Three Complete Novels: The Cat Who Tailed a Thief/the Cat Who Sang for the Birds/the Cat Who Saw Stars Read online

  Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  THE CAT WHO SAW STARS

  A JOVE Book / published by arrangement with the author

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1998 by Lilian Jackson Braun

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

  For information address:

  The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is

  http://www.penguinputnam.com

  ISBN: 978-1-1012-1433-6

  A JOVE BOOK®

  JOVE Books first published by The BERKLEY Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  JOVE and the “J” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

  Electronic edition: MARCH, 2003

  Also by Lilian Jackson Braun

  THE CAT WHO ROBBED A BANK

  THE CAT WHO SANG FOR THE BIRDS

  THE CAT WHO COULD READ BACKWARDS

  THE CAT WHO ATE DANISH MODERN

  THE CAT WHO TURNED ON AND OFF

  THE CAT WHO SAW RED

  THE CAT WHO PLAYED BRAHMS

  THE CAT WHO PLAYED POST OFFICE

  THE CAT WHO KNEW SHAKESPEARE

  THE CAT WHO SNIFFED GLUE

  THE CAT WHO WENT UNDERGROUND

  THE CAT WHO TALKED TO GHOSTS

  THE CAT WHO LIVED HIGH

  THE CAT WHO KNEW A CARDINAL

  THE CAT WHO MOVED A MOUNTAIN

  THE CAT WHO WASN’T THERE

  THE CAT WHO WENT INTO THE CLOSET

  THE CAT WHO CAME TO BREAKFAST

  THE CAT WHO BLEW THE WHISTLE

  THE CAT WHO SAID CHEESE

  THE CAT WHO TAILED A THIEF

  THE CAT WHO HAD 14 TALES

  (short story collection)

  THE CAT WHO SMELLED A RAT

  in hardcover from G. P. Putnam’s Sons

  Dedicated to Earl Bettinger,

  The Husband Who . . .

  ONE

  World-shaking news was seldom broadcast by WPKX, the radio station serving Moose County, 400 miles north of everywhere. Local baseball scores, another car accident, a fire in a chicken coop, and death notices were the usual fare. In late June, listeners snapped to attention, then, when a Sunday evening newscast included this bulletin:

  “An unidentified backpacker of no known address may or may not be a missing person, according to Moose County authorities. The Caucasian male, thought to be in his early twenties, stowed his camping gear on private property in the Fishport area three days ago and has not returned. He is described as fair-haired with blue eyes and of medium build. When last seen, he was wearing cutoff jeans, a white T-shirt, and a camera on a neck strap. Anyone seeing an individual of this description should notify the sheriff’s department.”

  Since the description might fit any number of vacationers in Moose County, the listening audience ignored the matter until the next day, when it was reported in the local newspaper. A detailed story—written in folk-style by Jill Handley, feature editor of the Moose County Something—made sense of the incident.

  Where’s David?

  MISSING HIKER

  BAFFLES F’PORT

  by Jill Handley

  Magnus Hawley of Fishport, a veteran on the commercial fishing boats, flagged down a sheriff’s patrol car on Sunday and told a curious tale. Hawley and his wife, Doris, live in a trailer home surrounded by flower beds on Lakeshore Road near Roaring Creek.

  “T’other night,” Hawley said, “me and m’wife had just ate supper and was watchin’ TV when there come a knock on the door. I goes to the door, and it’s a young feller with a big backpack, wantin’ to pitch his tent down by the crick for a coupla nights. He says he’s gonna do some hikin’ on the beach. He’s kinda sweaty and dusty, y’know, but he has a reg’lar haircut and talks decent.”

  Doris Hawley approved of the stranger. “He reminded me of our grandson—nice smile, very polite. I asked if he would be hunting for agates on the beach, because I could suggest a good spot, but he said he was mostly interested in taking pictures. His camera looked expensive, and I thought maybe he was a professional photographer. We told him he could camp near the picnic table at the bottom of the hill, so long as he didn’t throw trash in the creek or play loud music.”

  The stranger said his name was David. “I never knew a David who wasn’t trustworthy,” she said.

  She gave him some of her homemade gingersnaps and filled a jug with fresh water from the well. Her husband told David it was okay to take a dip in the creek but warned him about slippery rocks and strong current. Shortly after, they saw the young man heading for the lakeshore with his camera.

  “Funny thing, though,” said Hawley. “After that we di’n’t see hide or hair of the feller. I went down to the crick in a coupla days to see if he’d cleared out. The water jug—it was still on the picnic table, full up! And his pack was underneath, all strapped and buckled. On’y thing gone was the cookies. We talked about it, Doris and me. I said he could’ve took up with somebody he met on the beach. There’s no tellin’ what kids’ll do these days, y’know. But m’wife was worried about him slippin’ on the rocks and gettin’ drowned, so I hailed the patrol car.”

  A sheriff’s deputy and a state trooper inspected the campsite but found no identification of any kind. A description of the hiker, as given by the Hawleys, was broadcast Sunday night, but no response to the bulletin had been received at press time.

  Following the appearance of the story, the local gossip mill started grinding out idle speculations and inventing sensational details. Abduction was a possibility, many said, nodding their heads wisely. A few busybodies suspected the Hawleys of foul play. “Don’t eat any gingersnaps” was the popular quip in bars and coffee shops.

  One who listened to the gossip without contributing to it was Jim Qwilleran, a longtime journalist now writing a twice-weekly column for the Something. Only recently he had interviewed Hawley and other commercial fishermen, even spending time on the lake with a hard-working crew and a half-ton of slippery fish, and he resented the malicious whispers. Yet, that was to be expected in a community polarized between boaters and landlubbers. Qwilleran’s own reaction to the backpacker’s disappearance was an educated curiosity. Formerly a crime reporter in major cities around the United States, he had retained a Sherlockian interest in solving mysteries.

  Qwilleran was a popular man-about-town in Pickax City, the county seat (popu
lation 3,000). His column, “Straight from the Qwill Pen,” was said to rate ninety percent readership—more than the daily horoscope. Wherever he went in the county, he drew attention, being a good-looking fifty-plus and a well-built six-feet-two with a moustache of outstanding proportions. It had a droop that accentuated his melancholy demeanor, and his eyes had a brooding intensity. Yet friends knew him to be amiable, witty, willing to do favors, and fond of taking them to dinner.

  There was something else in Qwilleran’s favor: He was a philanthropist of incredible generosity. Earlier in life he had been a hard-working journalist Down Below, as locals called the high-population centers around the country. He lived from paycheck to paycheck with no thought of accumulating wealth. Then a happenstance that was stranger than fiction made him the most affluent individual in the northeast central United States; he inherited the Klingenschoen estate. The fortune had been amassed when the area was rich in natural resources and no one paid income tax. As for the original Klingenschoen, he had operated a highly profitable business.

  To Qwilleran the very notion of all that money was a burden and actually an embarrassment . . . until he thought of establishing the Klingenschoen Foundation. Now financial experts at “the K Fund” in Chicago managed the fortune, distributing it for the betterment of the community and leaving him free to write, read, dine well, and do a little amateur sleuthing. Townfolk of every age and income bracket talked about him at clubs, on the phone, in supermarkets. They said:

  “Swell fella! Not stuck up at all. Always says hello. Never know he was a billionaire.”

  “He sure can write! His column’s the only thing in the paper I ever read.”

  “That’s some moustache he’s got! M’wife says it’s sexy, ’specially when he wears sunglasses.”

  “Wonder why he stays single. They say he lives in a barn—with two cats.”

  “You’d think he’d get a proper house—and a dog—even if he doesn’t want a wife.”

  Qwilleran’s oversized moustache was a virtual landmark in Moose County, admired by men and adored by women. Like his hair, it was turning gray, and that made it more friendly than fierce. What no one knew about was its peculiar sensitivity. Actually, it was the source of his hunches. Whenever faced with suspicious circumstances, he felt a nudge on his upper lip that prompted him to start asking questions. Frequently he could be seen patting his moustache or grooming it with his fingertips or pounding it with his knuckles; it depended on the intensity of the nudge. Observers considered the gesture a nervous habit. Needless to say, it was not something Qwilleran cared to explain—even to his closest friends.

  With the disappearance of the backpacker, a nagging sensation on his upper lip was urging him to visit Fishport, a modest village near the resort town of Mooseville, where he had a log cabin and a half-mile of lake frontage. The cabin, part of his inheritance, was small and very old but adequate for short stays in summertime. Only thirty miles from Pickax, its remoteness was more psychological than geographic. Mooseville, with its hundred miles of lake for a vista, and with its great dome of sky, was a different world. Even the pair of Siamese with whom he lived responded to its uniqueness.

  A propitious fate had brought the three of them together. The female had been a poor little rich cat abandoned in a posh neighborhood when Qwilleran found her. Because of her sweet expression and winning ways, he named her Yum Yum. The sleek muscular male had simply moved in—at a time when Qwilleran was trying to get his life together. Kao K’o Kung had been his name before being orphaned. Now called Koko, he had a magnificent set of whiskers and remarkable sensory attributes. In fact, he and Qwilleran had developed a kind of kinship—the one with a feline radar system and the other with an intuitive moustache.

  The day after the newspaper story about the backpacker, Qwilleran drove downtown to the Something office to announce his vacation plans and hand in his copy for the “Qwill Pen” column. He had written a thousand words about the Fourth of July from the viewpoint of Benjamin Franklin. (How would Poor Richard react to backyard barbecues and high school majorettes in silver tights?) He found the managing editor’s office decorated with crepe-paper streamers and a sign daubed with the message: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JUNIOR . . . TODAY YOU ARE 16! Junior Goodwinter was past thirty, but slight stature and boyish features gave him the look of a perennial schoolboy.

  “Happy sixteenth!” Qwilleran said. “You don’t look a day over fifteen!” Dropping into a chair, he propped his right ankle on his left knee. “Any coffee left?”

  The editor swiveled in his chair and poured a mugful. “Did you see our story on the backpacker, Qwill? A teacher in Sawdust City called and laid us out for quoting the fisherman verbatim instead of correcting his grammar. What we printed is exactly how he said it. Jill had it all on tape.”

  “Pay no attention. She’s a crank,” Qwilleran said. “There’s nothing wrong with a little local color to relieve the monotony of good English.”

  “I’m with you,” Junior said. “Then a guy called and complained because Hawley’s wife was quoted as speaking better than her husband. He called it gender bias.”

  “I’ve met them both! That’s the way they speak, for Pete’s sake! I’m glad I don’t have your job, Junior.”

  “The Sawdust City woman wants us to start running a column on correct speech instead of ‘wasting so much space on sports.’ I quote.”

  “No one would read it.”

  “It would have to be chatty, like Ann Landers . . . Well, anyway, what are you doing for the Fourth?”

  “Leaving for a month’s vacation at the beach.”

  “Are you taking the cats?”

  “Of course! The beach is Cat Heaven! The screened porch is their Cloud Nine! I go up there for peace and quiet. They go for sounds and sights: squawking gulls, peeping sandpipers, cawing crows, chipping chipmunks! And everything moves: birds, butterflies, grasshoppers, waving beach grass, splashing waves . . .”

  “Sounds like fun,” Junior said. “And what will you be doing?”

  “Reading, loafing, biking, walking on the beach . . .”

  “Can you file your copy from up there?”

  “What?”

  “Does anyone have a fax machine you can use?”

  “You forget I’m going on vacation. I haven’t had one since God-knows-when.”

  “But you know the readers have fits if your column doesn’t run . . . And you boast you can write it with one hand tied behind your back.”

  “Well . . . only because it’s your birthday.”

  “Did you read Jill’s piece about the new restaurant up there?”

  “Yes, and I’m looking forward to checking it out. The new summer theater, too.”

  “Friday is opening night,” Junior said. “How’d you like to review the play for us?” He caught Qwilleran’s dour glance. “I know it’s your vacation, but you’re a writer, and writers write—the way other people breathe. How about it, Qwill? You can review a play blindfolded.”

  “Well . . . I’ll think about it.”

  Before leaving the building, Qwilleran stopped in the publisher’s office. He and Arch Riker had been lifelong friends and fellow journalists Down Below. Both had adapted to country living, but Arch had gone so far as to marry a local woman. Now his naturally florid face glowed with midlife contentment, and his paunchy midriff was getting paunchier. Mildred Riker was food writer for the paper.

  Qwilleran asked, “Have you two moved to your beach house?”

  “Sure have! It’s a longer commute but worth it. There’s something about the lake air that’s invigorating.”

  And intoxicating, Qwilleran thought; the locals are all a little balmy, and the summer people soon get that way. He said, “I’m packing up the cats and moving up there myself this afternoon. Polly will be gone all month, you know.”

  Riker had his Mildred, and Qwilleran had his Polly Duncan. She was the director of the Pickax Public Library, and the possibility of their marriage was widely discusse
d in the community. Both preferred their individual lifestyles, however, and let it be known that their cats were incompatible.

  Riker said, “Why don’t you come and have dinner with us tonight? The Comptons will be there, and Mildred is doing her famous coddled pork chops.”

  “What time?”

  “About seven . . . What do you think about the Fishport mystery? Have you heard the rumor about the Hawleys?”

  “Yes, and I won’t dignify it with a comment.”

  “Personally,” Riker said, “I think it’s all a publicity stunt trumped up by the chamber of commerce to promote tourism.”

  Qwilleran could never leave downtown without stopping at the used bookstore. He collected pre-owned classics as others in his financial bracket collected Van Goghs. Currently he was interested in Mark Twain. Coming from bright sunlight into the gloomy shop, he saw dimly. There was movement on a tabletop; that was Winston, the dust-colored longhair, flicking his tail over the biographies. There were sounds in the back room and the aroma of frying bacon; that was Eddington Smith preparing his lunch.

  A bell had tinkled on the door, and the old gray bookseller came out eagerly to meet a customer. “Mr. Q! I’ve found three more for you, all with good bindings: Connecticut Yankee, A Horse’s Tale, and Jumping Frog. Mark Twain lectured up here once, my father told me, so his books were popular. Two or three show up in every estate liquidation.”

  “Well, keep your eyes peeled for the titles I want, Ed. I’m going on vacation for a few weeks.”

  “Do you have plenty to read? I know you like Thomas Hardy, and I just found a leatherbound edition of Far from the Madding Crowd. My father used that expression often, and I never knew that he got it from Thomas Hardy.”

  “Or Thomas Gray,” Qwilleran corrected him. “Gray said it first—in Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.”

  “I didn’t know that,” said Eddington, always glad to learn a new fact. “I’ll tell my father tonight when I talk to him.” Then he added in response to a questioning glance, “I talk to him every night and tell him the events of the day.”