The Cat Who Wasn't There

Sixteen

The morning after the impromptu visit from Melinda, Qwilleran drove Polly to work. She said, "The trucks were still hauling things away until late last night, but thank goodness they're required to have everything out by tonight. It's been nerve-wracking. Bootsie is very unhappy." After dropping her at the library, Qwilleran continued on to the police station to see if they had picked up a prowler suspect, but the normally quiet headquarters bristled with act ivy Phones were busy; the computer was working overtime; officers were bustling in and out. Brodie, between phone calls, waved Qwilleran away and said, "Talk to you later." Mystified by the unusual dismissal, Qwilleran backed out of the station and went to the office of the Moose County Something. Even the unflappable city room reflected the excitement of breaking news.

"What's happening at the police station?" he asked the managing editor.

"This'll floor you, Qwill," said Junior.

"Roger just came from headquarters. You know all those trucks hauling stuff from the Goodwinter sale? One of them backed up to the Utley house last night and cleaned out all the teddy bears!

They used the tag sale as a cover. Sounds like professionals from Down Below. By now the stuff is probably on a plane headed for California." "Where were the women?" "Still in Minneapolis." "They had a watchman. Where was he?" "Threatened at gunpoint and then tied up. His wife was visiting relatives in Kennebeck, came home late and found him bound and gagged." Qwilleran said, "It would be interesting to know how they transported 1,862 teddy bears." "They bagged them in leaf bags--those large black plastic ones. That's according to the caretaker." "I wonder if they got Theodore. He was worth $80,000. No doubt the women had Ulysses and Ignace with them in Minneapolis. Doesn't it sound like an inside job, Junior? I'd question the caretaker. I'd find out if the local supermarkets had a run on black plastic leaf bags in the last few days. Have you talked to Grace Utley?" "Roger tracked her down in Minneapolis. She's furious, and her sister is under a doctor's care. They're not coming back. They're going to live down there and sell their house, so we'll have one more haunted house on the street. They should change the name to Halloween Boulevard." A brief bulletin about the theft appeared in the Tuesday paper, ending with the usual statement: "Police are investigating." Qwilleran spent Tuesday and Wednesday writing copy for his column, when not chauffeuring Polly or helping out at the box office. The house was sold out for opening night, and there was a great ferment of anticipation in Pickax; everyone who was not in the cast knew someone who was. Comments from ticket purchasers were varied: "Dr.

Melinda is playing the female lead... The director is a new man in town, unmarried... That funny Derek Cuttlebrink is in the show." As Qwilleran and Polly drove to the theatre on opening night, he said, "I think we'll like what Dwight has done with this play. For one thing, he's cut out Hecate's long, boring scene." "Good decision," she agreed.

"It wasn't written by Shakespeare anyway." Excited and well-attired townfolk were gathering under the marquee of the theatre and milling about the lobby, where the Bonnie Scots photographs were on exhibit. It was a big occasion in a small town, an occasion for dressing up. Polly wore her dinner dress and pearls; Qwilleran wore his suit. When they took their seats in row five on the aisle, Jennifer Olson's family was already there--all ten of them, and Grandma Olson kept waving her program at occupants of surrounding seats and saying, "My granddaughter is in the play!" The house lights dimmed, and after a moment of breathless silence the haunting notes of a tin whistle filled the theatre--noto melody, just sounds from another world. Polly whispered, "It gives me shivers." There were rumblings of thunder and flashes of lightning, and three shadowy, gray, ugly creatures whished onto the dimly lighted stage, their bodies bent in half, their voices cackling, "When shall we three meet again?" One looked like a cat, another like a toad.

"Fair is foul, and foul is fair!" The mood was set, and the story unfolded with the entrance of the king and his sons, the report from the bleeding captain, and praise for brave Macbeth. Then the tin whistle again chilled the audience, and the three witches sidled on stage to celebrate their evil achievements, dancing in an unholy circle as drumbeats were heard off stage.

"A drum, a drum!

Macbeth doth come!" A murmur rippled through the audience when Larry made his entrance, proclaiming in his great voice, "So foul and fair a day I have not seen." Two scenes later, when Melinda entered as Lady Macbeth, the audience gasped at her costume-sweeping robes of what looked like fur, and a jeweled wimple. When she began her monologue, however, Qwilleran and Polly exchanged brief glances; her delivery lacked energy. Still, act one kept the audience on the edge of their seats: the king murdered by Macbeth... the two grooms murdered as a cover-up... alarm bells and bloody daggers. There was a moment's comic relief when Derek Cuttlebrink telescoped his youth and height into the arthritic shape of an ancient porter.

"Knock, knock, knock! Who's there?" At intermission it was the French fry chef from the Old Stone Mill who was the topic of conversation in the lobby. When Qwilleran spoke to the Comptons, Lyle said, "I think Macbeth was written for bumper stickers: What's done is done! ... Out, out, brief candle... Lay on, Macduff!" Lisa said, "Qwill, how do you like Melinda. I think she's dragging." Her husband agreed.

"The sleepwalking scene is supposed to come in act two. She played it in act one." Most of the audience, while waiting for flashing lights to signal them back into their the seats, spoke of other things, as small-town audiences do: "Hey, what did you think about the teddy bear heist?" ... "Everybody on Goodwinter Boulevard is blowing their stack after that sale!" Nick and Lori Bamba were there, and Nick whispered something in Qwilleran's ear that he remembered later. In the second act the weird music accompanied the witches' dance around the cauldron.

"Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd!" Macbeth, suffering from strange diseases and seeing ghosts, was going mad. Lady Macbeth walked in her sleep, plagued by visions of bloody hands.

"Out, damned spot! Out, I say!" To make matters worse, their castle was besieged by an army of ten thousand soldiers. While waiting for his favorite line--Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day--Qwilleran began to feel uncomfortable. He found himself staring at the stage without seeing it. Then a chilling shriek of women's voices came from the wings. He clapped his hand to his moustache and half rose from his seat, whispering to Polly.

"Tell Arch to drive you home!" A second later he was walking quickly up the aisle. On the stage, Macbeth was saying, "Wherefore was that cry?" And an attendant replied, "The Queen, my lord, is dead!" Neither line was heard by Qwilleran. He was running across the theatre parking lot to his car. He drove through the woods at the rear, and as he approached the barn, he could see the long orchard trail and red taillights receding at the far end of it. The barn's automatic lights were on, indoors and out, but he beamed his headlights on the rear entrance and found the glass panel in the door shattered.

Jumping out of his car he hurried into the kitchen. The first thing he saw was blood on the earthen tile floor.

"Koko!" he shouted. The cat was sitting on top of the refrigerator, methodically licking his paws with toes spread wide and claws extended.

For one moment, Qwilleran thought he had attacked the intruder and driven him away.

Yet, there was too much blood for ordinary cat scratches. More likely the housebreaker suffered gashes from broken glass. He phoned the police from the kitchen, and the patrol car reported immediately, with the state police not far behind. A Ban dE at the Qwilleran barn had top priority. By the time they arrived, he had assessed the damage: "Broken window, forced entry, two items missing," he reported.

"One is a combination radio and cassette player. The other is a carrying case of cassettes--all spoken tapes from my trip to Scotland plus interviews conducted around Moose County. The tapes would be of no value to anyone, unless he wanted to suppress the material contained, and that's highly unlikely." Or is it? he wondered, almost at the same moment. One of the officers said, "They thought it was country music or rock. Cassettes are like candy to the kids." "You think it was a juvenile break-in?" Qwilleran asked.

"It happened just before I arrived home. I saw a car leaving through the orchard and turning right on Trevelyan. Either I interrupted them, or they had taken what they came for. The equipment was on my desk, visible through the windows. The interior lights came on automatically at dusk." "You should keep the shades pulled when you go out," the officer advised.

"Lotta nice stuff here." "I guess you're right. What's happening to Pickax? Petty thieves.

master burglars... prowlers..." "The town's growing. New people coming in.

We were on TV last week." Koko was watching the police stoically from the top of the refrigerator, and one of them, feeling eyes boring into the back of his head, turned suddenly and asked, "Is that the cat Brodie talks about?" As soon as they were off the premises, however, Koko's cool behavior changed. He uttered a loud wail from the pit of his stomach, ending in a falsetto shriek.

"For God's sake! What's that about?" Qwilleran gasped. And then he shouted in alarm, "Where's Yum Yum?" She had a dozen secret hiding places and was known to evaporate when strangers came to the house.

"TREAT!" Qwilleran shouted and then listened for the soft thumps meaning a cat had jumped down from a perch. There was a hollow silence.

"TREAT!" His voice reverberated among the beams and balconies, but there was no soft patter of bounding feet. Even Koko was ignoring the irresistible T word; he sat on the refrigerator as if petrified.

Qwilleran peeled off his coat and tie, grabbed a highpowered flashlight from the broom closet, and raced to the upper level to begin a frantic search of every known hiding place, every crevice in the radiating beams, under and over every piece of furniture, inside every drawer and closet... all the while calling her name. He didn't see the headlights approaching the barn through the woods, but he heard the pounding on what remained of the back door. Looking over the balcony railing, he saw Nick and Lori Bamba wandering inquisitively into the kitchen.

"Is this blood on the floor?" Nick was asking.

"What's wrong with Koko?" Lori was saying.

As Qwilleran walked down the ramp, flashlight in hand, Nick called up to him, "I picked up the Ban dE on my police band when we left the theatre. How bad is it?" Qwilleran could hardly force himself to say what he was thinking.

"It looks... as if... they've stolen Yum Yum.

" "Stolen Yum Yum!" they echoed in shocked unison.

"The police were here, and I reported the theft of a radio and cassettes. I didn't know then that she was missing. I've searched everywhere. I'm convinced she's gone. There's an emptiness when she's not here." He stooped and picked up a stray emery board and snapped it in two.

"Koko knows something's radically wrong. He knows she's gone." "Why would they take her?" Lori wondered. That was something Qwilleran preferred not to contemplate. He walked aimlessly back and forth, pounding his moustache. Nick headed for the phone.

"I'm going to call the police again." Qwilleran and the cat on the refrigerator had been staring at each other.

"One minute, Nick!" he said.

"At the theatre you mentioned you'd seen the prowler again." "Yes, today.

His car was parked outside the Dimsdale Diner, so I went in and sat at the counter next to this bearded guy. The cook called him Chuck.

I talked about fishing and baseball, but he didn't respond. I got the impression he wasn't tightly wound, or else he was stoned. I'm sure he hangs out in Shantytown." "Let's go out there," Qwilleran said impulsively, reaching for a jacket.

"D'you think he's the one who broke in?" "I'm getting ideas. Everything's beginning to mesh." He combed his moustache vigorously with his fingertips.

"Okay. We'll take my car. It's got everything we need." Qwilleran said, "Lori, talk to Koko. He's acting like a zombie." The road north from Pickax ran straight, and Nick drove fast. At Ittibittiwassee Road he turned left into the wooded slum, the car bouncing slowly along the rutted road between the trees, the headlights picking up glimpses of shacks and junk vehicles.

"If his car isn't here," Nick said, "we'll try the site of the old mine." At the mention of the abandoned mine, and all it implied, Qwilleran felt nausea in the pit of his stomach.

"There it is! That's the car!" he said. Nick turned off his lights and parked in a patch of weeds behind a junk truck.

"If he's the right one, I can radio the police." "How shall we work this?" "I'll get him to open up. You stand back out of sight, Qwill, until I get my foot in the door." "Let me go first." "No. Your moustache is too well known. Hand me the gun from the glove compartment, in case he gives us any trouble." "Easy with the car door," Qwilleran said, as they stepped out into the weeds. The maroon car was pulled up to a ramshackle travel trailer with a dim light showing through the small window. A radio was playing. By approaching the window obliquely, the two men could see parts of the interior while avoiding the meagre spill of light into the yard. They saw a heavily bearded man lying on a cot, fully clothed, taking swigs from a pint bottle.

Although the face was hairy, red gashes could be seen on the forehead.

Another gash crusted with dried blood trailed from the corner of one eye, which was swollen shut. Qwilleran thought, To get those wounds from glass, he'd have to go through the door headfirst; he was clawed! He whispered to Nick, "I can see my radio and cassettes in there." They crept forward. Then Nick banged on the door and called out in a friendly voice, "Hey, Chuck! I've got some burgers and beer from the diner!" After a slight delay, the door opened cautiously. It opened outward, and Nick yanked it all the way.

"Jeez, man! Wha' happened? You been in a fight--or what?" "Who're you?" the bearded man mumbled.

"You know me--Harry from the diner." Both men barged through the door as the fellow stepped back uncertainly.

"You're cops!" "Hell, no! I'm Harry, don't you remember? This is my uncle Bob." There was a foul odor in the littered trailer, also a large collection of electronic equipment, also a silver pocketknife alongside a small sink.

"Wotcha doin' here?" "Just wanna warn you, Chuck. The cops are on your tail. You gotta get out of here." "Where's the beer?" Qwilleran said with avuncular concern, "Forget the beer, son. You need a doctor... Harry, can we take him to a doctor?

... Yes, son, you could lose an eye if you don't have it taken care of fast. Where'd you get those bloody gashes?" "Uh... in the woods," was his fuzzy-minded reply.

"You must have been attacked by a wildcat! You can get blood poisoning from something like that. We've got to get you to the hospital for a shot, son, or you're dead! Was it a wildcat? ... Or was it a house cat Qwilleran gave it a threatening emphasis. The wounded man looked at him suspiciously. Qwilleran, who had been sniffing the fetid air of the trailer like a connoisseur, suddenly bellowed, "TREAT!" "NOW!" came a piercing shriek from behind a small closed door. He yanked it open. It was a closet-size toilet, and Yum Yum was perched precariously on the rim. She was wet. She had slipped into the rusty bowl. Ripping off his jacket, he wrapped it around her, crooning reassurances in her ear.

"Take her to the car," he said to Nick, "and stay with her. You know what to do. I want to talk to Chuck for a minute." Yum Yum knew Nick, and she was purring as he carried her from the trailer. As an afterthought, he took the gun from his pocket and laid it on the sink.

Casually picking it up, Qwilleran said, "Sit down, son. You look sick.

The poison's getting into your bloodstream. I want to give you some advice before the police get here. They're going to ask a lot of questions, and you'd better be ready with some good answers." The fellow sat down on the cot, looking bewildered.

"Where did you get all these radios and cameras?" Qwilleran began.

"Where did you get that pocketknife? What brought you here from Massachusetts? Do you know someone in Pickax?

Do you have a partner here? Why did you break into my barn and take my cat? Did you think I'd pay a lot of money to get her back? Who told you I had a valuable cat? Was it your partner's idea? What was your name before you changed it to Charles Edward Martin?" Headlights and flashing blue lights were approaching through the woods.

"Here comes the popcorn machine! Better tell the police the whole truth, or you'll be in bad trouble. And tell them the name of your partner, or they'll throw the book at you, and your partner will go scot-free... Here they are! And now, if you don't mind, I'll take my radio and cassettes." On the way back to town, Qwilleran held Yum Yum tightly. Only her nose projected from the enfolding jacket as she looked up with trusting eyes and contemplated his moustache. He said, "That guy's not very sharp.

He has the instincts of a criminal, I think, but not the capabilities." "He's punch-drunk," Nick said, "from booze or drugs or both. I've seen a lot of 'em. What I don't understand--how did he manage to grab Yum Yum? She's always leery of strangers." Qwilleran was not ready to tell the whole story as he perceived it, not even to Nick. He said, "She likes beards. She's a pushover for anything resembling a brush. I think he broke in primarily to abduct one of the cats for ransom. After he had grabbed her and taken her out to the car, he came back for the radio he'd seen on my desk.

That's when Koko sprang on his head from the top of the refrigerator and drew blood." "Mmmmmmmmmm," Yum Yum murmured.

"Yes, sweetheart, we'll soon be home, and you can have a bath." Nick said, "How did you know she was in that john?" "The pervading stink in that place had a distinct overtone of cat--notervous cat! I know it well! And there were cat hairs everywhere. I can imagine her flying around that trailer, shedding hair like a snowstorm and finally seeking refuge in that foul closet.

My poor little sweetheart!" Before the Bambas left the apple barn that night, Lori gave Yum Yum a bath, and Qwilleran supplied warm towels, while Nick nailed something over the broken window in the door.

"I feel guilty about keeping you people out so late," Qwilleran said.

"Do you have a baby-sitter?" "Nick's mother is staying overnight," Lori said.

"Thank God for mothers-inlaw!" "How could you be so sure, Qwill, that Yum Yum's kidnapper was the Boulevard Prowler?" Nick asked.

"Just a hunch." Qwilleran pounded his moustache with his fist. After they had gone, he still had to write a review of the play for the Thursday paper, but the Siamese needed comforting, so he touched a match to the combustibles in the fireplace and made a lap for them.

Both cats climbed aboard, Yum Yum sinking like a lead weight with her chin on his wrist. Even Koko, who was not a lap-sitter, huddled close to his ribcage. Only then could he think objectively. He could visualize the headline in the next day's paper: Goodwinter Heir Alive and in Jail. He tried to recall when he had first suspected the Boulevard Prowler to be Dr.

Hal's son. Absurd though it might seem, it was Yum Yum's cache of emery boards that steered his mind in that direction. Someone had told him-Carol Lanspeak, he thought--that Melinda's brother was named Emory.

Emory spelled with an O was a fairly common name in the Pickax phone book. Every time Qwilleran found a stray emery board on the floor, his mind went to the stray son who was killed in a car crash... Then the old gentleman at the Senior Care Facility had talked about the doctor's monthly payments. Emory wasn't Moose County's first remittance man; local historians wrote that wealthy families had often deported undesirable members to areas Down Below to avoid embarrassment to the family name. As for the payments continuing after Emory's death, Qwilleran could invent several explanations but accepted the most credible: Emory was still alive.. A few days later he met the bearded suspect at the preview of the Goodwinter sale, lingering over a table of family memorabilia: old LP recordings, a much-used piggy bank, the doctor's monogrammed pocketknife, a photo in a silver frame. Upon talking to him, Qwilleran realized that the beard disguised a long narrow face, known in Moose County as the Goodwinter face. Then, Qwilleran tried to recall, when did I first suspect he had a partner?

The fellow could carry off a solo operation like pilfering a silver pocketknife.

And, being a native of Moose County, he would know the best time to break into the Purple Point cottages. But he wasn't smart enough to plot a kidnapping; that was obvious. Furthermore, having lived Down Below for a decade or so, how would he know about Qwilleran's wealth and his relationship with Polly? How would he know about the renovated barn in the orchard and Qwilleran's obsessive concern for his pets? How did he know that Qwilleran would be attending the play on Wednesday night? When it had become clear to him that the prowler was the resurrected Emory Goodwinter, all the questions were answered, including, "What was the maroon jalopy doing in the elite Indian Village?" and "Why did Melinda drop in so sociably after the rehearsal Monday night, and why was she working so hard to be sweet?" She dropped in, Qwilleran now believed, to case the premises, and he had played right into her hands, giving her the T word and demonstrating how it worked. He mentally kicked himself, thinking, God, what a fool I was! He remembered her interest in the Scottish tapes, which she probably instructed Emory to grab--just in case they contained information that might be incriminating. The blaze in the fireplace burned out, and Qwilleran carried the Siamese to their loft apartment, limp with sleep, and wrote his review of Macbeth.