The Cat Who Wasn't There

by Lilian Jackson Braun

  Lisa said, “I loved your story on the teddy bears, Qwill, and we saw Grace Utley on television. I wonder what she thinks of this madhouse.”

  “She was smart enough to leave town on the eve of the preview.”

  “Any news about the jewel theft?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  Lyle said, “I’ll bet she wanted them stolen so she could spend the insurance money on those damned teddy bears!”

  On the way home Qwilleran caught up with Dwight Somers, walking empty-handed toward Main Street. “I’m getting out of here,” said the director. “The line is the equivalent of twelve blocks long!”

  “Would you like to come over to the barn for a drink or a cup of coffee?”

  “I’d sure like to see your barn. I’m parked in the theatre lot.”

  After he picked up his tin whistle from his car, they started out on foot through the woods. “A hundred years ago,” Qwilleran explained, “this barn serviced a large apple orchard.”

  “Larry told me about the murder in the orchard following a Theatre Club party. That was quite a story!”

  “That was quite a party! Have you been lucky enough to plug into the Pickax grapevine?”

  “I’m not a full subscriber yet. I think I’m on probation.”

  “The barn was used for storing apples and pressing cider originally, and even after it was renovated we could smell apples in certain weather. The orchard suffered a blight at one time, and the dead wood has been removed, but when the wind blows through the remaining trees, it sounds like a harmonica and frightens the cats.”

  “How many do you have?” Dwight asked.

  “Two cats. Forty-seven trees.”

  Dwight was properly impressed by the octagonal shape of the barn and the interior system of ramps and balconies surrounding the central fireplace cube. The Siamese, who usually disappeared when a stranger entered, did him the honor of approaching within ten feet, and Koko struck a pose like an Egyptian bronze.

  “Beautiful animals,” said the visitor. “I used to have a Siamese—when I was married. Why is the little one staring at me like that?”

  “She’s fascinated by your beard. She likes beards, moustaches, toothbrushes, hair brushes—” Qwilleran said. “What’ll you have to drink?”

  “It’s early. Make it coffee.”

  While they waited for the promising gurgle of the computerized coffeemaker, Qwilleran asked, “What brought you to Moose County, Dwight? Most people don’t even know it exists.”

  “To tell the truth, I’d never heard of it until the placement agency sent me up here. The company I worked for in Des Moines merged with another, and I was outsourced. XYZ Enterprises was looking for a PR rep who could contribute to the community in some useful way and improve their corporate image, which is pretty grim right now.”

  “I know. Developers frighten people. The general public doesn’t like to see changes in the landscape, for better or worse.”

  “That’s the truth! My chief asset was that I’d acted and directed in community theatre, so here I am, and I like it! Never thought I’d like living in a small town.”

  “This is not your average small town,” Qwilleran pointed out as he served the coffee.

  “I can see that! Our basic idea is to make our presence felt in a positive way through participation. For example, we’re collaborating with the hospital auxiliary on the first annual Distinguished Women Awards next Friday. A couple of your friends are on the list.”

  “How’s the play shaping up?”

  “On the whole I’m pleased with it. Wally Toddwhistle built some fabulous sets out of junk. Fran Brodie designed the costumes, and Wally’s mother is making them. Fran is codirector—a very talented girl! Attractive, too—with those race-horse legs! Has she ever been married?”

  “I don’t think so. Do you know she designed the interior of this barn?”

  Dwight glanced at the square-cut contemporary furniture, the Moroccan rugs, the large-scale tapestries. “She did a great job! She did Melinda’s apartment, too. That girl must have spent a mint on it!”

  “Melinda has expensive tastes.”

  Dwight had put his tin whistle on the coffee table, and Yum Yum was stalking it. With her body close to the floor she was creeping in slow motion toward the shiny black tube. Just before she pounced, Qwilleran shouted a sharp “No!” and she slunk away backwards as slowly as she had advanced. “She’ll steal anything that weighs less than two ounces,” he explained.

  Dwight said, “I brought the whistle to get your opinion, Qwill. I’m going to tape some weird tunes to play during the witches’ scenes.” He picked up the whistle and tootled some wild, shrill notes that sent Koko and Yum Yum hurtling up the ramp and out of sight, with their ears back and their tails bushed.

  “I think you’ve hit it right,” Qwilleran said. “Even the cats’ hair is standing on end . . . How did your Macduff turn out?”

  “Better than I expected, especially in his scene with Macbeth. When he has Larry to bounce off, he’s really with it. Larry is a superb actor.”

  “And Lady Macbeth?”

  “Well . . .” the director said with hesitation. “I have to tell you her performance is erratic. At one rehearsal she really gets inside the character, and the next night she seems diffused. Frankly, I’m disappointed. She says she hasn’t been sleeping well.”

  “Do you think she’s worrying about something?” Qwilleran asked, smoothing his moustache.

  “I don’t know. Another thing. She doesn’t take direction very well,” Dwight complained. “Is that because she’s a doctor? You can’t tell them anything, you know. Was she difficult when she lived here before?”

  “No, she was fun to be with, and she had a great zest for life. When I inherited the Klingenschoen mansion, she staged a formal dinner party for me—with a butler, footmen, two cooks, musicians, sixteen candles on the table, and a truckload of flowers. She had unbounded energy and enthusiasm then. Something must have happened to her in Boston.”

  “I hate to mention this, Qwill, but I wonder if she’s on drugs. I know there are hard-driving physicians who take diet pills to keep going, then downers so they can unwind. They become addicted.”

  Qwilleran recalled the new strangeness in Melinda’s eyes. “You could be right. One reads about health-care professionals becoming chemically dependent, as they say.”

  “What can anyone do about it? She might get into serious trouble.”

  “There are treatment centers, of course, but how would one convince her to get help? Assuming that’s really her problem.”

  The director said, “I’m concerned enough that I’ve coached someone to do Lady Macbeth in case Melinda doesn’t make it on Wednesday night. Keep your fingers crossed!” He pocketed his tin whistle and stood up. “This is all between you and me, of course. Thanks for the coffee. You’ve got a fabulous barn.”

  After he had left, the Siamese ambled down the ramp cautiously, and Yum Yum looked in vain for the tin whistle. Koko alarmed Qwilleran, however, by sniffing one of the light Moroccan rugs. With his nose to the pile, he traced a meandering course as if following the path of a spider. Qwilleran dropped down on hands and knees to intercept it, but there was nothing but an infinitesimal spot on the rug. Koko sniffed it, pawed it, nuzzled it.

  “You and your damned spots!” Qwilleran rebuked him. “You just like to see me crawling around! This is the last time I’m going to fall for it!”

  The next day, when Qwilleran went out for the Sunday papers, he walked past the entrance to Goodwinter Boulevard and was appalled at the condition of the exclusive enclave. Food wrappers and beverage containers littered the pavement and sidewalks. Lawns had been trampled and the landscaped median was gouged by tires. Melinda had made no friends among her neighbors. It would be Monday before the city equipment could undertake the cleanup, and the cartage trucks were yet to come.

  When Qwilleran picked up Polly for their dinner date that evening, she said, “For tw
o days trucks will be backing into the Goodwinter driveway, running over curbs, ruining bushes, and knocking down stone planters.”

  “Why did the city let them do it?” he asked.

  “In the first place, no one asked permission, I suppose, and even if they did, who would speak up against the estate of the revered Dr. Halifax? This is a small town, Qwill.”

  To reach Linguini’s restaurant they drove north toward Mooseville, and Qwilleran was describing Scottish Night at Brodie’s lodge when his voice trailed off in mid-sentence. They were passing the Dimsdale Diner, and he spotted a maroon car with a light-colored license plate in the parking lot.

  “You were saying . . .” Polly prompted him.

  “About the haggis . . . yes . . . It’s not bad. In fact, it’s pretty good if you like spicy concoctions. Even the cats liked it!”

  The Italian trattoria in Mooseville was one of the county’s few ethnic restaurants—a small mama-and-papa establishment in a storefront with a homemade sign. Mr. Linguini cooked, and Mrs. Linguini waited on tables. There were no murals of Capri or Venice, no strings of Italian lights, no red-and-white checked tablecloths or candles stuck in antique chianti bottles, no romantic mandolins on the sound system—just good food, moderate prices, and operatic recordings. Mr. Linguini had made the tables from driftwood found on the beach, and they were covered with serviceable plastic, but the napkins were cloth, and diners could have an extra one to tie around the neck. Qwilleran had chosen Linguini’s because . . . well, that was the surprise.

  Mildred Hanstable was still living at her cottage on the beach, so they stopped to pick her up, Arch Riker choosing to meet them at the restaurant. There was a reason why he wanted to drive his own car, Qwilleran suspected; they had not been lifelong friends without developing a certain transparency. The paunchy, ruddy-faced publisher was Mildred’s boss at the Moose County Something, for which she wrote the food column, and when the three of them arrived, he was already sitting at the four-stool bar sipping a tumbler of Italian red. The opera of the evening was Lucia di Lammermoor.

  Mrs. Linguini gave them the best of the eleven tables and then stood staring at the four of them with one fist on her hip. That was Linguini body language for “What do you want from the bar?”

  “What are you drinking tonight?” Qwilleran asked Mildred.

  “Whatever you’re having,” she said.

  “One dry sherry, two white grape juice,” he told Mrs. Linguini, “and another of those for the gentleman.”

  Mildred said, “Dr. Melinda wants me to lose weight, so I’m off alcohol for a while, and I’d like to ask you a personal question, Qwill, if you don’t mind. When you first went on the wagon, how did you feel about going to parties?”

  “Well, all my partying was done at press clubs around the country—”

  “And Qwill was a hell-raiser when he was young,” Riker interrupted.

  “When I first stopped drinking, I stayed away from press clubs and felt sorry for myself. That was phase one. In phase two, I found I could go to parties, drink club soda, and have a nice time. Not a good time, but a nice time . . . Now I realize that a good time depends on the company, the conversation, and the occasion—not a superficial high induced by a controlled substance.”

  “I’ll drink to that!” said Riker.

  There were no menu cards, and everyone in the restaurant had to eat what Mr. Linguini felt like cooking on that particular evening. Accordingly, when Mrs. Linguini brought the drinks, she also plumped down four baskets of raw vegetables and a dish of bubbling sauce kept hot over a burner. “Bagna cauda!” she announced. “You dip it. Verra nice.”

  Riker, a meat-and-potatoes man, looked askance at the vegetables, but when he tasted the anchovy and garlic sauce, he ate his whole basketful and some of Mildred’s.

  “Zuppa di fagioli!” Mrs. Linguini said when she brought the soup course. “Verra nice.”

  “Looks like bean,” he observed.

  “And now tell me about Scotland,” Mildred requested. “Were you pleased with the tour?”

  “Scotland is haunting and ingratiating,” Qwilleran replied, “but when a tour guide is telling me what to look at, I don’t absorb the scene as much as I do when I make my own discoveries.”

  “Hear! Hear!” said Riker.

  “The four of us should go back there next year, rent a car, stay at bed-and-breakfasts, meet some Scots, and discover Scotland for ourselves. Of course, it’s more work that way, and takes more time, and requires research.”

  The soup bowls having been removed, the pasta course appeared. Mrs. Linguini could hardly be said to serve; she delivered, banging the food on the table without ceremony. “Tortellini quattro formaggi. Verra nice.”

  “Four cheeses! There goes my diet,” Polly complained.

  “I adore tortellini,” said Mildred, “even though they’re known as bellybuttons. The legend is that they were inspired by Venus’s navel.”

  “If you like legends,” Polly told her, “you’ll love Scotland! They have kelpies living in the lochs, ogres in haunted graveyards, and tiny fairies dressed in moss and seaweed who weave tartans from spiderwebs.”

  “We didn’t see any,” Riker said. “Probably went at the wrong time of year.”

  “How do you like tonight’s pasta?” Qwilleran asked.

  “Verra nice!” they chorused in three-part harmony.

  Then Mildred wanted to know about the jewel theft, and they all pieced together the story, with Qwilleran concluding, “Scotland Yard is looking for the bus driver.”

  “Does anyone know why it’s called Scotland Yard?”

  No one knew, so Polly promised to look it up at the library the next day. Next they talked about the tag sale and Dr. Hal’s secret hobby.

  Riker said, “We’re breaking the story on Monday’s front page. The K Foundation is buying the whole collection for $100,000.”

  “Wonderful!” said Mildred. “Melinda needs the money.”

  “I wouldn’t say she’s hurting. I see her $45,000 car parked on the lot at Indian Village.”

  Qwilleran mused over his pasta as Mildred extolled the paintings. He wondered if the saintly Dr. Halifax had yet another secret in his life. Perhaps his monthly payments through a Lockmaster bank had not gone to his profligate son, else why would they continue after the young man’s death? “Did either of you know the doctor’s son?” he asked the two women.

  “He never came into the library,” Polly said.

  “He wasn’t in any of my classes,” said Mildred, “but I know he was a problem at school and a worry to his parents.”

  “And yet I suppose they gave him a big funeral and pulled out all the stops.”

  “No, just a memorial service in the home for the immediate family. His mother was bedridden, you know.”

  Skeptical as always, Qwilleran thought, Perhaps the car crash was no accident; it could have been planned. He remembered another such scandal in Pickax, involving a “good family.” If such were the case, the doctor’s payments were extortion money, going to a hired killer.

  “Here she comes again,” Riker mumbled.

  The entrée was delivered. “Polpettone alla bolognese! Verra nice.”

  “It’s meat loaf,” he said after tasting it.

  “But delicious! I’d love to take some home to Bootsie,” Polly said.

  That prompted Qwilleran to describe Koko’s reaction to the Scottish tapes—how he responded to certain voices and certain sounds. Then Polly told how she liked to tease Bootsie when he was on her lap by reciting “Pickin’ up paw paws, puttin’ ’em in a basket.” She said, “The implosive P tickles the sensitive hairs in his ears, and he protests.”

  “Now I’ll tell one,” Qwilleran said. “On one of my tapes, Lyle Compton tells about the Scottish psychopath who poisoned prostitutes in three countries. As soon as he mentions ‘pink pills for pale prostitutes,’ Koko protests forcibly, although the implosive P is coming from a recorder and can’t possibly tickle his ear
s!”

  “We all know that Koko is an extraordinary animal,” Riker said mockingly. “He gives new meaning to the word ‘cat’ . . . Ye gods! Here comes dessert!”

  “Zuccotto! Verra nice,” said Mrs. Linguini.

  As the overstuffed diners gazed at the concoction of cream, chocolate, and nuts, the coloratura aria coming from the speakers was the Mad Scene from Lucia.

  “How appropriate!” Polly remarked.

  Abruptly the music stopped, and diners at all the tables looked up as Mr. Linguini in long apron and floppy white hat burst through the kitchen door. Going down on one knee alongside Polly, he flung his arms wide and sang in a rich operatic baritone:

  “Hoppy borrrthday to you,

  “Hoppy borrrthday to you,

  “Hoppy borrrthday, cara mia,

  “Hoppy borrrthday to you!”

  Everyone in the room applauded. Polly clasped her hands in delight and looked fondly at Qwilleran, and Lucia di Lammermoor resumed.

  Mildred said, “No one told me it was your birthday, Polly. You must be a Virgo. That’s why you’re so modest and efficient and serene.”

  The evening ended with espresso, and with difficulty the party pushed themselves away from the table. Riker volunteered to drop Mildred off at her cottage, since it was right on his way to Indian Village. Uh-huh, Qwilleran mused; just what I expected.

  He and Polly drove home in silence. She was a happy woman who had had too much food; he was purposely holding his tongue. He wanted to say, I still think your friend didn’t die of natural causes; I suspect Melinda made an error in Irma’s medication. But it was Polly’s birthday, and he refrained from spoiling it with another conjecture. One should be able to say anything to a close friend, he reflected, and yet part of friendship was knowing what not to say and when not to say it, a bit of philosophy he had learned from recent experience.

  When they turned into Goodwinter Boulevard, the old-fashioned streetlamps were shedding a ghastly light on the scene of Saturday’s nightmare, and their car headlights exposed piles of litter in the gutter. As they approached the Gage mansion and slowed to turn into the side drive, their headlights picked up something else that should not have been there: a car parked the wrong way, with a bearded man at the wheel.