Джанет Кантрелл - Fat Cat At Large

Chase swooped down and picked him up. A piece of tan clothing dropped from his claws. Chase stared at the shining gold buttons, caught in a stray ray of sunshine poking through the clouds. She almost dropped Quincy. It was Doris’s jacket.

After she ran upstairs to shut Quincy into the apartment, she dialed Detective Olson.

“I’ve found the killer,” she began, but he cut her off.

“Where are you? What are you doing?” His voice was curt, abrupt.

“I’m not contaminating the scene. The evidence is on the ground, right where my cat found it.”

She heard him blow out a breath. “On the ground, where?”

“Right behind my shop. Come around the back and I’ll be here.”

“What is it?”

“You’ll have to come and see for yourself. I think I know, but I don’t want to say.” What if it was someone else’s jacket? She’d feel like a fool.

She was prepared for a crime scene team to arrive, but Detective Olson was the only person in the one unmarked car that idled to a stop beside her fifteen minutes later.

“Here it is.” She pointed to the jacket as soon as he climbed out of the car.

“At least I’m not finding you cornering someone you think is a murderer. Tell me exactly what happened here.” He pulled a small notepad and pen from his pocket. Good, she thought, he’s going to take notes.

She told him how Quincy stalked the jacket and extracted it from behind the bin. “See the bloodstain? Ted Naughtly says he saw his mother wearing this jacket, with the stain, when she left Gabe’s the day he died.” She didn’t mention that Ted also said his mother left it in the bushes in front of the condo. How did it get here, at her business? Was someone trying to implicate her? She was about to mention the discrepancy in location when he spoke.

Detective Olson hadn’t touched the jacket yet, but he bent over it and sniffed. “Doesn’t smell like blood.”

“It’s all dried up.”

“Doesn’t look like it either. Wrong color.”

“How could it not be blood? Ted saw her run out with this stain on her.”

“I’ll call Ted Naughtly in for questioning right away.”

“He’s at Laci’s apartment, I think. He was there a few minutes ago. Are you going to have someone investigate this? Is it evidence? I guess it could belong to someone else.”

In answer, a white CSI SUV with a blue BCA logo on the side pulled up behind the detective’s car. Beneath the bold initials were the words “Bureau of Criminal Apprehension” with a stylized map of Minnesota under the name of the state.

Chase observed while they took photographs and measurements, then answered their questions about exactly where the garment had been before Quincy pulled it out, as near as she could tell.

After they left, she realized that she’d stood Dr. Ramos up. Oops. She ran upstairs and called him from the apartment.

“Can you still see us?”

“I expected you about an hour ago.” He sounded annoyed, for which she didn’t blame him.

“Something happened. I need to talk to you about it.” Was that true? She wanted to talk to him about it.

“I’m about to see a patient. I should be done in half an hour, then I’m free for an hour.”

“I’ll be there this time. I promise.”

It was after lunchtime, so she gulped down a peanut butter sandwich, but would have preferred a bowl of hot soup. She’d gotten chilled standing in the parking lot for so long, watching the officials process the scene. The longer she had looked at the jacket, the less that stain had looked like blood to her, too. What was going on?

When Chase got to Mike’s office at Minnetonka Mills, he was still with his patient. After a short wait, she hauled Quincy into the examining room in his carrier. Did he feel lighter? Not likely, since he’d still been getting treats from Anna as of yesterday.

Chase winced when she lifted the carrier onto the exam table.

“Is something wrong?” Mike asked.

“I hurt my back the other day. His crate feels extra heavy, I think, since I did that.”

When the vet weighed him, though, it was worse than she expected.

“He’s gained a few ounces, almost a quarter of a pound.” He shook his head and gave Chase a stern glare. “That’s not good. The crate feels heavier because it is .”

“I should have waited longer. He’ll lose weight by next week.”

“Why would that magically happen?”

There was no call for sarcasm, she wanted to say, but bit her tongue. “I’ve put together a recipe, like you suggested. It’s for a healthy cat treat.”

“Tell me.” His look softened.

She told him the recipe and he admitted, nodding, that it was a good one. “I have to keep Anna from sneaking desserts to him.”

“Would you like me to tell her not to?”

Chase could imagine how well that would go over. “No, I can do it.” It would work better now that there was an alternative. She hoped.

“Take care of your back. If Quincy were lighter that would help.”

She wanted to stick her tongue out at him, but that would have been juvenile. As she left, she turned her head toward his closed office door and did it anyway.

• • •

Later, when Chasewas dressed for bed in her favorite flannel nightie, she finally got a chance to confer with Julie. She’d been wanting to talk to her all day.

“You wouldn’t believe how slow this thing is going,” Julie started out. “We finally finished voir dire today. I thought we’d be done with it two days ago.”

“Still, isn’t that pretty good for a major case? I think it takes longer than that sometimes.”

“I know, I know. It’s just that this doesn’t seem that major. The evidence will be pretty cut-and-dried. I mean, I don’t see how we can lose.”

“So what makes it take longer?”

“I think everyone is being extra careful about everything they do.”

Chase stretched and yawned. She was getting sleepy and hadn’t talked to Julie yet about Doris’s jacket.

“Why are they being so careful, do you think?”

“Oh, that’s obvious,” Julie said. “The press is all over this. They’re swarming the courthouse. It makes a good, scandalous story, robbing money from charity.”

“I guess that makes sense.” Chase tried to picture Doris’s murder trial when that day came. Or Ted’s. Or Torvald’s. Would she be called to testify? Would there be a gauntlet of reports and microphones to endure? “Listen, I want to talk something out with you.”

“Shoot.”

“I talked to Ted today, at Laci’s apartment.”

“I thought they broke up.”

“I’m not sure about their status. It seems to be on again at the moment. Anyway, he told me he saw his mother run out of Gabe’s condo, the afternoon he was murdered, with a huge red splotch on her jacket.”

“Wow! Do the police know about this?”

“They do now.”

“So she murdered him?”

“Not sure about that. Ted says she threw her jacket in the bushes right outside the condo. However, Quincy got out late this morning, after I came back from Laci’s, and he found her jacket behind my trash bin.”

There was a moment of silence. Then Julie giggled. “Quincy is quite the detective, isn’t he? How did that happen?”

“Getting out or finding the jacket?”

“Never mind. So you called the police?”

“Yes, and they came and went over everything out there. But what do you suppose this means?”

“You mean how did the jacket get there?”

“I guess. I don’t even know if Ted was telling the truth. Detective Olson doesn’t think the stain is blood at all. Could Ted be cold-blooded enough to try to frame his mother?”