Fat Cat At Large (A Fat Cat Mystery) (19 page)

C
hase stopped her bicycle in the middle of the bridge, her favorite part of the early morning ride she had been doing all too seldom lately.

“Looks like it’ll be warm again today,” said Julie, stopping beside her.

“I’m so glad you could make it this morning. We haven’t done this in ages.”

“Too long,” agreed Julie. “What with my trial and your troubles . . . Trial and troubles, sounds like a blues song, doesn’t it?”

“What do you think of your chances right now?” The testimony for Julie’s big trial was in its fifth day, having started last Friday.

“It’s hard to tell. This jury is very good at keeping a straight face and not letting on what they’re thinking. Better even than most of them are, I think.”

“Have you been able to find out anything else about that restraining order Iversen took out?”

“I haven’t had a chance to try, but I may be able to sneak a peek later this week. I did get a look at Hilda Bjorn’s file. They’ve opened a new case on her attack, of course.”

“Is my name the only one down for a suspect?”

“Well, so far, yes. But it’s very early days for that. What I want to tell you is that she’s doing well and they expect a full recovery. Did you know that she’s eighty-seven years old?”

“I’m glad she’ll be all right. But I wish she’d realize she’s wrong about seeing me right at the time when the murder was committed. Someone needs to recover her memory.”

“Grandma said she’s going to see Hilda in the hospital tonight.”

“Yes. I hope Anna can jog her recall. This will get Anna’s mind off the trial, too.”

“I think it would be better if something could get Bill Shandy’s mind off it. He’s so concerned for his rotten stepson.”

“What’s going on with his own son?”

“Rick? He’s almost worse than Marvin!” Julie picked up a stone from the bridge and heaved it over the railing. They both watched it plummet and sink into the depths of the Mississippi. “The guy has just lost another job. He only keeps them a few months, according to Grandma. He’s hitting his father up for money again. She says Bill feels so guilty because he has the money, but doesn’t think he should keep handing it out to him. He knows he should make his son grow up and take responsibility.”

“I agree. I might put it differently, though. He should
let
him grow up. Maybe the problem with all three of his kids is that he’s given them too much.”

“You could be right. Rick is the youngest and he’s forty-two.”

“And still asking his father for money?”

Julie nodded, staring at the swirling Mississippi below them. “At least every month.”

A pair of mallards floated by. They didn’t seem to have a care in the world.

“Still, a guy can’t be responsible for what his grown children do,” Chase said. “Poor Bill.”

“Marvin’s mother might be more to blame than Bill. Grandma says she was always urging Bill to never let her children be poor. Now that she’s dead, he feels he should honor her wishes.”

“But he can’t stand behind a son, or a stepson, who’s doing illegal things! Stealing from a charity organization that was formed to help children—that’s pretty low.”

“You don’t have to tell me. I’m on the prosecution’s side.”

“Do you have the proof to convict him?”

“Oh yes. But don’t tell Grandma. I’m trying to keep as much of this from her as I can.”

“It’s a deal,” Chase said.

“And I’m still nervous about getting you that info after your questioning. You haven’t mentioned that to anyone, have you?”

“Of course not! I’ll never do that.”

“I know. It just gives me the willies. I hope you’re completely out of this mess soon.”

“You and me both.”

When Chase returned to her apartment to change clothes for work, Quincy was acting strange. He didn’t rise from his bed to greet her, but sat licking one of his forepaws. She went to the bedroom to change, but he didn’t follow her like he usually did.

“Hey, big guy,” she said, coming into the kitchen, her shorts changed for slacks, but still wearing her T-shirt. “How about your morning din din?” She scooped out the dry diet food and topped it with her concoction. When she set it on the floor, Quincy stared for a minute, then got up and limped across the floor to his dish much more slowly than usual. Chase wondered if she should worry. When he finally got there, Chase saw that he had left tracks on the gray tile kitchen floor. Wondering what on earth he’d stepped in, she grabbed a paper towel to wipe the floor. The towel, however, showed bright red. She almost dropped it. Yes, she should worry! Quincy was bleeding!

It seemed to be his right front paw, so she grasped his leg to try to see if the bottom of his foot was cut. He snatched it away and hissed! Oh dear. Something must be very sore, his paw or his leg or something.

She heard Anna come in the back door and rushed downstairs to tell her that poor Quincy was bleeding.

“Poor baby!” Anna cried. “Can I try to look at him?”

“Sure, you can try. He won’t let me touch his leg.”

Anna trotted up the stairs. Chase was a little miffed. Why did Anna think Quincy would let her handle him when he wouldn’t let his owner, his favorite person, do it?

She followed Anna up the stairs and came into her living room to find Quincy sitting in Anna’s lap. He was on a dishtowel she had put over her jeans. Chase bit her words back when she realized that it was one of her good dishtowels, one of a set that she’d gotten on a trip to Amish country to see her friend Charlotte Bessette, who owned a wonderful cheese shop in the town of Providence, Ohio.

Not only had her cat abandoned her, he was managing to get bloodstains all over her nice linen dish towel.

“Look, Charity.” Anna lifted his front leg from the paw. “His dewclaw is bleeding.”

Chase realized she had grabbed his leg exactly on his dewclaw. No wonder he’d been irritated. “Why is it bleeding? Should I call Mike?”

“Dr. Ramos? Yes, I think so. Something’s wrong. Maybe it’s infected.”

“The vet sees him all the time. How could it get infected that fast?”

Anna gave her a stern look. “I’m not a veterinarian. How should I know?”

Quincy curled up in Anna’s lap with his tail over his nose. “It doesn’t seem to be hurting him,” Chase said. “I’ll go later. Right now we need to get the shop opened.”

It was obvious Anna thought Chase was doing the wrong thing by waiting, but she didn’t say a word, just gently set Quincy in his bed and swept past her on the way to the kitchen.

Chase finished dressing, ran a brush through her hair, and went to work. Once she and Anna got to working, and established their habitual rhythm, the day seemed brighter.

“Have you decided what you’re going to say to Hilda Bjorn when you see her tonight? Julie said you were visiting her in the hospital.”

“I am going to. I haven’t decided exactly. But I do want to see how definite she is about who she saw and when she saw them. I won’t single you out, but I’ll ask her about everyone she saw. Maybe that will jar something loose.”

“We should keep in mind that she was viciously attacked. I suppose you’ll be safe enough in the hospital, but if someone thinks you’re getting information from her, do you think you’ll be in danger?”

“Who’s going to know I’m there?”

“I don’t know. But someone knew she was giving evidence to the police.”

“Unless her attack has nothing to do with the murders. That’s another thing I’ll try to find out, what goes on in her life and if she’s in danger from elsewhere.”

“That’s a good idea. I hadn’t thought of that.” Her mind had held one track lately: the murders and the whys and wherefores connected with them. Hilda probably had a family somewhere, possibly relatives with feuds and factions. Maybe someone was in her will and wanted to inherit soon.

Chase’s mind turned to the dead men, Gabe and Torvald. Their connection was that they were working together to obtain her shop. In other words,
she
was the link between them. But how did Hilda Bjorn fit in? Could Anna find out?

W
hen Vi set her big tote bag on the counter and got a sandwich out of an insulated carrier for her lunch, Chase took the stool next to her.

“Are you still getting rides from Shaun Everly?”

Vi, who had just bitten off a mouthful of ham and swiss on rye bread, nodded. She finished her bite and said, “Not much longer, though. I found someone who will fix my Hyundai in exchange for some of my old clothes.”

“That sounds lucky! So you found a female auto mechanic?”

“I did.” Vi sounded proud. “She lives in Shaun’s apartment building.”

Which, Chase knew, was also where Laci lived.

“Are you doing all right with your finances now?”

Vi shrugged. “I guess so. I’m not out of money.”

Chase studied the young woman for a moment. The more she got to know her, the more enigmatic she seemed. Vi was the last person Chase would expect to do business by bartering. She did know that Vi had very little money smarts. After all, she’d gotten herself into enough trouble with her overdue bills that she had felt compelled to dip into the Bar None till. “You be sure and let me or Anna know if you get into any more trouble with your finances.” Chase certainly didn’t want that to happen again!

“Sure.” Vi seemed unconcerned.

“Which clothes are you giving up?” Chase had never seen Vi wear anything that looked as if it should be given away. That mechanic might be getting a heck of a good deal.

“Oh, they’re some that I’m not wearing.” She waved her hand to indicate how inconsequential those clothes were.

“Say, I’ll bet you might know the answer to a question I have.”

Vi crumpled her sandwich bag and stuffed it into the insulated lunch carrier, then stuffed that inside her tote. “Okay.”

“How did Shaun and Torvald know each other?”

“Did they?”

Chase remembered, at that moment, that Vi had denied knowing Torvald Iversen herself, after Chase had seen them arguing in the parking lot. “Yes. And you knew Torvald, too. I saw you talking to him one day outside.” Could Torvald have been the potential source of her money that had fallen through? He’d been a financer, but who would finance Vi? And why?

“Who?” Vi asked, her smooth face the picture of innocence.

“Tall, thin guy, usually wore a blazer.”

Vi raised her impeccable eyebrows and blinked. “Oh, is
that
who that was? The creep was trying to pick me up.”

To Chase’s ear, her statement rang false.

•   •   •

Chase crated Quincy,
without too much difficulty, right after she closed the shop, and drove him to Mike’s veterinary office in Minnetonka Mills. She’d called and described Quincy’s distress and Mike had said he’d work her in at the end of his day. She got there at 6:30 on the dot. Since it was after regular hours, his outside door was locked, but he opened it as soon as she knocked. His receptionist had gone for the day, so Mike led the way into the first examining room himself.

“I appreciate you doing this,” Chase said.

“No problem.”

They were being so formal. It was as if the redhead were standing in the corner of the room, listening to them. At least, that’s how Chase felt.

Mike lifted Quincy’s paw, gingerly, not touching the dewclaw, which was still seeping a bit.

“Ouch. You have an ingrown toenail, buddy.” He turned to Chase, his lips pursed ruefully. “Sorry I didn’t notice this before.”

“I guess you were concentrating on the size of his tummy.” Even to herself, Chase sounded cold and distant.

“Are you all right?”

“Mm–hmm.”

Mike turned to face her directly. “Are you mad at me?”

Chase couldn’t look him in the eye. “Why should I be?”

“Beats me. Are you free for dinner this weekend?”

“I’m not sure.”

“How about lunch, then?”

“You don’t have plans?”

“Nope. I have the whole weekend free. All day Saturday and Sunday. But you’re open on Saturday and—”

“Dr. Ramos?” A short, round woman in her late forties, or possibly early fifties, poked her head into the room. “Is there anything else? You want me to wait and do this room?”

Mike gave her a friendly smile. “No, Karla, I’ll wipe it down myself. You’d better get home. Thanks.”

That was Karla? Cute Karla? She
was
cute. She wore her graying hair in a thick braid that wound around the top of her head and her elbows were as dimpled as her cheeks.

“Nighty night, then.” Karla closed the door. Chase felt some of the stiffness go out of the room, and out of herself. That nice, older woman was no romantic threat.

“I could do dinner on Saturday,” she said.

“Good. We need to talk.”

Did that sound ominous? Promising? Both?

•   •   •

Anna called Chase
a little before 8:00 that night. “I got in to see Hilda. I had to say I was her cousin.”

“How did it go?” Chase asked.

“Not as well as I would have liked. The poor woman is sedated up to her eyeballs. She was very nice and very polite, and very vague. She doesn’t seem to remember anything right now.”

“Oh great. Wait, that could help. If she loses her memory of that day, I’m off the hook.”

“I suppose.” Anna sounded doubtful. “One problem was that she didn’t know who I was. I tried to explain that I worked at Bar None, but she grew agitated every time I said the name of our shop.”

Chase told Anna how Mike had clipped Quincy’s dewclaw, then clipped the other one as a precaution.

“He refused to charge me anything.”

“I’ll have to remember to start dating a vet if I get another pet.”

Anna and her husband had owned a series of miniature dachshunds. The two elderly dogs they’d owned when he’d died had passed away within two years. Anna hadn’t had the heart to get another pet since then.

Well, if Anna thought she and Mike were dating, and if she was going to dinner on Saturday, maybe she should shove the redhead out of her mind. If only she could.

A
nna had sounded pleased when Chase told her that she and Mike Ramos were going to dinner on Saturday. Chase had noticed this matchmaking tendency in Anna before, but it hadn’t come up lately. Julie was much too busy with her job in the state attorney’s office to see anyone and Chase had needed time to recover from her ordeal when she first came back home to Minneapolis.

Before they hung up, Anna had said that she and Bill Shandy were going out Saturday, too. Chase didn’t consider that she herself tended toward matchmaking, but she would be more than pleased if those two worked out. Bill deserved a chance at happiness and Anna was beginning to get over losing her mate, enough so that she was ready to start seeing Bill—and to tell Chase and Julie that she was doing it. Even if it did bother Julie because her trial was so closely connected.

Chase shook herself. What was she doing, daydreaming about romances when she was a suspect in two murders? Three, if Hilda Bjorn didn’t pull through.

•   •   •

Chase was filling
in at the sales counter while Vi went out to lunch on Friday. Business was sporadic, as it often was, coming in waves and lulls. During one of the lulls, Chase, humming “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” from
My Fair Lady
, turned from restocking the pink shelves with preboxed treats to find Torvald’s sister, Elinda, regarding her from just inside the front door. She was dressed, again, in tight-fitted clothing, a short black skirt and a purple blouse that strained to contain her bosom, with a miniature black purse over her shoulder.

“Hi,” Chase said. “Can I help you? Would you like some dessert bars?”

“No, I don’t think so. I wanted to see the place Gabe and Torvald were so crazy about getting.” And Shaun? Chase could see more tattoos now. One snaked up her left arm and another wound around her right ankle.

Chase waved her arm around the shop with a smile. “This is it.”

“He died for this?” Elinda’s sneer dismissed Chase’s shop as something not worth dying for.

Chase’s smile died. “Excuse me? How do you figure that?”

“He wanted to buy you out.” She stated that as if it explained everything.

“I don’t think I’m following you. Yes, he wanted to buy my shop. However, I never gave him the impression—
we
never gave him the impression that we would sell it. This property has been in Anna’s family for a long time.”

“Who’s Anna?”

“She’s the other owner.”

“Which one of you killed him?”

Chase stomped her foot. “Neither of us killed him! Torvald killed him!”

Elinda took a step back, blinking. “You’re crazy.”

Anna, no doubt responding to Chase’s foot stomp, poked her head through the kitchen doors. “Everything all right?”

“Are you the one who killed Gabe?” Elinda asked Anna.

“Oh, sure.” Anna blinked. “I ran over there and stuck a knife in him, just for the heck of it. I had no reason to, and didn’t have time to do it, but somehow, that’s what happened.” Anna looked at Chase. “Who is
this
?”

“She’s Torvald’s sister and Gabe’s mistress.”

“Oh!” Anna was struck by enlightenment. “She’s Hilda’s floozy.”

Elinda looked confused. “Huh?”

“Tell me,” Chase said. “Exactly what time were you at Gabe’s the day he died?”

“I wasn’t there that day.”

“You certainly were,” Anna said. “The older woman across the street saw you enter and exit.”

“Ted saw you, too,” Chase added. “Gabe’s son.”

“Ted?” Elinda asked. “A guy named Ted was going with Krystal, but not for long. Are you telling me he was Gabe’s son? I never even knew Gabe had a son. For some reason, Gabe never introduced me to any of his family.”

“Just answer the question,” said Anna. “What time were you there?”

“Was he dead when you got there?” Chase asked.

“No! He wasn’t dead! I didn’t kill him! He called me to come over and I got there about, I don’t know, around three thirty, I think.”

Chase nodded. “That fits. That’s when Ted says she was there, soon after Gabe got home from our shop. Before Doris got there.” If Elinda had killed Gabe, Doris may have walked in, seen him dead, and fled, just as she’d said she had. He couldn’t have thrown tomato sauce on Doris if he was dead when she visited, though.

“I don’t have to stand for this. I have places to be.”

“Dressed like that?” Anna said.

“I’ll have you know this is just like what I wear for work. Krystal and I both work at Cooter’s Sports Bar. She’s my roommate. We’d feel overdressed if we wore jeans, after working there.”

Something clicked into place for Chase. “Krystal. She dated Ted, you said?”

“She was with Ted Naughtly when Laci passed out.” Anna nodded.

“Ted Naughtly?” Elinda said. “So he
is
Gabe’s son?”

“He is,” Chase said.

“He’s been spying on me?”

Anna narrowed her eyes at the young woman. “Did you come back to Gabe’s condo after Doris left?”

“That bitch was there? No. Gabe said he was too busy to see me that day. I’ll bet it was because he was seeing her. We kinda had a spat. I wasn’t going to talk to him again until he called me.” Elinda whipped a tissue out of her tiny purse and dabbed at her eyes. “And now he’s dead. I wish I hadn’t gone away.” She stopped dabbing her eyes. “He saw
her
after he sent
me
away? Is that what you’re saying?”

Anna nodded. Elinda stormed out of the shop. Could Elinda be crossed off as a suspect? If only the police would cross off Chase.

•   •   •

Somehow, Chase made
it through the rest of the hours of operation on Friday. The words
murder suspect
kept echoing in her mind throughout the day, preventing her from thinking about anything else, even driving all the show tunes out of her head.

After the shop closed, she and Anna went through the cleaning up motions mechanically, without any conversation beyond what was needed to do the job. Anna seemed to have something on her mind, too. Chase was too unnerved by the visit from Elinda and too distracted to rouse herself to be concerned about Anna.

Later, upstairs, relaxing with a glass of wine that didn’t do much toward easing her fears, she chided herself for not being more concerned about Anna. She lifted her cell phone, which seemed to weigh five pounds, and called Anna, but didn’t get an answer. She tried Julie with the same result, then settled for a warm, purring cat in her lap until the phone rang.

“Detective Olson here. I need you to come to the station.” He sounded crisp and official.

“Now? It’s late and I’ve had a glass of wine. I shouldn’t drive.” She didn’t really think that one glass would impair her coordination, but it sounded like a good excuse to her. She certainly didn’t want to go to the station and be held all night again.

“I’ll come to your place. I have a few more questions.”

“What about?” It could be about Gabe, or Torvald, or Hilda. Any of the cases she was a prime suspect in.

“I’ll tell you when I get there.”

The connection went dead. At least she wouldn’t have to go to the station. Chase paced the floor of her apartment until she heard the doorbell. Just outside the rear door to the shop were two doorbells, one for her apartment and one for the shop. The shop bell tinkled like an old-fashioned brass bell, but the apartment doorbell chimed, so she could easily tell the difference. The chimes, usually pleasant, sounded dull tonight to her ear. Chase trudged down the stairs to let Detective Olson in and led him up to her apartment.

“Where do you want to talk?” he asked.

“In here, I guess.” Chase walked into her living room and sat on the couch. Detective Olson took the stuffed chair, kneeing the hassock aside.

He was in a cotton shirt, without his jacket. The day had been warm, but now the air was cooling off. His blue shirt sleeves were rolled up and cuffed, revealing strong forearms with soft brown hairs curling over the edges of the cuffs. His shirt was a shade or two lighter than his eyes. He pulled out a notepad.

It occurred to Chase that the man was a guest, although uninvited, in her home. She remembered her manners. “Would you like something to drink?” Anna would be appalled if she didn’t offer.

“What do you have?”

She didn’t want to offer wine to an officer of the law, even though her mostly empty glass was on the table beside him.

“I could make coffee or tea.”

“Just a glass of water, please.”

She had to admit that this was nicer than being interrogated in the station. She felt a degree of control over the situation in her own home. That control might be all in her mind, but she felt it nonetheless.

After she set a glass of ice water at his elbow, she returned to the couch while Detective Niles Olson drained half the glass.

Quincy sauntered in from the bedroom, where he had, no doubt, been under the bed until he’d decided to check out the newcomer. He sniffed the man’s leather shoes, then made his decision. He rubbed his side against the detective’s pant leg.

“Quince, you’ll get hair on him.” Chase jumped up to get her cat, but Detective Olson waved her away.

“That’s fine. It’ll mingle with the dog hairs from my golden retriever.”

“How do you manage a dog with the hours you must keep?”

“I have a neighbor who looks in on her from time to time. It’s very handy. Now, I’d like to know a bit more about you finding Hilda Bjorn.”

“There’s nothing more to tell. I’ve told you everything a thousand times.”

“Try this. Lean your head back and close your eyes.”

She laid her head against the leather back of the couch. If this was going to be another semi–hypnotism session, that might be good. Maybe she would remember something crucial, something that would get her off the hook. She felt herself beginning to relax already.

“You’re walking into the house. What do you see?”

“I see her living room.” Chase detailed going from room to room, thinking the house was empty. Lulled by his smooth voice, she got more and more relaxed and comfortable. It was, again, almost like being hypnotized, being right there at the scene. Then she got to the kitchen in the rear of the house. She shuddered, recalling Hilda on the floor, thinking she was dead.

“Exactly what do you see?” Was he trying to find some way to clear her? It almost seemed like it.

“I see her. At first I think she’s dead. But she isn’t. I’m glad she’s not bleeding too much. I see something blue. I also see a button by her head.”

“A button? What does it look like?”

“It’s . . . it’s purple.” Chase’s eyes opened and her hand flew to her mouth. It was Vi’s button. Or was it Laci’s? She couldn’t tell if it was cloth-covered or not.

“You recognize it?”

“No, no, I don’t. It’s only a . . . purple button.”

Mike had said there was a button at Torvald’s when Karla found him.

“Ms. Bjorn had another button just like it clutched in her hand. Tell me if you know where it came from.”

She couldn’t. Besides, she didn’t want Detective Olson to think Vi or Laci had attacked the old woman. He asked a few more times, trying to trip her up, she felt. Maybe trying to get her to tell him more, but she had no more to tell him.

“Has Doris Naughtly talked to you?” She remembered that she had urged the woman to voice her fears about her son to the authorities.

“I’ve talked to her. Several times. What do you mean?”

“She came here that rainy night—Tuesday, I think.”

“You think she has more information for me? She’s holding out?”

“Not that so much as she’s afraid her son might have motive to kill the two men. I don’t know what either one of them would have to do with Hilda Bjorn.”

“Maybe I’ll give Doris Naughtly another call. And her son, too.”

“Elinda, Torvald’s sister, came to see me today, here at the shop.”

That got his attention. “What did she want?”

“I’m not sure. She was Gabe’s mistress. Did you know that?”

Detective Olson gave her a look that said,
Come on now
. “Yes, we know that.”

“Have you ruled her out?”

He stood and left.

Later, Chase remembered that Elinda had been wearing a purple top. Had her blouse had purple buttons? Maybe.

For the rest of the evening, Chase vegetated, putting all her interviews with the detective out of her mind as much as she could, aided by a TV showing of
Oklahoma!
, and sipping a little more wine. She might have had one or two glasses too many, judging by the headache on Saturday morning.

Saturday, the shop was blessedly busy, keeping her from thinking about what had happened the night before. Although she did keep her glance on Vi’s blouse buttons a few times, thinking of Laci’s pastel buttons, too. Her head ached all day.

Once again, Anna was distracted. But this time, Chase thought she might know what was on her mind. She had mentioned she was seeing Bill that night. Bill was lucky to have someone who cared about him the way Anna did. She hoped he appreciated her.

After work, Chase’s spirits lifted as she changed clothes and primped for her dinner with Mike. Karla, even though she was, as advertised, cute, was much too old for Mike. Chase had worked herself into a fret for nothing over Karla. The redhead, on the other hand, was obviously not a bit too old for him, and prone to hugging.