Лилиан Браун - The Cat Who Tailed A Thief

The chief nodded. "I talked to him at the wedding. Seemed like a decent fellow."

"I even suggested that the K Fund hire him to restore the hotel and the Limburger mansion... and that's when the wings fell off! They checked his credentials and came up with zilch. Yet he claims to have restored important landmarks all over the eastern seaboard. I've seen the portfolio he shows to prospective clients, and I doubt whether it's legitimate. I also know the procedures for getting on the National Register, and no restoration consultant can guarantee his clients anything. He can only raise their hopes."

Brodie's scowl intensified as he listened. "Sounds like a scam, all right. The prosecutor should get in on this."

"Not too fast, Andy. On Wednesday, Bart Barter comes home and can tell us more about the K Fund's investigation. And tomorrow afternoon I want to set a little trap for Carter Lee, just to see how he reacts. I'll get back to you with the results - tomorrow about this same time."

"Good luck," Brodie growled without enthusiasm. Then he allowed himself a chuckle. "What does your smart cat think about this guy?"

"Well, Koko got hold of his fur hat once and was trying to kill it, if that means anything. To a cat, it's always open season on fur and feathers."

After his conference with Brodie, he waited until suitable hour before phoning the Carmichael apartment. Danielle answered, saying that her cousin had arrived but was a wreck; he'd been without sleep for a1most forty-eight hours; he was now sleeping and couldn't be disturbed.

"That's all right," Qwilleran said. "I wanted only to express my sympathy and invite the two of you for a business discussion tomorrow - and some refreshment. He might find it heartening to hear about two major restoration projects that could use his expertise. Do you think he's willing to take on something big - at a time like this?"

"He is! I know he is! What time tomorrow?"

"How about two-thirty? I'm in the last unit in Building Five. He's been here before... And what do you both like to drink?"

"Margaritas," she said promptly.

After that masquerade of goodwill and hospitality, Qwilleran planned - with an element of elation - how to snare his prey. For bait he would use a few drinks, a lot of sympathy, and a spurious business deal. Then he would spring the trap! There was a possibility that Carter Lee would be smooth enough, slick enough, to elude it. Although he had told the theatre club he had no acting ability, he was - in Qwilleran's book - the Olivier, the Gielgud, the Alec Guiness of the confidence game.

It might or might not be a coincidence that volume ten on the Melville shelf - the one that riveted Koko' s attention - was The Confidence-Man. The cat was also greatly attracted to A. Nutt's scholarly disquisition on the Ossian hoax! Qwilleran realized now that he should have taken the cat's eccentricities more seriously.

His immediate task was to prepare the trap. His idea, not yet fully developed, was to tell his listeners about Short and Tall Tales and play "The Dank Hollow" for them. After that, he would play a tall tale of his own - about a scam that victimized Pickax a hundred years ago. It would be so transparently analogous to the Pleasant Street project that the listeners would be uneasy. At least, he supposed, Danielle would be uneasy, even if her "cousin" kept his cool. Now, all Qwilleran had to do was to compose this tricky, sticky bit of fiction.

When he sat down at his typewriter, however, the events of the last twenty-four hours crowded his mind.

To clear it he needed a drastic change of thought. What would it be? He looked at Koko; the cat looked at him. Opera, the man thought.

"Yow!" said Koko.

Adrienne Lecouvreur, the man thought.

"Yow!" said Koko.

It was the compact disc album that Folly had given him for Christmas; he had never played it. Somewhat guiltily, he slipped the first disc into the player and stretched out in his lounge chair, with his crossed legs on an ottoman and a mug of coffee in his hand.

The first act was a bustling scene backstage at the Com‚die Fran‡aise, with theatre personnel and their visitors fretting, plotting, and flirting. Koko relaxed nearby, comfortable on his brisket, but Yum Yum had disappeared. No opera lover, she!

The music was lush; the voices were stirring. In the story, taking place in 1730, a glamorous actress and a spiteful princess were rivals for the love of a nobleman.

It was a tale of intrigue, passion, deceit, and revenge. It involved a pawned necklace, a bunch of violets, a lost bracelet. Koko fidgeted from time to time. Qwilleran was following the libretto in English, but the cat was hearing it in Italian. As if he knew what it was all about, he made sounds of disapproval as the tension mounted. In the last act, as Adriana was dying in the arms of her lover, Koko howled as if his body would turn inside out.

"You spoiled the finale," Qwilleran chided him afterward, as Yum Yum crawled out from her secret hiding place.

Yet, it was not an ordinary yowl; it was a hollow, tortured wail! Qwilleran replayed the fourth act, jumping tracks to the death scene: Adriana receiving the box of dead violets, thinking them a cruel message from a lost lover, burying her face sorrowfully in the wilted flowers, not knowing they came from the princess, not knowing they were poisoned. Koko howled again. He had made the same anguished response to "The Dimsdale Jinx" when the pasties were mentioned - the poisoned pasties.

-18-

After hearing Koko's response to the opera, Qwilleran sat down at his typewriter with grim purpose. Gone was his prankish cat-and-mouse approach to setting a trap for a con man. This was a different ballgame, he told himself; no more softball; now it was hardball! Koko's reaction to the poisoned violets confirmed a cynical journalist's suspicions. It also explained the increasing disturbance on his upper lip.

In the coffee houses the local jokers liked to say, "If you want to murder your wife, do it Down Below, and you can get away with it." With hindsight, Qwilleran now found recent events painfully obvious: the hurried wedding; the transfer of property to joint ownership; the swift cremation without autopsy; the secrecy about Carter Lee's whereabouts after the death, precluding interference from anyone in Pickax.

Yet was there any actual proof that he had poisoned her? The howling of a cat - hundreds of miles away - at the moment of death was hardly admissible evidence or even grounds for arrest. Koko's electrifying cry at the mention of poison was equally thin evidence. His supranormal powers of detection and communication were known to Qwilleran, but would anyone else believe them?

Of one thing he was sure: At the slightest hint that their game was up, Carter Lee and his so-called cousin would disappear, taking their fake IDs and the money from twenty trusting property owners and any amount of loot from the Duncan house.

Qwilleran called the police chief at home. "Andy, sorry to bother you. The case we discussed is more serious than I imagined. I'm going ahead with the entrapment, but I want you to stand by. Anything can happen!"

Then he sat down at his typewriter and pounded out two or three hundred words to implement his scheme. At one point the flash of headlights turning into the adjoining driveway prompted him to telephone Wetherby. Solemnly he said, "Joe, did you hear the news from New Orleans?"

"I did! I did! And I'm mad as hell! This should never have happened! I feel like kicking a door down!"

"Well, I'm going to kick that door down, and I need your help."

"What can I do?"

"Give me fifteen minutes more at my typewriter, then come over here."

Qwilleran finished writing his tall tale and had a bourbon ready for Wetherby when he arrived. "Sit down, Joe, and I'll explain." He waited until his guest had taken a sip. "Both you and I had suspicions about Carter Lee, of one kind or another, and I've been led to believe they weren't far off base. I intend to confront him in a devious way, just to see how he reacts."