Cat Who Saw Red

by Lilian Jackson Braun

  “Forgive me for intruding,” Miss Roop said, fingering her three strands of beads, “but this puzzle has me stumped, and I thought you might have a good dictionary, being a writer and all. I need an eleven-letter word for a kind of orchid. The first letter is c, and it ends in m.”

  “Cypripedium,” said Qwilleran. He spelled it for her.

  Miss Roop gasped, and a look of adoration crept into her small blue wrinkle-framed eyes. “Why—why—why, you are remarkable, Mr. Qwilleran!”

  He accepted the compliment without revealing the truth. He had learned the word while playing a dictionary game with Koko a few months before. “Will you come in?” he asked.

  She started to back away. “Oh, you’re probably busy writing one of your wonderful columns.” But her eyes seemed eager.

  “It’s about time I took a breather. Come on in.”

  “You’re sure it’s all right?” She glanced down the hall in both directions before stepping quickly into the apartment with a guilty little shrug.

  Qwilleran closed the door behind her, and when she looked apprehensive he explained that he must keep the cats from running into the hall. Koko and Yum Yum were sunning themselves on the blue cushion atop the dining table. Miss Roop glanced at them and stiffened perceptibly.

  Koko was stretched full length, and Yum Yum was playing with his tail. He tantalized her by slapping it this way and that, and she grabbed it whenever it came within reach. Airborne cat hairs could be seen glistening in the shaft of sunlight that slanted through the studio window.

  The relentless daylight also emphasized the two sets of wrinkles on Miss Roop’s forehead, caused by the habit of raising her eyebrows.

  Koko caught her disapproving stare and stopped playing games. He rolled over, lifted one hind leg and proceeded to lick the base of his tail. The visitor quickly turned away.

  “Will you have a chair?” Qwilleran offered her one of the dining chairs, guessing that she liked to sit up straight. He also offered to make a cup of instant coffee, but she declined hastily as if he had made an indecent suggestion.

  Mischievously he asked, “Something stronger?”

  “Mr. Qwilleran,” she said firmly, “I might as well tell you right now that I disapprove of drinking.”

  “I don’t drink either,” he admitted in his best chummy tone, without adding the grim reason why.

  Again she beamed at him with so much warmth that she embarrassed herself and began to talk self-consciously—too much, too loud, and too fast. “I love my work. Mr. Hashman was a brilliant man, rest his soul. He taught me everything I know about restaurant management. He sold out a long time ago, and now the Heavenly Hash Houses are a very big fast-food chain; you probably know that. They’re owned by three brilliant businessmen—”

  “Perhaps I should write a column on the history of the Hash Houses, since they originated in this city.” Qwilleran told himself it would be a neat way of sidestepping the quality of the food. “Would you be willing to be interviewed?”

  “Oh, dear, no! Don’t mention me! I’d rather you would write about the three brilliant men who expanded the chain from three restaurants to eighty-nine.”

  All uniformly mediocre, thought Qwilleran. He reached for his pipe and then changed his mind, convinced that his visitor would disapprove. With circumspection he attempted to pump her for information.

  “I’m hoping to write several stories on the gourmets who live at Maus Haus. Do you have any suggestions as to where I should start?”

  “Oh, they’re all interesting individuals, take my word for it,” she said enthusiastically.

  “Certainly a varied group. Do they all get along well?”

  “Oh, yes, they’re lovely people, all very agreeable.”

  “How about Max Sorrel? Is he a success as a restaurateur?”

  “Oh, he’s an excellent businessman. I admire Mr. Sorrel greatly.”

  “Seems to have an eye for the ladies.”

  “He’s a handsome man, with a charming personality, and very fastidious.”

  Qwilleran felt he was holding a conversation with a computer. He cleared his throat and tried another approach. “You weren’t at dinner Tuesday night, but there was a flare-up at the table. William was scolded for incompetence.”

  “We should all make allowances for youth,” Miss Roop said firmly. “He’s a nice boy—very friendly. I’m an old lady with white hair, but he talks to me as if we were the same age.”

  Qwilleran had always had a faculty for inducing people to talk frankly. The look of concern in his eyes and the downward curve of his heavy mustache combined to make him appear sympathetic and sincere, even when he was purely inquisitive, but his technique failed to work with Charlotte Roop. He merely learned that Rosemary was attractive, Hixie amusing, and Robert Maus brilliant—absolutely brilliant.

  “I suppose you know,” he said, attacking the subject with less delicacy, “that we’ve lost one of our dinner companions. Mrs. Graham has left her husband—rather suddenly and mysteriously.”

  Miss Roop raised her chin primly. “I never listen to gossip, Mr. Qwilleran.”

  “I hope nothing unfortunate has happened to her,” he persisted. “I heard a scream the night she disappeared, and it worries me.”

  “Mrs. Graham is perfectly all right, I’m sure,” said Miss Roop. “We must always maintain an optimistic attitude and think constructive thoughts.”

  “Do you know her well?”

  “We’ve had many friendly conversations, and she has taught me a great deal about her art. I admire her tremendously. A clever woman! And her husband is such a sweet man. They’re a lovely couple.”

  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?”

  “Yow!” 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 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 h
im 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.

  EIGHT

  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 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 légumes. 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, Gruyère, 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 café 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 all over 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—a
n athletic performance that took half an hour and burned off an ounce of his avoirdupois. 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 maître 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.”