Riker threw him a sour look. “Don’t forget I’m your boss.”
“Don’t forget I’m your financial backer.” The Moose County Something had been made possible by a loan from the Klingenschoen Fund, engineered by Qwilleran behind the scenes. “And if you don’t start spelling my name right in my column, the interest rate is going up.”
“I apologize. We gave the typesetter twenty lashes and an hour to get out of town.” Riker looked around the porch. “Where’s that supercat? Has he read any minds lately? Predicted any crimes? Sniffed out any dead bodies?”
“Mostly he’s too busy being a cat-laundering his tail, chattering at squirrels, eating spiders-all that kind of stuff. But yesterday he tore up the front page of your newspaper, Arch. That should tell you something about the Something. He may be protesting the number of typos.”
Koko was a legend among newsmen Down Below-the only cat in the history of journalism to be an honorary member of the Press Club. In addition to feline curiosity and Siamese intelligence he possessed an intuition that could put him on the scent of a crime. With a sniff here and a scratch there he could dig up information that astounded humans who had to rely on brainpower alone.
“He would have made a great investigative reporter,” Riker said. “We always had cats at home, but never any to compare with Koko. I think it has something to do with his whiskers. He has a magnificent set of whiskers.”
“Yes,” Qwilleran agreed quietly, stroking his ample moustache.
Riker leaned forward suddenly and squinted at a small mound of sawdust on the porch floor. “You’ve got carpenter ants!”
“Carpenter what?”
“Ants that chew their way through old wood. You’d better get a fumigator out here.”
Qwilleran groaned. He envisioned another call to Glinko.
Riker misunderstood the reaction. “Well, you don’t want the porch to fall down around your ears, do you? You should get a carpenter out here to examine the logs.” Qwilleran groaned again. “Let me tell you about the joys of living in a seventy-five-year-old log cabin-the perfect summer place, as you call it.” He explained the Glinko system, described the couple who operated it, and recounted the visits of Joanna Trupp. “Three visits from a plumber in four days!”
“Sounds to me as if she goes for your moustache,” Riker said. “You know how women react to that brush on your lip! Are you going to take her to lunch?’”
Qwilleran ignored that quip. “It sounds to me as if the whole Glinko network is a racket. I’ll know more at the end of the summer. If my suspicions are correct, the Something should run an expose!”
“Put Koko on the investigation,” the editor said with a grin.
“I’m serious, Arch! The whole operation stinks!”
“Oh, come on, Qwill! You’re making a mountain out of a molehill. You’d suspect your own grandmother.”
Qwilleran shifted his position uncomfortably.
“What’s the matter? You’re doing a lot of wriggling tonight. I think the porch posts aren’t the only place you’ve got ants.”
“They’re insect bites that itch like hell,” Qwilleran said testily. “About a dozen bites in one spot, and they don’t go away.”
His friend nodded wisely. “Spider bites. Our kids used to get them at summer camp. They last about a week.”
At that moment Koko swaggered onto the porch with a show of authority and stared pointedly at Qwilleran.
“Excuse me while I feed the cats,” he said. “Mix yourself another drink, Arch, and then we’ll go into town for dinner.’”
The resort town of Mooseville was two miles long and two blocks wide, strung out along the shoreline at the foot of the sandbluffs.
“One of these days,” Riker predicted, “some horny buck will chase a sexy doe across the top of that hill, and all that sand will come sliding down. We’ll have another Pompeii. I only hope it’s on our deadline.”
At the village limits the lakeshore highway became Main Street, with the municipal docks, a marina, and the Northern Lights Hotel on the north side.
Across the street were civic buildings and business establishments built entirely of logs, or concrete poured to resemble logs. Post office, town hall, bank and stores acted out the charade, and only the Shipwreck Tavern deviated from civic policy. The town’s noisiest and most popular bar occupied what appeared to be the wooden hull of a beached ship.
Qwilleran said, “We’ll stop at the tavern for a quickie and then go over to the hotel to eat.”
The interior of the bar emulated the hold of an old sailing vessel with sloping bulkheads and massive timbers, but instead of creaking hull, slapping waves, and singing whales, the sound effects were of television, jukebox, video games, and shouting, laughing patrons.
“Like the pressroom at the Fluxion!” Riker yelled. “Who are they?”
“Tourists! Summer people! Locals!” Qwilleran shouted back.
A busy waitress with a talent for lip-reading took their order: one martini straight-up with an anchovy olive, and one club soda with a lemon twist. When the bartender received the order, he waved in the direction of their table. Only Qwilleran ever ordered club soda with a twist.
Excusing himself, Qwilleran ambled over to the crowded bar to wedge in a few words with the man who was pulling beer. What followed was a pantomime of frowns, head-shaking, shrugs, and other gestures of helplessness.
“What was that?” Riker shouted.
“Tell you later.’”
A whiskered old man in a battered naval cap lurched into the tavern and climbed on a stool; the nearby barflies moved away.
“Who’s that?” “
“Antique dealer!” Qwilleran pointed out another colorful ancient in overalls-red-cheeked, bright-eyed, nimble as a monkey. “Gravedigger!”
They were soon blasted out of the Shipwreck Tavern and across the street to the hotel, where the dining room was so quiet, Riker complained, that it hurt his ears. Plastic covers on the tables and paper bibs on the customers identified it as spaghetti night.
“Now I’ll explain,” said Qwilleran. “That perfect summer place of mine that you admire so much is too small for everyday living. I want to build a small addition. IVe talked to Hasselrich, and it’s approved by the estate, but now comes the problem: finding a builder.”
“That shouldn’t be difficult,” said Riker. “The county has some big contractors.”
“Unfortunately they’re tied up with major projects in the warm months, and they won’t take a small job. The summer people have to resort to itinerant carpenters who drive into town in rusty crates and live in tents.”
“Are they licensed?”
“They get away without a license because they’re a necessary evil. The township looks the other way.”
“I never heard of such a thing!”
“There are plenty of things you never heard of, Arch, until you came to Moose County. It’s like living on another planet… Speaking of planets, do you hear any talk about UFOs?”
“Occasionally from the wire services, but that’s old stuff.”
“I mean-have you heard reports of recent activity over the lake?”
“No,” said the editor with amused interest. “Are there rumors?”
“The summer people discuss visitors from outer space the way you talk about the Chicago Cubs. Why don’t you assign Roger to do a story?”
“Why don’t you do the story yourself? It’s your lead.”
“I’m a nonbeliever. You and I know it’s some kind of meteorological phenomenon, but Roger swears it’s interplanetary, and Mildred acts as if she’s on first-name terms with the crews.”
The salad was crisp, the garlic bread was crusty, and the spaghetti was al dente. “It’s the best thing they do,” Qwilleran said. “All the locals come on Mondays. They let the tourists have the gray pork chops and gray baked potatoes and gray broccoli on the other nights.”