THE CAT WHO SANG FOR THE BIRDS

Qwilleran maneuvered an oblique sightline into the studio and glimpsed an artist working at an easel while his subject sat in a chair on a raised platform. The subject, who had trouble sitting still, was Chester Ramsbottom, a county commissioner and owner of a restaurant, a chesty man with thinning hair and an air of authority.

“I’ll tell you what it was all about!” he said belligerently. “It was a stupid boondoggle! All fake! And the taxpayers will hafta foot the bill! They never consulted me about any of this, and I’d like to know why! They duped the kids into watching this fake accident, and they fell for it! It was an insult to their intelligence and, by God! I’m gonna investigate!”

“Aw, shut your big yap, knucklehead!” came a raucous voice from the next studio.

“Who said that?” the commissioner blurted, half rising from his chair.

“Whoops, dearie!” came the voice, followed by a wolf whistle. “Ha ha ha ha ha!”

Qwilleran moved quietly to the adjoining studio and saw a young woman at a drawing board, covering her face with her hands to stifle her giggles. In a large cage was a parrot-green bird with a touch of red on his tail. He was blinking and rocking on his perch.

“Pretty Polly!” Qwilleran said to him. “Pretty Polly!”

“Bug off’, knucklehead!” came the impolite reply.

The artist jumped up and threw a blanket over the cage. “I’m sorry! You’re Mr. Q, aren’t you? He doesn’t like to be called Polly. His name is Jasper.”

“Is he yours?” The question was asked in disbelief. She was a diminutive young

woman, rather like a twelve-year-old, and there was an innocence in her large brown eyes.

“My boyfriend gave him to me, and my mom won’t let me have pets at home, so I’m keeping him here until can get an apartment.”

Qwilleran glanced around the room. All the studios had narrow ledges on the sidewalls for displaying art, framed or unframed. Here the ledges were filled with butterfly paintings. On a side table he noted a butterfly guidebook, a ceramic vase covered with butterflies in low relief, and a bowl of peanuts.

“So you’re the Butterfly Girl!” he said. “Do you object to being called that?”

“No, I really like it,” she said.

“Do you like butterflies?”

“Actually, I’ve never paid much attention to them,” he said, “but my cats like to see them flitting around. We don’t have any like these in my backyard.”

The paintings on display were about the size of an average book, each with a brilliant butterfly flat-out and another of the same species with wings folded back, resting on a twig or sipping nectar from a flower. The artist explained. “People prefer exotics, like the Paris Peacock and the Red Lacewing. The black-and-white one is a Tailed Emperor, and if you look closely you can see smidgens of blue, brown, orange, and maroon in the wings.”

“Hmmm,” he said, for want of a more intelligent response.

“A lot of people make collections, specializing in Blues or Swallowtails or Hairstreaks. They commission me to paint certain ones. It’s a lot of fun.”

“I imagine so,” he said. “Well, well! … That’s a beautiful vase.”

“Do you like it?” the Butterfly Girl said with eyes gleaming. “That’s my inspiration! My grandmother sent it from California… Do you mind if I uncover Jasper? The man next door has gone, I think.” She moved gracefully to the cage with a dancer’s posture, and Qwilleran noted that her hair was piled tightly in a ballerina’s topknot.

As soon as the cage was uncovered, Jasper squawked, “Gimme a peanut! Monkey gimme a peanut!”

“Who trained this bird!” Qwilleran asked.

“I don’t know. My boyfriend bought him at a bird show Down Below.”

“He has a murderous beak. I wouldn’t want to meet him in a dark alley.”

“He’s an Amazon hookbill. They’re supposed to be very intelligent.”

“He may have a high IQ, but his vocabulary needs to be cleaned up.”

“Same to you, knucklehead!”

Shaking his head in amused disbelief,

Qwilleran said goodbye to the Butterfly Girl and returned to the portrait studio, where the artist now sat alone. He had a bifurcated beard that gave him a comic look and twinkling eyes that suggested he had no objection to painting fools. Qwilleran wondered how Ramsbottom would be depicted - as an arrogant county boss or a genial purveyor of barbecue sandwiches?

“You must be Paul Skumble,” he said. “I’m Jim Qwilleran. We’ve never met, but I commissioned you to do a double portrait for a wedding gift last winter.”

“I remember well. That was a sad case. Sorry it didn’t work out. It would have been a challenge.”

“Are you relocating in Moose County?”

“No, my home and studio are still in Lockmaster, but I have several commissions up here, and I’m renting this studio on a temporary basis.”

“I’d like to have a portrait of a friend of mine, a librarian. I’d like her to be seated, holding a book. Would you be interested?”

“I think so. I’m very good at books. Some people say I paint books better than I paint faces.” His face crinkled with humor. He had a face that crinkled easily. Polly would like him.

“Will you be here on Sunday? I’d like you two to meet.”