Джанет Кантрелл - Fat Cat Spreads Out

When she and Anna got there, Mike wasn’t in the exhibition room. Chase was starting to get anxious about him. She knew he wanted to see the Fancy Cats.

Anna found the stand with Quincy’s name on it and set the bag containing the rest of his costume on the ground next to it while Chase put Quincy, in his carrier, on the top.

Ivan Aronoff, Chase knew, felt that his son had been done a grave injustice and was angry at the Picky Puss company. He had fixated on the diamond collar as a symbol of that injustice, it seemed. The company hadn’t done right by his son. He had made that abundantly clear. He also seemed a bit unhinged, in Chase’s opinion. Dangerous? She didn’t know. But if the man thought Mike had his treasure, and if Mike had left with the man, Mike could be in danger. Where were they?

She saw Peter, Ivan’s good-looking son, right away, but there was no sign of his father. Where was he?

Ingrid stood not far from Peter on the other side of the room. Chase waved, and Ingrid waved back. Chase wondered where she’d been all day. Ingrid turned and climbed into the bleachers.

“Earth to Chase.” Anna waved her hand up and down in front of Chase’s face. She had gotten Quincy out and held him, still wearing his little blue jacket. “Isn’t he cute? Take his picture.”

“Wait a sec.” Chase patted her jeans pocket, feeling for her phone. She wanted a picture of Quincy as well as some of the other cats with their costumes. Her cell was gone. “Where’s my phone?”

“Ah. I believe it’s in the booth,” Anna said. “I laid it down to wait on the travel agent. You were showing me a text, remember?”

Chase ran to the booth, now full of their boxes. Her cell phone sat on the table, the lone item there. At least no one had taken it. She thumbed it to see if she’d gotten any more cryptic messages from Mike. Two more from Tanner. They were dropping off in frequency. But none from Mike. She ran back and looked around the exhibit space.

“Mike still isn’t here.” She was getting a bad feeling in her stomach. She twisted a few strands of her hair frantically. She flipped through the pictures she had taken in the butter building.

“Oh dear.” Anna’s mouth dropped open. “I just realized. That text? He’s in trouble.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was sending you an SOS.”

Of course! That’s what it meant. Chase’s mouth dropped open, too. “You’re right. Mike is in trouble. But I don’t know where he is.”

Detective Olson entered the exhibition room and headed toward the bleachers. She wondered if he was there to see the contest. Or to take another look at some suspects? She knew she needed to tell him to talk to the toymaker and to do something about Mike. There seemed to be time right now. Cat owners were still trickling in.

Something clicked. Those pictures on her phone. She glanced through them.

“I have to show a picture to Niles,” Chase said. She caught him before he reached a seat.

“Detective,” she said. “Niles?”

“What?” It sounded like he meant, Not now .

“I think Michael Ramos is in trouble.”

The detective stopped and listened.

“He texted me ‘SOS’ a couple of times and he’s supposed to be here. I have no idea where he is, but . . .”

“He’s not hiding out?”

“Why would he hide out? He didn’t kill Oake, you know that.” What an exasperating man Detective Olson was.

“I’m beginning to think you’re right.” He seemed to be watching Ivan and Peter as they readied their cat, Shadow. Chase hadn’t seen Ivan arrive, but there he was. “We got a nine-one-one hang-up call from the doctor’s phone, but when we located it, outside the exhibit building, he wasn’t with it. Where do you think he might be?”

“He dropped his phone? Take a look at this picture.” She showed him the image on her phone.

“It’s a butter sculpture.”

“Look at the doorway.”

He drew the phone close to his face. She reached over and pressed a button to enlarge the photo.

“There are people going past. I didn’t realize these shots were in my pictures. I think I took one with Mike in it. This might be a stretch,” Chase said, ignoring Olson’s disparaging look, “but Mike’s aunt Betsy, his receptionist, said he left with someone who mentioned a collar. If this concerns the missing diamond collar, maybe this person has it. I thought Mike might be going with him to learn more, but what if he left with the killer?”

“Or, more likely, the thief.”

“But what if he’s the same person?”

“There’s a good chance of that, but who is he? Or she?”

She tried a different tack. She pointed to the picture. “That looks like Harper the toymaker to me. See the tattoos? The travel agent—Holly Molden, the redheaded one—told me that her partner, Sally Ritten, heard the toymaker say he saw someone run out of the building at about the time of the murder.” She didn’t mention that she had recognized Sally behind the booths. “Maybe Mike is trying to get that information. The other person here is tall. It looks like Mike to me. Maybe he left with the toymaker. Maybe both murders are tied together.”

“ Both murders?”

“I couldn’t help but see . . .”

Olson took another look at the phone picture. “The toymaker.” He scratched his chin. “Harper?”

“That’s what the sign says on this booth, but a guy visiting him called him Hardin.”

“Hardin?” He squinted at her. “I think I’m connecting some dots,” Olson said, nodding slowly. “I bet I know why he wouldn’t want to talk to us. I should have taken him in when I first got a funny feeling about him. I should have known who he was. He’s let his hair grow long in the back and he’s gotten bald on the top. He’s a little more wrinkled, but I should have recognized him.”

“Who is he?”

“Frank Hardin, if I’m right. He’s a wanted felon. He murdered two women in Iowa ten years ago. Threw them in the back of a van and drove them to a wooded park to strangle them and bury the bodies in a shallow grave. He was convicted and sentenced to life, but he escaped from prison three years ago.”

“He’s an escaped murderer? And he has Mike?”

TWENTY-SEVEN

Chase’s knees buckled. Detective Olson caught her around the waist with an iron grip and plunked her onto the hard bleacher seat.

“How long ago did you take this picture of Hardin and Ramos?” he asked. “If it is them.”

“I guess about half an hour, forty-five minutes, maybe a little more or less.”

“He might not have left yet. We’ll get a dog here, block off the parking lot and start searching. I’ll get his license number from Daisy. He had to register it for vendor parking.”

Detective Olson was speaking into his cell almost before he quit talking to Chase, requesting an APB on Hardin’s vehicle. Quickly he found Daisy, and they hurried away toward her office.

Chase’s heart hammered. She clenched her fists, almost jumping out of her skin. Hardin was a dangerous man. A murderer! And he had Mike. How long would it take to transport a police dog to the fair? Too long. She couldn’t stand still. She ran out of the building.

She sped down the midway toward the lot where the vendors parked. Two officers were questioning the man at the hot dog stand. Another one scribbled on a notepad while the chicken wing vendor waved her arms toward the parking lot.

Chase put on more speed and was at the vendors’ parking lot in less than two minutes.

She spotted Hardin/Harper right away at a big blue van four rows from where she stood.

Running as fast as she could, she sprinted for the vehicle. The toymaker opened the driver’s door and hitched himself up into the seat. She was still a row away.