Cat Got Your Crown

by Julie Chase

  “I’m not spitting on anything,” I said, pinching my face into a knot. “I love you, but that’s just bonkers, and why would I want to keep something I spit on under my pillow? Hard pass.”

  She moved the gaze of her forlorn brown eyes from my face to the stick and back.

  “Jeez.” I reached for the stick. “I’ll keep it under my pillow, but I won’t spit on it, okay?” If someone managed to get the jump on me while I was sleeping, I could always club them in the head.

  Imogene gave me the stick, then hugged me tight while the smoke cleared.

  Mom popped into view over Imogene’s shoulder, looking as if she was ready to club someone already. “What’s going on?”

  “You called my mother?” I asked Imogene. I wasn’t completely surprised. I just hadn’t seen her use her phone, and she’d been here only a few minutes.

  Mom headed for Jack. “How could you let this happen?”

  “I called as soon as I knew,” he said.

  My jaw dropped. Jack called my mother?

  I made a face at him.

  “You and I had an agreement,” she barked at him. “You’re supposed to keep her safe, and you’re supposed to keep these sorts of things from happening.”

  A man in the crowd raised his phone in Mom’s direction and held it there.

  Jack pointed a finger at the man’s face without taking his eyes off my mother.

  The man put the phone in his pocket.

  I reached for the door to my shop. “Why don’t we take this inside?” I asked, before footage of my usually poised mother berating a New Orleans detective went viral.

  Jack nodded, and I turned the deadbolt to let us in.

  I locked up behind us, then spun on Mom. “What are you doing? Jack is not my keeper, and it’s completely unfair of you to task him with something so ridiculous. He has an entire city to keep tabs on already, and I’m a grown woman. I don’t need a babysitter.”

  Jack, Imogene, and Mom muttered a jumble of words that sounded a lot like agreement on all sides. They all thought I needed a babysitter.

  I dropped my head back and growled at no one, then refixed my attention on Mom. “I’ve told you before. You can’t just assign a local detective to be personally responsible for my safety,” I said.

  She and Jack exchanged a look.

  “She didn’t,” he said. “I offered.”

  “What?” When had Jack and my mother spoken about me? Why hadn’t either of them mentioned it?

  Jack’s jaw went stiff and his stance rigid. The air around us grew uncomfortably thick.

  Mom clapped her hands softly. “Enough of this for now,” she said, dragging a pointed gaze to Jack. “I would like to know what’s going on with Eva. I’m having trouble reaching her, but I’d like to ask her to return to the committee, if that’s okay.”

  “It’s fine with me,” he said. “She was released after making her official statement, but she remains a person of interest. She’s free to do as she pleases, but she’s still our strongest suspect at this time.”

  “Great,” Mom said through gritted teeth and a forced smile. She turned on her toes for another look at me. “What are you doing about it? Don’t say nothing, because I know you’re lying. People who are doing nothing don’t get bloody-looking paper ladies glued to their door.”

  “I’m going to talk to Eva as soon as I can,” I said, forcing the image of the dripping red paint out of my head. “Maybe she’s remembered something else since giving her statement, or maybe she’ll be willing to open up to someone she knows personally.”

  “Good idea,” Mom said. She lifted her chin at Jack. “I have to go. Try not to let anything else happen to my little girl, or I’ll be forced to make good on our agreement.”

  “Mom,” I started, having no idea where to go from there.

  She turned back to me with narrowed eyes. “What are you wearing? That is not what I asked you to wear,” she said. “I swear if you were any more stubborn, you would’ve been born a bull.”

  I tugged the short bell of my skirt in both hands. “It’s blue.”

  “It’s navy. Navy is not pastel, and I’m done with this song and dance. My stylist will deliver a rolling rack of appropriate outfits to your dressing room immediately. Choose from there.”

  “I have a dressing room?”

  Mom rolled her eyes in a heated tizzy, then pointed two fingers at Jack’s eyes to let him know she was watching him, or might poke them out Three Stooges style, while I gaped after her.

  “What agreement?” I asked Jack when Mom had made it out of sight on the sidewalk beyond my window. “She said you have to keep me safe or she’ll make good on your agreement. What does that mean?”

  “It means she vowed to kill me in my sleep if any harm comes to you. Ever.”

  “She called that an agreement?”

  “Yeah,” he said, “because I agreed.”

  I groaned. “You really are my keeper.”

  “Yep.”

  I fell against his chest and wrapped my arms around his middle. “I’m so sorry.”

  Jack laughed. A few beats later, he hugged me back.

  Chapter Twelve

  Furry Godmother’s advice for life: Never look a gift horse in the mouth, especially if it comes dressed as a bull.

  Imogene walked Jack out a few minutes later while I helped a customer choose a dress for her Chihuahua. Imogene brought the bakery boxes back inside with her, and I said a silent prayer of gratitude that they hadn’t been stolen, because even after all the trouble I’d gone to baking and hauling them to work, the paper lady had made me forget they existed.

  I rang the woman up for the dress while Imogene set my boxes onto the counter and began filling the bakery display. Imogene had paired a teal pantsuit and white camisole with a purple head scarf wrapped exotically around her salt-and-pepper hair. She looked exquisite, confident, and ready to lecture when the line at my register disappeared. “I don’t envy Detective Oliver,” she said as an opening. “Keeping you alive and out of trouble is a full-time job. I should know. I did my time.”

  I smacked my lips at her. “Well, don’t make it sound like a jail sentence,” I said. “I wasn’t that bad.”

  She raised her brows. “You were worse, and at least if I’d been in jail, I could’ve eaten a warm meal and watched my programs. Instead, I chased you around this district with my heart in my throat for eighteen years while you and that red-headed friend of yours tried to tear the place down.”

  I smiled. “We have had some good times, haven’t we?”

  Imogene clucked her tongue.

  “Besides, Mom only said Jack has to keep me out of harm’s way, not out of trouble. Those are different.” I let the concept sink in a bit further. “I don’t understand why Jack offered to do such a thing, anyway. And I can’t decide if it’s gallant or controlling.” It would help me decide if I knew how the whole conversation had come about between him and my mother and why no one ever told me these things.

  “Speak of the devil,” Imogene said, “here she comes now, and she’s gone and dressed like him.”

  Scarlet’s smiling face flew along the windows and pivoted at the door. Little red horns protruded from a bulbous red helmet on her head.

  Imogene grabbed a bottle of glass cleaner and a rag, then headed toward the sticky door where the paper lady had hung. She pushed the barrier wide and held it while Scarlet skated inside. “What are you dressed up for?” she asked. “Does your mother know you’re out looking like that?”

  Scarlet spun in a circle on high-end roller blades. “I’m no longer my mother’s problem,” she said. “I’m thirty years old. I’m my husband’s problem now.” She smiled at Imogene’s sour look. “Carter likes my outfit,” she continued, striking a pose in her red-and-black roller derby ensemble. “What do you think?” she asked me, skating to the counter.

  Aside from the skates and knee and elbow pads, Scarlet wore little black spandex bike shorts under a red crinoli
ne tutu that stood out in every direction and what appeared to be a shiny red leotard under a red cut-off shirt that had the Hawthorne law firm logo on the back.

  “My mother would die,” I said. It was the first and only thing that came to mind for a long while. A few seconds later, I managed, “It’s really cute.”

  “Thanks.”

  My tired brain caught up with the situation a minute later. “Are you going to be one of the bulls tomorrow? I thought you would be standing around the water table with me.” If Scarlet wasn’t going to be there, who was I going to talk to? Who would check out the best costumes with me, nosh on vendor sweets, and rehash my murder investigation drama?

  “I’ll be at the table until it’s time to line up,” she said. “Then I really want to run down some men with my whiffle bat.” She mimed swinging a bat a few times, then grabbed the strap of her black cross-body bag and pulled it over her head. She slid the bag onto the counter. “I skated over to make sure I still knew how, and to bring you your outfit.”

  “You mean T-shirt,” I said.

  She nodded and grinned. “There’s a T-shirt.”

  I looked at the box, then Imogene. Imogene stopped working midwipe on my window and turned to watch. I felt the intense flutter of anticipation in my middle as I opened the box with bated breath. There was an entire outfit inside, and it coordinated with Scarlet’s, minus the skates. I lifted the pieces one by one.

  Imogene made a disapproving face from across the room. “That shirt is too small,” she said. “You can’t fit half your blessings in that little scrap of fabric, and that skirt had better come with some long pants, not those little booty shorts like Miss Thing is wearing over here. Your mother will kill you twice for that.”

  I gave Scarlet a sad look and held the shirt up to my chest. “She’s not wrong about my blessings.”

  “Braggart.”

  I smiled.

  I fished a bottle of water from my mini-fridge and passed it to Scarlet. “How’s life?”

  She sucked down half the bottle before stopping. “Better than yours at the moment, I think. I heard about the paper lady on your door.”

  “Well, the rumor mill is still spinning,” I said, slightly impressed by the speed the news had traveled.

  “Actually,” Scarlet said, “I heard it from the man on the corner wearing glitter paint and a crown.”

  “Did you think he looked pretty?”

  She cracked up. “I did.” She twisted the bottle cap back on with a sigh. “I wish I could help you with this investigation. Usually I hear all sorts of interesting things at times like these, but whatever’s going on with the pageant seems to be internal to the event, and all the people are from out of town, so none of my sources know them. The details are sealed up tight behind the Tea Room doors.” She leaned her elbows on the counter and set her water aside. “Maybe I can rent a pet and go in posing as a contestant.”

  Imogene headed back our way with the glass cleaner and paper towels. The shop door and windows sparkled from her touch. “Maybe you can put your connections to work finding your friend some more help. I didn’t sign on to work all these hours,” she said. “The place was dead when I stepped in. Now I have to request time off and coordinate my schedule with hers like this is my job. I don’t want a job.”

  “Can I stop paying you?” I asked.

  She made a mean face. “You know what I mean. I like helping. I don’t want to be all tied down like this. I’m about to die of exhaustion.”

  I rolled my eyes. “And you call me dramatic.”

  Scarlet skated around the counter and gave me a quick hug. “I’m on it, but I’ve got to skate home and change for Pilates now. Don’t worry another minute about looking for help here. I will find you help that you will love.”

  “Thank you,” Imogene and I responded at once.

  Scarlet waved and skated away.

  I took my time folding the pieces of my new outfit and returning them to their box.

  “I see you smiling at those,” Imogene said.

  I jumped, then stuffed the box under the counter.

  * * *

  The walkway from the parking lot to the Audubon Tea Room was lined in fat pillar candles stuck inside fancy glass vases. Strings of bistro lights wound through the canopy of tangled, reaching limbs overhead. I admired their wispy beards of moss and the enchanting effect that had been created.

  A pair of men in black suits opened the double doors to the Tea Room foyer with practiced precision, as if they shared one mind. They held their respective door with one of their hands while bending the other behind their backs and bowing slightly. I stopped to curtsy.

  Mom shook her head at me, apparently waiting in the foyer to complain about something immediately upon my arrival.

  “Hello, Mom,” I said, smacking air kisses on each side of her grouchy face. “I know you’re mad about earlier, but look.” I turned in a slow circle, showing off the petal-pink, knee-length dress I’d picked up on my way home to check on Penelope and Buttercup after work. “The saleslady assured me this is pastel.”

  “You know that’s pastel,” Mom said sharply, though her eyes gave her away. She loved designer chiffon as much as she enjoyed complaining about me.

  “You look amazing,” I said, admiring my custom-made gown on her narrow, youthful frame. “Smoking hot.”

  She blushed. “At fifty-two, I’m grateful for not frumpy, but I’ll take the compliment.”

  “Please. You barely look old enough to be my mother, and you know it,” I said. It was true. She’d had me at twenty-two and looked roughly fifteen at the time. These days, I saw the question in strangers’ eyes. We could easily have been sisters, me at thirty and her looking ambiguously forty.

  She held my gaze for several silent seconds before hooking her arm in mine. “I’m not happy about what happened to you earlier,” she said. “I should’ve handled the situation with more dignity and grace. I’m sorry. I was angry, and I let it get the best of me, but I’m not angry with you.”

  “You’re mad at Jack?” I guessed. “It’s not fair to hold him to his offer, even if it was his idea. There’s no way he can protect me from everything without putting me in his pocket and keeping me there.”

  Mom sighed. “I think he would try that if he could, and I wouldn’t stop him if I thought it was possible.”

  My chest warmed at her words. I didn’t want people worrying about me, especially Jack and Mom, because they both had so much to take care of already, but it was nice to be reminded that I was important to them—not just my general existence and safety, but my happiness. I was blessed beyond measure with a family, blood related and otherwise, who wanted the best for me, and the truth of it swelled my heart.

  “When did Jack make the promise to babysit me?” I asked, “and why didn’t you tell me?”

  “He came to me after the first time you were threatened last year,” she said, turning sad blue eyes on me. “Back then, your father and I knew him better than you, and we were doing the best we could to convince you both to play nice, Jack with his suspicions about your sudden return to the area and you with your intolerance of his general disposition. His tune changed when you were put in danger, and he’s come to us consistently over the year since, namely after each of your subsequent near-death experiences. He blames himself, and I don’t try to dissuade him.” She looked almost guilty as her gaze shifted to the floor. “Whatever keeps you safe is all that matters, and I doubt he minds the challenge.”

  I hugged her arm tighter as we continued through the busy space and leaned my head against her shoulder. “Do you know about Jack’s past?” I asked carefully, unwilling to give away anything personal about him that she didn’t already know.

  “We do,” she said softly. Of course she would. It was her business to know everything remotely related to her district.

  “Then you realize,” I said, “that he probably thinks of you as family, and that means a lot because he doesn’t let people i
n.”

  Jack’s teenage mother had run off and left him to be raised by her father, who had been busy building a condiment empire and had sent Jack abroad to be raised in elite boarding schools instead of in a home with his next of kin. He’d become understandably guarded.

  Mom slid her eyes to me as we walked. “He lets some people in.”

  She stopped at the entry to the main hall, then turned to look back through the foyer.

  “There. Do you see?” she asked, tipping her head slightly toward the empty table with a large FFA logo on the skirt. “They put their cage of chicks right there on the end and let people hold them.”

  “Oh my goodness. I forgot.” A stab of regret punched through me. “I was completely off balance after the paper lady incident, and I didn’t have time to think of a cute way to draw attention to your table. I’ll make a list of ideas when I get to the judges’ table. I swear.”

  “No worries,” Mom said. “I’ve got it handled. That was where I hurried off to this morning after I left your shop. I spoke with an old friend who makes hideous metal sculptures and charges a fortune for them. I figured if anyone I knew thought outside the box, besides you, it was him.” A small prideful smile curved her lips as she shifted her attention to the Jazzy Chicks’ table. “I told him what you said I should do, and he had something that fit the bill perfectly. He rents it for weddings and graduation parties.”

  I took a step in that direction. A large medieval-looking contraption sat front and center on the Jazzy Chicks’ display. The thing was made of glass and metal, almost like a snow globe, except instead of snow, the bottom was littered with paper money and checks. A braid of tiny light bulbs wrapped the glass like a vine. I probably could have fit two Penelopes inside if I tried. “What is it?” I asked.

  “It’s your idea,” she repeated. “Here. Try it.” She opened her clutch and handed me a twenty-dollar bill. “The slot is in the metal at the top. The metal hides the hole, so it looks magical and not like a cheap piggy bank.”