Lilian Braun - The Cat Who Brought Down the House

There were two thumps in the kitchen, as Koko jumped down from the top of the refrigerator.

Qwilleran thought, He’s been listening to this whole scenario!... Did he recognize Dick’s voice on the tape? NO! He’s never met Smiley; he’s just sensed his evil presence.

Koko stared pointedly at his empty plate under the kitchen table, and Qwilleran gave him a little something.

Qwilleran himself had a dish of ice cream. Then he sprawled in his big chair to think. He could imagine Simmons’s reaction to the drama. The tape recorder had been an inspired idea.

When Thelma confronted her nephew and he said she wouldn’t live long enough to change her will, she knew there was a gun in the desk drawer and she had told Simmons about it.

Did Thelma know all along that Dick was no good? It was too bad that Simmons had to leave so soon. Qwilleran would have enjoyed telling him of Koko’s investigative exploits.

It was a curious fact that lawmen were the only ones who accepted Koko’s peculiar talents. There had been Lieutenant Hames, Down Below, and there was Brodie, the Pickax police chief. Qwilleran had a hunch that Simmons would have been a third. Too late now.

Koko knew the man was thinking about him. The cat was sifting on a nearby lamp table, squeezing his eyes. He also rubbed his chin on the bottom edge of the lampshade. It was a gesture that seemed to give him a catly thrill. Knocking books off a shelf was another of Koko’s quirks, although it sometimes appeared as if there might be a method in his madness.

In the last two or three weeks he had shown a fondness for books with ‘Richard’ in the title. And he had exhibited a sudden interest in Robert Louis Stevenson. In quick succession he had dislodged A Child’s Garden of Verses and Travels with a Donkey and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Now, Qwilleran felt a prickling sensation on his upper lip. He thought, Could it be that Koko was looking for Kidnapped? It was the only Stevenson favorite not on the shelf. The notion, of course, was preposterous. And yet . . .

Qwilleran thought, If the kidnapping connection is preposterous, how about the catfit he staged when we played The Gambler? We thought it was Prokofiev’s music he didn’t like. More likely he was trying to tell us something about Thelma’s nephew... Koko knows a skunk when he smells one!

“Yoww-ow-ow!” Koko declaimed impatiently and rubbed the lampshade once more.

It was then that Qwilleran noticed an envelope on the table addressed simply to “Qwill’ It was large and square and ivory colored, and Qwilleran was not surprised to find the initials “T.T.” embossed on the flap. Obviously, Janice had left it there.

Inside there was a sheet of blank white paper.

Dubiously and reluctantly and even furtively, Qwilleran removed the lampshade and passed the paper back and forth over the hot lamp bulbs.

Gradually the message materialized printed in large block letters: THANKS, DUCKY, FOR EVERYTHING.

And where had Koko gone? He was under the kitchen table staring at his empty plate — the one on the right.

Yum Yum sat huddled on her brisket, guarding her one-and-only treasure, her silver thimble.

The End