Fat Cat At Large (A Fat Cat Mystery) (3 page)

C
hase dropped her outstretched hand to her side and spun toward the unknown man. He was middle-aged and had a preppy look, khakis, blazer over a polo shirt, sockless dock shoes.

“Should we pull the knife out?” she said. “He’s not bleeding much. Maybe we should.”

“You probably should have wiped your prints off and thrown it away before I caught you.”

Chase rose and the guy took a step backward. “We need to call nine one one,” she said.

“Why did you kill him?”

Now Chase took a step back. “Kill him? Is he dead? Why would I kill Gabe? “

Her mind raced. She had reason enough to kill him. This man thought she had. Her prints, as he said, were on the steak knife that obviously had killed him.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Torvald Iversen. I’d shake your hand, but it’s bloody.”

Chase inspected her right hand. He was right again. “Then you call nine one one. What if he’s alive?”

Torvald stepped around her and felt for a neck pulse. He gave her a dark scowl, then punched the three numbers into his phone. The man went out the front way to talk to the dispatcher, leaving Chase with the body . . . and her cat, still chowing down.

“Quincy, how could you?” She wiped her hand on a paper towel and stuck it in her pocket before she lifted her cat off the counter and nuzzled her face against his warm head. To her relief, he didn’t try to return to his feast. He might be full, she thought. Half of it was gone. She chanced another glance at Gabe, but he hadn’t moved. He had to be dead.

Being careful to avoid the body and the surrounding pool of blood, she followed Torvald Iversen onto the porch. He was slipping his phone into his pocket. “You’re to stay here, not leave,” he said.

This guy was annoying her. “Says who?”

“Says the dispatcher I just spoke to.” His voice was quiet, but smoky, in a creepy sort of way.

“And I suppose you’re free to go?”

He sneered, but halfheartedly.

“I thought not.” Chase, being a better person, did not return the sneer. “I have to get my cat home.” That sounded lame as soon as she said it. But what was she going to do with him while being questioned by the police? “Who are you?”

As the ambulance pulled up, lights and sirens at full speed, Quincy tensed in her arms. Chase tightened her grip and returned to the living room to shield him from the commotion a bit. The door, however, was standing wide-open and the noise made it into the living room just fine.

Her face buried in Quincy’s soft, orange fur, she felt tears begin. Then her hands started shaking, which alarmed Quincy even more. This was the second encounter with Gabe that had ended up with her shaking and distraught. But it would be the last. Deep inside, a small blossom of relief opened. He wouldn’t release a rat in her store. He wouldn’t report her to the health department (unless he already had). And he wouldn’t shut her down.

“What were you doing here, anyway?” She jumped. That man, Torvald, had come up behind her.

She hoped she hadn’t spoken any of her thoughts aloud. “Chasing my cat. He ran away and snuck in here.”

“He knows how to open doors?”

Two uniformed men, and one woman, ran past them into the kitchen.

“What are
you
doing here?” she asked Torvald.

“I had a business meeting scheduled with Mr. Naughtly.”

She wondered why he didn’t buy his donuts during business hours like everyone else. “It looks like he was ready to eat dinner.”

“It was a dinner meeting.”

A warm, familiar voice came from the doorway. “Chase? What’s the commotion?”

“Dr. Ramos! Am I ever glad to see you.”

“I was on my way to the drugstore when I saw the vehicles on the street. Is Gabe okay?”

“You know Gabe?” Did everyone know him?

Dr. Ramos gestured to the south. “I live two condos away. What’s happened? Are you feeling all right?” He must have noticed the tears on her face.

Torvald Iversen cleared his throat. “I arrived and found her pulling out the knife she stabbed Gabe Naughtly with.”

Chase whirled toward him. “That’s not true!” Quincy tightened his claws on her sweater.

A policeman with a deep five-o’clock shadow joined the group. “Who found the body? The call said someone named Iversen?”

“No, I found him,” said Chase. Her cat squirmed.

“Why don’t I take Quincy to my place until you’re done here.” Dr. Ramos took control of Quincy and, after assuring the policeman that he’d just arrived, walked down the stairs and into the night. Chase was sad to see the only friendly face disappear.

An hour later, after she told the policeman what happened, and after a detective arrived and she related everything three more times, she started walking toward home. She wondered how she would find Quincy and Dr. Ramos, but he hailed her from his screened-in front porch, two houses down.

Ten minutes later, ensconced in a recliner of fake—but very nice fake—leather, wrapped in an afghan, and sipping hot chocolate, Chase had almost finished going over the events of the afternoon to Dr. Ramos, who urged her to call him Mike.

“I told the exact same story to the policeman and to the detective, who showed up after you went home. That awful man, Torvald Iversen, kept interrupting and contradicting me the whole time we were questioned by the police officer, but the detective took us into upstairs rooms and talked to us separately. That man thinks I killed Gabe Naughtly!”

“You’re shaking again.” Mike hiked the afghan up her shoulder where it had slipped off.

She wasn’t shivering from cold, but it felt nice to have Mike Ramos fuss over her like that. What she was shivering from was harder to get over than cold.

“Do you think they’ll believe him?”

“I imagine they’ll check everything out. Lots of people must have seen you outside, trying to find Quincy.”

The cat caught the sound of his name and picked his head up off Chase’s lap. She wasn’t so sure lots of people had seen her. The five of them had separated—she, Anna, Julie, and Laci to search and Vi to guard the back door. She hadn’t seen anyone on this street before she reached the condo.

The chirrup of Chase’s phone sent Quincy shooting to the floor. He leaped into Mike’s lap.

“See how he moves?” she said, digging her cell out of her pocket. “So graceful? He’s not all that fat.”

She ignored his frown and answered her phone. She had let the other dozen or so calls in the last couple of hours go unanswered.

“Where on earth are you?” Anna asked. “We’ve been worried sick.” Anna sounded on the verge of tears.

“I’m okay and Quincy’s okay.” She heard Anna let out a long breath. “It’s a long story. I’ll be home in a few minutes. Is that where you are?”

“Yes, we’re at your place. We’ve been going door-to-door trying to find you two. There’s something happening at one of the condos up the street, too.”

“Yah, that’s where I’ve been. I’ll tell you all about it.”

Mike asked if she’d like a ride after she ended the call, but she thought the walk would be good to clear her head.

It was nice to be alone for a few minutes before answering still more questions. Quincy snuggled his head into her neck with his paws over her shoulder for the short trip. His long whiskers brushed her neck. Night had fallen. The tree-lined residential street was dark and quiet. The vehicles with flashing lights had departed. A crime scene van waited outside Gabe’s place, but its engine was turned off. She took her time covering the two blocks to her place. The business district of Dinkytown at nearly ten o’clock was more brightly lit than the blocks to the north, bustling with returning college students and, this week, some families.

She headed up the stairs in the rear of the building and found Anna and Julie inside her apartment. Anna grabbed Quincy and Julie hugged Chase, then they traded. When everyone had been hugged, Chase scrubbed her hands with water as hot as she could stand it. She kept imagining she could detect traces of blood, but Anna pronounced them clean. Chase accepted a cup of cranberry herb tea and settled into her chair with her feet on the hassock.

“Where are Laci and Violet?” she asked.

“We sent them home after an hour of searching,” Anna said. “They both looked dead tired. Young women have no stamina these days.”

Chase knew she herself couldn’t keep up with Anna and wasn’t surprised that her two employees had the same failing.

“I’m not sure yet,” Anna said, “but we might have an accounting problem.”

Accounting problem? Chase was the one who did the books. “What sort of accounting problem?”

“I’ll have to go over what I think I saw again. I don’t want to worry you for nothing. Just thought I’d mention it. Now tell us what’s going on.”

When Chase had told them everything she knew—that Gabe was dead, that Torvald Iversen was a jerk, and that Dr. Ramos was now Mike and, on second thought, fairly good looking—she remembered she hadn’t finished the cleanup in the shop. Quincy crawled into his cat bed and gave his collar a good scratching while she talked.

“I’ll go, you sit,” said Anna.

Julie sat on the floor beside the cat’s bed and patted her lap. Quincy left off scratching and accepted the invitation.

“I have to go downstairs to get a scoop of diet food for Quincy anyway. It won’t take but a few minutes.”

Anna protested, but let Chase leave.

Chase flicked the light switch at the top of the stairway and made her way down to her shop. She didn’t have to exit to the alley, since there was a door into the shop at the bottom of her steps. This door was rarely locked, but it was tonight. Vi had been guarding the alley entrance to the shop. Maybe she had locked everything when she’d left.

After Chase ran back up the stairs to get the key she hadn’t brought with her, she noticed that Quincy was crouched on the kitchen counter and Anna was holding something behind her.

She’s slipping him treats again, Chase thought. She’d deal with that later.

She ran down the steps again and opened the door into the dark kitchen.

Two dots of light glowed red in the light that came into the rear window from the parking lot streetlamp. The dots were near the floor. Chase stopped, puzzled. She saw another pair of glowing embers, then another.

She switched on the light and three huge white rats scurried out of the kitchen, pushing through the doors into the showroom.

Swallowing a scream, she stomped the floor, trying to flatten an imaginary Gabe Naughtly to a pancake. She let out some choice words aimed at the man, then stood still, remembering he was dead. Murdered.

Julie and Anna both clattered down the stairs in response to her stomps.

“Now what?” Anna and Julie could see the rage on her face, she was sure.

“Rats.” She pointed at the swinging doors.

J
ulie and Anna stood frozen in the doorway from the apartment stairs into the shop.

“There are rats in there,” Chase said, staring into the kitchen. Her body vibrated with anger. “Three of them, at least.”

“How do you know, Charity? Did you hear them?”

She assured both women she’d seen them. They believed her when one poked a head into the kitchen, whiskers twitching. Chase saw some of Quincy’s cat food scattered on the floor. The bag sat on its customary shelf. Someone must have strewn the food on the floor to keep the rats where she would be sure to come upon them immediately.

“Look,” said Julie, pointing to the corner. “Whoever put the rats here left their cage.”

“I guess we could lure them into it with Quincy’s food. That’s what they’ve been eating. I’m glad somebody likes it.”

“I have a better way.” Anna opened the cleaning closet. She pulled out the large bucket they used for mopping the floors. She swept up the food on the floor and dumped it into the bucket, adding another scoop for good measure. Then she removed a rack from the oven and propped it against the bucket with a ringing sound.

“Now we go away for a bit,” Anna said.

When they returned, half an hour later, the tall bucket held three large white rats and one black and white one. The food was gone and the rats seemed lazy and content, not at all distressed by the steep, unclimbable sides that confined them.

“What’s that little clatter noise?” asked Chase.

“It’s called bruxing,” Anna said. “That black-and-white one is chattering his teeth together.”

“Is he mad?”

“He’s probably content. It’s usually a happy sound. They’re obviously from a pet store. I’ll see how tame they are.” Anna bravely stuck a hand into the bucket. One rat sniffed her fingers. She picked it up and put it into the cage.

“Aw, he’s so nice and soft,” Anna murmured.

Chase was impressed. “This is a skill I didn’t know you had, Anna. Where did you learn to handle rats?”

“One summer in college, I worked in the science lab. These are tamer than those were, by a long shot.”

When all four were contained, Anna said she’d take them to the pet store on the next block over tomorrow morning.

Chase had dreams all night long of swirling, flashing lights, dead bodies rolling over, rats climbing her kitchen counters, and her own bloody hands. Morning took forever to arrive.

As she showered, she began to wonder when Gabe could have put the rats inside. How long had he been dead when she found him? His shoulder wasn’t warm when she touched it. His body was starting to stiffen. Didn’t that mean he’d been dead more than a few minutes?

So how could Gabe have done it? The rats were put there while everyone was searching for Qunicy. Gabe had to have been dead at that time. Who else hated Chase—or Anna—or the shop—enough to commit such horrible sabotage?

•   •   •

Early Wednesday, Chase
got her bike out and took a turn around Dinkytown. Since they were so busy at work this week, she was missing Chase Time, some moments to unwind by herself and get some sorely needed exercise. Standing in a kitchen or hunched over a computer were the opposite of exercise.

She pedaled out of the large parking area behind her store, past the trash bin where Gabe had once planted the other rats. Since the rodents had been released this time inside her store, she expected a visit from the health department. The oven could probably use cleaning, especially the rack Anna had used to trap the rats, but everything else was neat as apple pie. Anna always saw to that. She and her husband, when he was still alive, had run the sandwich shop where the Bar None now did business. After his death at the early age of sixty-eight, she had closed the business down and the property had stood vacant for several years. The experience had given Anna the sharp business sense she now possessed, and the knowledge of what the health department came looking for.

Chase steered her bike south, down Fifteenth Avenue, past the campus substation, then along University Avenue with the campus on her left, pedaling to Tenth Avenue and onto the bridge, where she could catch a glimpse of the Mississippi River.

A light breeze came from the west and the air promised a warmish day. It was still August, after all. Chase loved autumn and fall colors, and couldn’t wait to get her sweaters out of the under-bed box in her apartment. She spied a small sumac, beginning to flash its brilliant red leaves. Soon the others would follow, then the bigger trees, until Minneapolis was kissed by the jewel tones of turning leaves.

The sight of the Mighty Mississippi always calmed her. She stopped, straddling her bike for a few moments, watching the progress of the water that was near the beginning of its two-thousand-mile journey. When she was a child, she’d floated paper boats on its surface, then imagined their trip, picturing them making it all the way to New Orleans. Now that she was an adult, she knew a piece of paper would never make it that far. Still, she could imagine the voyage. She took a deep breath of the clear, crisp-tasting air over the cool water and pedaled to the shop, renewed and ready for another long day.

•   •   •

In her apartment,
showered and dressed, Chase poured the diet cat food into Quincy’s bowl and called him.

“Come get your din dins, little guy. Yummy, yummy.”

Quincy, who had been lying on the floor five feet from his dish, turned his head toward her with all the speed of a snail and stared. He didn’t even glance at the cat food.

“Quincy, baby, you have to eat something.” Chase knelt and held a piece of kibble before him. If a cat could look disgusted, that was Quincy’s expression.

Chase sighed, plunked the morsel into the bowl, and headed downstairs to work.

Chase had asked both Vi and Laci to work on Wednesday. Her inclination last night had been to shut the shop down for at least a day, but she didn’t know why she felt that way. Respect for the dead? She hadn’t respected Gabe when he was alive, so why should she start now? At any rate, she’d ignored that inclination. This week was too profitable to close down for a day.

The two young women weren’t respecting anybody, but started in on each other almost as soon as the shop was open.

“No, Laci.”

Chase listened in from the kitchen where she was helping Anna get out the ingredients she’d need for today’s baking.

“Why can’t you remember where the big bills go? Are you defective or something?”

Anna rushed to the front. When she returned to the kitchen she was tugging Vi by the arm. “That’s enough. You can’t speak to her that way.”

Vi shook Anna’s hand off and drew herself up to her full height. She looked down on Anna, which only made Anna stand taller and stick her chin out.

“You’ll speak respectfully to Laci,” Anna said, “as long as you’re both working together in the shop. Do you understand me?”

Vi glanced away. “You’re right, I was rude.”

“I can always hire someone else.”

That was true, Chase thought, but she would hate to lose Vi. She had such a way with the customers. Maybe Anna was being a little too hard on her. Sometimes Anna made Chase feel like a junior partner. Yes, she was a lot younger, but she wanted to be treated as an equal. Chase was going to stand up to Anna and tell her they needed both of them, as soon as she summoned the gumption. She was not fond of conflict by a long shot. She’d had enough lately.

Now Vi looked worried. Her hand flew to her neck. “I need the job, Mrs. Larson. I really do.”

“Then don’t make me fire you. Now go sell some goodies. The front is full of college students and their parents. And lay off your coworker.”

“Laci doesn’t remember anything I tell her. I think she does it on purpose sometimes.”

Anna closed her eyes and took a breath. “It doesn’t matter that much where the bills go in the cash drawer. We’ll get it all straightened out at night. Don’t worry about it so much.”

Vi pursed her lips, glossy pink today and matching her silk blouse. Her blouses always bore either matching or contrasting cloth-covered buttons. Today the buttons were lilac. “I’ll try to be patient.”

The rest of the morning went smoothly. Chase had fun helping bake one of their best sellers, Lemon Bars. She hummed “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’” from
Oklahoma!
as she zested the lemon peels and juiced the lemons. Such a fresh smell.

At lunchtime, Laci came to the kitchen to eat the lunch she’d brought in. She perched on a swivel-top stool at the island and munched her sandwich while Anna cleaned up her bowls and baking utensils in the huge sink. Chase finished dusting the cooled lemon bars with powdered sugar, took her yogurt from the refrigerator, and sat beside Laci.

“How are sales today?” Chase asked.

Laci fiddled with a loose bobby pin. She’d come to work with her long hair in a complicated but stylish updo. It looked nice on her. “We’re selling tons. We might run out of the Peanut Butter Chocolate Bars.”

“I have some in the oven,” said Anna.

They ate in silence for a bit while Anna clattered in the sink. Chase drew in the chocolaty smell of the baking goodies as she ate.

“Some people were asking if there were any rats in the kitchen,” said Laci, wadding up her plastic sandwich bag and shooting a basket in the big wastebasket at the end of the island.

Anna froze with a soapy hand in the air and Chase stopped eating midbite.

Anna turned from the sink slowly. “Who was asking that?”

How would anyone know about the rats? thought Chase. Anna had whisked them away to the pet store early in the morning.

“I don’t remember.” Laci bit into a crunchy apple.

“No,” said Chase. “We don’t have rats. You told them that, didn’t you?”

“Sure. There was just that one time, and Gabe put them there.”

“Put what where?” Vi pushed through the swinging doors.

“You remember when Gabe put those rats in the alley?” said Laci.

“So he’s the one who put the last ones here?” Vi asked.

“Chase says there aren’t any more.”

“It’s your turn in front,” said Vi to her coworker. Chase was glad they were being civil to each other. For now. “I’m ready for my lunch.”

When Laci had left, Chase turned to Vi, perched on a stool and unwrapping her sandwich with a self-assured air. “What’s this about rat rumors? Do you know who started that?”

Vi raised a smooth, perfectly groomed eyebrow.

How could the girl look so sophisticated? wondered Chase. She was almost ten years younger than Chase, but Vi made her feel awkward and young sometimes. Laci, who actually was younger and more awkward, probably felt ten times less capable around her. “What have you heard?” Chase said.

“Do you think Laci released the rats?” Vi said. “As a favor to Ted’s dad, to make Ted like her more?”

“That’s crazy,” said Chase, pushing her yogurt carton away, no longer hungry. “There aren’t any rats, and if there were, Laci wouldn’t be involved.”

“You should see those two,” said Vi. “I had to tell Ted not to come behind the counter. He’s got his hands all over her.”

“It doesn’t sound like Laci needs to curry his favor, then.”

Chase wondered if Vi was jealous. After all, Laci had a steady beau and she had none. That was probably because, as Vi had told them, she dumped every guy she dated after a few weeks. Anna thought Vi was waiting for one with a lot of money, trying them out to see how deep their pockets were.

The phone sounded in the office and Chase gladly quit the conversation to answer it. It was a paper-product supplier trying to get her business, and she made short work of the call.

While she was there, she opened the business spreadsheets to double-check something she thought she’d seen last time she balanced the books. Chase frowned. That was odd. Something wasn’t adding up.

As she quickly reached for the door to have Anna look at the computer, she heard Vi speaking in the kitchen, near the closed office door.

“I’m talking about the money. It’s not there. No, I don’t have it, Felix.”

She seemed to be speaking on her cell phone, probably unaware of how little soundproofing the office door provided.

“No, I can’t. She’s the owner. . . . Okay, co-owner. Same thing. I need to talk to you.”

Did Vi know something about missing money? Which co-owner was she referring to? Anna? Herself?

“Yes, I know it happened, but I can’t prove it.”

The door was thin enough that Chase heard Vi let out an exasperated breath, then stomp away. Chase cracked the door open after another minute and Vi was gone. She picked up her iced-tea glass from the counter. Anna had finished the dishes and was slipping another batch of bars into the oven.

Chase didn’t dare speak about the rats—or the accounts—with Anna when either of the sales workers could come in at any time and catch them. She’d ask her later if she was sure no one saw her returning the vermin this morning.

Anna had come back from the pet shop this morning saying that the owner hadn’t sold any rats lately, but he’d taken them from her. Anna and Chase wondered if they should bother to find out where they’d come from. Had the owner told someone else that the rats had been in their kitchen?

“No,” Anna had said. “He promised to keep quiet. He was upset about the dirty trick someone played on us.” The man had gone to high school with Anna and she trusted him.

Now Chase wondered if Anna’s trust had been misplaced and he’d let it slip somehow.

Anna went into the office to give Quincy some petting and keep him company for a few minutes between batches.

Vi pushed the doors open and returned to the kitchen. “There’s a guy out there,” she said.

“And?”

“He says he’s an environmental something.”

Chase gasped. “Environmental health inspector.”

“Oh.” Vi’s eyes grew wide. “What should we do?”

“Business as usual. Let him wander around wherever he wants.”

Vi turned to go.

“And Vi, don’t talk to him at all. Act like he’s not there.”

Anna emerged from the office. Chase ran over to her and inspected her for cat hairs. She plucked three off Anna’s shoulder and stuck them into the wastebasket. “Health inspector’s here,” she whispered.