Джанет Кантрелл - Fat Cat At Large

“Something’s wrong with the cook. I must have doubled the amount of almond flavoring.”

Chase took the confection from her and sniffed it. It smelled wonderful. She nibbled a corner, then ran to the sink to spit it out. “Um, maybe you tripled it.”

“Next, I’ll be confusing sugar and salt.” Anna shook her head to clear her mood and got up to start baking. Chase, not wanting to go over the ledger figures, started a batch of Strawberry Cheesecake Bars herself, humming “Ya Got Trouble” from The Music Man . The sweet baking smells soon dispelled the gloom that Anna’s early morning mood had thrown over the room.

Near lunchtime, Laci poked her head into the kitchen with a plea for help.

“We’re slammed. Every freshman on campus, I swear, is here. Some of them brought their whole families.” Her pinned-up hairdo was drooping and she shed two bobby pins on the floor.

“I’ll be right there,” said Chase. She zipped into the office to pour a bowl of diet treats for Quincy. He’d been right inside the door, but ignored the bowl. He turned his back and walked away, rather stiff-legged, his nose and his tail in the air. “You just be that way, then. We’ll see what the doc says tonight. You’ll see. He might put you on the cat equivalent of bread and water.” Something crunched under her shoe as she left the office.

She snatched up Laci’s fallen bobby pins and stuck them on the small shelf under the counter, then ran to the front. The room was crowded with college students and relatives. “Keep baking,” she called to Anna as she left. The shelves were half-empty and getting barer.

Chase made several trips back and forth from the freezer to replenish the stock, but the freezer was far from full. Just three more days until classes started. Then it would slow down and they could take time during the day to breathe.

It hadn’t helped, of course, that Anna had to throw out the huge batch she’d made last night. Oh well, there was nothing they could do about that now.

The cat strolled to the door of his prison, the restaurant office. It may have looked like a strange place for a feline to call home during working hours, but the pudgy tabby cat never failed to purr when he was deposited there. Maybe that was because of the basket, lined with a soft blanket, in the corner. Or it could have been because one of the humans invariably brought bits of cookie bars to him at regular intervals during the day. This day, however, she was late. The cat knew it was past time for a num num. He sat erect, with his ears pricked forward, his tail wrapped around his front paws, but twitching at the very tip. At last, someone was coming.

The older woman cracked the door open and slipped in.

“Here’s a good boy,” she crooned, sprinkling cookie bits on the floor in front of him. “We don’t want you to starve to death, do we?”

He settled down to licking them up, hardly noticing her leave, closing the door behind her.

Chase froze with her hand outstretched to receive a twenty from a student’s mother. That man coming in the door, the pale, thin guy wearing a blazer—was that the awful man who had found her with the bloody knife? The sound of a crash unfroze her arm and she took the money, then looked down to see what had fallen to the floor. Vi had knocked a stack of cartons off the shelf behind the sales counter.

As Vi knelt to pick them up, Chase followed the progress of the man. Yes, it was Torvald Iversen, the one who had called 911 and accused her of killing Gabe. She inhaled a deep, cleansing breath and made change for her customer. The woman thanked her sweetly and left with her daughter, obviously a freshman, a skinny girl who could probably eat the whole bag of Lemon Bars and not gain an ounce.

Iversen strolled around one of the front tables, lifting boxes and setting them down. Chase waited for him to acknowledge her, but he didn’t glance toward the back of the shop. Next, he perused the shelves of wares on the side wall, fingering the knot of his tie with his creepy, long, pale fingers. Finally, he left the shop without a glance in Chase’s direction and strolled toward the coffee shop.

Vi peeked over the counter after the door closed and watched Iversen depart, her eyes wide.

“Do you know that man?” asked Chase.

“What man?” Vi stood up and nudged at the stack of boxes she’d finished reshelving. “Oh, the one who just left? No, why?”

Chase felt sorry for the girl. She was lying, Chase was sure. She’d probably had a bad experience with the horrid man, but Chase couldn’t imagine what that would have been, what the connection between them could be.

Chase was still gazing out the front window, half expecting Iversen to pop in again, when she spotted a familiar figure walking down the sidewalk across the street. He turned into the coffee shop. Now she was sure Shaun Everly was in Minneapolis. What was he doing here? Was he here about the note she’d left him? Did he know she was here? She hoped not.

• • •

“You’ll have todo something different, you know.” Dr. Ramos, Mike as Chase was beginning to think of him, lifted Quincy off the scale. “Whatever you’re doing isn’t working. He’s gained nearly a half a pound. That’s a tremendous amount in such a short time. He’s in danger of becoming diabetic. If that happens, you’ll have a real problem on your hands.”

“Just what do you suggest?” Chase sounded, she thought, shrill. Really, what more could she do? “I’m feeding him the exact amount of the food you prescribed.”

“You can’t be. He can’t gain weight on that.”

Chase fisted her hands on her hips. “Are you calling me a liar?”

“No, no. Calm down. I’m not calling you—”

“I am not giving him extra food . . . but . . .”

He put Quincy into his crate and gave the cat a scratch behind his ears with a thoughtful frown. “But someone else is?” he said.

Chase’s mouth dropped open. How did he know? Anna was sneaking treats to him. That had to be it. When Chase had released Quincy from the office after the shop closed, she’d seen the cookie crumbs on the floor. She hadn’t thought anything of them at the time, since cookie crumbs got everywhere. But now she put it together. When she’d gone to the front this afternoon, Anna had probably indulged him.

Mollified somewhat, Chase admitted that maybe someone else was feeding him. “I’ll talk to Anna again. I’ll make it clear that she shouldn’t give him cookie leftovers.” She dug a plastic container out of her purse. “By the way, I brought you these.” She held out the bin.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a dozen Lemon Bars.”

He accepted the gift and set it on the desk in the corner of the examining room. “Are you trying to make me diabetic, too?”

Chase didn’t think that was very funny. He was attractive, but his jokes were lame. “I’d better get back and see if Anna needs any help,” she said, lifting Quincy’s crate.

“How many hours do you put in at Bar None?” He opened the door for her to exit and they walked down the hallway to the waiting room in the front. “It seems like you work day and night.”

“Sometimes we do. But there are slow periods when we relax a bit and even get caught up with the baking. Are you going to eat the Lemon Bars I brought you?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

“You’re afraid of becoming diabetic?”

He gave her a warm glance. “I was only kidding. Sorry if you took it wrong.”

He told her that his grandmother had been a baker, had baked bread every day, and cookies often. He’d grown up near the Iron Range, in the northeastern part of Minnesota. His father had been one of the few Hispanics to venture that far north for work. His mother came from a Swedish family that had lived in the area for a few generations.