Fat Cat Takes the Cake (12 page)

“W
hy doesn't that man ever answer his phone?” Chase slammed the office phone onto the charger.

When she stormed out of the office Anna asked her what was the matter.

“I wanted to tell Detective Olson something about Mr. Snelson's alibi. It's coming unpeeled like phyllo dough.”

“Hm,” Anna mused. “What would a baklava dessert bar taste like? How hard would that be?”

“Not now! You have to concentrate on the Minny Batter Battle.”

“I know, I know. It's good to be thinking ahead, don't you think?” Anna stopped stirring for a moment. “What about Mr. Snelson?”

“His wife gave him two conflicting alibis, but she was
in just now and Mallory says she bad-mouthed him. She made it clear that she's not buying dessert bars for him ever again. That woman likes to tell her business to everyone, I guess, even almost complete strangers.”

“I saw his wife this morning,” Anna said.

“Mrs. Snelson? Here?”

“No, on my way to work, she was stopped at the light beside me. I recognized her from coming into the shop, but she didn't seem to remember seeing me.”

“Did she look guilty of murder?”

“Something is up with that couple. Her backseat was stacked to the roof with piles of stuff.”

“Papers?”

Anna cocked her head. “I'd say more like clothing. It looked like men's clothing, dumped into the backseat.”

“Wow. I wonder if she kicked Mr. Snelson out. Mallory said she sounded steamed at him.”

“I was thinking that might be it.”

“Now I really need to get hold of Niles Olson.”

“Maybe he doesn't work on Sundays.”

Anna was probably right. The man needed a day off once in a while. Even if that was inconvenient for her.

Monday morning, Julie called to set up a time to see Dillon Yardley in the hospital. “I just found out I can get away for an hour at lunchtime,” she said. “Meet you there instead of later?”

Chase had slept in that morning. The stress was tiring her out. She hadn't fallen asleep until after two, tossing and turning and worrying. Then, when her alarm rang, she'd hit snooze for an hour.

But she was waiting in the lobby of the hospital at a quarter to twelve, which was good because Julie showed up a bit early. Chase carried a bouquet of carnations and a card, which Julie signed. “You have the room number?” Julie asked.

“I called up there as soon as I got here. Bart answered the phone. I was so surprised I hung up.”

“Oh great,
he's
here.” Julie twisted the corner of her mouth. “Oh well. This is the only time I have until late today.”

“He's not my favorite person either, but I think his heart's in the right place. He's very faithful to Dillon. By the way, he said something about you hearing him when I told him we would visit Dillon.”

Julie shook her head. “That's what he wanted legal advice about in the parking lot.”

“About Dillon?”

“Yes. It's complicated.”

The elevator dinged when they reached Dillon's floor and they wound through the hallways to get to the room. They peeked in.

“Is this the right number?” Julie whispered. “It's full of people.”

“There's Bart, over by the window.”

The room was small and held three large visitors. Bart Fender was one of them. His thick body blocked half the light from the window. The other two, an older couple, sat in chairs on the other side of the bed. The man held the hand of the frail, pale woman in the bed. Her skin was nearly as white as the sheets. Faint blue veins crisscrossed her
temples. Dillon had always been fair, but now it looked as though her skin was transparent, stretched tight across the bones of her face and hands.

“We have to, young man,” the older man said to Bart. “And we're going to. It needs to be done and there's nothing you can do about it.”

“I can go to a judge. I'll bring an injunction. You can't kill her.” Bart spoke through clenched teeth, his hands tightly fisted at his sides. Intense pain showed in his narrowed eyes.

The older man released Dillon's inert hand and rose from his chair. “You have no legal standing here, Fender. She's our daughter. And she's not going to get better.”

“You don't know that! She could! She only needs to wake up.” Bart's eyes squeezed together and his tears streamed down his cheeks to his thick neck. “You don't talk to her enough.”

Chase realized he had been crying all along.

Bart noticed them at that moment. “What are you doing here?” He sounded belligerent.

“Don't you remember I said I would come and visit Dillon?” Chase asked.

He gave a slight nod. “Oh. Yeah.”

“Maybe now isn't a good time,” Julie said.

“I'm sorry.” The woman stood and extended a hand. “We haven't met. I'm Dillon's mother.”

Chase and Julie introduced themselves to Dillon's parents. Mrs. Yardley took the flowers and the card and propped them up alongside a few others on the wide windowsill. “Bart said he thought Dillon would like some visitors,” Chase said.

“I'm so sorry,” Dillon's mother said. “Her father and I have decided to . . .”

“They're going to pull the plug,” Bart shouted. “They're going to kill her.”

“Bart, be reasonable.” Dillon's mother gestured to him with her palm outstretched. “The doctors say her brain is severely damaged.” She looked at Bart, pleading with her sad eyes. “It's time, Bart.”

“I'll stop this. You'll see.” He stormed out past all of them, brushing against Chase roughly as he left the room. She could feel heat emanating from him, he was so angry.

“Oh dear.” Dillon's mother's face puckered. “Can he really do that? Stop us from letting her go?”

Chase turned to Julie. Julie shrugged. She obviously didn't know if he'd be able to or not. That was probably what he'd wanted Julie to give him legal advice about. A look passed between the parents that told Chase she was right.

“Is she completely unresponsive?” Chase asked.

“What Bart sees,” said Dillon's father, “are some reflexive movements. Some occasional jerking. The hospital doctor is no help. He won't explain it to Bart. But if her brain is damaged, she has no chance. There's no point in continuing life support. Our own family doctor agrees with us.”

“Not in so many words,” his wife said, rearranging the cards on the windowsill.

“No, but that's what he meant. He said he wouldn't continue if it were his daughter.”

Chase shuddered at the stark words. The agony was palpable in this warm, small room. She reached out and touched
the hands of Dillon's parents, unable to speak. Julie did the same, and they departed in silence.

Julie had to say good-bye in the parking garage so she could get back to work. Chase drove home slowly, bothered by the terrible decision Dillon's parents were forced to make. Bart, she was convinced, was positive he was doing the right thing, but he was making it harder for Dillon's parents. There was no good solution. When she got home, she cuddled with Quincy and watched traffic from inside her balcony doors until she felt a bit calmer. Then she called Detective Olson.

“Olson here.” He sounded official and in a hurry.

“This is Chase Oliver, Detective Olson.”

“Chase, you can call me Niles, you know.” His voice softened.

Sometimes she thought she could, but at other times she didn't think so. “Okay, Niles. I wanted you to know that Mrs. Cray, the janitor at the high school, was in our shop yesterday. Has she called you?”

“No. What about?” Now he was interested.

“She cleaned the school Sunday morning after the reunion and she found the principal asleep in his office. She thought Mr. Snelson had slept there all night.”
And left tissues all over the floor.

“Do you have a number for her?”

Chase mentally kicked herself. “No, I gave her your number.”

“I don't think that helped, did it? She hasn't called me.”

He didn't have to rub it in and make her feel even worse for not thinking of getting some information from the woman.

“It's all right, Chase. I can find her. As a matter of fact, I interviewed Mrs. Snelson again this morning and she finally told us what I'm pretty sure is the truth. It also matches what your janitor says.”

“Which truth did she tell this time?” How could he be sure when she had given so many versions?

“She broke down, said she told him to leave the house and drove all his clothes to the dump. She said he had urged her to lie for him, but she hated doing it. She apparently didn't know he was involved with the land swindle that's been in the news. He told her about it a couple of nights ago and she blew up at him.”

“That makes sense. Anna said she saw Mrs. Snelson's car yesterday and it was piled high with clothing.”

“We re-interviewed him after talking with his wife and he gave us the same story. He slept all night at the school. The reason he didn't go home after the reunion was that he's allergic to his wife's new dog. She's been lying to protect him from being a murder suspect, but she's pretty upset about the real estate thing.”

“I think he had a lot to drink.” Mrs. Cray had said he smelled like liquor the next day. Chase herself had seen him taking hits from Ron's flask around the punch bowl, too. Maybe Ron compensated his blackmail victims with shots of fortification.

“He admitted he was being blackmailed by Mr. North,” Niles said. “But I don't think he could have killed him. A few witnesses say he was almost too drunk to stand by the end of the evening. We have two, now three, matching accounts of his whereabouts.”

“Should you be telling me all of this?”

“I just talked to a reporter and gave her most of the same information. Enough to publicly get Snelson off the hook anyway.”

“I didn't know he was
on
the hook. I thought Julie was the only one there.”

“Definitely not the only one.”

“But she is still on?”

“Yep. She's still on.”

C
hase felt more despondent than ever. Julie was firmly in the sights of Detective Olson for Ron North's murder. Another cuddling session with Quincy didn't lift her spirits. Maybe she would take her kitty out on his leash. Some fresh air and exercise might be what she needed to sharpen her mind about who had actually killed the reporter.

“Let's go, little guy.” She got his leash off the hook by her door where she'd been keeping it.

He padded over to her, which made her smile. Maybe, she thought, he's getting used to the leash. My training is working.

Before she realized where they were heading, she found herself in front of the neighborhood tavern, standing in the very spot where Dickie Byrd had been kissing the woman
who was not Monique, his wife. She wanted to stop a moment to think about things, but Quincy wanted to keep moving. The sidewalks everywhere were shoveled and dry. A squirrel scolded Quincy from halfway down the trunk of a tree planted in the sidewalk.

“You won't catch him, you know,” she said to Quincy.

“Won't catch who?” a man's low voice said.

Chase turned in time see a short man stagger out the door. His overcoat was open, showing his plaid vest. Langton Hail must have overheard her comment.

“Are you talking to me?” he asked. “I'm not trying to catch anyone.” His words were slurred and he grabbed the trunk of the tree, right where the squirrel had been, to steady himself. The squirrel scampered to the topmost branches and quit chattering.

“No, I . . . My cat . . .”

The man was a lot drunker than she'd seen him either the night of the reunion or at the restaurant where she'd been with Eddie.

“What're you lookin' at?” His body swayed toward her.

“Sorry, Mr. Hail. I'm out walking my cat. Do you need some help?”

“Who you think you are? I don't need any help. How do you know me anyway? Get outta my way.”

Chase was glad to oblige him and walked briskly down the sidewalk. When she reached the corner, she glanced behind. Langton Hail was still clutching the tree, reeling in an attempt to stay upright. He didn't seem to have any idea who she was, but why would he? She was one of the many alums at the reunion and he'd been an outsider, easy for
everyone to notice. His code name, PHOTO, in Ron North's notebook, had one less numerical entry beside it than PRINCE, Mr. Snelson's code name, and she hadn't seen anything pass between those two that night. Had Hail refused to pay Ron North? Had they had an altercation later, maybe when Ron attempted to extort the money? Had it ended up with Ron dead? And that's why the man was drinking so much. Remorse and guilt. Trying to wipe out the memory of what he'd done.

She hoped Hail was firmly in Detective Olson's sights along with Julie. He belonged there. Julie didn't.

When she got home and released Quincy from his harness, she gave him a warm Kitty Patty and told him what a good boy he was. Then, after pacing her kitchen for a few minutes, she called Anna.

She sat in her cushy chair and stared out at the street below. It was mid afternoon but, this far north, the sun was setting and it was already beginning to get dark. Anna's phone rang and rang. As Chase decided she wasn't going to answer, Anna picked it up. She sounded sleepy.

“Did I wake you?” Chase asked. “Were you taking a nap?”

“Not a nap. I closed my eyes for a few minutes.”

Yeah, right, Chase thought. It was that kind of day, chilly and gray, a good day for napping. In fact, her voice sounded like she was awakening from a sound sleep.

“You aren't practicing for the baking contest?”

Anna's sigh came over the phone with a
whoosh
. “I can't.”

“What's wrong?” Chase sat up straight. “Why can't you?” There was an air of defeat in Anna's tone that Chase had seldom heard.

“I mean I don't think I need to. I'm ready. Practicing more won't make me any better.”

“Are you ready to beat Grace Pilsen?”

“Who knows?”

That wasn't like Anna. “Anna, don't be discouraged. You probably don't need to rehearse anymore. You've got this in the bag.”

“I'm not discouraged, Charity,” she snipped. That wasn't like her, either. She was discouraged, Chase just knew it. “Is that why you called? To make sure I'm working on my entry?”

“No, actually. I called about a couple of things. I wanted to tell you that the principal, Mr. Snelson, is no longer a suspect for Ron North's murder.”

“Does anyone know why I saw his wife driving around with all those clothes in her car?”

“I told Niles about that. He says Mr. Snelson's wife kicked him out when he told her he was involved in the land swindle. Then she admitted to the police that he hadn't been home that night. Detective Olson has decided he slept at the high school all night. The janitor confirms that. She saw him waking up on his couch the next morning.”

“Where does that leave Julie?”

“Still in the bull's-eye, unfortunately. But I also need to tell you about seeing our classmate in the hospital. Julie and I went there at lunchtime.”

“Oh yes, Julie said you were going to. I haven't talked to her today. How is the poor girl?”

“She . . . Her parents were there. They want to take her off life support. They don't think she can recover, or that she'll
be brain damaged if she does. The hospital doctors don't agree, but their family doctor seems to.”

“Oh dear!” Now Anna sounded like herself, alert and concerned. “What exactly happened to her?”

“She tried suicide, from what I heard at the reunion. It didn't kill her, but put her into a coma. She's been unconscious for weeks. She's being kept alive by machines. It's so sad. She was a bouncy, happy person when I knew her a few years ago.”

“You know,” Anna said, “people sometimes come out of comas. They wake up after years, and some of them are even normal after that.”

“Her parents are ready to pull the plug.”

“How awful.”

“What makes it worse is that Bart Fender opposes them.”

“Who is he?”

“He was in our class, too. A wrestler back then. And now he's a coach at Hammond High. He's Dillon's boyfriend and believes she can recover.”

“What a mess.”

Chase agreed wholeheartedly.

“Anna, are you all right? Should I bring over some Chinese?”

“You know, that would be lovely. I do have a lot on my mind. Julie and the Batter Battle.”

“And you're getting married in a little over a week.”

“I think I'm more ready for that than for anything else.”