Bushy was there to project his slides of kittens on the backdrop. The idea was to show a different slide for each act. He had photographed them in all the kitten colonies on Pleasant Street: tiny creatures with large ears and floppy feet and comical markings. There was a mother cat suckling her brood, playing games with her soft paw, fondly carrying them around by the scruff of the neck.
Then there was a run-through of the grand finale. All cats had been brought to the opera house in carriers, and they would remain cooped up until it was time for them to go on—sequestered in the various dressing rooms and offices backstage. It was hoped that this would prevent squabbles.
Hixie said to the prominent citizens who awaited briefing, “Until the finale, it will have been a program of lighthearted song and dance and humorous verse. Suddenly the mood changes. A recording of Elgar’s ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ fills the hall, signifying a solemn occasion, and the procession of prominent citizens begins—one by one—walking with dignity—carrying a beloved pet.”
Qwilleran said, “Suppose there are whistles and shouts from the audience?”
“They’ll be instructed to limit responses to polite applause,” Hixie said. “When the last cat is off the stage, there will be whistles and shouts and a standing ovation.”
“What should we wear?” someone asked.
“Anything of neutral color—gray, tan, brown, black—whatever will show off your cat’s coloring.”
“What about the harmless herbal sedative?”
“We have an envelope for each of you, containing a capsule that is to be broken open and the powder sprinkled on the cat’s meal beforehand.”
Someone said, “Do you have any extras? I could use one myself!”
The following evening, supporters of the Kit Kat Agenda would have a preview of the renovated opera house, twenty-four hours before Thelma’s gala first night. It was a memory to boast about in years to come—for more reasons than one.
The red carpet was on the sidewalk. There was a canvas marquee at the entrance. A cordon of press photographers waited. And a flock of MCCC students in KIT KAT T-shirts would park cars, earning credits for community service.
It was a black-tie event, and patrons arrived in dinner jackets and long dresses, to be seated in comfortable swivel chairs at round cabaret tables. Then more students in KIT KAT T-shirts served chilled splits of champagne and hollow-stemmed plastic wineglasses.
When the lights dimmed, the master of ceremonies, Wetherby Goode, welcomed them in his irreverent style, then sat down at the piano and played “Kitten on the Keys.” It was a finger-tickling number that had been played by Moose County piano students for seventy-five years. Wetherby played it faster.
Then Hannah MacLeod sang Noel Coward’s “Chase Me, Charlie, Over the Garden Wall.” Qwilleran read T. S. Eliot’s whimsical verses about jellicle cats and such famous felines as Skimble-shanks and Bustopher Jones. The cat dancers danced and the cat tumblers tumbled. In between, the six-foot-eight Derek Cuttlebrink, Moose County’s gift to country western, loped into the spotlight, strummed his guitar, and sang original lyrics, such as:
Kit Kat kittens have love to give,
Kit Kat kittens are fun!
A handful of fur, just learning to purr—
Two are better than one.
All the while, the audience was enchanted by the changing background of kittenlife.
Then the stage blacked out for a moment, and the sonorous chords of “Pomp and Circumstance” filled the hall and a disembodied voice said, “During the following presentation of cats marching to save kittens, please limit your response to polite applause.”
The solemn procession began. Each pair was announced by the “voice.” Each pair moved slowly across the stage without acknowledging the polite applause.
“Her Honor, Mayor Amanda Goodwinter . . . and Quincy.”
“The WPKX meteorologist, Wetherby Goode . . . and Jet Stream.”
“Food editor for the Moose County Something, Mildred Riker . . . and Toulouse.”
“Prizewinning woodcrafter Douglas Bethune . . . and Winston Churchill.”
“Dr. Diane Lanspeak . . . and Hypo.”
“Nutcracker Innkeeper, Nick Bamba . . . and Nicodemus.”
“Professors Jennie and Ruth Cavendish . . . with Pinky and Quinky, short for Propinquity and Equanimity.”
“High-school custodian for forty years, Pat O’Dell . . . with Wrigley.”
“Superintendent of schools, Lyle Compton . . . and Socrates.”
“Director of the public library, Polly Duncan . . . and Brutus.”
“And last but not least, columnist James Mackintosh Qwilleran . . . and Kao K’o Kung.”
The polite applause reached a crescendo. Murmurs of enjoyment became a roar of approval. Someone shouted, “Cool Koko.”
The cat riding on Qwilleran’s shoulder stared with alarm at the darkened hall. Then, blinded by stage lights, he sprang into the air, wrenching the leash from Qwilleran’s grasp. He flew off the stage into the first row of tables. The shouts and screams only alarmed him more, and he went flying around the hall with leash trailing—jumping over heads, landing on backs and shoulders, while champagne bottles and glasses scattered.
“Close the doors!” Qwilleran yelled. Thwarted in his escape, Koko turned and scampered across more tables and patrons, until something stopped him abruptly.
“TREAT!” Qwilleran thundered, and the cat returned to the stage, pouncing on a few more heads and a few more shoulders.
By the time Qwilleran had grabbed the frantic animal, the other cats had gone home, and their rhinestone harnesses were on a table backstage. Koko’s was added to the pile, and he was stuffed into his carrier—to wait while Qwilleran helped the others clean up.
Hixie, the MacLeods, and Mavis Adams were picking up empty bottles and plastic glasses. Fortunately, nothing had spilled or broken. Cabaret tables and chairs had simply to be restored to their orderly rows.
Hixie said, “That Koko really knows how to bring down the house!”
Qwilleran grunted with irritation. “His performance won’t do any good for the adopt-a-kitten campaign.”
“Did you give him the sedative?”
“I sprinkled it on his food, as you instructed.”
Then he had a sudden hollow feeling. He tossed the carrier in the backseat and drove to the barn in a hurry. Leaving Koko in the car, he rushed indoors to look at the cats’ plates under the kitchen table.
Both plates were licked clean. Had Koko eaten the wrong one? Where was Yum Yum? He found her on the hearth rug, lying flat-out on her side. He spoke her name, and she raised her head and gave him a glassy stare. . . . It was all evident. Koko had sensed that something unacceptable had been added to his dish. He pushed Yum Yum aside and ate the contents of her plate and she consumed the harmless herbal sedative. She liked it!
In a few minutes Polly phoned from Indian Village.
“Qwill! What happened? Wasn’t Koko sedated?”
“You won’t believe this!” he said. “The cats never change plates. Koko’s is always on the right, and he knows right from left, but he detected a foreign substance. Somehow he convinced Yum Yum to change plates. She not only got the sedative but a larger serving of food than usual. She’s bushed!!”
The first week of the Film Club would also become noted for the “electrical storm of the century” in Moose County. According to the meteorologist, a weather front was stalled over Canada, gathering fury by the day. Bushy postponed the cruise for Thelma, Janice, and their guest; Qwilleran filed his copy early and returned to the snug safety of the barn; the Siamese were nervous.
Then there was a phone call from Simmons.
“Are you busy, Qwill? Thelma wants me to deliver something.” A few minutes later the green coupé pulled into the barnyard.
“Are you comfortable in the carriage house apartment?” Qwilleran asked.
“Very! I’ll hate to leave.”
“Don’t be
in a hurry,” Qwilleran said. “It’s vacant for the month of May. Be my guest. . . . How about a little bourbon and water?”
“Won’t hurt. And may help.” He handed over a plastic shopping bag.
Peering into it, Qwilleran said, “I don’t believe this. Where did she find it?”
“It’s a long story,” his guest said.
After they settled into the deep-cushioned sofas, there was the usual talk about the weather. The big electrical storm was on the way. Koko’s fur was standing on end as if electrified. He kept washing over his ear—with his left paw, not his right. Then he would tear up the ramp at ninety miles an hour—then race back down again. Yum Yum had already burrowed under the hearth rug.
“Let’s hear the long story,” Qwilleran suggested casually.
“Well!” said his guest. “Thelma went to the club in early morning, when Dick was not there—to see if everything was being done right. He had furnished his private office lavishly, she thought. Included was a small bar with several bottles of liquor. There were also two cut-glass decanters. She wondered if they were Waterford. There was a silver tray. She wondered if it was sterling. Turning it over, she found your name inscribed. . . . She decided not to mention it to Dick. She would just take it. And here it is!”
Qwilleran thought, It figures! . . . The cleaning crew was here . . . I was helping Bushy shoot hats . . . Dick delivered a gift . . . he saw the tray Mrs. Fulgrove had polished . . .
“Well! Thank you! What else can I say?”
Simmons said, “You can agree with me that the guy’s a kleptomaniac! Thelma’s finally getting that idea. In fact, she went through Dick’s desk, looking for a valuable object that disappeared from her house, but all she found was a handgun in the bottom drawer. She wondered if it was registered.”
“All very interesting, Simmons. What was the valuable object?”
“A wristwatch of Pop’s that she’d had on her dressing table for forty years! It was a gold Rolex with winding stem.”
“May I refresh your drink?”
Simmons sipped in thoughtful silence for a while, as Yum Yum played with his shoelace. Then he said suddenly, “Do you use a pocket tape recorder, Qwill?”
“All the time.”
“I’ve brought one for Thelma. A woman of her age and wealth and position should have one on her person at all times. She’s had a couple of run-ins with Smiley and who knows what that four-flusher has up his sleeve. To tell the truth, Qwill, I’m worried about Thelma. . . . She seems to think she put him in his place, but can he be trusted? He shows all the symptoms of a compulsive gambler. He could turn to crime to pay off gambling debts—or get wiped out if he defaults. Thelma won’t accept the fact that he’s a gambler, any more than she’ll admit that her pop was a bootlegger. Why? Is it because she’s so protective of her image?”
“You knew about the bootlegging?” Qwilleran asked.
“I know that this coastline was a major port of entry for contraband from Canada, which is more than you can say for potato chips.”
Qwilleran said, “Denial seems to run in the family. I’ve read all her brother’s letters, and he mentions Dick’s financial troubles but never his gambling, although it’s considered a fact among those who claim to know.”
“Ever since his father died, Smiley has been coming to California and buttering up his aunt.”
“Yow!” Koko howled with piercing intensity, and at the same moment blue-white lightning flashed in the many odd-shaped windows of the barn, followed immediately by the crack and rumble of thunder that reverberated in the vast interior. The wind howled. The rain lashed the walls of the barn.
Conversation was drowned out by the tumult overhead, and the visitor grasped an arm of the sofa and waited for the roof to cave in overhead.
Gradually the intervals between lightning flashes and thunderclaps widened, as the storm moved on to another target, and Qwilleran said, “You have your mud slides and earthquakes. We have our northern hurricanes, and if you liked this, just wait and see what we do with snow!”
The day after the storm, Wetherby Goode said to his listeners on WPKX: “It was fun while it lasted, wasn’t it, folks? There’s some flooding caused by overloaded storm sewers, but it was the good drenching rain that we hoped for. Now you can take a shower and water the geraniums without feeling guilty, and the weather will smile on the gala opening of Thelma’s Film Club. All the first-nighters will be dressed up, and I’ll be wearing my new cuff links. . . .”
21
On the opening night, Qwilleran and Polly were among those absent. He had explained to Thelma that it was more important to sell their seats to enthusiastic first-nighters. She understood.
Actually they were more interested in the following week’s offering—the 1922 talkie release of Eugene O’Neill’s prizewinning drama, Anna Christie. It was the film in which Garbo’s throaty voice was heard on the silver screen for the first time, saying, Give me viskey, baby, and don’t be stingy.
Qwilleran observed opening-night amenities, however, by sending Thelma a long telegram to the theatre and a dozen red roses to her home.
He and Polly dined at the Grist Mill—at a second seating following one for early show-goers. Derek Cuttlebrink seated them at the table beneath the scythe. He said, “The lobster curry’s good tonight.”
Qwilleran said, “Does that mean it’s usually bad? Or did you sell too little at the first seating—and you’re stuck with it?”
Derek smirked and said, “For that remark you get a fly in your soup.”
Polly said, “I hope the boss doesn’t overhear this exchange of pleasantries.”
Elizabeth Hart, the owner, was heading for their table. “Polly, so good to see you! I know you love curry. Try the Lobster Calcutta! . . . Qwill, thank you for sending Thelma to us! She’s delivering the hats Sunday, because she’s involved with her Film Club till then. We’ll open the exhibit the following Saturday. A whole fleet of yachts will be coming over from Grand Island. The media will love it. And we’re having a New York model here to model the hats and pose for photographs!”
Both Qwilleran and Polly ordered Lobster Calcutta and enjoyed it. Then he told her about finding the silver tray.
“Where was it?” she asked with concern.
“In a plastic shopping bag.”
“That’s a good idea. Mrs. Fulgrove knows what she’s doing. It will keep the tray from tarnishing so fast. Every time you use metal polish on your tray, you know, it loses a minuscule bit of the silver surface.”
Then he told her about his pleasant visit with Thelma’s Mr. Simmons—but not what they talked about. He said, “His first name is Mark.”
“I’m very fond of that name,” she said. “My father used to say that anyone named Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John has a built-in advantage over the Georges and Walters. His name was Orville.”
Qwilleran said, “I’ve often thought I should write a column on the naming of offspring: Why parents give them the names they do . . . how many persons go through life with a name they don’t like. My mother named me Merlin! One man I know narrowly escaped being named Melrose. And how about the fashions in names that change from generation to generation. No girl babies are named Thelma in the twenty-first century. Yet there was once a vogue for female names with ‘th’ in the spelling: Martha, Bertha, Dorothy, Edith, Faith, Ethel, Samantha, Judith . . .”
Polly said, “Sometimes, Qwill, you sound exactly like my father!”
The next day was a workday for Polly, and so Qwilleran took her home directly after dinner. By the time he arrived at the barn, Koko was doing his grasshopper routine, meaning a message was on the answering machine.
It was from Janice. “Qwill, I need to talk to you. Important. Call me anytime before midnight.”
He phoned her immediately. “Is something wrong, Janice?”
“Very sad!” she said in a sorrowful voice. “A message came for Mr. Simmons while he was at the club. His daughter in California was in
a car crash and is hospitalized in critical condition. He’s flying home tomorrow.”
“What a shame!” Qwilleran said. “Shall I drive him to the airport?”
“That would help. I’d drive him, but I have to be available for Thelma. There are problems at the club, you know, during its first week. So it’s very kind of you, Qwill.”
“Not at all. It’s the least I can do.”
This would be his last chance to talk with Thelma’s confidant, adviser, and self-appointed watchdog.
Early Thursday morning Qwilleran picked up the troubled father and asked, “Any news from the hospital?”
“I can’t get any information. What happened? Where did it happen? Whose fault was it? She’s always been a careful driver. What’s the nature of her injuries? I didn’t sleep a wink last night. I have a thirty-two-year-old daughter with two kids—who is hospitalized two thousand miles away. I can’t worry about an eighty-two-year-old woman with all the money in the world, who’s going to leave it to a relative who’s a nogoodnik.”
“Forget about Thelma,” Qwilleran said. “I’ll step in and do what needs to be done. But I’ll need information from you.”
“For one thing, she’s given me power of attorney in California, and I told her to name a local person. But so far nothing has been done. When she came here, full of family feeling and generosity, she made a new will, leaving everything to Smiley! A big mistake! It should be changed before it’s too late. She admires you, and you could talk some sense into her head! She’s a smart, successful, independent, opinionated woman, but she has this simpering sentimentality about her ‘dear Bud’ who played the flute and loved animals and was so good to his son, giving him everything he wanted . . . and her ‘dear Pop’ who invented a new kind of potato chip and was so good to his children. He left her his gold Rolex wristwatch, and she kept it wound for forty years. It has always been on her dressing table. It disappeared recently. Go figure.”
Cat Who Brought Down the House, the Unabridged Audio Page 16
