“But you went back.”
“Only to go home again. Thomas Wolfe was wrong, you can go home again, and I did. I’m out of it, Carolyn. They dropped the charges, did I tell you that? For me the case is over.” I flipped a paper ball, but Raffles was still busy killing the last one. “If you want somebody to solve it,” I said, “why don’t you try the cat?”
“The cat?”
“Raffles,” I said. “Maybe he’ll figure it out for you, like in those books by What’s-her-name.”
“Lillian Jackson Braun.”
“That’s the one. Everybody’s stymied, and then the genius cat breaks a T’ang vase or coughs up a hairball, and that provides the vital clue that nails another killer. I forget his name, this crime-solving cat.”
“It’s Ko-Ko. He’s Siamese.”
“Good for him. He’s been doing this forever, hasn’t he? Ko-Ko must be getting a little long in the fang by now. She ought to call the next one The Cat Who Lived Forever. I can’t believe some Siamese is that much sharper than old Raffles here. Go ahead, ask him who did it. Maybe he’ll knock a book off the shelves and answer all your questions.”
“You think you’re pretty funny, don’t you, Bern?”
“Well…”
“Well, what the hell,” she said. “Raffles, what’s the solution to the mystery of the stiff in the tub?”
Raffles stopped what he was doing, which was the systematic demolition of one of the sandwich-wrapper mice. He backed away from it, extended his front paws, stretched, extended his back paws, stretched again, and then arched his back, looking like something that belonged on a Halloween card. Then he wagged the tail he didn’t have—I can’t think of another way to say it—and leaped straight up in the air, grabbing at something only he could see. He landed on all fours, in the manner of his tribe, and turned slowly around, settled on his haunches, and stared at us.
I said, “Well, I’ll be damned.”
“We all will, Bern, but what’s that got to do with the price of Meow Mix? What was all that about, anyway?”
“Call Ray Kirschmann,” I said. “You’re the one who won’t stop hounding me, so you can be the one to call him.” I grabbed a pencil and retrieved a sheet of paper from the floor, uncrumpling it as best I could. I started making a list. “All of these people,” I said. “Tell him I want him to have them all at the Nugent apartment tomorrow evening at half past seven.”
“You’ve got to be kidding. How did you—what do you plan to—what did the cat do that—”
“You’re not making sentences,” I said, “Or sense. Tomorrow.”
CHAPTER Twenty-one
At exactly seven-thirty the following evening I presented myself to the Haitian doorman at 304 West End Avenue. “Bernard Rhodenbarr,” I said. “Mr. and Mrs. Nugent are expecting me.” I looked over his shoulder while he consulted a little list. I was pleased to note that there was a check mark next to every name but mine.
“Rhodenbarr,” I prompted, and he found my name and checked it off, turning to me with a cheering little smile. He pointed my way to the elevator, which was considerate if hardly necessary.
I rode upward to nine, walked the length of the hallway to G. I looked at the two locks, the Poulard, the Rabson.
I knocked on the door, and it was opened unto me.
The doorman’s list was accurate. They were all on hand. I didn’t know how Ray had managed it, but he had everybody present and accounted for.
They were in the living room. The room’s chairs and sofas were ranged in a circle, its circumference swelled by a few chairs brought in from the dining room. It was Ray who had opened the door for me, and he led me through the foyer into the center of things, whereupon whatever conversations had been limping along came to a gratifying halt.
“This here is Bernie Rhodenbarr,” Ray announced. “Bernie, I guess you know all these people.”
I didn’t really, but I nodded and smiled all the same, working my way around the circle with my eyes. As I said, everybody was there, and here’s how they lined up.
First was Carolyn Kaiser, my chief friend and poodle washer. Like me, she had gone home and changed after work; like me, she had selected gray flannel slacks and a blue blazer. It was no great trick to tell us apart, however, because there was a silver pin in the shape of a cat on the lapel of her blazer, and she was wearing a green turtleneck. (I had a shirt and tie, in case somebody invited me to the Pretenders.)
On Carolyn’s right was the one man present who could have invited me to the Pretenders, but I wasn’t sure we’d be speaking by the end of the evening. Marty Gilmartin, sharing a Victorian love seat with his wife, Edna, was wearing a gray suit, a white shirt, and a Jerry Garcia tie, along with a facial expression that hovered somewhere between bemused and noncommittal.
Edna Gilmartin looked more youthful and less formidable than I seemed to remember her from the ticket line at the Cort Theater. I barely noticed the dress she was wearing; what caught my eye was the necklace around her throat. It would have caught anybody’s eye, that was the whole point of it, but it had special impact on me because I thought I recognized it as part of the loot from Alex and Frieda’s place in Port Washington. A second glance put my mind to rest, but for a moment there it gave me a turn.
Alongside Mrs. Gilmartin, looking long and lean and country casual in boots and jeans and a sweatshirt with the legend GRAMMATICALLY CORRECT, was Patience Tremaine. She looked as though she didn’t have a clue what she was doing here, but was determined to be a good sport about it. I knew the feeling. I’d felt pretty much like that myself in the bat cave at Cafè Villanelle.
Patience was in an armchair. At her right, in one of the dining-room chairs relocated for the occasion, sat our host, Harlan Nugent. I was meeting him for the first time, although it seemed to me as though we had known each other for years. In any case, I recognized him from his photos. He was a big bear of a man, well over six feet tall and perilously close to three hundred pounds. No wonder his shoes had been too big for me. Tonight he wore a black-and-white houndstooth jacket over a black turtleneck, but I couldn’t keep from looking at his feet. He was wearing a very attractive pair of black tassel loafers. If they’d been in his closet on my last visit, I must have missed them. I had a feeling they’d made the trip to Europe with him.
Joan Nugent sat beside him. Some of her photographs showed her with graying hair, but evidently she’d had some sort of shock that had turned it black overnight, because there wasn’t a drop of gray in evidence at present. She had a long oval face and an olive complexion, and her hair was parted in the middle and gathered into a braid on either side. A Navajo squash-blossom necklace and a couple of silver-and-turquoise rings heightened the American Indian effect.
Ray Kirschmann was next to Joan Nugent, and there’s no real need to describe him. As usual, he was wearing a dark suit; as usual, it looked to have been custom-tailored for someone else. He was waiting for me to pull a rabbit out of a hat, and hoping to come out of the evening with something for his troubles. Either the rabbit or the hat, I suppose.
Doll Cooper was seated next to him, at one end of a long couch. She was wearing the very outfit she’d worn the night I first saw her—the dark business suit, the red beret. The only expression on her face was one of keen attention. Her body language reinforced the impression. One sensed that she was poised to cut and run at any moment, but in the meantime she would wait and see.
Borden Stoppelgard had the center of the couch, but he was keeping his distance from Doll and had positioned himself all the way at the other edge of the middle cushion. Borden was wearing a brown suit and a tie with alternating inch-wide stripes of red and green. He was sitting knee-to-knee with a woman with stylish blond hair and eyes the color of a putting green. The process of elimination, along with the fact that Borden was practically sitting in her lap, brought me to the conclusion that she was Lolly Stoppelgard.