Fat Cat At Large

THIRTY-TWO

Anna had sounded pleased when Chase told her that she and Mike Ramos were going to dinner on Saturday. Chase had noticed this matchmaking tendency in Anna before, but it hadn’t come up lately. Julie was much too busy with her job in the state attorney’s office to see anyone and Chase had needed time to recover from her ordeal when she first came back home to Minneapolis.

Before they hung up, Anna had said that she and Bill Shandy were going out Saturday, too. Chase didn’t consider that she herself tended toward matchmaking, but she would be more than pleased if those two worked out. Bill deserved a chance at happiness and Anna was beginning to get over losing her mate, enough so that she was ready to start seeing Bill—and to tell Chase and Julie that she was doing it. Even if it did bother Julie because her trial was so closely connected.

Chase shook herself. What was she doing, daydreaming about romances when she was a suspect in two murders? Three, if Hilda Bjorn didn’t pull through.

• • •

Chase was filling in at the sales counter while Vi went out to lunch on Friday. Business was sporadic, as it often was, coming in waves and lulls. During one of the lulls, Chase, humming “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” from My Fair Lady, turned from restocking the pink shelves with preboxed treats to find Torvald’s sister, Elinda, regarding her from just inside the front door. She was dressed, again, in tight-fitted clothing, a short black skirt and a purple blouse that strained to contain her bosom, with a miniature black purse over her shoulder.

“Hi,” Chase said. “Can I help you? Would you like some dessert bars?”

“No, I don’t think so. I wanted to see the place Gabe and Torvald were so crazy about getting.” And Shaun? Chase could see more tattoos now. One snaked up her left arm and another wound around her right ankle.

Chase waved her arm around the shop with a smile. “This is it.”

“He died for this?” Elinda’s sneer dismissed Chase’s shop as something not worth dying for.

Chase’s smile died. “Excuse me? How do you figure that?”

“He wanted to buy you out.” She stated that as if it explained everything.

“I don’t think I’m following you. Yes, he wanted to buy my shop. However, I never gave him the impression—we never gave him the impression that we would sell it. This property has been in Anna’s family for a long time.”

“Who’s Anna?”

“She’s the other owner.”

“Which one of you killed him?”

Chase stomped her foot. “Neither of us killed him! Torvald killed him!”

Elinda took a step back, blinking. “You’re crazy.”

Anna, no doubt responding to Chase’s foot stomp, poked her head through the kitchen doors. “Everything all right?”

“Are you the one who killed Gabe?” Elinda asked Anna.

“Oh, sure.” Anna blinked. “I ran over there and stuck a knife in him, just for the heck of it. I had no reason to, and didn’t have time to do it, but somehow, that’s what happened.” Anna looked at Chase. “Who is this?”

“She’s Torvald’s sister and Gabe’s mistress.”

“Oh!” Anna was struck by enlightenment. “She’s Hilda’s floozy.”

Elinda looked confused. “Huh?”

“Tell me,” Chase said. “Exactly what time were you at Gabe’s the day he died?”

“I wasn’t there that day.”

“You certainly were,” Anna said. “The older woman across the street saw you enter and exit.”

“Ted saw you, too,” Chase added. “Gabe’s son.”

“Ted?” Elinda asked. “A guy named Ted was going with Krystal, but not for long. Are you telling me he was Gabe’s son? I never even knew Gabe had a son. For some reason, Gabe never introduced me to any of his family.”

“Just answer the question,” said Anna. “What time were you there?”

“Was he dead when you got there?” Chase asked.

“No! He wasn’t dead! I didn’t kill him! He called me to come over and I got there about, I don’t know, around three thirty, I think.”

Chase nodded. “That fits. That’s when Ted says she was there, soon after Gabe got home from our shop. Before Doris got there.” If Elinda had killed Gabe, Doris may have walked in, seen him dead, and fled, just as she’d said she had. He couldn’t have thrown tomato sauce on Doris if he was dead when she visited, though.

“I don’t have to stand for this. I have places to be.”

“Dressed like that?” Anna said.

“I’ll have you know this is just like what I wear for work. Krystal and I both work at Cooter’s Sports Bar. She’s my roommate. We’d feel overdressed if we wore jeans, after working there.”

Something clicked into place for Chase. “Krystal. She dated Ted, you said?”

“She was with Ted Naughtly when Laci passed out.” Anna nodded.

“Ted Naughtly?” Elinda said. “So he is Gabe’s son?”

“He is,” Chase said.

“He’s been spying on me?”

Anna narrowed her eyes at the young woman. “Did you come back to Gabe’s condo after Doris left?”

“That bitch was there? No. Gabe said he was too busy to see me that day. I’ll bet it was because he was seeing her. We kinda had a spat. I wasn’t going to talk to him again until he called me.” Elinda whipped a tissue out of her tiny purse and dabbed at her eyes. “And now he’s dead. I wish I hadn’t gone away.” She stopped dabbing her eyes. “He saw her after he sent me away? Is that what you’re saying?”

Anna nodded. Elinda stormed out of the shop. Could Elinda be crossed off as a suspect? If only the police would cross off Chase.

• • •

Somehow, Chase made it through the rest of the hours of operation on Friday. The words murder suspect kept echoing in her mind throughout the day, preventing her from thinking about anything else, even driving all the show tunes out of her head.

After the shop closed, she and Anna went through the cleaning up motions mechanically, without any conversation beyond what was needed to do the job. Anna seemed to have something on her mind, too. Chase was too unnerved by the visit from Elinda and too distracted to rouse herself to be concerned about Anna.

Later, upstairs, relaxing with a glass of wine that didn’t do much toward easing her fears, she chided herself for not being more concerned about Anna. She lifted her cell phone, which seemed to weigh five pounds, and called Anna, but didn’t get an answer. She tried Julie with the same result, then settled for a warm, purring cat in her lap until the phone rang.

“Detective Olson here. I need you to come to the station.” He sounded crisp and official.

“Now? It’s late and I’ve had a glass of wine. I shouldn’t drive.” She didn’t really think that one glass would impair her coordination, but it sounded like a good excuse to her. She certainly didn’t want to go to the station and be held all night again.

“I’ll come to your place. I have a few more questions.”

“What about?” It could be about Gabe, or Torvald, or Hilda. Any of the cases she was a prime suspect in.

“I’ll tell you when I get there.”

The connection went dead. At least she wouldn’t have to go to the station. Chase paced the floor of her apartment until she heard the doorbell. Just outside the rear door to the shop were two doorbells, one for her apartment and one for the shop. The shop bell tinkled like an old-fashioned brass bell, but the apartment doorbell chimed, so she could easily tell the difference. The chimes, usually pleasant, sounded dull tonight to her ear. Chase trudged down the stairs to let Detective Olson in and led him up to her apartment.

“Where do you want to talk?” he asked.

“In here, I guess.” Chase walked into her living room and sat on the couch. Detective Olson took the stuffed chair, kneeing the hassock aside.

He was in a cotton shirt, without his jacket. The day had been warm, but now the air was cooling off. His blue shirt sleeves were rolled up and cuffed, revealing strong forearms with soft brown hairs curling over the edges of the cuffs. His shirt was a shade or two lighter than his eyes. He pulled out a notepad.

It occurred to Chase that the man was a guest, although uninvited, in her home. She remembered her manners. “Would you like something to drink?” Anna would be appalled if she didn’t offer.

“What do you have?”

She didn’t want to offer wine to an officer of the law, even though her mostly empty glass was on the table beside him.

“I could make coffee or tea.”

“Just a glass of water, please.”

She had to admit that this was nicer than being interrogated in the station. She felt a degree of control over the situation in her own home. That control might be all in her mind, but she felt it nonetheless.

After she set a glass of ice water at his elbow, she returned to the couch while Detective Niles Olson drained half the glass.

Quincy sauntered in from the bedroom, where he had, no doubt, been under the bed until he’d decided to check out the newcomer. He sniffed the man’s leather shoes, then made his decision. He rubbed his side against the detective’s pant leg.

“Quince, you’ll get hair on him.” Chase jumped up to get her cat, but Detective Olson waved her away.

“That’s fine. It’ll mingle with the dog hairs from my golden retriever.”

“How do you manage a dog with the hours you must keep?”

“I have a neighbor who looks in on her from time to time. It’s very handy. Now, I’d like to know a bit more about you finding Hilda Bjorn.”

“There’s nothing more to tell. I’ve told you everything a thousand times.”

“Try this. Lean your head back and close your eyes.”

She laid her head against the leather back of the couch. If this was going to be another semi–hypnotism session, that might be good. Maybe she would remember something crucial, something that would get her off the hook. She felt herself beginning to relax already.

“You’re walking into the house. What do you see?”

“I see her living room.” Chase detailed going from room to room, thinking the house was empty. Lulled by his smooth voice, she got more and more relaxed and comfortable. It was, again, almost like being hypnotized, being right there at the scene. Then she got to the kitchen in the rear of the house. She shuddered, recalling Hilda on the floor, thinking she was dead.

“Exactly what do you see?” Was he trying to find some way to clear her? It almost seemed like it.

“I see her. At first I think she’s dead. But she isn’t. I’m glad she’s not bleeding too much. I see something blue. I also see a button by her head.”

“A button? What does it look like?”

“It’s . . . it’s purple.” Chase’s eyes opened and her hand flew to her mouth. It was Vi’s button. Or was it Laci’s? She couldn’t tell if it was cloth-covered or not.

“You recognize it?”

“No, no, I don’t. It’s only a . . . purple button.”

Mike had said there was a button at Torvald’s when Karla found him.

“Ms. Bjorn had another button just like it clutched in her hand. Tell me if you know where it came from.”

She couldn’t. Besides, she didn’t want Detective Olson to think Vi or Laci had attacked the old woman. He asked a few more times, trying to trip her up, she felt. Maybe trying to get her to tell him more, but she had no more to tell him.

“Has Doris Naughtly talked to you?” She remembered that she had urged the woman to voice her fears about her son to the authorities.

“I’ve talked to her. Several times. What do you mean?”

“She came here that rainy night—Tuesday, I think.”

“You think she has more information for me? She’s holding out?”

“Not that so much as she’s afraid her son might have motive to kill the two men. I don’t know what either one of them would have to do with Hilda Bjorn.”

“Maybe I’ll give Doris Naughtly another call. And her son, too.”

“Elinda, Torvald’s sister, came to see me today, here at the shop.”

That got his attention. “What did she want?”

“I’m not sure. She was Gabe’s mistress. Did you know that?”

Detective Olson gave her a look that said, Come on now. “Yes, we know that.”

“Have you ruled her out?”

He stood and left.

Later, Chase remembered that Elinda had been wearing a purple top. Had her blouse had purple buttons? Maybe.

For the rest of the evening, Chase vegetated, putting all her interviews with the detective out of her mind as much as she could, aided by a TV showing of Oklahoma!, and sipping a little more wine. She might have had one or two glasses too many, judging by the headache on Saturday morning.

Saturday, the shop was blessedly busy, keeping her from thinking about what had happened the night before. Although she did keep her glance on Vi’s blouse buttons a few times, thinking of Laci’s pastel buttons, too. Her head ached all day.

Once again, Anna was distracted. But this time, Chase thought she might know what was on her mind. She had mentioned she was seeing Bill that night. Bill was lucky to have someone who cared about him the way Anna did. She hoped he appreciated her.

After work, Chase’s spirits lifted as she changed clothes and primped for her dinner with Mike. Karla, even though she was, as advertised, cute, was much too old for Mike. Chase had worked herself into a fret for nothing over Karla. The redhead, on the other hand, was obviously not a bit too old for him, and prone to hugging.