It’s September in Pickax, four hundred miles north of everywhere, and the citizens of Moose  County are all agog: the Highland Games, celebrating Pickax’s Scottish heritage with such revelry as bagpipe skirling and  tossing the caber, are expected to yield aggressive county-partisan competition; the town hotel is reopening in grand  style; and the mysterious Mr. Delacamp, a renowned estate jewelry dealer from Chicago, is honoring the town with a visit.  The excitement rises to a fever pitch when Delacamp is found murdered in his room at the new hotel—and his assistant is  inexplicably missing. Then the winner of the caber-tossing contest disappears as well and it’s up to  journalist/philanthropist Jim Qwilleran and his suspiciously sagacious Siamese cats, Koko and Yum Yum, to get to the bottom  of it all. Could Koko’s newfound interest in photographs, pennies, and paper towels help lead Qwilleran to the murderer?