The guest book was on a wooden stand next to the front door. The pages were white with gold lettering, and a gold pen lay atop the book. Chase was sure Doris had picked out these things. Ornate was the woman’s style.
Chase picked up the heavy pen, glancing at the names already entered between the gold lines. Violet Peters’s name was near the top of the page. Torvald Iversen had scrawled his name five lines up. Under it was another Iversen name, Elinda, written in a loopy style. Since it was on a separate line, it didn’t seem like it was Torvald’s wife. Maybe a sister, aunt, mother? Chase shuddered at the thought of being married—or related—to the man. After she signed her name, she quickly found Doris, muttered her obligatory line, and walked home.
• • •
In her apartment, she settled into her comfy chair without that glass of wine she’d been looking forward to for hours, since she’d already had a couple in the kitchen with Anna after they’d closed up. Her phone rang and she jerked awake, realizing she had dozed off.
“Julie? How’s everything going?”
“We’re still picking the jury, but I think we’ll finish with that tomorrow. The day after, at the latest.” Chase heard Julie take a sip of something with clinking ice cubes.
“It sure is a slow process.”
“Sometimes I think due process should be called glue process,” said Julie. “There’s something I need to tell you. Grandma talked to me just a few minutes ago and I’m not sure what she’s trying to say.”
“What were her words?”
“She didn’t make a lot of sense. She was distraught. First, she told me she thought the receipts looked like they were short again today. Then she rambled on about Ted Naughtly’s history, but when I asked her directly, she said she didn’t think he took the money.”
“Really? More was missing today?”
“Then she told me your nemesis from Chicago showed up. I remember you telling me all about him, the cad.”
“What does Anna think of him? She didn’t say much to him.”
“She wouldn’t say it right out, but I don’t think she dislikes him enough.” More ice cubes clinked. “I got the impression they had talked for at least a few minutes.”
“Wait a sec.” Chase went to the kitchen to pour herself a glass of Dr Pepper. The sound of Julie’s ice cubes was making her thirsty. On her way back to her leather couch, Quincy wound around her legs, nearly tripping her. He felt so solid. He had to be gaining, not losing ounces.
“They must have talked after the shop closed. Did she say exactly what he told her?”
Julie blew out a breath into the phone. “He told her you stole that money in Chicago. The money you think he stole and blamed you for.”
“And?”
“I still think you shouldn’t have run. I could have come over and helped you with, I don’t know, some sort of legal solution.”
“I know, and I still appreciate the offer, but I was sick of the place.” Chase took a noisy gulp of the pop, rather more than she’d intended.
“What was that sound?”
“Me, swallowing, silly.”
“Swallowing what?”
Chase sighed. “Dr Pepper.” Chase set the glass on the side table and tucked her feet under the afghan she kept on the back. Her toes were icy from the floor. “So, does Anna believe Shaun?”
Quincy jumped onto the arm of the chair, purring loudly. He scratched his neck with his hind foot, then curled up in her lap.
“No, she says you told her you had proof Shaun was the thief. But she’s worried about you. Hey, I have a call from my boss. Talk to you tomorrow.”
Quincy jumped down with a solid plop. He stepped daintily into his cat bed in the corner of the room and pawed at it before settling down.
“That’s curious,” Chase said to the cat. The bed shouldn’t have made any noise, but there was a faint rustle when Quincy scratched at it. She recalled that he’d been doing that for a few days. Usually he climbed in, curled up, and settled down with no pawing.
“Let me see, little guy.” She knelt, with a groan of pain as her back acted up with her movement, and lifted him out of the plush-lined foam bed, adorned with orange paw prints on the outside. A scrap of paper lay curled in the corner. That must have been what had rustled, she reasoned. She extracted it and Quincy hopped back into his nest.
It was a corner, torn from a larger piece of paper. She couldn’t tell what it was, but it might have been a legal document. At the bottom, Torvald Iversen’s signature and handwritten date were clear below a printed line that had his name, “agent for” with the rest torn off. Above that, the letters GABRI remained under the line and there was no signature above it. She would show this to Julie and see what she could make of it.
But it looked like some sort of agreement between Gabriel Naughtly and Torvald Iversen. It was dated the day Gabe had died. And someone, it seemed, had torn it up. In a fit of anger? Just before a murder? How had it ended up in Quincy’s bed?
FIFTEEN
Chase gave herself the luxury of sleeping in on Wednesday. A whole day stretched ahead, free of the shop, to do anything she wanted. She thought for a while about the people Hilda Bjorn had seen outside Gabe’s condo the day he died. Mike Ramos had said that Iversen was there before he said he was. Maybe Hilda missed that. She probably wasn’t on her front porch all the time. If only there was a way to prove that he was there, beyond one person’s suspicions.
And who were the others, a young man and a floozy? It sounded like Gabe had a mistress. Did he also have a stalker? The mistress didn’t stay long, Hilda had said. Was that because she ran in, killed him, and fled? She said the young man didn’t go in. How confusing!
The young man could have been Ted, but why would he stay outside and not go into his own father’s place? Could the young man have been the mysterious guy she’d seen with Vi out back?
The floozy? Too-tight clothes—Laci and Vi both wore tops that fit snugly. All the girls their age did. But tattoos and extremely high shoes—that wouldn’t be either of them.
As soon as Chase swung her legs off the bed to the floor, Quincy made it plain that she had duties. After pouring the food into his bowl—which he took three bites of before stalking away—she took a couple of pain pills and went downstairs to do some research on the computer.
She looked up diet cat food and found lots of ads and recommendations for commercial cat food. Adding the word recipe to her search netted more valuable results. Some of the webpages suggested using ground bone and canning the food, some debated between raw and cooked, one stressed the need to balance all sorts of vitamins, minerals, and amino acids, and sounded very complicated. None of them were specifically for weight loss, though.
Maybe she should just concentrate on treats. After another half hour, she began to get some ideas. To rest her brain from cat treats, she looked up the page for local news and found the headlines Julie had been anticipating.
LOCAL MAN ON TRIAL FOR CHARITY THEFT
The article didn’t mention Bill’s name, but did Marvin Shandy’s, of course. Bill had adopted him and his sister and changed their last names to his. Chase wondered if he regretted that now. Poor Bill. Poor Anna. The publicity was going to affect both of them badly. She shook her head and returned to a bit more cat treat research.
Back upstairs, she poked around in her refrigerator to see what she could use for a tempting cat treat. She put a couple of slices of leftover turkey through her meat grinder and mashed it together with hamburger and low-fat chicken broth, adding a bit of oatmeal and an egg. She made two patties and stuck them under the broiler. She took the patties out of the oven before they were thoroughly cooked. Quincy had never liked well-done meat. The cat, lured by the turkey, rubbed against her calves a few times, then sat staring up at the stove, his eyes wide and his ears pricked forward.