{"id":1784,"date":"2026-01-03T21:49:59","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T21:49:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/the-cat-who-18-the-cat-who-said-cheese-braun-lilian-jackson\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T21:49:59","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T21:49:59","slug":"the-cat-who-18-the-cat-who-said-cheese-braun-lilian-jackson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/the-cat-who-18-the-cat-who-said-cheese-braun-lilian-jackson\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cat… Who 18 – The Cat Who Said Cheese – Braun, Lilian Jackson"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Lilian Jackson Braun – The Cat Who Said Cheese

1

Autumn, in that year of surprises, was particularly delicious in Moose County, 400 miles north of everywhere. Not only had most of the summer vacationers gone home, but civic-awareness groups and enthusiastic foodies were cooking up a savory kettle of stew called the Great Food Explo. Then, to add spice to the season, a mystery woman registered at the hotel in Pickax City, the county seat. She was not beautiful. She was not exactly young. She avoided people. And she always wore black.

The townfolk of Pickax (population 3,000) were fascinated by her enigmatic presence. “Have you seen her?” they asked each other. “She’s been here over a week. Who do you think she is?”

The hotel desk clerk refused to divulge her name even to his best friends, saying it was prohibited by law. That convinced everyone that the mystery woman had bribed him for nefarious reasons of her own, since Lenny Inchpot was not the town’s most law-abiding citizen.

So they went on commenting about her olive complexion, sultry brown eyes, and lush mop of dark hair that half covered the left side of her face. Yet, the burning question remained: “Why is she staying at that firetrap of a flophouse?” That attitude was unfair; The New Pickax Hotel, though gloomy, was respectable and painfully clean, and there was a fire escape in the rear. There was even a presidential suite, although no president had ever stayed there – not even a candidate for the state legislature on an unpopular ticket. Nevertheless, no one had been known to lodge there for more than a single night, or two at the most, and travel agents around the country were influenced by an entry in their directory of lodgings:

NEW PICKAX HOTEL, 18 miles from Moose County Airport; 20 rooms, some with private bath; presidential suite with telephone and TV; bridal suite with round bed. Three-story building with one elevator, frequently out of order. Prison-like exterior and bleak interior, circa 1935. Public areas unusually quiet, with Depression Era furnishings. Cramped lobby and dining room; no bar; small, unattractive ballroom in basement. Sleeping rooms plain but clean; mattresses fairly new; lighting dim. Metal fire escape in rear; rooms with windows have coils of rope for emergency use. Dining room offers breakfast buffet, luncheon specials, undistinguished dinner menu, beer and wine. No liquor. No room service. No desk clerk on duty after 11 p.m. Rates: low to moderate. Hospital nearby.

Business travelers checked into the New Pickax Hotel for a single overnight because no other lodgings were available in town. Out-of-towners arriving to attend a funeral might be forced by awkward plane schedules to spend two nights. In the hushed dining room the business travelers sat alone, reading technical manuals while waiting for the chopped sirloin and boiled carrots. Forks could be heard clicking against plates as the out-of-town mourners silently counted the peas in the chicken pot pie. And now, in addition, there was a woman in black who sat in a far corner, toying with a glass of wine and an overcooked vegetable plate.

One resident of Pickax who wondered about her was a journalist-a tall, good-looking man with romantically graying hair, brooding eyes, and a luxuriant pepper-and-salt moustache. His name was Jim Qwilleran; friends called him Qwill, and townfolk called him Mr. Q with affection and respect. He wrote a twice-weekly column for the Moose County Something, but he had been a prize-winning crime reporter Down Below-local parlance for metropolitan areas to the south. An unexpected inheritance had brought him north and introduced him to small-town life -a unique experience for a native of Chicago.

Qwilleran was admired by young and old, male and female – not only because he had turned his billion-dollar inheritance over to charity. His admirers appreciated his down-to-earth style: He drove a small car, pumped his own gas, cleaned his own windshield; he walked around town; he pedaled a bike in the country. As a journalist, he showed a sincere interest in the subjects he interviewed. He responded courteously to strangers when they recognized his moustache and hailed him on the street or in the supermarket. Understandably he had made many friends in the county, and the fact that he lived alone – in a barn, with two cats – was a foible they had learned to accept.

Qwilleran’s housemates were no ordinary cats, and his residence was no ordinary barn. Octagonal in shape, it was a hundred-year-old apple storage facility four stories high, perched on an impressive fieldstone foundation and topped with a cupola. To make the barn habitable, certain architectural changes had been made. Triangular windows had been cut in the walls. The interior, open to the roof, had three balconies connected by a spiraling ramp. And on the ground floor the main living areas surrounded a giant white fireplace cube with great white stacks rising to the roof. The barn would have been a showplace if the owner had not preferred privacy.

As for the cats, they were a pair of elegant Siamese whose seal-brown points were in striking contrast to their pate fawn bodies. The male, Kao K’o Kung, answered to the name of Koko; he was long, lithe, and muscular, and his fathomless blue eyes brimmed with intelligence. His female companion, Yum Yum, was small and delicate, with violet-blue eyes that could be large and heart-melting when she wanted to sit on a lap, yet that dainty creature could utter a piercing shriek when dinner was behind schedule.

One Thursday morning in September, Qwilleran was closeted in his private suite on the first balcony, the only area in the barn that was totally off-limits to cats. He was trying to write a thousand words for his Friday column, “Straight from the Qwill Pen.”

Emily Dickinson, we need you!

“I’m nobody. Who are you?” said this prolific American poet.

I say, “God give us nobodies! What this country needs is fewer celebrities and more nobodies who live ordinary lives, cope bravely, do a little good in the world, enjoy a few pleasures, and never, never get their names in the newspaper or their faces on TV.”

“Yow!” came a baritone complaint outside the door.

It was followed by a soprano shriek. “N-n-now!”

Qwilleran consulted his watch. It was twelve noon and time for their midday treat. In fact, it was three minutes past twelve, and they resented the delay.

He yanked open his studio door to face two determined petitioners. “I wouldn’t say you guys were spoiled,” he rebuked them. “You’re only tyrannical monomaniacs about food.” As they hightailed it down the ramp to the kitchen, he took the shortcut via a spiral metal staircase. Nevertheless, they reached the food station first. He dropped some crunchy morsels on two plates; separate plates had been Yum Yum’s latest feline-rights demand, and he always indulged her. He stood with fists on hips to watch their enjoyment.

Today she had changed her mind, however. She helped Koko gobble his plateful; then the two of them worked on her share.

“Cats!” Qwilleran muttered in exasperation. “Is it okay with you two autocrats if I go back to work now?”

Satisfied with their repast, they ignored him completely and busied themselves with washing masks and ears. He went up to his studio and wrote another paragraph:

We crave heroes to admire and emulate, and what do we get? A parade of errant politicians, mad exhibitionists, wicked heiresses, temperamental artists, silly risk-takers, overpaid athletes, untalented entertainers, non-authors of non-books…

The telephone interrupted, and he grabbed it on the first ring. The caller was Junior Goodwinter, young managing editor of the Moose County Something. “Hey, Qwill, are you handing in your Friday copy this afternoon?”

“Only if the interruptions permit me to write a simple declarative sentence in its entirety,” he snapped. “Why?”

“We’d like you to attend a meeting.”

Qwilleran avoided editorial meetings whenever possible. “What’s it about?”

“Dwight Somers is going to brief us on the Great Food Explo. He’s spent a few days in Chicago with the master-minds of the K Fund, and he’ll be flying in on the three-fifteen shuttle.”

Qwilleran’s petulance mellowed somewhat. The K Fund was the local nickname for the Klingenschoen Foundation that he had established to dispense his inherited billion. Dwight Somers was one of his friends, a local public relations man with credentials Down Below. “Okay. I’ll be there.”

“By the way, how’s Polly?”

“She’s improving every day. She’s now allowed to walk up and down stairs – a thrill she equates with winning the Nobel Prize.” Polly Duncan was a charming woman of his own age, currently on medical leave from the Pickax Public Library, where she was chief administrator.

“Tell her Jody and I were asking about her. Tell her Jody’s mother had a bypass last year, and she feels great!”

Thanks. She’ll be happy to hear that.”

Qwilleran returned to his typewriter and pounded out another few sentences:

Collecting nobodies makes a satisfying hobby. Unlike diamonds, they cost nothing and are never counterfeited. Unlike first editions of Dickens, they are in plentiful supply. Unlike Chippendale antiques, they occupy no room in the house.

The telephone rang again. It was a call from the law firm of Hasselrich Bennett & Barter, and Qwilleran groaned. Calls from attorneys were always bad news.

The quavering voice of the senior partner said, “I beg forgiveness, Mr. Qwilleran, for interrupting your work. No doubt the Qwill pen is penning another quotable column.”

“No apology needed,” Qwilleran said courteously.

“I trust you are enjoying these fine autumn days.”

“There’s no better season in Moose County. And you, Mr. Hasselrich?”

“I savor every moment and dread the onslaught of winter. And how, pray, is Mrs. Duncan?”

“Progressing well, thank you. I hope Mrs. Hasselrich is feeling better.”

“She recovers slowly, one day at a time. Grief is a stubborn infection of the spirit.” Eventually the attorney cleared his throat and said, “I called to remind you that the annual meeting of the Klingenschoen Foundation will be held in Chicago at the end of the month. Mr. Barter will represent you as usual, but it occurred to me that you might like to accompany him, since you have never appeared at one of these functions. You would be warmly welcomed, I assure you.”

To Qwilleran, corporate meetings were worse than editorial meetings. “I appreciate the suggestion, Mr. Hasselrich. Unfortunately, commitments in Pickax will prevent me from leaving town at that time.”

“I understand,” said the attorney, “but I would be remiss if I were to allow the invitation to go untendered.”

There were a few more polite words, and then Qwilleran hung up the receiver with smug satisfaction; he had avoided one more boring meeting with the financial big-wigs. Upon first inheriting the Klingenschoen fortune, his financial savvy was so scant that he needed to consult the dictionary for the number of zeroes in a billion. Wealth had never interested him; he enjoyed working for a living, cashing a weekly paycheck, and practicing economies. When the billion descended on him, he considered it a burden, a nuisance and an embarrassment. Turning the vast holdings over to a foundation was a stroke of genius on his part, leaving him happily unencumbered. He returned to the typewriter:

How do you recognize a nobody? You see a stranger performing an anonymous act of kindness and disappearing without a thank

-you. You hear spontaneous words of wit or wisdom from an unlikely source. I remember an elderly man walking with a cane in downtown Pickax when the wind velocity was forty miles an hour, gusting to sixty. We sheltered in a doorway, and he said, “The wind knocked me down in front of the courthouse, but I don’t mind because it’s part of nature.”

When the telephone rang for the third time, Qwilleran answered gruffly but changed his tune when he heard the musical voice of Polly Duncan. “How are you?” he asked anxiously. “I phoned earlier. but there was no answer.”

“Lynette drove me to the cardiac clinic in Lockmaster,” she said with animation, “and the doctor is astonished at my speedy recovery. He says it’s because I’ve always lived right, except for insufficient exercise. I must start walking every day.”

“Good! We’ll walk together,” he said, but he thought, That’s what I’ve been telling her for years; she wouldn’t take my advice. “I’ll see you tonight at the usual time, Polly. Anything you need from the store?”

“All I need is some good conversation – just the two of us. Lynette is going out. A bient\u201ct, dear.”

“A bient\u201ct.” Before returning to his treatise on nobodies, Qwilleran took a moment to relish Polly’s good news. He still remembered her late-night call for help, her frightened eyes as the paramedics strapped her onto a stretcher, his own uneasy moments outside the Intensive Care Unit, and his long wait in the surgery wing of a Minneapolis hospital. Now she was convalescing at the home of her sister-in-law but yearning for her own apartment. After preparing a cup of coffee, he wrote:

I began my own collection of nobodies Down

Below, my first being a thirteen-year-old boy who did all the cooking for a family of eight. The next was a woman bus driver who set her brakes, flagged down another bus, and escorted a bewildered passenger onto the right one.

The next interruption was a call from John Bushland, the commercial photographer. “Say, Qwill, do you remember the time I tried to shoot your cats in my studio? We couldn’t even get them out of their carrying coop.”

“How could I forget?” Qwilleran replied. “It was the battle of the century – between two grown men and two determined cats. We lost.”

“Well, I’d like to take another crack at it – at your house, if you don’t mind. There’s another competition for a cat calendar. They’d feel more comfortable on their own territory, and I could try for candids.”

“Sure. When do you want to try it? In daylight or after dark?”

“Natural light works better for eye color. How about tomorrow morning?”

“Make it around nine o’clock,” Qwilleran suggested. “Their bellies will be full, and they’ll be at peace with the universe.”

Eventually he was able to stretch his thesis to a thousand words, ending with:

One word of caution to the novice collector of nobodies: Avoid mentioning your choice collectibles to the media.

If you do, your best examples will become celebrities overnight, and there’s no such thing as a prominent nobody.

Having worked against odds, the writer of the “Qwill Pen” finished in time for the meeting at the newspaper office. He said goodbye to the Siamese as he usually did, telling them where he was going and when he would return. The more one talks to cats, he believed, the smarter they become. His two Mensa candidates responded, however, by raising groggy heads from their afternoon nap and giving him a brief glassy stare before falling asleep again.

He walked downtown. No one in Pickax walked, except to a vehicle in the parking lot. Qwilleran’ s habit of using his legs instead of his wheels was considered a quaint eccentricity – the kind of thing one could expect of a transplant from Down Below. He walked first to Lois’s Luncheonette for a piece of apple pie.

The proprietor – a buxom, bossy woman with a host of devoted customers – was taking a mid-afternoon break and chattering to coffee-drinking loiterers. She talked about her son, Lenny, who worked the evening shift on the desk at the hotel and also attended classes at the new college. She talked about his girlfriend, Anna Marie, who was enrolled in the nursing program at MCCC and also worked part-time at the hotel. Students, she said, were glad to work short hours, even though the skinflint who owned the hotel paid minimum wage without benefits.

Qwilleran, always entertained by Lois’s discourses, arrived at the newspaper conference in good humor.

The Moose County Something was a broadsheet published five days a week. Originally subsidized by the K Fund, it was now operating in the black. The office building was new. The printing plant was state-of-the-art. The staff always seemed to be having a good time.

The meeting was held in the conference room. Its plain wood-paneled walls were decorated with framed tear sheets of memorable front pages in the history of American journalism: Titanic Meets a Mightier… War in Europe… Kennedy Assassinated. Staffers sat around the large teakwood conference table, drinking coffee from mugs imprinted with newspaper wit: “If you can’t eat it, don’t print it”… “Deadlines are made to be missed”… “A little malice aforethought is fun.”

“Come on in, Qwill,” the managing editor said. “Dwight isn’t here yet. Since we hate to waste time, we’re inventing rumors about the mystery woman.”

There were six staffers around the table:

Arch Riker, the paunchy publisher and editor in chief, had been Qwilleran’s lifelong friend and fellow journalist Down Below. Now he was realizing his dream of running a small-town newspaper.

Junior Goodwinter’s boyish countenance and slight build belied his importance; he was not only the managing editor but a direct descendent of the founders of Pickax City. In a community 400 miles north of everywhere, that mattered a great deal.

Hixie Rice, in charge of advertising and promotion, was another refugee from Down Below, and after several years in the outback she still had a certain urbane verve and chic.

Mildred Hanstable Riker, food writer and wife of the publisher, was a plump, good-hearted native of Moose County, recently retired from teaching fine and domestic arts in the public schools.

Jill Handley, the new feature editor, was pretty and eager but not yet comfortable with her fellow staffers. She came from the Lockmaster Ledger in the neighboring county, where the inhabitants of Moose County were considered barbarians.

Wilfred Sugbury, secretary to the publisher, was a thin, wiry, sober-faced young man, intensely serious about this job. He jumped up and filled a coffee mug for Qwilleran. It was inscribed: “First we kill all the editors.”

Also present, watching from the top of a file cabinet, was William Allen, a large white cat formerly associated with the Pickax Picayune.

Qwilleran nodded pleasantly to each one in turn and took a chair next to the newcomer. Jill Handley turned to him adoringly. “Oh, Mr. Qwilleran, I love your column! You’re a fantastic writer!”

Sternly he replied, “You’re not allowed to work for the Something unless you drink coffee, like cats, and call me Qwill.”

“You have Siamese, don’t you… Qwill?”

“Loosely speaking. It’s more accurate to say that they have me. What prompted you to leave civilization for life in the wilderness?”

“Well, my kids wanted to go to Pickax High because you have a larger swimming pool, and my husband found a good business opportunity up here, and I wanted to write for a paper that carries columns like the “Qwill Pen.” That’s the honest truth!”

“Enough!” said the boss at the head of the table. “Any more of this and he’ll be asking for a raise… Let’s hear it for our gold-medal winner!”

Everyone applauded, and Wilfred flushed. He had come in first in the seventy-mile Labor Day Bike Race, yet no one at the newspaper knew that he even owned a bike- such was his modesty and concentration on his work.

Qwilleran said, “Congratulations! We’re all proud of you. Your pedaling is on a par with your office efficiency.”

“Thanks,” said Wilfred. “I didn’t expect to win. I just signed up for the fun of it, but I decided to give it my best shot, so I trained hard all summer. I was confident I could go the entire route, even if I came in last, but everything turned out right for me, and after the first sixty miles I suddenly thought, Hey, chump, you can win this crazy race! That was between Mudville and Kennebeck, with only a few riders ahead of me, so I gave it an extra push to the finish line. Nine bikers finished, and they all deserve credit for a great try. They were as good as I was, only I had something going for me – luck, I guess. I’m hoping to compete again next year.”

This was more than the quiet young man had said in his two years of employment, and all heads turned to listen in astonishment. Only Qwilleran could think of something to say: “We admire your spirit and determination, Wilfred.”

Riker cleared his throat. “While we’re waiting for the late Mr. Somers, let us resume our deliberations.” Then he added in a loud, sharp voice, “Who is the mystery woman and what is she doing here?”

Mildred said, “She always wears black and is inclined to be reclusive. I think she’s in mourning, having suffered a great loss. She’s come to this quiet town to deal with her grief. We should respect her need for privacy.”

Qwilleran stroked his moustache, a sign of purposeful interest. “Does she ever venture out of the hotel?”

“Sure,” Junior said. “Our reporters in the field have seen her driving around in a rental car with an airport sticker, a dark blue two-door.”

“And,” Hixie added, signaling news of importance, “one day when I was getting an ad contract signed at the Black Bear Cafe, I saw her in the hotel lobby with a man! He was wearing a business suit and tie, and he was carrying a briefcase.”

“The plot thickens,” Riker said. “Was he checking out or checking in?”

Qwilleran said, “I haven’t seen her. Is she good-looking? Is she young? Is she glamorous?”

“Why don’t you have dinner at the hotel, Qwill, and see for yourself?”

“No thanks. The last time I went there, a chicken breast squirted butter allover my new sports coat. I considered it a hostile attack on the media.”

Wilfred said shyly, “Lenny Inchpot told me she looks foreign.”

“Very interesting,” said Junior. “We have a foreign agent in our midst, a scout for some international cartel planning to come up here and pollute our environment.”

“Or she’s a government undercover operator, casing the area as a possible site for a toxic waste dump,” Riker suggested.

The new woman on the staff listened in bewilderment, uncertain how to react to the straight-faced conjectures.

“Or she’s a visitor from outer space,” Mildred said merrily. “We had a lot of UFO sightings this summer.”

“You’re all off-base,” Hixie declared. “I say the man with a briefcase is her attorney, and she’s Gustav Limburger’s secret girl friend, now suing him for patrimony.”

Laughter exploded from all except Qwilleran and the new editor. She asked, “What’s so funny?”

“Gustav Limburger,” Mildred explained, “is a short, bent-over, mean-spirited, eighty-year-old Scrooge, living in seclusion in Black Creek. He owns the New Pickax Hotel.”

“Well, what’s wrong with my theory?” Hixie demanded. “He’s rich. He’s got one foot in the grave. He has no family. It wouldn’t be the first time a dirty old man made a deal with a young woman.”

There was more laughter and then a knock on the door, and Dwight Somers walked into the conference room, saying, “Let me in on the joke.” The PR man had looked better before he shaved off his beard, but what he lacked in handsome features he made up in enthusiasm and personality. He nodded to each one at the table and nodded twice to Hixie. “Sorry to be late, gang. The plane lost its left wing somewhere over Lockmaster. Enemy fire is suspected.”

“No problem,” Riker said, motioning him to a chair. “The K Fund will buy the airline a new wing.”

“Welcome to the Moose County Dumbthing!” Junior said, while Wilfred scurried to fill a coffee mug imprinted: “First we kill all the PR people.”

The publisher asked, “Was this your first visit to Klingenschoen headquarters, Dwight? I hear it’s impressive.”

“Man! It’s staggering! You’re talking about an operation that occupies four floors of an office building in the Loop. They have a think tank of specialists in investments, real estate, economic development, and philanthropy. Their thrust is to make Moose County a great place to live and work without turning it into a megalopolis. They’re for saving the beaches and forests, keeping the air and water clean, creating businesses that do more good than harm, and zoning that discourages high-density development.”

“Sounds Utopian. Will it work?”

“If it works, it’ll be a prototype for rural communities throughout the country-that is, if they want to thrive and still maintain their quality of life.”

“What about tourism?” Junior asked.

“The K Fund soft-pedals the kind of tourism that alters the character of the community. They’re bankrolling country inns that operate on a small scale, serve fine food, appeal to discriminating travelers, and get high-class publicity. For tourists on a budget they’re promoting small campgrounds that don’t clear-cut the woods.”

Someone asked about business opportunities.

“Now we come to the point,” Dwight said. “If there’s one industry that’s clean, indispensable, and positive in image, it’s food! The county’s already known for fisheries, sheep ranches, and potato farms. Now the K Fund is backing enterprises such as a turkey farm and a cherry orchard, ethnic restaurants, and food specialty shops. The Great Food Explo will be a festival of all kinds of happenings related to food.” He opened his briefcase and handed out fact sheets. “The Explo opens with a bang a week from tomorrow. Any questions?”

Someone said, “It sounds like it could be fun.”

“The trend is to food as entertainment,” Dwight said. “There are a lot of foodies out there! People are dining out more often, talking about food, buying cookbooks, taking culinary classes, watching food videos, joining gourmet clubs. Some of the new perfumes on the market smell like vanilla, raspberry, chocolate, nutmeg, cinnamon…”

Riker said, “I wouldn’t mind having a Scotch aftershave.”

“Don’t worry! They’ll get around to that.”

“Starting next week,” Junior said, “we’re expanding our food coverage to a full page.”

Qwilleran asked, “I suspect the mystery woman is part of a publicity stunt for the Explo.”

“No! I swear it on a stack of cookbooks,” Dwight said. He closed his briefcase. “I want to thank you, gang, for this opportunity to cue you in. I hope you’ll jump on the bandwagon and call me if I can help.”

“It’s an appetizing prospect,” Riker said. “Let’s send Wilfred out for burgers and malts!”

2

Qwilleran was a congenital foodie who needed no coaxing to participate in the Great Food Explo. He hoped it would open up new sources of material for his “Qwill Pen” column. Finding topics for the twice-weekly space was not easy, considering the boundaries of the county and the number of years he had been Qwill-penning.

From the newspaper he walked to Toodle’s Market to buy food for his fussy felines. Toodle was an old respected food name, dating back to the days when grocers butchered their own hogs and sold a penny’s worth of tea. Now the market had the size and parking space of a big-city supermarket, but not the hypnotic glare of overhead fluorescents. Incandescent spotlights and floodlights illuminated the meats and produce without changing their color or giving Mrs. Toodle a headache. It was she who ran the business, with the assistance of sons, daughters, in-laws, and grandchildren. Qwilleran bought a few cans of red salmon, crabmeat, cocktail shrimp, and minced clams.

His next stop was Edd’s Editions, the used-book store. Here there were thousands of volumes accumulated from estate sales in surrounding counties. Color- less books cluttered the shelves, tables, and floor, and Eddington Smith had a dusty, elderly appearance to match his stock. Also blending into the background was a portly longhair named Winston who dusted the premises with sweeps of his plumed tail. There was always an odor in the store, compounded of mildewed books from damp basements, the sardines that constituted Winston’s diet, and the liver and onions that Eddington frequently prepared for himself in the back room. On this day the aroma was unusually strong, and Qwilleran made his visit brief.

“I want something for Mrs. Duncan, Edd. She likes to read old cookbooks. She finds them amusing.”

“I hope she’s feeling better?”

“She’s recovered her sense of humor, so that’s a good sign,” Qwilleran said as he examined, hastily, three shelves of pre-owned recipe books. One was a yellowed 1899 paperback titled Delicious Dishes for Dainty Entertaining, compiled by the Pickax Ladies’ Cultural Society. Leafing through it, he noted recipes for Bangers and Beans, Wimpy-diddles, and Mrs. Duncan’s Famous Pasties. “I’ll take it,” he said, thinking, She may have been Polly’s great-grandmother-in-law.

Meanwhile Eddington was unpacking a newly arrived carton of old books from a family of dairy farmers and cheesemakers.

Qwilleran spotted Great Cheeses of the Western World-A Compendium. “I’ll take this, too,” he said. “How much do I owe you? Don’t bother to wrap them.” He left in a hurry as the store odors became overwhelming.

Memories of the bookstore lingered in his nostrils as he walked home along Main Street, around Park Circle, through the theatre parking lot, then along a wooded trail to the apple barn. The theatre, a magnificent fieldstone building, had once been the Klingenschoen mansion, and the fine carriage house at the rear was now a four-car garage with an apartment upstairs. The tenant was unloading groceries from her car as Qwilleran crossed the parking lot.

“Need any help?” he called out.

“No thanks. Need any macaroni and cheese?” she replied with a hearty laugh. Her name was Celia Robinson, and she was a jolly gray-haired grandmother who supplied him with home-cooked dishes that he could keep in the freezer.

“I never say no to macaroni and cheese,” he said.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you, Mr. Q. What do you think about the mystery woman at the hotel? I think you should investigate.” Mrs. Robinson was an avid reader of spy fiction, and twice she had acted as his confidential assistant when he was snooping into situations that he considered suspicious.

“Not this time, Celia. No crime has been committed, and the gossip about the woman is absurd. We should all mind our own business… And how about you? Are you still in the Pals for Patients program?”

“Still doing my bit! They’ve started a Junior Pal Brigade now, and it’s my job to train them – college students who want to earn a little money. Nice kids. They’re very good at cheering up house-bound patients.” She stopped and sniffed inquiringly. “Did you just buy some rat cheese?”

“No. Only a book on the subject. It belonged to a cheesemaker and acquired a certain redolence by osmosis.”

“Oh, Mr. Q! What you mean is – it stinks!” She laughed at her own forthrightness.

“If you say so, madame,” he said with a stiff bow that sent her into further gales of laughter.

From there he tramped through the dense evergreen woods that screened the apple barn from the heavy traffic of Park Circle. As he approached the barn, he was aware of two pairs of eyes watching him from an upper window. As soon as he unlocked the door, they were there to meet him, hopping on their hind legs and pawing his clothing. He knew it was neither his magnetic personality nor the canned seafood that attracted them. It was the cheese book! Their noses wrinkled. They opened their mouths and showed their fangs. It was what the veterinarian called the Flehman response. Whatever it was called, it was not a flattering reaction.

Qwilleran gave the cheese book an analytical sniff himself. Celia was right; it had a definite overripe stink – like Limburger cheese. It had been many years since his introduction to Limburger in Germany, but it was memorable. Ripe was their word for it. Rank would be more descriptive.

Limburger, he recalled, was the name of the old man so uncharitably described at the editorial meeting. He sounded like a genuine character. Like most journalists, Qwilleran appreciated characters; they made good copy. He remembered his interviews with Adam Dingleberry, Euphonia Gage, and Ozzie Penn, to name a few. He went into action.

First he relegated the cheese compendium to the tool-shed, hoping it would lose its scent in a few days. Next he consulted the Black Creek section of the phone book and called a number. There were many rings before anyone answered.

A crotchety, cracked voice shouted, “Who’s this?”

“Are you Mr. Limburger?”

“If that’s who you called, that’s who you got. Whaddaya want?”

“I’m Jim Qwilleran from the Moose County Something.”

“Don’t wanna take the paper. Costs too much.”

“That’s not why I’m calling, sir. Are you the owner of the New Pickax Hotel?”

“None o’ yer business.”

“I’d like to write a history of the famous hotel, Mr. Limburger,” Qwilleran persisted in a genial voice.

“What fer?”

“It’s been a landmark for over a hundred years, and our readers would be interested in – “

“So whaddaya wanna know?”

“I’d like to visit you and ask some questions.”

“When?” the old man demanded in a hostile tone.

“How about tomorrow morning around eleven o’clock?”

“lffen I’m here. I’m eighty-two. I could kick the bucket any ol’ time.”

“I’ll take a chance,” Qwilleran said pleasantly. “You sound healthy.”

“N-n-now!” came a cry not far from the mouthpiece of the phone.

“Whazzat?”

“Just a low-flying plane. See you tomorrow, Mr. Limburger.” He heard the old man slam down the receiver, and he chuckled.

Before going to see Polly, Qwilleran read the fact sheet about the Great Food Explo. The opening festivities would center about a complex called Stables Row. It occupied a block-long stone building on a back street in downtown Pickax. In horse-and-buggy days it had been a ten-cent barn: all-day stabling and a bucket of oats for a dime. Later it was adapted for contemporary use, housing stores, repair shops, and offices in ever-changing variety. Now it was embarking on a bright new life. Large and small spaces had been remodeled to accommodate a pasty parlor, soup bar, bakery, wine and cheese shop, kitchen boutique, old-fashioned soda fountain, and health food store.

Special events during the Explo would include a pastry bake-off, a celebrity dinner-date auction, and a series of cooking classes for men only. Qwilleran knew his friends would coax him into enrolling, but he knew all he wanted to know about cooking: he could thaw a frozen dinner to perfection. He opened a can of minced clams for the Siamese and said, “Okay, you guys. Try to stay out of trouble while I’m gone. I’m going to visit your cousin Bootsie.”

Qwilleran drove his car to Pleasant Street, a neighbor- hood of Victorian frame houses built by affluent Pickaxians in an era when carpenters had just discovered the jigsaw. Porches, eaves, bay windows, and gables had been lavished with fancy wood trim, to the extent that Pleasant Street had been nicknamed Gingerbread Alley. Here Polly’s unmarried sister-in-law, the last Duncan-by-blood, had inherited the ancestral home, and here Polly was recuperating.

On arrival, Qwilleran went slowly up the front walk, gazing up at the architectural excesses with amazement. He was unaware that Bootsie, Polly’s adored Siamese, was watching him from a front window. The two males – competitors for Polly’s affection – had never been friendly but managed to observe an uneasy detente. Qwilleran turned a knob in the front door, which jangled a bell in the entrance hall, and Polly arrived in a flurry of filmy blue. She was wearing a voluminous caftan that he had given her as a get-well gift.

“Polly! You’re looking wonderful!” he exclaimed. It had been painful to see her pale and listless. Now her eyes were sparkling, and her winning smile had returned.

“All it takes is a good medical report plus some blusher and eye shadow,” she said gaily. “Brenda came over today to do my hair.”

They clung together in a voluptuous embrace until Bootsie protested.

“Lynette has gone to her bridge club tonight, so we can have a t\u02c6te-\u2026-t\u02c6te with tea and cookies. The hospital dietician gave me a cookie recipe with no sugar, no butter, no eggs, and no salt.”

“They sound delectable,” he said dryly.

They went into the parlor, which several generations of Duncans had maintained in the spirit of the nineteenth century, with velvet draperies, fringed lamp shades, pictures in ornate frames, and rugs on top of rugs. A round lamp table was skirted down to the floor, and as Qwilleran entered the room to take a chair, a fifteen-pound missile shout out from under the skirt and crashed into his legs.

“Naughty, naughty!” Polly scolded with more love than rebuke. To Qwilleran she explained, “He was only playing games.”

Oh, sure, he thought. “Lynette wants me to move in permanently, and I’m tempted, because Bootsie loves the house. So many places to hide!”

“So I’ve noticed. Does he ambush all your visitors? It’s a good thing I have a strong heart and nerves of steel.”

Polly laughed softly. “How do you like the cookies?”

“Not bad. Not bad. All they need is a little sugar, butter, egg, and salt.”

“Now you’re teasing! But that’s all right. I’m happy to be alive and well and teasable… Guess who visited me today and brought some gourmet mushroom soup! Elaine Fetter!”

“Do I know her?”

“You should. She’s a zealous volunteer who works hard at working for nothing. She volunteers at the hospital, the historical museum, and the library. I find her very good on phones and cataloguing, but she’s not well-liked, being somewhat of a snob. She lives in West Middle Hummock, and we all know that’s a status address, and her late husband was an attorney with Hasselrich Bennett & Barter.”

“How was the soup?”

“Delicious, but too rich for my diet. Gourmet cooks have a heavy hand with butter and cream. Incidentally, she grows her own mushrooms – shiitake, no less.”

Qwilleran’s interest was alerted. Here was a subject for the “Qwill Pen.” There was something mysterious about mushrooms, and even more so about shiitake. “Would she agree to an interview?”

“Would she! Elaine loves having her name in the paper.”

“When will you feel like restaurant dining again, Polly? I’ve missed you.” Dining out was one of his chief pleasures, and he was a gracious host.

“Soon, dear, but I must be careful to order wisely. The dietician gave me a list of recommended substitutes, and she stressed small portions.”

“I’ll speak to the chef at the Old Stone Mill,” Qwilleran said. “For you he’ll be glad to prepare a three-ounce broiled substitute with a light substitute sauce.”

She trilled her musical laugh. It was good to hear her laughter again. He realized now that her physical condition had affected her disposition, long before she felt chest pains.

“Did you have any other visitors today?” he asked, thinking about Dr. Prelligate. The president of the new college was being much too attentive to Polly, in Qwilleran’s estimation, and the man’s motives were open to question.

“The only one was my assistant,” she said. “Mrs. AIstock brought some papers from the library for me to sign. She’s doing an excellent job in my absence.”

“I hope she filled you in on the latest gossip.”

“Well – you probably know this – Derek Cuttlebrink is enrolled in Restaurant Management at the college. No doubt it was Elizabeth Hart’s influence.”

“Yes, a girlfriend with an income of a half-million can be subtly influential. Let’s hope that Derek has finally found a career direction… What else did you hear from the library grapevine?”

“That Pickax is going to have a pickle factory. Is that good or bad?”

“Not good. We’ll have to choose a Pickle Queen as well as a Potato Queen and a Trout Queen. The whole town will smell of dill and garlic from July to October.”

“I thought you liked garlic, dear.” She was goading him gently.

“Not as a substitute for fresh air. Can you imagine the TV commercials for Pickax Pickles? They’d be done in animation, of course-a row of pickles wearing tutus and dancing to the Pickax Polka, with pickle-voices screaming, ‘Perk up with Pickax Pickles.’… No, tell Mrs. Alstock there’s no pickle factory on the K Fund agenda for economic development. The rumor mongers will have to go back to the drawing board.”

“Well, are you ready for some gossip that’s absolutely true?” Polly asked. “The mystery woman came into the library and checked out books on a temporary card!”

“Hmff! If she’s a reader, she can’t be all bad, can she? What kind of book? How to build a bomb? How to poison the water supply?”

“Book withdrawals are privileged information,” she said with a superior smile.

“So the library knows her name and address.”

“No doubt it’s in the files.”

Qwilleran smoothed his moustache in contemplation and looked at her conspiratorially under hooded eyelids.

She recognized the humor in his melodramatic performance and retorted sweetly, “You’re plotting a Dirty Trick! The Pickax Plumbers will break into the library after hours and burglarize the files, and we’ll have a Bibliogate scandal.”

Before he could think of a witty comeback, the front door slammed. There were footsteps in the entrance hall. Lynette had come home early.

“I didn’t stay for refreshments,” she explained. “I decided I’d rather visit with you two.”

“We’re flattered. Sit down and have a cookie,” Qwilleran said in a monotone. He was reflecting that Lynette was a decent person – pleasant, helpful, generous, well-meaning, and smart enough to play bridge and handle health insurance in a doctor’s office, but… she didn’t get it! It never occurred to her that he and Polly might like a little privacy – once in a while.

Polly said to her sister-in-law, “We were just talking about the mystery woman.”

Pontifically Qwilleran announced, “I have it on good authority that she’s a fugitive from a crime syndicate or a terrorist group. She knows too much. She’s a threat to the mob. Her life is in danger.”

Lynette’s eyes grew wide until Polly assured her he was only kidding. Then Lynette asked, “Does anyone mind if I turn on the radio for the weather report? Wetherby Goode says the cutest things!”

Qwilleran listened politely to the meteorologist’s inanities: “Rain, rain, go away; come again another day.” Then he made an excuse to leave. Polly understood; she gave him apologetic glances. Bootsie always escorted him to the front door, as if to speed the parting guest. This evening Qwilleran was escorted by a committee of three, and there was no opportunity for a private and lingering goodnight. Polly, he decided, had to get out of that house!

Arriving at the apple barn, Qwilleran stepped from his car and was virtually bowled over by a putrid stench coming from the tool shed, a hundred feet away. He was a man who made quick decisions. The cheese book had cost him six dollars, but he knew when to cut his losses. He turned his headlights on the shed, found a spade, and dug a sizable hole in the ground. Without any obsequies he buried Great Cheeses of the Western World. He hoped it would not contaminate the water table.

The Siamese were glad to see him. They had been neglected most of the day. They had had no quality time with him.

“Okay, we’ll have a read,” he announced. “Book! Book!”

One side of the fireplace cube was covered with shelves for Qwilleran’s collection of pre-owned books from Eddington’s shop. They were grouped according to category: fiction, biography, drama, history, and so forth, with spaces between that were large enough for Koko to curl up and sleep. He seemed to derive comfort from the proximity of old bindings. He also liked to knock a volume off a shelf occasionally and peer over the edge to see where it landed. In fact, whenever Qwilleran shouted “Book! Book!” that was Koko’s cue to dislodge a title. It was a game. Whatever the cat chose, the man was obliged to read aloud.

On this occasion the selection was Stalking the Wild Asparagus. Qwilleran often read about nature, and he had enjoyed Euell Gibbons’s book, even though he had no desire to eat roasted acorns or boiled milkweed shoots. The chapter he now chose to read was all about wild honeybees, and he entertained his listeners with sound effects: Bzzzzzzz. The Siamese were fascinated. Yum Yum lounged on his lap, and Koko sat on the arm of the chair, watching the reader’s moustache.

Halfway through the chapter, just as the wild bees were swarming from a hollow tree, Koko’s rapt attention faltered, his ears pricked, and his tail stiffened. He looked toward the back door. It was late, Qwilleran thought, for a car to be coming through the woods without invitation. He went to investigate. Standing on the threshold he saw no headlights, heard no motor noise, but unnatural sounds came from behind the toolshed. He snapped on the exterior lights and ventured toward the woods with a high-powered flashlight and a baseball bat.

As he approached the shed, there was scrambling in the underbrush, followed by dead silence, but the putrid odor told the story. A raccoon had dug up the cheese book and left it there, muddy and disheveled. The question now arose: How to get rid of it? Using the flashlight, he scoured the tool shed for containers with airtight lids and consigned the cheese book to a plastic mop pail. O’Dell’s janitorial service would know what to do with it.

There was also a metal tackle box, empty and slightly rusted – the kind a mass murderer Down Below had used to send dynamite through the mails. For one brief giddy moment, Qwilleran considered mailing the cheese book to his former in-laws in New Jersey.

3

Friday started with a whisper and ended with a bang! First, Qwilleran fed the cats. He watched in fascination as they groomed themselves from whisker to tail tip. They seemed to sense, Qwilleran thought, that a prize-winning professional photographer was coming and that they might become famous calendar cats. The female was dainty in her movements; the male brisk and business-like. He had extremely long, bold whiskers, and Qwilleran wondered if they accounted for his remarkable intuition. Koko was also a master of one-upmanship, and he had proved more than once that he had John Bushland’s number.

Bushy, as the balding young man liked to be called, arrived without noticeable photo equipment-just a small, inconspicuous black box dangling around his neck.

Qwilleran met him at the door. “Come in quietly and make yourself at home. Avoid any sudden movements. Don’t touch your camera. I’m making coffee, and we’ll sit around and talk as if nothing is going to happen.”

Bushy wandered into the library area and looked at titles on the shelves. “Wow!” he said softly. “You have a lot of plays. Were you ever an actor?”

“I was headed in that direction before I discovered journalism. A little acting experience, in my opinion, is good preparation for almost any career.”

“Shakespeare… Aristophanes… Chekhov! Do you read this heavy stuff?”

“Heavy or light, I like to read them aloud and play all the roles myself.”

“Do you realize how many plays have food in the title? The Wild Duck, The Cherry Orchard, The Corn Is Green, Raisin in the Sun, Chicken on Sunday, A Taste of Honey…”

Qwilleran brought a tray to the coffee table. “Sit down, Bushy, and have some coffee and shortbread from the new bakery on Stables Row. It’ll remind you of our trip to Scotland. Ignore the cats.”

They were warming themselves in a triangle of sun- light on the pale Moroccan rug. Koko had struck his leonine pose, with lower body lying down and upper body sitting up, like the fore and aft halves of two different animals.

Bushy said, “Junior wants me to pull a paparazzi stunt and get some candids of the mystery woman. He thinks they’ll be useful to the paper and\/or the police if she turns out to be a spy or a fugitive from the FBI or whatever. What do you think about her wig? I think it’s a man in drag.”

“I think everyone’s overreacting,” Qwilleran said.

“Tell me about the Celebrity Auction. I hear you’re on the committee.”

“Yeah… well… the Boosters Club is raising money to aid needy families at Christmastime. People will bid against each other to have a dinner date with a celebrity, such as the mayor. I volunteered to take someone out on my cabin cruiser for a picnic supper. I’m no celebrity, but I’ll throw in a portrait sitting in my studio.”

Roguishly Qwilleran asked, “Is this outing going to be chaperoned?”

“Well, now that you mention it, we expect some flak from the conservative element, but what the heck! If they can stage an auction Down Below with a few million strangers, we can have one up here, where everybody is always watching everybody.”

Meanwhile the Siamese were rehearsing every pose known to calendar cats. Yum Yum lounged seductively, extending one long, elegant foreleg. Koko sat regally with his tail curled just-so and turned his head in a photogenic profile. The intense rays of the sun heightened the blue of their eyes and highlighted their fur, making every guard hair glisten.

Bushy said under his breath, “Don’t speak. They’re lulled into a false sense of security. It’s the moment of truth… Say cheese, you guys.” He stood up in slow motion, moved stealthily to the right vantage point, lowered himself gradually to one knee, and furtively raised his camera. Immediately Koko rolled over and started grooming the base of his tail, with one hind leg raised like a flagpole. Yum Yum rocked back on her spine and scratched her right ear, with eyes crossed and fangs showing.

The photographer groaned and stood up. “What did I do wrong?”

“It’s not your fault,” Qwilleran said. “Cats have a sly sense of humor. They like to make us look like fools, which we are, I guess. Sit down and have another cuppa.”

Now the cats turned their backs, Yum Yum in a contented bundle of fur, while Koko crouched behind her. He was staring at her backbone and lashing his tail in slow motion. Then, with body close to the floor, he moved closer, wriggling his hindquarters. She seemed quite oblivious of his curious pantomime.

“What’s that all about?” Bushy asked.

“They’re just playing. It’s a boy-girl thing.”

“I thought they were fixed.”

“It doesn’t make any difference.”

Suddenly, with a single swift leap, Koko pounced, but before he landed, she was gone, whizzing up the ramp with Koko in pursuit.

“Well, I’ve got to get back to the studio,” Bushy said. “Thanks for coffee. Tell the cats I haven’t given up!”

Before going to Black Creek for his interview with Gustav Limburger, Qwilleran had breakfast at Lois’s Luncheonette. At that hour she was hostess, waitress, cook and cashier. “The same?” she mumbled in his direction. In a few minutes she banged down a plate of pancakes and sausages and sat down across the table with a cup of coffee.

“I hear your son won the silver in the bike race,” he said.

“It ain’t real silver,” she said, jerking her head toward the bulletin board behind the cash register. It displayed the silverish medal, a green and white helmet, and a green and white jersey with a large “19” on the back. “You know what? He’s in college now, and he’s tellin’ me all the things I been doin’ wrong for the last thirty years. I bet those professors don’t teach ’em about all the headaches in the hash-slingin’ business. I should be teachin’ at the college!”

“Does he plan to take over this place when he finishes this course?”

“Nah. His ambition is to be manager of the New PIckax Hotel! My God! That fleabag! He’s outa his bleepin’ mind.”

“Do you know the old gentleman who owns it?” Qwilleran asked.

“Gentleman? Hah!” Lois made a spitting gesture. “He’d come in here for breakfast when you could get four pancakes, three sausages, and five cups o’ coffee for ninety-five cents, and he’d leave a nine-cent tip! Talk about cheap! One day he had the nerve to ask if I’d like to marry him and run his mansion like a boarding house! Did I ever tell him off! I said he was too old and too tight and too smelly. All my customers heard me. He stomped out without payin’ for his breakfast and never come back. I di’n’t care. Who needed his nine cents?”

“I was under the impression he was well off,” Qwilleran said.

“If he ain’t, he should be! They built the state prison on his land! He made out like Rockefeller on that deal!”

The town of Black Creek, not far inland from Mooseville, had been a boomtown when the river was the lifeline of the county, and it flourished again when the railroad was king. After that, the mines closed and the forests were lumbered out, and it became a ghost town.

When Qwilleran drove there on Friday, it still looked like a no-man’s-land. All that remained of downtown was a bar, an auto graveyard, and a weekend flea market in the old railroad depot. In the former residential area, all the frame houses had burned down or been stripped for firewood, leaving only the Limburger mansion rising grotesquely from acres of weeds. Victorian in style, with tall, narrow windows, a veranda and a turret, it had been a landmark in its day, being constructed of red brick. Local building materials were wood or stone; brick had to be shipped in by schooner and hauled overland by ox cart. The Limburgers had spared no expense, even importing Old-World craftsmen to lay the brick in artful patterns. Now one of the stately windows was boarded up; paint was peeling from the wood trim and carved entrance door; the lawn had succumbed to weeds; and the ornamental iron fence with spiked top was minus an eight-foot section.

When Qwilleran drove up, an old man was sitting on the veranda in a weathered rocking chair, smoking a cigar and rocking vigorously.

“Are you Mr. Limburger?” Qwilleran called out as he mounted the six crumbling brick steps.

“Yah,” said the old man without losing a beat in his rocking. His clothes were gray with age, and his face was gray with untrimmed whiskers. He wore a shapeless gray cap.

“I’m Jim Qwilleran from the Moose County Something. This is an impressive house you have here.”

“Wanna buy it?” the man asked in a cracked voice. “Make an offer.”

Always ready to play along with a joker, Qwilleran said, “How many rooms does it have?”

“Never counted.”

“How many fireplaces?”

“Don’t matter. They don’t work. Chimney blocked up.”

“How many bathrooms?”

“How many you need?”

“Good question,” Qwilleran said. “May I sit down?” He lowered himself cautiously into a splintery rocking chair with a woven seat that was partly unwoven. A dozen stones as big as baseballs were lined up on the railing. “Do you know what year this house was built, Mr. Limburger?”

The old man shook his head and rubbed his nose with a fist as if to relieve an itch. “My grandfader built it. My fader was born here, and I was born here. My grandfader come from the Old Country.”

“Is he the one who built the original Pickax Hotel?”

“Yah.”

“Then it’s been in the family for generations. How long have you been the sole owner?”

“Long time.”

“How large a family do you have now?”

“All kicked the bucket, ‘cept me. I’m still here.”

“Did you ever marry?”

“None o’ yer business.”

A blue pickup drove onto the property and disappeared around the back of the house. A truck door slammed, but no one made an appearance. Thinking of the uncounted bedrooms, Qwilleran asked, “Do you take roomers?”

“You wanna room?”

“Not for myself, but I might have friends coming from out of town – “

“Send ’em to the hotel.”

“It’s an interesting hotel, no doubt about it,” Qwilleran said diplomatically. “Lately I’ve noticed a fine looking woman there, dressed in black. Is she your new manager?”

“Don’t know ‘er.” Limburger rubbed his nose again.

Qwilleran had an underhanded way of asking questions that were seemingly innocent but actually designed to goad an uncooperative interviewee. “Do you dine at the hotel frequently? The food is said to be very good, especially since you brought in that chef from Fall River. Everyone talks about his chicken pot pie.”

The old man was rocking furiously, as he lost pa- tience with the nosy interviewer. He replied curtly, “Cook my own dinner.”

“You do?” Qwilleran exclaimed with feigned admiration. “I envy any man who can cook. What sort of thing – “

“Wurst… schnitzel… suppe…” “Do you mind if I ask a personal question, Mr. Limburger? Who will get the hotel and this splendid house when you… kick the bucket, as you say?”

“None o’ yer business.”

Qwilleran had trouble concealing his amusement. The whole interview resembled a comic routine from vaudeville days. As he turned away to compose his facial expression and consider another question, he saw a large reddish-brown dog coming up the brick walk. “Is that your dog?” he asked.

For answer the old man shouted in his cracked voice, “Get outa here!” At the same time he reached for a stone on the railing and hurled it at the animal. It missed. The dog looked at the stone with curiosity. Seeing that it was inedible, he came closer. “Mis’rable mutt!” Limburger seized a stick that lay ready at his feet and struggled to stand up. Brandishing the stick in one hand and clutching a stone with the other, he started down the brick steps.

“Careful!” Qwilleran called out, jumping to his feet.

The angry householder went down the steps one at a time, left leg first, all the while yelling, “Arrrrgh! Get outa here! Filthy beast!” Halfway down the steps he stumbled and fell to the brick sidewalk.

Qwilleran rushed to his side. “Mr. Limburger! Mr. Limburger! Are you hurt? I’ll call for help. Where’s your phone?”

The man was groaning and flailing his arms. “Get the man! Get the man!” He was waving feebly toward the front door.

Qwilleran bounded to the veranda in two leaps, shouting “Help! Help!”

Almost immediately the door was opened by a big man in work clothes, looking surprised but not concerned.

“Call 911! He’s hurt! Call 911!” Qwilleran shouted at him as if he were deaf.

The emergency medical crew responded promptly and proceeded efficiently, taking the old man away in an ambulance. Qwilleran turned to the big man. “Are you a relative?”

The answer came in a high-pitched, somewhat squeaky voice that seemed incongruous in a man of that size. He could have been a wrestler or football lineman. Also incongruous was his hair: long and pre- maturely white. The journalist’s eye registered other details: age, about thirty… soft, pudgy face… slow-moving… unnaturally calm as if living in a daze. Here was a character as eccentric as Limburger.

The caretaker was saying, “I’m not a relative. I just live around here. I kinda look after the old man. He’s gettin’ on in years, so I keep an eye on him. Nobody else does. I go to the store and buy things he wants. He don’t drive no more.

They don’t let him drive. That’s bad, when you live way out here like this. He’s got a bad temper, but he don’t get mad at me. He gets mad at the dog that comes around and dirties the sidewalk. I told him he’d fall down them steps if they wasn’t fixed. I could fix ’em if he’d spend some money on mortar and a few bricks. All it would take is about ten new bricks.”

With rapt attention, Qwilleran listened to the rush of.I words that answered his simple question.

The caretaker went on. “Last Halloween some kids come around beggin’ like they do, and he chased ’em away with a stick, like he does the dog. Same night, a brick come through the front window. Somebody took a brick outa the front steps and threw it right through the window. I’m not sayin’ it was the kids, but…” He shrugged his big shoulders.

Since they were on the subject of damaged property, Qwilleran asked, “What happened to the section of fence that’s missing? Did someone drive a truck through it?”

The bland face turned to the gaping space. “Some lady wanted to buy a piece of it, so the old man sold it. I dunno what she wanted it for. I hadda deliver it in my truck, and she give me five dollars. She di’n’t have to do that, but it was nice. D’you think it was nice? I thought it was nice, but the old man said she shoulda give me ten.” Limburger’s helper never referred to his boss by name.

“By the way, I’m Jim Qwilleran from the Moose County Something.” He held out his hand. “I was interviewing Mr. Limburger about the hotel.”

The fellow wiped his hand on his pants before shaking Qwilleran’s. His eyes were riveted on the famous moustache. “I seen your picture in the paper. The old, man don’t take the paper, but I read it at Lois’s. I go there for breakfast It’s yesterday’s paper, but that don’t matter. I like to read it. Do you eat at Lois’s? Her flapjacks are almost as good as my mom’s. D’you know my mom?”

Genially Qwilleran said, “I don’t even know you. What’s your name?”

“Aubrey Scotten. You know the Scotten Fisheries? My granddad started the business, and then my dad and uncles ran it. My dad died five years ago. My brothers run it now. I got four brothers. D’you know my brothers? My mom still lives on the Scotten farm on Sandpit Road. She grows flowers to sell.”

“Aubrey is a good Scottish name.” “I don’t like it. My brothers got pretty good names- Ross, Skye, Douglas, and Blair. I asked my mom why she give me such a dumb name, and she di’n’t know. She likes it. I think it’s a dumb name. People don’t even spell it right. It’s A-u-b-r-e-y. In school the kids called me Big Boy. That’s not so bad.”

“It’s appropriate,” Qwilleran said. “Do you work with your brothers?”

“Nab, I don’t like that kinda work no more. I got me some honeybees, and I sell honey. I’m startin’ a real job next week. Blair got me a job at the new turkey farm. Maintenance engineer. That’s what they call it. I don’t hafta be there all the time. I can take care of my bees. The hives are down by the river. D’you like bees? They’re very friendly if you treat ’em right. I talk to ’em, and they give me a lot of honey. It was a good summer for honey flow. Now they’re workin’ on goldenrod and asters, and they’re still brooding. I re-queened the hives this summer.”

“I’m sure the bees appreciated that.” It was a flip remark intended to conceal ignorance. Qwilleran had no idea what the man was talking about. He recognized possibilities for the “Qwill Pen,” however. “This is all very interesting, and I’d like to hear more about your friendly bees. Not today, though; I have another appointment. How about tomorrow? I’d like to write about it in the paper.”

The garrulous beekeeper was stunned into silence.

On the way back to Pickax, Qwilleran rejoiced in his discoveries: two more “characters” for the book he would someday find time to write. Both were worthy of further acquaintance. The good-hearted fellow who didn’t like his name had the compulsive loquacity of a lonely person who yearns for a sympathetic audience. It was easy to imagine a comic dialogue between the talkative young man and the grumpy oldster who was stingy with words as well as money. It was less easy, however, to imagine Aubrey Scotten as a maintenance engineer.

Qwilleran knew about the turkey farm, underwritten by the K Fund. His friend, Nick Bamba, had been hired as manager-with option to buy in two years. They had sent him to a farm in Wisconsin to learn the ropes. At last Nick could quit his unrewarding job at the state prison near Mooseville. While the original Hanstable turkey farm would continue to supply fresh turkeys to the prison and to local markets, the new “Cold Turkey Farm” would raise birds, fast-freeze them, and ship to markets Down Below.

Meanwhile, Nick’s wife, Lori, had submitted an idea to the K Fund which was accepted, and she would open a small restaurant in Stables Row. Details had not been announced.

Qwilleran admired the energy and ambition of the young couple, who were rearing a family of three as well as tackling new challenges. He questioned the wisdom, however, of hiring Aubrey Scotten as maintenance engineer of the Cold Turkey Farm. As soon as he returned to the bam, he called directory assistance for the number of the new enterprise and phoned the manager.

After a few pleasantries, Qwilleran said, “Nick, I just met a man who says he’s been hired as your maintenance engineer.”

“Aubrey Scotten? Yeah, aren’t we lucky?”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s a genius at repairing things – anything! Refrigeration, automated machinery, automotive equipment – anything! He has a God-given talent, that’s all.”

“Well!” Qwilleran said, “I’m surprised, to say the least.”

“It’s a long story. I’ll tell you when I see you,” Nick said. “And what do you think about Lori’s venture?”

“I haven’t heard any details.”

“Call her! Call her at home. She’ll be tickled to fill you in.”

The golden-haired Lori Bamba had been Mooseville postmaster when Qwilleran first met her. Since then she had started a secretarial service and, later, a bed-and-breakfast inn on Breakfast Island, all the while parenting three children and five cats. Now she was opening a restaurant!

“How’s it going?” he asked her on the phone.

“Super! We’ll be ready to open next Friday.”

“What’s the name of your restaurant?”

“First, I have to ask you a question. What does spoon-feeding mean to you, Qwill ?”

“Being sick in bed when I was a kid.”

“Well, smarty, the dictionary says it means pampering and coddling. My family loves any kind of food that can be eaten with a spoon, so I’m opening a high-class soup kitchen called the Spoonery.”

“You mean you’ll serve nothing but soup?”

“Soups and stews – whatever can be eaten with a spoon. Eat in or take out. How does it sound?”

“Daring! But if it’s good enough for the K Fund, it’s good enough for me.”

“You ‘II like it! I’ve got dozens of exciting recipes.”

“Well, I wish you luck, and I’ll be your first customer. Just don’t serve turnip chowder or parsnip bisque!”

Koko was antsy that afternoon. First, he walked away from the feeding station when the midday treat was served; he drove Yum Yum crazy by pouncing on her and chasing her up to the rafters; he pushed several books off the library shelves. When he started rattling the handle of the broom closet, Qwilleran got the message. As soon as the door was opened, Koko bounded into the closet and sat on top of the cat-carrier.

“You rascal!” Qwilleran said. “You want to roll on the concrete!”

During the summer he had taken the Siamese to the cabin at the beach on several occasions, where their chief pleasure was rolling on the concrete floor of the screened porch. They writhed and squirmed and flipped from side to side in catly bliss that Qwilleran failed to understand. Yet, he indulged their whims. Soon they were driving to the log cabin he had inherited from the Klingenschoen estate.

It was a thirty-mile jaunt to the lake. In cat-miles it was probably perceived as a hundred and thirty, although the Siamese rode in privacy and cushioned comfort in a deluxe carrier on the backseat. Thoughtfully, Qwilleran used the Sandpit Road route to avoid heavy truck traffic; eighteen-wheelers disturbed Yum Yum’s delicate digestive system. Both cats raised inquisitive noses when they passed the Cold Turkey Farm and again when they reached the lakeshore with its mingled aromas of fish, seagulls, and aquatic weeds.

At the sign of a letter K on a post, a relic of the Klingenschoen era, they turned into a narrow dirt lane that wound through several acres of woods, up and down ancient sand dunes, and between oaks and pines and wild cherry trees. That was when Koko became excited; bumping around in the confines of the carrier and rumbling internal noises that alarmed his partner.

Qwilleran recognized the performance; the cat was sensitive to abnormal situations; something unusual lay ahead. He himself noticed recent tire tracks and was annoyed when he found another car parked in the clearing adjoining the cabin. He imagined insolent trespassers, surf-fishing and building illegal fires on the beach and throwing beer cans in the beach grass. When he parked behind the unauthorized vehicle, however, he noted a local license plate and a rental car sticker in the back window of a dark blue two-door.

His reaction was a gradual buildup of dumb disbelief, then amazement, then challenge and triumph! What a coup! He was about to come face-to-face with that woman! And he had her trapped!

4

There was no doubt in Qwilleran’s mind: the dark blue two-door with airport sticker in the window had been rented to the stranger who was mystifying Pickax. He had an exclusive news break! His colleagues would be green with envy.

The doors of the cabin were still locked; she would be walking on the beach, he assumed. The cabin perched on the crest of a high sand dune overlooking the lake, and he walked to the edge. At the foot of the weathered wooden steps leading down to the beach, he saw a large straw hat. Under it, with back turned to him, was a figure dressed in black, sitting in a folding aluminum chair – the kind perennially on sale at the hardware store.

He needed only a moment to decide on a course of action. He would avoid frightening her or embarrassing her; he had everything to gain by being pleasant – even hospitable. There were comfortable chairs on the porch; there were cold drinks in the car, as well as two goodwill ambassadors who had winning ways – when they felt like it.

As he started down the steps, his thudding footsteps were drowned out by the splashing waves below and the screaming seagulls above. Halfway down, he coughed loudly and called out in a comradely voice, “Hello, down there!”

The straw hat flew off, and a dark-haired woman turned to look up at him.

“Good afternoon! Beautiful day, isn’t it?” he said in the mellifluous voice he used in crucial situations.

She jumped to her feet, clutching a book. “My apology! I not know someone live here.”

English was not her native tongue; her accent had an otherwhereness that he considered charming. “That’s all right. I live in Pickax and just stopped to check for storm damage. There was a severe wind storm a few days ago. What are you reading?” That was always a disarming question, he had learned.

“Cookbook.” She held it up for proof. “I go away now.” Flustered, she started to fold her chair.

“You don’t need to rush off. Perhaps you’d enjoy a glass of cider on the porch. It has a magnificent view of the lake. By the way, I’m Jim Qwilleran of the Moose County Something.”

“Ah!” she said joyfully, focusing on his moustache. “I see your picture in the paper… But you are too kind.”

“Not at all. Let me carry your chair.” He ran down the few remaining steps. “And what is your name?”

She hesitated… “Call me Onoosh.”

“In that case, call me Qwill,” he said jovially.

She smiled for the first time, and although she was not a beauty by Hollywood standards, her olive complexion glowed and her face was radiant. At the same time, a gust of wind blew her dark hair away from her left cheek, revealing a long scar in front of her ear. She stuffed books and other belongings into a tote bag, and Qwilleran reached for it.

“Allow me.”

As they reached the top of the dune, she exclaimed about the log cabin and the stone chimney. “Beautiful! Is very old?” She pronounced it be-yoo-ti-ful.

“Probably seventy or eighty years old.” He ushered her into the screened porch. “Have a chair and enjoy the view, and excuse me for a moment while I unload the car and bring in my two companions. Do you like cats?”

“All animals, I adore!” Her face again glowed with happiness.

She could be in her thirties, he guessed as he went to the car. She could be from the Middle East. She may have lived in France. Her black pantsuit, far from being mourning garb, had a Parisian smartness.

He served the cider and asked casually, “Are you vacationing up here?”

“Yes, but no,” she replied cryptically. “I look for place to live. I like to cook in restaurant.”

“Where are you staying?”

“Hotel in Pickax.”

“Have you been there long?”

“Two weeks. People very nice. Desk clerk give me big room in front. Very good, I talk to chef. I tell him how to cook vegetables, He try, but…not good.”

“Yes, we do have friendly people here. How did you happen to find Moose County? It’s off the beaten path, and few people know it exists.”

Shyly she explained, “My honeymoon I spend here – long time ago. Was nice.”

“Honeymoons are always nice,” Qwilleran said. “So your husband is no longer with you?” He considered that a good way of putting a prying question.

She shook her head, and her face clouded, but it soon brightened. The Siamese, who had been rolling and squirming on the concrete of the back porch, now arrived to inspect the stranger and leave their seal of approval on her ankles. “Be-yoo-ti-ful!” she said.

“They’re especially fond of people who read cookbooks.”

“Ah! Cooking I learn very young, but something more is always to learn.”

“What do you think of the food in our local restaurants?”

She looked at him askance, from behind her curtain of hair. “Is not too good.”

“I agree with you, but we’re trying to improve the situation.”

Brightening, she said, “Mediterranean restaurant – very good here, I think.”

“You mean, stuffed grape leaves and tabouleh and all that? When I lived Down Below I haunted Middle Eastern restaurants. We used to ask for meatballs in little green kimonos.”

“Very good,” she said. “I make meatballs in little green kimonos.” She waved a hand toward a tangle of foliage on the dune. “Wild grapevines you have in woods. Very good fresh. In jars, not so good.” She paused uncertainly. “You have kitchen? I stuff some for you.”

Qwilleran’s tastebuds were alerted. “I have kitchen, and I have salt and pepper, and I drive into town to buy whatever you need.” Without any intention of mocking, he was imitating her cavalier way with pronouns, verbs, prepositions, and adverbs.

“Is too much trouble,” she protested. “Not so! Tell me what to buy.”

She recited a list: ground lamb, rice, onion, lemon, fresh mint. “I pick small young leaves – boil five minutes – ready when you come back.”

Before leaving, Qwilleran checked out the Siamese. They were asleep on the guest bed. If Koko had wanted so badly to drive to the cabin, why had he spent five minutes rolling on the concrete and the rest of the after- noon in sleep? Cats were unpredictable, unfathomable, and impossible not to like. Koko raised his head and opened one eye. “Mind the house,” Qwilleran instructed him. “I’m running into town.”

There were stores in Mooseville, but he would hesitate to trust their meat. Fish, yes. Lamb, no. He drove to Pickax. At Toodle’s Market, where he was a regular customer for lunch meat, the butchers knew him and gladly ground some lamb, fresh. Onoosh had not specified quantity, so he asked for two pounds, to be on the safe side. At the produce counter, a Toodle daughter-in-law helped him choose a lemon and three onions but said they never had fresh mint. “Everybody has it in the backyard,” she said. “It grows like wild.”

At the rice shelf he was puzzled. There was long grain, short grain, white, brown, precooked, preseasoned.

Another customer, better-groomed and better-dressed than the other women shoppers, said, “Having a problem, Mr. Q? Perhaps I can help you. I’m Elaine Fetter. We’ve met at the library, where I volunteer.”

“Yes, of course,” he said emphatically, as if it were : true. She was a statuesque woman with an air of authority and surely some opinions about rice. “What kind of rice would you suggest for… uh… meatballs?”

“I believe you’d be safe with white short-grain: Do you have a good recipe for meatballs?” she asked. “I’m compiling a community cookbook for the Friends of the Library, and we’d be honored if you would let us print one of your favorite recipes. I know – “

At that moment they were both startled by a loud BOOM!

“Oh, heavens !” she exclaimed. “What was that? It sounded so close!”

“I’d better go and check it out,” he said. “Excuse me. Thanks for the advice.” He snatched a package of white short-grain and took his purchases to the check-out counter.

“Did you hear that sonic boom?” the cashier asked. “It was loud enough to curdle the milk.”

“Sounded like an explosion on Pine Street,” Qwilleran said. “They’re doing construction work on Stables Rowand could have hit a gas main.”

As he pulled out of the parking lot, scout cars were speeding toward downtown, and the flashing lights of emergency vehicles could be seen coming from the hospital and the firehall. The trouble was not on Pine Street, however. Main Street traffic was being detoured. He parked where he could and ran toward the center of town.

One irrelvant and irreverent thought crossed his mind: Whatever the blast might be, it was not happening on the newspaper’s deadline, and Arch Riker would have a fit! It would be Monday before the Something could report it, while WPKX would be broadcasting it all weekend.

That was the way it always seemed to happen in Pickax. Like the Friday night toothache after the dentist’s office closed for the weekend, disasters always happened after the Friday newspaper had gone to press.

A procession of pedestrians was hurrying to the scene, and the shout went up: “It’s the hotel! The hotel blew up.!”

A cordon of yellow crime-scene tape kept onlookers away from the shattered glass and debris that covered the sidewalk and pavement in front of the New Pickax Hotel. There were businessfolk standing in front of their stores and offices… farmers in town on business… shoppers carrying bundles… teens wearing high school athletic jackets. Many were horrified; others were there for the excitement; a few grinned and said it was about time they bombed it. Stretcher bearers hurried up the front steps. The medical examiner arrived with his ominous black bag and was escorted into the building by the police.

“Somebody’s killed,” the watchers said. On the far side of the yellow tape was a gathering of persons Qwilleran knew. To reach them he ran around the block and into the back door of Amanda’s Design Studio. The shop was empty. He zigzagged through the furniture displays and found everyone on the sidewalk, watching and waiting: Amanda Goodwinter herself, her assistant, the installation man, and two customers. One of the studio’s large plate glass windows was cracked. No one noticed Qwilleran’s arrival; they were all looking up at the second floor of the hotel.

Like all the buildings on downtown Main Street, it was solidly built of stone that had survived fire, tornado, and even a minor earthquake. The windows of all three floors were shattered, however. On the second floor, wood sash had been blown out. Fragments of draperies and clothing hung from projections on the outside of the building. The arm of an upholstered chair lay on the sidewalk.

“Lucky it’s only the arm of a chair,” the installer said with a sly leer.

Amanda, cranky as usual, said, “Old Gus probably bombed it himself to collect the insurance, or had that creepy helper of his do the dirty work.”

“He ain’t creepy! He’s an all-right guy!” the installer said belligerently. He was one of the big young blond men indigenous to Moose County, and he contradicted his employer with the confidence of an indispensable muscleman in a furniture business run by two women.

“Shut up and get some tape on that cracked glass!” Amanda shouted.

“Hi, Qwill!” said Fran Brodie, her assistant. “Are you covering this for the paper, or just nosing around?” She was not only a good designer and one of the most attractive young women in town; she was the daughter of the police chief and, as such, had semiofficial status. She said, “Dad always complains that nothing big ever happens on his turf, but this should keep him quiet for a while.”

The chief was swaggering about the scene, towering over the other officers, giving orders, running the show. The state police were assisting.

“I was buying groceries and heard the blast,” Qwilleran said. “Does anyone know what happened?”

In a confidential tone, Fran said, “They think it was a homemade bomb. They say room 203 is really trashed. Everyone’s wondering about the mystery woman.”

Qwilleran thought of Onoosh; hadn’t the desk clerk given her a big room at the front? “Any injuries?” he asked. “Your dad was wearing his doomsday expression when he took the coroner into the building.”

“Oh, he always looks like that when he’s on duty. So far, it doesn’t look serious. Leonard Inchpot came out with a bandage on his head, and he and some others were hustled away in a police car – to the hospital, no doubt. Someone said a chandelier fell on his head.”

Outside the yellow-tape, bystanders were making guesses; a reporter was maneuvering to get camera shots; a WPKX newswoman was thrusting a microphone in front of officials and eyewitnesses. Inside the tape, an ambulance with open doors had backed up to the front steps. Then the coroner came out, and silence fell on the crowd. He was followed by medics carrying a body bag on a stretcher. A sorrowful moan arose from onlookers, and the question was repeated: Who was it? Guest or employee? No one knew. “I can’t hang around,” Qwilleran told the designer. “I’m due back in Mooseville. I’ll tune in my car radio to hear the rest.”

He wanted to break the news to Onoosh, gently, and he wanted to observe her reaction. It would reveal whether she was really a cook looking for a job in a restaurant, or the intended victim of a murderous plot.

As he drove back to the cabin, he heard the bleat-bleat-bleat of a helicopter. That would be the bomb squad from the SBI – the State Bureau of Investigation. His radio was tuned in, with the volume turned down to muffle the country music favored by the locals. He turned it up when an announcer broke in with a news bulletin:

“An explosion in downtown Pickax at four-twenty this afternoon claimed the life of one victim, injured others, and caused extensive property damage. Thought to be caused by a homemade bomb, the blast wrecked several front rooms of the New Pickax Hotel. A member of the staff was killed instantly. Others were thrown to the floor and injured by falling debris. All windows facing Main Street were shattered, and those in nearby buildings were cracked. The hotel has been evacuated, and Main Street is closed to traffic between Church and Depot Streets. Police have not released the name of the victim, pending notification of relatives, nor the name of the guest registered in the room that received the brunt of the blast. Police Chief Andrew Brodie said, ‘There aren’t many guests around on Friday afternoon, or the casualties would have been greater.’ Stay tuned for further details.”

Qwilleran stepped on the accelerator. A quarter-mile from the letter K on a post, he rounded the last curve in the road in time to see a car leaving the K driveway in a cloud of dust. It turned onto the highway without stopping, heading west. As he approached from the east, it picked up speed.

All his previous surmises were thrown into confusion as he covered the winding trail to the cabin faster than usual. Her car was gone. He thought, She sent me to buy lamb so she could escape; she was headed for the airport. Then he thought, Maybe she wasn’t the target of the bomb; maybe she was involved in the bombing. He tried to make sense of the disparate elements: the eccentric owner of the hotel… the mystery woman… property insurance… the old man’s tumble down the stairs… the mechanical genius who worked for him… the possibility of a homemade bomb… and all the rumors he had heard in the last two weeks. Qwilleran felt his face flushing. Having fallen for her ruse, he was too embarrassed to think straight. That woman could have ransacked the cabin! She could have taken the cats!

He jumped from his car when he reached the clearing and rushed indoors, going first to the guest room. The cats were still asleep, drugged by the lake air. Then he checked the lake porch. She had left her beach hat, the folding chair, and three books from the public library.

They were all cookbooks. In the kitchen a paper towel was spread with damp grape leaves, and the saucepan in which they had been boiled was draining in the sink; the salt and pepper shakers were standing ready; the chopping board and knife were waiting for the onion; and the countertop radio was blaring country music. He turned it off irritably.

Only then did he realize that Onoosh had been working in the kitchen and listening to the radio when the bulletin was broadcast. She had dropped everything, grabbed her tote bag, and headed for the airport. She knew the bomb was intended for her. He searched the cabin, hoping she might have left a note, but all he could find was a number on the telephone pad. It looked familiar. He called it and was connected with the airport terminal. “Did the five-thirty shuttle leave on schedule?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“A woman was racing to catch it. Do you remember a woman in a black pantsuit boarding the plane?”

“Yes, sir,” said the attendant, who sold tickets, rented cars, and even carried luggage in the small terminal. “She turned in a rental and ran to the plane. Didn’t even have any luggage. Lucky we had a seat for her. On Friday nights we’re usually sold out.”

Now Qwilleran thought he understood. Whether or not she was a cook, she was a fugitive – in hiding – fearing for her life. With all due respect to the PPD and SBI, he believed they would never apprehend the bomber who killed the wrong person. The Pickax mystery woman, like the Piltdown man, would remain forever the subject of debate.

5

Qwilleran sat glumly on the porch overlooking the lake without seeing the infinity of the blue sky, the turquoise expanse of water, and the white ruffles of surf at the shoreline. He was organizing his reactions. He grieved over the senseless death of a hotel employee; in a small town everyone was a friend or a neighbor or a nodding acquaintance or the friend of a friend. Further, he regretted the wanton destruction of the building, no matter how substandard its rating or how disliked its owner. And personally he was disappointed by the sudden departure of the fascinating woman who had said, “Call me Onoosh.” An exclusive news story had slipped through his fingers; his vision of a Mediterranean restaurant on local soil had faded away; and he had lost a potential purveyor of meatballs in little green kimonos. All of these considerations added up to a determination to solve the who and why of the bombing. It was none of his business; it was police business. Yet, his curiosity began a slow boil.

Meanwhile, he had unwanted souvenirs of the afternoon’s adventure: two pounds of ground lamb, a pack- age of rice, and three large onions. The lemon he could use in Squunk water, an innocuous beverage from a local mineral spring. The rice could be returned to the store; Mrs. Toodle would be glad to give him a refund. As for the onions, he could hurl them into the adjoining woods – to spice the diet of a wandering raccoon.

The problem was… the Iamb. When the Siamese staggered out of the guest room, he offered them a taste; they declined even to sniff it. “You ungrateful snobs !” he scolded. “There are disadvantaged cats out there who don’t know where their next mouse is coming from!” He had pointed out that fact frequently, without effecting any change in their attitude. They liked Scottish smoked salmon, oysters, lobster out of the shell, caviar (fresh, not tinned), and escargots.

His next thought – to give the lamb to Polly as a treat for Bootsie – would lead to embarrassing inquiries and awkward explanations. His friend, though a wonderful woman in every way, was inclined to be overpossessive and unnecessarily jealous. That eliminated another solution.

To donate the Iamb to Lois for her ever-bubbling soup pot would create a countywide stir. There were no secrets at the Luncheonette, and two pounds of ground Iamb from the richest bachelor in northeast central United States would be good for two months of delectable gossip.

There remained Celia Robinson. As his so-called secret agent, she had proved an ability to follow instructions without asking questions, and she was probably the only individual in Moose County who could keep a secret. He telephoned her from the cabin, and there was no answer. He decided to put the problematic meat in the freezer. He knew Onoosh would never return, but if she did…

Qwilleran and the Siamese returned to the apple barn. There was no storm damage at the cabin; in fact, there had been no storm. The county was enjoying an exceptionally pleasant September.

He fed the cats a can of red salmon and then went to Lois’s for the Friday dinner special, fish and chips. One of the part-time cooks was manning the deep-fryer, and Lois was waiting on tables, taking customers’ money, and venting her rage about the bombing. Only a public figure with Lois’s thirty years of experience could rave, rant, and rail so histrionically while pouring coffee and making change. Qwilleran’s arrival launched another tirade:

“Oh!… Oh!… Did you hear the six o’clock news? D’you know who was killed? Anna Marie! Lenny’s girlfriend! Sweet girl – never hurt a soul. Why her? Why her?… Sit anywhere, Mr. Q. Fish and chips special tonight… Only twenty years old! She was gonna be a nurse! Lenny and her were childhood sweethearts. They were goin’ to college together. She worked part-time as a housekeeper at the hotel… How many pieces, hon? Two or three? Coleslaw or reg’lar?.. They say the cops are investigatin’. Ha! What the hell good is that? A beautiful girl with her whole life snuffed out! Somebody should sue!… Are you guys through with the ketchup bottle?… Lenny just called me from home. He was lyin’ down and heard it on the radio. He’s bein’ very brave, that kid, but he’s hurtin’ inside – hurtin’ bad. He was the one who got her the job. That makes it twice as bad… Coffee, anybody? New pot…. The blast dumped a light fixture on Lenny’s head, but it ain’t serious. They stitched him up and sent him home, but he’s out of a job till they fix the damage. That’ll take forever if they leave it to the ol’ coot who owns the place… More bread? Got enough butter? It’s the real thing – not that low-cholesterol stuff.”

Qwilleran’s next destination was Gingerbread Alley. Even as he reached for the doorbell at the Duncan homestead, Polly yanked the door open. She was looking painfully grieved. Lynette, sober-faced, hovered in the background. In unison they said, “Did you hear the latest?”

“Yes,” he said. “It’s Anna Marie Toms. Did you know her?”

“She worked as a page at the library while she was in high school,” Polly said. “Lovely girl – so conscientious.”

“Her family lives in Chipmunk,” Lynette added, “but they’re good people. They go to our church.”

“It’s unfair to judge one by one’s address,” Polly protested. “Well, let’s go into the parlor.”

Qwilleran kept an eye on the skirted table as he seated himself. Lynette served instant decaf and pound cake from the new bakery.

“There’s a rumor,” she said, “that someone in Lockmaster wanted to buy the hotel, and old Scrooge wanted too much money, so they blew it up in revenge.”

Stupid rumor, Qwilleran thought, and yet it was the kind of tale that flourished in scandal-hungry Pickax. He said, “Gustav Limburger is in the hospital. He fell down his front steps this morning. I was interviewing him about the history of the hotel. I’d like to know his condition, but the hospital won’t give any information on the phone.”

“I can find out,” Lynette said. She worked for a clinic and had connections. When she returned, she recited a litany of bad news: multiple fractures, advanced osteoporosis, hypertension, cardiac arrhythmia, and more.

“Oh, dear! I should feel sorry for him,” Polly said, “and yet…”

“He’s a character,” Qwilleran said. “Did you ever meet him?”

“My only contact was by mail. Every year when the library appealed for funds, he returned our envelope with two one-dollar bills. In spite of inflation, it never changed.”

“Better than nothing,” Lynette said. “By the way, the Toms family are patients at our clinic, and I suppose I shouldn’t tell you this – I know you won’t either of you repeat it – but Anna Marie was enrolled in prenatal care.”

“Oh, dear!” said Polly.

Qwilleran huffed into his moustache as possibilities invaded his mind.

Then she said with an effort to be cheerful, “Well, what did you do this afternoon? Anything interesting?”

“I took the cats for a ride. Koko has been tormenting Yum Yum lately, and that means he’s restless.”

“Elaine Fetter phoned a while ago and said she saw you at Toodle’s, buying ingredients for meatballs, and you’re going to contribute your meatball recipe to the community cookbook! Have you been keeping secrets from me, dear?” she concluded with a mischievously oblique glance.

“Mrs. Fetter is confused. You know and I know, Polly, that I’m a culinary illiterate. The day I take up cooking will be the day the sky falls.”

“But you were buying ingredients for meatballs!” she continued with the persistence of a prosecuting attorney. She enjoyed putting him in the hot seat, knowing his ability to wiggle out of any uncomfortable situation.

Qwilleran had to think fast; he did that well, too. “I was picking up groceries for Mrs. Robinson. She makes a special meatball for her cat, and I asked her to make a batch for my two gourmands.”

“What makes it so special?”

“I don’t know. I had to buy lamb, rice, onion, and lemon.”

“That sounds Middle Eastern,” Polly said. “I’d love to have her recipe. Could you get it for me?”

The situation was becoming sticky. “I’m afraid she doesn’t share recipes. She’s… uh… going into catering and wants to have a repertory of exclusive dishes.” He congratulated himself on that ingenious fabrication but found it advisable to cover his tracks. He left early. He said he had some writing to do. Within minutes he was phoning Celia Robinson, and there was urgency in his voice.

“What’s up, Chief?” she asked eagerly.

“I have a favor to ask, Celia – nothing to do with a criminal investigation.”

“Aw shucks!” she said with a merry laugh. “First, a question: Do you ever make meatballs with rice?”

“No, I use bread crumbs.”

“If you were to make meatballs with rice, would Wrigley eat them?”

“Oh, sure, but he’d throw up. Rice is something he can’t seem to digest.”

“I see,” Qwilleran said. “Well… if anyone asks you, would you be good enough to say that you make meat- balls with rice for Wrigley? And if anyone requests your.. recipe… Just say no!”

“Okay, Chief. It won’t be the first fib I’ve told for you, and I haven’t been struck by lightning yet!”

He hung up with a sense of relief. He was covered. He knew that Polly would mention the meatballs to her assistant, Mrs. Alstock, who would mention them to her dear friend, Celia Robinson. It was one of the complexities of living in a small town. In away, life Down Below was simpler, despite traffic jams, air pollution, and street crime. There was a comfortable anonymity in a city of millions.

His next call was to the police chief at home. “Anything good on the tube tonight, Andy?”

“Nab, I turned it off, and I’m reading your column on Nobodies in today’s paper. The trouble is, all the Nobodies in Pickax think they’re Somebodies and exempt from paying traffic fines… What’s on your mind?”

“The explosion. Was it pretty bad?”

“Everything in a certain radius was blown to bits. That poor girl never knew what hit her.”

Qwilleran asked, “Am I correct in thinking room 203 was registered to the mystery woman?”

“Right, and she hasn’t been seen since.”

Qwilleran paused dramatically before saying, “I spent the afternoon with her.”

“What! How come? How did you meet her? What do you know?”

“Why don’t you put on your shoes, Andy, and come over for a Scotch?”

In five minutes the police chief drove into the barnyard. He was a tall, husky, impressive figure, even out of uniform, and he was especially impressive when he wore a full Scottish kit and played the bagpipe at weddings and funerals. He walked into the barn with a piper’s swagger.

Qwilleran had a tray ready with Scotch and cheese, and Squunk water for himself. As the two men settled into big chairs in the lounge area, the Siamese walked into view with a swagger of their own. Corning close to the coffee table, they sat down with noses on a level with the cheese platter. As the guest raised his glass in a Gaelic toast, the two noses edged closer.

“No!” Qwilleran thundered. Both cats backed off a quarter of an inch and continued to contemplate the forbidden food with half-shut eyes.

“Cocky little devils,” Brodie said. “Bet you spoil them rotten.”

“Try this cheese, Andy. It’s a kind of Swiss from the new Sip ‘n’ Nibble shop in Stables Row. It’s run by two guys from Down Below. They like to be called Jerry Sip and Jack Nibble. Jerry’s the wine expert, and Jack knows everything about cheese.”

“Gimme a slice. Then tell me how you met that woman.”

“It was a weird coincidence. I’d never seen her, but they were talking about her at the paper yesterday and mentioned that she drove a dark blue rental car. So, this afternoon I drove to the cabin on a routine inspection, and there was a dark blue two-door in my parking lot! My car almost reared up on its hind wheels! The woman was sitting on my beach at the foot of the dune, reading a cookbook, so I figured she wasn’t dangerous.”

Brodie grunted at intervals as Qwilleran told the whole story. “So she offered to make some stuffed grape leaves if I’d buy the ingredients, and that’s what I was doing when the bomb went off.”

The chief chuckled. “She wanted to get your car out of the drive so she could make a getaway.”

“That was my first thought. For a few minutes I felt like an absolute dunce. Then I realized – correctly, I believe – that she’d heard the bulletin on the air and had to get out of town fast. Somehow she knew the bomb was intended for her. I called the airport, and they said she’d turned in the car and boarded the shuttle.”

Brodie said, “She might have decamped in a hurry be- cause she was a conspirator in the bomb plot. She was conveniently out of the building – and hiding out on your property – when the bomb exploded.”

Qwilleran drew a heavy hand over his moustache, as he always did when he was getting a major hunch. A tingle on his upper lip was a signal that he was on the right track. “I maintain, Andy, that she’s a fugitive trying to go underground. This neck of the woods is ordinarily as underground as you can get, but there’s another clue to consider. When the wind blew her hair away from her face, I saw a long vertical scar in front of her left ear.”

“Could be the result of an auto accident,” Brodie suggested. “What name did she give you?”

“Only her first name: Onoosh.”

“Onoosh? What kind of name is that? On the hotel register she signed Ona Dolman.”

A dark brown paw stole slowly over the edge of the coffee table.

“No!” Qwilleran bellowed, and the paw was quickly withdrawn.

“I didn’t know cats liked cheese,” said the chief, who thought they lived on rodents and fish-heads.

“Since the new store opened, both cats are turning into cheese junkies,” Qwilleran said.

“Well, I guess we’ll never see Ona Dolman again, but it’s no big loss. The hell of it is the murder of that innocent girl – Anna Marie Toms. I know the family – good people! Not everybody living in Chipmunk gets into trouble with the law. She was kind of engaged to Lenny Inchpot, Lois’s son. I’ll play the bagpipe at her funeral service, if they want me to.”

“Do you know exactly how it happened, Andy?”

“It’ll come out later, but I’ll fill you in now – off the record.” Brodie had gradually accepted this journalist from Down Below as trustworthy and useful. Qwilleran’s experience as a crime reporter in major cities around the country had given him insights into investigative processes, and his natural instinct for snooping often unearthed facts of value to official investigators. In pursuing his private passion, Qwilleran was quite satisfied to remain in the background, tip off the authorities, and take no public credit. Brodie, for his part, appreciated his cooperation and occasionally leaked confidential information – through his daughter, the designer. It was a casual arrangement, unknown to other local law enforcement agencies.

“Anything you see fit to tell me is always off the record, Andy. That goes without saying.”

“Okay. About four o’clock this afternoon an unidentified white male – about forty, medium build, clean-shaven – came in the front door of the hotel with a gift package and some flowers for Ona Dolman. Lenny, on duty at the desk, said she wasn’t in but he’d send them up to her room as soon as the porter returned from his break. The suspect said the gift was hand-blown glass, very fragile, and he’d feel more comfortable taking it upstairs himself and putting it in a safe place. He asked for a piece of paper and wrote: OPEN WITH CARE, HONEY. SO Lenny told him to ask the housekeeper on the second floor to let him into 203. When the suspect came back down, he yelled thank-you and went out the back door. The porter was having a cigarette in the parking lot and saw a blue pickup drive slowly down the back street and pick up a man in a blue jacket. So what? Blue pickups and blue jackets are a dime a dozen around here.”

Qwilleran asked about witnesses on the second floor. “The manager’s office is up there. She didn’t see the suspect, but the housekeeper asked where to get a vase for some flowers and later took the vacuum cleaner into 203, saying the flowers had made a mess on the rug. When she plugged in the cord or pushed the machine around, she probably tripped the bomb. Lenny feels he’s responsible for her death. That boy’s gonna need counseling.”

“Bad scene,” Qwilleran said somberly. “Can he describe the suspect?”

“Two witnesses got a close look at him-Lenny and the florist who sold him the flowers. The SBI computer is making a composite sketch from their descriptions, but I don’t know how they’ll find any clues in the rubble. A bomb blows up a lot of evidence.”

“Yes, but the forensic people work miracles. Every year there seems to be new technology.” Qwilleran poured another Scotch for Brodie and asked how he liked the cheese.

“Good stuff! I’ve gotta tell the wife about it. What d’you call it?”

“Gruy\u0160re. It’s from Switzerland.”

“Yow!” came a loud demand from the floor, and Qwilleran gave each cat a tiny crumb of it, which they gobbled and masticated and savored at great length as if it were a whole wedge.

Brodie asked, “Did Ona Dolman say anything at all that might finger the bomber?”

“No, I’m afraid I missed the boat. I intended to ask some leading questions while we were eating our grape leaves. I even picked up a bottle of good wine for her!” Qwilleran said with annoyance.

“Well, anyway, now that we know she left on a plane, we can start a search. If she was in hiding, she falsified information but there’ll be prints on the car, if they haven’t cleaned it.” He went to the phone and called the airport; the car had been thoroughly cleaned when it was returned. Qwilleran said there would be prints on the kitchen sink at the cabin, and he turned over the key to Brodie, along with the folding chair, cookbooks, and straw hat that she had left behind.

“We’ll need your prints, too, Qwill. Stop at the station tomorrow.”

“I don’t envy you, Andy. You don’t know who she really is, where she really lives, why she’s being pursued, where she went, who planted the bomb, where he lives, what’s his motive, how he found her, and who drove the getaway vehicle.”

“Well, we should be able to lift her prints, and just about every man, woman, and child in Pickax can describe her…

What did you call that cheese?”

“Gruy\u0160re.”

“Yow!” said Koko.

Qwilleran said, “I asked the guy at the cheese store why a cat would prefer this to Emmenthaler, which is also Swiss. He said it’s creamier and saltier.”

“Is it expensive?”

“It costs more than processed cheese at Toodle’s, but Mildred says we should buy better food and eat less of it.”

Brodie stood up. “Better be goin’ home, or the wife’ll call the police.”

Just then a low rumble caught the attention of the two men. It came from under the coffee table. As they turned to look, Koko came slinking out, making a gutteral noise, waving his tail in low gear, sneaking up behind Yum Yum.

“Watch this!” Qwilleran whispered.

POW! Koko pounced! WHOOSH! Yum Yum got away, and they were off on a wild chase up the ramp.

“They’re just showing off,” Qwilleran said. “They do it to attract attention.”

The chief went home carrying a wedge of Gruy\u0160re.

6

On Saturday morning Qwilleran fed the cats, policed their commode, brushed their coats, and combed airborne cat hair out of his moustache and eyebrows. Koko had pushed a book off the library shelf. “Not now. Later,” he said. “I have a lot of calls to make. Expect me when you see me.” He replaced the playscript of A Taste of Honey on the shelf. Then he thought, Wait a minute! Ores that cat sense that I’m going to interview a beekeeper? And if he does, how can he associate my intentions with the word “honey” on a book cover? And yet, he had to admit, Koko sometimes used oblique avenues of communication.

He went to the police station to be fingerprinted and then to the library for a book on beekeeping. Rather than appear to be a complete dolt, he looked up the definitions of brooders, supers, and smokers, also swarming, hiving, and clustering. While there he heard the clerks greeting Homer Tibbitt, who arrived each day with a briefcase and brown paper bag. Although the sign on the front door specified NO FOOD OR BEVERAGES, everyone knew what was in the paper bag. He was in his late nineties, however, and allowances were made for age. With a jerky but sprightly gait, he walked to the elevator and rode to the mezzanine, where he would do research in the reading room.

Qwilleran followed, using the stairs. “Morning, Homer. What’s the subject for today?”

“I’m still on the Goodwinter clan. Amanda found some family papers in an old trunk and gave them to the library – racy stuff, some of it.”

“Do you know anything about the Limburger family?” Qwilleran dropped into a hard oak chair across the table; the historian always brought his own inflated seat cushion.

“Yes, indeed! I wrote a monograph on them a few years ago. As I recall, the first Limburger came over from Austria in the mid-nineteenth century to avoid conscription. He was a carpenter, and the mining companies hired him to build cottages for the workers. But he was a go-getter and ended up building his own rooming houses and travelers’ inns. Exploiting the workers was considered smart business practice in those days, and he got rich.”

“What happened to his housing empire?”

“One by one the buildings burned down. Some were pulled down for firewood in the Great Depression. The Hotel Booze is the only building still standing. The family itself – second generation – was wiped out in the flu epidemic of 1918. There was only one survivor, and he’s still living.”

“You mean Gustav?” Qwilleran asked. “He has a reputation for being quite eccentric.”

“Haven’t seen him for years, but I remember him as a young boy, recently orphaned. Pardon me while I refresh my memory.” The old gentleman struggled to his feet and went to the restroom, carrying his paper bag. It was no secret that it contained a thermos of decaffeinated coffee laced with brandy. When he returned, he had recalled everything.

“Yes, I remember young Gustav. I was a fledgling teacher in a one-room school, and I felt sorry for him. He’d lost his folks and was sent to live with a German- speaking family. His English was poor, and to make matters worse, there was a lot of anti-German sentiment after World War One. It’s no wonder he was a poor student. He played truant frequently, ran away from home a couple of times, and finally dropped out.”

“Didn’t he inherit the family fortune?”

“That’s another story. Some said his legal guardian mismanaged his money. Some said he went to Germany to sow his wild oats and lost it all. I know he sold the Hotel Booze to the Pratts and kept the New Pickax hotel. I hear it was wrecked by a bomb yesterday.”

“Apparently Gustav never married,” Qwilleran remarked.

“Not to anyone’s knowledge. But who knows what he did in Germany? When I was writing the Limburger history, I tried to get him to talk, but he shut up like a clam.”

“He’s in the hospital now, in serious condition.”

“Well, he’s up in years,” Homer said of the man who was fifteen years his junior.

Driving north to the Limburger house, Qwilleran passed the decrepit Dimsdale Diner at the comer of Ittibittiwassee Road and noted half a dozen farm vehicles in the weedy parking lot. That meant the Men’s Dimsdale Coffee and Current Events Smoker was in session. That was Qwilleran’ s name for the boisterous group of laughing, gossiping, cigarette-smoking coffee hounds who gathered informally in-between farm chores. He parked and joined them and was greeted by cheers.

“Here’s Mr. Q!… Move over and make room for a big cheese from downtown!… Pull up a chair, man!”

Qwilleran helped himself to a mug of bad coffee and a stale doughnut and sat with the five men in feed caps and farm jackets. They went on with their quips, rumors, and prejudices:

“That explosion was an inside job. You can bet on it!”

“They should’ve dynamited the whole inside and then started over.”

“Looks like that foreign babe was in on it.”

“Old Gus was taken to the hospital when he heard the news.”

“What’ll happen to the hotel when he cashes in?”

“He’ll leave it to that fella that does his chores,”

“That’s a laugh! Gus is too stingy to give a penny away – even after he’s dead!”

“He won’t die unless he can figger out how to take it with ‘im.”

“I’ll bet he’s got a coupla million buried in his backyard, What d’you think, Mr. Q?”

“If you believe everything you hear, there’s enough money buried in Moose County backyards to pay the national debt.”

With that, they all laughed, pushed back their chairs, and trooped out to their blue pickup trucks.

En route to Black Creek, Qwilleran detoured through the town of Brrr, so named because it was the coldest spot in the county, He wanted to chat with Gary Pratt, partner of the Hotel Booze and chummy host at the Black Bear Cafe. Gary was a big bear of a man himself, having a shaggy black beard and a lumbering gait. He was behind the bar when Qwilleran slipped onto a bar stool.

“The usual?” he asked, plunking a mug on the bar and reaching for the coffee server.

“And a bearburger – with everything,” Qwilleran said. The noon rush had not yet started, and Gary had time to lean on the bar in front of his customer. “What are they jawboning about in Pickax today?”

“The bombing. What else?”

“Same here.”

“Any brilliant theories as to motive?”

“Well, folks around Brrr think it has to do with that foreign woman. They’ve seen her sitting on the beach and doing the tourist shops on the boardwalk. That hair of hers is what makes them leery. She’d come in here for lunch, and I’d try to get her into conversation. No dice. Then last Saturday she had dinner with one of our registered guests – a man.”

“What kind of guy?”

“Looked like a businessman – clean-cut and about her age – wore a suit and tie. In Brrr, a suit and tie look suspiciously like the FBI or IRS, so he made folks nervous. He checked into the hotel about five-thirty, which looks like he came up on the shuttle flight and she picked him up at the airport. She drives a rental; we’ve seen it on our parking lot. So, anyway, they had dinner together – sat in a comer booth and talked like long-lost-whatever.”

“Intimately?” Qwilleran asked.

“No.”

“Furtively?”

“Not that either-more like a serious business deal, but every time I took them another glass of wine or walked by with the coffee server, they were talking about the weather. The thing of it is, how much can you say about the weather? One guy around here has it figured out that the bombing was an insurance scam, and she was a plant; it was set up to look like the bomb was meant for her.”

“Gary, can you honestly see that old geezer in Black Creek plotting a sophisticated insurance scam?”

“Not him. They suspect the property management sharpies in Lockmaster. They run the hotel for him. I have a theory myself. It’s common knowledge at the Chamber of Commerce that Lockmaster has been trying to get him to sell. He won’t. You know how the Germans are about property. Well! Now that the building is damaged, he’ll be willing to sell – at their price.”

Qwilleran huffed into his moustache as he reflected that everyone in Moose County considered everyone in Lockmaster to be a crook. Likewise, Lockmaster denizens thought Moose County was populated with hayseeds. Race, color, and creed had nothing to do with this absurd bigotry; it was purely a matter of geography. He said to Gary, “This man wearing a suit and tie – was he swarthy like her?”

“No, he had light skin, reddish hair. They were together the next day, too, and then I think she drove him to catch the Sunday-night shuttle. He checked out around four-thirty-paid his bill with cash. Makes you wonder what he had in his briefcase.”

The bearburger arrived with all the trimmings, and Gary changed the subject to the Labor Day Bike Race. “I didn’t finish – didn’t expect to – but it was fun. Have you heard what’s next? The Pedal Club’s sponsoring a bike-a-thon called Wheels for Meals. It’ll benefit the hot-meal program for shut-ins – our contribution to Explo. Sponsors can pledge anywhere from a dime to a dollar per mile. I figure I’m good for thirty miles. After that, they’ll have to cart me away in the sag wagon.”

“What’s the sag wagon?” Qwilleran asked.

“Just kidding. It’s not an ambulance. It’s a support vehicle with water, energy drinks, first aid, and racks for disabled bikes. No food. No hitchhiking.”

“Okay, I’ll sponsor you.” Qwilleran signed a green pledge card for a dollar a mile. Then he said, “Do you happen to know Aubrey Scotten?”

“Sure. I knew him in high school. I know all the Scotten brothers. They belong to the Outdoor Club. Aubrey comes in for a burger once in a while. Have you met him?”

“Briefly. I’m supposed to interview him about bee-keeping this afternoon. Do you think he’ll make a good subject?”

“Oh, he’ll spout off, all right. Most of the time he’s laid back, but if he likes you, he won’t stop yakking. I don’t know how much of it you’ll be able to use.”

“Can you fill me in on a few things?”

“Such as… ?”

“Is he a reliable authority on beekeeping? Is his honey considered good? Was his hair always snow-white?”

Gary looked uncertain and then decided it was all right to talk to this particular newsman. “Well… about the hair: It happened while he was in the Navy. He had an accident, and his hair turned white overnight.”

“What kind of accident?”

“Some kind of foul-up aboard ship, never really explained. Aubrey got clunked on the head and dumped in the ocean and nearly drowned. In fact, he was a goner when they hauled him out, but he came back to life.

Those Scottens are a tough breed. It changed his personality, though.”

“In what way?”

“For one thing, he’d been a bully in high school, and now he’s a kind-hearted guy who won’t swat a fly! For another thing, he used to work in the Scotten fishing fleet; now he’s terrified of boats, and the sight of a large body of water gives him the screaming-meemies. The Navy gave him an honorable medical discharge and sent him home… Don’t let anyone know I told you all this stuff.” Gary poured another cup of coffee for Qwilleran. “But there was a plus! Aubrey turned into some kind of genius. He can repair anything – anything! He was never that way before. He fixed the big refrigerator here and my stereo at home.”

Qwilleran’s blood pressure was rising; a near-death experience would be more newsworthy than the honey-bee business.

Then Gary said, “Aubrey won’t talk about his accident, and neither will his family – especially not to the media. Some scientists wanted to come up here and study his brain, but his brothers put the kibosh on that scheme in a hurry.”

For the second time in two days, Qwilleran had seen a good lead turn out to be no-story, so… back to the honeybees!

Surrounded by the devastation of Black Creek, the Limburger mansion loomed like a haunted house. Still, Qwilleran thought as he parked at the curb, it could be renovated to make a striking country inn, given a little imagination and a few million dollars. The exterior brickwork – horizontal, vertical, diagonal and herringbone – was unique. The tall, stately windows, with the exception of the Halloween casualty, had stained-glass transoms or inserts of etched and beveled glass.

On the railing of the veranda the row of stones waited for the patient’s return, and the reddish-brown mongrel that had provoked the old man’s accident was still hanging around.

Qwilleran mounted the crumbling brick steps with caution and rang the doorbell. When there was no answer, he walked around the side of the house, saying, “Good dog! Good dog!” The animal nuzzled and whimpered and looked forlorn; Qwilleran wished he had brought some stale doughnuts from the Dimsdale Diner.

“Hello! Hello? Is anyone here?” he shouted in the direction of the weathered shed. The door stood open, and a bulky white-haired figure materialized from the interior gloom. Aubrey seemed bewildered.

Qwilleran said, “I was here yesterday, when Mr. Limburger fell down the steps. I’m Jim Qwilleran, remember? I told you I’d return to ask you all about beekeeping.”

“I di’n’t think you’d come back,” the young man said. “Folks say they’ll come back, and they never show up. A man ordered twelve jars of honey, and I had ’em all packed up in a box. He never showed up. I don’t understand it. It’s not friendly. D’you think it’s a friendly thing to do?” The plaint was recited in a high whining voice.

“Some people don’t have consideration for others,” Qwilleran said with sympathy. “How is Mr. Limburger? Do you know?”

“I just come from the hospital. He was in bed and yellin’ his head off about the food. He likes rabbit stew and pigs’ feet and stuff like that. He likes lotsa fat. I seen him eat a pound of butter, once, like candy. It made me sick.”

Qwilleran pointed to the shed. “Is that part of your honey operation?”

“That’s where I draw the honey off.”

“Do you have any for sale? I’d like to buy a couple of jars.”

“Pints or quarts? I don’t have no quarts. I sold ’em all to Toodle’s Market. Mrs. Toodle is very friendly. She knows my mom.” He disappeared into the dark shed and returned with two oval jars containing a clear, thick amber fluid.

“Why are honey jars always flat?” Qwilleran asked. Cynically he thought, Makes them look like more for the money; makes them tip over easily.

“Flat makes the honey look lighter. Most people want light honey. I don’t know why. I like the dark. It has lots a taste. This is wildflower honey. I took some to Lois, and she give me a big breakfast. Di’n’t have to pay a penny. She give me prunes, turkey hash, two eggs, toast, and coffee.”

Aubrey rambled on until Qwilleran suggested that they sit on the porch and turn on the tape recorder. First, Aubrey had to find something for Pete to eat. Pete was the reddish-brown dog. Qwilleran waited in Limburger’s creaking rocker, which was situated on a squeaking floorboard. He rocked noisily as he thought about the poor old dog, coming every day to be fed at the back door and stoned at the front door – not that the old man ever struck his target. Still, the treatment must have confused Pete, and it was not surprising that he dirtied the brick walk.

When Aubrey appeared, he had walked through the house and come out the front door, carrying a large book which he handed to Qwilleran. It was a very old, leather-bound, gold-tooled Bible with text printed in Old German. The beekeeper explained, “It came from Austria more’n a hunerd years ago. The old man’s gonna leave it to me when he kicks the bucket. The cuckoo clock, too. It di’n’t work, but I fixed it. Wanna see the cuckoo clock? It’s on the wall.”

“Later,” Qwilleran said firmly. “Sit down and let’s talk about bees. Do you ever get stung?”

Aubrey shook his head gravely. “My bees ain’t never stung me. They trust me. I talk to ’em. I give ’em sugar-water in winter.”

“Would they sting me?”

“If you frighten ’em or act unfriendly or wear a wool cap. They don’t like wool. I don’t know why. Bees never sting me. I seen a swarm of wild honeybees go inside an old tree, once. I went to look, and they swarmed allover me. I think they liked me. They was all over my face and in my ears and down my neck. It was a crazy feeling.”

“I’ll bet!” Qwilleran said grimly.

“I went home and come back with an empty hive. I hived the whole swarm. I think they was glad to get a good home. Bees are smart. If there’s an apple tree and a pear tree, they go to the apple tree. It’s got more sugar. The old man don’t like honey. He likes white sugar. I seen him eat a whole bowl of sugar with a spoon, once. It made me sick. Would it make you sick?”

Piecemeal, with numerous digressions, the interview filled the reel of tape: A bee hive was like a little honey factory. Every bee had a job. The workers built honeycombs. The queen laid eggs. The field workers collected nectar and pollen from flowers. They brought it back to the hive to make honey. The door keepers guarded the hives against robbers. The drones didn’t make honey; they just took care of the queen. If the hive got crowded, the drones were thrown out to die.

Qwilleran asked, “How do they get the nectar back to the hive?”

“In their bellies. They carry pollen in little bags on their legs.”

Skeptically Qwilleran asked, “Are you telling me the truth, Aubrey?”

“Cross my heart,” said the big man solemnly. “Wanna see the hives?”

“Only if you lend me a bee veil. They might think my moustache is made of wool.”

“If a worker stings you, he dies.”

“That’s small comfort. Give me a bee veil and some gloves.”

They walked down a rutted trail to the river, where all was quiet except for the rushing of the rapids and the cawing of crows. On the bank stood a shabby cabin with a paltry chimney and a hand pump on a wooden platform at the door. A lonely outhouse stood in a nearby field.

Aubrey said, “My family had six cabins they rented to bass fishermen. Two burned down. Three blew away in a storm. I live in this one. The walls were fulla wild bees, and I hadda smoke ’em out and take off the siding, and underneath the walls were fulla honey.”

As they neared the cabin, Qwilleran became aware of a faint buzzing; he put on the gloves and the hat with a veil. On the south side of the building, exposed to the sun and protected from the north wind, was a row of wooden boxes elevated on platforms – not as picturesque as the old dome-shaped hives pictured on honey labels. The boxes were Langstroth hives, Qwilleran later learned, designed in 1851.

Aubrey said, “The bees do all the work. I take the trays of honeycomb up to the shed and draw the honey off and put it in jars. Those trays get pretty heavy.”

“‘Sounds like sticky business,” Qwilleran said.

“I hadda crazy accident, once. I di’n’t put the jar right under the spout, and the honey ran allover the floor.”

The busy bees paid no attention to the journalist. He spoke quietly and made no sudden moves. “What do they do in winter?”

“They cluster together in the hives and keep each other warm. I wrap the hives in straw and stuff. They can get out if they want, but the mice can’t get in.”

“What about snow?”

“It don’t matter if the hives are buried in snow, but ice-that’s bad. My whole colony was smothered by ice, once.”

It was a fantastic story, if true, Qwilleran thought. He would check it against the bee book at the library. “And now I’d like to see the cuckoo clock,” he said. Truthfully, it was the interior of the mansion that interested him: the carved woodwork, the staghorn chandelier, the stained glass. The furnishings were sparse. The old man had sold almost everything, Aubrey said. Only one room looked inhabited. There were two overstuffed chairs in front of a TV, a large wardrobe carved with figures of wild game, and a gun cabinet with glass doors. The pendulum of the carved clock wagged on the wall.

“Who’s the hunter?” Qwilleran asked.

“The old man shoots rabbits and makes hasenpfeffer. He shoots crows, too. I used to do lotsa hunt’n’ with my brothers. I was a good shot.” He looked away. “I don’t wanna hunt any more.”

The clock sounded cuckoo cuckoo cuckoo, and Qwilleran said it was time to leave. He paid for his honey and left with a new respect for the thick amber fluid. How many bellyfuls of nectar would it take, he wondered, to make a pint of honey?

He propped his purchases in a safe place in his car, where they would not tip or spill. Then he drove to Toodle’s Market to buy something fresh for the Siamese and something frozen for himself. On the way he thought about the industrious workers and the hapless drones… about nature’s way of converting flowers into food without chemicals or preservatives… and about the mild-mannered beekeeper who talked to his bees. Not a word had been said about the hotel bombing, an incident that was on everyone’s tongue.

Arriving at the market, Qwilleran opened his car door and heard a sickening sound as glass broke on concrete pavement in a puddle of amber goo. He looked down at the disaster, then up at the sky and counted to ten.

7

A jar of honey spilled on a parking lot is not as bad as a jar of spilled honey mixed with broken glass. Qwilleran, having made this profound observation, notified Mrs. Toodle, and she summoned one of her grandsons, The three of them marched single file to the scene of the accident, Qwilleran apologizing profusely and Mrs. Toodle thanking him for reporting it, The situation tickled the funny bone of the young Toodle; it was almost as funny as the time he dropped a crate of eggs.

“You’ll have to get every last bit of glass,” his grandmother admonished. “If a dog comes along and licks the spot, he could cut his tongue,” When her back was turned, Qwilleran slipped the young man a generous tip.

“That’s not necessary,” she said, having developed eyes in the back of her head after years of running a supermarket.

He bought some corned beef at the deli counter – enough for the cats’ dinner and a late-night snack for himself, then drove downtown to buy flowers for Polly. At five o’clock she would be venturing out of doors for her first walk since having surgery. He parked in the municipal lot and walked to the florist shop. Downtown Pickax was a three-block stretch of heterogeneous stone buildings: large, small, impressive, quaint, ornate, and primitive. All were relics of the era when the county was famous for its quarries. Together with the stone paving, they gave the town its title: City of Stone. A Cotswold cottage, the Bastille, Stonehenge, and a Scottish castle did business side by side. To Qwilleran, Main Street was Information Highway; friends and acquaintances stopped him to report the latest scandal, rumor, or joke.

Today he bumped into Whannell MacWhannell, the accountant. Big Mac, a burly Scot, greeted Qwilleran with “Aye! There’s a rumor the ‘braw laird of Mackintosh’ has ordered a kilt, tailor-made! You can wear it to Scottish Night at the lodge and the Highland Games in Lockmaster.”

“That is, if I’m’ ‘braw’ enough to wear it at all. It’s supposed to be a surprise for Polly, so don’t spread the rumor.” Even though his mother was a Mackintosh, and even though he had joined the clan as a tribute to her memory, Qwilleran had reservations about appearing in public in a kilt.

The two men stood on the sidewalk and gazed with dismay at the boarded windows of the hotel across the street. “A crying shame!” said the accountant. “It wasn’t a good hotel, but it was all we had, and who knows what’ll happen to it now? The owner’s in the hospital, and the management agency will be dragging its feet. They’re based in Lockmaster, you know, and couldn’t care less about a little creeping blight in downtown Pickax.”

Qwilleran said, “I met the owner just before he had his accident, and he’s eccentric, to say the least. I hope his affairs are in order-legal and financial. I hope he has an attorney, and an estate-planner, and a will.”

“The problem is that no one wants to work with the scoundrel,” Big Mac said. “Our office used to do his tax work, but he was impossible. Didn’t keep records. Wouldn’t take advice. What does one do with a client like that? I’ve forgotten whether we fired him or he fired us. His local attorney bowed out in desperation, too. The Lockmaster agency probably handles all his affairs now. They have my sympathy!”

Main Street was crowded with Saturday shoppers, since there was no mall to lure them from downtown, and they were joined by quite a few sightseers, gawking at the scene of the explosion. Among them was Mitch Ogilvie, dressed more like a farmer than a museum manager.

Qwilleran grabbed him roughly by the arm. “Mitch, you dirty dog! What happened to you? I hear you left the museum. You look as if you’re going to a costume party!” He was wearing grubby denims, field boots, and a feed cap. He had also grown a beard.

“Yeah, I’m working my way up the ladder,” the young man said. “From hotel clerk… to museum manager… to goat farmer! I’m glad I wasn’t working here when the hotel blew up.”

“Yes, but what’s this about goat farming?”

“Kristi started a new herd, and I helped her sell her mother’s antiques. She realized enough to make some big improvements in the house and the farm, so I hired on.”

“Have you learned how to milk goats?”

“Believe it or not, I’m the cheese-maker. I went to a farm in Wisconsin and took a course. The new cheese shop on Stables Row is handling our product. Maybe you’ve seen our label: Split Rail Farm. We got rid of the old white fence, and I built one myself out of split rails.”

“I’ve not only seen your label, I’ve bought your cheese,” Qwilleran said. “I’ve tried the feta and the pepper cheese. Great eating! I’d like to see the cheese operation; I might be able to write about it.”

“Sure! Great! Anytime!” Qwilleran suggested the next afternoon. “That is, if you don’t mind working on Sunday.”

“There are no days off in the goat business, Qwill.” Mitch glanced at the hotel. “But it’s safer than working at the Pickax Hotel… See ya!”

Qwilleran continued on his way to the shop called Franklin’s Flowers. It was across from the hotel and next door to Exbridge & Cobb, Fine Antiques. Susan Exbridge was a handsome match for her upscale establishment. She collected Georgian silver, won bridge tournaments at the country club, received alimony from a wealthy developer, and bought her clothes in Chicago. When Qwilleran happened along, she was standing on the sidewalk, critiquing a display she had just arranged in the window.

Stealing up behind her and disguising his voice, he said, “There’s a wrinkle in the rug, and the lamp shade is crooked.”

She saw his reflection in the glass and turned quickly. “Darling! Where have you been all summer? The town has been desolate without you!” As one of the more flamboyant members of the theatre club, she over dramatized.

“It’s been a hectic summer in many ways,” he explained.

“I know. How’s Polly?” The two women were not warm friends, but they observed the civilities, as one is required to do in a small town.

“Improving daily. We have to find her a place to live. Her apartment is being swallowed up by the college campus. Temporarily she’s staying with her sister-in- law.”

“Why don’t you and Polly – ” she began.

“Our cats are incompatible,” he interrupted, knowing what she was about to suggest.

They discussed the possibilities of Indian Village, a complex of apartments and condominiums on the Ittibittiwassee River. There were nature trails; the river was full of ducks; the woods were full of birds.

“The quacking and chirping sometimes drive me up the wall,” Susan said, “but Polly would love it.” There was a tinge of snobbery in her comment. In Indian Village, the bridge-players never went birding, and the bird-watchers never played bridge. Some day, Qwilleran thought, he would write a column on cliques in Moose County. He might lose a few friends, but it was a columnist’s duty to stir things up occasionally.

Susan opened the front door. “Come in and see my new annex.”

The premises always gleamed with polished mahogany and shining brass, but now an archway opened into a new space filled with antiques of a dusty, weathered, folksy sort.

“Do you recognize any of those primitives?” she asked. “They were in Iris Cobb’s personal collection, and I never had a place to display them until the store next door was vacated. I rented half of it, and Franklin Pickett took the other half. Honestly, he’s such a pill! He always wants to borrow antique objects for his window display, but he never offers a few flowers for my shop.”

In the archway a rustic sign on an easel announced: THE IRIS COBB COLLECTION. Qwilleran noted a pine cupboard, several milking stools, benches with seats made from half-logs, wrought-iron utensils for fireplace cooking, an old school desk, some whirligigs, and a faded hand hooked rug with goofy-looking farm animals around the border. He picked up a basket with an openwork weave that left large hexagonal holes. It had straight sides and was about a foot in diameter. He questioned the size of the holes.

“That’s a cheese basket,” Susan explained. “They’d line it with cheesecloth, fill it with curds, and let it drip. It belonged to a French-Canadian family near Trawnto Beach. They were shipwrecked there in 1870 and decided to stay. They raised dairy cattle and made their own cheese until the farmhouse was destroyed by fire in 1911. The daughter was able to save the cheese basket and that hooked rug. She still had them when she died at the age of ninety-five.”

Qwilleran gave her a stony stare. “You should be writing fiction, Susan.”

“Every word is true! Iris recorded the provenance on the catalogue card.”

Qwilleran shrugged a wordless apology to the memory of the late Iris Cobb. She had been an expert on antiques and a wonderful cook and a warm-hearted friend, but he had always suspected her of inventing a provenance for everything she sold. “And what is that?” he asked, pointing to a weathered wood chest with iron hardware.

“An old sea chest,” Susan recited glibly, “found in an attic in Brrr. It had been washed up on the beach following an 1892 shipwreck and was thought to belong to a Scottish sailor.”

“Uh huh,” Qwilleran said skeptically, “and there was a wooden leg in the chest thought to belong to Long John Silver. How much are you asking for the cheese basket and the chest? And are they cheaper without the provenance?”

“Spoken like an experienced junker,” she said. “Because you’re an old friend of dear Iris, I’ll give you a clergyman’s discount, ten percent. She’d want you to have it.”

Qwilleran grunted his thanks as he wrote the check, thinking that dear Iris would have given him twenty percent. He said, “I don’t suppose her personal cookbook turned up, did it?”

“I wish it had! Some of my customers would mort- gage their homes to buy it! The book was a mess, but the recipes she had developed were priceless. She kept it in that old school desk, but by the time I was appointed to appraise the estate, it was gone.”

“It was left to me in her will, you may recall-a joke, I presume, because she knew I was no cook and never would be.”

“I hate to say this,” Susan said, “but I think it was taken by one of the museum volunteers. There were seventy-five of them – on maintenance, security, hosting, cataloguing, etc. Mitch Ogilvie was the manager then, and he put a notice in the volunteers’ newsletter, pleading for its return-no questions asked. No one responded…. I’ll have my man put a coat of oil on the sea chest for you, Qwill, and deliver it to the barn.”

Qwilleran left with his cheese basket and visited the florist next door, pushing through a maze of greeting cards, stuffed animals, balloons, chocolates, and decorated mugs to reach the fresh-cut flowers.

“Hello, Mr. Q,” said a young clerk with long silky hair and large blue eyes. “Daisies again? Or would you like mums for a change?”

“Mrs. Duncan has an overriding passion for daisies and unmitigated scorn for mums,” he said sternly. “Why are you pushing mums? Did your boss buy too many? Or does he get a bigger markup on mums?”

She giggled. “Oh, Mr. Q, you’re so funny. Most people like mums because they last longer, and we have a new color.” She showed him a bouquet of dark red. “It’s called vintage burgundy.”

“It looks like dried blood,” he said. “Just give me a bunch of yellow daisies without that wispy stuff that sheds all over the floor.”

“You don’t want any statice?” she asked in disbelief. “No statice, no ribbon bows, no balloons.” Then, having asserted himself successfully, he relented and said in a genial tone, “You had some excitement across the street yesterday.”

She rolled her expressive blue eyes. “I was paralyzed with fright! I thought it was an earthquake. My boss was in the back room working on a funeral, and he was as scared as I was.” She added in a whisper, although there was no one else in the shop, “The police have been here, asking questions. The man that planted the bomb bought some flowers from us.”

“Did you see him?”

“No. I was in the back room working on a wedding. Mr. Pickett waited on him. He bought mums in that new color.”

“Well, tell your boss to stock up on vintage burgundy. There’ll be a run on it when the public discovers it was the bomber’s choice. Don’t ask me why. It’s some kind of wacky mass hysteria.”

Somewhat behind schedule – because of the spilled honey and the unplanned meetings on Main Street and the purchase of the antiques – Qwilleran hastily chopped corned beef for the Siamese. The salty meat seemed to give them a special thrill. Then they inspected the cheese basket on the coffee table, its open weave making a crisp lineal pattern on the white surface.

“We will not chew this basket!” Qwilleran warned them. “It belonged to Mrs. Cobb. You remember Mrs. Cobb. She used to make meatloaf for you. Her basket deserves your respect.”

Koko sniffed it and walked away with the bored attitude of a cat who has sniffed better baskets in his time. Yum Yum tried it on for size, however, and found it a perfect fit. She curled into it with her chin resting on the rim, a picture of contentment.

Qwilleran drove to Gingerbread Alley and found Polly dressed for her first walk but apprehensive. “I know it’s silly to feel this way, but I do,” she said apologetically.

“One turn around the block, and you’ll be ready for another,” he predicted. He gave her the flowers.

“Daisies!” she cried. “They’re the smiley faces of nature! Looking at them always makes me happy. Thank you, dear.” She deposited them casually into a square, squat vase of thick green glass that showed off the crisscrossed stems. “Daisies arrange themselves. One should never fuss with them.”

Qwilleran noted a large pot of mums in the entrance hall. “Unusual color,” he remarked.

“It’s called vintage burgundy. Dr. Prelligate sent them. Wasn’t that a thoughtful gesture?”

He huffed into his moustache. Previously, Polly had thought the man good-looking, charming, and intellectual; now he was thoughtful as well. Obviously he was trying to keep Polly from moving out of her on-campus apartment-all the more reason why she should relocate in Indian Village.

They walked down the street slowly, hand-in-hand. She said, “You know the neighbors will be watching and circulating rumors. In Pickax hand-holding in public is tantamount to announcing one’s engagement.”

“Good!” Qwilleran said. “That’ll give them something else to think about besides the hotel bombing.” He did most of the talking as she concentrated on her breathing and posture. He described his interview with Aubrey and the mysteries of honey production. “The poet hit the nail on the head when he wrote about the murmuring of innumerable bees.”

“That was Tennyson,” Polly said. “Perfect example of onomatopoeia.”

“I won a fourth-grade spelling bee with that word once,” he said. “They gave me a dictionary as a prize. I would have preferred a book about baseball.”

“How are Koko and Yum Yum?”

“They’re fine. I’m reading Greek drama to them – Aristophanes right now. They like The Birds… For sport Koko and I play Blink. We stare at each other, and the first one to blink pays a forfeit. He always wins, and I give him a toothful of cheese.”

“Bootsie won’t look me in the eye,” Polly said. “He’s very loving, but eye contact disturbs him.”

The excursion was more therapeutic than social, and Polly was glad to return to her chair in the Victorian parlor. Lynette was busy in the kitchen, preparing a spaghetti dinner for the new assistant pastor of their church. Qwilleran was invited to make a fourth, but he was meeting Dwight Somers at Tipsy’s Tavern.

Meanwhile, he went home and read some more Aristophanes to the Siamese. “Do you realize,” he said to them, “that you’re two of the few cats in the Western world who are getting a classical education?” They liked the part about Cloud-Cuckoo-Land, where the birds built a city in the sky. He embellished the text with birdcalls as he read about thirty thousand whooping cranes flying from Africa with the stones; curlews shaping the stones with their beaks; mud-larks mixing the mortar; ducks with feet like little trowels doing the masonry; and woodpeckers doing the carpentry. Yum Yum purred, and Koko became quite excited.

Tipsy’s Tavern in North Kennebeck was a roadhouse in a sprawling log cabin-with rustic furnishings, bustling middle-aged waitresses, noisy customers, and a reputation for good steaks. Dwight ordered a glass of red wine, while Qwilleran had his usual Squunk water from a local mineral spring.

“Do you really like that stuff!’ Dwight asked. “I’ve never tasted it.”

“It’s an acquired taste.” Qwilleran raised his glass to the light, then sniffed it. “The color should be crystal clear; the bouquet, a delicate suggestion of fresh earth.” He sipped it. “The taste: a harmonious blend of shale and clay with overtones of quartz and an aftertaste of… mud.”

“You’re losing it!” his dinner companion said.

Chiefly they talked about the plans for the Explo. The bombing had hurt morale downtown, but Dwight had jacked up the hype, and merchants were rallying around. That was the commercial aspect of Explo. There was more. He said:

“The K Fund, frankly, is afraid of being perceived as a year-round Santa Claus. That’s why they’re encouraging community fund-raising for charity. They’re matching, dollar for dollar, all the money raised by the celebrity auction, bike-a-thon, pasty bake-off, etc. All proceeds will go to feed the needy this winter. There’ll be more hardship than usual because of the financial scandal in Sawdust City.”

“Who are the celebrities to be auctioned?” Qwilleran asked.

“The idea is to have five bachelors and five single women. In some cases, the dinner-date package will include a gift. Everything is being donated by restaurants, merchants, and other business firms. The public will pay an admission fee – high enough to discourage idle sightseers – and that’ll add a couple of thousand to the take.”

“Who’s the auctioneer?”

“Foxy Fred. Who else? He’s donating his services, and you know how good he is! People will have lots of fun… Here’s a list of the packages being offered.” He handed Qwilleran a printout.

1 – Dinner and dancing at the Purple Point Boat Club with Gregory Blythe, investment counselor and mayor of Pickax.

2 – Transportation by limousine to Lockmaster for a gourmet dinner at the five-star Palomino Paddock with interior designer Fran Brodie.

3 – Portrait-sitting at John Bushland’s photo studio and a picnic supper on his cabin cruiser, catered by the Nasty Pasty.

4 – A cocktail dress from Aurora’s Boutique and dinner at the Northern Lights Hotel with Wetherby Goode, WPKX meteorologist.

5 – A boat ride around the off-shore islands and dinner at the exclusive Grand Island Club with Elizabeth Hart, newcomer from Chicago.

6 – An afternoon of horseback riding on private bridle paths and dinner at Tipsy’s with Dr. Diane Lanspeak, M.D.

7 – A motorbike tour of the county and a cook-out at the State Park with Derek Cuttlebrink, former chef at the Old Stone Mill.

8 – A poolside afternoon at the Country Club and dinner in the club gazebo with Hixie Rice, vice president of the Moose County Something.

9 – An all-you-can-eat feast and acoustic rock concert at the Hot Spot with Jennifer Olsen, the theatre club’s youngest leading lady.

Qwilleran read the list, nodding at the choices and chuckling a couple of times.

Dwight asked, “How does it strike you? Have we covered the bases? We included Derek and Jennifer to get the young crowd. Derek’s groupies will attend en masse, screaming.”

“He’s not a former chef at the Old Stone Mill,” Qwilleran said. “He’s a former busboy, who spent two months in the kitchen mixing coleslaw. Girls like him because he’s six-feet-eight-and an actor.”

Dwight was making notes. “Got it! Any other comments?”

“Everything else looks good. It’s well known that Elizabeth Hart has a trust fund worth millions; that’ll up the bidding… Greg Blythe will go over big. Bidders will expect to get some hot investment tips as well as the Boat Club’s famous Cajun Supreme, which is really carp.”

“How does Dr. Diane’s package hit you, Qwill?”

“She’s a personable and intelligent young woman, and everyone likes Tipsy’s steaks, but not everyone cares for riding. Are substitutions allowed?”

“You mean, like a complete set of blood tests and an EKG? I doubt it. But we’re advertising the auction in Lockmaster, and their horsy crowd will be up here, bidding.”

Then Qwilleran said, “Wait a minute! You have only nine packages on this list.”

“Precisely why I’m buying your dinner tonight,” Dwight said slyly. “Check this out for number ten: A complete makeup and hair styling at Brenda’s Salon, prior to dinner at the Old Stone Mill with popular newspaper columnist, Qwill Qwilleran.”

The popular columnist hemmed and hawed.

“You’re an icon in these parts, Qwill – what with your talent, money, and moustache. Women will bid high to get you! Bidders would fight even to eat tuna casserole at the bombed-out hotel with the richest bachelor in northeast central United States. Fran Brodie will attract high-rollers, too. She’s a professional charmer; the Paddock is self-consciously expensive; and the limousine will be driven by the president of the department store in a chauffeur’s cap.”

Qwilleran nodded with amusement. “That’s Larry’s favorite shtick. Where are you getting the limousine?”

“From the Dingleberry Brothers, provided they don’t have an out-of-town funeral.”

When the steaks arrived, Qwilleran had time to consider. Actually the adventure would be material for the “Qwill Pen.” The twice-a-week stint was ceaselessly demanding, and readers were clamoring for three a week. Down Below, in a city of millions, it would be easy, but Moose County was a very small beat. Finally he said, “I hope we don’t have to stand up in front of the audience like suspects in a police lineup.”

“Nothing like that,” Dwight assured him. “We’ve booked the high school auditorium, and there’s a Green Room where the celebrities can sit and hear the proceedings on the PA. Onstage there’ll be an enlarged photo of each celebrity, courtesy of Bushy. After each package is knocked down, the winner and celebrity will meet onstage and shake hands – amid applause, cheers, and screams, probably.”

“I’m glad you explained all this, Dwight. It gives me time to disappear in the Peruvian mountains before auction night.” He was merely goading his friend. Finally he said, “Let me congratulate you, Dwight, on your handling of Explo – and not just because you’re buying my steak.”

“Well, thanks, Qwill. It was a big job. Only one thing worries me. The timing of the explosion at the hotel could not have been worse; it gives ‘Explo’ a bad connotation. I can’t help wondering if there’s an element in the county that opposes our celebration of food. Nowadays we have anti-everything factions, but can you imagine anyone being anti-food?”

“The cranks are always with us,” Qwilleran said, “hiding behind trees, peeking around corners, going about in disguise, and plotting their selfish little schemes.”

When Qwilleran arrived home, it was dark, and the headlights of his car picked up a frantic cat in the kitchen window – leaping about wildly, clawing at the sash – his howls unheard through the glass. Qwilleran jumped from his car, rushed to the back door, and fumbled anxiously with the lock. In the kitchen, a single flick of the switch illuminated the main floor, and Koko flew to the lounge area. Qwilleran followed. There, on the carpet, Yum Yum appeared to be in convulsions, lashing out with all four legs, trying to turn herself inside out. Her tiny head was caught in one of the holes of the cheese basket. The more she fought the wicker noose, the greater her panic.

Qwilleran was in near-panic himself. He shouted her name and tried to grab her, but she was a slippery handful. Going down on his knees, he seized the basket with one hand and held it steady, at the risk of hurting her. With the other hand he captured her squirming flanks and squeezed her body between his knees. How could he withdraw her head without tearing her silky ears? It was impossible. Incredibly, she realized he was trying to help, and her body went limp. Murmuring words of assurance, he broke the strands of dry wicker with his free hand, one after the other, until her head could be freed from the trap.

She gulped a few times as he clutched her to his chest, massaged her ears, and called her his little sweetheart. “You gave us a scare,” he said. After a few moments, Yum Yum wriggled out of his arms, licked a patch of fur on her breast, gave one tremendous shudder, and went to the kitchen for a drink of water.

8

On Sunday morning the church bells rang on Park Circle – the sonorous chimes of the Old Stone Church and the metallic echo of the Little Stone Church.

Earlier in the morning, Qwilleran had received a phone call from Carol Lanspeak, who lived in fashionable West Middle Hummock. She and Larry drove into town every Sunday with garden flowers for the larger, older, grander of the two places of worship. This time they were bringing a new couple to church, recently arrived from Down Below: J. Willard Carmichael and his wife, Danielle.

“He’s the new president of Pickax People’s Bank, a distinguished-looking man and a real live wire,” Carol said. “His wife is much younger and a trifle – well – flashy.. But she’s nice. It’s a second marriage for him. I think you’d like to meet Willard, Qwill, and they’re both dying to see your barn.”

Qwilleran listened patiently, waiting for her to come to the point.

“Would you mind if we stopped at the barn after the service – for just a few minutes?”

Qwilleran could never say no to the Lanspeaks. They were a likable pair – not only owners of the department store but enthusiastic supporters of every civic endeavor. “I’ll have coffee waiting for you,” he said.

“Then we’ll skip the coffee hour at the church and see you about twelve-fifteen. Your coffee is better, anyway. Strong, but better.”

It was to her credit that she liked his coffee. Some of his best friends made uncomplimentary remarks about its potency. It was, as Carol said, strong!

To the Siamese, Qwilleran said, “I want you guys to be on your best behavior. Some city dudes are coming to visit. Try not to act like country bumpkins. No picking of pockets! No untying of shoelaces! No cat fights!” Both of them listened soberly, Koko looking elegantly aristocratic and Yum Yum looking sweetly incapable of crime.

When the Lanspeaks’ car eventually pulled into the parking area, Qwilleran pressed the button on the automated coffee maker and gave the visitors a few minutes to admire the barn’s exterior before going out to greet them. They were introduced as Willard and Danielle from Detroit.

“Grosse Point, really,” she said. They had an urban veneer, Qwilleran noticed. It was evident in the suavity of their manner, the sophistication of their dress and grooming, and the glib edge to their speech. He invited them indoors.

Carol said, “We’ve brought you some flowers from our garden…. Larry, would you bring them from the trunk?”

It was a pot of mums, blooming profusely.

“Thank you,” Qwilleran said. “Unusual color.”

“Vintage burgundy,” Larry said.

Indoors there were the usual gasps and exclamations as the newcomers viewed the balconies, ramps, lofty rafters, and giant white fireplace cube. The Siamese were sitting on top of it, looking down on the visitors with bemused whiskers.

“Handsome creatures,” said Willard. “When we’re settled, I’d like to get a couple of Siamese. Is there a local source?”

“There’s a breeder in Lockmaster,” Qwilleran said with a lack of endorsement, referring to the friend of Polly’s who had introduced the belligerent Bootsie into his peaceful life.

Danielle, who had been silently staring at the famous moustache, spoke up, “I’d rather have a kinkajou. They have sexy eyes and yummy fur.” Her rather tinny voice reminded Qwilleran of the sound track of early talkies. The other members of the party looked at her wordlessly.

“Shall we have coffee in the lounge?” he suggested. As he served, he was thinking that Danielle was hardly Moose County’s idea of a banker’s wife – or even a Sunday churchgoer; her dress was too short, her heels too high. Everything about her was studiously seductive: her style, her glances, her semidrawl, her flirtatious earrings. Dangling discs twisted and flashed when she moved.

“And what brings you people to the north woods?” he asked.

The husband, who seemed to be in mid-life, said, “I’ve reached the stage of maturity where one appreciates the values of country living. Danielle is still looking back, like Lot’s wife, but she’ll adapt… Won’t you, sweetheart?”

Sweetheart was pointedly silent, and Qwilleran filled the void by asking her for her first impression of Pickax.

“Well, it’s different!” she said. “All those farmers! All those pickup trucks! And no malls! Where do people go to shop?”

He glanced at the Lanspeaks, who wore sickly smiles. “We have an excellent department store downtown,” he said, “and quite an assortment of specialty shops. We’re old-fashioned. We like the idea of shopping downtown.”

The banker said, “I’m surprised that mall developers Down Below haven’t latched on to this county. There’s a lot of undeveloped land between here and the lakeshore.”

Qwilleran thought, This guy’s dangerous. He said, “That land was owned by the wealthy Klingenschoen family and is now held in trust by the Klingenschoen Foundation-with a mandate to preserve its natural state in perpetuity.”

“I don’t care. I like malls,” Danielle announced. “I lived in Baltimore before I married Willard.”

“Ah! Home of the Orioles! Are you a baseball fan?”

“No. Football is more exciting.”

Carol said, “Danielle has stage experience, and we’re hoping to get her into the theatre club.”

Sure, Qwilleran thought; she could play Lola in Damn Yankees. “Where are you living?”

“In Indian Village until our house is ready. We bought the Fitch house in West Middle Hummock – the modem one. I really love the neat modem stuff in this barn. It’s exciting.”

“Thank you, but all the credit goes to Fran Brodie, a designer at Amanda’s studio on Main Street.”

“I’ll have to go and see her. Our house needs a lot of doing-over. Nobody lived there for three years. It’s funny, but it was built for another banker-but he died.”

Qwilleran thought, For your information, sweetheart, he was murdered.

The sharp edge of her voice was disturbing the Siamese on the fireplace cube; they were getting restless. Carol too may have reacted to the tension in the air and Danielle’s sultry glances beamed in Qwilleran’s direction. She said, “Qwill,

I’ve been meaning to ask you: How’s Polly?” She turned to the Carmichaels. “Polly Duncan is a very charming woman whom you’ll meet eventually – head of the Pickax Public Library. Right now she’s recovering from surgery…. How soon will she be back in circulation, Qwill?”

“Very soon. I’m taking her for a walk every day.”

“Take her to the Scottish Bakery for afternoon tea.

She’ll love the scones and cucumber sandwiches.”

There was increased activity on top of the fireplace cube. Koko stood up and stretched in a tall hairpin curve, then swooped down onto the Moroccan rug that defined the lounge area. Yum Yum followed, and while she checked the banker’s feet for shoelaces, Koko walked slowly toward Danielle with subtle intent. She was sitting with her attractive knees crossed, and Koko started sniffing her high-heeled pumps as if she had a nasty foot disease or had stepped in something unpleasant. He wrinkled his nose and bared his fangs.

“Excuse me a moment,” Qwilleran said, and grabbed both cats, banishing them to the broom closet, the only suitable detention center on the main floor.

When he returned to the group, Larry said, “We have something we’d like to discuss with you, Qwill. The recent financial disaster in Sawdust City is going to leave hundreds of families and retirees with no hope of a Christmas, and the Country Club is undertaking to buy food, toys, and clothing for them. We’re planning a benefit cheese-tasting; you’ve probably heard about it. Sip’n’Nibble will supply the cheese and punch at cost, and Jerry and Jack will sort of cater the affair.”

A yowl came from the broom closet as Koko heard a familiar word.

“We were wondering how much to charge for tickets, when our new financial wizard came up with an idea. You explain it, Willard.”

“It doesn’t take a wizard to figure it out,” the banker said. “The lower the ticket price, the more tickets you sell – and the more cheese the purchasers consume. You’re better off to charge a higher price and attract fewer people. Your revenue remains the same, but your costs are lower. After all, you’re doing this to raise money for charity – not to serve a lot of cheese.”

Another round of yowls came from the broom closet. Larry said, “We were planning to hold the event at the community hall until my dear wife came up with another idea. Tell him, Carol.”

“Okay, it’s like this. We could charge even more for tickets if we had the cheese-tasting in a really glamorous place. There are people in Moose County who’d give an arm and a leg to see this barn – especially in the evening when the lights are on. It’s enchanting.”

“You could ask one hundred dollars a ticket,” the banker suggested.

It crossed Qwilleran’s mind that the K Fund could write a check to finance all the Christmas charities, but it was healthier for the community to be involved. He said, “Why not charge two hundred dollars and limit the number of guests? The higher the price and the smaller the guest list, the more exclusive the event becomes.” And, he mused, the less wear and tear on the white rugs.

“In that case,” said Willard, “why not make it black tie and increase the price to three hundred?”

“And in that case,” Larry said, “we would have two punch bowls, one of them spiked.”

There were sounds of thumping and banging in the broom closet and an attention-getting crash.

“We’d better say goodbye,” Carol said, “so the delinquents can get out of jail.”

Qwilleran was heartily thanked for his hospitality and his generosity in offering the use of the barn. “My pleasure,” he mumbled.

Larry pulled him aside as they walked to the parking area and said, “The Chamber of Commerce has formed an ad hoc committee to inquire into the future of the hotel. We can’t afford to have a major downtown building looking like a slum. Not only that, but the city needs decent lodging. The owner is in the hospital, possibly on his death bed. His management firm in Lockmaster is suspect – as to capability and, let’s face it, honesty. The committee will go to Chicago to petition the K Fund to buy the hotel, either from the owner or from his estate. I hope you approve.”

“Excellent idea!” Qwilleran said. “But when it comes to renovating the interior, we don’t want any Chicago decorators coming up here and telling us what to do.”

All his guests had parting words. Carol whispered, “Koko’s shoe-sniffing act was a riot!”… The banker said, “Let’s have lunch, Qwill.”… The banker’s wife said, “I love your moustache!”

They drove away, and Qwilleran released two poised animals from a closet cluttered with plastic bottles, brushes, and other cleaning equipment knocked off hooks and shelves. Cats, he reflected, had a simple and efficient way of communicating; they were the inventors of civil disobedience. As for Koko’s impudent charade with Danielle’s shoe, it might be one of his practical jokes, or it might be a sign of a personality clash.

As Qwilleran drove to the goat farm later that afternoon, he remembered only its shabbiness. Now it was registered as a historic place.

The Victorian frame building was freshly painted in two tones of mustard, set off by a neat lawn and a split rail fence. A bronze plaque gave the history of the farm built by Captain Fugtree, a Civil War hero. New barns had been added, goats browsed in the pastures, and a new pickup truck stood in the side drive.

The former hotel clerk and museum manager came out to greet him, looking like a man of the soil. “Kristi will be sorry to miss you. She’s in Kansas, showing one of her prize does.”

Qwilleran complimented him on the condition of the farm and asked about some shaggy dogs in the pasture with the goats.

“A Hungarian breed of guardian dog,” Mitch said. “Do you notice a difference in the new herd? We’re specializing in breeds that give the best milk for making the best cheese – two hundred of them now.”

“Does Kristi still give them individual names?”

“Absolutely-names like Blackberry, Moonlight, Ruby, and so on, and they answer to their names. Goats are intelligent – also very social.”

They were walking toward a large, sprawling barn- new, but with a weathered rusticity that suited the landscape. One side was open like a pavilion, its floor spongy with a thick covering of straw. Several does of various breeds and colors were lounging, mingling sociably, and amusing themselves as if it were a vacation spa. Hens strutted and pecked around a patient Great Dane, and a calico cat napped on a ledge. Qwilleran took some pictures. Two members of the sisterhood nuzzled his hand and leaned against his legs; a half-grown kid tried to nibble his notebook. This was the holding pen; from here the does would go into the milking parlor, fourteen at a time.

The rest of the barn had white walls, concrete floors hosed down twice a day, stainless-steel vats and tanks, and computerized thermometers. Here the milk was cooled, then pasteurized, then inoculated with culture and enzymes; later the curds would be hand-dipped into molds. This was the French farmstead tradition of cheese-making, using milk produced on the site.

“Sounds like a lot of work,” Qwilleran observed. “It’s labor-intensive, that’s for sure,” Mitch said. “I mean, feeding and breeding the goats, milking two hundred twice a day, plus making the cheese. But there’s a lot of joy in goat-farming, and I’ll tell you one thing: The does are easier to get along with than some of the volunteers at the museum. The old-timers resented a young guy with new ideas… Want to go to the house and taste some cheese?”

They sat in the kitchen and sampled the farm’s chevre – a white, semisoft, unripened cheese. Mitch said, “It’s great for cooking, too. I make a sauce for fettucine that beats Alfredo’s by a mile!”

“You sound like an experienced cook,” Qwilleran said. “You could say so. It’s always been my hobby. I was collecting cookbooks before I owned my first saucepan. I do more cooking than Kristi does.”

“Does she still have ghostly visitors during thunderstorms?”

“No, the house isn’t so spooky now that the clutter’s gone and the walls are painted. We’re thinking of getting married, Qwill.”

“Good for you!” That was Qwilleran’s ambiguous response to all such announcements. “By the way, do you remember the furor over the disappearance of Iris Cobb’s cookbook?”

“I sure do. I thought it was quietly lifted by one of the volunteers, and I had an idea who she was, but it would have been embarrassing to accuse her, and I didn’t have proof.”

Qwilleran went home with a variety of cheeses: dill, garlic, peppercorn, herb, and feta. On the way back to the barn he pondered the fate of the Cobb recipe book. If it could be recovered, he would have the K Fund publish it for sale, the proceeds going to an Iris Cobb memorial. He could envision a chef’s school in conjunction with the college, drawing students from all parts of the country and sending graduates to five-star restaurants. What a tribute it would be to that modest and deserving woman! The Iris Cobb Culinary Institute!

It was pie in the sky, of course. Whoever swiped it probably destroyed it after cannibalizing the best recipes. Everyone thought the culprit was a museum volunteer; no one ever suggested that the culprit may have been the museum manager.

9

The electronic chimes of the Little Stone Church clanged their somber summons on Monday morning as hundreds of mourners flocked to the memorial service for Anna Marie Toms. Many were strangers. It was Moose County custom to attend funerals, for whatever reason: sympathy for the survivors, neighborly compassion, curiosity, grim sociability, or just something to talk about all week. Qwilleran walked to the Park Circle to see what was happening. The traffic jam was more than the local police could handle, and state troopers were assisting.

The crowd overflowed the church. Onlookers clustered on adjoining lawns and filled the circular park that divided Main Street into northbound and southbound lanes. Among them were persons that Qwilleran thought he identified as plainclothes detectives from the SBI. He also noticed a misplaced apostrophe in signs carried by Anna Marie’s fellow students from Moose County Community College.

ANNA MARIE WE LUV YA

LENNY WER’E WITH Y A

He had his camera and took snapshots to show Polly. A detective asked for his identification. Photographers from the Moose County Something and the Lockmaster Ledger were busy. The afternoon papers would carry their first coverage of the Friday bombing, and they would go all out.

From there Qwilleran walked downtown to the newspaper office and handed in his Tuesday copy. He said to Junior Goodwinter, “I saw Roger and Bushy at the memorial service. The Ledger was covering it, too.”

“Yeah, we’re giving it the works. But, do you know what? You’ll never believe this, Qwill. Franklin Pickett, the florist, was in here an hour ago, trying to make a deal. He’s the one who sold the flowers to the bombing suspect, and he wanted us to buy his story! I told him no thanks and suggested he try the Ledger!” The young managing editor exploded with laughter. “I even gave him the address. I told him to ask for the editor in charge of checkbook journalism. He wrote it all down.”

“You have a wicked sense of humor,” Qwilleran said. “Well, the Ledger is always dumping their rejects on us, you know. They sent us the guy with the talking pig – right after we’d carpeted the city room! Everyone knows how pigs are!”

Qwilleran chuckled at the recollection. “So… what are you doing on the front page, Junior?”

“Police releases are minimal, as usual, but we’ve got man-on-the-street stuff, photos, and a computer sketch of the suspect based on witnesses’ descriptions and supplied by the SBI. He’s a white, fortyish, clean-shaven male, Qwill, so that lets you off the hook.”

“Thanks. I was worried.”

“Then we’ve got a sidebar on the history of the hotel, courtesy of good old Homer. Jill is at the memorial service right now, trying to get a sappy feature story. Roger went to the hospital, hoping to get an interview with Gustav Limburger, but the old crab threw a bedpan at him. Roger also contacted the realty firm in Lockmaster that manages the hotel, but they weren’t talking to the media.”

“What about the mystery woman? Wasn’t her room the target?”

“Yeah. Ona Dolman, her name is. At least, that’s the way she registered. She’s skipped, though. Left without checking out. Didn’t have any luggage to come back for, that’s for sure. Owes for five nights. Ona Dolman is also the name she used at the car rental and the library and on traveler’s checks. There’s no evidence that she used a credit card or personal checks anywhere… So we’ve been busy! How did you spend your weekend?”

“Just scrounging material for my column. Did you talk to any hotel employees?”

“We buttonholed Lenny at the scene, but the police wouldn’t let him talk. The chef was chummy with Ona Dolman, according to one of the waitresses. After the blast he picked himself up off the floor, grabbed his knives, and took off! Probably went back to Fall River, Massachusetts. Sounds as if he knows something about Dolman that the rest of us don’t know. Anyway, the police will be checking him out. Frankly, I hope he stays in Fall River.”

After talking with Junior, Qwilleran made the rounds of the newspaper offices, where his twice-weekly visits were always welcomed as if he were handing out ten-dollar bills. He wanted to have words with Arch Riker, but the publisher was still at lunch. His secretary, Wilfred, said, “He’s been gone a couple of hours, so he should be back soon. Are you sponsoring anybody in the bike-a-thon, Mr. Q?”

“If you’re riding, I’m sponsoring. I always back a winner,” Qwilleran said as he signed a green pledge card for a dollar a mile.

Next he picked up his fan mail from the office manager, who delighted in handing it to him personally. He knew her only as Sarah, a small woman with steel-gray hair and thick glasses, who had never married. Junior called her “Qwill’s number one fan.” She memorized chunks of the “Qwill Pen” and quoted them in the office; she knew the names of his cats; she crocheted catnip toys for them. For his part, Qwilleran treated Sarah with exaggerated courtesy and suffered good-natured ribbing in the cityroom about his “office romance.”

“Would you like me to slit the envelopes for you, Mr. Q? There are quite a few today.” She kept a record of his columns according to topic, plus a tally of the letters generated by each one. She was able to say that cats and baseball were his most popular topics.

“Sarah,” he said sternly, “if you don’t stop calling me Mr. Q, you’ll lose your job. It’s a condition of employment here that you call me Qwill.”

“I’ll try,” she said with a happy smile.

“And yes, I’d appreciate it if you’d slit the envelopes.”

Next, Hixie Rice beckoned to him from the promotion department. “Sit down,” she said. “We have a problem to discuss. Did you see the teasers on the Food Forum in last week’s editions? We haven’t been getting any results – not one!”

“I remember seeing them,” he said. “Show me a copy to refresh my memory.” The announcement, which looked more like an ad than a news item, read:

ATTENTION! FOODlES!

Do you have questions about food, cooking, or nutrition?

Are you hunting for a particular recipe?

Would you like to share one of your own? Do you have any pet peeves about food, or food stores, or restaurants?

THE FOOD FORUM IS FOR YOU!

Send us your queries, quips, beefs, and suggestions.

We want to hear from you.

They’ll be printed in the

Food Forum on the food page every Thursday.

Hixie said, “Is there something wrong with our readers? Or is there something wrong with us?”

Qwilleran considered the questions briefly. “Well, first of all, our readers may not know what a foodie is. Second, they may not want to be called foodies. Third, you don’t state whether their names will be used. Mostly, I would say, they don’t quite get the idea, or they’re waiting for someone else to start it. This is not Down Below; this is four hundred miles north of everywhere.”

“What are you saying, Qwill? That we should run a dummy column on the first food page?”

“Something like that – to prime the pump… Why are you looking at me like that, Hixie? I see a sudden happy expression of premeditated buck-passing.”

“Would you do it, Qwill? Would you write some fake letters with fake signatures? You’d be good at it.”

“Are you implying that fakery is my forte? I’ve always left that to the advertising profession.”

“Ouch! I don’t care. Hit me again. Just do this one favor for me, and I’ll be forever grateful. The Food Forum was my idea, and I’d hate to have a complete flop.”

At that point Wilfred interrupted; the boss had returned.

“Okay, Hixie, I’ll see what I can do,” Qwilleran said. “And don’t let anyone on the staff know,” she cautioned him.

“No problem. I’ll hand in my copy disguised as a box of chocolates.”

He was still in a bantering mood when he went into the publisher’s office. “Were you having another power lunch?” he asked. “Or was it a three-Scotch goof-off?”

Riker rebuked him with a frown. “I was having an important luncheon with the editor in chief of the Lockmaster Ledger.”

“At the Palomino Paddock? Who paid?”

There was another scowl. “The Ledger is giving full coverage to the bombing, and we both think it’s a two-county story. We’re sharing sources. We also discussed the hostility and prejudice that exists between the two counties. We should be working for the same goals instead of sniping at each other at every opportunity.”

“Let’s not get too brotherly,” Qwilleran said. “Sniping is the spice of life.”

“Since you’re feeling so good,” Riker said, “how’d you like to take on an extra assignment – in a pinch?”

Qwilleran’s flippancy switched to wariness. “Like what?”

“Wednesday night’s the opening session of Mildred’s series of cooking classes for men only, and the course is a sellout. We should have a reporter there.”

“What’s the matter with Roger? He’s on nights this week.” Roger MacGillivray was a general assignment reporter married to Sharon Hanstable, Mildred’s daughter.

“Sharon is assistant demonstrator for the course, so Roger has to stay home and baby-sit Wednesday night,” Riker explained. Then his usually bland expression changed to a roguish one. “However, Roger could cover the story, and you could baby-sit. Or Sharon could stay home with the kids, and you could help Mildred with the demonstration.”

Gruffly Qwilleran said, “Tell Roger to stay home. What time does the class start? Where’s it being held?”

“Seven-thirty at the high school, in the home ec department. Take a camera.”

“What’s the deadline?”

“Thursday noon, firm. Earlier if possible.”

“What is Mildred going to teach these guys? How to make grilled cheese sandwiches?”

Riker ignored the remark. “Most men who signed up want to master one or two specialties, like barbecued spare ribs or Italian spaghetti. If I do say so myself, I make a memorable stuffed cabbage, but nothing else.”

“How come I’ve known you since kindergarten and never tasted your memorable stuffed cabbage?”

Shrugging off the question, Riker went on. “Some of the requests made by the class are meatloaf, Oriental stir-fry, pan-fried trout, Swiss steak, and so on.”

“Okay, Arch. If I do this for you,” Qwilleran said, “you owe me one.”

“Any time you say, friend.”

On the way out of the building, Qwilleran picked up a paper from a bundle that had just come from the printing plant. The headline read: SEARCH TWO COUNTIES FOR BOMB MURDERER. He planned to read it with his lunch at Lois’s.

Lois herself was waiting on tables. “Is that today’s paper?” she asked. “Is Lenny’s picture in it?”

Qwilleran scanned the front page, the carry-over on three, and the photo spread on the back page. “Doesn’t look like it,” he said, “but Lenny had his picture in the paper when he won the silver, and I imagine he looks better in a helmet than a bandage. How’s he doing?”

“Not good. He’s down in the dumps. Him and Anna Marie were gonna get married, you know… What’ll it be for you today, besides three cups of coffee?”

He ordered a Reuben sandwich and reserved a piece of apple pie, one of Lois’s specialties that sold out fast. While waiting for the sandwich, he perused the paper. There were photos of the shattered interior of room 203; the fallen chandelier lying on the reservation desk; the hotel exterior, windowless and draped with debris. There was also a photo of Anna Marie copied from her driver’s license, found in her handbag in the employees’ locker room.

Of unusual interest was the computer-composite of the suspect’s probable likeness, this being the first time such a technical advance had appeared in the local paper. It would also be running in the Lockmaster Ledger, and the good folk of two counties would carry it around and peer suspiciously into every passing face.

The lead story was set in large type, giving it importance and concealing the embarrassing truth that there was little to report that was not already generally known:

Law enforcement agencies are combing two counties in their search for the suspect who allegedly planted a bomb in the New Pickax Hotel, killing one employee, injuring two others, and causing extensive property damage. The explosion occurred Friday at 4:20 P.M.

No guests were on the premises at that time.

Pronounced dead at the scene was Anna Marie Toms, 20, of

Chipmunk, a part-time housekeeping aide at the hotel and nursing student at Moose County Community College.

Desk clerk Leonard Inchpot, 23, of Kennebeck sustained a head injury when a chandelier dropped from a ceiling above the registration desk. Manager

Isabelle Croy of Lockmaster was thrown to the floor in her second-floor office. Both were treated at the

Pickax Hospital and released.

“Several members of the staff were shaken up,” said Croy. “Because it was late Friday afternoon, all the commercial travelers had checked out, and the dinner hour hadn’t started yet. We feel terribly upset about Anna

Marie. She was new and trying so hard to do a good job.”

Major damage occurred at the front of the building on the second floor, with the bomb allegedly planted in room 203.

A police spokesperson said that a white, middle aged, clean-shaven man entered the hotel at approximately four o’clock to deliver what he said was a birthday gift and also a bouquet of flowers for the occupant of 203. Shortly after, Toms was seen entering the room with a vacuum cleaner “because the flowers had made a mess on the rug,” Croy said. The explosion occurred within minutes.

PPD chief Andrew Brodie said, “A couple of thousand bombings are reported in the U.S. every year. Dynamite and blasting caps and other components of homemade bombs are easy to buy, and too many nuts out there have the know-how. You can even make a bomb with fertilizer.”

Room 203 had been occupied for the last two weeks by a woman registered as Ona

Dolman of Columbus, OH. She has not been seen since the bombing. A spokesperson at the airport reported that a woman using that name returned a rental car at 5:20 P.M. Friday and boarded the shuttle flight to Minneapolis.

The Moose County Something has not been able to locate anyone of that name in Columbus, OH.

Local police are being assisted in the investigation by detectives, bomb experts, and forensic technicians of the SBI, as well as the sheriff departments of Moose and

Lockmaster counties.

The photo of room 203 was a scene of incredible destruction: walls gouged, doors ripped off, ceiling panels hanging down, and furnishings shredded and flung about the room like confetti. Qwilleran read the lead story twice; there was no mention that the desk clerk allowed the stranger to take the gift upstairs himself. Then Qwilleran wondered, If the “clean-shaven” stranger had worn a shaggy beard and long hair, and if he had been carrying a six-pack of beer instead of flowers, would he have been allowed to go up to 203? He also wondered about the manager’s remark that commercial travelers checked out Friday afternoon. Did that fact have anything to do with the timing of the explosion? If the Lockmaster management firm had indeed plotted the incident, as some believed, did the in-house manager (from Lockmaster) suggest the best time to pull it off?

There was more on the front page. A bulletin stated: “Do not open gifts or other unexpected packages delivered to your home or place of business-if the sender is unknown. Play it safe! Contact the police!”

A human interest anecdote with an ironic twist was included as a sidebar:

After the “birthday gift” had been delivered to room 203, the desk clerk notified the kitchen that it was Dolman’s birthday, and the chef, Karl Oskar, prepared to bake her a birthday cake. He was mixing the batter when the bomb exploded, and both he and the batter ended up on the floor.

Qwilleran finished his lunch and went to Amanda’s Design Studio to speak with Fran Brodie. The designer was cloistered in a consultation booth with an indecisive client and a hundred samples of blue fabric. Fran saw him and made a grimace of desperation, but he signaled no-hurry and ambled about the shop. He liked to buy small decorative objects once in a while, partly to please the daughter of the police chief.

When Fran finally appeared at his elbow, he was examining a pair of carved wooden masks painted in garish colors. “That woman!” she muttered. “She’s a sweet little lady, but she can never make up her mind. She’ll come back tomorrow with her mother-in-law and again on Saturday with her husband, who couldn’t care less. He’ll point to a sample at random and say it’s the best, and she’ll place the order…. What do you think of my Sri Lanka masks?”

“Is that what they are? I’d hate to meet one of them in a dark alley,” They were mythical demons with wicked fangs, bulging eyes, rapacious beaks, and bristling headdresses.

“By the way,” Fran said, “you made a big hit with the new banker’s wife. She came in this morning, and all she could talk about was you and your barn. She thinks you’re charming. She loves your voice. She loves your moustache. Don’t let Polly hear about Danielle; she’ll have a relapse. But thanks for giving me credit for the barn, Qwill. She’ll be a good customer. She hates blue.”

“Did you sign her up for the theatre club? I hear she’s had stage experience.”

“Well… yes. She was a night-club entertainer in Baltimore. Her stage name was Danielle Devoe… Is that today’s paper you’re carrying?”

“Take it. I’ve read it. There’s nothing new,” he said. “You probably know more than the newspaper.”

“I know they’ve run a check on Ona Dolman. Her driver’s license is valid, but there’s no such address as the one she gave the hotel. The suspect was described as wearing a blue nylon jacket and a black baseball cap with a ‘fancy’ letter D on the front. He got into a blue pickup behind the hotel.”

Qwilleran thought, Nine out of ten males in Moose County drive blue pickups and wear blue jackets; they also wear high-crowned farm caps advertising fertilizer or tractors. Baseball caps are worn chiefly by sport fishermen from Down

Below. The suspect’s black one sounds like a Detroit Tigers cap; the letter D is in Old English script.

To Fran he said, “I think I’ll take these hideous masks. Would you gift-wrap them and deliver them to Polly on Gingerbread Alley? I’ll write a gift card.”

Dubiously the designer said, “Will she like them? They don’t represent her taste in decorative objects.”

“Don’t worry. It’s a joke.” On the card he wrote: “A pair of diet deities to bless your kitchen: Lo Phat and Lo Psalt.”

10

As Qwilleran fed the cats on Tuesday morning, a hundred questions unreeled in front of his brain’s eye:

Who had bombed the hotel – and why? Would he strike again?

What would happen to the hotel now? Would it ever be restored? Was this the beginning of the end for downtown Pickax?

Were mall developers from Down Below implicated in the bombing? Did they want to see the demise of downtown shopping?

What was J. Willard Carmichael’s true reason for moving to Moose County? Did Pickax People’s Bank have an interest in promoting mall development?

And what about Iris Cobb’s cookbook? Would it ever be found?

And what about the Food Forum? Was it just another; of Hixie’s harebrained ideas? Why should he waste his time dummying a column for her when he had problems of his own?

Feeding words and thoughts into the bottomless maw of the “Qwill Pen” was one problem. Feeding two fussy felines was another, more immediate, more exasperating problem. They had been on a seafood binge, and he had stocked up on canned clams, tuna, crabmeat, and cocktail shrimp. Today they were turning up their wet black noses at a delicious serving of top-quality red sockeye salmon with the black skin removed.

“Cats !” he muttered. Koko was the chief problem, having spent his formative years in the household of a gourmet cook. That cat wanted to order from a menu every day! Yum Yum merely tagged along with her male companion. She was the type of cat who could live on love: stroking, hugging, sweet words, a ready lap.

Qwilleran found himself yearning for other times, other places – when Iris Cobb was his housekeeper, when he lived in Robert Maus’s high-class boarding house, when Hixie was managing the Old Stone Mill and sending the busboy over with cat-sized servings of the daily specials, He was aware of the conventional wisdom: If they get hungry enough, they’ll eat it. But he, unfortunately, was the, humble servant of two sovereign rulers, and he knew it. He admitted it. What was worse, they knew it.

Qwilleran left the two plates of untouched salmon on the kitchen floor in the feeding station and went to breakfast at Lois’s, knowing she often had interesting leftovers in the refrigerator, waiting to go into the soup pot. It was raining, so he drove his car.

He sat in his favorite booth and ordered pancakes. Lois’s son was serving. The rather large adhesive bandage on his forehead indicated that he had looked up when the bomb exploded and the chandelier dropped.

“Will you be able to ride in the bike-a-thon Sunday?” Qwilleran asked him.

“I don’t much feel like it, but everybody tells me I should.” Lenny Inchpot had the lean and hungry look of a bike racer, the neatly groomed look of a hotel clerk, and the stunned look of a young man facing tragedy for the first time.

“If you bike, I’ll sponsor you at a dollar a mile.”

“Take it!” Lois shouted from the cash register. “Give him a green card!” It was not really a shout; it was Lois’s usual commanding voice.

Qwilleran asked Lenny, “What’s the best place to get some good pictures?”

“About a mile south of Kennebeck, where the road runs between two patches of woods. Know where I mean? We’re just starting out – no drop-outs – no stragglers. It’s some sight! You see a hundred bikers come over the hill! The paper’s gonna print a map of the route on Friday, and everybody knows that’s the best place to shoot, so get there early. Take a lotta film. There’s a prize, you know, for the best shot.”

As they talked, Qwilleran felt someone staring at them from a nearby table. It proved to be a husky man with a pudgy face and long white hair. He was eating pancakes.

“Good morning,” Qwilleran said. “How are the flapjacks today?”

“They’re good! Almost as good as my mom’s. Lois always gives me a double stack and extra butter. I bring my own honey. D’you like honey on flapjacks? Try it. It’s good.” The beekeeper leaned across the aisle, offering Qwilleran a plastic squeeze bottle shaped like a bear-cub.

“Thank you. Thank you very much… How is Mr. Limburger? Do you know?”

“Yeah. I took him a jar of honey yesterday, and he threw it at the window, so I guess he’s feeling pretty good. Coulda broke the glass. He wants to come home. The doctor says: No way!”

Qwilleran dribbled honey on his pancakes and staged a lip-smacking demonstration of enjoyment. “Delicious! Best I’ve ever tasted!” Then he noticed the front page of Monday’s newspaper on Aubrey’s table. “What did you think of the hotel bombing?”

“Somebody got killed!” the beekeeper said with a look of horror on his face. He stared at his plate briefly, then jumped up and went to the cash register.

“Aubrey, don’t forget your honey!” Qwilleran waved the squeeze bottle.

The man rushed back to the table, snatched it, and left the lunchroom in a hurry.

Lenny ran after him in the rain. “Hey, you forgot your change!”

Lois said, “What’s the matter with him? He didn’t even finish his double stack.”

“He’s wacko from too many bee stings,” her son said. “Well, you wash his table-good! It’s all sticky… How’d you like the flapjacks, Mr. Q?”

“Great! Especially with honey. You should make it available to your customers.”

“Costs too much.”

“Charge extra.”

“They wouldn’t pay.”

“By the way, Lois, could I scrounge a little something for the cats? Tack it on to my check.”

“Don’t be silly, Mr. Q. I always have a handout for those two spoiled brats. No charge. Is ham okay?”

With a foil-wrapped package in the trunk of his car, Qwilleran drove to the public library for a conference with Homer Tibbitt, but the aged historian was not to be found in his usual chair. Nor was he in the restroom, taking a nip from his thermos bottle. One of the clerks explained that rainy weather made his bones ache, and he stayed home.

A phone call to the retirement village where the nonagenarian lived with his octogenarian wife produced an invitation. “Come on over and bring some books on lake shipwrecks. Also the file on the Plensdorf family.” At ninety-five-plus, Homer Tibbitt had no intention of wasting a morning.

The historian was sitting in a cocoon of cushions for his back, knees, and elbows when Qwilleran arrived. “I need all this padding because I’m skin and bones,” he complained. “Rhoda’s trying to starve me to death with her low-fat-this and no-fat-that. I’d give my last tooth for a piece of whale blubber.”

“Homer, dear,” his wife said sweetly, “you’ve always been as thin as a string bean, but you’re healthy and productive, and all your contemporaries are in their graves.” She served Qwilleran herb tea and some cookies that reminded him of Polly’s dietetic delight.

He said to Homer, “Under these circumstances, my mission today may prove painful. I want to know what food was like in the old days, before tenderizers and flavor-enhancers.”

“I’ll tell you what it was like! It tasted like food! We lived on a farm outside Little Hope when I was a boy. We had our own chicken and eggs, homemade bread made with real flour, milk from our own cow, homegrown fruit and vegetables, and maple syrup from our own trees. I never even saw an orange or banana until I went away to normal school. That’s what they called teacher training colleges in those days. I never found out why. Rhoda thinks it’s a derivation from the French… What was I talking about?”

“The food you ate on the farm.”

“Our fish came from Black Creek or the lake, and sometimes we butchered a hog. Anything we didn’t eat we took to Little Hope and exchanged for flour, sugar, and coffee at the general store.”

“And calico to make dresses for your womenfolk,” Rhoda added.

Qwilleran asked, “What happened when the mines closed and the economy collapsed?”

“With no jobs, there was no money for food, and no market for our farm produce. We all tightened our belts.”

Rhoda said, “Tell him about the rationing in World War One.”

“Oh, that! Well, you see, sugar was in short supply, and in order to buy a pound of it, we had to buy five pounds of oatmeal. We ate oatmeal every day for breakfast and sometimes dinner and supper. I haven’t eaten the stuff since! After the war I went away to school and I discovered fancy eating, like creamed chicken and peas, and prune whip. I thought that was real living! Then I came home to teach, and it was back to boiled dinners, squirrel pie, fried smelt, and bread pudding. What a letdown! Then came the Great Depression, and we majored in beans and peanut butter sandwiches.”

Qwilleran said, “You haven’t mentioned the foremost regional specialty.”

The Tibbitts said in unison, “Pasties!”

“If you write about them,” Homer said, “tell the green horns from Down Below that they rhyme with nasty, not hasty. You probably know that Cornish miners came here from Britain in the mid-nineteenth century. Their wives made big meat-and-potato turnovers for their lunch, and they carried them down the mine shaft in their pockets. They’re very filling. Takes two hands to eat one.”

Rhoda said, “There’s disagreement about the recipe, but the real pasty dough is made with lard and suet. I don’t approve of animal fat, but that’s the secret! The authentic filling is diced or cubed beef or pork. Ground meat is a no-no! It’s mixed with diced potatoes and rutabagas, chopped onion, salt and pepper, and a big lump of butter. You put the filling on a circle of dough and fold it over. Some cooks omit the rutabagas.”

Qwilleran said., “There’s a Pasty Parlor opening in downtown Pickax on Stables Row.”

“Unfortunately,” she said, “pasties are no longer in our diet. Homer and I haven’t had one for years… Have we, dear?”

They turned to look at the historian. His chin had sunk on his chest, and he was sound asleep.

Having been briefed in Pasty Correctness by the knowledgeable Tibbitts, Qwilleran went to Stables Row to check out the Pasty Parlor, not yet open for business. Behind locked doors there were signs of frantic preparation, but he knocked, identified himself, and was admitted. A bright young couple in paint-spattered grubbies introduced themselves as the proprietors.

“Are you natives of Moose County?” he asked, alI though he noted something brittle about their appearance and attitude that indicated otherwise.

“No, but we’ve traveled up here on vacations and eaten a lot of pasties, and we decided you people need to expand your horizons,” the young man said. “We made a proposal to the K Fund in Chicago and were accepted.”

“What was your proposal?”

“A designer pasty! Great-tasting! Very unique! Choice of four crusts: plain, cheese, herb, or cornmeal. Choice of four fillings: ground beef, ham, turkey, or sausage meat. Choice of four veggies: green pepper, broccoli, mushroom, or carrot – besides the traditional potato and onion, of course. Plus your choice of tomato, olive, or hot chili garnish – or all three – at no extra charge.”

“It boggles the mind,” Qwilleran said with a straight face. “I’ll be back when you’re open for business. Good luck!”

From there he hurried through the rain to Lori Bamba’s brainchild: The Spoonery. It was not yet open for business, but the energetic entrepreneur was lettering signs and hanging posters. He asked her, “Are you serious about serving only spoon-food?”

“Absolutely! I have dozens of recipes for wonderful soups: Mulligatawny, Scotch broth, Portuguese black bean, eggplant and garlic, and lots more. Soup doesn’t have to be boring, although I’ll have one boring soup each day for the fuddy-duddies.”

“What does your family think about it?”

“Nick’s very supportive, although he’s working hard at the turkey farm. My kids are taste-testing the soups. My in-laws are helping set up the kitchen… How are Koko and Yum Yum? I haven’t seen them since Breakfast Island.

“They’re busy as usual, inventing new ways to complicate my life.”

Lori said with her usual exuberance, “Do you know what I read in a magazine? Cats have twenty-four whiskers, which may account for their ESP.”

“Does that include the eyebrows?”

“I don’t know. They didn’t specify.”
<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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