Джанет Кантрелл - Fat Cat At Large

Anna grabbed her wineglass and took a healthy swig before answering, “It’s Bill.”

“Bill? Your future fiancé?” Chase sat in Anna’s large, comfy, green striped chair and set her wineglass on the round marble-topped table at her elbow.

“Did you know we went out for a bit in high school? I didn’t tell you that part. Doris dated him after me. We were never very serious. Doris dated him for a time, and she treated him so badly, I felt sorry for him. After I left for college, he married his first wife.”

“On the rebound?” Chase said.

“Maybe. After Doris stole Bill away from me, she dumped him. He took it hard. Bill asked me out again, but I had fallen, hard, for Allan. I don’t think Bill was happy with his first wife at all. I’m not even sure he was happy with his second wife, Marvin’s mother. Her children were always such a trial for him.”

Anna shook her head, recollecting the old history. “Doris was just never a nice person. She was always attracting guys with her cleavage and her flirty ways, then dropping them flat. Now that Bill and I are dating seriously, I’ve heard more about Doris. She really did wrong by him. She’s even making another play for him. She shops for canaries every week and has never bought one. He sees through her by now, so it won’t do her any good. But it still upsets me, for his sake.”

Chase covered Anna’s worn hand with hers. “I’m sorry.”

“Marrying Allan and opening our sandwich shop was the best thing that could have happened. I feel bad for anyone who has never known what we had together.”

Anna took another sip of her wine after that long discourse. “That’s the whole story. She’s an evil woman and I’d rather she didn’t shop here. And I’d very much rather she didn’t stop in at Bill’s shop every day, not that he would give her the time of day.”

“Did Doris start making a play for Bill before or after her husband was murdered?”

“Before, but not long before. I think they separated soon after she started sashaying around Bill’s shop acting like she wanted to buy a pet, flirting just like in the old days.”

Chase wondered if wanting to renew an old flame, whom she had dumped, would be a motive for getting rid of her husband. She’d sure like to know what they were quarreling about when he threw tomato sauce on her.

As she drove home later, she realized they hadn’t made a decision about Vi. They couldn’t fire her right away, for the simple reason that they didn’t have anyone else to work the salesroom.

• • •

Chase was readyfor bed very early after a strawberry-scented bubble bath that soothed her frazzled nerves somewhat and eased her aching back. She pulled her duvet up and climbed in with a Bookmobile Cat mystery by Laurie Cass. Even though Chase had never seen a bookmobile, she liked the concept, and loved Eddie the cat.

Before she’d read five pages, Mike Ramos called.

“I’ve been thinking about you.” That voice, so deep and rumbly. If she’d never seen his handsome face, she could have fallen for that voice over the phone. “How are you holding up with everything that’s going on?”

“My back is a little better, but I’m awfully nervous about not knowing who is killing people around here.”

“Would it help to know I’m a little worried, too?”

That was sweet of him to say that. After all, he wasn’t nearly as involved as she was.

“Let me know if there’s anything I can do,” he said.

A vision of Mike rubbing her back, soothing her sore muscles, relaxing her, flitted through her mind. Something inside her tingled. “I will, I promise.”

They chatted a bit about the murders and the suspects, then hung up. But now that she’d thought about a massage, Chase wanted one right away. She would work on that.

• • •

After her chatabout suspects with Mike, Chase decided to organize her thoughts more clearly, if she could. She wrote out two names in pencil at the top of a piece of paper: Gabe and Torvald. Unfortunately, for her and for Torvald, he would have been the first named suspect in Gabe’s column, except he was dead, too. She chewed on the pencil. Did the fact that he was dead mean he didn’t murder Gabe, though? Could he have killed him, then could someone have killed Torvald because of that? Maybe Doris? Or Ted? Or Gabe’s tattooed mistress? That mistress was a shadowy figure. Chase assumed she existed, but had never seen the woman herself.

All right, then, time to get down to business. She refused to put her own name anywhere on the paper. Under Gabe , she wrote Doris and Ted . Not knowing the mistress’s name, she wrote just that: mistress . She repeated the same three names in Torvald’s column, in case Torvald killed Gabe and someone exacted revenge on him.

She stared at the names for a moment. The shadowy mistress brought to mind the shadowy young man Vi had talked to in the parking lot last Saturday. She wrote down young man . It had looked like they were arguing. Chase had never seen him again, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a killer.

That’s ridiculous, she told herself. You can’t suspect people just because you don’t know who they are. She erased the young man from both columns.

Quincy noisily protested the fact that she was ignoring him and that his next meal was late. Chase rose to feed him, but she was so absorbed in her task that she didn’t look to see whether or not he ate.

Lacy had connections with the Naughtly family, all of whose names were on the lists, but Chase couldn’t see her way to putting Laci’s name down. Violet had even less connection.

But there was Shaun Everly. She had seen him get into Torvald’s car. Did he have business dealings with Torvald? Gabe had, and Gabe was dead. There must be a tangled connection there somewhere. She put Shaun’s name in both columns.

Except that Torvald’s name was only in one column, the suspects were identical. This was getting her nowhere. She crumpled up the paper and got up to toss it in the kitchen recycle basket.

In the kitchen, she noticed Quincy hadn’t touched his food. No wonder—she had forgotten to add the homemade treats. She mixed in the Kitty Patties and watched Quincy empty his bowl in record time.

Then she made herself a cup of herbal tea and carried it onto her balcony. She wrapped herself in a soft blanket and, watching the Friday night parade pass on the sidewalk below, she sipped her tea and stroked the contented cat in her lap, humming “It’s the Hard-Knock Life” from Annie .

• • •

Hilda Bjorn didn’ttake long to collect on the dozen dessert bars Chase had offered her. She came in Saturday morning, right after opening.

Chase heard her voice in the front and came out to greet her.

“Vi,” she said, turning to her clerk, who was more like her suave, confident self today. Her buttons were rose gingham against a purple satin blouse. “I want you to let Hilda choose a dozen, on the house. She helped corral Quincy the other day.”

“Sure thing, boss.” Vi beamed her golden smile on the old woman. “Would you like to taste anything?”

Chase left them to it, glad that Hilda was following through.

The customers were steady throughout the morning, but dwindling from the huge crowds of the week before, much to Chase’s relief—and Anna’s, too, since she could ease up on the incessant baking.

Vi asked to go out for lunch, so Anna clerked while she was gone. There was no reason not to let her go, with the amount of business they were doing.

Soon after Vi returned, Laci Carlson came through the rear door. Chase was surprised to see her there.

Anna reacted much more, though. “What on earth are you doing here, child? Shouldn’t you be resting?”