Лилиан Браун - The Cat Who Tailed A Thief

"Stay tuned," he said. "You may hear some more surprising news."

Wetherby called to him, "Shall I pour you a Squunk water?"

"No, I need something stronger," Qwilleran said.

"Open a ginger ale."

-19-

Moose County's last square inch of snow melted at 2:07 P.M. on February 15, an all-time record. The rain stopped falling; the flood waters receded; and soon the farmers would be worrying about a summer drought. On the air the weatherman said, "Come, gentle spring! ethereal mildness, come!"

"Lynette would have loved that quotation," Polly said to Qwilleran.

"It sounds familiar. Who wrote it?"

"Coleridge... I believe."

Since meeting Wetherby Goode, he had stopped making needling remarks about his literary allusions. The two men now shared a secret. They had agreed not to reveal their role in the entrapment and flight of Carter Lee James. When Brodie questioned him, Qwilleran shrugged it off. "I simply confronted Carter Lee with what I thought was the truth; he threatened me; and Koko chased him out of the house."

Miraculously the fugitives had survived the rough tumble in the raging river but were still hospitalized under police arrest. The man would be charged with murder and twenty counts of fraud; the woman, an admitted kleptomaniac, would turn state's witness against him in exchange for immunity. On the gossip circuit the locals were saying: "That ain't his real name. Down Below they fake driver's licenses, credit cards, Social Security numbers - everything."

"He looked like such a gentleman! All those monogrammed shirts! I can't believe he'd commit murder!"

"Everybody said she shouldn't have married outside her clan and not so fast. She hardly knew him!"

"Well, she was forty. She didn't have time to waste."

"CLJ must be his real initials, or he'd have to buy a new bunch of shirts every time he changed his ID. That'd cost!"

One evening Qwilleran and Polly met for their weekly dinner of flattened chicken breast. This time the recipe called for shallots, lemon zest, chopped spinach, and blue cheese.

"Hail, noble Brutus!" he said when the erstwhile Bootsie met him at the door. The cat paraded back and forth with tail erect to demonstrate his nobility.

Polly said, "He can hardly wait to meet his little companion. Her name is Catta. She can't leave her mother for another two weeks... Qwill, whatever happened to all the cat names your readers were sending you?"

"There were thousands of postcards, and I finally hired Wilfred Sugbury and his girl friend to tabulate them. They turned over to me pages and pages of listings, classified according to number of syllables. One syllable names are in the minority. Apparently two syllables are more effective in getting a cat's attention."

"Will you write a column on the subject?"

"Or a scientific paper on Feline Nomenclature in Northern Climates. I just happen to have a few notes with me." He drew a folded paper from his pocket:

1. In Moose County, with its large population of barn cats as well as house pets, a large percentage are named after edibles: Pumpkin, Peaches, Sweet Potato, Butterscotch, Jelly Bean, Ginger, Huckleberry, Pepper, Marmalade, Licorice, Strudel, Popcorn, and so on. 2. Names are not always complimentary: Tom Trouble, Stinky, Lazy Bum, Hairball. 3. Cats named for famous personalities, real or fictional, are so named as a compliment to the namesake: Babe Ruth, Socrates, Walter Mitty, Queen Juliana, Maggie and Jiggs, Eleanor Roosevelt, George Washington. 4. Cats in the same family often have names that rhyme: Mingo and Bingo, Cuddles and Puddles, Noodle and Yankee Doodle.

Polly read the notes and asked him to talk on the subject at the next meeting of the Friends of the Public Library. He said he would consider it.

After dinner he asked, "Do you know anything about the dirk that Lynette used to cut her wedding cake?"

"Yes, it was a gift from Danielle. It had the lion rampant of Scotland on the hilt."

"Well I happen to know that the light-fingered Danielle stole it from the MacMurchie house when she and Carter Lee were doing their so-called appraisal of the premises Gil was very much upset It was the last gift he'd received from his late wife."

"That s terrible!" Polly said. "Lynette would have been mortified if she had known The MacMurchies were such good neighbors. In a plumbing emergency she could call Gil and he'd rush over with a wrench."

They both fell into silence. Qwilleran was thinking: Did Danielle know she'd get her wedding present back again - after New Orleans? Was she a genuine neurotic with a compulsion to steal? Or was her pilfering intended to focus public attention on minor crimes while Carter Lee committed a major swindle? The latter would explain the "theft" of his own coat, which was not missing for long As for the heist from the money jar, even a banker's wife could use a couple of thousand. But what did she do with the bag of old clothes from the church's donation box?

Polly broke the silence. "I never suspected either of them. Did you Qwill?"

"Well..." He contemplated what to tell and what not to tell. "Carter Lee's talk about the official registration of historic buildings aroused my curiosity. How does it work? I found that it involves complicated nomination forms technically and professionally correct with photographs and documented information about the architecture, materials, workmanship, and history of the building - all of which had to be approved by the state before going to national headquarters. How could he guarantee his clients anything? Yet, twenty families were convinced, and I was only a doubting Thomas... When I discovered he was a fraud, it was too late."

Polly sighed deeply. "For Lynette's sake I wish we could return the dirk to Gil MacMurchie. She would want it that way You know Qwill I have a key to her house. She asked me to keep an eye on the property while they were honeymooning Do you suppose at would be all right if I went over there and simply - "

"No, it would not be all right!" he interrupted sternly. That would be stealing - inappropriate conduct for the administrator of the public library. However... if you went over there to check up... and discovered a leak... a mysterious puddle of water under the kitchen sink... you could call Gil, and he'd rush over there with his pipe wrench It's not stealing if you take something that belongs to you."

Another evening Qwilleran was at home and his doorbell rang. On his doorstep was a man wearing a respiratory mask and holding a glass jar.

"What-what?" Qwilleran spluttered.

From the neck down, the figure was recognizable as Wetherby Goode. "Come in, you screwball! Take that thing off your head! What's in that jar?"

"Horseradish from my great-uncle in Lockmaster. He grows his own and grates it himself. One whiff is enough to kill a rhinoceros."

"I'll take a chance," said Qwilleran, who was a horseradish addict. "How about a bourbon?"

Koko made an appearance, looking regal, and Yum Yum rippled into the room in the flirty way she had.

"Do they ever catch mice?" Wetherby asked.

"It's Yum Yum's secret dream, but Koko is more of a thinking cat. He specializes in thought transference. He's telling me he'd like to move back to the barn. Is this good weather going to hold?"

"Don't ask me about the weather I'm only a meteorologist. Ask the fuzzy caterpillars."

Qwilleran said, "Polly tells me your listeners send you suggestions for your daily quotes."

"They sure do and I appreciate it Polly sends me weather quotes all the time - from Shakespeare and all those other old guys."

"She knows the Bard forward and backward," Qwileran remarked casually, but he was taken aback. Why had she not told him? True he concealed his investigations and Koko's collaborations because she would discourage one and laugh at the other. It came as a surprise however that Polly would conceal anything from him.