Джанет Кантрелл - Fat Cat Takes The Cake

Anna had heard her snarling voice, which was rather loud, and came barging through the double doors almost as violently as Grace had entered the shop. The doors whomp ed as they swung back and forth a few times in Anna’s wake.

“What do you want here?” Anna asked.

“I’m trying to keep you from being disqualified.”

Anna drew herself up to her full height, which wasn’t much more than Grace’s. Both women measured about five feet tall.

They faced off in front of the sales counter, the lights of the display case below acting as spotlights on the action. Mallory and Chase watched in fascinated silence.

“I’ll have you know,” Anna said, “that I’m officially entered and have turned in my recipe. My paperwork is all in order.”

“Except for this.” Grace extracted a piece of paper from the briefcase she carried and waved it toward Anna, who came forward and grabbed it.

“This is my application. I turned this in long ago. My acceptance was based on this.”

“Look at the bottom.” Grace’s sneer grew uglier. “You neglected to sign your full name.”

Anna glanced at the sheet. “I . . . what ?” She put her finger on the signature that even Chase could see from behind the counter.

“What kind of a signature is A. A. Larson?”

“It’s my legal signature. I use it on everything.”

“That’s right,” Chase put in. “She does.”

Grace shot Chase a withering look, her upper lip curling like Elvis’s. “That could mean a lot of different people. What with all the Alvas and Anderses and Arvas around here.”

“Grace,” Anna said. “Go home. That’s my signature and anyone can compare it to hundreds of other things I’ve signed. Get out of my shop.”

Grace drew air in through her dilated nostrils, stuffed the paper inside her briefcase, and left, torturing the bell again on her way out.

“Doesn’t she have anything better to do than harass people?” Anna muttered as she returned to the kitchen.

The shop started to fill with shoppers, so Chase stayed on in front. She looked up as she was sliding some bars from the display case into a bag and saw Tanner, the kid who handled the web presence for Bar None, standing behind her customer. When the woman gathered her purchases and left, Tanner moved to the counter. This time the lights in the display case winked on his nose ring.

Mallory gave Tanner a huge grin and welcomed him to the shop. “Can I help you?”

She was learning, thought Chase, although maybe now she was being overly enthusiastic.

Tanner smiled back at Mallory, but spoke to Chase. “I came by to see what’s going on with the webpage. Something’s wrong with it.”

“Oh dear. Is it something you can’t fix?” Chase said.

“Not from my end. Can I look at your setup?”

“I’ll show you,” Mallory said. She abruptly slid out from behind the counter and beckoned Tanner into the kitchen.

What was that about? Chase wondered. Of course, Mallory knew where the computer was, in the office off the kitchen. But she wouldn’t know where to find anything on it. She called after them. “Let me know if you need help!” Then she continued whittling down the line of buyers before her, all with their arms full of her wares.

When Mallory emerged a few minutes later, she told Chase that Tanner was trying a few things to fix the website. Chase did a double take at the pink glow on her cheeks. It seemed that Mallory was smitten. She smiled at the thought and kept working.

Tanner reappeared in the salesroom in under ten minutes. “That cat must have unplugged the router. If it’s okay with you, I want to look up something. Then I’ll be off.”

“Wait a sec,” Chase said. “I’ll go with you.”

She should make sure Quincy was still in the office, since she had neglected to mention him to the pair when they headed that way. But she had another idea, too.

TEN

Chase watched Tanner glide through some computer screens she had never seen before. They were not only unfamiliar, they were weird-looking. “What’s that?” she asked.

“It’s your code. It’s what’s behind your webpages. I think I need to tweak a couple of things.”

She wasn’t sure how to state her question. “How are you at . . . getting into things?”

Tanner gave her a questioning glance. “What do you mean? What things?”

Chase sat on the edge of the desk and looked down at Tanner, who was occupying her desk chair. “Have you been following the murder of Ron North?”

He nodded with excitement. “The guy you found with your cat? That is totally . . . different.”

She thought he’d been about to say it was awesome. It totally was not awesome. Not to her and not to Julie.

“I mean, I heard on the web that he was strangled with a scarf. And it belongs to your friend Julie, right? That’s not good.”

Chase agreed. “I need to convince the police that she didn’t do it.”

“How do you know she didn’t?”

Good question. Julie had disappeared right after Ron North left the reunion. She could have followed Ron to the parking lot, briefly. She could have gotten her scarf back. But Chase hadn’t seen it again—until she encountered it wrapped around Ron’s neck. She knew her best friend wasn’t a killer. “Ron North had lots of enemies. He was an annoying person and might have been blackmailing people.”

“Whoa. That could get him dead.”

“Yes, it could.”

“So, who all was he blackmailing?”

When Chase didn’t answer, he caught on. “You want to find out, right? You want me to hack into his, like, online stuff?”

“Would you know where to find things like that?”

“That’s what you meant about getting into things. Private messages and stuff. I might. Give me a few minutes.”

Chase left him to it. The thought crossed her mind that he would probably be able to access everything on her computer. But there wasn’t much there that she wanted to keep secret. She hoped he wouldn’t hack into her bank account and steal all of her cash. Somehow, she couldn’t picture Tanner doing that.

Anna raised her eyebrows, questioning Chase as she passed through the kitchen.

“Later,” Chase mouthed.

“Is he still here?” Mallory asked when Chase returned to the front of the shop.

“He’s doing some extra work for me.”

She was able to lose herself in dessert bar sales for two hours without thinking about Tanner and what he might be into. When he poked his head into the salesroom and beckoned her, she followed him to the office. He’d been there much longer than he’d thought he would.

“What did you find?” Not her own passwords, she hoped.

“All kinds of stuff.” He was zinging with excitement. “I haven’t had this much fun since the release of Call of the Aura Assassins .” His fingers shook as they hovered over the keyboard for a moment, then steadied as they danced across it. A screen of exchanges came up. “Look at these e-mails.”

Chase bent to get a better angle on the screen. One set of messages was from “rnorth83,” the other from “bigbyrd.” She scanned them. The most interesting e-mails were near the bottom.

bigbyrd:mona sez u followed her again 2day. this is your last warning.

rnorth83:or what?

bigbyrd:i go to the cops

rnorth83:and i release my pictures. i no where you were last nite and it wasnt at home. was it.

“Bigbyrd must be Richard Byrd. It’s kind of hard to read that stuff, isn’t it? These almost look like text messages rather than e-mails.” Chase said.

Tanner blinked. “Why?”

“You don’t have to stop and think about what that means?”