Джанет Кантрелл - Fat Cat At Large

The wooden floor planks creaked as she tiptoed across the living room. Chase flinched with each footfall, her nape hairs prickling. No one appeared at the top of the stairs to her right, yelling at her to get out, so she kept going.

She hoped Quincy was in the kitchen, where the food was. If not, she would have to think about exploring further. Quincy could be crouched inside an empty room, scared. For all his fierce bravado, he was a small animal, and vulnerable in so many ways. What if this household owned a pit bull? Or a mastiff? She almost whimpered aloud thinking about it.

Chase braced herself with a deep breath, inhaling another whiff of the delicious aroma, and peeked around the corner, into the kitchen. Sure enough, Quincy sat on the counter, devouring the meatloaf. But what caught her attention was the man, lying on his side on the floor beside some scraps of paper, his back to her. She knew him.

She breathed his name. “Gabe? Gabe?”

Quincy turned his head toward her and blinked his gorgeous amber eyes, then returned to his task.

Gabe must be injured, she thought. She knelt and shook his stiff shoulder. No response. She rolled him onto his back. Gasped. A steak knife was stuck in his chest. That couldn’t be good! She reached toward the handle to pull out the knife, touched it, then hesitated and started to draw her hand back.

A soft voice from the doorway said, “What have you done?”

THREE

Chase dropped her outstretched hand to her side and spun toward the unknown man. He was middle-aged and had a preppy look, khakis, blazer over a polo shirt, sockless dock shoes.

“Should we pull the knife out?” she said. “He’s not bleeding much. Maybe we should.”

“You probably should have wiped your prints off and thrown it away before I caught you.”

Chase rose and the guy took a step backward. “We need to call nine one one,” she said.

“Why did you kill him?”

Now Chase took a step back. “Kill him? Is he dead? Why would I kill Gabe? “

Her mind raced. She had reason enough to kill him. This man thought she had. Her prints, as he said, were on the steak knife that obviously had killed him.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Torvald Iversen. I’d shake your hand, but it’s bloody.”

Chase inspected her right hand. He was right again. “Then you call nine one one. What if he’s alive?”

Torvald stepped around her and felt for a neck pulse. He gave her a dark scowl, then punched the three numbers into his phone. The man went out the front way to talk to the dispatcher, leaving Chase with the body . . . and her cat, still chowing down.

“Quincy, how could you?” She wiped her hand on a paper towel and stuck it in her pocket before she lifted her cat off the counter and nuzzled her face against his warm head. To her relief, he didn’t try to return to his feast. He might be full, she thought. Half of it was gone. She chanced another glance at Gabe, but he hadn’t moved. He had to be dead.

Being careful to avoid the body and the surrounding pool of blood, she followed Torvald Iversen onto the porch. He was slipping his phone into his pocket. “You’re to stay here, not leave,” he said.

This guy was annoying her. “Says who?”

“Says the dispatcher I just spoke to.” His voice was quiet, but smoky, in a creepy sort of way.

“And I suppose you’re free to go?”

He sneered, but halfheartedly.

“I thought not.” Chase, being a better person, did not return the sneer. “I have to get my cat home.” That sounded lame as soon as she said it. But what was she going to do with him while being questioned by the police? “Who are you?”

As the ambulance pulled up, lights and sirens at full speed, Quincy tensed in her arms. Chase tightened her grip and returned to the living room to shield him from the commotion a bit. The door, however, was standing wide-open and the noise made it into the living room just fine.

Her face buried in Quincy’s soft, orange fur, she felt tears begin. Then her hands started shaking, which alarmed Quincy even more. This was the second encounter with Gabe that had ended up with her shaking and distraught. But it would be the last. Deep inside, a small blossom of relief opened. He wouldn’t release a rat in her store. He wouldn’t report her to the health department (unless he already had). And he wouldn’t shut her down.

“What were you doing here, anyway?” She jumped. That man, Torvald, had come up behind her.

She hoped she hadn’t spoken any of her thoughts aloud. “Chasing my cat. He ran away and snuck in here.”

“He knows how to open doors?”

Two uniformed men, and one woman, ran past them into the kitchen.

“What are you doing here?” she asked Torvald.

“I had a business meeting scheduled with Mr. Naughtly.”

She wondered why he didn’t buy his donuts during business hours like everyone else. “It looks like he was ready to eat dinner.”

“It was a dinner meeting.”

A warm, familiar voice came from the doorway. “Chase? What’s the commotion?”

“Dr. Ramos! Am I ever glad to see you.”

“I was on my way to the drugstore when I saw the vehicles on the street. Is Gabe okay?”

“You know Gabe?” Did everyone know him?

Dr. Ramos gestured to the south. “I live two condos away. What’s happened? Are you feeling all right?” He must have noticed the tears on her face.

Torvald Iversen cleared his throat. “I arrived and found her pulling out the knife she stabbed Gabe Naughtly with.”

Chase whirled toward him. “That’s not true!” Quincy tightened his claws on her sweater.

A policeman with a deep five-o’clock shadow joined the group. “Who found the body? The call said someone named Iversen?”

“No, I found him,” said Chase. Her cat squirmed.

“Why don’t I take Quincy to my place until you’re done here.” Dr. Ramos took control of Quincy and, after assuring the policeman that he’d just arrived, walked down the stairs and into the night. Chase was sad to see the only friendly face disappear.

An hour later, after she told the policeman what happened, and after a detective arrived and she related everything three more times, she started walking toward home. She wondered how she would find Quincy and Dr. Ramos, but he hailed her from his screened-in front porch, two houses down.

Ten minutes later, ensconced in a recliner of fake—but very nice fake—leather, wrapped in an afghan, and sipping hot chocolate, Chase had almost finished going over the events of the afternoon to Dr. Ramos, who urged her to call him Mike.

“I told the exact same story to the policeman and to the detective, who showed up after you went home. That awful man, Torvald Iversen, kept interrupting and contradicting me the whole time we were questioned by the police officer, but the detective took us into upstairs rooms and talked to us separately. That man thinks I killed Gabe Naughtly!”

“You’re shaking again.” Mike hiked the afghan up her shoulder where it had slipped off.

She wasn’t shivering from cold, but it felt nice to have Mike Ramos fuss over her like that. What she was shivering from was harder to get over than cold.

“Do you think they’ll believe him?”

“I imagine they’ll check everything out. Lots of people must have seen you outside, trying to find Quincy.”

The cat caught the sound of his name and picked his head up off Chase’s lap. She wasn’t so sure lots of people had seen her. The five of them had separated—she, Anna, Julie, and Laci to search and Vi to guard the back door. She hadn’t seen anyone on this street before she reached the condo.

The chirrup of Chase’s phone sent Quincy shooting to the floor. He leaped into Mike’s lap.