The Cat Who Tailed a Thief (4 page)

“It’s absurd,” said her husband, “but I don’t fight it.”

Qwilleran claimed he had never been superstitious. “As a kid, I deliberately walked under ladders and stepped on cracks in the sidewalk.”

“And look how he turned out!” Riker said. “Luckiest guy in the northeast central United States.”

In pioneer days, Mildred related, it was unlucky to whistle in the mines, kill a woodpecker in a lumber camp, or drop a knife on the deck of a fishing boat.

“Today,” Polly said, “we observe superstitions half in fun and half hopefully. Lynette always wears her grandmother’s ring to play bridge, and she almost always wins.”

“Anything will work if you think it will,” Qwilleran said. “With the ring on her finger, she expects to win—a positive attitude that enables her to think clearly and make the right moves.”

“The
right bids
,” Arch corrected him. “You’re thinking of chess.”

With a wink at the others, Mildred said, “Arch always puts on his right shoe before the left.”

“It has nothing to do with superstition. It has everything to do with efficiency,” he explained. “It’s the result of a lifelong time-and-motion study.”

“You never told me that,” she said innocently. “But if you accidentally put on the left shoe first, you take it off and start over.”

“Who needs Big Brother? I’ve got Big Wife monitoring my behavior.”

“Ooh! I’m going on a diet after the holidays,” Mildred said.

“Isn’t it strange,” Polly remarked, “how many superstitions have to do with the feet, like putting a penny in your shoe for luck or wearing mismatched socks to take an exam? Bootsie gives his paw three licks—no more, no less—before starting to eat.”

“Will someone explain to me,” Qwilleran asked, “why Koko always eats with his rear end pointed north? No matter where he’s being fed, he knows which way is north. And Yum Yum always approaches her food from the left. If something’s in the way and she has to do otherwise, she throws up.”

Arch groaned. “This conversation is getting too deep for me. Let’s have dessert.”

After the plum pudding had been served and after the coffee had been poured, the presents were opened—not in a mad scramble but one at a time, with everyone sharing the suspense.

The first—to Qwilleran from the Rikers—was an odd-shaped package about four feet long. “A short stepladder,” he guessed. “A croquet set.” It proved to be a pair of snowshoes. “Great!” he said. “There are snow trails all around here! It’s just what I need to get some exercise this winter!” And he meant it.

Polly was thrilled with her suede suit and silk blouse, and the Rikers whooped in unison over the Majolica coffeepot. Then Arch unwrapped his baseball tie and exploded with laughter, while Mildred screamed in glee.

Qwilleran said, “It was supposed to be a joke, but I didn’t know it was that funny!” He understood their reaction when, a few minutes later, he opened a long, narrow giftbox from Arch. It was a baseball tie.

The largest box under the tree—to Qwilleran from Polly—was a set of leather-bound books by Herman Melville, a 1924 printing in mint condition. Included were novels that Qwilleran, a Melville buff, had never been able to find. He dug into the box excitedly, announcing title after title, and reading aloud some of the opening lines.

“Okay,” Arch said, “you’ve got all winter to read those books. Let’s open some more presents.”

Also for Qwilleran was an opera recording from Polly:
Adriana Lecouvreur
with Renata Tebaldi. . . Toulouse gave Koko and Yum Yum a gift certificate good at Toodle’s fish counter. . . Arch gave Mildred a three-strand necklace of onyx beads accented with a cartouche of gold-veined lapis lazuli.

The last gift under the tree was tagged to Qwilleran from Bootsie. “It’s a package bomb,” he guessed. After unwrapping it with exaggerated care, he exclaimed, “I can only quote the bard:
I am amazed and know not what to say!
It’s a sporran!”

“You could have fooled me,” said Arch. “I thought it was something for cleaning the windshield.”

“A sporran, for your information, Arch, is a fur pouch worn with a kilt by men in the Scottish Highlands. It’s used to carry money, car keys, driver’s license, cigarettes, lighter, credit cards, sunglasses, and possibly a sandwich.” He turned to Polly. “How did Bootsie find out I’d bought a kilt?”

“Everyone in town knows it, dear. There are no secrets in Pickax.”

“Well, we’re now a two-sporran family. Yum Yum has a cat-size sporran attached to her underside. It flaps from side to side when she trots, but hers is real fur. I think this one can be machine-washed and tumble-dried.”

* * *

When dusk fell and the gaslights on River Lane began to glow, it was snowing, so Arch drove Polly and Qwilleran home with their loot and foil-wrapped packs of turkey for their cats. Qwilleran minced some before going to Polly’s for mint tea and a recap of the afternoon:

“Carol gets the credit for selecting your suit, Polly.”

“Mildred made your sporran, Qwill.”

“The snowshoes are good-looking enough to hang on the wall when I’m not using them.”

“Did you know Adriana was the last role Tebaldi sang before she retired?”

“Eddington Smith searched a whole year for a Melville collection. This one turned up in Boston.”

It had stopped snowing when Qwilleran finally went home, and he was surprised to find footprints in the fresh snow on his front walk, leading to and from his doorstep. They were a woman’s footprints. There were no tire tracks. She lived in the Village and had walked. Who in the Village would pay a call without phoning first or being invited? Not Hixie or Fran. Certainly not Amanda Goodwinter. Opening the storm door, he found a gift on the threshold, wrapped in conservative holly paper and about the size and weight of a two-pound box of chocolates. He felt obliged to quote Lewis Carroll:
Curiouser and curiouser!
He carried it indoors, hoping it was not chocolates.

The Siamese, dozing on the sofa, raised their heads expectantly.

“Three guesses!” he said to them as he tore open the paper. It was a book with an unusual binding: leather spine and cloth-covered boards in a red and green Jacobean design, leafy and flowery. The gold tooling on the spine spelled out
The Old Wives’ Tale.

“Hey,” he yelped, alarming the cats. Arnold Bennett was one of his favorite authors, and this was considered his best novel. It was obviously a special edition of the 1908 book, with heavy quality paper, deckled edges, and woodcut illustrations. There was a note enclosed:

Qwilleran was flabbergasted. Sarah Plensdorf was the office manager at the
Something
—an older woman, rather shy. She lived alone in the Village, surrounded by family treasures.

Clutching the book, he dropped into his favorite easy chair and propped his feet on the ottoman. Koko and Yum Yum came running. Reading aloud was one of the things they did together as a family.

Bennett had been a journalist, and his novels were written in an unromantic style with detailed descriptions. As Qwilleran read, he dramatized with sound effects: the resounding call of the cuckoo in the English countryside, the clanging bell of the horse-car in town, the snores of Mr. Povey, asleep on the sofa with his mouth wide open. (He had taken a painkiller for his aching tooth.) When the prankish Sophie reached into the gaping mouth with pliers and extracted the wobbly tooth, Mr. Povey yelped, Qwilleran yelped, Yum Yum shrieked. But where was Koko?

Some muttering could be heard in the foyer, where Qwilleran had piled all the Christmas gifts; Koko was doing his best to open the carton containing the set of Melville’s works.

Was he attracted to the leather bindings? Did he detect codfish on a set of old books from Boston? Could he sense that the box contained a novel about a whale? He was a smart cat, but was he that smart?

Koko did indeed have a baffling gift of extrasensory perception. He could tell time, read Qwilleran’s mind, and put thoughts in Qwilleran’s head. All cats do this, more or less, at feeding time. But Koko applied his powers to matters of good and evil. He sensed misdeeds, and he could identify misdoers in an oblique sort of way. Melville’s novels were concerned with good and evil to a large degree; was Kao K’o Kung getting the message?

Was it coincidence that he pushed
The Thief
off the bookshelf when Pickax was plagued with petit larceny—and some not so petit?

Trying to find answers to such questions could drive a person mad, Qwilleran had decided. The sane approach was to be receptive, open-minded. There was one clue, however, that he had divined: Normal cats have twenty-four whiskers on each side, eyebrows included. Koko had thirty!

Between Christmas and New Year’s, Qwilleran took Celia Robinson’s grandson out on an assignment. He had been scheduled to interview an innkeeper in Trawnto Beach, but a dowser in Pickax seemed more likely to interest a future scientist. Furthermore, the dowser lived nearby, and Qwilleran could avoid sixty miles of driving in the company of a precocious fourteen-year-old. Admittedly, summer would be more appropriate for a dowsing story, but the interview could be conducted during Clayton’s visit and put on hold. Then, after spring thaw, Qwilleran could return for a demonstration of the mysterious art.

When he drove into Celia’s parking lot, he saw Clayton on the snowblower, spraying his grandmother with plumes of white flakes, while she pelted him with snowballs in gleeful retaliation. Brushing snow from their outerwear, they approached Qwilleran’s car, and Celia made the introductions: “Mr. Qwilleran, this is my famous grandson . . . Clayton, this is the famous Mr. Q. I call him ‘Chief.’”

“Hi, Chief,” the young man said, thrusting his hand forward. His grip had the confidence of a young teen who is expecting a scholarship from M.I.T.

“Hi, Doc,” Qwilleran replied, referring to his role in the Florida investigation. He sized him up as a healthy farm-bred youth with an intelligent face, freshly cut hair, and a voice deeper than the one on last year’s tape recording. “Got your camera? Let’s go!”

“Where are we off to, Chief?” Clayton asked as they turned into Park Circle.

“We’re going to Pleasant Street to interview Gil MacMurchie. His ancestors came here from Scotland about the time of Rob Roy. Do you know about Rob Roy? Sir Walter Scott wrote a novel with that title.”

“I saw the movie,” Clayton said. “He wore skirts.”

“He wore a kilt, customarily worn by Scottish Highlanders for tramping across the moors in wet heather, and also as a badge of clansmanship. During the Jacobite rebellion, clans were stripped of their names and kicked off their land. Rob Roy had been chief of the MacGregor clan but changed his name to Campbell. ‘Roy’ refers to his red hair.”

“How do you know all that?”

“I read. Do you read, Doc?”

“Yeah, I read a lot. I’m reading Einstein’s
Philosophy of Civilization.”

“I’m glad you’re not waiting for the movie. . . Mr. MacMurchie is retired from the plumbing and hardware business, but he’s still active as a dowser. Know anything about dowsing? Scientists call it divining. It’s also known as water witching.”

“Sure, I know about that! When our well ran dry, my dad hired a water witch. He walked around our farm with a branch of a tree and found underground water. I don’t know how it works.”

“No one knows exactly, but there are plenty of guesses. Geologists call it an old wives’ tale.”

“What does that mean?”

“Folklore. . . superstition. Yet proponents of dowsing say it works, in spite of the controversy.”

Pleasant Street was an old neighborhood of Victorian frame houses ornamented with quantities of jigsaw trim around windows, porches, rooflines, and gables. The large residences had been built by successful families like the MacMurchies and Duncans in the heyday of Moose County.

“This street looks like Disneyland,” said Clayton. “It doesn’t look real.”

“There may be no other street in the United States with so much gingerbread trim still intact. Right now there’s a proposal to restore all the houses and have it recognized as a historic neighborhood.”

Qwilleran parked in front of a neat two-tone gray house that still had a stone carriage step at the curb. The sidewalk and the steps of the house had been recently broomed, showing the streak marks of the broom straw in the snow.

As they walked up the front steps, Clayton asked, “What kind of pictures shall I take?”

“Close-ups of Mr. MacMurchie and his dowsing stick, plus anything else that looks interesting. If you get some good shots, the paper might do a picture spread and give you a credit line.”

Clayton had never seen a doorbell in the middle of the door, and he snapped a picture of it. He had never heard the raucous clang it made, either.

“Remember, Doc,” Qwilleran said. “I ask the questions; you click the camera, but do it unobtrusively.”

“Do you tape the interview?”

“If he gives permission; that’s our paper’s policy. But I take notes, whether we tape or not. When I was younger, I could commit a whole interview to memory, and it would be printed verbatim without error. But that was just showing off.”

The man who responded to the bell was a leathery-faced Scot whose red hair was turning sandy with age. “Come in! Come in, Qwill” was his hearty welcome.

“Gil, this is my photographer, Clayton Robinson.”

“Hiya, there! Let’s go right back to the kitchen. There’s some folks from the bank working in the front rooms. All my dowsing gear is laid out on the kitchen table.”

A long hall extended through to the rear, similar to that in the Duncan house. Lynette’s furnishings were stubbornly Victorian, however; this collection represented the taste of passing generations and the fads of recent decades: a little William Morris, a little Art Deco, a little Swedish modern, a little French provincial, a little Mediterranean.

As the trio walked down the hall, Qwilleran glimpsed antique weapons in a glass-topped curio table. . . a small black dog asleep on the carpeted stairs. . . a man and a woman examining one of the parlors and making notes.

“Excuse the mess,” the dowser apologized when they reached the kitchen. “My wife passed away last year, and I’m no good at housekeeping. I’m getting ready to move into a retirement complex, and I’m selling the house and most of my goods. Willard Carmichael at the bank said I can get more for the house if I fix it up so that it’s historic. You know Willard, don’t you? He sent this out-of-town expert over here today to figure out what needs to be done and what it’ll cost. Sounds pretty good to me!. . . Pull up a couple of chairs. Do you want me to explain this gear? Or do you want to ask questions?”

Laid out on the table was an array of forked twigs, L-shaped rods, barbed wire, string, even a wire coat hanger.

“Let’s talk first,” Qwilleran suggested, setting up his tape recorder. “How long have you been dowsing, Gil?. . . I’ll tape this, if you don’t mind.”

“Ever since I was a kid and my granddad showed me how to hold the forked stick. He found good water for folks, and also veins of iron ore and copper. The mines closed a long time ago, but folks always need good drinking water. When there’s a drought, some wells run dry. When a new building’s going up, they have to know if there’s water down there and how many gallons a minute they can get.”

Qwilleran asked, “Considering new technology, is water witching a dying art?”

“No way! No way! My grandson’s been finding water since he was twelve. It’s a gift, you know, and you pass it on, but it skips a generation. My father couldn’t find water to save his life! My son can’t either. But my grandson can. See what I mean?”

Occasionally there was the soft click of a camera and a flash of light.

“How often are you called upon to use this skill?”

“All depends. I’m a licensed plumber, and my wife and me ran the hardware store for years, but I’d always go out and dowse if somebody wanted me to. Still do.”

“Are you always successful?”

“If the water’s down there, by golly I’ll find it! Sometimes it just ain’t there! Either way, I never charge for my services, and I’ve made a lot of friends. Of course, I’ve made enemies, too. There’s a well-driller in Mooseville who hates my guts. He’ll drill a couple of dry holes, and then I’m called in and I find water with my little forked stick. Drives the guy nuts!” MacMurchie stopped to enjoy a chuckle. “Then there’s an old biddy in Kennebeck who says it’s the work of the devil. But just wait till her well runs dry and see who she calls!” The dowser slapped his knee and had another laugh. “If she calls me, I’m gonna go out there with one of them Halloween masks with red horns.”

“How about the scientists? The geologists?”

“Oh, them! Just because they can’t explain it, they think it’s all superstition. How about you, Qwill? What’s your honest opinion?”

“I’ll reserve my opinion until next spring when you give a demonstration. Meanwhile, what are these gadgets?” He waved his hand at the odd assortment on the kitchen table.

“Okay. Here’s the famous forked twig—goes back hundreds of years. Can be birch, maple, willow, apple, whatever. Should be fresh, with the sap in it. . . So you hold it in front of you, stem pointing up. The two forks are in your hands, palms up—like this.” The camera clicked. “You walk across the ground, concentrating. You pace back and forth. Suddenly the stick quivers, and the stem swings down and points to the ground. There’s a vein of water under your feet!”

“Uncanny!” Qwilleran said. “How far down?”

“Could be twenty, forty, sixty feet. If I say it’s down there, all you gotta do is drill—or dig. My granddad dug wells by hand, as deep as eighty feet! Sent the mud up in buckets.”

Qwilleran heard voices in the next room: the rumble of a man’s voice and a woman’s shrill laughter. Catching Clayton’s eye, he jerked his head in that direction, and the young photographer quietly left the room.

“Are there any women dowsers, Gil?”

“In some places. Not here.”

“Explain these other gadgets.”

“They’ll all find water, but mostly it depends on the dowser. Nothing works if you’re just fooling around, or if you don’t feel too good, or if you think it’s really a lot of baloney.” MacMurchie looked up suddenly, over Qwilleran’s shoulder, and said, “Yes, Mr. James. Want to see me?”

A deep, pleasant voice said, “We’re leaving now. We’ll be back tomorrow to appraise the upstairs. I think you have a gold mine here. Don’t let me disturb you. We can find our way out.”

Qwilleran had his back to the voice and saw no reason to turn around.

“Nice fella,” the dowser said as footsteps retreated and a woman’s laughter drifted back to them.

Qwilleran stood up and pocketed his recorder. “This has been very enlightening. I’ll look forward to the demonstration in the spring. . . Where’s my photographer? Let’s go, Clayton.”

“Here I am—in the dining room. I’ve found a friend.” He was sitting cross-legged on the floor, and a black schnauzer was curled on his chest, looking up at him with a shameless expression of devotion.

“That’s Cody,” said MacMurchie. “You can have her if you want. I can’t have a pet where I’m going. She’s a sweet little girl. She was my wife’s.”

Clayton said, “I live on a farm. She’d like it there. Can I take her on the plane, Chief?”

“Better discuss it with your grandmother.”

While Clayton took a few pictures of Cody, the two men walked toward the front door, and Qwilleran asked about the weapons in the curio table.

“They’re Scottish dirks—longer than daggers, shorter than swords.” He lifted the glass top and removed a dirk from its scabbard. “See these grooves in the blade? They’re for blood. Those Highlanders thought of everything.” There were also two silver pins three inches in diameter, set with stones as big as egg yolks—a kind of smoky quartz. “Those are brooches to anchor a man’s plaid on his shoulder. The stones are cairngorms, found only on Cairngorm mountain in Scotland. We call the brooches poached eggs. Sorry to say, I’ve got to unload all this stuff. No room in my new place. I’ll only keep the dirk with the silver lion. It was a gift from my wife.”

“How much do you want for all the others?” Qwilleran asked.

MacMurchie rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “Well. . . let’s see. . . four dirks with brass hilts and leather scabbards. . . and two silver brooches. . . You could have ’em for a thousand, and I’d throw in the table.”

“I wouldn’t need the table, but I’ll think about the others and let you know.”

“Are you going to Scottish Night at the lodge?”

“They’ve invited me, and I’ve bought a kilt, but so far I haven’t had the nerve to wear it.”

“Wear it to Scottish Night, Qwill. There’ll be twenty or thirty fellas in kilts there, and you’ll feel right at home. I’ll lend you a knife to wear in your sock. You have to have a knife in your sock to be proper.”

“Isn’t it considered a concealed weapon?”

“Well, Andy Brodie wears one to Scottish Night, and he never got arrested. When you go in, you show it to the doorman, that’s all. Wait a second.” MacMurchie disappeared and returned with a stag-horn-handled knife in a scabbard. “You borrow this, Qwill. It’s lucky to wear something borrowed.”

Qwilleran accepted, saying it was a good-looking knife.

“It’s called a d-u-b-h, but it’s pronounced
thoob
.”

They said good-bye. Qwilleran told Cody she was a good dog. He and his photographer drove away from Pleasant Street.

“That was cool,” Clayton said.

“How’d you like to stop at the Olde Tyme Soda Fountain for a sundae?”

It was a new addition to downtown Pickax, part of the revitalization sponsored by the K Fund. A light, bright shop with walls and floor of vanilla white, it had small round tables and a long fountain bar in chocolatecolored marble. Customers sat on “ice cream” chairs or high stools of twisted wire, with strawberry red seats. Sundaes were called college ices; sodas were called phosphates; banana splits remained banana splits. That was Clayton’s choice. Qwilleran had a double scoop of coffee ice cream. Everything was served in old-style ice cream dishes of thick molded glass.