Chimera and the Cat Burglar (FUC Academy #46)

Chapter 12

Chapter

Twelve

“I’m surprised they’re allowing me visitors. Especially the one who put in a false report to get me arrested,” Boo spat at her mother, who looked at her from the other side of the bars.

The dismal gray walls of the jail cell sapped the color from Cecilia’s face, and the single bulb overhead added to her mother’s ghoulish appearance.

Boo quelled a hiss and took a step back, lowering her hands. If she wanted a chance to call Alyce and get all this sorted out, then fighting with her mother wouldn’t help.

Still, Boo glared at her mother, whose perfectly ironed white pantsuit looked out of place in the dank surroundings.

“Would it surprise you to know that I’d hoped you’d simply stay out of my town?” Cecilia asked.

The nerve of Mom.

“Willow Wisp doesn’t belong to you, Mom, much as you like to think it does,” Boo taunted.

Cecilia bared her fangs and snarled.

“Corral your temper, Mother.” Her mother’s anger pressed down on Boo as if a tangible force, forcing Boo to gasp to escape suffocation.

Boo removed herself from the confrontation, plopping onto the lumpy cot and running her fingers along the stained mattress on the metal rim.

The threadbare piping indicated an aged mattress. The toilet, which sat in a dark corner, whined, the water continuously filling and draining the bowl simultaneously.

There wasn’t a flimsy, paper ass gasket in sight!

Only a thin, metal seatless rim.

Boo hacked.

“You only have yourself to blame,” Cecilia said as she evoked a staring contest.

Childish games. Mother dominates the Olympic sport.

When Boo was young, she’d played this game with her mother. Boo recalled how one of them would tire and blink, resulting in a fit of laughter. Back then, they never ridiculed and blamed each other for breaking contact.

But not now. Boo’s mother had set out to prove a point, and her grape-sized green eyes bulged to their limits.

Boo knew that resolve like the back of her paw.

Where did her mother’s pain originate?

Boo knew hers sprang from Cecilia’s rejection and insistence on obedience and perfection.

“What happened to you, Mom? Why are you so angry?” At me?

As the sun set, Cecilia lifted her gaze to the small, barred window, her face a mask of bitterness and frustration. “Is my demeanor really that surprising? How else is a mother to react to offspring that turned out so disappointing?”

Her mother’s words stung like Boo had fallen into a hornet’s nest.

Still, she shoved the hurt down deep. “What are you blaming me for? I’ve done everything for you.”

At least Boo had tried before she’d been jailed that first time. While her mother worked, Boo had taken charge of household duties and meal prep along with her curriculum.

“Everything you’ve done has dragged our family name through the mud,” Cecilia elaborated. “You’re reckless. I’d hoped that being jailed once would have been enough. For a time, it seemed that way. Sure, you kept an apartment in town, so I had to keep my eye on your movements, but you never returned to the graveyard. I’d foolishly hoped that you were done with all that.”

Boo clenched her balled fists, struggling to keep her composure. She wished she’d kept that Botox appointment she didn’t need so that her face wouldn’t twitch from frustration.

Her mother was driving her mad.

“Mom, everything I did was to please you. Seeing you angry all the time was hard on me. I didn’t know how to fix what others had broken in you.”

“I never asked you to take care of me.” Cecilia winced. “I was the parent. I was the one responsible for you.”

“Responsible for me?” Boo checked more things off the mental list when her mother had failed her.

Abuse.

Neglect.

Abandonment.

That time Cecilia dragged Boo to the ER, convinced she’d seen her husband’s ghost.

Boo continued, “How many times did I come home from school hungry and find an empty refrigerator? Then, when you held down a job, I was left to cook dinner for us, do the laundry, clean the house, and keep perfect grades to keep you from seeing spirits. Forgive me if I may have acted like a petulant child, but I had my reasons.”

Boo jumped up to a standing position and paced in a tight circle around the dirty drain cover in the center of the room. She had to spring this cell, but how?

The steel bars and block walls allowed her no chance at freedom, but she gripped the bars, attempting to rip them from their foundations like she was as strong as Willy.

Shocker. She wasn’t.

Her mother growled. “Look at how capable you are today. Look at how much better you are than me.”

“Is that what you think?” Boo had never put words to her reasons for grave robbing. She’d never seen her tasks as something meant to develop character or to outrank her mother. Boo was simply trying to rectify past wrongdoings.

She’d only wanted her mother’s approval, but perhaps she only needed her own.

Her mother was incapable of seeing Boo as more than an irritant.

Sure, Boo had wanted to guarantee that the artifacts would be returned to local families, but she couldn’t discount the joy she felt when she failed at finding the original owner or descendant.

Boo had celebrated helping her mother grow their museum’s collection of artifacts, which fueled Boo’s drive to hunt for more items, as each earned a crumb of approval from Cecilia.

Cecilia huffed. “You think you helped me?”

Boo nodded. “The better your museum did, the more money you made, and for once, I didn’t go hungry. You seemed content.”

“Content?” Cecilia exclaimed. “Because of you, I’m forever branded the mother of a criminal.”

Boo sat quietly, picking at a string at the corner of the mattress, pondering her arrest years before. “If you hadn’t called the police, I wouldn’t have been charged with a crime.”

Cecilia clucked her tongue. “So, you’ve branded yourself a hero? You and your gorilla?”

“Willy is a chimera, Mother. And don’t bring him into this.” Boo took a deep, shuddering breath.

Mercifully, Cecilia listened for once.

The subsequent silence was amplified by the whining toilet, and someone rattled their cage in the distance.

Boo didn’t know how long she’d be stuck in the holding cell. The phantom taste of bland food and day-old bread of the prison cafeteria rode her tastebuds. The flip-flops she’d worn the last time she was incarcerated had never fit her feet, and she’d occasionally rolled her ankles. That was bound to happen again.

Boo ripped the thread and tossed it onto the concrete floor, overwhelmed by the enormity of her situation.

Drip, drip, drip.

Her mother sniffed, and she rubbed her eyes.

Was she crying?

Cecilia was giving Boo whiplash with her emotions, and Boo struggled to know how to read the woman.

Heartless Cecilia never once showed her sadness, not since that time she’d landed in the ER, years and years ago.

The closer Boo studied her mother, the more she wondered if her mother’s sadness encompassed more than her disappointment.

When Boo met her mother’s gaze, her eyes were red-rimmed and beginning to swell.

“You can stop the show, Mother. I’m not one of your constituents.”

“Is that what you think of me?” Cecilia’s voice hitched. “That I’m an ice queen?”

Boo glanced at her hands, wishing she had her knife to comfort her.

Cecilia admitted, “I didn’t want you to suffer the same fate as your father.”

Boo sucked a breath. Had she heard her mom correctly? “What fate did Dad suffer?”

“You weren’t much more than three years old the night your father disappeared,” Cecilia explained. “He learned of a secret from a man he met in the cemetery.”

Scooting closer to the edge of her cot, Boo narrowed her gaze at her mom. “What man?”

“I never met him, but he claimed there were riches beneath the cemetery.” Cecilia unbuttoned the top button of her suit. “We were struggling, Thom and me. It was a bad time for our kind. Then you came along.”

A bad time for our kind? Oh, yes, the feline leukemia virus, FeLV, combined with the threat of cat-scratch fever. Yowl!

A disease and bacterial infection Boo had no control over, just like she had no control over how her mother perceived her or treated her.

“Stop blaming me. Maybe you should have thought twice before bringing me into the world.” As Boo said the words, she shuddered, and the rickety bed rattled.

Cecilia picked at her cuticle and then brushed her eyes with the heels of her hands. “Anyway, your father went into the cemetery with this man to learn the truth about what lay below the grass, and he never returned.”

“Are you going to talk nonsense about some portal, like Ginnie?” Boo asked with an exasperated sigh.

“It’s not nonsense; it’s the truth.”

Boo shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Okay, and this portal caused my father to disappear?”

Cecilia nodded, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. “I suspect, like you, he was curious, but in his case, curiosity killed the cat. Thom’s desire to prove the existence of other worlds was lost in the void. I’ve tried to cover it up, to keep you safe and to protect you from your curiosity. I couldn’t have you following in his footsteps.”

“And you’d rather see me jailed than dead. You’d rather treat me like you didn’t love me, so I’d stay away from you and, thereby, Willow Wisp. So I’d stay above the lawn.”

Her mother’s eyes rained, and her chest pumped as she ugly cried.

Was this the miracle Boo had waited for?

“All of it’s true,” Cecilia admitted. “The police gave up when no one bothered the headstones. The cemetery has been quiet for four years until last night. I made you the villain in the cover-up, and I’m so sorry. I never stopped loving you. I’m so proud of who you’ve become as a woman.”

Proud? Loved her?

Boo hated crying. She never thought she’d be a dripping mess in her mother’s presence, but Boo understood sacrificing for those she loved. So had her mother.

Boo sprang from her cot and ran to the bars, tossing her arms around her mother’s thin shoulders to hug her despite the barrier between them.

The woman stiffened briefly before melting against Boo.

“I’m so sorry, Boo. I thought if I pushed you away, you’d stay safe.” Cecilia inched back, meeting Boo’s teary gaze.

“I guess we’re both guilty of our screw-ups.” Boo pushed back from her mother, dusting off the crusted dirt on her jeans and noticing that soil had fallen on her mother’s white outfit.

“Sorry. I’ve got my dirt on you.” Boo brushed off her mom’s pants.

Cecilia stilled Boo’s hands. “This outfit is as much a front as my lies. It’s about time I get dirty again.”

This turn of events was more than Boo could have asked for. “Well, we have a chance to fix our mess, and I have an idea.”

Her mother had answered all the questions that had run through Boo’s mind since Boo’s original incarceration. They had one more day to pull together until it was summer solstice, and it was already early Friday morning. “Guard!”

The stocky woman marched toward the cell, giving Boo a stern look. “Problem?”

“No problem,” Cecilia piped up. “I’m dropping the charges. It turns out, I was mistaken about my daughter.”

Mom looked at Boo with love in her eyes, something Boo had wished for her whole life.

“I’ll see what I can do.” The guard narrowed her brown gaze before strolling down the corridor and disappearing behind a locked door.

“She looks thrilled with her job,” Boo said, stepping back from the bars.

Cecilia held Boo’s shoulders. “Don’t worry. I’m sure my lawyer is already on his way.”

No sooner had her mother said the words than a man appeared, his suit as crisp as if he’d been dunked in Faultless starch.

“Stan Freedom, this is Boo Bombay, my daughter. Boo, this is Stan.” Cecilia gestured between Boo and the lawyer.

“Ms. Bombay.” Stan nodded. “I’ve heard many good things about you over the years.”

Good things?

“I’m dropping the charges,” Cecilia reiterated. “I’m sorry for the paperwork that might cause, but I made a mistake. One I need you to help me rectify.”

“Oh.” The lawyer pursed his lips and then nodded, likely happy to charge Cecilia for the extra work.

The guard returned, unlocking the cell, allowing Boo to exit and follow the group down to the processing desk.

As Stan and the officer worked on the paperwork, Cecilia glanced at her daughter. “So, why did you return to town?”

“I have tickets to the auction at the museum tonight,” Boo offered. “I’m… well, I’m on assignment. Supposedly, someone there owns a heart-shaped stone that belongs to the Bastet statue.”

“You’re on an assignment?”

Boo nodded. “I’m working for the Furry United Coalition. I’m officially a cadet, but the director is allowing me and Willy to?—”

Her words were cut off when her mother pulled her into a tight hug.

“I’ve never felt prouder of you,” Cecilia stated. “My daughter, working for FUC! You should be very proud of yourself.”

When Cecilia finally let her go and Boo caught her breath, she realized that if Mom knew about FUC, she’d know about Alyce. Boo added, “I wish Alyce would have spelled out what this stone looks like.”

“I think I may have a clue,” Cecilia said. “I know about the Bastet statue. The stone is a zebra heart—a black and white jasper stone. The gem has powers, including cell regeneration. It’s a powerful protection stone, warding off negative energy and helping to keep the owner safe from harm.”

“Miss Bombay, you’re free to go,” the officer announced, holding out a plastic bag containing her belongings.

The contents included shoes, a cell phone, ID, an ornate-handled knife, and the necklace she’d found years ago: a gold necklace with a heart-shaped, black and white stone.