Mike turned to face her. “Is Quincy missing?”
Chase nodded, then spoke to Inger. “Maybe I should come back and help look for him.”
When she was a child and Julie nicknamed her Chase, no one could have foreseen that she would spend so much time chasing a cat.
“I think I just saw him there.” Mike pointed at the tarp that formed the rear wall of the booth.
“Where?” Anna bent down and looked at the floor under the table.
“He left. He slid out under the tent.”
Chase told Inger she thought the cat was at the fair and cut the call short. “Are you sure you saw him?” she asked Mike.
“Not positive. It’s dark back there. But it sure looked like a critter jumped off this table and went underneath the tarp.”
“Great,” Chase said, planting her fists on her hips. “Quincy is loose again.”
After extensive exploring, the aroma coming from the cold building was too much for the cat to resist. It was true, he’d gotten a lot of treats up and down the path he’d been roaming, but this was incredible. The whole building was full of butter. After the heavy door was pushed open, he slipped in, unseen by the person entering. Two people started having a violent scuffle, which sent the cat under a table, crouching until the disturbance was over. After the one left and the other lay still on the floor, the cat picked a table with a large amount of the delicious-smelling stuff and sprang up. It was full of the wonderful goodness. He started licking. Butter. An almost infinite amount of it. Yum.
The three split up and Chase trudged past the booths. She bypassed the sturdy refrigerated building for butter sculptures, since the door was firmly shut. A sign hung on it that read “Keep Closed.” The jeweler next to it had seen him. He had even petted Quincy and fed him a potato chip from his snack stash. Chase paused at a booth with darling children’s clothing featuring colorful bird, fish, and butterfly accents. The two women there exclaimed how cute Quincy was. They had given him some cheese crackers. At a book vendor, she was told that her cat was so clever, he’d tried to open one of the books on the display table. They had slipped him a piece of ham sandwich. Everywhere she went, from the cupcake tent to one selling unique board games and fancy decks of cards, she was told how clever and darling her orange-striped cat was. Almost all of them had fed him. She wondered how he was still able to walk.
She visited the food concessions selling hot dogs and cotton candy and deep-fried concoctions, shuddering to think what they must have fed him. The people selling handmade banjos and the ones selling glass mobiles hadn’t given him anything, but had admired the “charming” animal. At a booth that gave out information about planting microchips into pets, she snatched a pamphlet after asking about Quincy. She would talk to them later.
The calliope music reminded her there was another midway, in the lot that held the rides and carny games. She walked past the food vendors and made her way along the line of barkers who were calling passersby to “step up” and “win a prize” for either “the little lady” or “the kiddies.” At each booth, she hoped to see her chubby buddy perched on a ledge or nestled in with the pastel plush tigers and bears. At least these fair workers hadn’t handed out any treats to Quincy. None of them had even seen him.
She trudged back toward her booth. The sun was warm and raised a dusty, pleasant smell from the sawdust. She’d covered almost the entire row of vendors twice. There was one she had skipped. The booth to one side of theirs was empty, except for the standard table and two chairs. A cardboard placard read “Harper’s Toys.” She gave it a cursory search, but it provided no hiding places and held no food.
Two booths away from the one for Bar None, she paused when she saw a familiar figure. Mike stood a head taller than the other two people he was with, a young woman and an older one.
“No, I’m not sure where it is,” the younger woman was saying to the older one. An abundance of glossy black tresses tumbled below her shoulders and swung when she shook her head. She sounded stressed.
“Your grandfather will kill you when he finds out you took that collar.” The other woman ran a hand up and down the strap to her shoulder bag. “He has enough on his mind right now and he thinks you’ve quit taking things that don’t belong to you.”
“I know. Don’t tell him, okay? I’ll find it.” The black-haired woman turned and entered the tent behind her. The sign above the door said “Fortunes Read.”
Chase approached Mike and the older woman.
“Hi,” Mike said. “I want you to meet my aunt Betsy. She’s my dad’s sister.” So Betsy was a Ramos by birth. She was much shorter than Mike, but had his same deep brown eyes and dark curls, hers cut short to frame an oval face with only a few age lines.
Anna came running up to the group. “Quincy isn’t all that’s missing, Charity. The Hula Bars—”
“Mrs. Larson.” Mike smiled at Anna. “I’d like you to meet my aunt Betsy.”
Anna halted and waited a few seconds until her breathy panting slowed down. “Pleased to meet you.” They shook hands. “We’re very fond of your nephew. But, Charity”—she turned to Chase—“Quincy got into the Hula Bars.”
Chase gasped. “Are they ruined? How many? Are there any left?”
“He destroyed ten boxes.”
“He ate ten boxes of dessert bars?” Mike’s jaw dropped. “I didn’t think even Quincy could eat that much.”
“No, no. He didn’t eat all of them, only ruined them. I can’t tell how many bars are completely gone, but those boxes can’t be sold. They’re clawed to pieces.”
Chase’s heart dropped toward her sneakers. “Ten boxes? That’s almost all of the Hula Bars that we brought here. They’ve been our best seller since we introduced them. We needed those boxes to sell.”
“We do have a ton of Harvest Bars, but you’re right. I guess we’ll have to make some more tonight.” Anna’s brow furrowed beneath her silver curls, and her blue eyes grew somber.
“Thank goodness he didn’t destroy the Harvest Bars. Where is that rascal?” Chase clenched one fist inside the other until her knuckles were white.
“He’ll come back. One of us has to start baking soon.” Anna gave Chase a look that said Chase should do it. “If you stay here, you’ll worry yourself to death over Quincy. I’ll finish setting up and you can look in on Inger.”
Chase resisted the notion of leaving with Quincy on the loose, but Anna finally convinced her. She had searched everywhere and didn’t know what else she could do. “Okay, Anna. I’ll head back in a few minutes. Call me the second he shows up. “
Anna agreed. They said good-bye to Mike’s Aunt Betsy and trudged toward their booth, leaving Mike chatting with his aunt. Chase assumed he’d tell her what a terrible cat owner Chase was, not able to control her animal’s weight, or even his whereabouts.
Chase glanced back to see if they were whispering and pointing at her. But Aunt Betsy was walking away as Mike ducked into the fortune-teller’s booth. She wondered, briefly, what had been troubling the young woman, and how she knew Mike. The man had a talent for collecting attractive females.
Before she left, she helped Anna finish unpacking the goods that weren’t ruined.
“Anna, about that midmorning snack that Inger mentioned,” Chase started.
“I made sure she was going to give him a Kitty Patty. It wasn’t anything he shouldn’t have.”
“But he doesn’t need an infinite amount of those, you know. I usually give him one about midday, not midmorning.”
Anna gave Chase a pained look and turned away to arrange their price list on a plastic stand. A stack of the fliers describing how to save dessert bars for the holidays lay beside the stand. Anna knocked a few of them off the top of the pile and Chase bent down to retrieve them.