Fat Cat Takes the Cake (6 page)

C
hase let Eddie pick the restaurant and he drove her to an out-of-the-way place. The outside of Gourmet Leaves and Plants was interesting and even funky. When they got seated Eddie started enthusing over the menu.

“See this?” He pointed to the top of the sheet. “Organic. Vegan. Raw. Gluten-free.”

Chase suppressed a shudder. “Is there regular food, too?” The weather was chilly and she had been looking forward to some thick, creamy soup, or maybe a juicy hamburger.

Eddie flashed that grin. “This
is
regular food. What's wrong with it?”

Chase saw the selection of chilled soups. Nothing hot. “Well, are there any burgers?” She flipped the menu over,
searching in vain for some comfort food. There were an awful lot of juices listed.

“Let me order. I promise you'll love it. This place serves only healthy food.”

The waiter was hovering by them now. Eddie told him they would both start with a “rejuvenator.”

Chase started to look for it on the menu, then decided not to. She would give it a chance based on the taste. When the glass arrived, she sniffed the cloudy liquid. It smelled fresh and lemony. However, when she took a sip, she barely managed to swallow it. “I think I'll need some water, too.”

“You don't like the fermented quinoa sprouts?” Eddie's face fell, disappointed.

“Maybe it's the ginger.” There was at least five times more of the stuff than she could take in the “rejuvenator.”

The waiter was still nearby. “What kind of water?” he asked.

“Just regular water, please.”

“Unflavored?”

“Tap water, please.”

The waiter sniffed. “We do not serve tap water.”

“Then please bring me whatever you have.”

She got a glass bottle of “oxygen-infused water” that tasted rather musty, but better than the fermented quinoa.

The meal went downhill from there. Eddie had ordered her a falafel wrap that tasted good, but she would have much preferred something hot and filling.

Eddie steered the conversation to the weather and the background on almost every item from the menu. Chase was relieved that he didn't bring up anything from high school,
like, the prom. She remained polite and listened to his discourse on healthy food, nodding and staying silent on the subject. After all, she was in the business of making and selling sweet treats.

While they were waiting for the check, Chase noticed the man at a table across the small dining room. He had just been ushered in and seated. A waiter was standing above him, waiting to take his order. “I'm sorry,” the waiter said. “Could you repeat that?”

“I said I want a drink!”

The waiter drew himself up slightly. “Sir, we do not serve alcohol here.”

“Well, what good is this place?” Chase thought he must be pretty drunk to think this place would have a bar that served anything other than juice and liquid sprouts. The man struggled to his feet. He reeled, then stumbled toward the door. He was short and stout and the vest he wore strained at the buttons over his tummy. Recognition dawned.

“Eddie,” Chase whispered. “Do you know who that man is?”

Eddie squinted in the man's direction. “I've seen him somewhere.”

“At the reunion. Wasn't he talking with Mr. Snelson?”

“Might have been.”

Chase was sure now. That was the man who had talked with Mr. Snelson and had argued with Ron North. He was now very drunk and still trying to get more liquor. Maybe he'd been blackmailed by Ron and had killed him and was now so remorseful that he was drinking too much? Maybe her imagination was filling in too many blanks.

If only she and Julie could figure out what the entries in Ron's notebook meant!

Eddie drove her to the rear parking lot, which was where she almost always entered her shop and her apartment. He continued Chase's healthy food education on the way and she continued to bite her tongue, resisting mention of the fact that some people like food that tasted good and filled them up.

“Would you like to come in and pick out a dessert?” As soon as she'd said the words, she realized that he probably wouldn't.

“Do you have anything healthy?”

She thought about their products. She'd seen a lot of coconut oil on the menu at the vegan place. “We have Hula Bars. They're full of pineapple and coconut.”

Maybe he wouldn't ask what else was in them. If he had any taste at all, he'd surely like them.

“Sounds good. Sure.”

In case Anna had let Quincy loose in the kitchen, she guarded the door with her foot when she opened it. Sure enough, the cat was sitting there, looking at Anna patiently. Probably wishing she would drop something onto the floor.

Anna glanced up as they entered the toasty warm kitchen. “Who's this?” she asked with a tentative smile.

“Eddie. We went to high school together. We ran into each other today and I offered him a Hula Bar or two.” And he set me on fire when we touched. I'm not really two-timing Mike Ramos. Simply getting him a Hula Bar, she thought to herself.

“Go right ahead.” Anna returned to her ingredients, laid out in small bowls and dishes, but kept her eye on Chase and Eddie until they were through the swinging double doors.

Quincy followed them and Anna whispered to him, “Go ahead, Quincy. You chaperone them.”

Chase suspected that Anna thought her whisper was softer than it was.

Chase flicked the lights on. “I'll show you the shop first,” she said. “The only products out right now are some of the boxed treats.” The glass case got emptied every night. “Would you like a box of Hula Bars?”

“Maybe I should try a taste first?”

“Go ahead and take this. Give them away if you don't like them.” She shoved a box into his hands in spite of his doubtful expression. He raised his eyebrows and squinted at it. “What's in these?”

“I told you. Pineapple and coconut. Also some walnuts.”

“Any sugar?”

“Brown sugar.” Surely that would be all right for a health nut.

“Flour?” Quincy rubbed against Eddie's pant leg. He lowered his chin, frowned, and moved his leg slightly away from the cat.

“Of course.”

He pushed the box toward her. “I can't eat white flour. You shouldn't either.”

“Some of our products don't contain flour.”

“How about white sugar?”

She admitted that most of them did. She wouldn't be able
to eat many of her own wares if she didn't eat flour or sugar. At the moment, she couldn't think of any that were up to Eddie's standards.

“When you start selling some healthy products, let me know. I'll take you to my own place next time.”

She remembered the card he'd given her. Health from the Heath Bar, it had said. Wow, she was sure looking forward to another health food place. It wasn't a good name, she thought, since it made her think of a candy bar. She'd bet there wouldn't be any candy bars at any Health from the Heath Bar.

“I'll give you call,” he said as she showed him out the back door.

If he didn't, maybe that would be all right since it seemed they had nothing in common now.

“What was that all about?” Anna asked after Eddie left.

“An old high school friend. I told you.”

“Why are you blushing?” Anna raised her eyebrows and squinted in the same skeptical way Eddie had at her wares. “Is he an old flame?”

“Yes, with emphasis on
old
. Not anymore. I'm going to buy some new sneakers. Quincy, you be good while I'm gone.” She leaned down to give him a few strokes, loving the rumbling purr he returned. She left before Anna could talk about Eddie Heath any more. She was conflicted enough without trying to explain herself to her partner.

Anna was gone when she returned with her new sneakers. She hadn't even considered asking Anna along. Although Anna loved shoe shopping, she wouldn't love trying on
anything as prosaic and practical as everyday work shoes. Anna hadn't stayed to see them, so Chase knew she was right.

Julie had called her while she was trying on her fifth pair of shoes, then Chase had decided to catch a bite of supper at a fast food place near the mall. She had to have something substantial after that lunch. By the time she got back it was nearly seven.

She sipped her takeout drink through the plastic straw as she entered her apartment, greeted Quincy—Anna must have brought him here when she left—and returned Julie's call.

“Where have you been? Anyplace interesting?” Julie asked.

“I've been doing your favorite thing, buying a pair of shoes.”

“Only one pair? I never buy just one.”

“Well, I know, but I never buy two.”

“Right. Okay, spill, what kind, what color? Where did you go?”

“They're mostly white, with some blue—”

“You bought tennis shoes! You're bragging about buying tennis shoes?”

So Julie thought as much of her purchase as Anna must have, obviously. Chase still had to buy her wedding shoes, too. She hadn't seen a thing she liked today. “Yes, I bought shoes for work. My other pair is falling apart. Now, what did you call me about?”

“Ooh, I have a scoop. I think. One of the other lawyers was talking to me in the break room about an older man who is in the process of getting his real estate license. I didn't pay
much attention until he said the man is a high school principal, and has been forever.”

“Mr. Snelson?” Chase toed off her old sneakers and curled up in the corner of her leather couch—her one splurge when she'd been furnishing the apartment. After Quincy inspected the new bag with the shoebox inside, he joined her and got a head scratch for his efforts.

“Mr. Van Snelson! None other. Yes, he even knew his name. Our principal is going to quit his job as soon as he qualifies, evidently. My colleague knows the woman who teaches the class he's taking. Mr. Snelson has told the teacher that he wants to keep it quiet until he's ready to make the change.”

“Oh, so the teacher tells your lawyer friend, who tells you, who tells me. So much for keeping it quiet.”

“How does he think no one is going to find out? It's not illegal to say who your students are. So far, though, that's only four people.”

“So far. What a strange thing for him to do, don't you think? Go into real estate?”

“Eh, I don't know. He's been at that school for ages, but I don't think anyone ever liked him.”

“You're not supposed to like the principal, are you?” Chase recalled, though, that she had adored her principal in grade school.

“Why not? If you're not a troublemaker, there's no reason you shouldn't get along with him.”

“You and I certainly weren't troublemakers, were we?”

“Wellll,” Julie drawled. “There was that time . . .”

“Oh yes, but we never got caught.”

“What's that horrible noise?”

Chase had reached the bottom of her drink and had slurped. Quincy, annoyed at the racket, too, jumped down. “My drink.”

“I also wanted to tell you that I was called into the police station at noon.”

“How did that go, Jules?”

She took a deep breath, sounding shaky. “Not the funnest lunch hour I ever took. That Detective Olson is a grim guy.”

“He can be. What did he ask you about?”

“Lots, including the fact that my scarf was used to strangle Ron North. I remember Ron took it with him, but I get the idea he doesn't believe me. I made the mistake of telling the detective it's one of my favorites, so he wanted to know why I didn't get it back. I couldn't stand dealing with Ron, is why, but Olson is not buying it. He knows about the thing in high school, too. Someone must have told him.”

Chase cringed, glad Julie couldn't see her face.

“But I've been going over those pages you copied for me. I saw something I hadn't noticed before.”

Shaking her new shoes out of the box, Chase left it with the lid off so Quincy could jump in and out of it. He would probably do that for at least half an hour. “Wait, let me get my copy.” Chase spread the pages out on her kitchen table.

“Look at the page with those weird names.”

Chase pulled the sheet toward her.

“See it? The extra letter?”

“No.” She held the paper up closer to her face. “Oh, yes, I do.” A faint J was written lightly below the word BIRD. “He was thinking of adding to this list? Someone named J? Has it been penciled in? I think so.”

“BIRD, Chase, think of it. Isn't that Dickie Byrd?”

“Then who is PRINCE?”

“I've been thinking about that, too. I still remember how to spell principal the way our second grade teacher taught us. He's a prince of a pal, she said.”

“Yes, I remember that. So you think this is the principal, Mr. Snelson?”

“Maybe. I have no idea who PHOTO is, but I'll bet these are blackmail victims. And I think I was about to be added to the list.”

C
hase thought, on the surface, that Julie's theory was far-fetched. She had asked her what on earth Ron North would be blackmailing her about. But when Julie pointed out that he was working on the real estate swindle story, Chase began to change her mind. Maybe he was trying to blackmail everyone involved in that. Eventually, he would have realized that Julie wasn't part of any swindle. So much for the real estate case distracting Julie from being a murder suspect.

Ron probably had a chance at shaking down whoever had offered the money to Hilda Bjorn. And that might be Mr. Snelson, since he was getting into the real estate business and there were what looked like dollar amounts next to his code name. If PRINCE
was
his code name. That would mean
that Hilda Bjorn's Vance Nelson actually was Van Snelson. There were amounts written in for the person called PHOTO, too. Maybe Mr. Snelson had a partner in crime who was already certified to handle real estate.

If BIRD was Dickie Byrd, Ron North hadn't been successful at getting any money out of him. Chase leafed through Ron's story notes to find anything that might pertain to wrongdoing on the part of Dickie. It looked like Ron had started to interview the principal for an article on the school board. He seemed to suspect there were some shady activities going on there. The notes went on to mention the real estate scams. There were also notes about historical swindles, maybe to fill out his intended article.

Dickie Byrd didn't figure in those pages. However, Dickie was an easy target even if he hadn't taken part in the scams. If he was always this careless about kissing women other than his wife in public, Ron could easily try to blackmail him about his indiscretions.

Chase devoutly hoped the police could figure out Ron's code. His notes flitted from one thing to another so that she didn't know how he had planned to write anything coherent from them. She also wished, even more devoutly, that J would end up standing for someone other than Julie.

Before they had hung up, Chase had described to Julie the person she and Eddie had seen at lunch, drunk. Julie remembered him from the reunion, but had no idea who he was. Was he PHOTO?

She couldn't sleep with all of this rattling around inside her head, so she padded down to the office, leaving Quincy snoring softly on her bed.

Ron's notebook mentioned the school board, and Dickie was on it. Maybe the scandal that got him killed wasn't real estate, but something to do with the school board. She looked up the local school board and there was Dickie Byrd's picture, the same one he was using on his campaign posters. Another member stood out to her. It was the man with the vest, the short, dumpy drunk she'd seen at lunch.

His name was Langton Hail and, upon further investigation, she found he was a real estate developer. He had built hotel complexes in several major cities.

It took her a long time to fall asleep with the associations and cross-associations whirling in her poor, tired brain.

•   •   •

Chase was glad
she would be working in the shop today to take her mind off Ron North's murder and everything else related to it.

Since the shop was fairly busy, she worked the counter beside Mallory, the new hire. About midmorning, it dawned on Chase what bothered her about Mallory. The woman, little more than a girl, rarely smiled. She knew this was her first job out of high school, but her résumé had listed an impressive number of retail places she had worked during the summers. Shortly before lunchtime there was a lull, one of those rare times without a single person in the shop.

“Mallory,” Chase began, then wondered how to continue. She paused, then forged ahead. “I need to tell you something very important about selling things to people.”

Mallory drew in her breath, her eyes wide with worry. “What am I doing wrong? Did I miscount the change?”

Chase gave her what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “No, nothing like that.” It suddenly occurred to her that the reason Mallory's list of jobs was so long could be that she got fired from all of them. “You're doing fine, really. But, well, I'm sure you've heard that first impressions are important. Right?”

Mallory nodded, but the worry remained etched on her face. She sucked on her bottom lip and hunched her thin shoulders.

“Relax, dear. I'm going to tell you a secret. There's only one thing you need to do to improve what you're already doing. It's a tiny thing, but it makes a huge first impression. When you first interact with a customer, you smile. That's it. The customer is at ease, so you're more at ease. Things will go smoothly if they feel comfortable with you from the start.”

Mallory nodded, her posture and her face losing some of the tension.

Just then, the tension in the shop kicked up one hundred percent. Grace Pilsen, Anna's old baking rival, strode into the Bar None, throwing the door open so violently that the usually soft bell jangled loudly. She looked fierce, but that was her normal expression, Chase thought. She'd never seen the woman without an angry scowl on her face.

Confronted with this new, terrifying customer, Mallory reassumed her worried expression. Chase couldn't blame her for not trying out the smile technique with this woman.

“Ms. Pilsen,” Chase said, also not smiling. “Is there anything I can help you with?”

“I need to speak to Anna.” She ended her sentence with an unattractive sneer. The white skunk streak in her
suspiciously black hair always made Chase think of Cruella De Vil, the villain in the
One Hundred and One Dalmatians
Disney movie. A shorter, plumper version. The woman obviously ate a lot of what she baked at The Pilsener.

Anna had heard her snarling voice, which was rather loud, and came barging through the double doors almost as violently as Grace had entered the shop. The doors
whomp
ed as they swung back and forth a few times in Anna's wake.

“What do
you
want here?” Anna asked.

“I'm trying to keep you from being disqualified.”

Anna drew herself up to her full height, which wasn't much more than Grace's. Both women measured about five feet tall.

They faced off in front of the sales counter, the lights of the display case below acting as spotlights on the action. Mallory and Chase watched in fascinated silence.

“I'll have you know,” Anna said, “that I'm officially entered and have turned in my recipe. My paperwork is all in order.”

“Except for this.” Grace extracted a piece of paper from the briefcase she carried and waved it toward Anna, who came forward and grabbed it.

“This is my application. I turned this in long ago. My acceptance was based on this.”

“Look at the bottom.” Grace's sneer grew uglier. “You neglected to sign your full name.”

Anna glanced at the sheet. “I . . .
what
?” She put her finger on the signature that even Chase could see from behind the counter.

“What kind of a signature is A. A. Larson?”

“It's my legal signature. I use it on everything.”

“That's right,” Chase put in. “She does.”

Grace shot Chase a withering look, her upper lip curling like Elvis's. “That could mean a lot of different people. What with all the Alvas and Anderses and Arvas around here.”

“Grace,” Anna said. “Go home. That's my signature and anyone can compare it to hundreds of other things I've signed. Get out of my shop.”

Grace drew air in through her dilated nostrils, stuffed the paper inside her briefcase, and left, torturing the bell again on her way out.

“Doesn't she have anything better to do than harass people?” Anna muttered as she returned to the kitchen.

The shop started to fill with shoppers, so Chase stayed on in front. She looked up as she was sliding some bars from the display case into a bag and saw Tanner, the kid who handled the web presence for Bar None, standing behind her customer. When the woman gathered her purchases and left, Tanner moved to the counter. This time the lights in the display case winked on his nose ring.

Mallory gave Tanner a huge grin and welcomed him to the shop. “Can I help you?”

She was learning, thought Chase, although maybe now she was being overly enthusiastic.

Tanner smiled back at Mallory, but spoke to Chase. “I came by to see what's going on with the webpage. Something's wrong with it.”

“Oh dear. Is it something you can't fix?” Chase said.

“Not from my end. Can I look at your setup?”

“I'll show you,” Mallory said. She abruptly slid out from behind the counter and beckoned Tanner into the kitchen.

What was that about? Chase wondered. Of course, Mallory knew where the computer was, in the office off the kitchen. But she wouldn't know where to find anything on it. She called after them. “Let me know if you need help!” Then she continued whittling down the line of buyers before her, all with their arms full of her wares.

When Mallory emerged a few minutes later, she told Chase that Tanner was trying a few things to fix the website. Chase did a double take at the pink glow on her cheeks. It seemed that Mallory was smitten. She smiled at the thought and kept working.

Tanner reappeared in the salesroom in under ten minutes. “That cat must have unplugged the router. If it's okay with you, I want to look up something. Then I'll be off.”

“Wait a sec,” Chase said. “I'll go with you.”

She should make sure Quincy was still in the office, since she had neglected to mention him to the pair when they headed that way. But she had another idea, too.