Fat Cat Takes the Cake (16 page)

C
hase sat at her desk in front of her monitor. It displayed a screen saver depicting a cat watching fish swim past. She ignored the playful image and doodled on a pad of paper, considering each suspect again for about the hundredth time.

Van Snelson. PRINCE in the blackmail book. Hated kids, even though he had been a high school principal for eons. Was getting into real estate, but not in a good way: swindling poor Hilda Bjorn and others out of their homes. He had probably slept at the high school all night and not left the building to murder anyone or stash any bodies. However, if he was being blackmailed, he might want Ron North dead.

Langton Hail. PHOTO in the blackmail book. The partner in crime—no, more like the instigator of the real estate swindle. However, he was an alcoholic, now trying to recover
by drinking vegetable-laden beverages at Eddie Heath's Health Bar. She shuddered. That night, though, he had been too drunk to drive and had stayed either inside the school or in his car until morning, when Eddie saw him leaving. If he was faking being drunk, he could have murdered Ron and returned, acting like he hadn't left. Not likely, but possible. Not only the blackmail, but having a newspaper article expose his dealings, was a fine motive.

Then there were both Byrds. At first she considered Dickie Byrd because he might want to defend his wife's honor from her stalker. When she found out they had split up, that motive had fallen apart. If Ron knew about the mistress, though, that could hurt his campaign, so that was a very good motive. He had spent the night with that mistress. She might have fallen asleep while he slipped out, murdered Ron, dumped him, and crept silently back into bed. Not likely, but also possible.

Monique Byrd. Should she still be under consideration? She surely wanted to get rid of the annoying man. Enough to murder him? Had he been in that trunk and not left a trace?

The scenarios were all possible, but not probable. The trouble was, none of the alibis seemed ironclad, while all of the motives were good.

That faint J penciled in below the other blackmail victims was probably Julie. It wasn't good that she appeared in both parts of Ron's notebook, the blackmail part and the stalking part.

Maybe it was time to review that night another time and go over every single thing she could remember.

She had arrived with Julie, who immediately found Jay.
Chase talked to Bart Fender at the punch bowl, then Julie and Jay came over. Jay soon left with some guys and Bart wandered off.

Then Ron North had approached the two women. Ron started talking about Julie being part of the real estate scam. He seemed at least half drunk, and offered to spike their drinks. Then he attacked Julie and kissed her. Jay pulled him off and he and Julie left Chase with Ron.

However, she left and joined a group of women from her English class and they chatted for a good while. She observed Ron, still at the punch bowl, with some classmates and Mr. Snelson. Mr. Hail was with him. The two older men both left angry, possibly after Snelson paid him blackmail money, and joined Dickie Byrd.

Then Ron accosted Monique Byrd when she got punch. She threw her punch in his face. Bart started over, probably to do harm to Ron, but Ron skedaddled out the door to the parking lot. Bart followed him.

Julie had been in the parking lot with them, unfortunately. Chase didn't notice her leave or return. She couldn't testify as to how long Julie had been missing. How could the other, unnamed classmates do that?

The next thing Chase remembered was being approached by Eddie Heath. People were beginning to leave.

Who else had been in the parking lot at about that time? Probably lots of people. How could someone have killed Ron North and not been seen?

Bart had followed him out immediately. If he worked quickly, he could have done it. He was strong enough to strangle skinny Ron North. Chase had detected flashes of
rage from him and wondered if he had Roid Rage from the steroids he was most probably taking. But why would he kill Ron? For bothering Monique Byrd? For blackmailing two men, one of whom was his boss? For mashing Julie, with whom he had almost no interaction? It didn't seem that any of the letters in the notebook could mean Bart Fender. There were no Fs and the only B had to be Dickie Byrd.

Rats. Here was a good suspect with opportunity and means—and no motive.

The butterscotch tabby grew bored with nothing going on. She was sitting there, not even typing. When she worked on the keyboard, he often jumped into her lap, never mind that it made it doubly hard to type that way. It got him attention. Sometimes he even jumped onto the keyboard. That could be counted on to cause a lot of commotion. This writing on paper business, however, was extremely boring.

He decided to check on his stash. He snaked a claw under the desk and pulled the material out a bit. Yes, it was still there.

“My gloves!” Chase plopped down onto the floor. “There they are! You pushed my gloves under the desk, didn't you, you pesky cat.” She fished one out, pushing Quincy away. He wanted to play with it, but she needed her good gloves. The weather was turning colder and colder and she didn't see any sense in buying a new pair when she already owned these.

“The other one is under here, too, isn't it?” she asked him. She knelt down, putting her head on the floor to see better. Something was under there, for sure. Reaching up to her desk drawer, she withdrew a wooden ruler and used it to get at the other glove.

“There! I'm so glad I found these.” She picked them up. A piece of paper dropped to the floor. She retrieved it. Why did it look so familiar? It had been torn from a spiral notebook, judging from the shredding on one side. The paper was small and lined. She squinted to make out the faint pencil writing. It held some words in capital letters and amounts next to them. It was another page from Ron North's notebook!

C
hase set the page on her desk, carefully, and called Julie. The cell phone rang over to voice mail.

“Call me,” she barked. She glanced at the clock. Two in the afternoon. Julie was, no doubt, in the middle of something at work.

She got up and started pacing. The paper was yellow and brittle. It must have fallen out of the notebook when they first started examining it. Maybe it was a page from an older notebook that Ron had stuck into the newer one. The louse had been blackmailing people for a long time. It was a wonder he wasn't rich. Or hadn't been killed years ago.

Stopping long enough to peer at the paper, she bent close over the desk. Squint as she might, she couldn't quite make out the smudged writing. Was the first letter H? If she could
find a way to connect this with another blackmail victim, even if it was an older one, there would be another suspect.

“Charity? Tanner is here,” Anna said as she rapped on the office door.

Chase opened the office door, careful to keep Quincy contained. “Hi, Tanner. How's it going?”

“Hangin' in there. Do you have a check for me?”

“I was going to mail it tomorrow, but you can have it today.” Since he'd come by, he must need the money. She wrote him a check, wishing she could pay him more. Maybe she would be able to some day. He deserved it, having done such a great job on the webpage. “I've heard people say they found our shop on the Internet, so the page is working.”

“Great.” His smile lit up his skinny face as he took his money. His nose and eyebrow rings glinted in the glow of the moving screen saver.

“What's this?” He reached for the page.

“No, don't touch it.” Chase caught his hand. “It's old and pretty delicate. I just found it under my desk. I think the cat put it there.”

“Why is it so special?”

“I think it's an old page from the notebook of the man who was murdered.”

“That one I hacked into? That rnorth83 guy?”

“You remember his e-mail name?”

“Sure. He was emailing bigbyrd about some pictures he had.”

“Do you want to look at this paper and tell me if you can decipher what it says?”

Tanner left it on the desk, but adjusted the desk lamp to
shine more brightly on it. “H something, right? HU? Should I go into his account again and see if he e-mailed anybody with HU in their name?”

“Can you do that? Do you have time?”

“No problem.”

That was a good idea. “Have a seat,” she said, waving him into her desk chair.

The cat and the fish disappeared and Tanner started working. His long, thin fingers flew over the keys, clicking so loudly that Quincy stared. Chase stared, too, hoping to see the name of the murderer displayed on the screen, along with a picture and personal statistics. That always happened for the sleuths on TV.

“You can go do something else while I work,” he said.

She was probably making him nervous, hanging over his shoulder. “I'll be in the kitchen.”

Anna had a batch of her favorites, Lemon Bars, coming out of the oven, so Chase grabbed a hot pad and slid the dessert bars onto a cooling rack. She picked one up with a paper towel and blew on it to cool it.

Mallory poked her head into the kitchen. “Did I hear Tanner come in?”

“He's in my office,” Chase said. “He'll be out in a few minutes.” Maybe.

Mallory's face split into a huge grin. “Okay. Tell him I'm here.”

Chase assured her she would. She loved seeing this young love blossom before her eyes. Mallory was working hard at smiling at the customers, and she was doing a much better job than when she'd started working at the Bar None. But no
customer had ever gotten the grin she had given at the thought of Tanner being near.

She popped the Lemon Bar into her mouth, closing her eyes as the sweet-tart flavor melted on her tongue.

In less than half an hour, Tanner emerged. “I got it. Wanna see?”

Chase hurried into the office. Tanner pointed to the screen. He had gotten into Ron North's e-mail account again.

“How long before someone shuts this down?” she asked.

“It might stay out there for years, unless the cops want to close it.”

This time the messages were between rnorth83 and someone called hunkyb.

hunkyb:
not tellin u agin

rnorth83:
wotz ur problem man

hunkyb:
its all yr fault stay away from her its all yr fault

rnorth83:
or?

hunkyb:
ill smash in ur ugly face

rnorth83:
like u did last time

hunkyb:
this time ill do it

“So,” Chase said, trying to figure out what was going on in this exchange. “Hunkyb warns Ron to stay away from . . . someone, a female.”

“Probably his girlfriend. Or wife. And looks like North was stalking her, like he did all those others. Is she in the notebook?”

“How would I tell?”

“Let's look at it again.”

“Better yet,” Chase said, “let's figure out who hunkyb is. This older page references someone beginning with H.”

“Can I touch it? I'll be careful.” Tanner pointed to the brittle paper.

Chase bit her lip, but nodded.

Tanner grasped the paper at the corner and held it up to Chase's desk lamp. The letters leapt into clarity, seen with the backlighting.

“HULK,” they both said together.

“Great,” Chase said. “Now we have to figure out who both HULK and hunkyb are.”

“Probably the same person. North gave people nicknames. He wouldn't call the guy the same thing the guy called himself. This sounds like a big person, either name you use.”

“Someone who thinks he's good looking, since he calls himself a hunk.”

Her cell phone rang. It was Eddie Heath. A shiver ran up her spine. Eddie wasn't tall, but he was muscular. And his last name started with H.

“A
ren't you going to answer that?” Tanner asked.

“I'd better. It's . . .” She couldn't explain in two seconds that Eddie Heath thought a lot of himself, had a lot of muscles, and had a name beginning with H.

“Eddie, it's good to hear from you.”

Tanner raised his eyebrows. He had seen her reluctant, maybe scared face along with her hesitation and doubted her words, she was sure.

“Oh yeah? Why's that?” Eddie asked. Why did he do that? He hadn't seen her face.

“Just, you know. To thank you for the vinegar stuff.” Yeah, right. She would never drink that in a million years.

“Hey, did my cure work? You sound a lot better.”

“Yes, tons better.” She pointed to her phone and then to the page with the H. Tanner nodded.

“Are you up for a walk?” Eddie asked.

“Not right now. The shop is open. Isn't yours?”

“I did open today, but I have help here. We got the parking spaces cleared again this morning. Got a lot of customers today, too. That little guy, Hail, he came in for his smoothie.”

“That's nice.”

Tanner was looking concerned. He scribbled something on a scrap of paper—not the one from the notebook, she was glad to see.

Ask for his e-mail address.

She nodded. “Eddie, could you do me a favor? Could you e-mail me the recipe for that vinegar cure?”

“I can make it for you whenever you want.”

“I'd really like to have it, though. I'd like to . . . show it to some other people.”

“Sure, if you want.”

She gave him her e-mail address and he said, “I'll get to it later today. I'm not at the store now. So, a walk later?”

“I . . . I'd better not chance it. I'll wait until I'm one hundred percent healthy. I'm afraid I'll relapse.” That much was true. “Thanks anyway.”

“Sure thing. See you later.”

“Well?” Tanner asked after she finished the call.

“He'll e-mail it ‘later.'”

“Remind him if he doesn't do it today.”

She thought that would be a very good idea. Then, when she was sure, she'd call Detective Olson with some real
evidence and he'd have to investigate Eddie instead of Julie. Unless she could get a little more information from him. Dare she?

“Tanner, you're a gem,” she said. She leaned over and kissed the top of his head.

“Aw. Thanks.” His skin reddened on his neck and the flush rose to the tips of his ears.

“You'd better go tell Mallory you're here.”

He rushed out of the office.

She picked up the copies of the notebook and turned to the section where Ron kept track of his stalking victims. Maybe there was a tie-in with HULK and the women. The ones listed first, which she presumed were older, were M and J. Monique and Julie, they had assumed, since he had harassed and terrified both of them in high school. Then there were the others: D, K, L, and the mysterious Q. They could be anyone.

Julie called and she put the papers down.

“Sorry I was busy before. Do you have any good news for me?”

“I might. I think a page fell out of that notebook we gave to the police. Quincy must have shoved it under my desk. It was there with my gloves.”

“Your good gloves? You found them? Great.”

“Yes, I'm happy to finally have them back. But this page is the real find. The paper is old, maybe from an older notebook. He lists someone he calls HULK.”

“Do we know any large, green people?”

Chase laughed. “Tanner was here and he performed
another miracle. He hacked into Ron North's e-mail account again and found an angry exchange between him and someone beginning with H, hunkyb.”

“Someone named B?”

“I thought it meant ‘hunky bod' and this guy thinks a lot of himself.”

“Could be. Or hunky boy, I guess.”

“Julie, I'm afraid this might be Eddie Heath.”

“Really? Eddie? Wow. If he's the killer that would be bad. Do the e-mails give a motive for murder?”

“They're angry and threatening. The hunk person mentions smashing in Ron's ugly face.”

“Ouch. And you think this is Eddie? Are you going to stop dating him?”

“I'm not dating him!”

“Right. Are you going to stop seeing him? How long has it been since you've seen Mike?”

Too long. Much too long.

“Chase, we could use you out front,” Anna called from the kitchen.

“I'd better get to work,” Chase said to Julie.

“Me, too. Call me later.”

The salesroom was humming with activity. It seemed that, all of a sudden, everyone in Dinkytown and beyond had decided that goodies from the Bar None would make excellent Christmas and Hanukkah gifts.

Chase looked up from counting change when she heard a familiar voice.

“Patrice,” she said, “I haven't seen you in a while.”

Patrice was next in line for Mallory. “I've been helping Mike out at the clinic. His assistant has the flu.”

“That's terrible. So far all I've had is a cold.” She rapped her knuckles on the wooden top of the display case for luck.

“I haven't seen you either. I asked Mike about that the other day.”

Chase handed the change to her customer. “Thank you and have a nice day.”

“What I mean is, are you and Mike seeing each other anymore?” Patrice went on.

Chase wasn't sure how to answer that. “We're not
not
seeing each other. It's, well . . . things are busy right now.”

“He isn't that busy.” She looked around the crowded shop. “I guess you are though, huh?”

“Yah, it'll let up after Christmas.”

Patrice handed her box of Hula Bars to Mallory, who had taken about fifteen minutes telling Tanner good-bye in the kitchen, and who was now back at work. “Shall I tell him anything from you?”

“Sure. Say hi.”

“You want him to call?”

“Sure.” Yes, she did want him to call. “Tell him I'm thinking of him and would like to get together soon. I've been sick or I would have called before.”

Patrice didn't seem convinced that Chase was sincere, but she left, promising to relay the message.

After the shop closed at 6
PM
, and Mallory and Inger had both left, Chase helped Anna with the last of the cleanup.

“Anna, I need some advice.”

Anna looked eager to give it. Chase knew that she liked to keep track of Chase's life, and recently Chase hadn't been quite honest with her about Eddie Heath. Anna hitched herself onto one of the stools and patted the other one. “Come on. Sit here and tell me. This sounds serious.”

“It's about Eddie Heath.”

Anna nodded her wise-grandmother nod. “I thought it might be.”

How did she know everything like that? Patrice should employ Anna when she did her fortune-telling act. “I don't really want to keep seeing him. My mind tells me that, it really does. But I end up with him whenever he calls. There's such a . . . pull. It's like magnetism.”

Anna nodded again. She patted the back of Chase's hand. “Yes, it is. It's chemistry. And sometimes it happens with the wrong people.”

“What should I do about it?”

“You know the answer. Stop seeing Eddie.” She squeezed Chase's hand.

Chase slapped her other palm flat on the counter. “I will. I'll do that. As soon as . . . I do have to touch base with him once more. I need to know why he was being blackmailed by Ron North.”

“He was? Do you think he killed Ron?”

“Probably. I don't know. I would like him to be guilty and for Julie to be in the clear.”

“Then you don't see him again, you ninny. You give your information to the detective.”

“But I don't think there's enough to go on.”

“Let the police decide. Don't you dare get close to that man again. Charity? You hear me?”

“I hear you,” she said, but she didn't look at Anna when she said it and she knew Anna must have known she didn't mean it. She wouldn't see him alone, though. She would see him with Julie by her side.

“Meanwhile,” Anna said, “you should take some dessert bars to Dr. Michael Ramos. He's gone without them for too long. Lemon, right? The same kind you like?”

“Right. I'll do that.” This time she looked at Anna. “That's such a good idea. Maybe I'll take some over tonight.”

“Wait a minute. Let me tell you about when this chemistry thing happened to me. Maybe you can learn something from it. When I was engaged to my husband, about a year before we got married, I met a guy at the roller rink. I first noticed him because of his fancy skating—crossovers and spins and even some hops—then I noticed how tall he was. And blond as he could be. Like a beacon in the dim roller rink.

“Well, he saw me watching him and gave me the sexiest wink you can imagine. I was a decent skater and I was skating along just fine, but took a tumble when he did that. He was right there to help me up and, I'll tell you, our hands touched and fireworks exploded right there inside the roller rink.”

Chase could picture the young, graceful Anna on skates. She couldn't quite picture her going end over end, but she was getting a vision of the tall stranger.

“I didn't know a thing about him, but we went to the ice cream store for sundaes as soon as we could get our skates off. We met for lunch two, maybe three times, then he asked
me out on a car date. Dinner and a movie, he said. Meanwhile, I was keeping all this from my fiancé and it was giving me stomachaches. I hadn't told my parents or anyone about him. But I fell asleep dreaming about him and woke up hoping I'd see him that day.

“We finally went out on a real date and I found out what a mistake I had made. Instead of dinner, he drove to a secluded parking lot out near Lake Minnetonka. I asked him what we were doing there and he said he wanted to talk and get to know me a little better. We had talked and talked at our lunches, but mostly about him. About how he was going to go to Harvard and probably would go into politics, or maybe law. He had, he said, graduated at the top of his class and the Ivy Leagues were fighting over him. To be sure, we hadn't talked about me much, so I agreed. But, deep down, I knew this wasn't right. I got that slight prickle you get when things are off.

“We only talked about me for a minute before he grabbed me and started kissing me. Even then, I didn't resist. He was a great kisser. But then, it seemed like there were four guys in the car, or one guy with eight arms. He was all over me, trying to get my clothes off.”

“Anna! What did you do?”

“I pushed him away, but he kept coming. I started to panic, then I got out of the car and ran to the nearest house, which wasn't very close. Thank goodness he didn't follow me. I called my dad and he came to get me.”

“Did you ever see him again?”

“No, and—it's funny—I don't even remember his name anymore.”

Would Chase ever forget Eddie Heath's name? Of course, she was older now than Anna had been at the time of the skating masher. So probably not.

“Charity, I'm not saying this is the same situation, but I am saying you need to trust what your good sense is telling you and ignore the fireworks. They aren't reliable.”

If only she could remember that when the fireworks were going off.