The Cat Who Saw Red (10 page)

A peculiar noise came from Koko, who had jumped from the table and was looking for an empty shoe. Qwilleran scooped him up and rushed him into the bathroom.

“Excuse me,” he said to his guest when the crisis was past. “Koko just chucked his breakfast. He must have a hair ball.”

Miss Roop gave Koko a look of faint distaste.

“I wonder what happened to Mrs. Graham’s cat,” Qwilleran remarked. “She was all broken up about losing him.”

“She will rise above it. She is a sensible woman, with remarkably strong character.”

“Is that so? I’ve been told that she is capricious and a little scatterbrained.”

“I beg to differ! I have seen her at work. She knows what she wants, and she takes endless pains to achieve it. One day she was sitting at the wheel, spinning a pot, as they say — or should I say casting a pot?”

“Throwing a pot,” Qwilleran corrected her.

“Yes, she was throwing a pot on the wheel, pumping the machine with her dainty little foot, and I asked her why she did not use the electric wheel. It would be so much easier and more efficient. She said, ‘I’d rather work harder and produce an object that has my own personality in the clay.’ That was a beautiful thought. She is a real artist.” Miss Roop rose to leave. “I have stayed too long. I’m keeping you from your work.” And when Qwilleran remonstrated, she added, “No, I must go downstairs and get a bite to eat.”

When Charlotte Roop was gone, Qwilleran said to Koko, “Did you hear what she said about the wheel?”

“Yowl” said Koko, who was back on the table, washing himself in the sunlight.

“Dan said he saved Joy from a serious injury by throwing the switch. A slight discrepancy, don’t you think?”

Koko nodded in agreement, it seemed, or was he merely licking the pale patch of fur on his breast?

“I’d like to figure out a way to sneak you into that pottery,” Qwilleran said. “I’ll bet you could sniff out some clues.”

More than once in the past Koko had led the way I into a highly revealing situation, but if the cat had a sixth sense about suspicious behavior, Qwilleran’s sensitive mustache had an equal awareness. Many a time it had alerted him to bad news, hidden danger, and even unsuspected crime.

Now he was experiencing the same disturbing quiver on his upper lip. It was telling him that something dire had happened to Joy. It was telling him that Joy was not alive. He didn’t want to believe his hunch. He refused to believe his hunch.

For Qwilleran the day seemed interminable. He skipped lunch. At noon Rosemary stopped at his door with a ball of yarn; she had been tidying her knitting basket and thought the cats would enjoy some exercise with a ball of yarn. Qwilleran invited her to come in, but she was on her way to work. In the afternoon the sun disappeared behind a bank of gray clouds, and the cold light flooding through the huge studio window drenched the apartment in gloom. The cats felt the chill. Ignoring the yarn, they crept behind the books in the bookcase and found a cozier place for their afternoon nap.

Qwilleran was thankful when the time came to leave for the Stilton Hotel. He needed a change of scene and a change of thought, and he was glad, somewhat, that he had invited the babbling Hixie Rice. On the way to the hotel he stopped at the office to open his mail, and a fleeting impulse sent him to the Fluxion library to pick up an old clip file on the River Road pottery… the Penniman Pottery, as it was originally known.

He met Hixie in the hotel lobby. It seemed to the newsman that she was exhibiting desperate gaiety with her cherry red suit and shrimp pink hat laden with straw carrots, turnips, and radishes.

“That’s a tasty chapeau,” Qwilleran remarked.

“Merci, monsieur.” She fluttered her double set of I eyelashes. “I’m glad you like it.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Oh, you’re a kidder!” Hixie gave him a playful shove. “I couldn’t resist the straw legumes. You know me!… Do you speak French?”

“Only enough to keep out of trouble in Paris.”

“I’m taking a Berlitz course. Say something in French.”

“Camembert, Roquefort, Brie,” said Qwilleran.

The annual Choose Cheese celebration was being hosted by the cheese industry in the hotel ballroom. The hundred or more guests, however, were patronizing the free bar and ignoring the long table of assorted cheeses.

“This is a typical press party,” Qwilleran explained. “About six of the guests are members of the working press, and nobody knows who the others are or why they were invited.”

He smoked his pipe and sampled a Danish cheese made with skim milk. Hixie sipped a Manhattan and sampled the Brie, Camembert, Cheshire, Edam, Gorgonzola, Gouda, Gruyere, Herkimer, Liederkranz, Mozzarella, Muenster, Parmesan, Port du Salut, and Roquefort.

“Is that all you’re going to eat, for gosh sake?” she asked.

“I might take a little Roquefort home to Koko,” Qwilleran said and then added, “We had an unexpected visitor today — Miss Roop. I sense that she disapproves of cats. Koko didn’t approve of her, either.”

“Charlotte disapproves of everything,” said Hixie. “Smoking, drinking, gambling, divorce, short skirts, shaggy dog stories, foreigners, motorcycles, movies with unhappy endings, politicians, gum-chewing, novels written after 1910, overtipping of waiters, and sex.”

That kind always had a skeleton in the closet, Qwilleran thought. “Has there ever been any romance in her life?” he asked his well-informed companion.

“Who knows? I suspect she was secretly in love with Hash House Hashman. He’s been dead for fifteen years, but she still talks about him all the time.”

Qwilleran chewed his pipe stem thoughtfully. “Did you ever wonder what happened to Joy Graham’s cat?”

Hixie shrugged. “Ran away, I suppose. Got picked up. Got run over by a bus. Fell in the river. Choose one of the above.”

“Do you like pets?”

“If they don’t cause trouble or tie you down too much. I bought myself a canary, but he seems to be a deaf-mute. That’s just my luck. I’m a born loser.”

Qwilleran sliced a wedge of Norwegian Gjetost and presented it to her on a cracker. “I suppose you know that Joy has disappeared.”

“Yes, I heard she left him.” For a moment Hixie’s jovial expression changed to one Qwilleran could not identify, but her face quickly brightened again. “Try this Westphalian Sauermilch, mon ami. C’est formidable!”

Qwilleran obliged and remarked that it was a little immature. It had not quite achieved total putrefaction. He was determined, however, not to let her change the subject. “Did you ever see Joy throw a pot on the wheel?” he asked.

“No, but she almost threw a pot at my head once. I accidentally broke a dumb-looking pitcher she’d made, and after that I wasn’t exactly welcome in the pottery.”

“We’ve got a colorful tribe at Maus Haus. What kind of guy is Max Sorrel?”

“A confirmed bachelor,” Hixie groaned. “His only love affair is with that big fat restaurant… Poor Max! He’s got the legendary heart of gold, and he doesn’t deserve the trouble he’s having.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Don’t you know? He may lose his restaurant. He’s even had to sell his boat! He has — or he did have — a gorgeous thirty-six-foot cruiser that he used to tie up behind Maus Haus.”

“What’s the problem?”

“You mean you haven’t heard the rumors?” Qwilleran scowled and shook his head, professionally humiliated because rumors were circulating and he, a member of the Press Club, was in the dark. “People are saying all kinds of absurd things. Like, Max’s head chef has a horrible disease. Like, a customer found something unspeakable in his soup. Sick jokes.”

“Sounds like poison tongue campaign.”

“It’s rotten, because Max runs a meticulously clean restaurant. And yet the rumors have mushroomed, and the customers are staying away in droves.”

“I thought the Golden Lamb Chop had a sophisticated clientele. They should know that the Board of Health —”

“Nobody believes the rumors, but cafe society and the gambling crowd won’t patronize a spot that’s being laughed at. And they’ve been Max’s best customers.”

“Does he have any idea how the thing started?”

She shook her head. “He’s very well liked allover town. I told him he ought to get one of the papers to print a story about it, so he could deny everything publicly, but he said that would only attract more unwelcome attention. He’s hoping it will blow over before he goes completely broke.”

“It’s slander, ” Qwilleran said. “He’s got a case if he can find out who’s behind it.”

“That’s what Robert says, but Max can’t trace a thing.”

Qwilleran had considered inviting Hixie to dinner — even after all the cheese — but he changed his mind. He wanted to go to the Golden Lamb Chop, and he wanted to go alone. Taking her home in a taxi, he sensed her disappointment.

“Do you like baseball?” he asked. “I can get seats in the press box some weekend, if you’d like to go.” He was being noble. If his friends in the press box saw him with this overweight, overdressed, overexpressive date, they’d never let him live it down.

“Sure, I like baseball. Especially the hot dogs.”

“Any particular team you’d like to see?”

“Whoever’s at the bottom of the league. I like to root for the underdog.”

When Qwilleran returned to Number Six to give the cats some turkey with a garnish of Roquefort, he was greeted by a scene of incredible beauty. The apartment had been transformed into a work of art. The cats had found Rosemary’s ball of gray yarn and had spun a web that enmeshed every article of furniture in the room. They had rolled the ball across the floor, tossed it over chairs, looped it around table legs, carried it up to the desk and around the typewriter and down again to the floor, hooking it in the jaws of the bear before repeating the same basic design with variations. Now the cats sat on the bookcase, as motionless as statuary, contemplating their creation.

Qwilleran had seen string sculpture at the museum that was less artful, and it was a shame to destroy it, but the crisscrossing strands made it impossible to move about the room. He found the end of the yarn and rewound it — an athletic performance that took half an hour and burned off an ounce of his avoir-dupois. This time he put the ball of yawn away in the desk drawer. Then he went to dinner — alone

The Golden Lamb Chop occupied a prominent corner where State Street, River Road, and the expressway converged. The building was a nineteenth-century landmark, having been the depot for interurban trolleys before the automobile came on the scene. Now the interior had a golden glow, like money: gold damask on the walls, gold silk shades on the table lamps, ornate gilt frames on the oil paintings. The floor was thickly carpeted in a gold plush, spongy enough to turn an unwary ankle and uniquely patterned with a lamb chop motif in metallic gold threads.

At the door to the main dining room Qwilleran was greeted by Max Sorrel — hand on heart. His well-shaped head was freshly shaved; his dark suit and candy-striped shirt were crisp as cornflakes.

“You alone?” the restaurateur asked, flashing a professional smile with the minty fragrance of toothpaste and mouthwash. “Just hang your coat in the checkroom. We don’t have a hatcheck girl tonight.” He seated the newsman at a table near the entrance. “I want you to be the guest of the house. Understand?”

“No, this is on the Daily Fluxion. Let them pay for it.”

“We’ll argue about that later. Mind if I join you — in between seating customers? We’re not very busy on weeknights, and I’ve given my maitre d’ a little vacation.”

The proprietor took a seat where he could keep a hopeful eye on the entrance. Thirty empty tables stood waiting in their gold tablecloths, with gold napkins folded precisely and tucked into the amber goblets.

“How many can you seat?” Qwilleran asked.

“Two hundred, counting the private dining room upstairs. What’ll you have to drink?”

“Just tomato juice.”

Sorrel called a waiter. There was only one of them in evidence. “One tomato juice and one rye and soda, Charlie, and get me a clean glass, will you?” He handed over a goblet on which a drop of detergent had left a spot. “If there’s anything I can’t stand,” he told Qwilleran, “it’s spots on the glassware. What’ll you have to eat? I recommend the rack of lamb.”

“Sounds good,” Qwilleran said, “but I may have to take some of it home in a doggie bag. I’m on a diet.”

“What for a first course? Vichyssoise? Herring in sour cream?”

“Better make it a half-grapefruit.”

Qwilleran started to light his pipe, and Sorrel pushed an amber glass ashtray toward him, after examining it for blemishes. “Know how we clean ashtrays here?” he said. “With wet tea bags. It’s the best way… Excuse me a moment.”

A couple had entered the empty dining room, looking bewildered, as if they had come on the wrong night.

“You don’t have a reservation?” Sorrel asked them with a frown. He hesitated. He consulted a ledger. He did some crossing out and some writing in. Finally — with a convincing show of magnanimity and a buttery smile for the lady — he consented to give them a table, seating them in a large front window in full view of passing traffic. He explained to them that the regular crowd was late because of the ball game, as he removed from their table a gold tent-card that said “Reserved.”

When the grapefruit was served, Sorrel watched Qwilleran spoon it out of the rind. “You unhappy about something?” he asked the newsman. Qwilleran gave him a questioning frown. “I can tell by the way you eat your grapefruit. You’re going around it counterclockwise. Did you ever watch people eat grapefruit? The happy ones eat clockwise.”

“Curious theory.”

“Do you secretly wiggle your toes inside your shoes when you eat something good?”

“I don’t know, and I’m not sure I want to know.”

“I can tell a lot about people by watching them eat — how they break their rolls, spoon their soup, cut their meat — even the way they chew.”

“How do you size up the motley crew at Maus Haus?” Qwilleran asked.

“Interesting bunch. Hixie — she’s got a lot of ginger, but she’s getting panicky. She wants to get married in the worst way. Rosemary — she looks like a perfect lady, but don’t be too sure. William — there’s something weasely about that boy. He’s not on the up-and-up. I can tell by the way he holds his fork. How do you size him up?”