The Cat Who Said Cheese

14

Following his interview with Elaine and his enlightening conversation with Polly, Qwilleran hurried home to the barn. He waved at Celia Robinson, getting out of her red car in front of the carriage house. He looked into the sea chest at the back door - empty! He let himself in and went directly to the telephone without even speaking to the welcoming cats. He called Celia.

"Hi, Chief!" she hailed him in her usual cheerful manner. "Were you trying to reach me earlier? I've been out all day. I sang in the choir and then served at the coffee hour. Then Virginia Alstock took me to dinner with her folks, and we took them for a ride. It was a beautiful day! Did you do something special?"

"No, I'm just a working stiff," he said. "I did an interview out in West Middle Hummock. That's why I'm calling. Do you happen to know a Donald Fetter?"

"Sure! I know Donald very well. He's a subscriber to Pals for Patients. He's confined to a wheelchair, you know. It was an auto accident. His father was killed, and he'll never walk again. His mother says he was driving too fast on those winding roads and hit a tree. He's quite young. Why did you ask?"

"It's a long story - too long for the phone. Why don't' you hop into your car and drive down here before dark? I have some new cheese for you to try - "

"Isn't that funny?" she interrupted. "I was just thinking about you when you called. Virginia gave me a new recipe for macaroni and cheese, and - "

"If you need a guinea pig, I'm willing to volunteer. Meanwhile, I may have a new assignment for you."

"Whoops!" she cried in her youthful way. "Give me ten minutes to feed Wrigley, and I'll be right there."

Qwilleran hung up and turned to the Siamese, who had heard the word cheese and were waiting in anticipation. "Our neighbor is coming for a conference, and I want you two heathens to behave like civilized human beings. Or, at least, civilized beings," he corrected himself. He arranged a cheese board for his guest and gave the cats a crumble or two: Havarti for Yum Yum, feta for Koko.

While waiting for Celia, he played the tape of his interview with the Mushroom Queen, as he now thought of her, uncharitably. She gave evasive answers to some questions and textbook answers to others, never striking a personal note. She never said, "I maintain the humidity" or "We inoculate the logs."

Postponing the mushroom column in light of the new information would be an inconvenience, but, for the moment, there was another matter on his mind.

Celia arrived in a flush of smiles. "What's that box outside the door? Where are those good kitties?"

Qwilleran replied, "The kitties, as you call them, are guarding the cheese. The box is a historic sea chest to be used for deliveries of macaroni and cheese if I'm not home."

As she went to the lounge area and dropped her large handbag on the floor at her feet, the Siamese followed her. They knew that handbag! Sometimes it contained a treat. "The autumn color is terrific this year," she said. "Especially on Ittibittiwassee Road. Virginia said it's because of the sharp frost we had... What's the new cheese?"

"Goat cheese from the Split Rail Farm. I wrote about it in my column Friday. This one has garlic... this one is flavored with dill... and that one is fern, quite salty."

"Yow!" said Koko. "When my husband was alive," she said, "we kept a few goats and sold milk to folks in town who had trouble with cow's milk. I loved our she-goats. They're so sweet, the way they look at you with sleepy eyes! I called them April, May, June, and Holiday. The buck was March. My! He was a smelly critter." Celia gazed into space with a bemused expression. "Seems a long time ago." Then she snapped back to the present. "How was the autumn color in West Middle Hummock?"

"Spectacular! I went out there to interview Elaine Fetter about her mushrooms."

"Her mushrooms? Is that what she told you? The whole thing was Donald's idea! He was very depressed until he heard about growing - what do you call them?"

"Shee-tock-ee. They're a Japanese mushroom."

"Well, it gave him something to live for. We send Junior Pals out there, and they help with the heavy work - those big logs, you know, Did you taste the mushrooms? Did you see the kitchen? I wouldn't know how to act in such a big one.

What's his mother like? I only met her once. Donald doesn't get along with her too good."

"She's a prominent club woman and volunteer - accustomed to running the show - somewhat conceited, they say - a gourmet cook - and she's writing a cookbook."

"Did you see the cookbooks she has in her kitchen? I never saw so many!"

"That, madame, is precisely why you are here," Qwilleran said in the declamatory style that always made her laugh.

"Okay. Shoot!" she said merrily. "First, a little background information: Have you heard of Iris Cobb? She died before you moved up here."

"Virginia talks about her. She made wonderful cookies."

"She contributed greatly to the community, but she's chiefly remembered for her cooking, Her collection of personal cooking secrets was left to me in her will, but it disappeared before I could put my hands on it."

"You don't cook, Chief! What good would it do?" "She also left me that pine wardrobe over there, a Pennsylvania German schrank, The cookbook, I think, was supposed to be a joke, but I planned to publish it and donate the proceeds to charity, in her name."

"That's pretty nice, Yes, I like that!" Celia said. "Any notion what happened to it?"

"There are three possibilities: It was in a piece of furniture that was sold to an out-of-state dealer when her apartment was liquidated. Or it was thrown out as junk, being a greasy, spotted, scuffed notebook with a broken spine and loose pages. Or it was simply stolen. A request for its return, with no questions asked, produced no results."

"Sounds like something I wouldn't mind reading myself," Celia said.

"You may get a chance. When I was in Mrs. Fetter's kitchen this afternoon, I noticed a battered black book among all the colorful jackets of slick new cookbooks. I didn't think too much of it at the time; I was concentrating on how to handle all the technical stuff on spawn and inoculation and incubation without boring my readers. Later, though, I remembered that the spine of the black book had been repaired with transparent tape. That's when my suspicions arose." He touched his moustache tentatively. "The next time you go to see Donald - if you do go, that is - you might sneak a peek. Could you manage that?"

"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:

FROM FRANCE:

Roquefort, the king of cheeses - blue- veined, patented five centuries ago.

Brie, the queen of cheeses - soft, buttery, salty, and capricious-once an influence in

French politics.

Camembert, invented by a woman - a soft, elegant dessert cheese associated with affluence. Port du Salut, first made by

Trappist monk - nothing monastic about its rich, ripe flavor.

Neufchƒtel - small, white, creamy, mild- flavored - becomes pungent with age.

FROM GERMANY:

Tilsiter - full-bodied ripe flavor, pleasant to the nose and palate. More respectable than Limburger.

FROM ITALY:

Bel Paese - pearly white, sweetly mild, and agreeably rubbery in texture.

Fontina - yellowish and sometimes slightly smoky. A table cheese that also melts well for cooking.

Gorgonzola - blue-veined like Roquefort but less salty and more creamy than crumbly.

FROM SWITZERLAND:

Emmenthaler - the big cheese with big holes. Wheels weigh up to 160 pounds.

Flavor: Swiss.

GruyŠre - a smaller, saltier, creamier, more delicious Swiss with smaller holes

(called "eyes").

Raclette -a rich cheese made for fondue and the melt-and-scrape ritual called

"raclette."

FROM DENMARK:

Havarti - mild, clean, slightly acid flavor that becomes sharper with age.

Samsoe - similar to Cheddar in flavor with a slightly sweet, nutty flavor.

FROM THE NETHERLANDS:

Edam - popular low-fat cheese with cushiony shape and red rind. Texture: like soap but pleasant.

Gouda - yellow, fairly hard, and blessed with a strong flavor minus bite. Smoked version is great!

FROM CANADA:

Cheddar - with the famous flavor and famous black rind. Need we say more.

FROM GREECE:

Feta - soft, white, heavily salted.

Crumble it on salads, pizza, and other dishes.

FROM GREAT BRITAIN:

Cheddar - from the country where it all began. Complicated to make, easy to love.

Stilton - a magnificent blue-veined cheese that slices well. A classic with port wine.

As Qwilleran read this list aloud, Yum Yum fell asleep on his lap with a foreleg over her ears, but Koko listened attentively. Three times he yowled - at Brie, GruyŠre, and feta. Because they're salty, Qwilleran reasoned, but so is Roquefort... Yet, Koko was unimpressed by the king of cheeses.

At midday he walked to the newspaper office and handed in his copy on eating in the good old days. It began, "Where are the foods of yesteryear?"

He also picked up his fan mail, but Sarah was not there to slit the envelopes for him. The office boy said with a grin, "She took the day off to get her hair and face done. Whoo-ee!" Officially the speaker was a "systems aide," but to Qwilleran he was still an office boy.

For lunch he went to the Spoonery, where the day's soup specials were New Orleans gumbo, Viennese goulash, oxtail, and turkey-barley. He had a bowl of the oxtail and pronounced it sensational. He also asked Lori if the turkey-barley soup really had any turkey in it.

"It's loaded! Big chunks! Want a bowl? The second bowl is twenty percent off," she said.

"No thanks, but I'd like a quart to take out." He planned to fish out a few chunks of turkey for the Siamese, avoiding the barley. That should satisfy them until the bird in the refrigerator was ready to fly.

Before he left the Spoonery, several copies of the Monday paper were delivered for customers to read with their soup, and Qwilleran grabbed one. The weekend had been an editor's delight, with the Celebrity Auction, the Pasty Bake-off and the bike-a-thon. Qwilleran chuckled as he read about the pasty winners' names being locked in a safe overnight - accidentally. More likely, he thought, Hixie had engineered the trick to delay the newsbreak until the Something's deadline. The news story read:

PASTY WINNERS HERALDED

Two local cooks were elected to the new

Pasty Hall of Fame Saturday after their contest entries survived three batteries of judges.

Lenore Bassett of Trawnto Beach placed first among the turnip less entries.

George Stendhup of Sawdust City won in the turnip category. Each will receive a blue ribbon and a $100 prize.

After the process of blind judging - with entrants identified only by number - the suspense was prolonged by an accidental misunderstanding. Entrants' names were locked in a safe in the office of

MacWhannell & Shaw. The bakers of the winning pasties were not known until this morning.

Stendhup, a toolmaker, was one of an unexpected number of male entrants. "I always knew the guys made better pasties than the gals," he said when contacted with the good news. Pork was his meat of choice.

"I always add turnip for more guts."

Bassett could not be reached for comment, but her husband, Robert, said, "She's out of town on family business, but I'm gonna phone her the good news after five o'clock.

Me and the kids always said Mom makes the best goldanged pasties anywhere."

Mildred Riker, food editor of the

Something and one of the final judges, said, "The response to this celebration of a cultural legend exceeded our wildest expectations, with more than a hundred entries. The overall quality was excellent, and the final judges were hard-put to name winners."

The sponsors of the Food Fair and Pasty

Bake-off was the Chamber of Commerce.

Another headline caught Qwilleran's attention, although it was buried on page four. Notable for its brevity, it covered the who, what, when, and where of the newspaper rule book, but not the why.

BIZARRE INCIDENT IN BLACK CREEK

The body of a tourist from Glassville,

OH, was found in a riverbank cabin Sunday morning. Victor Greer, 39, renting the cabin for a weekend of fishing, had been stung to death by bees, according to the medical examiner. The incident was reported by the beekeeper, Aubrey Scotten. The cabin is owned by Scotten Fisheries.

The item, Qwilleran knew, was played down for two reasons: The victim was not a local man, and the county disliked adverse publicity. It was commonly believed that the metropolitan media, bored with ordinary shootings and beatings, watched the small-town newspapers like vultures, hoping to spot a bizarre country crime. Most country crimes reported Down Below were "bizarre," and the use of the word in the Something headline was a mistake, in Qwilleran' s opinion. He wondered who had written it. The wire services would pick it up, and the TV networks would fly crews to the "grim ghost town" with nothing but a "haunted house" and a "death cottage" where "killer bees" attacked an innocent fisherman from Down Below. They would fluster the poor beekeeper and trick him into saying something stupid that would sound suspicious to a coast-to-coast audience, and the cameras would zoom in on the buzzing bees and make them look like monsters. Qwilleran hoped the intruders would be stung; it would serve them right!

Further, he sensed the need to steer the nervous, distraught Aubrey out of harm's way. His motive was not entirely altruistic; as a journalist he was drawn to a newsworthy character with an exclusive story to tell.

He walked home briskly to pick up his car keys. The quart of turkey soup he put in the refrigerator, closing the door as quietly as possible. Then he left the barn without disturbing the sleeping cats.

Arriving at the Limburger house, he parked in the side yard. For the first time the door of the honey shed was closed. First he went to the front door and clanged the old-fashioned doorbell; there was no response. He banged on the door without results. Yet, Aubrey's blue pickup was parked in the yard. He might be down at the creek with his bees.

Qwilleran rang the bell again and peered through the etched glass. A shadowy figure was shambling toward the front door. "Aubrey! It's your friend from Pickax!" Qwilleran yelled. "I need some more honey!" Purposely he used two buzz words: "friend" and "honey." The door opened slowly and Aubrey said in his squeaky voice, "Threw it all out. I'm gonna let my bees go wild."

"Have the police been talking to you again?"

Aubrey shook his mop of long white hair. "They come back, but I hid in the cellar."

"Well, let me give you some friendly advice. You should get away from here. Strangers will be coming up from Down Below, and they're worse than the police. Go and stay with your family for a while. Where do your brothers live?"

"Up the road."

"Okay, I'll drive you there. Do you want to pack a bag - or anything?"

"I don't need nothin'." Then, as Qwilleran steered him toward his car, Aubrey added, "I wanna go to my mom's."

"That's fine. That's even better. Tell me where to go."

On the way Aubrey mumbled brief, half-hearted answers to questions intended to fill the awkward silence: Does your mother live alone? Do you see her often? How long has your father been gone? Have you talked to her since the accident?

A large old farmhouse between Black Creek and Mooseville was the Scotten homestead. It had a well-kept lawn and what seemed like acres of mums in bloom, some of them the color of dried blood. It looked like a commercial flower business. A woman was digging up clumps of mums and transferring them to pots. When the car pulled into the long driveway, she stuck the pointed spade in the ground and came forward - a tall woman like her sons, but her weathered face was gaunt under a large straw hat. She wore denims, with kneepads buckled on her legs.

"You poor boy!" she said, throwing her arms around her big son. "You look terrible! You need something to eat!" She looked at Qwilleran's moustache. "Do I know you? You must be the man from the paper. You wrote about the bees."

"I'm also a customer of Aubrey's. I stopped at the house to buy honey and thought he looked in need of some home cooking."

"Poor boy! Come in the house and I'll make you a big stack of flapjacks," she said. "I'd better give you a haircut, too. How long since you went to the barber, son?"

Qwilleran caught her eye and mumbled, "I want to speak to you."

"Aubrey, go in and wash up. I'll get rid of these muddy boots and be right there."

Qwilleran said, "Don't let anyone know he's here, not even your sons. All sorts of people will be pestering him - for various reasons. Wait till it blows over. Can you keep him for a few days?"