Fat Cat Takes the Cake Read online

  She couldn’t sleep with all of this rattling around inside her head, so she padded down to the office, leaving Quincy snoring softly on her bed.

  Ron’s notebook mentioned the school board, and Dickie was on it. Maybe the scandal that got him killed wasn’t real estate, but something to do with the school board. She looked up the local school board and there was Dickie Byrd’s picture, the same one he was using on his campaign posters. Another member stood out to her. It was the man with the vest, the short, dumpy drunk she’d seen at lunch.

  His name was Langton Hail and, upon further investigation, she found he was a real estate developer. He had built hotel complexes in several major cities.

  It took her a long time to fall asleep with the associations and cross-associations whirling in her poor, tired brain.

  • • •

  Chase was glad she would be working in the shop today to take her mind off Ron North’s murder and everything else related to it.

  Since the shop was fairly busy, she worked the counter beside Mallory, the new hire. About midmorning, it dawned on Chase what bothered her about Mallory. The woman, little more than a girl, rarely smiled. She knew this was her first job out of high school, but her résumé had listed an impressive number of retail places she had worked during the summers. Shortly before lunchtime there was a lull, one of those rare times without a single person in the shop.

  “Mallory,” Chase began, then wondered how to continue. She paused, then forged ahead. “I need to tell you something very important about selling things to people.”

  Mallory drew in her breath, her eyes wide with worry. “What am I doing wrong? Did I miscount the change?”

  Chase gave her what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “No, nothing like that.” It suddenly occurred to her that the reason Mallory’s list of jobs was so long could be that she got fired from all of them. “You’re doing fine, really. But, well, I’m sure you’ve heard that first impressions are important. Right?”

  Mallory nodded, but the worry remained etched on her face. She sucked on her bottom lip and hunched her thin shoulders.

  “Relax, dear. I’m going to tell you a secret. There’s only one thing you need to do to improve what you’re already doing. It’s a tiny thing, but it makes a huge first impression. When you first interact with a customer, you smile. That’s it. The customer is at ease, so you’re more at ease. Things will go smoothly if they feel comfortable with you from the start.”

  Mallory nodded, her posture and her face losing some of the tension.

  Just then, the tension in the shop kicked up one hundred percent. Grace Pilsen, Anna’s old baking rival, strode into the Bar None, throwing the door open so violently that the usually soft bell jangled loudly. She looked fierce, but that was her normal expression, Chase thought. She’d never seen the woman without an angry scowl on her face.

  Confronted with this new, terrifying customer, Mallory reassumed her worried expression. Chase couldn’t blame her for not trying out the smile technique with this woman.

  “Ms. Pilsen,” Chase said, also not smiling. “Is there anything I can help you with?”

  “I need to speak to Anna.” She ended her sentence with an unattractive sneer. The white skunk streak in her suspiciously black hair always made Chase think of Cruella De Vil, the villain in the One Hundred and One Dalmatians Disney movie. A shorter, plumper version. The woman obviously ate a lot of what she baked at The Pilsener.

  Anna had heard her snarling voice, which was rather loud, and came barging through the double doors almost as violently as Grace had entered the shop. The doors whomped as they swung back and forth a few times in Anna’s wake.

  “What do you want here?” Anna asked.

  “I’m trying to keep you from being disqualified.”

  Anna drew herself up to her full height, which wasn’t much more than Grace’s. Both women measured about five feet tall.

  They faced off in front of the sales counter, the lights of the display case below acting as spotlights on the action. Mallory and Chase watched in fascinated silence.

  “I’ll have you know,” Anna said, “that I’m officially entered and have turned in my recipe. My paperwork is all in order.”

  “Except for this.” Grace extracted a piece of paper from the briefcase she carried and waved it toward Anna, who came forward and grabbed it.

  “This is my application. I turned this in long ago. My acceptance was based on this.”

  “Look at the bottom.” Grace’s sneer grew uglier. “You neglected to sign your full name.”

  Anna glanced at the sheet. “I . . . what?” She put her finger on the signature that even Chase could see from behind the counter.

  “What kind of a signature is A. A. Larson?”

  “It’s my legal signature. I use it on everything.”

  “That’s right,” Chase put in. “She does.”

  Grace shot Chase a withering look, her upper lip curling like Elvis’s. “That could mean a lot of different people. What with all the Alvas and Anderses and Arvas around here.”

  “Grace,” Anna said. “Go home. That’s my signature and anyone can compare it to hundreds of other things I’ve signed. Get out of my shop.”

  Grace drew air in through her dilated nostrils, stuffed the paper inside her briefcase, and left, torturing the bell again on her way out.

  “Doesn’t she have anything better to do than harass people?” Anna muttered as she returned to the kitchen.

  The shop started to fill with shoppers, so Chase stayed on in front. She looked up as she was sliding some bars from the display case into a bag and saw Tanner, the kid who handled the web presence for Bar None, standing behind her customer. When the woman gathered her purchases and left, Tanner moved to the counter. This time the lights in the display case winked on his nose ring.

  Mallory gave Tanner a huge grin and welcomed him to the shop. “Can I help you?”

  She was learning, thought Chase, although maybe now she was being overly enthusiastic.

  Tanner smiled back at Mallory, but spoke to Chase. “I came by to see what’s going on with the webpage. Something’s wrong with it.”

  “Oh dear. Is it something you can’t fix?” Chase said.

  “Not from my end. Can I look at your setup?”

  “I’ll show you,” Mallory said. She abruptly slid out from behind the counter and beckoned Tanner into the kitchen.

  What was that about? Chase wondered. Of course, Mallory knew where the computer was, in the office off the kitchen. But she wouldn’t know where to find anything on it. She called after them. “Let me know if you need help!” Then she continued whittling down the line of buyers before her, all with their arms full of her wares.

  When Mallory emerged a few minutes later, she told Chase that Tanner was trying a few things to fix the website. Chase did a double take at the pink glow on her cheeks. It seemed that Mallory was smitten. She smiled at the thought and kept working.

  Tanner reappeared in the salesroom in under ten minutes. “That cat must have unplugged the router. If it’s okay with you, I want to look up something. Then I’ll be off.”

  “Wait a sec,” Chase said. “I’ll go with you.”

  She should make sure Quincy was still in the office, since she had neglected to mention him to the pair when they headed that way. But she had another idea, too.

  TEN

  Chase watched Tanner glide through some computer screens she had never seen before. They were not only unfamiliar, they were weird-looking. “What’s that?” she asked.

  “It’s your code. It’s what’s behind your webpages. I think I need to tweak a couple of things.”

  She wasn’t sure how to state her question. “How are you at . . . getting into things?”

  Tanner gave her a questioning glance. “What do you mean? What things?”
r />   Chase sat on the edge of the desk and looked down at Tanner, who was occupying her desk chair. “Have you been following the murder of Ron North?”

  He nodded with excitement. “The guy you found with your cat? That is totally . . . different.”

  She thought he’d been about to say it was awesome. It totally was not awesome. Not to her and not to Julie.

  “I mean, I heard on the web that he was strangled with a scarf. And it belongs to your friend Julie, right? That’s not good.”

  Chase agreed. “I need to convince the police that she didn’t do it.”

  “How do you know she didn’t?”

  Good question. Julie had disappeared right after Ron North left the reunion. She could have followed Ron to the parking lot, briefly. She could have gotten her scarf back. But Chase hadn’t seen it again—until she encountered it wrapped around Ron’s neck. She knew her best friend wasn’t a killer. “Ron North had lots of enemies. He was an annoying person and might have been blackmailing people.”

  “Whoa. That could get him dead.”

  “Yes, it could.”

  “So, who all was he blackmailing?”

  When Chase didn’t answer, he caught on. “You want to find out, right? You want me to hack into his, like, online stuff?”

  “Would you know where to find things like that?”

  “That’s what you meant about getting into things. Private messages and stuff. I might. Give me a few minutes.”

  Chase left him to it. The thought crossed her mind that he would probably be able to access everything on her computer. But there wasn’t much there that she wanted to keep secret. She hoped he wouldn’t hack into her bank account and steal all of her cash. Somehow, she couldn’t picture Tanner doing that.

  Anna raised her eyebrows, questioning Chase as she passed through the kitchen.

  “Later,” Chase mouthed.

  “Is he still here?” Mallory asked when Chase returned to the front of the shop.

  “He’s doing some extra work for me.”

  She was able to lose herself in dessert bar sales for two hours without thinking about Tanner and what he might be into. When he poked his head into the salesroom and beckoned her, she followed him to the office. He’d been there much longer than he’d thought he would.

  “What did you find?” Not her own passwords, she hoped.

  “All kinds of stuff.” He was zinging with excitement. “I haven’t had this much fun since the release of Call of the Aura Assassins.” His fingers shook as they hovered over the keyboard for a moment, then steadied as they danced across it. A screen of exchanges came up. “Look at these e-mails.”

  Chase bent to get a better angle on the screen. One set of messages was from “rnorth83,” the other from “bigbyrd.” She scanned them. The most interesting e-mails were near the bottom.

  bigbyrd: mona sez u followed her again 2day. this is your last warning.

  rnorth83: or what?

  bigbyrd: i go to the cops

  rnorth83: and i release my pictures. i no where you were last nite and it wasnt at home. was it.

  “Bigbyrd must be Richard Byrd. It’s kind of hard to read that stuff, isn’t it? These almost look like text messages rather than e-mails.” Chase said.

  Tanner blinked. “Why?”

  “You don’t have to stop and think about what that means?”

  “I think it means that North was stalking Byrd’s wife or girlfriend. Byrd wants him to stop, but North has some kind of pictures that Byrd doesn’t want anyone to see.”

  So no, the e-mail shorthand was not a puzzle to Tanner, Chase thought. “And North knows something about Byrd being somewhere that he shouldn’t have been. I mean North knew that.”

  “Right. He’s not threatening anyone now, is he? Byrd, I mean.”

  “They were threatening each other,” Chase said. “I wonder if this was a stalemate. I don’t remember hearing about any incriminating photos of Dickie. What’s the date of this exchange?”

  Tanner scrolled up. “Two weeks ago.”

  “Oh, recently. So this is fresh stuff. The police need to know about this.”

  Tanner blanched and his fingers stilled. “No, you can’t do that. You can’t tell them I hacked in here.”

  Chase nodded slowly. “Yes, I see that.” But she had the knowledge. She should be able to find another way to get the information to the police. After all, she had seen Byrd kissing that woman. Maybe North had pictures of those two. And maybe Byrd spent some time with that woman when he was supposed to be somewhere else. Like at home. How would she go about ferreting out this stuff?

  “Thanks, Tanner. This is a big help.”

  He got up and stretched. He’d been sitting for over two hours straight and even his young body must have felt stiff. “No problem. Let me know if you need anything else like this. It’s fun stuff.”

  “Can I get you something to drink? To eat?”

  He glanced at the time in the corner of the computer monitor. “No, I better go. I’m late.”

  After he left, she checked whether any pages were open that referenced material she would rather he didn’t see. There didn’t seem to be, but how easy would it be for Tanner to cover his tracks? He sure knew his way around a computer. Chase wondered if Mike Ramos had known about all of Tanner’s talents when he recommended him.

  She had a little session with Quincy, giving him his Kitty Patty and a Go Go Ball, then headed for the salesroom through the kitchen.

  “Julie called,” Anna said. She was up to her elbows in powdered sugar, sprinkling it with flair over a new batch of Hula Bars. It must have been the wintry feel to the weather that was selling the pineapple-coconut concoctions like hotcakes. They tasted like summer. Anna had been baking them all morning to replenish the supply. “She’s bringing lunch.”

  “She’s not working today?”

  “She said something about having to be in the neighborhood. I’ll bet that’s her now.”

  They both heard the back door open and Julie appeared a moment later, laden with Mexican takeout bags.

  “Mmm,” Chase said, sniffing the tangy aroma of the flavored meat. “Tacos or burritos?”

  “Some of each,” Julie said, depositing the bags on the center island counter. “I got some for Mallory, too. Inger’s not working today, right? That’s what Grandma said.” Julie sounded fine, but there was worry in her eyes. Her face was tight.

  “She had a doctor’s appointment this morning,” Chase said. “She’s coming in later this afternoon.”

  “Good,” Julie said. “I would have picked up something a bit more bland if I’d thought she would be here.”

  “She’s all done with morning sickness, but she still doesn’t like to be around spicy food,” Anna said. “That’s understandable.”

  Chase remembered what a picky eater Inger had been when she’d stayed in her apartment after her parents kicked her out.

  “Anna said you had to be in the area,” Chase said, picking up a soft taco and biting off the end. “Mm. Love these.” The cheese melted on her tongue, mitigating the spicy beef a tad.

  “I’m going to visit Hilda Bjorn again about my pro bono case, right after we eat. It’s been crazy at work.”

  “Oh good,” Chase said. “I’d sure like to know what’s going on with that. Is a pro bono case confidential?”

  “Well, yes. But if I find anything criminal is going on, I’ll turn it over to the DA’s office.”

  “Will you know that just from talking to her?” Anna asked.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. But I can contact some of my former colleagues there and they can dig if I think they need to.”

  “It has to be criminal, doesn’t it?” Chase said, reaching for another taco. “Offering such a ridiculously low price?”

  “They’re taking advantage of an old w
oman.” Anna didn’t consider herself old, of course.

  “They’re not the only ones,” Julie said. “You’d be amazed at how many seniors get swindled over the phone and the Internet.”

  “My cousin,” Anna said, “gave out her credit card number and her bank account information to someone who called offering her life insurance. She never saw the insurance, or the five thousand dollars the crook took out of her bank account.”

  “That’s awful,” Julie said. “Did she tell someone?”

  “Yes. She lives in Oregon and the authorities have all the information. I don’t think they caught anyone, but the bank says they’ll make good on the money. She has no idea how long that will take.”

  Julie stuffed her burrito wrapper into the now empty bag and rinsed her fingers at the sink. “I’d better get going.”

  “I wish I could come and hear what Ms. Bjorn says.” Chase was picking up the tidbits that had dropped from her tacos.

  Julie gave her a stern look. “You know you can’t do that.”

  She did know. Julie had broken so many rules for her, though, that she sometimes lost sight of the boundaries. However, Chase thought she could probably find out the gist of their conversation from the horse’s mouth—Hilda Bjorn. Or maybe even from Professor Fear. He was so good about taking care of his neighbor. And, if the rumors were true, he would soon receive a similar offer on his house.

  “See you later.” Julie smiled as she swept out the back door.

  Chase gathered up the last of the debris. “I’ll go get Mallory to eat her lunch.”

  “Let me take a turn up front,” Anna said. “I haven’t worked the floor today. I don’t think there’s any kitchen work that needs doing. I may make another batch later.”

  “You don’t need to practice for the Batter Battle?”

  “Tonight I will. Bill is going to come here to talk about his suit for the wedding and I’ll work on my technique.”

  Chase decided to catch up on paperwork in the office. The phone on the desk rang before she sat down. She didn’t recognize the number. “Yes?”

  “Hey, Eddie here. You free for lunch tomorrow?”