Fat Cat At Large

TWENTY-SEVEN

The kitchen closed in, stifling her. Maybe she would return to Hilda’s and see if she was home. She grabbed her sweater from the hook and opened the rear door. She hesitated. She should tell Anna she was leaving. Turning around, she saw Quincy leap from the box on the counter. He darted between her legs and was gone before she could completely recover her balance.

“Anna!” she called, hoping Anna could hear her. “Quincy’s out again. I’m going after him.” She hoped Anna had heard. She followed Quincy, hoping he would stop at the trash bin. He wasn’t there, but she spotted him rounding the building at the corner. Again.

He was heading the way he’d headed several other times, for the block of Gabe’s condo and Hilda Bjorn’s house.

Chase was tired of running after that cat. If he was so overweight, why could he run so fast? She knew where he was going, so she decided she wasn’t going to rush. On her ambling way, she mused that Chase was certainly an apt nickname for her, since chasing was one of her main occupations. If only Quincy weren’t so clever. She hadn’t seen him get out of the office, but he must have smuggled himself out in the box of paper bags.

As she approached Hilda’s place, Professor Fear rode to his own house from the other direction, pedaling his fat-tired blue bicycle. His hair was more windblown than the last time she’d seen him, most likely due to the bike. He didn’t notice her at first.

“Hi, Professor Fear,” she called. “Do you know if Ms. Bjorn is home?”

“She should be. I saw her this morning. She wasn’t feeling well and was going to stay home all day.” He carried his bike up his porch steps and chained it.

Chase called her thanks, but they were unacknowledged. The man merely straightened up from securing his bicycle and entered his home. Maybe she should bring Ms. Bjorn something. Tuna hot dish? Chicken soup? Would that help convince the woman that Chase was not a killer?

Quincy sat purring on Hilda Bjorn’s wicker rocker. It still swayed from his jump onto its seat. Chase picked him up, trying to determine whether or not he was lighter after his jaunt. She couldn’t tell.

She knocked on the front door, but didn’t hear any movement inside. Since she knew Hilda was there, and was ill, she tried the doorknob. It wasn’t locked. She pushed the door open a few inches and called, “Ms. Bjorn?” She repeated the name a few times, getting louder each time and nudging the door farther open with each repetition. She thought she heard a door close at the back the house.

She entered the living room, a small, snug room with afghans draped over the couch and both of the overstuffed chairs. One end of the room held a dining table and hutch. Ms. Bjorn must be in her bedroom, poor thing. Chase tried the first door leading off the hall that ran the length of the house. It was a bedroom, and probably Hilda’s, but no one was in the room. The bedclothes were smoothed, but the bed wasn’t made up. A coverlet and two pillow shams rested on an old-fashioned fainting couch under the window. Chase tried the bathroom off the bedroom, but it, too, was empty.

Reentering the hallway, she tried the next room, also a bedroom. The heavy red draperies were drawn and the room was dark. It was obviously the guest room and hadn’t been occupied recently, from the evidence of a layer of dust on the wooden floor.

She left the room. Quincy wriggled out of her arms and ran toward the rear of the house. Chase ran after him, stopping short when she got to the end of the hallway.

Hilda lay on her kitchen floor, a small puddle of blood beside her. It brought back the vision of Gabe so vividly, Chase started to feel faint.

Chase clutched the doorjamb and gave a loud gasp. Hilda’s eyes fluttered open.

“Oh my,” the woman breathed, barely audible.

Chase knelt and took Hilda’s hand. “It’s okay, I’m here,” she said. Hilda pulled her hand away and frowned.

Sitting back on her heels, Chase whipped her cell phone out of her pocket and dialed 911. Before the operator answered, Chase heard sirens. Puzzled, she completed the call anyway. The sirens probably weren’t coming here. The woman at the call center, after finding out where Chase was, told her to stay put.

“Don’t you want to know what the emergency is?” asked Chase, standing up and regarding Hilda, who didn’t seem awake anymore. Something blue lay on the floor, in the shadow of the dark wood cabinets. “The woman here needs help right away. Hilda Bjorn. She’s been sick, but—”

“Help is on the way. You need to stay right where you are. Don’t move and don’t touch anything.”

Chase thought that was odd. “I should pick up my cat. He might disturb something. There’s blood.” There was something else on the floor, near Hilda’s head. Something small and round. It might have been a button.

Quincy was, in fact, ignoring everything else and sniffing poor Ms. Bjorn’s feet. She was barefoot, wearing a gown and robe. She must have felt his whiskers because she twitched her foot. Quincy transferred his sniffing to the door that led to the backyard.

“I repeat,” the voice on the line said, “don’t move and don’t touch anything.”

“Can I hang up now?”

Two policemen came quietly into the kitchen, their guns drawn.

Chase flinched and dropped her phone.

“Don’t move,” one of the men said, the square-jawed one.

“No, I won’t.” Her voice was faint, just above a whisper. She didn’t think she could have said it any louder at the moment. The barrel of the gun loomed, huge and deadly. She wished it weren’t pointing at her. She raised her hands in the air, surrendering. “My cat,” she said.

“Is that it?” the rounder-faced one asked, jerking his head toward the door and Quincy.

“Him. That’s him.”

The policemen exchanged a private look.

“Go get it,” the lantern-jawed one said to her. “Then stand right there and don’t move.”

She walked to the back door, weak-kneed. Professor Fear’s face, wearing an incredulous expression, peered in at her through the windowpane. She saw a policeman come up behind him and motion him off the back porch. After she picked Quincy up, she stole glances out the door. Professor Fear stood in the yard talking to the policeman, waving his hands toward the house.

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, one of the policemen knelt beside Hilda Bjorn until a pair of medics arrived. They scooped her onto a gurney and whisked her down the hall, seconds after entering the room.

Chase was relieved that Hilda’s color was good and she didn’t seem to be bleeding much.

The two policemen remaining in the kitchen huddled together across the room for a quiet conversation. One shook his head at everything the other one said.

“Is anyone there?” a familiar voice called from the front of the house.

It was Mike Ramos! Chase was so relieved to hear his voice she nearly dropped Quincy.