Fat Cat At Large (A Fat Cat Mystery) (12 page)

C
hase wanted to talk to Julie about what Ted had said. If it was true, it sounded like his mother had to have killed his father. No wonder the poor guy was so distraught. After Ted had mentioned the jacket, Chase remembered it—light tan, with epaulettes held by huge gold buttons. She’d seen it when Doris was in the shop that day.

As she walked home from Laci’s apartment, she pondered what Ted might be saying after she left.

A sudden gust sent the fallen leaves dancing down the sidewalk before her. The weather was not only turning cooler. The day had turned darker as low clouds rolled in to hide the sun.

The lovebirds had cried out for privacy with their lingering glances and deep breathing, so she’d left Laci to comfort Ted. Chase would be beside herself if she were in his situation.

But had he told her the truth? Could he be rotten enough to want to implicate his mother in his father’s death? He could, she thought, if he was the one who had killed him. His version jibed, somewhat, with Hilda’s. But he could still have committed the murder and be blaming his mother. Hilda had left out Doris being there. And Iversen. Maybe she wasn’t there, although Chase would bet Iversen was. She was beginning to think she should forget about relying on the old woman’s witness. She didn’t sound senile when you talked to her, but Chase had to admit she didn’t know any senile people and had no idea what they should sound like. Maybe they sounded perfectly normal, like Hilda.

Chase kicked at a clump of oak leaves. The wind caught them and tossed them into the street. A ray of sunshine broke through the restless, milling clouds, then disappeared just as quickly. She pulled her jacket collar up. If only Julie were more available to her today. This was an important step in Julie’s career, assisting on a big, public case (even if it was one that sent her grandmother reeling), but Chase wished it weren’t happening right now. She had to talk to someone.

Almost home, she dialed Anna, who didn’t answer. The wind blew more fiercely across the open parking lot, moaning through the tree branches. She could taste the crispness of the coming season in the air.

Next, as she crossed the lot to her door, she tried to call her new acquaintance, Mike Ramos.

“Chase, good to hear from you. Are you ready to bring Quincy in so I can reweigh him?”

She’d forgotten all about that. Was it Saturday he had suggested she do that?

“Oh, oh yes. Could I bring him in today? The shop is closed.” She’d see him face-to-face, which would be even better than phoning. She’d talk to him there.

He said she could come right away since his waiting room was empty, so she opened the door to the stairs to go up and get Quincy.

The tabby cat had noticed that the apartment door hadn’t latched all the way the last time she left. He’d spent the morning searching the apartment, but hadn’t been able to find any more of the treats, the best-tasting thing he’d had to eat for a long time. He nudged the apartment door open and expanded his search to the stairs. Just as he reached the bottom, the treat maker opened the door that led to the parking lot. He slipped through before she could react and ran outside, on the chance that there might be something good to eat out there.

Chase gave a sigh. She knew she shouldn’t call after him. That would only excite him and make him run farther away. But he wasn’t running. He scampered to the large trash bin and crouched, tail twitching, peering underneath with that intent predator cat stare. Chase crept up behind him. Before she could stoop to pick him up, he scooted, quick as a cat’s blink, around behind the trash bin. She cursed under her breath at the pain that seared her back.

She called his name softly, wishing she had one of those Kitty Patties. Again, she snuck up behind him. This time, he stayed put, intent on his prey. He reached an agile paw behind the large bin and clawed, bringing out a scrap of material.

Chase swooped down and picked him up. A piece of tan clothing dropped from his claws. Chase stared at the shining gold buttons, caught in a stray ray of sunshine poking through the clouds. She almost dropped Quincy. It was Doris’s jacket.

After she ran upstairs to shut Quincy into the apartment, she dialed Detective Olson.

“I’ve found the killer,” she began, but he cut her off.

“Where are you? What are you doing?” His voice was curt, abrupt.

“I’m not contaminating the scene. The evidence is on the ground, right where my cat found it.”

She heard him blow out a breath. “On the ground, where?”

“Right behind my shop. Come around the back and I’ll be here.”

“What is it?”

“You’ll have to come and see for yourself. I think I know, but I don’t want to say.” What if it was someone else’s jacket? She’d feel like a fool.

She was prepared for a crime scene team to arrive, but Detective Olson was the only person in the one unmarked car that idled to a stop beside her fifteen minutes later.

“Here it is.” She pointed to the jacket as soon as he climbed out of the car.

“At least I’m not finding you cornering someone you think is a murderer. Tell me exactly what happened here.” He pulled a small notepad and pen from his pocket. Good, she thought, he’s going to take notes.

She told him how Quincy stalked the jacket and extracted it from behind the bin. “See the bloodstain? Ted Naughtly says he saw his mother wearing this jacket, with the stain, when she left Gabe’s the day he died.” She didn’t mention that Ted also said his mother left it in the bushes in front of the condo. How did it get here, at her business? Was someone trying to implicate her? She was about to mention the discrepancy in location when he spoke.

Detective Olson hadn’t touched the jacket yet, but he bent over it and sniffed. “Doesn’t smell like blood.”

“It’s all dried up.”

“Doesn’t look like it either. Wrong color.”

“How could it not be blood? Ted saw her run out with this stain on her.”

“I’ll call Ted Naughtly in for questioning right away.”

“He’s at Laci’s apartment, I think. He was there a few minutes ago. Are you going to have someone investigate this? Is it evidence? I guess it could belong to someone else.”

In answer, a white CSI SUV with a blue BCA logo on the side pulled up behind the detective’s car. Beneath the bold initials were the words “Bureau of Criminal Apprehension” with a stylized map of Minnesota under the name of the state.

Chase observed while they took photographs and measurements, then answered their questions about exactly where the garment had been before Quincy pulled it out, as near as she could tell.

After they left, she realized that she’d stood Dr. Ramos up. Oops. She ran upstairs and called him from the apartment.

“Can you still see us?”

“I expected you about an hour ago.” He sounded annoyed, for which she didn’t blame him.

“Something happened. I need to talk to you about it.” Was that true? She
wanted
to talk to him about it.

“I’m about to see a patient. I should be done in half an hour, then I’m free for an hour.”

“I’ll be there this time. I promise.”

It was after lunchtime, so she gulped down a peanut butter sandwich, but would have preferred a bowl of hot soup. She’d gotten chilled standing in the parking lot for so long, watching the officials process the scene. The longer she had looked at the jacket, the less that stain had looked like blood to her, too. What was going on?

When Chase got to Mike’s office at Minnetonka Mills, he was still with his patient. After a short wait, she hauled Quincy into the examining room in his carrier. Did he feel lighter? Not likely, since he’d still been getting treats from Anna as of yesterday.

Chase winced when she lifted the carrier onto the exam table.

“Is something wrong?” Mike asked.

“I hurt my back the other day. His crate feels extra heavy, I think, since I did that.”

When the vet weighed him, though, it was worse than she expected.

“He’s gained a few ounces, almost a quarter of a pound.” He shook his head and gave Chase a stern glare. “That’s not good. The crate feels heavier because it
is
.”

“I should have waited longer. He’ll lose weight by next week.”

“Why would that magically happen?”

There was no call for sarcasm, she wanted to say, but bit her tongue. “I’ve put together a recipe, like you suggested. It’s for a healthy cat treat.”

“Tell me.” His look softened.

She told him the recipe and he admitted, nodding, that it was a good one. “I have to keep Anna from sneaking desserts to him.”

“Would you like me to tell her not to?”

Chase could imagine how well that would go over. “No, I can do it.” It would work better now that there was an alternative. She hoped.

“Take care of your back. If Quincy were lighter that would help.”

She wanted to stick her tongue out at him, but that would have been juvenile. As she left, she turned her head toward his closed office door and did it anyway.

•   •   •

Later, when Chase
was dressed for bed in her favorite flannel nightie, she finally got a chance to confer with Julie. She’d been wanting to talk to her all day.

“You wouldn’t believe how slow this thing is going,” Julie started out. “We finally finished voir dire today. I thought we’d be done with it two days ago.”

“Still, isn’t that pretty good for a major case? I think it takes longer than that sometimes.”

“I know, I know. It’s just that this doesn’t seem
that
major. The evidence will be pretty cut-and-dried. I mean, I don’t see how we can lose.”

“So what makes it take longer?”

“I think everyone is being extra careful about everything they do.”

Chase stretched and yawned. She was getting sleepy and hadn’t talked to Julie yet about Doris’s jacket.

“Why are they being so careful, do you think?”

“Oh, that’s obvious,” Julie said. “The press is all over this. They’re swarming the courthouse. It makes a good, scandalous story, robbing money from charity.”

“I guess that makes sense.” Chase tried to picture Doris’s murder trial when that day came. Or Ted’s. Or Torvald’s. Would she be called to testify? Would there be a gauntlet of reports and microphones to endure? “Listen, I want to talk something out with you.”

“Shoot.”

“I talked to Ted today, at Laci’s apartment.”

“I thought they broke up.”

“I’m not sure about their status. It seems to be on again at the moment. Anyway, he told me he saw his mother run out of Gabe’s condo, the afternoon he was murdered, with a huge red splotch on her jacket.”

“Wow! Do the police know about this?”

“They do now.”

“So she murdered him?”

“Not sure about that. Ted says she threw her jacket in the bushes right outside the condo. However, Quincy got out late this morning, after I came back from Laci’s, and he found her jacket behind my trash bin.”

There was a moment of silence. Then Julie giggled. “Quincy is quite the detective, isn’t he? How did that happen?”

“Getting out or finding the jacket?”

“Never mind. So you called the police?”

“Yes, and they came and went over everything out there. But what do you suppose this means?”

“You mean how did the jacket get there?”

“I guess. I don’t even know if Ted was telling the truth. Detective Olson doesn’t think the stain is blood at all. Could Ted be cold-blooded enough to try to frame his mother?”

“If he is, he’s going about it in an odd way. He told you where she put the jacket, but that’s not where it was.”

“I wonder if Doris moved it. If she knew Ted saw her stash it there and decided to . . . I don’t know . . . try to implicate me?”

“But her jacket can’t implicate
you
, can it?”

Chase grunted in exasperation. “I don’t know. I don’t know who to believe and I don’t know what anything means.”

T
he next morning, Chase arrived downstairs before everyone else, carrying a plastic bin that contained Quincy’s new treats. After she put it on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator, she busied herself in the kitchen, starting the coffee and getting out supplies for the day’s baking. She was eager for Anna to get there so she could tell her about the treats—and about Doris’s jacket.

When Anna finally came in, Chase had to look twice. She wore her usual vibrant sweater, this one of bright teal with turquoise swirls, but the rest of her was drab and colorless. There wasn’t a hint of bounce in her step. Even her usually brilliantly shining gray hair was limp and lackluster. Chase wasn’t sure whether to sympathize or to leave her alone.

Anna surveyed the bowls, the mixer, and the pans Chase had spread on the granite counter, and dropped to one of the stools, where she started swiveling back and forth, a dull expression on her face.

“I have something to show you.” Chase’s own voice sounded unnaturally bright to her, trying, as she was, to combat Anna’s gloom. She presented the plastic container of cat treats and opened the lid so Anna could see them.

Anna leaned over and sniffed. “They don’t smell too appetizing.”

“They’re not for you, silly. They’re for Quince. These are healthy cat treats. Dr. Ramos says he should have only these from now on, and his diet food.”

“Poor Quincy.”

“He loves them! And you’re to stop giving him desserts.” Chase knew she was becoming shrill. Anna was being unreasonable.

Anna shrugged, glanced away, and picked a couple of cat hairs off her pants. The swiveling stool had developed a squeak.

“You’re driving me nuts,” Chase said, then softened her voice as she put the cat treats into the refrigerator. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Do you know about Julie’s trial?” She quit swiveling.

“Yeah, that’s gotta be hard on the family.”

“It is! Bill is beside himself.” Finally, a spark from Anna. “He has such ambivalent feelings toward Marvin to begin with. And, on top of everything, his own son is giving him a hard time.”

“Marvin is his stepson, right? But he had a child with his second wife, Marvin’s mother?”

“Yes. His only natural child.”

“What a mess.” The coffeemaker quit making its gurgling noises and Chase poured Anna a cup.

“Julie says it could drag on for weeks.” She took the steaming mug and inhaled the strong coffee aroma, giving Chase a weary smile. “Thanks.”

“So, you and Bill? You’re . . . ?”

“Yes. We are.” Her smile deepened. “I was hoping he would, maybe, propose soon. I so wanted to surprise you with a ring.” She frowned and started swiveling the squeaky stool again.

“That would be a huge surprise, since I didn’t even know you were seeing anyone.”

“I’m sorry to have kept this a secret. Julie didn’t want me to broadcast it, since she’s working on his stepson’s trial. There’s also the fact that his wife hasn’t been dead that long, barely a year. I didn’t want to tell anyone. It just seemed a little . . . icky.”

“Oh, Anna.” Chase gave her a hug from behind, resting her chin on Anna’s dear, gray head. That effort didn’t hurt her back a bit. “I’m so sorry you’ve been going through this alone. We shouldn’t keep secrets from each other. And there’s something else I have to talk to you about.”

Chase felt Anna stiffen. She went on. “About firing either of these girls. We can’t do that.”

“And why not? We hired them. We can fire them.” Anna got up and stepped away.

Chase took a deep breath. “Am I not a full partner?”

“Of course.”

“Then you need to consider what I think.”

Anna nodded and was about to say something else.

Vi came in and interrupted any further discussion. The changeable woman was, once again, her disheveled self rather than the usual suave, smooth Violet Peters. She even had a small stain on her dark blue satin blouse. Chase couldn’t remember ever having seen a blotch on Vi’s clothing. Her buttons today were two shades of pink. Sometimes Chase thought her clothes were a notch or two down from designer stuff, but those buttons made up for that.

Vi said perfunctory good mornings and passed through to the salesroom to don her smock and open up.

Chase raised her eyebrows at Anna, but she had turned her attention to beginning the day’s baking.

Chase retreated into the office to go over the books from two days ago. She turned on the computer and glanced at the news page that came up.

She did a double take. The headline hit her.

PROMINENT FINANCIER FOUND DEAD; FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED

The victim’s name, Torvald Iversen, jumped out at her from the verbiage below the bold print. Chase let out a sharp yelp. Two seconds later, Anna opened the door.

“Are you all right?”

Chase pointed at the screen. “He’s dead!”

Anna peered at the screen.

“You want to sit and read it?” asked Chase.

Anna pulled a chair over and they both consumed the short, uninformative article. Iversen had been found dead in the morning at his home by his cleaning lady. She usually arrived when he was gone, but this time she had found his body close inside the front door, partially blocking her entry. A quote from her was included (“I tried and tried to push the door open, and when I did, I almost threw up”), but there was no comment “at this time” from the officials.

“I’m calling Detective Olson,” Chase said, and pulled up the number he’d reached her from on her cell. But there was no answer.

“I imagine he’s busy right now,” Anna said. “He’s probably working on this case since it has a tie-in with Gabe’s, don’t you think?”

Chase nodded. That made sense. Chase decided she would go over the receipts later. She was a little too rattled to do it just now.

She and Anna shut Quincy into the office and both worked in the kitchen for a few minutes before Vi came in.

“What was the matter? The customers have left and I came back to see what’s going on.”

“Oh, you heard me yell when I saw the news?” Chase said. “I was surprised to see a report that Torvald Iversen is dead.”

“Oh.” Vi paled. “On the Internet? Isn’t he the one who . . . ?”

“The one who’s been accusing me of murder. Yes. I can’t say I’m sorry he’s dead.” Chase immediately regretted her last statement, recalling that Vi had denied knowing him once before, the day he’d made her so nervous she’d knocked over a stack of dessert containers. “Now he can never admit he killed Gabe.”

“He . . . he killed
Gabe
?” Vi looked shocked.

“Why else would he keep insisting I did it?”

“That’s a good question.”

The chimes on the front door tinkled and Vi left to greet the customer.

“What do you suppose is wrong with her?”

“I’m as puzzled as you are, Anna. We were going to have a talk with her, and with Ted, but I don’t think that’s happened either, has it?”

“Do you think that’s a good idea? Maybe we should stay out of their personal lives.”

“But Vi works for us,” Chase said. “We should try to help her. That reminds me, we still need to talk, we two, about our other employee.”

“Laci?”

“Yes. I know she and Vi can’t work together without tangling, and Vi is the much better salesperson. But . . .”

“We should get rid of both of them.”

Chase blew out a breath of exasperation. Why was Anna so obtuse sometimes? “No, I don’t think we should. We can work all this out. And if we’re going to make an extra effort to help Violet, then we have to do the same for Laci. They’re both our employees. They’re part of the Bar None family.”

“I suppose you’re right. But can we help Laci, somehow, without her working here?”

Chase shot Anna an exasperated look.

“All right, I’ll make more effort.” Anna returned to the kitchen, allowing Chase to catch a whiff of the tangy scent of the Lemon Bars that were browning in the oven before the office door swung shut.

There, she’d done it. She’d spoken her mind about Vi and Laci. They would keep employing them and would get them settled down so they could work together by the holidays. That was over two months away. Relief washed over Chase. She was sure she was doing the right thing.

Later that afternoon, Detective Olson returned Chase’s phone call.

“I read about Iversen,” she said. “That’s why I called you.”

“You have information about his death?”

“Not really. It’s just that, well, he’s been so vehement in accusing me, I figured maybe he killed Gabe. Was it suicide?”

“Is that what you read? Was that on the Internet?”

“No, it didn’t say
suicide
. It said
foul play
. But if he was remorseful about killing Gabe, suicide would make sense.”

“It’s pretty hard to bash your own head in.”

“He could fall on something sharp.”

“Didn’t happen. His skull is crushed, and the murder weapon has been removed. You don’t need to concern yourself with Iversen’s death. But I have something to tell you about the jacket you found.”

“Is it Doris’s?”

“Yes, but—”

“So she
did
kill him.”

There was a pause at the detective’s end of the call before he continued. “As I was trying to say, the stain is tomato sauce.”

“Tomato sauce? There was all that blood.”

“Not everything you saw on the floor of the condo was blood. A bunch of it was sauce. It either spilled or was thrown. I suspect Naughtly threw it at his wife, from the amount on her jacket.”

“Is there a serial killer?”

“I wouldn’t say that. But I will caution you to be careful what you say to people who knew Gabe. That’s why I told you some of this. I want you to stay safe. Keep away from his acquaintances and relatives.”

Chase deflated after the phone call. It would be hard to avoid all of Gabe’s acquaintances and harder to avoid his relatives, since her employee was dating one relative and another was a regular customer.

It seemed like Doris hadn’t killed Gabe. Whoever had would probably have blood on their clothes. Too bad Hilda Bjorn hadn’t seen anyone run out of the condo covered in blood. It didn’t look like Iversen had done it either. In fact, Chase would bet her missing money that the same person killed both of them. Evidence against this was that the murder weapons were so different. They were both probably weapons of convenience, though, the nearest weapon to hand. That seemed to make sense. A small point for it being the same killer.

Not only should she stay away from people connected to Gabe, she should keep away from potential murder weapons.