them.

  “Yow!” said Koko, squeezing his eyes shut.

  When Joy arrived with her bourbon, she said, “You can make yourself very popular in this house by keeping a bottle handy. Mr. Maus doesn’t approve of hard liquor—it paralyzes the taste buds—but most of us like to sneak a cocktail now and then.”

  “How does anyone live here and stay thin?”

  “Mr. Maus says a true gourmet never stuffs himself.”

  Qwilleran poured the drinks. “You were a great cook, Joy. I still remember your homemade raisin bread with honey and lemon frosting.”

  “Potting is not far removed from baking,” she said, curling up comfortably on the built-in bunk. “Wedging clay is like kneading dough. Applying a glaze is like frosting a cake.”

  “How did you happen to take up potting?”

  Joy gazed wistfully into the past. “When I left Chicago so suddenly, Jim, it had nothing to do with you. I adored you—I really did. But I wasn’t satisfied with my life . . . and I didn’t know what I wanted.”

  “If you had only explained—”

  “I didn’t know how. It was easier just to . . . disappear. Besides, I was afraid you’d change my mind.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “San Francisco. I worked in restaurants for a while and then supervised the kitchen on a large ranch. It was operated as a pottery school, and eventually they let me handle some clay. I learned fast, won prizes, and I’ve been potting ever since.”

  Qwilleran, relaxing in the big plaid arm chair, took time to light his pipe. “Is that how you met Dan?”

  She nodded. “Dan said there was too much competition in California, so we moved to Florida, but I hated that state! I couldn’t create. I felt a hundred years old in Florida, so we went back to the Coast until we got the offer to come here.”

  “No kids?”

  Joy took a long, slow sip of her drink. “Dan didn’t—that is, he wanted to be free to be poor. And I had my work, which was time-consuming and fulfilling. Did you ever marry, Jim?”

  “I gave it a try. I’ve been divorced for several years.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  “She was an advertising woman—very successful.”

  “But what did she look like?”

  “You.” Qwilleran allowed himself to look at Joy fondly. “Why are we talking in the past tense? She’s still alive—though not well and not happy.”

  “Are you happy, Jim?”

  “I have good days and bad days.”

  “You look marvelous! You’re the type that improves with age. And that mustache makes you look
so romantic. Jim—I’ve never forgotten you—not for a single day.” She slid off the bunk and sat on the arm of his chair, leaning toward him and letting her hair fall around them in a thick brown curtain. “You were my first,” she whispered, close to his lips.

  “And you were my first,” he replied softly.

  “Yow!” said an imperious voice from the top of the bookcase. A book crashed to the floor. Cats flew in all directions, and the spell was broken.

  Joy sat up and sighed deeply. “Forgive me for that silly outburst at dinner tonight. I’m not like that—really I’m not. I’m beginning to hate myself.”

  “Everyone flies off the handle once in a while.”

  “Jim,” she said abruptly. “I’m going to get a divorce.”

  “Joy, you shouldn’t—I mean, you must think it through carefully. You know how impulsive you are.”

  “I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.”

  “What’s the trouble between you and Dan? Or don’t you want to talk about it?”

  She glanced around the room, as if searching for the words. “I don’t know. It’s just because . . . well, I’m me and he’s himself. I won’t bore you with details. It may be selfish of me, but I know I could do better on my own. He’s dragging me down, Jim.”

  “Is he jealous of your work?” Qwilleran was thinking of the six-hundred-piece table service.

  “I’m sure of it, although I try to keep a low profile. Dan has never been really successful. I’ve had better reviews and bigger sales—and without even trying very hard.” Joy hesitated. “No one knows it, but I have fantastic ideas for glazes that I’ve been holding back. They’d be a sensation, I guarantee.”

  “Why have you held them back?”

  She shrugged. “Trying to play the good wife, trying not to surpass my husband. I know that’s old-fashioned. The only way I can shake loose and be honest with myself as an artist is to get out of this marriage. I tell you, Jim, I’m wasting my life! You know how old I am. I’m beginning to want comforts. I’m tired of making my own clothes out of remnants and driving an ancient Renault without a heater . . . Well, it does have a heater, but there’s this big hole in the floor—”