Джанет Кантрелл - Fat Cat At Large

“Are you still getting rides from Shaun Everly?”

Vi, who had just bitten off a mouthful of ham and swiss on rye bread, nodded. She finished her bite and said, “Not much longer, though. I found someone who will fix my Hyundai in exchange for some of my old clothes.”

“That sounds lucky! So you found a female auto mechanic?”

“I did.” Vi sounded proud. “She lives in Shaun’s apartment building.”

Which, Chase knew, was also where Laci lived.

“Are you doing all right with your finances now?”

Vi shrugged. “I guess so. I’m not out of money.”

Chase studied the young woman for a moment. The more she got to know her, the more enigmatic she seemed. Vi was the last person Chase would expect to do business by bartering. She did know that Vi had very little money smarts. After all, she’d gotten herself into enough trouble with her overdue bills that she had felt compelled to dip into the Bar None till. “You be sure and let me or Anna know if you get into any more trouble with your finances.” Chase certainly didn’t want that to happen again!

“Sure.” Vi seemed unconcerned.

“Which clothes are you giving up?” Chase had never seen Vi wear anything that looked as if it should be given away. That mechanic might be getting a heck of a good deal.

“Oh, they’re some that I’m not wearing.” She waved her hand to indicate how inconsequential those clothes were.

“Say, I’ll bet you might know the answer to a question I have.”

Vi crumpled her sandwich bag and stuffed it into the insulated lunch carrier, then stuffed that inside her tote. “Okay.”

“How did Shaun and Torvald know each other?”

“Did they?”

Chase remembered, at that moment, that Vi had denied knowing Torvald Iversen herself, after Chase had seen them arguing in the parking lot. “Yes. And you knew Torvald, too. I saw you talking to him one day outside.” Could Torvald have been the potential source of her money that had fallen through? He’d been a financer, but who would finance Vi? And why?

“Who?” Vi asked, her smooth face the picture of innocence.

“Tall, thin guy, usually wore a blazer.”

Vi raised her impeccable eyebrows and blinked. “Oh, is that who that was? The creep was trying to pick me up.”

To Chase’s ear, her statement rang false.

• • •

Chase crated Quincy,without too much difficulty, right after she closed the shop, and drove him to Mike’s veterinary office in Minnetonka Mills. She’d called and described Quincy’s distress and Mike had said he’d work her in at the end of his day. She got there at 6:30 on the dot. Since it was after regular hours, his outside door was locked, but he opened it as soon as she knocked. His receptionist had gone for the day, so Mike led the way into the first examining room himself.

“I appreciate you doing this,” Chase said.

“No problem.”

They were being so formal. It was as if the redhead were standing in the corner of the room, listening to them. At least, that’s how Chase felt.

Mike lifted Quincy’s paw, gingerly, not touching the dewclaw, which was still seeping a bit.

“Ouch. You have an ingrown toenail, buddy.” He turned to Chase, his lips pursed ruefully. “Sorry I didn’t notice this before.”

“I guess you were concentrating on the size of his tummy.” Even to herself, Chase sounded cold and distant.

“Are you all right?”

“Mm–hmm.”

Mike turned to face her directly. “Are you mad at me?”

Chase couldn’t look him in the eye. “Why should I be?”

“Beats me. Are you free for dinner this weekend?”

“I’m not sure.”

“How about lunch, then?”

“You don’t have plans?”

“Nope. I have the whole weekend free. All day Saturday and Sunday. But you’re open on Saturday and—”

“Dr. Ramos?” A short, round woman in her late forties, or possibly early fifties, poked her head into the room. “Is there anything else? You want me to wait and do this room?”

Mike gave her a friendly smile. “No, Karla, I’ll wipe it down myself. You’d better get home. Thanks.”

That was Karla? Cute Karla? She was cute. She wore her graying hair in a thick braid that wound around the top of her head and her elbows were as dimpled as her cheeks.

“Nighty night, then.” Karla closed the door. Chase felt some of the stiffness go out of the room, and out of herself. That nice, older woman was no romantic threat.

“I could do dinner on Saturday,” she said.

“Good. We need to talk.”

Did that sound ominous? Promising? Both?

• • •

Anna called Chasea little before 8:00 that night. “I got in to see Hilda. I had to say I was her cousin.”

“How did it go?” Chase asked.

“Not as well as I would have liked. The poor woman is sedated up to her eyeballs. She was very nice and very polite, and very vague. She doesn’t seem to remember anything right now.”

“Oh great. Wait, that could help. If she loses her memory of that day, I’m off the hook.”

“I suppose.” Anna sounded doubtful. “One problem was that she didn’t know who I was. I tried to explain that I worked at Bar None, but she grew agitated every time I said the name of our shop.”

Chase told Anna how Mike had clipped Quincy’s dewclaw, then clipped the other one as a precaution.

“He refused to charge me anything.”

“I’ll have to remember to start dating a vet if I get another pet.”

Anna and her husband had owned a series of miniature dachshunds. The two elderly dogs they’d owned when he’d died had passed away within two years. Anna hadn’t had the heart to get another pet since then.

Well, if Anna thought she and Mike were dating, and if she was going to dinner on Saturday, maybe she should shove the redhead out of her mind. If only she could.

THIRTY-TWO

Anna had sounded pleased when Chase told her that she and Mike Ramos were going to dinner on Saturday. Chase had noticed this matchmaking tendency in Anna before, but it hadn’t come up lately. Julie was much too busy with her job in the state attorney’s office to see anyone and Chase had needed time to recover from her ordeal when she first came back home to Minneapolis.

Before they hung up, Anna had said that she and Bill Shandy were going out Saturday, too. Chase didn’t consider that she herself tended toward matchmaking, but she would be more than pleased if those two worked out. Bill deserved a chance at happiness and Anna was beginning to get over losing her mate, enough so that she was ready to start seeing Bill—and to tell Chase and Julie that she was doing it. Even if it did bother Julie because her trial was so closely connected.

Chase shook herself. What was she doing, daydreaming about romances when she was a suspect in two murders? Three, if Hilda Bjorn didn’t pull through.

• • •

Chase was fillingin at the sales counter while Vi went out to lunch on Friday. Business was sporadic, as it often was, coming in waves and lulls. During one of the lulls, Chase, humming “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” from My Fair Lady , turned from restocking the pink shelves with preboxed treats to find Torvald’s sister, Elinda, regarding her from just inside the front door. She was dressed, again, in tight-fitted clothing, a short black skirt and a purple blouse that strained to contain her bosom, with a miniature black purse over her shoulder.

“Hi,” Chase said. “Can I help you? Would you like some dessert bars?”

“No, I don’t think so. I wanted to see the place Gabe and Torvald were so crazy about getting.” And Shaun? Chase could see more tattoos now. One snaked up her left arm and another wound around her right ankle.