The Cat Who Played Post Office by Lilian Jackson Braun Read Free Book Online Page B

"What lovely weather you have here! It's suffocating in the city, Isn't this a quaint airport!" "Everything's quaint in Pickax, Mrs. Cobb, Do you have luggage?" "Only this carryon. It's all I need for an overnight." "You're welcome to stay longer, you know." "Oh, thank you, Mr. Qwilleran, but I have to go back tomorrow to close the deal with Mrs. Riker. She's going to live in your old apartment over the shop." "She is going to live there?" Qwilleran repeated, "What about her husband? What about their house in the suburbs?" "Didn't you know? She's getting a divorce." "I had lunch with Arch a few days ago, and he didn't say a word about it... but I remember he looked troubled, I wonder what happened." "I'll let him tell you the story," Mrs. Cobb said, and she pursed her lips with finality.
     
     
On a relentlessly straight highway they drove across the lonely landscape of Moose County - through evergreen forests and rockbound wasteland, past abandoned mines and unnatural hillocks that had once been slag heaps.
     
     
"Very rocky," Mrs. Cobb observed.
     
     
"Pickax is built almost entirely of stone," said Qwilleran.
     
     
"Is it really? Tell me about your house. Is it sumptuous?" "It's a big chunk of fieldstone three stories high, I call it Alcatraz Provincial," he began. "All the rooms are huge, The foyer would make a good roller rink if we took up the Oriental rugs... Every bedroom has a canopied bed and its own sitting room, dressing room, and bath.... There's an English pub in the basement, and the top floor was supposed to be a ballroom, but it was never finished.... The kitchen is so big you have to walk a mile to prepare a meal, It includes a butler's pantry, a food storage room, a laundry, a half bath, and a walk-in broom closet. The whole service area, as well as the solarium, is floored in square tiles of red quarry stone." "Any ghosts?" Mrs. Cobb asked with some of the old twinkle in her eyes, "Every old house should have a ghost.
     
     
Maybe you remember the one we had on Zwinger Street. She never materialized, but she moved things around in the middle of the night. She was very prankish." "I remember her very well," Qwilleran said. "She put salt shakers in your bedroom slippers." He also remembered that her ghostly pranks were an ongoing practical joke that C. C. Cobb had played on his gullible wife.
     
     
"How's Koko?" she asked.
     
     
"He's fine. He's taking piano lessons." "Oh, Mr. Qwilleran," she laughed. "I never know whether to believe what you say." They approached Pickax via Goodwinter Boulevard, lined with the stately stone houses that wealthy mining pioneers had built in the heyday of the city. Then came Main Street, the circular park, and the majestic K mansion.
     
     
Mrs. Cobb gave a little scream." Is this it? Oh! Oh! I want the job!" "You don't know how much it pays," Qwilleran said. "Neither do I." "I don't care. I want the job." When they entered the foyer, the amber walls were glowing and the brass-and-crystal chandelier was sparkling.
     
     
The furnishings looked almost self-consciously pedigreed.
     
     
"Why, it's like a museum!" "It's a little rich for my taste," Qwilleran admitted, "but everything is the real thing, and I have respect for it." "I could do a real museum catalogue for you. That rosewood-and-ormolu console is Louis XV, and I'll bet it's a signed piece. The clock is a Burnap - brass works, moonphase, late eighteenth." "Are you ready for the dining room?" Qwilleran switched on the twenty-four electric candles mounted on two staghorn chandeliers. It was a dark room, richly paneled, and the furniture was massive.
     
     
"Linenfold paneling!" Mrs. Cobb gasped. "Austrian chandeliers! The furniture is German, of course." "That's the original furniture," Qwilleran said, "before the Klingenschoens became serious collectors and switched to French and English." When they crossed the foyer to the drawing room, she stared in awed silence. Chandeliers festooned with crystal were