Fat Cat At Large (A Fat Cat Mystery)

A slight trespass . . .

The wooden floor planks creaked as she tiptoed across the living room. Chase flinched with each footfall, her nape hairs prickling. No one appeared at the top of the stairs to her right, yelling at her to get out, so she kept going.

She hoped Quincy was in the kitchen, where the food was. If not, she would have to think about exploring further. Quincy could be crouched inside an empty room, scared. For all his fierce bravado, he was a small animal, and vulnerable in so many ways. What if this household owned a pit bull? Or a mastiff? She almost whimpered aloud thinking about it.

Chase braced herself with a deep breath, inhaling another whiff of the delicious aroma, and peeked around the corner into the kitchen. Sure enough, Quincy sat on the counter, devouring the meatloaf. But what caught Chase’s attention was the man, lying on his side on the floor beside some scraps of paper, his back to her. She knew him.

She breathed his name. “Gabe? Gabe?”

Quincy turned his head toward her and blinked his gorgeous amber eyes, then returned to his task.

Gabe must be injured, she thought. She knelt and shook his stiff shoulder. No response. She rolled him onto his back. Gasped. A steak knife was stuck in his chest. That couldn’t be good! She reached toward the handle to pull out the knife, touched it, then hesitated, and started to draw her hand back.

A soft voice from the doorway said, “What have you done?”

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FAT CAT AT LARGE

A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

Copyright © 2014 by Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

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eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-62163-9

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / September 2014

Cover illustration by Dan Craig.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE: The recipes contained in this book are to be followed exactly as written. The publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision. The publisher is not responsible for any adverse reactions to the recipes contained in this book.

Dedicated to the late, great, mighty Agamemnon, my inspiration for Quincy

I’ve had a great team of people reading and catching errors for me. Thanks to Barbara Moye, Gale Albright, and Kathy “Eagle Eye” Waller for helping out. Also, to early readers Daryl Wood Gerber, Janet Bolin, and Marilyn Levinson. Krista Davis, Janet Koch, and Peg Cochran are always in my corner. To Paula Benson and Kinli Bare Abee for reading and assistance. For information on bruxing, to Andrew MacCrae, who was the first to give me this guidance. To my wonderful agent, Kim Lionetti. To my editor, Danielle Stockley, whose ideas generated the Fat Cat Mysteries. To my family for putting up with my long hours, days, weeks, and months of writing. Hubby has done a LOT of dishes and laundry. To Jessica Busen for encouragement and assistance. To all of the Austin Mystery Writers for support and encouragement. My department in charge of cat food, KB Inglee and Bodge, has my sincere thanks, also my dessert bar tasters, the choir at Concord United Methodist Church, Knoxville, Tennessee. And to all the wonderful Guppies, without which I would never stick to it or have the courage to submit a thing.

I’ll mention that I rearranged Dinkeytown a bit and probably mentioned some businesses that aren’t there anymore (and some that never were), so it’s slightly made-up, but every single person is entirely made-up.

If I’ve fluffed anything, it’s because I didn’t heed advice, or just wrote it wrong.

The butterscotch tabby cat crouched in his soft-sided carrier in the strange room. His nose twitched. This place was full of the smell of fear. He hadn’t eaten for two hours. Time for a decent meal. At least a snack. He clawed at the inside of the zipper. The top flap budged a bit. After he silently worked at it for a few more minutes, the flap opened far enough. Purring, he sprang out.

C
harity Oliver jumped up from the plastic chair in the examining room and caught her cat. “Quincy! How did you escape?” She stroked him and he twisted his head to lick her hand.

“Here, let me, Ms. Oliver.” Nice deep, rumbly voice, she thought. The veterinarian took the cat from her. His strong hands were warm. He cuddled Quincy, who began a steady purr.

“Please call me Chase, Dr. Ramos.” Only Anna called her Charity, after all, and hardly anyone called her Ms. Oliver.

Dr. Ramos set Quincy on the stainless steel examining table and fished his stethoscope out of his lab coat pocket. After sticking the earpieces into his ears, he bent his dark curls close to the cat to listen to his insides, then palpated Quincy’s stomach.

Chase felt bad about the poking and prodding her little darling was enduring, but Quincy didn’t seem to mind it. In fact, he licked the vet’s hand.

This guy was no ancient fuddy-duddy vet, like the one in Chicago, she thought. The pictures on the pale blue walls were of angelic children and fluffy pets, not clinical diagrams. Her heart rate sped up a little as she twirled a strand of her straight, honey-blonde hair. He couldn’t be much older than her own thirty-two. And not bad looking at all.

After the vet had taken Quincy’s temperature and peeked into his ears and mouth, he lifted the cat onto the scale and frowned.

“Is he healthy?” she asked. “I wanted to get him checked, since we just moved here. I adopted him from a shelter. He was the smallest of the litter. Little stick legs, and that sweet tail—it stuck straight up. Someone had dropped them off on the beach.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe he’s gotten this big. Isn’t he handsome?” She was chattering. Like a ninny. She needed to stop chattering.

“You say he was found on a beach? Lake Calhoun?”

“Oh no, Lake Michigan. I got him when I was living in Chicago.”

When the vet looked at her, she noticed his deep-set, coffee-brown eyes for the first time. They matched the little chocolate labs on his white coat. Except the little dogs couldn’t give her that flutter inside.

“Where do you live now?” he asked.

“Here. Minneapolis. Dinkytown.” There, that wasn’t chattering.

Dr. Ramos straightened and stuck his stethoscope into his pocket. He rubbed his palms together with a papery sound. “He’s a nice-looking shorthair, healthy for now. You need to make some changes, though. I’m afraid Quincy is far too fat for his small frame. Fifteen pounds is more than he should be carrying.”

Okay, the vet wasn’t
that
good looking. Quincy wasn’t “far too fat.” Was he?

Quincy meowed and batted at Dr. Ramos’s elbow. Chase thought the cat was disagreeing, too.

“We’ll have to put him on a diet,” the vet continued, catching Quincy’s paw and stroking it. “Is he an inside or outside cat?”

“Um, inside.” Mostly inside. Except when he got out. Quincy was a clever escape artist.

“Good.” He whipped out a prescription pad. “Here’s what we’ll need to feed him.”

We?

“See that he doesn’t eat anything else, other than a few treats. Is he used to eating twice a day or once?”

“Well, I leave his food out.”

“Twice a day, to begin with. One-third cup per serving. I’ll write the amount here. We take his bowl up when he’s finished. Treats only once a day. That’s written down, too.”

“But he usually munches all day long. He doesn’t eat that much.”

“He’ll get used to it.”

Definitely not that good looking. Poor Quincy! “He won’t like that.”

Dr. Ramos gave her a stern frown. His eyes were more of a hardwood-brown than coffee. “Do you want a diabetic cat?”

Who did he think he was? Her sixth-grade teacher?

She raised her chin in defiance. “I’ll see what
we
can do.”

The vet turned to go. “Bring him back in two weeks. I want to see his weight down by at least a pound.”

•   •   •

Chase pulled her
little Ford Fusion into the slot behind the Bar None and carried Quincy up the wooden steps to her second-floor apartment. She set him, in his carrier, on her kitchen counter and returned down the inside staircase to fetch the bags of cat food she’d bought on the way home.

She stopped beside her car and closed her eyes, turning her face up to soak in the late summer warmth. This last week of August, the temperatures were already dropping a bit, but the sun still put out heat. The leaves of the small trees at the edge of the alley parking area riffled in the slight breeze. The trees were green, but the autumn blaze of color would begin soon. A few marshmallow-fluff clouds drifted in the impossibly blue Minnesota sky.

Chase brought the bags in through the back door of the Bar None, where Quincy spent his days, plumped them down on the granite counter, scooped out enough food for tonight, then hurried upstairs. She was expecting her business partner, Anna, and her best friend, Julie, for dinner, and to sample a new recipe Anna was trying out.

After releasing Quincy, she mixed up a salad and put sandwiches together. The women would eat the minimal meal in haste, then start sampling dessert bars.

Anna Larson, Chase’s business partner and so much more, arrived first, tripping lightly up the stairs.

“You amaze me, Anna,” said Chase as Anna hung her brilliant blue sweater on the hook by the door. “My stairs don’t bother you a bit, do they?”

Anna gave a short laugh. She was the age to be Chase’s grandmother, early seventies, yet she ran up the stairs as easily as Chase, or more so. She wore blue jeans, sneakers, and plain T-shirts, but loved topping her outfits off with sweaters in various shades of blue. Today’s was adorned with yellow chrysanthemums.

“I thought we should try these. Pineapple Walnut Dream Bars.” Anna spread a printout on the counter. “I cobbled this recipe together from a couple of others we’ve done in the past.”

Quincy came into the kitchen to greet Anna. He rubbed against her blue jeans until she picked him up and rubbed his round tummy. “Who’s a good boy?” she asked. “Who’s a cuddlekins?”

Quincy purred that, obviously,
he
was the good boy and the cuddlekins.

Chase picked up his empty ceramic bowl from the floor and rinsed it out, then filled it with precisely one-third of a cup of mixed cat food, half new and half old. The woman at the pet store had told her to mix the two for a few days.

After Anna set him down, he cautiously approached his bowl and sniffed. He gave his mistress a baleful stare with his amber eyes, then picked at the food.

“It’ll be okay, Quince,” said Chase, softly. “You’ll get used to it.”

Was that a doubtful expression she got from him? He let out a howl.

“What’s wrong with Quincy?” Anna snatched him up.

“He’s on a diet. He doesn’t like it.”

“That’s right, you went to the vet today. Shall I give him a treat?”

“Only once a day, the doc said.”

Anna widened her eyes in horror. “Once a day? I give him num nums all day long.”

“That may be our problem.”

Anna grabbed a handful of his usual treats and fed them to the cat. “He’s starving.”

“He’s not starving. We’re supposed to use—” She looked for the new treat box, but she’d left it downstairs. And now she was saying
we
. “He has special treats now. Dr. Ramos says he’s too fat.”

“Quincy is large-boned. You tell that to this Dr. Ramos.”

Julie, Anna’s granddaughter and Chase’s best friend since childhood, arrived and the three women sat down to their meal.

The dessert trial went well. All three agreed that Pineapple Walnut Dream Bars should be sold at the dessert bar shop co-owned by Chase and Anna.

“But the name is cumbersome,” Chase said. “Besides, we have several called Dream Bars already.”

“How about Hula Bars?” Julie asked. “The pineapple and the coconut taste like something Hawaiian.”

Anna snapped her fingers. “Yes! That’s it. I’ll call them Hula Bars.”

The shop and Chase’s snug apartment above it were located on the fringes of the University of Minnesota, in an area of Minneapolis called Dinkytown. It was a small neighborhood with wide sidewalks and its own distinct, comfy, homey aura. Chase and Anna wouldn’t have thought of locating anywhere else. Not only because of the location, but because the property had been in Anna’s family for three generations, first as a jewelry store, then as a sandwich restaurant, and now as the Bar None.

“These are every bit as good as the raspberry ones.” Julie finished her last bite and dusted powdered sugar from her fingers.

“Take the rest home, Julie,” said Chase. The sweetness, offset by the dusky walnut taste, lingered in her mouth. “They’re in a plastic box on the counter inside.”

The women sat sipping lemongrass tea on Chase’s balcony. The temperature had dropped with the sun and they were wrapped in sweaters.

“We won’t be able to sit out here in another month or so,” Julie said. Chase’s best friend bore a family resemblance to Anna, her grandmother. Both women were shorter than Chase’s five six and they had the same periwinkle-blue eyes. Anna’s short bob was gray, while Julie’s was still dark brown, since she was exactly Chase’s age.

Chase warmed her fingers on her mug as a gust of brisk air hurtled down the street. “We almost can’t sit here tonight. I wonder if we’re getting a cold snap.”

“I’ll stop by the grocery store on my way in tomorrow morning,” Anna said, “to pick up coconut extract and some dried pineapple. I think we have everything else in the shop for the new recipe.”

The plastic bin of Hula Bars lay on the counter, unguarded. The kitchen, indeed the whole apartment, smelled like goodness. The sweet scent tickled the nose of the hungry cat. He wondered why the food and the snacks were so poor lately. Following the enticing odor, he jumped up and explored the countertop. It was no problem to bat the container to the floor, where the lid popped off and the contents were strewed across the tiles.