The Cat Who Brought Down the House

Chapter 11

On the morning of the waffle breakfast Qwilleran tuned in the WPICX weathercast, knowing he would hear nonsense as well as reasonably accurate predictions. His friend Wetherby Goode was more entertainer than meteorologist, but that was what the good folk of Moose County wanted. He always had a few lines of poetry, song, or nursery rhyme to fit the weather.

At least once a week he dedicated a forecast to someone in the news, such as Lenny Inchpot when he won the bicycle road race and Amanda Goodwinter when she was elected mayor.

On Thursday he dedicated his predictions to ‘Thelma Thackeray, who grew up here and has returned to God’s country after a long career someplace in California . . . ’

Thelma, you may have forgotten that we have interesting weather here. This morning is sunny with temperatures in the upper seventies, but if you go out, take a jacket and umbrella, because there will be light rain and a chill breeze –that is, if you don’t want to catch cold. But if you do get the sniffles, drink some hot lemonade and put a goose-grease plaster on your chest.”

Then he sang a few lines about ‘raindrops falling on my head’ accompanying himself on the studio piano.

If Thelma happened to be listening, she would scream with laughter at the mention of goose grease. Old-timers in Moose County, reminiscing about the ‘bad old days,’ always guffawed over the hot, scratching, smelly horrors of a goose-grease plaster.

To Qwilleran’s recollection he had eaten waffles only once in his life, and it behooved him to educate himself. A phone call to the public library launched a volunteer on a spirited search.

Thanks to her efforts, he learned that waffles have been around since Ancient Greece... that the first waffle iron in the United States was patented in 1890... that waffle irons were the most popular wedding gift in the first quarter of the twentieth century... that there was at least one waffle iron in every respectable attic in Moose County.

As the time came to leave for breakfast, the cats watched him with anxious blue eyes, as if they expected never to see him again. “Would you like to send your regards to Pedro and Lolita?” he asked.

Pleasant Street was quiet—ten gargantuan wedding cakes waiting for a wedding. The most flamboyant was Number Five. The front door, called the carriage entrance, was on the side, and Janice was waiting for him in her cook’s apron and floppy hat.

“Good morning,” she said. “Isn’t it a lovely day?”

He handed her the bunch of carnations in green tissue that he had picked up on the way over. His instinct had told him to choose brilliant red.

“Thelma will love them!” Janice said. “She’s running a little late. Shall I bring you coffee while you’re waiting?”

The wait gave him a chance to appraise the decorating. He thought it had elegance and joie de vivre. The whiteness of it all reminded him of a white-on-white artwork he had won in a raffle at the Art Center. Against the totally white background, however, exciting things were happening: A sofa and chairs with ebony frames in contemporary mission style had square-cut seats and back cushions in steel gray silk. Cool! he thought. They were accented with puffy down-filled toss pillows in parrot colors: vivid green, brilliant red, and chrome yellow. Tables were stainless steel with plate-glass tops. Hand-made art rugs, large and small, defined the areas. Wall art consisted of large contemporary paintings and tapestries that stayed on the wall instead of jumping out at the viewer.

He was attracted to a pair of tall, narrow etageres in the foyer—stainless-steel frames, each with five plate-glass shelves graduated in width. The frames flared upward, so that the shelf space at the top was wider than the shelf space at the bottom. It was a concept that gave grace and lightness to the design. The Moose County approach, Qwilleran thought, would be: straight-up-and-down like a ladder.

The shelves were filled with an astounding collection of tropical birds in brilliantly glazed porcelain. As Qwilleran examined them, he became aware of a strong presence: Thelma was descending the stairs with one braceleted hand grasping the handrail and the other braceleted hand extended in welcome. She was wearing a simple caftan in brilliant yellow that accentuated the silvery gray of her hair—a short-crop with bangs.

Qwilleran said, “Your home, Thelma, has an air of elegance plus a certain joie de vivre!”

“Bless you, Ducky! You talk just like you write! And you look even handsomer than you did at the party!... Follow me! Waffles will be served in the breakfast room. I hope you like them as much as we do!”

In the breakfast room Qwilleran was served crisp, buttery waffles flavored with toasted pecans and topped with an apple-date sauce. He declared they were the best he had ever tasted in his life. (His previous experience had been in a fast-food place in New Jersey.) “What do the parrots have for breakfast?” he asked, to nudge the conversation in another direction.

“Standard parrot feed,” Thelma said, “plus treats like safflower seeds, apples, bananas, celery, and raw peanuts. They love chocolates and marshmallows, but we don’t want them to get fat.”

Janice said, “Dick gave Lolita a chocolate-covered caramel, and her beak got all gummed up. It was funny to watch her struggle, but she liked it and wanted more.”

“I don’t approve of Dick’s cute tricks, and I've told him so!” his aunt said sternly.

Twice, in asides to each other, the two women had referred to a ‘Mr Simmons.’

“Who is Mr Simmons?” Qwilleran asked. “Your probation officer?”

Janice squealed in glee; Thelma murmured her amusement and said, “He’s a retired police detective who worked for me at the dinner club. He was a security guard in dinner jacket and black tie, and he felt it his responsibility to protect my personal safety.”

“He had a crush on Thelma,” Janice said mischievously

“When I sold the club and retired, he became a friend of the family, coming to dinner once a week and keeping an eye on everything. He adored Janice’s cooking. When he learned we were moving east, he insisted on giving me a small handgun and showing me how to use it, being concerned about two women crossing the continent alone. He is a dear, sweet man.”

Qwilleran said, “I hope no one ever calls me a dear, sweet man.”

“Don’t worry, Ducky; they won’t,” Thelma retorted. That was what he liked about her—her edge.

Qwilleran had avoided asking obvious questions about the parrots, since the answers had been in Friday’s feature story, which he should have read. Actually he had given it a quick scan, so he played it safe. “How was your sight-seeing in Lockmaster, Thelma?”

“The horse country is pretty... and the restaurants are quite good... though not as good as mine, Ducky!” she said with a confidential wink. Then she said soberly, “What I really went to see was my brother’s grave. I told Dick to leave me alone for a few minutes and I visited with dear Bud... and said a little prayer. Then I wanted to see the gorge where he and Sally used to hike, and where he had his accident. Dick stayed at the car—he said it was too gruesome. But I thought it was beautiful. There was a trestle bridge in the distance that looked as if it was made of toothpicks, and while I watched, a little toy train roared across it. There was a river far down below.”

“The Black Creek,” Qwilleran said.

“When Pop used to bring us to Lockmaster for a picture show, we never saw anything like the gorge. He’d hitch up the wagon, and my stepmom would make pasties, and we’d have a picnic lunch. Tickets to the picture show were a nickel, so that was twenty cents for four. Pop didn’t often splurge.”

“Do you remember the first movie you ever saw?”

“How could I forget? It was Ben Hur with all those chariot races! Silent, of course... then The Circus with Charlie Chaplin. How we loved the little tramp!... The first picture with sound was The Jazz Singer and that’s when I decided I wanted to be in pictures, as they said then. By that time we weren’t so poor and could go oftener.”

Qwilleran asked, “When did movies come to Pickax?”

“Bud and I turned twelve, and Pop gave us the Pickax Movie Palace for a birthday present. It had been the old opera house—closed for ages—and he said he got it cheap. That’s when we started seeing Garbo, John Barry-more, Gable, and the Marx Brothers. We saw Duck Soup three times. When I saw The Gay Divorcee with Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, that’s when I knew I had to go to Hollywood.”

Janice had the waffle iron at the table, and Qwilleran was indulging himself.

“Shall we take our coffee into the aviary?” Thelma suggested.

All the houses on Pleasant Street had been designed with a front parlor and a back parlor, the latter being the family room in contemporary parlance. At Number Five it was called the aviary, however. Half of the space was behind chain-link fencing reaching to the ceiling. The other half was comfortably furnished with wicker tables and chairs and indoor trees in brass-bound tubs.

Inside the giant cage all was aflutter with color and life as parrots teetered on perches, showed off on trapezes, or climbed the chain-link, using their feet and strong beaks. One powerful beak was chewing on a tree branch. At the same time there was chattering, whooping, conversing in two languages, and noisy flapping of wings.

In the background were six single-occupancy cages, five of them with doors open and night-covers rolled back. A cover with the embroidered name CHICO stood alone.

“Who’s Chico?” Qwilleran asked. “Is he in the doghouse?”

“Our dear Chico died three years ago,” Thelma said. “We keep his cage as a memorial to a very remarkable bird.”

Qwilleran said, “I must say they’re an engaging crew!” He could imagine how tormented Thelma must have been when they were stolen.

They sat in the wicker chairs with their coffee, and Qwilleran said, “In Friday’s paper you were quoted as saying that Amazons are unusually intelligent and talkative, and that yours hold conversations in English and Portuguese. How do birds, no matter how intelligent, learn human speech?”

“They mimic the people they live with, including babies, cats, dogs, and voices on television,” Thelma said. “Pedro used to live with a professor in Ohio and has a working vocabulary of two hundred words. He also likes to talk politics. That’s Pedro, chewing on a tree branch.”

“Powerful beak,” Qwilleran said. “I wouldn’t want to meet him in a dark alley.”

“He’s called a Blue Front. Others are: Yellow Nape and Red Lore—all are wonderfully colorful when they fan their tails and fluff their nape feathers.”

Qwilleran said, “The one with a white circle around the eye seems especially alert and listening to everything we say.”

“That’s Esmeralda. She lived with a musical family and has a large repertory of patriotic songs, popular tunes, and operatic arias. Unfortunately she doesn’t know anything all the way through. Carlotta can recite the Greek alphabet but only as far as kappa... Navarro does a perfect wolf-whistle... They pick up whatever they hear... The two sitting with beaks together like a couple of gossips are Lolita and Carlotta. They keep looking at your moustache, Qwill—trying to figure out how to steal it. Amazons are very mischievous, you know.”

Qwilleran stood up. “The situation is getting dangerous! In the interests of sartorial safety, I must leave.”

She responded with her soft little laugh—a musical “hmmm hmmm hmmm.”

Then soberly he said as they walked to the door, “Have you ever seen the grave of your father, Thelma?”

“I don’t even know its location!”

“I do. It’s a beautiful site. I'd like to drive you there Sunday afternoon. And we could have dinner at the Boulder House Inn overlooking the lake.”

“Bless you!” she cried.

As he was leaving, he asked casually, “Okay to write a "Qwill Pen" column on the Amazons? If so, I'll have to He was aware of Janiee’s petrified stare, but he concentrated on Thelma’s reaction. She caught her breath and paused slightly before saying, with equal nonchalance, “The cocky little devils have had all the publicity they deserve. Thanks, but no thanks.”

“Too bad,” Qwilleran said, “1 was looking forward to having some dialogue with Pedro on politics.”

“Yes, he has some opinions,” Thelma said, “but they’re not always printable.”

On the way home he pulled off the road and phoned Bushy, leaving a message on his answering device: “Go ahead and invite Janice for a boat ride. I'm taking Thelma sightseeing Sunday afternoon.”

It was not long before Thelma called the barn:

“Qwill, that photographer who took pictures of the parrots has invited Janice for a boat ride Sunday, with a picnic lunch on an island. The reporter who was here and her husband are invited, too. I'd like Janice to meet some people of her own age, but I'm wondering if it’s entirely –safe.”

Was she worried about a seaworthy craft? A competent pilot? Decent weather? Or what?

He said, “John Bushland comes from a long line of lake navigators and grew up at the pilot wheel. And Jill Handley’s husband owns the health food store downtown, so you know the lunch will be safe, too.”

That evening, when Qwilleran and Polly had their usual phone-chat, he said, “Would you mind if I took another woman to dinner on Sunday?” He waited for her to splutter a question and then explained. “Thelma has never seen her father’s grave at Hilltop Cemetery and I thought it would be a kind gesture if I took her there and then to the Boulder House for Sunday dinner.”

“Why Boulder House?” she asked more or less curtly. “It’s picturesque and historic.” Actually, he saw it as a chance to tease the potato chip heiress.

Toward the end of the evening, when it was still too early for lights-out, he sprawled in his lounge chair with his feet on the ottoman and thought about the next ‘Qwill Pen’ column—and the next—and the next. A columnist’s job, he liked to say, is 95 percent ‘think’ and 5 percent ‘ink.’ Koko was staring at him. One could never tell whether he was beaming a message about food or a lofty idea for the “Qwill Pen.” Qwilleran agreed with Christopher Smart, the poet who maintained that staring at one’s cat will fertilize the mind.

What transpired on this occasion may have been the cat’s idea or his own; no one was keeping score. The fact was that Qwilleran’s mind drifted to Tony, the Bixby tomcat... and the two vans... and the large boxes thought to contain stolen TV sets... Could they have been parrot cages, shrouded with custom-tailored night covers? If so, the person who drove away from the scene fast could have been Dick, the hero of the abduction incident. In that case, it was Dick who killed the kidnapper. And if so, did he recover the ransom from the dead man’s possession?

But then he thought: The rescuer of the parrots could have been a go-between, an unscrupulous lout, paid for his services. That being the case, did the go-between pocket the ransom after delivering the birds and killing the poor clod behind the steering wheel? How many of the devils collaborated on the plot?

And then he thought: Was Dick one of the collaborators?

The idea was abhorrent, although—as Shakespeare observed—one can smile and smile and be a villain.

“Yew!” was Koko’s strident announcement. After all, it was five minutes after the time for their bedtime snack.

The days that followed were unusually busy for Qwilleran, and there was no time for frivolous conjectures about the kidnapping. Indeed, he had to admit that the large, square objects mentioned in the Bixby Bugle might have been stolen television sets, as the police said.