Джанет Кантрелл - Fat Cat Spreads Out

She squeezed inside between two people who were coming out the door. For the first time, the door was propped open. A small cluster of spectators remained, taking pictures, around the woman with the beautiful North Star. Chase smiled. She was glad the woman had won and that she’d come to the butter building after all. She would get back to the booth as soon as she could to warn Anna, but first she wanted to stick around to see if she could find out anything else. It shouldn’t take long. Chase slipped past some other contestants on her way to congratulate the winner.

However, she found she had to pause at the Minskys’ table on the way. Mara stood quietly weeping and trembling as her father gouged chunks out of their sculpture and flung them into a trash barrel.

“Daddy, don’t. Please don’t,” she whispered.

Chase watched, horrified, as the man seemed to grow more and more angry, hurling bigger and bigger pieces of their creation into the garbage. She looked around to see if any other sculptors were destroying theirs. The man who had carved the lifelike gopher was taking pictures of his. The man who had carved the Vikings football team was walking away. She caught him.

“What happens to the sculptures?” she asked.

“The maintenance people will clean up,” he said. He frowned at Karl Minsky. “At least that’s what most of us do: leave them here to be disposed of.”

Chase steered around the Minskys on her way to the North Star woman. The anger radiating off the man was almost palpable. It was frightening his daughter, and it frightened Chase almost as much.

On an impulse, she stooped and picked up a bit of the straw with a tissue, then stuck it into her pocket.

Once again, she admired the detailed work on the woman’s sculpture. A blue ribbon had been pinned into the butter. She wondered what it would be like to create something like this, to work so hard, and to have it turn out so well, then to see it destroyed. Or to know, from the beginning, that it would be. Butter sculptures couldn’t last long, she was sure. She snapped a cell phone picture of it, just because everyone else was photographing it.

Several people had gone around to the back of it and were taking pictures there, too, so she followed suit and took a few of the back side. She was sure Anna would like to see it.

The detail there was equally as exquisite. While the front captured the route of the Mississippi through the state, the back depicted the Twin Cities with the most prominent buildings in relief. The IDS Tower shot up next to the Capella Tower, with its distinctive round top. The Wells Fargo Center nestled between them. The waterway between the two burgs was sketched in, and the state capitol building stood by itself near the big river bend.

Chase’s cell beeped for an incoming text message. She glanced at it. The message, from Mike Ramos, read, “So s.” He must have started to send something and gotten interrupted. She turned her attention back to the contest winner.

The sculptor, whose name tag said she was Astrid, beamed and posed beside her creation. She didn’t look like she would tire of this any time soon. Chase couldn’t blame her. That amount of prize money would have made her glow for a few hours, too.

A man came in pushing a cushioned cart and wheeled it up to the North Star.

“It’s time,” he said. He pulled on a pair of gloves and reached for the statue.

“Where’s it going?” Chase asked him.

“Big building,” he said, jerking his head in that direction. “So everyone can see it and take pictures. We’ll display it there on a tray table to catch the drips until it starts to melt too much, then we’ll cart it away.”

So this was the beginning of the end for the prizewinner.

Elsa and Eleanor were standing outside when she left the building. Chase couldn’t believe her luck. She said hello to them and walked closer.

“Who won?” asked Elsa. “We don’t dare go in to find out.”

Chase would see if that was true. She fished the tissue out of her pocket and waved it near her nose, taking a tiny swipe at a nonexistent itch. A couple of straws of hay fell out of her pocket with the tissue.

The twins sneezed in unison.

Elsa started sniffling and Eleanor’s eyes began to water. “Do you have another tissue?” Elsa asked, her voice choked.

“No, sorry. This one is used.” She stuck the tissue back into her pocket with the straw. Yes, the sisters were definitely allergic to it. “Astrid, the woman who carved the North Star, won.”

“Thank you,” Eleanor said, choking. They both hurried away.

That answered Chase’s question about the allergies once and for all. She didn’t think Elsa could have entered the room long enough to kill her husband.

Chase hurried back to the Bar None booth. Anna was waiting on a few stragglers. Chase turned back to where Holly Molden, the redheaded travel agent, was standing in the back of her booth, chewing her fingernails. Holly raised her eyebrows to ask Chase what she wanted. Chase opened her mouth but couldn’t tell her about Sally. Someone official should do that.

She returned to the Bar None booth. Anna was the only one there now.

“Where is everybody?” Chase asked.

“I think they’re all watching the judging of the contests today. We had a handful right after you left, but no one to speak of for the last fifteen minutes.”

“Anna,” she whispered, so the travel agent wouldn’t hear her. “I just saw the most horrible thing. Our neighbor is dead.”

“The toymaker?”

“No, Sally, the tall travel agent. I saw her body behind the booths. Detective Olson and some other official people are there. He told me to leave, but I heard him say he thinks she was strangled.”

“Strangled?”

“Shh.” Chase tilted her head toward the next-door booth. “She doesn’t know yet. Anna, if she was murdered, we’ll have to be very careful. I have no idea what’s going on around here.”

Anna glanced around at their empty booth. “Do you want to close up now and watch some of the contests, then? There will be more people there.”

“Have you noticed the time? I think we’d better do it and get Quincy ready for his big moment.”

Her cell beeped again. It was the same puzzling message from Mike except without any spacing between the letters this time: “Sos.”

Why wouldn’t he just call? Or text something more intelligible? She was going there soon to pick up Quincy. She’d ask him when she got there.

“Anna, do you know what this means?” She held the screen out.

The older woman took the phone and frowned. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

Holly came into the booth as Anna set down the cell phone and started scooping up the few dessert bars that remained unsold.

“Wait, I want to take some of those home,” Holly said, pointing her stubby fingernails at the Almond Cherry Bars. Her nails looked raw and ragged. Almond Cherry was the flavor Sally had bought.

“Do you know anything about your partner yet?” Chase asked. Somebody should tell this woman soon.

“No.” She pursed her lips and a tear rolled down her cheek. “I don’t know what to do.”

Anna came around the table, gave her the goodies, and hugged her. “I’m so sorry you’re going through this.”

Holly collapsed into her arms, sobbing, for a few minutes. The she raised her head, took a deep breath, and gave a tentative smile. “Thank you. I’m sure she’s just stuck somewhere with a flat tire and a dead cell phone.”

Chase almost gasped at how wrong that was. It was upsetting she hadn’t been told about her partner’s death yet, but Chase didn’t want to be the one to tell her. She barely knew the woman. Quick, she thought. Change the subject. “Have you heard anything new about the missing diamond collar?”