The Cat Who Dropped a Bombshell

Dwight went on. "On July Fourth the theme will be Pickax Now, and on Labor Day, Pickax Future. "

Hixie said, "I've been telling Dwight about the one-man show you did, Qwill - on the Big Burning of 1869."

"How did it work?" Dwight asked.

Qwilleran explained. "We asked the audience to imagine that radio existed in 1869, and we brought them a broadcast covering the fire, which destroyed practically the whole county except the courthouse in Pickax. I played the radio announcer; Hixie was technical assistant, handling sound effects."

Hixie groaned. "Once we did the show in a church basement when the furnace was out of order. The audience was sitting wrapped in blankets and wearing earmuffs and mittens. And the radio announcer was saying that the temperature was a hundred degrees as he mopped his brow."

Qwilleran recalled another time when - at the most tragic moment in the show - a small girl walked across the stage looking for the restroom. "A few minutes later, she came back. It's to the audience's credit that they didn't laugh, but I had a hard time keeping a sober face."

Dwight asked, "Could you dig your script out of mothballs and do the show for Pickax Now audiences?"

Qwilleran said he believed so. Actually, he was fond of working before an audience, reading words that he had written, hearing the enthusiastic applause. "How many shows?"

Dwight thought one a week for thirteen weeks would be appropriate - and well attended. "What would you think about a Sunday matinee? In the opera house?"

"Better than church basements and school gyms, I say. Let's do it!"

The City of Pickax was ready for its great moment in history! Houses were painted; trees were pruned; street paving was repaired. Downtown, the sidewalk planters were a riot of pink, white, and red petunias, and cracked concrete sidewalks were repaved in the fashionable brick.

The stately old brick courthouse with its proud stretch of lawn was now flaunting its famous peony bushes.

By contrast, the Pickax City Hall had always been a civic embarrassment: a two-story gray brick building with a flat roof, small naked windows, and an unimpressive entrance door.

The police department upstairs was entered from the rear, and there was a jail in the basement. But this year Hixie Rice had made it a personal mission to beautify City Hall. The windows were given shutters; the two front steps were given an ornamental handrail; an important entrance door was coaxed out of an antique shop; and the windows, both upstairs and down, were equipped with window boxes.

Hixie accomplished all this with her strong sell, winning personality, long eyelashes, and refusal to take "no" for an answer.

Then the Downtown Beautiful Committee planted the window boxes with . . . pansies! Yellow pansies! The jokers in the coffee shops had a field day with the pansies and there were waggish letters to the editor. But the pansies flourished.

Three parades were announced with the first being on Memorial Day, with the theme Pickax Then. All signs pointed to good weather, according to the WPKX meteorologist.

Then Qwilleran received a troubling message:

"Qwill, I need to talk to you, but I don't want Gary to know. Don't return the call - Maxine."

She was the wife of the owner of the Hotel Booze in Brrr. They had been married only a short time. She had long owned and operated the Harbourside Marina.

The message gave Qwilleran a sudden desire for one of the burgers for which the Hotel Booze was famous. Grabbing his car keys and orange baseball cap, he said goodbye to the Siamese, who followed him to the door. In leaving, it made no difference what he said. It might be a little Shakespeare in a sonorous voice, like "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers," or it might be "Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle" in a falsetto that made their ears twitch. To him it was never clear whether they were reluctant to see him go or glad to have the premises to themselves for feline shenanigans.

On his way to Brrr Qwilleran reviewed what he knew about the town, founded two centuries ago because of its superb natural harbour. The hotel had been built on a cliff overlooking the bay. It had the proportions of a shoebox, and a sign running the length of the roof could be seen far out in the lake. In large block letters it said: ROOMS FOOD BOOZE . No one knew the sign's date of origin, but it gave the hotel its nickname.

When Qwilleran first arrived in the north country, Gary Pratt had just inherited the hotel from his insolvent father but could not operate it because of too many code violations. The elder Pratt had been able to get by on the grandfather clause in the building code, but young Pratt needed to make extensive improvements - or else. Yet banks would not lend him the money because of youthful indiscretions.

Enter: Qwilleran. He saw something promising in Gary Pratt, and the K Fund backed the improvements.