"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."