The Cat Who Tailed A Thief

-3-

On December 24, Qwilleran went downtown at noon to celebrate with the staff of the Moose County Something. They were having the afternoon off, but first there was the office party. It featured ham sandwiches from Lois's Luncheonette, a sheet cake from the Scottish bakery, coffee, and year-end bonuses. Arch Riker was beaming as he handed out the envelopes with a ho-ho-ho.

Qwilleran said to him, "This is a far cry from the wild office parties we had Down Below. They were all booze, no bonuses."

"Don't remind me!" Riker protested. "I've been twenty-five years trying to forget my first one at the Daily Fluxion. Rosie and I were just married, and the whole Riker family was celebrating Christmas Eve at our house - with a potluck supper and me in a Santa suit handing out presents. That was the plan, anyway. I had to work all day, but it got whispered around that every department was holding open house. Bring your own glass! At five o'clock we all started making the rounds to Editorial, Sports, Women's, Photo Lab (that was the worst), Advertising, Circulation - the whole shebang! Everyone was wallowing in holiday cheer, and I completely forgot my wife and family! By the time some guys took me home in a cab, I flaked out and woke up the next morning. Oh, God! I was in the doghouse for a year!"

Qwilleran said, "You weren't the only heel. That's why firms outlawed office parties. There's nothing like a lawsuit to grab the corporate attention."

Then Hixie Rice, the promotion director and a resident of Indian Village, pulled him aside. "Did you hear about the theft?" she whispered.

"The Pickax Picaroon strikes again!

When was the money last seen?"

"The night before. We'd had our Christmas bridge party, and everyone was extra generous. Then we put the jar away in the manager's office as usual, camouflaged with a shopping bag."

"But all the players know where it's kept - right? Someone was waiting for it to fill up. Who are these players?"

"Mostly residents of the Village, but a few guest players as well, who drive out from Pickax or wherever. Ironically, the shopping bag was gone, too. They must have used it to carry the money. According to the denomination of the bills, it could be as much as two thousand... Do you have a noodle, Qwill?"

"Yes. Let's get some ham sandwiches before the vultures from the city room eat them all."

After the camaderie of the office party, Qwilleran was reluctant to leave the festive downtown scene, where shoppers were hurrying faster and carolers were singing louder. He picked up a few extra gifts: perfume for Polly, a scarf for Mildred, and a few small cans of smoked turkey pƒt‚ and gourmet sardines for the cats he knew.

The first can went to the longhair at the used book store. The bookseller was overwhelmed, saying it was the first Christmas present Winston had ever received. Eddington Smith was a gentle little old man who loved books, but not for their content. He loved them for their titles, covers, illustrations, paper quality, and provenance. He slept and cooked meals and repaired books in a room at the back of the store.

Slyly he said to Qwilleran, "I know what Santa's bringing you!"

"Don't' tell me. I want to be surprised."

"It's an author you like a lot."

"That's good."

"I could tell you his initials."

"Please, Eddington, no clues! Just show me what's come in lately." He never left the store without buying something.

The bookseller puttered among opened and unopened cartons until he found a box from the estate of a professor of Celtic literature, who had spent his last years in Lockmaster; the area reminded him of Scotland. "Beautiful bindings," he said. "Most printed on India paper. Some very old but the leather is well cared for... Here's one published in 1899."

Qwilleran looked at it. The title was Ossian and the Ossianic Literature, and it was written by A. Nutt. "I'll take it," he said, thinking he might give it to Arch Riker for a gag. As he left the store, he called out, "merry Christmas, Edd! When I die, I'm leaving you all my old books."

"I'll be the first to go," the old man said earnestly, "and I'm leaving you my whole store. It's written in my will."

He mentioned his purchase to Polly Duncan that evening. They met at her place for their traditional Christmas Eve together. "I bought a book on Ossian today at Eddington's. The author was someone by the name of Nutt. Wasn't there a scandal concerning Ossian in Samuel Johnson's time?"

"Yes, and quite a controversy," she said. "An eighteenth-century poet claimed to have found the third-century poems of Ossian. Dr. Johnson said it was a hoax."

After serving a low-fat supper, the offered Qwilleran a choice of pumpkin pie or fruitcake with a scoop of frozen yogurt.

"Is there any law against having both?" he asked.

"Qwill, dear, I knew you'd say that !... By the way, Lynette has been chiding me for calling you `dear'. She says it's old-fashioned."

"You're the only one in my whole life who's ever called me that, and I like it! You can quote me to your sister-in-law. For someone who hasn't had a love affair for twenty years, she hardly qualifies as an authority on affectionate appellations." They listened to carols by Swiss bell-ringers and French choirs. He read Dickens's account of the Cratchits' Christmas dinner. She read Whittier's SnowBound. In every way it was an enjoyable evening, unmarred by any hostility from Bootsie. (The husky male Siamese, who considered Qwilleran a rival for Polly's affection, had been sequestered in the basement.) Perhaps the occasion was made more poignant by Polly's recent crisis, when they feared they might never have another Christmas Eve together. The blissful evening ended only when the banging on the basement door became insufferable.

On Christmas morning Qwilleran's telephone rang frequently as friends called to thank him for their gift baskets. One of them was a fun-loving, gray-haired grandmother: Celia Robinson. She was his neighbor when he lived in the barn and she supplied meatloaf, macaroni and cheese, and other home-cooked fare that he could keep in the freezer.

"Merry Christmas, Chief! Thank you for the goodies! And Wrigley thanks you for the gourmet sardines. He sends greetings to Koko and Yum Yum. Are they having a good Christmas?"

"They had some of your meatloaf, and that made their day." This mild quip occasioned a burst of merry laughter.

"Guess what, Chief!" She called him "Chief" for reasons that only he and she understood. "My grandson is here for the holidays."

"Clayton?" He knew about the fourteen-year-old science and math whiz who lived on a farm in Illinois.

"I picked him up at the airport yesterday afternoon. Mr. O'Dell came to supper, and we all opened presents and had a good time. Then we floodlighted the yard and built a big snowman. Today Clayton went to your barn on snowshoes and checked it out. Everything's okay. No damage. Today we're having dinner with Virginia Alstock's family. Her kids are about Clayton's age."

While she was talking, Qwilleran was thinking. He had never met the fourteen- year-old science and math whiz who had helped solve the Euphonia Gage case in Florida, and he felt obliged to extend some form of hospitality, although he was not fond of the underage bracket. He said, "Would your grandson like to go along with me on an assignment for the paper?"

"Oh, Chief! He'd love it! He's outside now, using the snowblower, but I'll tell him when he comes in. He'll be thrilled! It might change his life! He might decide to be a newspaperman!"

"Tell him to stick with cybernetics. It pays better. Does he have a camera?"

"Yes A new one his dad gave him for Christmas. And he has the little tape recorder he used in Florida."

"Good! He can pose as my photographer. Tell him to pick up a roll of film, and I'll pay for it. Meanwhile, I'll set up an interview and call you back."

"Shall I cut his hair?" Celia asked.

"Not necessary," Qwilleran said. "Photographers aren't expected to look too civilized."

Her laughter was still resounding as they hung up.

Then Polly called to discuss how they should dress for dinner.

"Arch will be wearing his twenty- year-old red wool shirt," Qwilleran said, "so I suggest we go in sweaters."

Polly's staff had given her a white sweater embroidered with red cardinals and green holly - livelier than her usual garb, but Polly herself was livelier since her surgery. Qwilleran had a new sweater, ordered from Chicago, that looked like an Oriental rug - high style for a man whose peers Down Below used to call a lovable slob.

"I'll pick you up at one o'clock," he said. "Bundle up, and we'll walk. It isn't windy."

"Do you know who's just moved into the unit next to you, Qwill?"

"A husky man. Drives a large van."

"That's Wetherby Goode!"

"No! What did I do to deserve that clown for a neighbor?"

"Do I detect inter-media jealousy?" she said, teasing gently. "Most radio listeners think he's entertaining. It's not all about dew point and barometric pressure. One windy day he sang `Rockabye Baby.' After an ice storm he quoted from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. One of his listeners had sent it in: The ice was here, the ice was there, the ice was all around. People are afraid he'll run out of quotes."

"Well, if you have to have a gimmick with your weather, I guess that's as good as any," Qwilleran acknowledged. "Who lives next to you?"

"The Cavendish sisters, retired teachers, very quiet."

At one o'clock they started out for the Riker condo in Building Two, muffled in down jackets, scarfs, woolly hats, mittens, and boots. They walked hand-in- hand as they had done during her first post-surgery outings. Now it has become a pleasant custom to both of them; to observers it was romantic grist for the gossip mill.

Polly had a red wool scarf, six feet long, wrapped around her chin and ears and trailing front and back. "A present from Lynette," she said.

"What did you give her?"

"A set of violet-scented soap, bath oil, and cologne. Violet is all she ever wears."

"I always wondered what that aroma was on Pleasant Street. I thought it was furniture polish."

"Oh, Qwill, you're wicked! Violet is a lovely scent. To simplify my Christmas shopping I mailed the same thing to my sister in Cincinnati, and she phoned this morning to say how much she liked it."

"Do people on your gift list ever call to say they hate what you gave them?"

"Now you're being the cynical journalist!"

Arriving at their destination, they were greeted at the door by a committee of three: the beaming host in a red wool shirt, the plump and pretty hostess in a chef's apron, and their cat in his usual tuxedo with white shirt-front and spats. Toulouse looked slyly satisfied with his lot, like an alley-smart stray who has found a home with the food writer of a newspaper. The two women hugged, and each told the other she looked wonderful. The men, friends since childhood, had only to make eye contact to express all that needed to be said.

There was a Scotch pine tree in the living room, trimmed like the one at their wedding the previous Christmas: White pearlescent ornaments, white doves, white streamers. The festively wrapped packages under the tree included those sent over by Polly and Qwilleran. The aromas were those of pine boughs, roasting turkey, and hot mulled cider.

Mildred removed her apron and joined the others around a low party table loaded with hot and cold hor d'oeuvres.

Polly said, "I always feel so secure when I come to dinner here. Mildred doesn't fuss in the kitchen; she doesn't expect anyone to help; and everything turns out perfectly: the hot foods hot and the cold foods cold."

"Hear! Hear!" Qwilleran said.

As the four busied themselves with the hors d'oeuvres, conversation came in short bites:

About the theft: "An inside job! An outsider could have stolen it only if an insider talked on the outside."

About Lynette: "Suddenly she's looking ten years younger! Is she in love?... She was jilted twenty years ago and hasn't dated since... Maybe it's Wetherby Goode. She thinks he's cute."

About George Breze: "What's he doing in Indian Village?... His house on Sandpit Road is up for sale... His wife left him. Why did she stay as long as she did?"

About the Carmichaels: "Big difference in their ages... He's an asset to the community, but she's a misfit... Someone should talk to her about her wardrobe."

Polly said, "She has such a pouty mouth! Is it natural?"

"It's what they call a fish-mouth," Mildred said. "You can have it done."

"My wife is so worldly," said Arch.

Toulouse walked into the room with a solemn tread and rubbed against the cook's ankles as a reminder that the turkey was ready. Mildred served it with a brown-rice-and-walnut stuffing, twice- baked sweet potatoes with orange glaze, sesame-sauced broccoli, and two kinds of cranberry relish.

"I feel compelled to serve two kinds," she said, "or the turkey will be dry and the stuffing will be soggy. It's just a superstition."

"It's absurd," said her husband, "but I don't fight it."

Qwilleran claimed he had never been superstitious. "As a kid, I deliberately walked under ladders and stepped on cracks in the sidewalk."

"And look how he turned out!" Riker said. "Luckiest guy in the northeast central United States."

In pioneer days, Mildred related, it was unlucky to whistle in the mines, kill a woodpecker in a lumber camp, or drop a knife on the deck of a fishing boat.

"Today," Polly said, "we observe superstitions half in fun and half hopefully. Lynette always wears her grandmother's ring to play bridge, and she almost always wins."

"Anything will work if you think it will, Qwilleran said. "With the ring on her finger, she expects to win - a positive attitude that enables her to think clearly and make the right moves."

"The right bids," Arch corrected him. "You're thinking of chess."

With a wink at the others, Mildred said, "Arch always puts on his right shoe before the left."

"It has nothing to do with superstition. It has everything to do with efficiency," he explained. "It's the result of a lifelong time-and-motion study."

"You never told me that," she said innocently. "But if you accidentally put on the left shoe first, you take it off and start over."

"Who needs Big Brother? I've got Big Wife monitoring my behavior."

"Ooh! I'm going on a diet after the holidays," Mildred said.

"Isn't it strange," Polly remarked, "how many superstitions have to do with the feet, like putting a penny in your shoe for luck or wearing mismatched socks to take an exam? Bootsie gives his paw three licks - no more, no less - before starting to eat."

"Will someone explain to me," Qwilleran asked, "why Koko always eats with his rear end pointed north? No matter where he's being fed, he knows which way is north. And Yum Yum always approaches her food from the left. If something`s in way and she has to do otherwise, she throws up."

Arch groaned. "This conversation is getting too deep for me. Let's have dessert."

After the plum pudding had been served and after the coffee had been poured, the presents were opened - not in a mad scramble but one at a time, with everyone sharing the suspense.

The first - to Qwilleran from the Rikers - was an odd-shaped package about four feet long. "A short stepladder," he guessed. "A croquet set." It proved to be a pair of snowshoes. "Great!" he said. "There are snow trails all around here! It's just what I need to get some exercise this winter!" And he meant it.

Polly was thrilled with her suede suit and silk blouse, and the Rikers whooped in unison over the Majolica coffeepot. Then Arch unwrapped his baseball tie and exploded with laughter, while Mildred screamed in glee.

Qwilleran said, "It was supposed to be a joke, but I didn't know it was that funny!" He understood their reaction when, a few minutes later, he opened a long, narrow giftbox from Arch. It was a baseball tie.

The largest box under the tree - Qwilleran from Polly - was a set of leather-bound books by Herman Melville, a 1924 printing in mint condition. Included were novels that Qwilleran, a Melville buff, had never been able to find. He dug into the box excitedly, announcing title after title, and reading aloud some of the opening lines.

"Okay," Arch said, "you've got all winter to read those books. Let's open some more presents."

Also for Qwilleran was an opera recording from Polly: Adriana Levouvreur with Renata Tebaldi... Toulouse gave Koko and Yum Yum a gift certificate good at Toodle's fish counter... Arch gave Mildred a three-strand necklace of onyx beads accented with a cartouche of gold- veined lapis lazuli.

The last gift under the tree was tagged to Qwilleran from Bootsie. "It's a package bomb," he guessed. After unwrapping it with exaggerated care, he exclaimed, "I can only quote the bard: I am amazed and know not what to say! It's a sporran!"

"You could have fooled me," said Arch. "I thought it was something for cleaning the windshield."

"A sporran, for your information, Arch, is a fur ouch worn with a kilt by men in the Scottish Highlands. It's used to carry, money, car keys, driver's license, cigarettes, lighter, credit cards, sunglasses, and possibly a sandwich." He turned to Polly. "How did Bootsie find out I'd bought a kilt?"

"Everyone in town knows it, dear. There are no secrets in Pickax."

"Well, we're now a two-sporran family. Yum Yum has a cat-size sporran attached to her underside. It flaps from side to side when she trots, but hers is real fur. I think this one can be machine-washed and tumble-dried."

When dusk fell and the gaslights on River Lane began to glow, it was snowing, so Arch drove Polly and Qwilleran home with their loot and foil-wrapped packs of turkey for their cats. Qwilleran minced some before going to Polly's for mint tea and a recap of the afternoon:

"Carol gets the credit for selecting your suit, Polly."

"Mildred made your sporran, Qwill."

"The snowshoes are good-looking enough to hang on the wall when I'm not using them."

"Did you know Adriana was the last role Tebaldi sang before she retired?"

"Eddington Smith searched a whole year for a Melville collection. This one turned up on Boston."

It had stopped snowing when Qwilleran finally went home, and he was surprised to find footprints in the fresh snow on his front walk, leading to and from his doorstep. They were a woman's footprints. There were no tire tracks. She lived in the Village and had walked. Who in the Village would pay a call without phoning first or being invited? Not Hixie or Fran. Certainly not Amanda Goodwinter. Opening the storm door, he found a gift on the threshold, wrapped in conservative holly paper and about the size and weight of a two-pound box of chocolates. He felt obliged to quote Lewis Carroll: Curiouser and curiouser! He carried it indoors, hoping it was not chocolates.

The Siamese, dozing on the sofa, raised their heads expectantly.

"Three guesses!" he said to them as he tore open the paper. It was a book with an unusual binding: leather spine and cloth-covered boards in a red and green Jacobean design, leafy and flowery. The gold tooling on the spine spelled out The Old Wives' Tale.

"Hey," he yelped, alarming the cats. Arnold Bennett was one of his favorite authors, and this was considered his best novel. It was obviously a special edition of the 1908 book, with heavy quality paper, deckled edges, and woodcut illustrations. There was a note enclosed:

Qwill - You mentioned Bennett in your column last week, and I thought you'd like to have this precious book from my father's collection.

-Your Number-One Fan - Sarah

Qwilleran was flabbergasted. Sarah Plensdorf was the office manager at the Something - an older woman, rather shy. She lived alone in the Village, surrounded by family treasures.

Clutching the book, he dropped into his favorite easy chair and propped his feet on the ottoman. Koko and Yum Yum came running. Reading aloud was one of the things they did together as a family.

Bennett had been a journalist, and his novels were written in an unromantic style with detailed descriptions. As Qwilleran read, he dramatized with sound effects: the resounding call of the cuckoo in the English countryside, the clanging bell of the horse-car in town, the snores of Mr. Povey, asleep on the sofa with his mouth wide open. (He had taken a painkiller for his aching tooth.) When the prankish Sophie reached into the gaping mouth with pliers and extracted the wobbly tooth, Mr. Povey yelped. Qwilleran yelped, Yum Yum shrieked. But where was Koko?

Some muttering could be heard in the foyer, where Qwilleran had piled all the Christmas gifts; Koko was doing his best to open the carton containing the set of Melville's works.

Was he attracted to the leather bindings? Did he detect codfish on a set of old books from Boston? Could he sense that the box contained a novel about a whale? He was a smart cat, but was he that smart?

Koko did indeed have a baffling gift of extrasensory perception. He could tell time, read Qwilleran's mind, and put thoughts in Qwilleran's head. All cats do this, more or less, at feeding time. But Koko applied his powers to matters of good and evil. He sensed misdeeds, and he could identify misdoers in an oblique sort of way. Melville's novels were concerned with good and evil to a large degree; was Kao K'o Kung getting the message?

Was it coincidence that he pushed the The Thief off the bookshelf when Pickax was plagued with petit larceny - and some not so petit?

Trying to find answers to such questions could drive a person mad, Qwilleran had decided. The same approach was to be receptive, open-minded. There was one clue, however, that he had divined: Normal cats have twenty-four whiskers on each side, eyebrows included. Koko had thirty!