Page 46 of Breaking All The Rules
He gave his boots a good wipe on the mat before he entered the living room, the polished floorboards gleaming in a shaft of afternoon sunlight coming from the open door. “Have a seat down there,” she said, indicating the couch to his left. “I’ll be just a jiffy.”
She scurried away then, and Austin assumed she’d left to fix him a plate of cookies or other home-baked goodies, and he couldn’t object without it causing some kind of offense. Because that’s the way things were done around here. If someone came knocking, you gave them the very best of Eastern Colorado hospitality, and he’d learned a long time ago that police work was secondary to Credence cordiality.
Even if it meant disrupting his plans to see Beatrice.
Austin sat while he waited, pulling out his notebook and pencil from his shirt pocket, ready to take down any details. The room was as clean and neat as the rest of the house, immaculately kept, and smelled like disinfectant and furniture polish. But it was all very modest. Nothing flashy or expensive. Not ostentatious. So where the hell a tiara came into this, he had no idea.
Mrs. Jennings didn’t look the tiara type. No one in Credence did.
“I feel terrible about doing this,” she said from somewhere in the kitchen, “but I just can’t do it anymore.”
Austin frowned. Couldn’t do what anymore?
“I promised Cecil I’d look after his Princess, but the pots were the last straw.”
“Cecil from next door?” Old Cecil Grainger had died a month ago.
“That’s right,” Mrs. Jennings confirmed. “I mean, the man was dying and fretting so much about what would happen to his Princess, I couldn’t say no.”
Princess? Was that something to do with the tiara?
“But since the tiara fiasco—”
Aha. They were finally cutting to the chase.
“Princess hasn’t been happy,” she continued from the other room, “and she knocked over all my potted plants this morning and it was just the last straw and I was at my wits’ end when I called the police, and then Arlo said you’d be around to take care of it.” She appeared again, her arms full of some kind of giant…creature. “And so here she is.”
Mrs. Jennings crossed straight to him and dumped the…cat? in Austin’s lap. The animal landed with a thud. Jesus, she weighed more than his father’s working dog, Rocky.
“There you go, Princess,” she said, barely disguising her glee. “You’ll be much happier with more space to run around.” She petted the animal perfunctorily on the head before wiping her hands on her apron, as if her work here was done.
“Space?” Austin said absently as he glanced down at what was possibly the ugliest cat he’d ever seen.
She was big rather than fat, a Maine coon, he guessed, and her fur, which was wild and thick in some areas and patchy in others, was a dirty kind of orange with streaks of cream. Hair sprouted from her enormous ears—wispy white tufts of it sticking out worse than any old man. She was missing an eye, the lid all wrinkled in its socket, and one tooth stuck out over the lower lip.
The cat squinted up at Austin—not a good look on a one-eyed cat—then glared like he was beneath her contempt and meowed like a fish wife. Princess, his ass. Whoever thought up that name had either a keen sense of irony or had been shit-faced.
“At your ranch,” Mrs. Jennings prompted.
Austin frowned. Say what, now? “The ranch?”
She smiled at Austin indulgently. “You’re a good boy for taking care of this for me.”
The cat meowed loudly again, as if she vehemently disagreed with Mrs. Jennings’s assessment, then gave Austin a stone-cold glare. He’d never seen a cat with resting bitch face, but he was pretty sure Princess had perfected it. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Jennings. Can we back it up a little? Chief Pike said this was about a missing tiara?”
“Goodness, no.” The older woman laughed. “I said she misses her tiara.”
“The cat has a tiara?”
More laughter. “Princess had this cushion with a tiara printed on it, but I had to wash it, because no way was I having that mangy old thing inside my house. But it fell apart in the wash, and things have not been good between us ever since, I’m afraid, and I can’t keep dealing with a passive-aggressive animal like this. I went over this twice with Arlo. I’m sure he understood.”
Yeah…Austin was also sure Arlo had understood perfectly. He was no doubt laughing his ass off back at the station right now.
“He thought you might be able to use a cat on the ranch? Like a barn cat, you know? For the rats.”
Princess, who, despite having a forest of hair growing from her ears, appeared to have perfect hearing, meowed most indignantly at that suggestion. Austin stared down at the ugly-ass cat that had the most robust ego he’d ever come across, sitting like a fucking queen on his lap. He wasn’t sure if it was the word “barn” or “rats” that had caused her reaction.
Whichever one it was, he was pretty sure Princess of the Tiara Cushion wasn’t going to accept such a lowly station in life.
