Lilian Jackson Braun - Cat 10 Who Talked to Ghosts

She placed the kitten carefully on the floor, and he lurched across the carpet like a windup toy, his skinny legs splayed at odd angles and his large brown feet flopping like a clown in oversize shoes. Polly explained, "He's still unsteady on his legs, and he doesn't quite know what to do with his feet. Of course, he's a little dismayed, being away from his mother and siblings... Aren't you, sweetums?"

Qwilleran had to admit he was an appealing little creature, but he found Polly's commentary cloying. He occasionally called Yum Yum his little sweetheart, but that was different. It was a term of endearment, not maudlin gush. "What's his name?" he asked.

"Bootsie, and he's going to grow up to be just like Koko."

Fat chance, Qwilleran thought, with a name like that! Koko bore the dignified cognomen of Kao K'o Kung, a thirteenth-century Chinese artist. He said, "You told me you didn't want a pet. You always said you were too busy and too often out of town."

"I know," she said, sweetly sheepish, "but the librarian in Lockmaster had a litter, and Bootsie was just too irresistible. Do you want to hold him? First I have to give him a kiss-kiss so that he knows he's loved."

Qwilleran accepted the small bundle gingerly. "He must weigh about three ounces. What's he stuffed with? Goose down?"

"He weighs exactly one pound and eight and a half ounces on my kitchen scale."

"Do you feed him with an eyedropper?"

"He gets a spoonful of nutritional catfood four times a day. It doesn't take much to fill up his little tum-tum."

Bootsie was quite content on Qwilleran's lap, his loud purr shaking his entire twenty-four and a half ounces. Occasionally he emitted a small squeak, closing his eyes in the effort.

"He needs oiling," Qwilleran said.

"That means he likes you. He wants you to be his godfather. Give him a kiss-kiss."

"No thanks. I have jealous cats at home." He was glad when Bootsie was returned to the bedroom and dinner was served.

It was curry again - and hot enough to send him catapulting out of his chair after the first forkful. "Wow!" he said.

"Hot?" Polly inquired.

"Like Hades! What happened?"

"I learned how to mix my own curry powder - fourteen spices, including four kinds of pepper. Would you like some ice water?"

Every few minutes Polly peeked into the bedroom to check the kitten. Asleep or awake? In or out of the basket? Happy or unhappy? Qwilleran could hardly believe that an intelligent, sophisticated, middle-aged woman with an executive position in a public library could be reduced overnight to a blithering fool.

For dessert she served a welcome dish of sherbet and suggested having coffee in the living room. "Would you like Bootsie to join us?" she asked coyly.

"No," he said firmly. "I have a serious matter to discuss with you."

"Really?" She said it with a distracted glance at the bedroom door, having heard a squeak, and he knew he would have to drop a bomb to galvanize her attention.

"It's my theory," he said, "that Iris Cobb's death was a case of murder."

-7-

WHEN POLLY HEARD the word "murder," she was aghast. In Moose County homicide was traditionally considered the exclusive property of the cities Down Below. "What leads you to that conclusion, Qwill?"

"Observation, speculation, cerebration," he replied, smoothing his moustache slyly. "At the Old Stone Mill last night, you may remember, I asked if the Goodwinter farmhouse has the reputation of being haunted. I wasn't simply making conversation. Prior to her death Iris complained about noises in the walls - knocking, moaning, and even screaming. In her last letter to her son she was almost deranged by her fears, hinting that there were evil spirits in the house. Then, just before she died, she saw something outside the kitchen window that terrified her."

"How do you know?"

"She was talking to me on the phone at the time. Shortly after, I arrived and found her dead on the kitchen floor. Strangely, all the lights were turned off, inside and outside the house. A heart attack, the coroner said, but I saw the look of terror on her face, and I say it was not a heart attack pure and simple. She was frightened to death, purposely or accidentally, by something outside the window. It could be the same something that turned off the lights, either before or after she collapsed."

Polly gasped and forgot to look at the bedroom door. "Are you implying - a phantom? You've always scoffed at such things."

"I'm simply saying I don 't know. Something is going on that I don't understand. Koko spends hours gazing out the very window where Iris saw the frightening vision."

"What is the view from that window?"

"After dark, nothing, unless cats can see things that we don't. In the daytime there's only the barnyard and the old barn beyond. The birds have gone south, it appears, and the squirrels are all up on Fugtree Road, raiding the oak trees. Yet something rivets Koko's attention. He also prowls the kitchen floor, sniffing and mumbling to himself."

"Have you heard any of the noises that disturbed Iris?"