In the fellowship room twenty members were sitting in a circle, and Qwilleran went around shaking hands. He needed no introduction. Everyone glanced at his moustache and said, “I read your column… Where do you get your ideas?… How are your kitties?” All were his age or older.
After a brief business meeting, a member read a paper on his genealogical research in Ireland, and others spoke about their happy discoveries in family documents, or at the courthouse, or in cemetery records, or federal military archives.
Finally Larry Lanspeak asked the honored guest if he would say a few words.
You skunk! Qwilleran thought, why didn’t you warn me? Nevertheless, he stood up, looked around the circle and blinked his eyes as he considered his chore. (I feel just like Kiltie, he thought.) Then, in his mellifuous lecture-hall voice he began:
“This evening has been an experience that’s enlightening, to say the least. I myself am a lost entity wandering in a void – minus relatives, family records, and even an inkling of my father’s first name. He died before I was born, and my mother never mentioned his name or those of my grandparents.
“Those of you who have births and deaths inscribed on the flyleaves of family bibles must consider my predicament strange indeed. To me, growing up as the only child of a single parent, there was nothing strange about it at all. It never occurred to me to ask questions, being too busy playing baseball, acting in school plays, doing homework, reading books about dogs and horses, and fighting with my peers.
“My mother died when I was in college, and later all family memorabilia were destroyed in a fire…. What can I tell you? We lived in Chicago; my mother’s maiden name was Mackintosh; our last name was spelled with a QW. That’s all I know. My case rests.”
The moment of silence that preceded the burst of applause testified to the deeply touching nature of his confession. One woman sobbed audibly. He acknowledged the response with a sober nod. Actually there had been no fire, but it was not so much a lie as a euphemism for the black period in his life when he lost everything, including his self-esteem.
When the Lanspeaks were driving him home, Carol said, “Qwill, I didn’t know you were such a man of mystery!”
Larry said, “Do you mind if I turn on the eleven o’clock news?”
The lead item was a death notice: “Osmond Hasselrich, eighty-nine, died at Pickax General Hospital tonight after an illness of several weeks. The senior partner of Hasselrich Bennett and Barter had practiced law in Moose County for sixty years. A native of Little Hope, he survived his wife, daughter, and two brothers.”
“The end of an era,” Larry said. “He was a grand old gentleman! He claimed to be – and I quote – ‘just a country lawyer but the best goldurned country lawyer you’ll ever find!’ And he was right!” Then Larry declaimed in his best oratorical style, “Farewell, noble Osmond.”
Qwilleran’s chief memory of the old man was his custom of serving tea to his clients, pouring it into his grandmother’s porcelain cups that rattled in their saucers when he passed them with shaking hands.
When he entered the barn, the Siamese were waiting side by side, solemnly, as if they knew something momentous had happened. Koko ran to the answering machine, where there was a message from the junior partner of HB&B: “Qwill, Osmond has gone! I was with him at the end. There’s something he wants you to have. Can you meet me for lunch in the Mackintosh Room tomorrow at twelve? Call my office.”
Uncomfortably, Qwilleran thought, He’s left me his grandmother’s cups and saucers! I made the mistake of admiring them too much.
Twelve
Thursday, September 17 – ‘Monkee see, monkey do.’
WHEN QWILLERAN CAME DOWN the ramp in the morning, he saw an unusual spectacle: two cats sitting on their haunches with tails curled and ears at attention, but they were two feet tall, and their ears measured about five inches, Koko and Yum Yum were in the foyer, watching birds through the sidelights, and the morning sun slanted in at a low angle and elongated their shadows on the floor.
Another surprise was in store when he turned on the radio for the hourly newscast:
“A sheriff’s deputy was attacked in the woods near the Big B minesite sometime after midnight, while investigating an abandoned pickup registered to John Campbell, a suspect in the local slaying of a Chicago businessman. Deputy Greenleaf was struck on the head by a blunt object. When she regained consciousness, her service revolver was missing. The suspect is now considered armed and dangerous, described as a Caucasian male in his early twenties, six-feet-two, weighing two hundred and fifty pounds. When last seen he was wearing a Moose County Bucks T-shirt.”
Qwilleran discussed the item with the Siamese as their heads bent over their breakfast plates; “Boze apparently ran out of gas. Will he use the gun to hijack another vehicle? Do the sport fans know that John Campbell, the alleged attacker, is Boze Campbell, the champion?”
