Cat With a Fiddle (9781101578902)

by Adamson, Lydia

  “Mistake!” He grunted. “That old bastard with his pants around his ankles was a mistake, I guess.”

  “So you are sure you saw the girl there?”

  “Had on nothing but her socks. A mistake, yeah! That’s what she claimed. Guess those six twenty-dollar bills on the dresser were a mistake, too. Arrogant little twist, she was. She had the gall to threaten to sue me for false arrest.” Scott laughed nastily then. “Old Kenally had the nerve to deny it, too. I let the two of them bitch all they wanted to. I still took them in. Guess he thought his money could actually change what is real to what ain’t real. You’d think he’d get tired of playing the John after a while, but not that old bastard. Heard he even died with his pants down. They found him out in Montauk with a fourteen-year-old from one of the migrant camps.”

  “Sounds like a real sweet guy,” Tony said under his breath.

  “Mr. Scott,” I said, “can you tell me what happened after you took them out of the Dolphin Inn?”

  “Happened? What do you mean, ‘what happened’? What usually happened. He was Mr. Hiram Kenally. They were released. She got off on a misdemeanor loitering charge. Twenty-bucks fine, or something. Walked off to turn another trick.”

  “And what about the money you saw? Wasn’t that rather a lot for Mr. Kenally to spend on a prostitute?”

  “You didn’t know that bastard. If he had three dollars in his pocket, he’d pay three. If the charge was three thousand, he’d have paid that just as easy. Whatever it took.

  “Now, as for you investigating a murder, lady”—he flicked his cigarette away brutally—“I don’t know whether I believe a single word of it.”

  “I can appreciate your position, Mr. Scott. But the important question is, can I believe you?”

  He didn’t answer. He only spat onto the frozen ground, and then drifted into his house.

  I walked back to the car slowly. Tony climbed in and asked what our next stop would be.

  “Nowhere just yet, Tony. Let’s just sit here a while and get warm.”

  “What is it, Swede?” he asked, concern in his voice.

  “Well, that’s it, isn’t it? That’s what I was after. Tom Scott just confirmed everything. Little Beth turned a trick with a dirty old man for a hundred and twenty dollars.”

  “Yeah. Just like the computer said. But what does it mean? It’s just the way of the world, isn’t it?”

  “Not the world of the Riverside String Quartet—not the one I witnessed just last month. And you know, Tony, Southampton is a very small world, isn’t it?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean, if Beth was plying her trade out here, then why not in Manhattan? Why be so specialized? And I also mean, what if she wasn’t the only one? What if Miranda did it too—and Darcy—and Roz? In fact, maybe that rich old Aunt Sarah wasn’t a Scottish Fold cat at all.”

  “So do you think the stolen cats had nothing to do with anything?” Tony asked.

  “What I think, Tony, is that we’d better come up with some tricks of our own. And like I said, time is short.”

  Chapter 22

  Will Gryder was in his shallow grave in some restful spot in southern California.

  The Riverside String Quartet was no more.

  The clock was ticking.

  The egg was broken.

  Now it was time to make the omelet.

  I sat waiting for Tony to return from the mission I’d sent him out on. Bushy and I were tossing the catnip ball around, just to pass time. I was singing an old standard that I’d recast to fit my feline preoccupations: “I Want a Tabby Kind of Love.”

  The doorbell sounded then.

  “Here comes Tony,” I told Bushy on my way to the door. “Getting excited?”

  He walked off slowly but firmly, the ball in his teeth.

  Basillio’s jacket seemed to give off the scent of the cold outdoors. “Well, here the filthy things are,” he said, dropping a paper sack filled with books onto the sofa. “Do me a favor, will you, and never send me over there again.”

  “Oh, come on, Basillio. I thought you’d enjoy being in the Forty-second Street area. I thought it would bring back fond memories of your dark and misspent youth.”

  His face took on a grim, wounded expression. “I do not like browsing in pornographic book-stores for tawdry paperbacks about prostitutes. It demeans my serious erotic feelings for you.”

  “Such high-flown language from you, Basillio.”

  “Here,” he said, stepping up to me and encircling my waist, “let me put it to you . . . in . . . ah . . . layman’s terms.”

  I laughed. “Later, Tony.”

  I looked down at the things he’d tossed onto the sofa: five identical copies of some trash entitled Hookers. The book was about a hundred and fifty pages in length, printed on cheap stock and purporting to be actual case studies of “working girls.”

  The cover design was suitably lurid, showing the grotesque sexual posturings of three over-endowed women in various states of undress.

  Tony picked up one of the copies.

  “Isn’t that amazing?” he said. “These things haven’t changed in the past twenty years! They just keep recycling the same covers.”

  “So much the better,” I said. “Both the cover and the title. I sent you out for something on prostitution, but I never thought you’d find something called Hookers. It’s absolutely perfect.”

  Carefully, I began to rip the cover off each of the books.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he asked, astonished.

  “You’ll see in a minute.”

  I gathered the five covers and brought them to the dining room table, Tony following in my footsteps.

  “Well, you’ve been a busy bee, haven’t you?” he said, looking over my shoulder at the five stamped envelopes laid out on the table. Each was addressed to a member of the Riverside String Quartet, the last one to Mathew Hazan at his West Fifty-seventh Street office.

  “And just what are these—your show-and-tell homework?” Tony had picked up a couple of the five-color xeroxes I had had made from an old Scientific American.

  “What do they look like?”

  “Pictures of mice.”

  “Exactly. Tufted field mice. Some of the world’s most adaptable creatures, particularly when they displace house mice. The way they did at Covington.”

  Tony folded his arms and began what can only be described as a peculiar little dance. He circled the chair I sat in, looking at me from different angles. He appeared to be making some kind of mock evaluation of me.

  “I think, Miss Nestleton,” he pronounced, “that the years of scratching out a living—the endless hard times—have finally taken their toll on you. In other words, you have finally cracked, baby.”

  “Hardly,” I said. “You’ll see.”

  I picked up my scissors and cut out the five tufted little creatures from their verdant backgrounds. Then, on the back of each Hookers cover, I affixed one of the mice with Scotch tape. Finally, I popped each cover into one of the neatly typed envelopes.

  “I think the clouds are beginning to clear a bit,” Tony said. “You’re about to play a little game of post office, aren’t you?”

  “That’s right. A serious game of post office. One of the five people who are going to get this cryptic greeting card is the murderer. I want that person to be confused about whether the sender is friend or foe.

  “I want that person to feel that the sender knows a lot about a lot of things. About the Dolphin Inn in Southampton, for instance.”

  “You mean you want them to think they’re about to be blackmailed?”

  “Well, no . . . and yes. I want them to look at the card as both a reminder and a threat. Because what it’s really saying is that they had bett
er get up to where the tufted field mice play and find Will’s manuscript. Because it’s still hidden there: somewhere at the Covington Center for the Arts.”

  “But, Swede, you have the manuscript, what there is of it. The outline only hints at an exposé, and Gryder never mentions prostitution specifically.”

  “He was murdered before he could. And besides, the murderer doesn’t know how far Will had gotten on the book. Only you and I know that—and Ford Donaldson.”

  Tony watched me silently as I sealed each letter. When I’d finished, he asked me rather gravely, “Are you really going to mail those things?”

  “Yes, of course I am.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know, Swede. To be honest, it seems to me that you kind of blew it up there with that state cop and that first trap of yours. And now you’re clutching at straws. And I mean clutching.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “So you’re really going to mail them?”

  “Yes, I really am—that is to say, we are. But not from here. From Northampton. So that the killer knows this anonymous correspondent knows whereof he or she speaks.”

  Tony slammed his hand down on the table. Bushy flew out of the room. Pancho flew in.

  “Now I know why you wanted me to hang on to Greg’s old heap, even after we got back from Southampton! Damn! I should have known you had something up your sleeve.”

  I gently smoothed back the hair on poor Tony’s head. “I knew you’d love being in the country with us for a few days.’

  “Us?” he asked.

  “Yes. Me and Pancho and Bushy.”

  “God.”

  “You’re looking very pale, Basillio. Some sun and some fresh country air will do you a world of good. We’ll walk in the woods, roast chestnuts, maybe—”

  “Get killed by a killer,” he finished for me.

  “We’re not going to be killed, Tony. Besides, I can’t put these in the mail until I check something out up there. A white duffel bag with a broken lock.”

  “What’s in it?”

  “Nothing.”

  He was silent for a few beats, unwilling to delve further. Then he asked, “Wouldn’t you rather go to Atlantic City?”

  “Basillio, you’re going to love it up there. Covington is wonderful. It absolutely reeks of dreams.”

  “Dreams? What dreams?”

  “Artists’ dreams. Great ennobling projects.”

  “Like ‘Still Life of Piano Player with Chisel in Chest’?”

  “Not exactly. But that’s a good title.”

  “This case is making you macabre as well as crazy, Swede. I really hope you know what you’re doing.”

  Did I? Did I really?

  “Didn’t you leave something out of that stuff we’re going to be doing up in the country?” Tony asked. “Aren’t we going to make insane love in front of a roaring fire?”

  “Aren’t you going to help me catch Pancho and get him in the carrier?”

  “Why don’t you just hold up a picture of a tufted field mouse near the door?”

  “Pancho is far too busy to hunt,” I said.

  We began to stalk the wily Pancho. He was, oddly enough, quiet once he was inside the box. Bushy, on the other hand, walked right in, cooperating fully, only to metamorphose into a shrieking holy terror as soon as the lock had clamped shut.

  So many contradictions. So little time.

  Chapter 23

  Oh, I’d seen this road before. I knew where the rest stops were, and where to get the cheapest gas. But this time Tony was at the wheel. And he spent the bulk of the time muttering and bitching and asking himself why, how, he’d once again allowed me to talk him into some nutty undertaking against his better judgment.

  The cats glowered at us from their prison cells on the backseat, their eyes huge and iridescent in the darkness.

  It got colder with every mile, and once we had crossed the state line into Massachusetts, freezing mists disabled our vision no matter how hard we worked the defroster. I thought perhaps all parties might be soothed by a few choruses of one of the good old hymns, so I launched into “Nearer My God to Thee.” I soon gave up on that, though.

  It was around eleven in the evening when we pulled into the courtyard of the small hotel in Northampton.

  “Can’t this mysterious white duffel bag wait until tomorrow morning?” Tony asked, after we’d checked in and released Bushy and Pancho into their new environment. The room smelled faintly of insect spray, and the cats were wandering around sniffing suspiciously at every corner.

  “We have to go now, Tony It’s no more than twenty minutes away. And then we can come right back. Maybe we can get something to eat in town, although it’s a bit late.”

  “Maybe there’s an all-night record store, too. Think we can find one of those?”

  “What do you need with a record store?”

  “I don’t know. Just asking.”

  Basillio is very peculiar when he’s angry. Very peculiar indeed.

  I poured fresh litter into a big cardboard box and set it in the bathtub, cautioning the cats against starting any trouble while we were gone. Then Tony and I headed for Covington.

  ***

  The house and grounds were deserted, and still as death. I guided Tony down the access road toward the studio where Will had died, away from the main house, until we could go no further. Then, grasping my flashlight tightly, I walked toward the creek, Tony following. The wind was powerful and relentless. There was no moon.

  I pushed in the door to the shed and stood there for a full minute. Basillio’s rapid breathing sounded like the roar of the ocean in my ear. Without putting on the light, we made our way to the narrow aisle and turned down it, to the place where Ford Donaldson and I had set our trap.

  The white duffel was still there. “Looks like somebody got here before you,” Tony said.

  He was right. The bag had been shredded with a knife and ripped open. The sundry papers and trash I’d stuffed inside it were strewn about on the floor, as if a pack rat had been clawing through it.

  “Well, too bad,” he said.

  “Too bad? It’s beautiful, Tony! It confirms everything. Don’t you see what happened? After my trap was exposed as bogus and the quartet unceremoniously kicked me out of their midst, one of them came back here and searched this bag, looking for Gryder’s evidence—for his manuscript.”

  I felt so good that, had there been a few more inches of space in that cramped aisle, I might have executed a most unladylike jig.

  “You see, Tony, the trap wasn’t really bogus. I just baited it incorrectly. With those wee Scottish kittens.”

  “Let’s talk about this over dinner,” he said. “It’s freezing in here.”

  We returned to the car and drove to the stately old post office in town. I dropped the five envelopes into the mailbox just in front of the building.

  I got behind the wheel and, by instinct, found the little diner where Ford Donaldson had taken me for coffee. Whatever it was they fed us had plenty of good-tasting gravy on top of it. I even had lemon pie for dessert. It was nearly one in the morning when we returned to the hotel. The cats were fine. I opened two cans of food, over-feeding them as a kind of bribe. Tony stretched out on the bed and was fast asleep in a matter of seconds, fully clothed. I covered him with a blanket, and after changing into my wooly red nightshirt I lay down beside him, listening to the window shivering in its casement.

  I awoke at seven-thirty. Tony had gone.

  There was a note saying he would bring back breakfast, provided he didn’t get lost.

  I showered, then made the bed, forgetting that there was maid service here. I guess I had forgotten to tell Tony that all we had to do was go downstairs anytime after eight A.M. and breakfast would be served to
us. The cats were holding up remarkably well, not complaining much at all, and I made sure to tell them how much I appreciated it. Then I put in a call to Ford Donaldson.

  He had come in to the office early and was genuinely surprised to hear from me, even more surprised to find I was in a nearby hotel. I didn’t want to discuss matters on the phone, so I asked him bluntly if he’d mind driving over to see me as soon as possible.

  For a long time, there was no answer. In fact, I thought the line had gone dead. But then he asked with no small amount of suspicion, “What brings you back out this way, Alice?”

  “I’d rather tell you that in person.”

  “What about a hint?”

  “If you could just spare me a few minutes, Ford. For old time’s sake,” I added.

  Again, he hesitated. “Look . . . I’ll just drop over now.”

  “Fine. I’ll be waiting.”

  I wished I had that coffee Basillio was bringing. I jumped when I heard a sudden noise. But it was only Pancho knocking over the wastepaper basket and sticking his face in it for a quick look. “Just behave yourself, Panch,” I told him, “and I’ll get you sardines for lunch.” I could tell he didn’t believe me.

  In less that ten minutes Ford was knocking at the door. He stepped in quickly, as if there were something illicit in his visit. His eyes roamed over the room professionally, taking everything in.

  “I’m here with a friend,” I said, noticing that he had fixed on Tony’s shaving kit.

  “Glad to hear it.” Then he smiled, sort of, leaned heavily against the dresser, and asked, “What can I do for you, Alice?”

  “Won’t you sit for a moment?” I said.

  “Better not. I can’t stay long.”

  “Ford, how’s the investigation going?”

  He shrugged. “Not good.”

  “Did you know the quartet has broken up?”

  “What?”

  “The Riverside String Quartet. They’ve announced that they’re disbanding.”

  “That’s a shame. But it’s not like it’s the Everly Brothers or something.”