What did you call that cheese?"
"GruyŠre."
"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 GruyŠre.
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."