The Cat Who Turned on and Off (8 page)

“How about Andy’s private life?” Qwilleran asked. “Did he have the same lofty standards?”

Russell Patch laughed. “You better ask the Dragon . . . . About this other thing—don’t get me wrong. I didn’t have any hard feelings against Andy personally, you understand. Some people carry grudges. I don’t carry a grudge. I may blow my stack, but then I forget it. You know what I mean?”

After Qwilleran left the carriage house, he made a telephone call from the corner drugstore, where he went to buy a new toothbrush. He called the feature editor at his home.

“Arch,” he said, “I’ve run into an interesting situation in Junktown. You know the dealer who was killed in an accident a couple of months ago—”

“Yes. He’s the one who sold me my Pennsylvania tin coffeepot.”

“He allegedly fell off a stepladder and allegedly stabbed himself on a sharp object, and I’m beginning to doubt the whole story.”

“Qwill, let’s not turn this quaint, nostalgic Christmas series into a criminal investigation,” the editor said. “The boss wants us to emphasize peace-on-earth and goodwill toward advertisers until the Christmas shopping season is over.”

“Just the same, there’s something going on in this quaint, nostalgic neighborhood that bears questioning.”

“How do you know?”

“Private hunch—and something that happened yesterday. One of the Junktown regulars stopped me on the street and spilled it—that Andy had been murdered.”

“Who was he? Who told you that?” Riker demanded.

“Just a neighborhood barfly, but great truths are spoken while under the influence. He seemed to know something, and twelve hours after he talked to me, he was found dead in the alley.”

“Drunks are always being found dead in alleys. You should know that.”

“There’s something else. Andy’s girl friend is obviously living in fear. Of what, I can’t find out.”

“Look, Qwill, why don’t you concentrate on writing the antique series and getting yourself a decent place to live?”

“I’ve got an apartment. I’ve moved into a haunted house on Zwinger Street—over the Cobb Junkery.”

“That’s where we bought our dining room chandelier,” said Riker. “Now why don’t you just relax and enjoy the holidays and—say!—be sure to visit The Three Weird Sisters. You’ll flip! When will you have your first piece of copy?”

“Monday morning.”

“Keep it happy,” Riker advised. “And listen, you donkey! Don’t waste any time trying to turn an innocent accident into a Federal case!”

That directive was all the encouragement Qwilleran needed. It was not for nothing that his old friend called him a donkey.

With a stubborn determination to unearth the truth about the death of Andy Glanz, Qwilleran continued his tour of Zwinger Street. He walked past the Bit o’ Junk antique shop (closed)—past The Blue Dragon—past a paint store (out of business)—past a bookstore (pornographic)—until he reached a place called Ann’s ’Tiques, a subterranean shop smelling of moldy rugs and rotted wood.

The little old white-haired woman seated in a rocking chair resembled a dandelion gone to seed. She looked at Qwilleran blankly and kept on rocking.

“I’m Jim Qwilleran from the
Daily Fluxion,
” the newsman said in his courtliest manner.

“Nope, I haven’t had one o’ them for years,” she replied in a reedy voice. “People like the kind with china handles and a double lid.”

Qwilleran inspected the litter of indescribable knick-knacks and raised his voice. “What’s your specialty, Miss Peabody?”

“No sir! No discounts! If you don’t like my prices, leave the things be. Somebody else’ll buy ’em.”

Qwilleran bowed and left the shop. He walked past a billiard hall (windows boarded up)—past a chili parlor with a ventilator exhausting hot breath across the sidewalk (rancid grease, fried onions, sour mop)—until he reached the fruit and tobacco shack of Papa Popopopoulos. There was an aroma of overripe banana and overheated oil stove in the shack. The proprietor sat on an orange crate, reading a newspaper in his native language and chewing a tobacco-stained moustache of great flamboyance.

Qwilleran stamped his feet and clapped his gloved hands together. “Pretty cold out there,” he said.

The man listened attentively. “Tobac?” he said.

Qwilleran shook his head. “No, I just stopped in for a chat. Frankly, that last pouch I bought was somewhat past its prime.”

Popopopoulos rose and came forward graciously. “Fruit? Nize fruit?”

“I don’t think so. Cozy little place you’ve got here. How long have you been doing business in Junktown?”

“Pomegranate? Nize pomegranate?” The shopkeeper held up a shriveled specimen with faded red skin.

“Not today,” said Qwilleran, looking toward the door.

“Pomegranate make babies!”

Qwilleran made a hasty exit. There was nothing to be learned, he decided, from Andy’s two protégés.

It was then that he spotted the shop of The Three Weird Sisters, its window filled with washbowl and pitcher sets, spittoons, and the inevitable spinning wheel. Arch Riker might flip over this junk, but Qwilleran had no intention of flipping. He squared his shoulders and marched into the shop. As soon as he opened the door, his nose lifted. He could smell—was it or wasn’t it? Yes, it was—clam chowder!

Three women wearing orange smocks stopped what they were doing and turned to regard the man with a bushy moustache. Qwilleran returned their gaze. For a moment he was speechless.

The woman sitting at a table addressing Christmas cards was a brunette with luscious blue eyes and dimples. The one polishing a brass samovar was a voluptuous orange-redhead with green eyes and a dazzling smile. The young girl standing on a stepladder hanging ropes of Christmas greens was a tiny blonde with upturned nose and pretty legs.

Qwilleran’s face was radiant as he finally managed to said, “I’m from the
Daily Fluxion.”

“Yes, we know!” they chorused, and the redhead
added in a husky voice, “We saw you at the auction and
adored
your moustache. Sexiest one we’ve ever seen in Junktown!” She hobbled toward him with one foot in a walking cast and gave his hand a warm grasp. “Pardon my broken metatarsal. I’m Cluthra. Godawful name, isn’t it?”

“And I’m Amberina,” the brunette said.

“I’ve Ivrene,” said a chirping voice from the top of the stepladder. “I’m the drudge around here.”

The redhead sniffed, “Ivy, the soup’s scorching!”

The little blonde jumped down from the ladder and ran into the back room.

Flashing her dimples, the brunette said to Qwilleran, “Would you have a bowl of chowder with us? And some cheese and crackers?”

If they had offered hardtack and goose grease, he would have accepted.

“Let me take your overcoat,” said the redhead. “It’s awfully warm in here.” She threw her smock back over her shoulders, revealing a low-cut neckline and basic architecture of an ample nature.

“Sit here, Mr. Qwilleran.” The brunette moved some wire carpet beaters from the seat of a Victorian settee.

“Cigarette?” offered the redhead.

“I’ll get you an ashtray,” said the brunette.

“I smoke a pipe,” Qwilleran told the sisters, groping in his pocket and thinking, If only the guys in the Feature Department could see me now! As he filled his pipe and listened to two simultaneous conversations, he glanced around the shop and saw lead
soldiers, cast-iron cherubs, chamber pots, and a tableful of tin boxes that had once held tobacco, crackers, coffee, and the like. The old stenciled labels were half obliterated by rust and scuffmarks, and Qwilleran had an idea. Arch Riker said he collected tin; this was the chance to buy him a crazy Christmas present.

“Do you really sell those old tobacco tins?” he asked. “How much for the little one that’s all beat up?”

“We’re asking ten,” they said, “but if it’s for yourself, you can have it for five.”

“I’ll take it,” he said and threw down a nickel, without noticing the expression that passed among them.

The youngest one served the soup in antique shaving mugs. “The Dragon just phoned,” she told Qwilleran. “She wants to see you this afternoon.” She seemed unduly pleased to give him the message.

“How did she know I was here?”

“Everybody knows everything on this street,” the redhead said.

“The Dragon has this place bugged,” the young one whispered.

“Ivy, don’t talk silly.”

The sisters continued the conversation in three-part harmony—Cluthra in her husky voice, Amberina with a musical intonation, and Ivrene piping grace notes from her perch. Eventually Qwilleran brought up the subject of Andy Glanz.

“He was a real guy!” the redhead said with lifted
eyebrows, and her rasping voice showed a trace of tenderness.

“He had quite an intellect, I understand,” Qwilleran said.

“Cluthra wouldn’t know anything about that,” said the young one on the ladder. “She brings out the beast in men.”

“Ivy!” came the sharp reprimand.

“It’s true, isn’t it? You said so yourself.”

The brunette hastily remarked, “People don’t believe we’re sisters. The truth is, we had the same mother but different fathers.”

“Does this business support the three of you?”

“Heavens, no! I have a husband, and I do this just for fun. Ivy’s still in school—art school—and—”

“And Cluthra lives on her alimony,” chipped in the youngest, earning pointed glares from her elders.

“Business has been terrible this month,” said the brunette. “Sylvia’s the only one who’s doing any business around here.”

“Who’s Sylvia?” Qwilleran asked.

“A rich widow,” came the prompt reply from the top of the ladder.

“Sylvia sells camp,” the redhead explained.

“That’s not what you called it yesterday!” Ivy reminded her.

“Where’s her shop?” asked the newsman. “What’s her full name?”

“Sylvia Katzenhide. She calls her place Sorta Camp. It’s in the next block.”

“Cluthra calls her the Cat’s Backside,” Ivy said, ignoring the exasperated sighs from her sisters.

“If you go to see Sylvia, wear earmuffs,” the redhead advised.

“Sylvia’s quite a talker,” said the brunette.

“She’s got verbal diarrhea,” said the blonde.

“Ivy!”

“Well, that’s what you
said!
”

When Qwilleran left the Three Weird Sisters, he was walking with a light step. He had heard little Ivy say, as he walked out the door, “Isn’t he groovy?”

He preened his moustache, undecided whether to answer Mary Duckworth’s summons or visit the loquacious Sylvia Katzenhide. Mrs. McGuffey was also on his list, and sooner or later he would like to talk to the outspoken Ivy again—alone. She was a brat, but brats could be useful, and she was an engaging brat, as brats went.

On Zwinger Street a hostile sun had penetrated the winter haze—not to warm the hearts and frozen nosetips of Junktown residents, but to convert the lovely snow into a greasy slush for the skidding of cars and splashing of pedestrians, and Qwilleran’s mind went to Koko and Yum Yum—lucky cats, asleep on their cushions, warm and well-fed, with no weather to weather, no deadlines to meet, no decisions to make. It had been a long time since he had consulted Koko, and now he decided to give it a try.

There was a game they played with the unabridged dictionary. The cat dug his claws into
the book, and Qwilleran opened to the page indicated, where the catchwords at the top of the columns usually offered some useful clue. Incredible? Yes. But it had worked in the past. A few months before, Qwilleran had been credited with finding a stolen jade collection, but the credit belonged chiefly to Koko and Noah Webster. Perhaps the time had come to play the game again.

He went home and unlocked his apartment door, but neither cat was anywhere in sight. Someone had been in the apartment, though. Qwilleran noticed a slight rearrangement and the addition of several useless gimcracks. The brass candlesticks on the mantel, which he liked, had gone, and in their place stood a pottery pig with a surly sneer.

He called the cats by name and got no answer. He searched the apartment, opening all doors and drawers. He got down on his knees at the fireplace and looked up the chimney. It was an unlikely possibility, but one could never tell about cats!

While he was posed on all fours with his head in the fireplace and his neck twisted in an awkward position, Qwilleran sensed movement in the room behind him. He withdrew his head just in time to see the missing pair walk nonchalantly across the carpet, Koko a few paces ahead of Yum Yum as usual. They had come from nowhere, as cats have a way of doing, holding aloft their exclamatory tails. This unpredictable pair could walk on little cat feet, silent as fog, or they could thump across the floor like clodhoppers.

“You rascals!” Qwilleran said.

“Yow?” said Koko with an interrogative inflection that seemed to imply, “Were you calling us? What’s for lunch?”

“I searched all over! Where the devil were you hiding?”

They had come, it seemed, from the direction of the bathroom. They were blinking. Their eyes were intensely blue. And Yum Yum was carrying a toothbrush in her tiny V-shaped jaws. She dropped it in front of him.

“Good girl! Where did you find it?”

She looked at him with eyes bright, crossed, and uncomprehending.

“Did you find it under the tub, sweetheart?”

Yum Yum sat down and looked pleased with herself, and Qwilleran stroked her tiny head without noticing the faraway expression in Koko’s slanted eyes.

“Come on, Koko, old boy!” he said. “Let’s play the game.” He slapped the cover of the dictionary—the starting signal—and Koko hopped on the big book and industriously sharpened his claws on its tattered binding. Then he hopped down and went to the window to watch pigeons.

“The game! Remember the game? Play the game!” Qwilleran urged, opening the book and demonstrating the procedure with his fingernails. Koko ignored the invitation; he was too busy observing the action outdoors.

The newsman grabbed him about the middle and
placed him on the open pages. “Now dig, you little monkey!” But Koko stood there with his back rigidly arched and gave Qwilleran a look that could only be described as insulting.

“All right, skip it!” the man said with disappointment. “You’re not the cat you used to be. Go back to your lousy pigeons,” and Koko returned his attention to the yard below where Ben Nicholas was scattering crusts of bread.

Qwilleran left the apartment to continue his rounds, and as he went downstairs, Iris Cobb came flying out of the Junkery.

“Are you having fun in Junktown?” she asked gaily.

“I’m unearthing some interesting information,” he replied, “and I’m beginning to wonder why the police never investigated Andy’s death. Didn’t the detectives ever come around asking questions?”

She was shaking her head vaguely when a man’s gruff voice from within the shop shouted, “I’ll tell you why they didn’t. Junktown’s a slum, and who cares what happens in a slum?”

Mrs. Cobb explained in a low voice, “My husband is rabid on the subject. He’s always feuding with City Hall. Of course, he’s probably right. The police would be glad to label it an accident and close the case. They can’t be bothered with Junktown.” Then her expression perked up; she had the face of a woman who relishes gossip. “Why were you asking about the detectives? Do you have any
suspicions?
”

“Nothing definite, but it was almost too freakish to dismiss as an accident.”

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe there was something going on that nobody knows about.” She shivered. “The idea gives me goosebumps . . . . By the way, I sold the brass candlesticks from your apartment, but I’ve given you a Sussex pig—very rare. The head comes off, and you can drink out of it.”