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Reggie rolled his eyes, but Chantelle Dubois only scowled so hard I wasn’t sure if she could even see her target. “Nope. I was catfished. Housefished. Whatever. Byhim.”
I angled my torso toward Reggie, arms still crossed.
He wrinkled his nose.
“Is this the place she rented from you?” I asked when he didn’t make a peep to confirm or deny the woman’s claims.
“Yep.”
“And it looksnothinglike the photos on the website!” Chantelle shrieked.
“Well, of course not. The AI doesn’t know what it looks like. It’s never been here.”
Chantelle’s nostrils flared, and I held up a hand to silence her before she could start in on him again. “Reggie, are you sayin’you used some kind of artificial intelligence for the photos in your rental listin’?”
“Well, yeah. I don’t have a camera, and these kids at the library said it was easy. They showed me how to do it, and I just told the AI what the place looked like, and it made up some real nice pics in a blink. Gotta say, there might be somethin’ to this whole robot thing.”
“See what I mean?” Chantelle exclaimed. “False advertising. Liar. Cheat. Thief. I want him arrested.”
I sighed. “All of those things may be true?—”
“Hey!” Reggie protested.
“Come on, Reg. Look at this dump.”
He looked it over. “It’s not all that bad.”
“It’s not this good, either,” Chantelle said, holding her phone out so I could see the photos from Reggie’s listing.
It looked more like my famous sister-in-law’s fancy custom-built mansion than the house before me could ever dream of becoming.
I frowned at Reggie, baffled. “What did you think would happen when they got here? They’d just forget what they’d seen online and stay here anyway?”
“Sure, why not? She’s just bein’ unreasonable.”
“Officer, enough of this.” Chantelle pointed a red, sparkly nail at Reggie. “Arrest that man.”
As I opened my mouth to reply, I heard a quiet snort, looking up to find Chantelle’s new husband shaking his head.
“I tried to tell her you wouldn’t do that,” he said with a sigh. “Guess this is the start of our future together, huh?”
Chantelle ignored him, whirling back to me. “He’s wrong, right? He said you’d call this a civilian matter, but it’s a crime, isn’t it?”
I hated to disappoint her. “Ma’am, when you booked this house, you entered into a contract with Reggie, here. That meanshe didn’t steal your money, you gave it to him in exchange for rentin’ this house. There’s nothin’ I can do about it not measurin’ up to what you thought you were payin’ for. That’s somethin’ the courts need to iron out.”
“Told you,” Mr. Dubois chimed in.
“You some kind of lawyer?” I asked.
“Nah, but this is classic Judge Judy. Think we can make it on the show?”
Chantelle let out a frustrated scream, cutting off my reply to her clueless husband.
After directing the newlyweds to the very nice B&B on Main Street, I warned Reggie to get a lawyer. And a haircut, too, just in case they served him with court papers attached to a TV appearance.
And then, I was back in my cruiser, headed toward town in a much brighter mood than I’d been in when I’d first arrived at that catfish of a rental house.
Right up until Paisley keyed up on the radio to dispatch one of the other officers. She hadn’t even been talking to me, and yet the mere sound of her voice filling my squad car was akin to a storm cloud sliding in through the air vents.
