Fat Cat Spreads Out (3 page)

Chase approached Mike and the older woman.

“Hi,” Mike said. “I want you to meet my aunt Betsy. She's my dad's sister.” So Betsy was a Ramos by birth. She was much shorter than Mike, but had his same deep brown eyes and dark curls, hers cut short to frame an oval face with only a few age lines.

Anna came running up to the group. “Quincy isn't all that's missing, Charity. The Hula Bars—”

“Mrs. Larson.” Mike smiled at Anna. “I'd like you to meet my aunt Betsy.”

Anna halted and waited a few seconds until her breathy panting slowed down. “Pleased to meet you.” They shook hands. “We're very fond of your nephew. But, Charity”—she turned to Chase—“Quincy got into the Hula Bars.”

Chase gasped. “Are they ruined? How many? Are there any left?”

“He destroyed ten boxes.”

“He ate ten boxes of dessert bars?” Mike's jaw dropped. “I didn't think even Quincy could eat that much.”

“No, no. He didn't eat all of them, only ruined them. I can't tell how many bars are completely gone, but those boxes can't be sold. They're clawed to pieces.”

Chase's heart dropped toward her sneakers. “Ten boxes? That's almost all of the Hula Bars that we brought here. They've been our best seller since we introduced them. We needed those boxes to sell.”

“We do have a ton of Harvest Bars, but you're right. I guess we'll have to make some more tonight.” Anna's brow furrowed beneath her silver curls, and her blue eyes grew somber.

“Thank goodness he didn't destroy the Harvest Bars. Where is that rascal?” Chase clenched one fist inside the other until her knuckles were white.

“He'll come back. One of us has to start baking soon.” Anna gave Chase a look that said Chase should do it. “If you stay here, you'll worry yourself to death over Quincy. I'll finish setting up and you can look in on Inger.”

Chase resisted the notion of leaving with Quincy on the loose, but Anna finally convinced her. She had searched everywhere and didn't know what else she could
do. “Okay, Anna. I'll head back in a few minutes. Call me the second he shows up. “

Anna agreed. They said good-bye to Mike's Aunt Betsy and trudged toward their booth, leaving Mike chatting with his aunt. Chase assumed he'd tell her what a terrible cat owner Chase was, not able to control her animal's weight, or even his whereabouts.

Chase glanced back to see if they were whispering and pointing at her. But Aunt Betsy was walking away as Mike ducked into the fortune-teller's booth. She wondered, briefly, what had been troubling the young woman, and how she knew Mike. The man had a talent for collecting attractive females.

Before she left, she helped Anna finish unpacking the goods that weren't ruined.

“Anna, about that midmorning snack that Inger mentioned,” Chase started.

“I made sure she was going to give him a Kitty Patty. It wasn't anything he shouldn't have.”

“But he doesn't need an infinite amount of those, you know. I usually give him one about midday, not midmorning.”

Anna gave Chase a pained look and turned away to arrange their price list on a plastic stand. A stack of the fliers describing how to save dessert bars for the holidays lay beside the stand. Anna knocked a few of them off the top of the pile and Chase bent down to retrieve them.

As she straightened, they both heard a scream. Chase threw the papers onto the table and she and Anna ran outside their booth to see what was going on.

The butter sculpture building was on the far side of the fortune-teller's booth and a jewelry kiosk, four booths away from the Bar None. Several people were running toward it. Anna and Chase followed the gathering crowd.

A young man in a security uniform came up behind them and pushed his way through. “Excuse me,” he repeated. “Emergency, let me through.”

Within minutes, the onsite ambulance pulled up, lights flashing, the siren giving short burps, and paramedics rushed into the structure. In a few more minutes, two policemen came running and entered the exhibit space as well. That exhibition space was more than a tent, since it had to be refrigerated to keep the butter from melting. It was temporary but had wooden walls and a door. The door was closed and no one could see in, although Chase tried to peek every time it opened to admit someone else. More police arrived. A woman stood sobbing outside the entrance. Her face was red and splotchy.

Chase saw the young woman from the fortune-telling booth, the one Mike and his aunt had been talking to, at the opposite edge of the crowd. She chewed her knuckles with a worried look. She didn't take her eyes from the closed door.

After a very long time, it seemed, paramedics emerged from the butter sculpture building pushing a gurney. The figure on it was covered with a sheet. Chase's hand flew to her mouth. Anna grabbed her other hand and they held on tight. How awful that someone had passed away the day before the fair started.

The woman who had been outside the building now
followed behind the gurney, silently weeping. She was dressed in a long, red, swishy skirt and cowgirl boots and had a stylishly shaped short hairdo. Chase surmised that someone had had a heart attack. Maybe a man, and this was his wife. Did butter sculptors eat a lot of butter? Were they an unhealthy bunch? The crowd parted to let them wheel the body to the ambulance, waiting a few feet away. The woman spoke with the paramedics, who shook their heads at her and closed the back bay doors.

The two policemen were the next to emerge. They led a tall, handsome man to their squad car. When he looked up to scan the crowd, he gave a shake of his head to the fortune-teller. Then he turned toward Chase. It was Mike Ramos!

C
hase felt her knees weaken as she watched Mike being led away toward the police car.

“Ma'am.” A policewoman appeared beside her, holding Quincy. “Dr. Ramos said this was your cat. He sure is a handsome fellow.”

Taking the cat, Chase tried to speak, but couldn't get any sounds out at first. “What . . . why . . .” She cleared her throat. “Is Dr. Ramos being arrested? What for?”

“He's being brought in for questioning.” The woman left abruptly before Chase could ask her anything more. What was going on? It was like he was being . . . What was a good word? Detained?

Anna reached over to give the frightened cat in Chase's
arms a head rub. “Did you look inside there when we were searching for Quincy?” She nodded toward the building Mike Ramos had come from.

“No. I didn't see how he could get inside. The door was closed.” Quincy nuzzled against Chase's arm and left a smear. He had something oily on his whiskers. Butter?

“That doesn't always stop Quincy,” Anna said. “But what's happening to Mike Ramos?”

Chase shook her head. It was all too bewildering.

Another car pulled up onto the midway as the ambulance drove away with the body, leaving the weeping woman behind. Out of the newly arrived car stepped Detective Niles Olson.

“Uh-oh, look who's here,” Anna said. “That dead man must have been murdered.”

“Figures
he
would show up,” Chase said. She had a strange relationship with the tall, good-looking homicide detective and a checkered history. Now she really wondered if Mike was being detained.

The man's impossibly dark blue eyes scanned the crowd, lingering on Chase for an extra second before he entered the building.

“What should we do?” Chase asked.

“There's nothing we can do. Dr. Ramos can take care of himself. If he needs help, he'll ask. I'm sure they'll let him go soon. He must have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Chase stole looks over her shoulder at the female police officer leaning into the squad car to talk to Mike
as she and Anna returned to their own booth with Quincy purring in Chase's arms.

“You bad fat cat,” she murmured, burying her face in his soft orangey fur. It smelled faintly of butter. He looked like he'd gained at least a pound eating the dessert bars and the handouts during his travels. “If you really think we can't do anything for Mike Ramos, I'll take Quincy back to the shop now and see how Inger's doing.”

“And bake some more Hula Bars,” Anna said.

“Yes, and that. You'll be okay here doing all the work alone?”

“With the size of our space, it might be easier for me to finish setting up by myself. I'll be fine.”

In spite of Anna's certainty about Mike being able to take care of himself, Chase wanted to ask Julie if her defense attorney friend Jay Wright was available just in case. She called her on her way home, but the call rang over to voice mail. Chase hardly ever phoned Julie in the middle of her workday, and it was reasonable that her personal cell was turned off. She decided not to leave a message and that she would try to call again later.

When Chase got back to the Bar None, it was lunchtime. After closing Quincy into the office, she briefly told Inger everything that had happened. Inger had met the veterinarian and expressed concern for him, but Chase repeated what Anna had said. There was nothing they could do for him. Unless, Chase thought, she could get Jay Wright to free Mike from the clutches of the police.

She asked Inger how business had been in the morning.

“Slow. Really slow.” Inger looked pale again today.

“Can you see a doctor this afternoon if we close up?”

“I don't really have a doctor, but I can go to the clinic.”

“I think you should. You've been feeling bad for too long.” Chase waited for Inger to tell her she was pregnant. If Inger knew she was pregnant, that was.

“It's crazy. I don't know what's wrong with me. I mostly only feel bad in the morning.”

Maybe she really had no clue. “You need to see a doctor,” Chase urged. “Right away.”

“Okay, okay, I'll do it.”

Chase smiled at her. “Make sure you do. It might be important.”

Inger looked puzzled. Yes, she had no clue. “How's Quincy after his adventure?”

“He'll live.” She didn't want to detain Inger further with the details of his escapades at the fair. She'd tell her later. But Chase did take a moment to wonder how Quincy had gotten inside the building where the man died, and from where Mike Ramos emerged, escorted by the police. She hoped he would be questioned and released quickly.

“How did he sneak into the basket in the first place?” Inger asked.

“How does he sneak anywhere? The cat has skills.”

After Inger left, saying she would go straight to the clinic, Chase baked five dozen more Hula Bars. They packaged six bars to a box, so that would make up for the ten boxes Quincy had gotten into.

She tried Julie again with the same result. This time
she left a message to call her back as soon as she could. She also tried to call Mike to see if he had been let go, but he didn't answer either. It was maddening! She had no idea what was going on.

Tanner had sent her an e-mail saying he already had a mock-up of a website ready. She went to the computer in the office to look at it. She hadn't given the young man the office number because she didn't want Anna answering the phone when he called, so he only had Chase's cell phone number.

Quincy stretched, putting his front paws on her lap before jumping up and settling in.

She opened the file and paused, then knocked back against the chair with her mouth agape. Quincy flinched, but didn't jump down. It was stupendous, given what he had to work with. It was just what she had imagined, with placeholders for the pictures she hadn't sent yet. The home page displayed the address, phone number, and a map that could be used to get directions to the Bar None. Across the top was a banner in pink and white stripes, to match the wallpaper, with the shop name and sketches of dessert bars scattered in among the letters. Tabs for “Products” and “Ordering” and “Contact” were empty. She had a lot of material to send to him yet.

Tanner had been more observant than she thought on his one visit, last week, when Anna was out. She could imagine what Anna would think if she saw him, with his nose and eyebrow rings, not to mention the colorful dragon tattoo on the inside of his arm. He had a habit of running
his glossy black fingernails through his shaggy brown hair when he was hunkered down at Chase's computer.

The timer in the kitchen dinged and she hurried in to take out the last batch of bars, dumping her cat onto the floor and slamming the office door shut behind her.

While she was waiting for the bars to cool, Quincy made a racket in the office.

“Oh, poor baby,” she said, going back into the office. “Sorry I abandoned you so rudely. Do you have a tummy ache from all that sugar you got into today? Such a bad boy.” Her actions contradicted her stern words as she swooped him up and gave him a cuddle. He'd missed his customary noon Kitty Patty, but Chase decided to forgo it today.

She and Anna were planning on taking Quincy to the fair in his crate tomorrow, once the fair started, since Chase didn't want to leave him by himself in the office or her apartment all week long. There were things a bored cat could do to express his displeasure, she knew from experience. Of course, being in a crate all day wasn't good either. She'd have to find a place to let him exercise a bit during the days.

When the Hula Bars were cool enough to pack, she toted them to her little Ford Fusion, parked in its space behind the shop, and drove back to the Bunyan County Fairgrounds. Even though the fair wasn't open yet, most of the bright lights were shining tonight, giving the place a festive look. The merry-go-round music still tinkled from the main parking lot. She parked in the exhibitors'
lot and carried the bag to their booth. The evening air was turning decidedly chilly.

Anna, pulling her azure sweater tight around herself, gave a shiver when Chase approached.

“We'll need jackets here at night.”

“Anna, is that sweater all you brought? It's fifty degrees out here. Here, put these somewhere and let's get you someplace warm.”

“I have to finish putting everything else in the storage boxes.” The fair had provided large, heavy metal boxes, bolted to rings in the ground and equipped with padlocks, so exhibitors could store their goods overnight. They were expected to take cash home with them but, fortunately, didn't have to schlep the goods back and forth for the whole week.

Chase stuck the ten replacement cartons in one of the metal boxes and clicked the padlock. “There, now you come with me.”

“I'll do no such thing,” Anna said. “There are still these to pack.” She gestured to some dessert bar boxes at the bottom of the basket that Chase had overlooked. “And these.” Anna pointed to more goodies that were tucked under the table, where they'd stashed them when they first arrived. “I'll finish up, and I have my car here.”

“Well, then come over to my place for a hot chocolate when you're finished.”

“That would be lovely. Should I call Julie?”

“Please do. I've been trying to get her all day. I need to talk to her.” Maybe Anna would have better luck. Chase rushed home to get the cocoa started.

*   *   *

Anna and Chase
were settled in Chase's homey living room, Quincy in Anna's lap, his narrowed eyes on the marshmallows heaped atop her cup of chocolate, his nose twitching. Chase had just handed Anna's cup to her and returned to the kitchen to get her own mug when the doorbell chimed. There were two doorbells outside the back door, one for the shop and one for her apartment. Downstairs, the back door led into a hallway outside the shop kitchen, where a set of inside stairs went up to Chase's apartment.

She ran down the stairs to admit Julie. Anna had gotten hold of her, and Julie had said she would be right over. However, when she opened the door, two people, not one, stood outside. Julie had her grandmother's periwinkle-blue eyes and wore her brown hair cut short. Chase was an inch or so taller than her friend.

“Chase,” Julie said. “You remember Jay, right?” She smiled up at her taller companion.

How convenient. She could talk to both of them now, rather than going through Julie. “Of course. Jay Wright, right? You're the guy who got me out of jail.”

Jay chuckled, showing a deep dimple in his right cheek. That only made him more good-looking than he already was, although his supershort haircut was not to Chase's liking. “Yep, that's me, the right Jay Wright. I heard there was hot chocolate available here.”

“Come in out of the cold. I have a favor to ask after you get settled.”

Chase led them upstairs. Jay and Julie sat on the leather couch, Chase's one extravagance when she'd furnished her nest. Anna and Quincy were ensconced in the cinnamon-and-mocha-toned stuffed armchair, so Chase pulled a seat in from the kitchen after she put a plate of Lemon Bars on the hassock, within everyone's easy reach.

“We're so glad you decided to do the fair,” Julie said, giving her hot drink a cautious sip.

“We're glad, too,” Anna said. “But why are you
both
glad?”

“Oh, didn't I tell you? Jay's aunt is on the organizing committee. That's the reason I told you to go in the first place. I owed Jay a favor.”

“I guess I owe you one, too,” Chase said, remembering his kindness when he had shepherded her out of the police station.

“Have either of you heard what happened at the fairgrounds today?” asked Anna.

They shook their heads.

“One of the butter sculptors died,” Chase said.

“Murdered,” Anna added.

Julie sucked in a mouthful of air through rounded lips. Jay raised his eyebrows.

“You almost made me spill my cocoa,” Julie said.

Chase turned to Anna. “I know the homicide detective was there, but are you sure the person was murdered? Or that it was a butter sculptor?”

“I talked to his wife. They wouldn't let her into the ambulance. She was walking down the midway looking
lost and I offered her a ride after you left, but she didn't take me up on it.”

“So, give.” Julie leaned forward. “What did she say?”

Anna hesitated, looking at Chase.

“What?” Chase asked. “I'm not in trouble because Quincy was there, am I? I didn't find his body.”

“No. Dr. Ramos did. He's a suspect.”