"Could I! You know me, Chief! I'll go there with one of the junior trainees. Is there anything special I should look for, besides grease spots?"
"I don't imagine Iris ever put her name on it. If she did, no doubt it's been obliterated. But first you should look for almost illegible handwriting. Next you might look for certain recipes that made her a legend in her time, like butter pecan ginger snaps and lemon coconut squares. She also had a secret way with meatloaf and macaroni and cheese."
"Oh, this will be fun!" She rummaged in her large handbag for a notepad and made a few jottings. "If it turns out to be Mrs. Cobb's book, how will you go about getting it?"
"That's the difficulty. In a small town you don't send a cop with a search warrant and a court order to seize stolen property - especially when the suspect is a prominent woman who has a dinner date with the mayor... Although - off the record, Celia - the mayor himself has a few shadows falling across his illustrious past."
"Oh, this town is a hoot!" Celia squealed with laughter. "Somebody should write a book!... But look! It's getting dusk. I should get home before it's dark in the woods." She gathered up her large handbag and struggled to rise from the deep cushions of the sofa.
"Better check your handbag for stowaways," Qwilleran suggested, noticing that one cat was missing from the top of the fireplace cube. He escorted her to her car and then returned to check out the Siamese. Yum Yum had jumped down from the cube and was doing extravagant stretching exercises. Koko was sitting in front of the refrigerator, staring at the door handle. Inside, the frozen turkey was still hard as a rock.
The next morning a delegation arrived at the barn on official business. They were there to discuss arrangements for the cheese-tasting party: the two men from Sip'n'Nibble, who were catering the event; Hixie Rice as volunteer publicist; Carol Lanspeak and Susan Exbridge, representing the Country Club. The male-dominated service organization had recently voted to allow women members to serve on committees.
"Not because they were suddenly conscious of women's rights," Susan explained dryly, "but because they need help with their projects."
"So true!" Carol said.
Jerry Sip and Jack Nibble, who had never seen the barn before, were overwhelmed by its size and rustic contemporary magnificence. The main floor was a hundred feet across, minus the space occupied by the fireplace cube, and living areas on all sides of the cube were roomy, to say the least.
"This is some place!" Jack said, "We can handle a hundred people here without a hitch. We'll have the punch bowls on the dining table and set up two eight-foot folding tables on either side - for the cheese service. With white tablecloths, of course."
"And flowers," Susan added. "For the dining table I'm bringing two very tall silver candelabra and a silver bowl for a low arrangement of fall flowers. They're corning from a florist in Lockmaster. I ordered several arrangements from Franklin a week ago, but now... his shop is full of police, and all his plants and flowers are dying, and no one knows exactly what's going on."
Carol said, "I hear the body is being shipped to his home town in Ohio. It's all too dreadful!"
There was a moment of respectful silence. Then Qwilleran asked about parking. "With a hundred guests there could be as many as fifty cars."
"Guests will park in the theatre lot," Carol explained, "and jitneys from County Transport will deliver them to the party. We purposely scheduled it for after-dark, because the exterior of the barn looks so spectacular under the floodlights, and the interior looks magical. The whole evening is going to be gala! I've special-ordered several evening dresses for my customers, and if the merchandise doesn't come in today's delivery, I'm in deep trouble!"
"Do you think I should lock up the cats?" Qwilleran asked.
"No, let them mingle with the guests. They're a delightful addition to a party - so elegant, so well-behaved."
He uttered a grunt of doubt. "Who'll be guarding the sixteen running feet of cheese table? We're talking about cheese bandits here."
"No problem," said Jack Nibble, the cheese maven. "A bunch of students will be coming from the college to help serve, pick up empties, and all that."
"And what kind of punch are you serving?"
"None of your sissy-pink punches," said Jerry Sip. "The non-alky bowl will have three kinds of fruit juices plus a slug of strong cold tea and a dash of bitters. With the tea and the cranberry juice, it'll have a good color. The wine punch is amber-colored, like Fish House punch but nowhere near as potent."
"Smoking prohibited, I assume?" "Definitely!" said Hixie, who had become militantly anti-tobacco since giving up cigarettes herself.
Carol said, "The hosts who greet people and hand out programs will also circulate and be sure no one lights up. The programs list the cheeses being served."
"Yow!" came a loud comment from the kitchen, Jack and Jerry, startled, turned their heads quickly in that direction.
"That's only Koko," said Qwilleran. "He always has to put in his nickel's worth, no matter what the conversation...
Well, it looks as if you've covered all the bases."
"Everything will run smoothly," said Jack. "Trust me."
And Carol added, "Everyone will have a perfectly fabulous time." Then, as the delegation was leaving, she said to Qwilleran, "Your dinner date was at the store as soon as we opened the doors this morning. Sarah wanted something special to wear. She bought a rust-colored silk with a Chanel jacket piped in black, and we're doing rush alterations for her."
Hixie also had a private comment to make to him as she handed him an advance copy of the program. "This should remind you of a cheese-tasting you and I went to Down Below. You were covering it for the Daily Fluxion, and you invited me."
He nodded. "It was held at the Hotel Stilton, and you wore a hat with vegetables on it."
"My God!" she said, rolling her eyes. "The things I wore when I was young and foolish! We've both come a long way since then, baby!"
Having said goodbye to the group, Qwilleran found Koko sitting in front of the refrigerator in rapt concentration, as if willing the door to fly open and the turkey to fly out. "Sorry, old boy," he said. "You'll have to wait a couple of days. How about a read instead?" He waved the program for the cheese-tasting.
With mumbles of appreciation, the Siamese ran to their positions: Koko jumping on the arm of Qwilleran's favorite chair and Yum Yum waiting patiently for his lap to become available. First he read the preface aloud. It said that cheese is mentioned in the Bible and in Shakespeare's plays, and that there are hundreds of different cheeses in the world today. It said that tonight's event would feature imports from nine countries. It said that those selected could be considered the Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms of the cheese world.
At each mention of cheese, Koko responded with an emphatic yowl.
"What is this? The Anvil Chorus?" Qwilleran complained. "I appreciate your interest, but your comments get boring after a while." It occurred to him that Koko might confuse "cheese" with "treat," or even "read." He wondered if a cat's ear is tuned to vowels and not consonants. As a test he tried using the French word for cheese:
"If Roquefort is considered the king of fromages, Cheddar must surely be the Houses of Parliament. The centerpiece on each fromage table tonight is a large wheel of Cheddar, one from Great Britain and one from Canada. Even so, be sure to sample all twenty fromages in this unique adventure in tasting."
Koko yowled at every mention of fromage, leading Qwilleran to conclude that the cat was not comprehending words; he was reading minds, and the extra whiskers were probably responsible.
The program then listed the twenty cheeses with country of origin and kernels of information: