Fat Cat Takes the Cake (11 page)

I
f Chase had to be shut up somewhere during a snowstorm, inside her own apartment, cuddling with Dr. Michael Ramos, was a good place to be. He had obviously planned his foray to her refrigerator, because he dashed out to his car before he came upstairs and returned with a naturally chilled bottle of burgundy.

The two of them, joined by a purring tabby cat, watched the snow fall from her leather couch, wrapped in an afghan Anna had made for her last Christmas, as they sipped the dark, ruby goodness and munched on a few toffee dessert bars. The snow had picked up again and was now thicker and faster than ever.

After the snowplows made a second trip down Chase's street, Mike thought he'd better get going before the streets
filled up with snow again. “I'd love to stay much longer, but I should leave now.” He gazed into her face for a long moment. She searched his eyes, wondering how deep his feelings for her went. She thought she saw flickers of love, but wasn't sure.

“You won't have any trouble with that big truck, will you?” Chase asked.

“Probably not, but this isn't going to let up anytime soon.”

She had to agree with that. It was on the tip of her tongue to suggest he stay the night, but he gave her a peck on the cheek and left before she could form the right phrase in her mind. How do you ask that, she wondered. Everything she thought of sounded wrong: Wanna stay over? Would you like to stay here? Are you sure you want to leave?

Back on the couch, she was left with a cozy, warm glow. Part of it was the wine, but part was from the warmth of a big, strong man, whose arm had been around her for an hour. The only part that bothered her was the chaste peck he gave her when he left. It wasn't a kiss, a real kiss. Was he pulling away from her? Was he interested in someone else?

She wandered downstairs to work on the billing for the shop, since she had all this extra time. Switching on her monitor, she breathed a sigh of relief that it was working. At least she hadn't lost power. Quincy padded after her and curled up on the floor beside her.

This was where they were supposed to be now. The cat was content. He had been puzzled when everyone left the shop in the middle of the day. He was disappointed now that
there were no baking smells coming from the kitchen. None of the women who slipped him tidbits were around. He missed them. This one, although she made delicious treats and din dins, never let loose with extras between scheduled meals and treats. She was rigid that way. He had enjoyed nestling with her and his vet upstairs, but it felt normal to be here in the office. He checked under the desk. The paper and his other treasures were where he had left them. He was too warm and comfy to make the effort of batting at any of them. Maybe some other time.

Julie called when Chase was in the middle of paying some vendors online.
What did businesses ever do before computers and the Internet?

“Have they plowed your street?” Julie asked.

“Twice. They don't usually do that.”

“It's almost stopped snowing here.”

“It keeps starting and stopping. Have you seen the weather forecast?” Chase clicked over to the weather site as she said it.

“This should be the end of it,” she said. “I talked to Anna. She said you closed up early. What've you been doing?”

Julie was trying to sound casual, so Chase chuckled.

“Oh, Mike came over, I'll bet.”

“He lost power and asked me to refrigerate some insulin for his boarders. And he stayed awhile.”

“Nice.”

“What are you doing?”

“Jay and I were at his place. We talked about my . . . my case.” Julie's voice faltered on the last word. If only she didn't have a case!

“Does he have any insight? Any words of wisdom?” Chase turned an invoice over on her desk and started in on the next one.

“Not really. But he trusts Gerrold that there's not enough evidence to go forward.”

“Then why are they even still considering you?”

“I guess because they don't have anybody else. Do you have dinner plans?”

“If Jay is gone, why don't you bring Chinese over here? I'm doing some computer work that will take me about an hour.”

They had a companionable evening, but Chase was frustrated when Julie left. She didn't have as much faith as Julie did in her lawyer. She had a lot more experience with Detective Niles Olson than she did with Gerrold Gustafson and didn't think he and the district attorney would be bringing the case to a grand jury unless they thought there was a chance of pinning the murder on her best friend.

Sunday morning dawned extra bright. The sun reflected off the snow outside onto Chase's bedroom wall and woke her fifteen minutes before her alarm was set to go off at eight o'clock. She'd had a bad night, lying awake worrying about Julie and wondering if there was anything she could do. At one point she considered going to the police station and talking to the detective. Then she drifted into a restless sleep and dreamed that she found a bloody knife, thus
exonerating Julie. It was a light sleep and she awoke from the dream, realizing that there was no knife involved. Her despair descended with even more weight.

The phone startled her minutes after she opened her bleary eyes to the overly bright sunshine. She picked up her cell. It was Eddie. She let it go to voice mail, but he immediately called again, so she answered.

“You up for a jog today?”

“Eddie, our shop is open on Sundays.”

“We could get one in quick, before you open. The snow stopped.”

Was the man made of energy? “No, we could not. I'm still in bed.”

“Really? What is it, eight?”

He probably got up at five. “Not yet. My alarm will go off when it's eight.”

“How about after work?”

It would be dark when the shop closed at six. She felt she was being rude. She did enjoy being around him, if they weren't eating cardboard health food and if he wasn't berating her about the contents of her dessert bars. “Maybe Monday. We're closed Monday and Tuesday.” That would give her a day to think of an alternative activity to jogging on snowy, slushy sidewalks.

“Call me Monday, then?”

She promised she would. Should she feel bad about seeing two men at once? No, she told herself. It wasn't like she was committed to either one. And vice versa, as far as she could tell.

Before she finished breakfast she heard Anna arrive and
yoo-hoo
up the stairs to let her know she was at work. She stumbled down the stairs, feeling the lack of sleep. Quincy darted in front of her at the bottom of the steps and she nearly tripped over him.

“Are you okay?' Anna asked.

“A little tired. I didn't sleep well last night.”

“Worried about Julie?”

When Chase nodded, Anna confessed that she was, too. If she had spent a sleepless night over Julie, it didn't show. She wore a bright blue, green, and red cardigan over a pink T-shirt. The theme was trees. Not strictly Christmas trees, but pine trees with red and blue bows. Appropriate for the season. Anna's cheeks were the pink of her shirt and her eyes blazed blue to match the yarn of the bows in the bright daylight flooding the kitchen. The kitchen faced east and the windows, kept clean mostly by Anna, let all the December light in. Chase wished there were some warmth with the light, but it
was
December.

Inspecting Anna more closely in the light, she could detect dark smudges beneath those sparkling eyes.

“I have to look something up,” Chase said. “Be right back.”

She followed Quincy into the office and searched for current movies to try to find one Eddie might be interested in. Although she had no idea what his taste in movies was, she could probably rule out chick flicks. Would he go for the he-man thriller stuff? There was a new James Bond. Maybe he'd like that. She made a note of times and theaters for all the shows that were possibilities. The one thing she wasn't
going to do was jog in December after a snowstorm. She wasn't even big on jogging on dry pavement in good weather. She did love biking, but this was no longer the time of year for that.

When Mallory and Inger had both arrived, she talked to them in the kitchen before they opened the shop.

“This is a long shot, I know, but do either of you remember if you sold anything to someone who works with Grace Pilsen?”

They looked at each other.

“Pilsen?” Mallory asked.

“Does this have anything to do with something called The Pilsener?” Inger said.

“Yes,” Chase said. “That's the shop Grace owns. You remember something about it?”

They both nodded.

“How could we forget?” Inger said. “This woman came in and said she wanted to buy one of each bar—everything we sell.”

“And she paid with a credit card from a place called The Pilsener,” Mallory added. “I thought the woman probably owned a bar.”

“It's actually a bakery,” Chase said.

They both shook their heads. “I wondered what a tavern would do with so many dessert bars,” Mallory said.

“It was so weird,” Inger said. “We told her we didn't sell every single type every single day, so she bought everything we had on hand. I've been expecting her to come back another day and do it again, but she hasn't.”

“You don't remember sticking an extra piece of paper in the bag, do you?”

“Bags. There were several of them.”

Chase thanked them and they went out front with her to fill the cases while Chase tended the cash register and flipped the sign to “Open.”

So that was how Grace thought she could “deconstruct” the Bar None recipes, Chase mused. It was unlikely that she could, but she at least knew most of their products if she'd bought nearly each type of bar. That must have been how the purloined recipe copy got to her, too. Chase could envision it falling out of her apron pocket and landing on the shelf under the counter that held the paper bags. Sometimes her pencil fell out of her pocket and that's where it landed if it didn't hit the floor. She was sorry she hadn't seen it before it got into Grace's purchase.

On the way to the kitchen, she yawned and stretched, trying to stay wide-awake.

Chase and Anna baked most of the morning, then relieved the salesclerks as they had their lunches. After Chase came back and sent Inger to the front, she decided to do some more ordering. The cinnamon was nearly gone and they used a lot this time of year.

No sooner had she sat at her desk, with Quincy purring in her lap, than the office phone rang.

It was Detective Olson. For a split second, her tired brain thought she had called him, but then remembered that she had formed the idea and rejected it. So what was he calling about?

“Ms. Oliver?” She sat up straighter. He called her Chase
when he wasn't being official and formal. “We need you to come to the station to answer a few more questions. Could you make it this afternoon?”

At least he let her set the time. Sort of. “Yes, sure, I can come anytime. What is this about?”

“About the murder. About you finding the body.”

Holy smokes! Was the next suspect . . . Chase Oliver?

D
etective Niles Olson had taken Chase on a mental trip through discovering a body before and it had almost been like hypnotism. While sitting at the chair beside his desk, she had recalled details that had escaped her previously. It didn't work this time, though.

“You saw the scarf beside the body like this, right?” He had sketched in the way it had lain on the dirt beside Ron's body, still partly around his neck.

Yes, it was exactly as she had told him the last time she was questioned.

“No footprints in the mud? Any drag marks?”

“No, only Quincy sitting there eating some peanuts that must have been in Ron's pocket. Would his head have made drag marks?” His head had been toward the street and his
feet farther into the bush, so if he were dragged, it had to have been by his feet. The detective had told her Ron North was killed somewhere else. Something about knowing the body had been moved.

“Probably not. But after both Dr. Ramos and you were crawling around in there, we don't have any good prints from the dirt.”

Chase thought that could not have been helped. They had to crawl into the bush to find him.

“And you're sure his blackmail victims didn't kill him? Alone or together? Hail and Snelson are in on that shady deal together, trying to cheat people by buying up their property for less than it's worth.”

“Those two spent the night together at Mr. Snelson's house. That's backed up by his wife. She insists her husband came home very soon after the reunion.”

That woman had made a point of telling Mike Ramos, too. The fact that she was reiterating the story all over town made Chase doubt that it was true. “And Hail was with him? Why would he sleep at their house?”

The detective frowned. Was he getting impatient with her questions? “They both say they had business to discuss pertaining to their new real estate venture and needed to work on it that night. They walked to Snelson's house, which is nearby.”

“Their scam, you mean. That would be hard to do since they were both drunk. Mrs. Snelson told me, when she came into the shop yesterday, that her husband didn't come home that night. She did say he spent the night with Mr. Hail, but not at her house.”

He scribbled something on his notepad. “Looks like we need to talk to Mrs. Snelson once more.”

“How about Mr. Snelson? And Mr. Hail, too? Why would Mr. Hail spend the night at anyone's house? That would be odd, since he lives in town, doesn't he?”

Olson didn't answer any of her questions, but she knew they were good ones.

Maybe she would try to talk to the men herself. These people were changing stories every day. If she collected enough contradictions, Olson would take them seriously and Julie's charges could be dropped and her hearing could be canceled.

After Chase returned to the shop, Mrs. Cray, the janitor from Hammond High School, came into the Bar None again. Chase happened to be behind the counter when she paid for her purchase, six Margarita Cheesecake Bars.

“I can't resist,” she said. “I do love a margarita. Not that often, every once in a blue moon. Not that often at all.” She got her checkbook out and started writing. “Now, what's the date? Oh, it's Sunday, isn't it? Maybe I shouldn't eat these on Sunday.”

“There's hardly any alcohol in them, Mrs. Cray,” Chase said. “It's there for flavoring, that's all.” She didn't mention the tequila and Grand Marnier since all but the taste baked out.

“To think that only last Sunday I was working at Hammond. And there was Mr. Snelson, sound asleep on the couch in his office.” She chuckled.

“He . . . slept in his office after the reunion?”

“I'd say he did. He had on a suit—for sure he slept in
it—wrinkled like all get out.” She leaned over the counter to whisper to Chase. “That office was a mess, too. I'd say he and the missus are having problems, wouldn't you?”

Chase shrugged. There were more likely explanations, she thought. A missus who alibied her husband probably wasn't kicking him out of the bedroom. Neither of her two versions matched this one. She'd told Chase and Anna that her husband hadn't come home, but had spent the night with Langton Hail. But she'd told the detective that both men spent the night at her house. She was trying hard to give her husband an alibi, it seemed, but wasn't doing a good job of it.

Mrs. Cray stood up straight to deliver the details. “He was all embarrassed and got up real quick. He was rubbing his eyes and yawning. His eyes were red and itchy-looking and he'd thrown tissues all over the floor. What a mess. Said he slept in his office all night so no one would break in. Just because they broke into the junior high school across town doesn't mean he needs to sleep in his office.”

The woman leaned in close again for her next condemnation. “I'll tell you what. He smelled like liquor, too. That man had been drinking.”

That was true. She'd seen him at the punch bowl getting lacings from Ron North. He'd been embellishing Snelson's drink as well as Hail's with the bourbon from his flask. “There was punch at the reunion.”

“There was also a half-empty whiskey bottle on his desk.”

“Mrs. Cray, you should tell Detective Olson about this. About where Mr. Snelson was. He needs this information.”

“Oh, I couldn't.”

“Yes, you have to.” She had a thought. “Do you think anyone else spent the night there with him?” Like maybe Langton Hail.

“Oh no, there's only room for one person to sleep there.”

Chase wrote Detective Olson's phone number, which she had memorized a long time ago, on the back of Mrs. Cray's receipt. “Here, please call him. He's a good guy. Niles Olson. He needs to know this.”

If she didn't tell him about Snelson's odd sleeping habits, Chase would.

Bart Fender came in a couple of hours later, while Chase was again in the front room. This time she was giving Inger her lunch break.

“Raspberry Chiffon again?” Chase asked.

“How do you remember that?”

Chase didn't say that it was stuck in her mind because it seems such a delicate, dainty choice for a high school coach and former wrestler. She shrugged. “I just do. I remember lots of our customers' favorites.” That part, at least, was true.

“Julie and I are thinking of going to visit Dillon on Monday. Do you think that would be a good idea?” She was putting out a feeler for how conscious the poor woman was.

“So Julie heard what I said. That would be great! She would love it. Hardly anyone comes by. Her family is there a lot, and me, but that's about it.”

“So she recognizes you?”

He looked away. “I'm not sure. But she reacts when she hears my voice. I think she knows it's me.”

“She's not really in a coma?”

He screwed his face up into an angry scowl. “No, she's not. She's not in any coma. She's only asleep.”

Chase guessed that she and Julie would have to go find out for themselves.

As he left, Bart almost plowed over the next woman to enter the shop. It was none other than Mrs. Snelson. Chase wondered if the woman's ears had been burning earlier when Mrs. Cray and she were talking about her.

“I can take over, Ms. Oliver,” Inger said, coming up behind her. Inger had taken a brief potty break.

“Call me Chase, Inger. I can stay out here a little longer.”

“It's not that busy. Anna told me to send you to the kitchen. I think she needs some help.”

Chase left, frowning. She would much rather stay in the front and talk to Mrs. Snelson again. There was no graceful way to do it, so back to the kitchen she went.

The center island was stacked with boxes.

“The paper delivery came and I have to stir this caramel,” Anna said. “Could you clear off a space for me to set a couple of baking sheets so I can pour this?”

“I'll do better than that,” Chase said. “I'll put them all away.” She got busy stowing the boxes on the lower shelves and the task was done in a few minutes. She straightened from shoving the last box in place, pulled out the pans, and dusted off her hands. “Let me have a look out front for a minute,” she said, and dashed to the front.

She saw Mrs. Snelson going out the door. Oh well. If the woman was becoming a regular, there would be another time
soon to talk to her and see if she had yet another story about the night of the reunion.

At Mallory's next break, Chase sat with her while Anna took her place selling.

“Did Mrs. Snelson buy the same thing this time?” Chase asked.

Mallory frowned. “Just the Lemon Bars. I asked her if she would like Peanut Butter Fudge again, but she started on a rant about her husband.”

That was interesting. “What sort of rant?”

“She called him some bad names and said she wasn't buying anything for him ever again.”

That was certainly puzzling. Mrs. Cray thought the marriage was in trouble, but Mrs. Snelson had gone to great, if contradictory, lengths to shield her husband from suspicion. Now, however, it seemed Mrs. Cray was right. Maybe the relationship was volatile. Would she quit protecting him now?

Chase went to the office to call Detective Niles Olson.