Fat Cat At Large (A Fat Cat Mystery) (5 page)

A
s Chase trudged up the steps to her apartment at the end of the day, her cell phone trilled. The caller ID said “MN Police,” so she figured she’d better answer it. She clicked the button, juggling Quincy while she unlocked and opened her door.

“Miss Oliver?” It was the cute detective, Niles Olson. Her heart quickened. If he wanted a date, she’d go, she decided right then. His voice was lovely over the phone.

“Yes?” There was, she was sure, a big smile in her voice. “This is Chase.” She drew her name out. She realized she was flirting. With a policeman! What had gotten into her?

“We have a match on the prints.”

“The prints?” She kicked the door shut and set Quincy on the floor. “Fingerprints?”

“Yes, yours match the ones on the murder weapon.”

“Well, yes, I told you I touched it.” She opened the fridge and pulled out a package of cheese. Quincy displayed mild, dignified interest.

“They’re the only ones.”

She froze with the refrigerator door open. The cat moved closer and put his front paws on the bottom shelf.

“Miss Oliver? Are you there?”

“Yes. What are you saying?” She returned the cheese to the refrigerator drawer, shooed Quincy out, and closed the door with a whomp of the gasket. Some of the air seemed to go out of the apartment, making it hard to breathe. Quincy stalked off as if he had never displayed any interest in the refrigerator.

“I’m saying you’d better not leave town any time soon. If you must, please clear it with me first.”

“Oh.” She clicked the phone off. Not leave town? The only fingerprints on the weapon? She was a
suspect
?

Chase sat in her stuffed chair and hyperventilated. Quincy seemed to sense her real distress and climbed into her lap, purring loudly. She stroked his silky back absently.

After what may have been minutes and may have been an hour, it registered that Quincy felt heavier than ever.

Chase needed to talk to someone. Not Anna. She called her best friend, Julie. She and Julie had taken skating lessons together, had camped out at Lake Minnetonka every summer, cross-country skied on the golf courses every winter, had shared the stories of their first kisses in eighth grade, had cried together when Julie got stood up at a junior high school dance, and knew all of each other’s secrets. Chase needed to hear a friendly voice, so she did what she usually did. She called Julie.

There was no answer. She texted, “Call ASAP SOS.”

Within five minutes her cell rang.

Chase opened the connection without checking caller ID. “Julie?”

“No, this is Dr. Ramos.”

Chase pictured his dark, curly hair and those liquid brown eyes. Her heart lurched slightly. “Yes?”

“I’m calling to see how Quincy is doing.”

“Oh.” He was just interested in the cat. “To tell you the truth, something isn’t working. I don’t have a scale, but it seems like he’s gaining weight.”

“You’re feeding him the prescription meals and treats?”

“Oh yes. I am, Dr. Ramos.” Other people may not be, though. Other people, like Anna.

“Please call me Mike. Do you think he’s getting into anything else to eat?” Was he a mind reader?

“He . . . may be getting . . . something.” She scratched between her cat’s ears, right on his stripes, where he liked it.

“Would you like to come in tomorrow and weigh him here?”

“Sure, I’d— No, I can’t tomorrow. It’s Friday. The shop will be tremendously busy until school opens next Tuesday.”

“What time do you close?”

“At six.”

“I can stay late for you, if you’d like to come by then.”

She’d prefer to meet him somewhere that wasn’t furnished with stainless steel tables, but that would do for now. Maybe she’d bring him some Almond Cherry Bars.

“I also called to see how you’re doing, Chase.”

“Not all that well.”

“I’m concerned about you being mixed up in a murder mess.”

That was sweet. The man
was
good looking. And hadn’t accused her of embezzlement. So he was a huge step up from the last guy she’d dated, Shaun Everly.

“I’m holding up pretty well, Dr. Ramos.”

“Mike.”

“Okay, Mike.”

“If there’s anything I can do, don’t hesitate to let me know.”

She couldn’t imagine what that would be, but she thanked him for his kind offer.

“I’ll see you about six thirty?”

After she hung up, Chase had a warm, fuzzy tingle that Mike was thinking of her. She picked Quincy up and danced around the small room with him, being careful not to stomp her feet too heavily so Anna wouldn’t come up and ask what she was doing. Quincy seemed puzzled by the activity, but went along with it, although he flattened his ears a bit.

Anna had offered to do the books again. Chase hoped there wouldn’t be more money missing tonight.

After a light supper and another attempt to convince Quincy that his diet food was delicious, she tried Julie again. Still no answer.

As she crawled into bed with a book she was sure she wouldn’t be able to concentrate on, her cell rang. She saw Julie’s ID. At last!

“I have so much to tell you,” Chase began.

“I have some news, too, but you go first.”

“You want the good news or the bad news first?”

“Bad,” said Julie. “Get it out of the way.”

“This isn’t
too
bad. We had a violation on the health inspection, but it’s an easy fix—just the sign missing that tells us to wash our hands. Stupid regulation anyway. Here’s the good news. Sort of. I think Quincy’s vet might like me.”

Quincy raised his head and blinked at the mention of his name. Chase scratched the short, soft fur between his ears and he closed his eyes, purred, and leaned into her fingers.

“You’re not sure that it’s good news?”

“Not really. He aggravates the heck out of me. He’s so critical of Quincy.”

“Chase, I think he’s trying to keep your baby healthy. That’s not a bad thing.”

“I suppose. Now, what’s your news?”

“I have a new case, a big one.”

“Ooo, great! Can you tell me about it?”

“Not yet. It’ll be a high-profile trial, so you’ll read about it. I’m excited!”

“Are you going to be superbusy?”

“Probably. Why? Do you need something?”

“How can you tell?” Chase smiled. Her anxiety must have been transmitting through the phone waves. “I was wondering if you could find out what the police file says about me. Detective Olson told me not to leave town. He said mine were the only fingerprints on the murder weapon.”

“There you go! You didn’t murder Naughtly. This is the proof.”

A
s Chase walked slowly down the stairs to the shop on Friday morning, she pondered what Julie had said. Why hadn’t she thought of the fact that Gabe’s prints should be on the knife? That is, they should be on it if he’d used it to, say, slice onions or bell peppers for his meatloaf. If the killer had pulled it from a drawer or a knife block, and had used gloves, then sure, hers would be the only prints. Could she get the lab to test the knife for traces of onion? Didn’t everyone put onion in meatloaf?

At least Julie said she would try to access the files and see if there was anything in the parts available to her that she could pass on to Chase. Julie was such a good friend. Not only didn’t she have time to do this right now, she shouldn’t be poking around in cases she wasn’t working on. If only Julie were in criminal defense, instead of prosecution. Except she wouldn’t be able to spy for Chase if she were.

Quincy purred in her arms as she reached the bottom of the steps and reached for the door into the kitchen. She hesitated a moment. Anna hadn’t come up to say good-bye last night and they hadn’t parted on good terms earlier. Chase determined to patch things up today.

She threw the door open and sang a cheery “Hi” to Anna, who was on a stool at the island.

Anna’s chin was in her hands, elbows propped on the granite surface, a glum expression on her face. The expression was so unusual, Chase wondered at first if the woman dressed in Anna’s bright yellow T-shirt and wearing Anna’s shiny gray hair, staring at the bars on the baking pan that sat on the counter in front of her, was really Anna.

“How’s it going?” Chase asked, regretting her wording the moment she said it. It was obviously not going well. “What’s the matter?”

“Taste this.” Anna took a square off the pan and held it out, then drew her hand back. “No, don’t. I’m not that mean.”

It looked like an Almond Cherry Bar from the batch Anna had made late yesterday. “Something’s wrong with it?”

“Something’s wrong with the cook. I must have doubled the amount of almond flavoring.”

Chase took the confection from her and sniffed it. It smelled wonderful. She nibbled a corner, then ran to the sink to spit it out. “Um, maybe you tripled it.”

“Next, I’ll be confusing sugar and salt.” Anna shook her head to clear her mood and got up to start baking. Chase, not wanting to go over the ledger figures, started a batch of Strawberry Cheesecake Bars herself, humming “Ya Got Trouble” from
The Music Man
. The sweet baking smells soon dispelled the gloom that Anna’s early morning mood had thrown over the room.

Near lunchtime, Laci poked her head into the kitchen with a plea for help.

“We’re slammed. Every freshman on campus, I swear, is here. Some of them brought their whole families.” Her pinned-up hairdo was drooping and she shed two bobby pins on the floor.

“I’ll be right there,” said Chase. She zipped into the office to pour a bowl of diet treats for Quincy. He’d been right inside the door, but ignored the bowl. He turned his back and walked away, rather stiff-legged, his nose and his tail in the air. “You just be that way, then. We’ll see what the doc says tonight. You’ll see. He might put you on the cat equivalent of bread and water.” Something crunched under her shoe as she left the office.

She snatched up Laci’s fallen bobby pins and stuck them on the small shelf under the counter, then ran to the front. The room was crowded with college students and relatives. “Keep baking,” she called to Anna as she left. The shelves were half-empty and getting barer.

Chase made several trips back and forth from the freezer to replenish the stock, but the freezer was far from full. Just three more days until classes started. Then it would slow down and they could take time during the day to breathe.

It hadn’t helped, of course, that Anna had to throw out the huge batch she’d made last night. Oh well, there was nothing they could do about that now.

The cat strolled to the door of his prison, the restaurant office. It may have looked like a strange place for a feline to call home during working hours, but the pudgy tabby cat never failed to purr when he was deposited there. Maybe that was because of the basket, lined with a soft blanket, in the corner. Or it could have been because one of the humans invariably brought bits of cookie bars to him at regular intervals during the day. This day, however, she was late. The cat knew it was past time for a num num. He sat erect, with his ears pricked forward, his tail wrapped around his front paws, but twitching at the very tip. At last, someone was coming.

The older woman cracked the door open and slipped in.

“Here’s a good boy,” she crooned, sprinkling cookie bits on the floor in front of him. “We don’t want you to starve to death, do we?”

He settled down to licking them up, hardly noticing her leave, closing the door behind her.

Chase froze with her hand outstretched to receive a twenty from a student’s mother. That man coming in the door, the pale, thin guy wearing a blazer—was that the awful man who had found her with the bloody knife? The sound of a crash unfroze her arm and she took the money, then looked down to see what had fallen to the floor. Vi had knocked a stack of cartons off the shelf behind the sales counter.

As Vi knelt to pick them up, Chase followed the progress of the man. Yes, it was Torvald Iversen, the one who had called 911 and accused her of killing Gabe. She inhaled a deep, cleansing breath and made change for her customer. The woman thanked her sweetly and left with her daughter, obviously a freshman, a skinny girl who could probably eat the whole bag of Lemon Bars and not gain an ounce.

Iversen strolled around one of the front tables, lifting boxes and setting them down. Chase waited for him to acknowledge her, but he didn’t glance toward the back of the shop. Next, he perused the shelves of wares on the side wall, fingering the knot of his tie with his creepy, long, pale fingers. Finally, he left the shop without a glance in Chase’s direction and strolled toward the coffee shop.

Vi peeked over the counter after the door closed and watched Iversen depart, her eyes wide.

“Do you know that man?” asked Chase.

“What man?” Vi stood up and nudged at the stack of boxes she’d finished reshelving. “Oh, the one who just left? No, why?”

Chase felt sorry for the girl. She was lying, Chase was sure. She’d probably had a bad experience with the horrid man, but Chase couldn’t imagine what that would have been, what the connection between them could be.

Chase was still gazing out the front window, half expecting Iversen to pop in again, when she spotted a familiar figure walking down the sidewalk across the street. He turned into the coffee shop. Now she was sure Shaun Everly was in Minneapolis. What was he doing here? Was he here about the note she’d left him? Did he know she was here? She hoped not.

•   •   •

“You’ll have to
do something different, you know.” Dr. Ramos, Mike as Chase was beginning to think of him, lifted Quincy off the scale. “Whatever you’re doing isn’t working. He’s gained nearly a half a pound. That’s a tremendous amount in such a short time. He’s in danger of becoming diabetic. If that happens, you’ll have a real problem on your hands.”

“Just what do you suggest?” Chase sounded, she thought, shrill. Really, what more could she do? “I’m feeding him the exact amount of the food you prescribed.”

“You can’t be. He can’t gain weight on that.”

Chase fisted her hands on her hips. “Are you calling me a liar?”

“No, no. Calm down. I’m not calling you—”

“I am
not
giving him extra food . . . but . . .”

He put Quincy into his crate and gave the cat a scratch behind his ears with a thoughtful frown. “But someone else is?” he said.

Chase’s mouth dropped open. How did he know? Anna was sneaking treats to him. That had to be it. When Chase had released Quincy from the office after the shop closed, she’d seen the cookie crumbs on the floor. She hadn’t thought anything of them at the time, since cookie crumbs got everywhere. But now she put it together. When she’d gone to the front this afternoon, Anna had probably indulged him.

Mollified somewhat, Chase admitted that maybe someone else was feeding him. “I’ll talk to Anna again. I’ll make it clear that she shouldn’t give him cookie leftovers.” She dug a plastic container out of her purse. “By the way, I brought you these.” She held out the bin.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a dozen Lemon Bars.”

He accepted the gift and set it on the desk in the corner of the examining room. “Are you trying to make me diabetic, too?”

Chase didn’t think that was very funny. He was attractive, but his jokes were lame. “I’d better get back and see if Anna needs any help,” she said, lifting Quincy’s crate.

“How many hours do you put in at Bar None?” He opened the door for her to exit and they walked down the hallway to the waiting room in the front. “It seems like you work day and night.”

“Sometimes we do. But there are slow periods when we relax a bit and even get caught up with the baking. Are you going to eat the Lemon Bars I brought you?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

“You’re afraid of becoming diabetic?”

He gave her a warm glance. “I was only kidding. Sorry if you took it wrong.”

He told her that his grandmother had been a baker, had baked bread every day, and cookies often. He’d grown up near the Iron Range, in the northeastern part of Minnesota. His father had been one of the few Hispanics to venture that far north for work. His mother came from a Swedish family that had lived in the area for a few generations.

Chase took that friendly conversation as Mike trying to make up for his lame joke.

As she walked through the outer waiting room, a tall, svelte redhead with a short, spiky hairdo rose to greet Dr. Ramos. He met her with a huge smile and put a hand on her arm. Chase noticed that she didn’t have a pet with her.

So Dr. Ramos had a girlfriend. She was disappointed, she had to admit. The man was devilishly attractive.

•   •   •

Anna had left
by the time Chase got home, but there was a sticky note from her on the apartment door: “See me in the morning about the accounts.”

The note was like a splash of cold water in her face. Were they short of money again?

Quincy started meowing the moment she came in. She poured diet food into his bowl. He turned away and meowed again.

“What is the matter with you?” Chase caught herself. It wouldn’t do any good to yell at a cat. Especially at Quincy. He replied to her with a disdainful nose lift and disappeared into the bedroom.

Chase kicked off her shoes and sat in her favorite armchair to make a mental list of what she needed to worry about: Quincy, Anna, the missing money, her prints on the murder weapon, Laci and Vi squabbling. Anything else? Oh yes, the unexpected arrival of Shaun Everly. That was probably her most immediate problem right now.

As she reached for the TV remote to take her mind off her worries, her cell phone rang. She saw Laci Carlson’s ID.

“Ms. Oliver?” She sounded worried, upset. “Could you do me a huge favor? I need to talk to you.”

Now what? “I’ll try. What do you need?”

“I need to tell you . . . to talk to you. Can you meet me somewhere?”

“Tonight?” She was so comfortable.

“Maybe early tomorrow? Al’s Breakfast opens at six.”

Chase groaned inwardly. Laci’s voice was growing higher, tighter. Distress was obvious in her tone. Had Anna fired her? She was so itching to get rid of one of them—or both. Chase thought she had better meet the young woman. “How about six thirty?”

“Sure. I’ll get there earlier to get a table.”

“See you.” Al’s Breakfast had only fourteen stools at the counter, so even arriving at 6:30 didn’t assure you a seat. But it gave you a fighting chance.

Chase checked her clock. Six thirty would arrive in a few short hours. She drew a bath after she ended the call, promising to show up, and wondering what had gotten Laci so upset. A nice, long, soaky bath with bath oil and a scented candle would help put her to sleep better than television. Anna would probably get to the shop at around 7:30, her usual time. Chase had to be there to answer Anna’s summons, but surely, talking to Laci wouldn’t take more than an hour.