Lilian Braun - The Cat Who Saw Red

"Then why didn't you ship her clothes" — puff, puff — "the way she asked? How come you burned them?" Qwilleran examined his pipe critically. There's something wrong with this tobacco." To himself he said, Watch it, Qwill. You're on thin ice.

"So help me, they were some rags she didn't want," an said. "You can burn cloth in a kiln to give the pots a special hazy effect. You can pull all kinds of tricks by controlling the burning gases. . . How did you know, anyway?" Dan's eyes grew steely for a moment.

"You know how reporters are, Dan. We're always looping around. Occupational disease," the newsman explained amiably. "Have some cheese? It's good Roquefort."

"No, I'm stuffed. Man, you nag just like my wife. You're like a dog with a bone."

"Don't let it burn you. I'm playing games, that's alI. Shall I refill your glass?" Qwilleran poured Dan another drink. "Okay, try this on for size: You said you weren't taking a trip, but according to the grapevine you're heading for Paris."

"Well, I'll be jiggered! You're a nosy bugger." Dan scratched his cheek. "I suppose that nutty Hixie's been blabbing. I had to tell her something to get her off my neck. That kid's man-hungry, I'm telling you."

"But are you really planning to leave? I have a friend who might take over the pottery if you're giving it up."

"Just between you and me and the gatepost," the potter said, lowering his voice, "I can't warm up to this neck of the woods. I'd go back to California if I could break my contract with Maus, but I don't want to spill the beans till I know for sure."

"Is that why you broke all those pots and dumped them in the river?"

Dan's mouth fell open. "What?"

"All those blue and green pots. You can see them down there, shining right through the mud. Must be the Living Glaze."

"Oh, those!" Dan took a long swallow of bourbon and ginger ale. "Those were rejects. When I got the notion for the new glaze, I tried it out on some bisque that had sagged in the kiln. Those pots were early experiments. No point in keeping them."

"Why'd you dump them in the river?"

"Are you kidding? To save a little dough, man. The city charges by the bushel for collecting rubbish, and Maus — that old pinch-penny — makes me pay for my own trash removal."

"But why in the middle of the night?"

Dan shrugged. "Day or night, I don't know the difference. Before a show you work twenty-four hours a day. When you're firing, you check the kiln every couple of hours around the clock. . . Say, what are you? Some kind of policeman?"

"Old habit of mine," Qwilleran said; the ice was getting thinner. "When I see something that doesn't add up, I have to check it out. . . such as . . . when I write a check for seven hundred and fifty dollars and someone ups it a thousand dollars." He regarded the potter calmly but steadily.

"What do you mean?"

"That check I gave Joy, so she could take a vacation. You cashed it. You should know what I mean." Qwilleran loosened his tie.

"Sure, I cashed it," Dan said, "but it was made out for seventeen-fifty. Joy left in a hurry, I guess, and forgot to take it with her. She'd forget her head it if wasn't fastened on. She called me from Miami and said she'd left a check for seventeen hundred and fifty dollars in the loft, and I should endorse it for her and wire her half of the money. She told me to use the rest for a big swing-ding for the opening."

"This afternoon you told me the champagne party was financed by the Los Angeles deal."

Dan looked apologetic. "Didn't want you to know she'd handed me half of your dough. Didn't want to rile you up . . . Are you sure you didn't make out that check for seventeen fifty? How could anybody add a thousand bucks to a check?"

"Easy," Qwilleran said. "Put a one in front of the numeral and add teen to the end of the word seven."

"Well, that's what she did, then, because it sure as hell wasn't me. I told you she's no saint. If you'd been married to her for fifteen years, you'd find out." Dan shifted impatiently in his chair. "Jeez! You're an ornery cuss. If I wasn't so good-natured, I'd punch you in the kisser. But just to prove there's no hard feelings, I'm going to give you a present." He pushed himself out of the deep chair. "I'll be right back, and if you want to sweeten my drink while I'm gone, that's okay with me."

That was when Qwilleran felt a tremor of uncertainty. That check he had given Joy — he had written it without his glasses and in a state of emotion. Perhaps he had made a mistake himself. He paced the floor, waiting for Dan's return.

"Koko, what are you hiding for?" he mumbled in the direction of the bookcase. "Get out here and give me some moral support!"

There was no reply, but the length of brown tail that was visible slapped the shelf vehemently.

Shortly Dan returned with two pieces of pottery: a large square urn with a footed base and a small rectangular planter. The large piece was in the rare red glaze.

"Here!" he said, shoving them across the desk. "I appreciate what you're doing for me at the paper. You said you liked red, so the big one's for you. Give the blue one to the photographer. He was a good egg. See that he gets me some copies of the pictures, will you? . . . Well, here — take 'em — don't be bashful."

Qwilleran shook his head. "We can't accept those. They're too valuable." The red pots in the exhibition, he remembered, had been priced in four figures.

"Don't be a stuffed shirt," Dan said. "Take the damn things. I sold all the rest of the Living Glaze; People gobbled them up! I've got a stack of checks that would make you cross-eyed. Don't worry; I'll make up that thousand bucks. Just see that I get some good space in the paper."

Dan left the apartment, and Qwilleran felt his face growing hot. The confrontation had settled none of his doubts. Either he was on the wrong track entirely, or Dan was a fast-talking con man. The potter's seedy appearance was deceiving; he was slick — too slick.

There was a grunt from the bookshelves, and a cat backed into view — first the sleek brown tail, then the dark fawn haunches, the lighter body, and the brown head. Koko gave an electric shudder that combed, brushed, and smoothed his fur in one efficient operation.

"I thought I had everything figured out," Qwilleran said to him, "but now I'm not so sure."

Koko made no comment but jumped from the bookcase to the desk chair and then to the desktop. He paused, warily, before beginning to stalk the red urn. With his body low and his tail stiffened, he approached it with breathless stealth, as if it were a living thing. Cautiously he passed his nose over its surface, his whiskers angling sharply upward. His nose wrinkled, and he bared his teeth. He sniffed again, and a growl came from his throat, starting like a distant moan and ending in a hair-raising screech.

"Both of us can't be wrong," Qwilleran said. "That man is lying about everything, and Joy is dead."

Joy had hated and feared the river, and now Qwilleran was repelled by the black water beyond the window. Even Koko had shrunk from it when they explored the boardwalk. Two artists had drowned their long ago, more recently a small child, and now perhaps Joy, perhaps William. A fog was settling on the river. Boats hooted, and the foghorns at Plum Point was moaning a dirge.

Qwilleran dialed the press room at police headquarters, and while he waited for the Fluxion night man to com eon the line, he summed up his deductions. The Living Glaze was Joy's creation; he had seen Dan copying formulas from her loose-leaf notebook into a ledge. That being true, everything else fell into lace: Dan's refusal to let her show her work prior to the exhibition; the broken ceramics in the river in shapes typical of Joy's handiwork; the consensus among exhibition visitors that the glaze was too good for the clay forms beneath. Yet Dan was brazenly taking credit for the Living Glaze. Would he dare take credit if he knew Joy was alive?