Lilly's Law. Dianne Drake

One slight error in judgment and his job was out the door along with his postgrad degree. But she did have that damned bought-and-paid-for paper sitting right out on her desk for anybody to see who cared to look.

      Second time…well, he shook his head over that one. What were the odds she’d turn up on the receiving end of another of his investigations? She’d been innocent that time, too. In fact, he’d never even connected her to that story—probably because she wasn’t connected, not directly, anyway. But her law firm epitomized that notoriously fictitious Dewey, Cheatham and Howe. They’d done some book cooking, trust-fund skimming, creative billing, so on and so on. And even though Lilly was only a contract employee, not a real member of the firm—meaning she’d never gotten near the trusts, never did any billing, hardly ever got out of the research library—she’d been swept into the sting along with everybody else. Swept, cuffed and locked up tight.

      And he’d never forget the look on her face that day when they shoved her, handcuffed and horrified, through the lobby, in front of friends and co-workers. On her way out of the building she still hadn’t known who was responsible for the bust, but as the police hustled her past him and their eyes met briefly, she’d realized who’d done that to her. That look of betrayal in her eyes had punched him in the gut, and the heart, because he knew she’d trusted him—she’d put everything else behind her and trusted him.

      If ever there was a defining moment in a life, that was his.

      Lilly had been released hours later, thanks to one of the partners, who’d mustered enough integrity to unimplicate her. Afterward, Mike had sent her flowers, written a dozen contrite e-apologies and printed the damned retraction she’d demanded in place of suing him. Granted, it ran on page seven, when the picture of her being arrested was a first-page classic. But apparently that make-good hadn’t done the trick. Problem was, he wasn’t sure even sending him up the river now, if only for a weekend, would be enough to satisfy her yet. Lilly was clearly holding on to some surplus rage after all this time. And she deserved to. But he’d sure been hoping it wouldn’t trickle into this little matter. “So should I drop my drawers again, Mike?” he asked, his voice on the verge of acceptance, since there was no other choice but to accept his fate for the next three days. If there was one thing he knew for sure about Lilly, she wouldn’t give in. Once she’d made up her mind, nothing changed it.

      Smiling, Roger shook his head. “Nope, not another strip search, unless you insist. But if you want, I’ll call Jimmy and let him know where you are. Maybe he can figure out what to do—how to get you out of here or something.” Roger chuckled as he led Mike down the gray hall to his home-away-from-home for the next few days. “Or at least he can bring you a pizza for supper. He’s good for that much, I’ll bet.” Jimmy Farrell, the Journal’s lawyer on retainer, had finally passed his bar exam six months earlier, after four tries. And he was really cheap to hire, which was the cardinal circumstance surrounding Jimmy’s status at the newspaper. No one in Whittier particularly embraced Jimmy for their legal affairs, since he’d grown up there and had a reputation for off-centered intelligence and out-on-a-limb common sense. But he’d muddled through law school somehow, surprised everyone when he finally passed the bar exam, and optimistically hung out his shingle to practice. So far, his clients were only court-appointed, those who couldn’t afford their own attorney, and he represented them adequately. No one complained too much, because no one had great expectations of Jimmy.

      The day he’d approached Mike to represent the Journal, the offer had been so ridiculous Mike didn’t have the heart to turn him down. “Fifty dollars a month, Mike, will keep me on retainer for the paper.” Mike knew it would also pay the electric bill in Jimmy’s office slash apartment. “Most reputable papers keep a lawyer on retainer, and this is your chance.”

      More out of charity than anything else, Mike had agreed, and from that day on, three months now, the Journal had been duly, if not well, represented. And today’s pizza delivery would mark Jimmy’s first official appearance on the paper’s behalf. “Lilly’s not letting me out of here, Roger. No way in hell. So tell Jimmy I like pepperoni and sausage. Hold the onions.”

      “Lilly?” Roger interrupted. “You mean Judge Malloy? That Lilly?”

      Mike cringed. Her Honor Judge Lillianne Malloy wasn’t the image of the Lilly Malloy that was in his mind when he’d discovered she’d been hired for traffic court in Whittier. That Lilly was still the one he’d…well, suffice it to say there had been some nice dreams of her from time to time. Gorgeous, responsive, just a little unsure. Always eager. But when he’d sneaked into the back of the courtroom a couple of times to watch her work, the Lilly he observed was so much more than he ever expected from her. Still gorgeous beyond reason, tall, round in all the right places, soft—even though her sexier-than-hell hair was pulled severely back and half of her face was covered by ridiculously large glasses—she now possessed confidence—self-assurance like he’d never before seen in her. And it showed in her movements, in her voice, and especially in that tangy smile she’d used on him earlier—the one meant to castigate him, but which had the opposite effect. All in all, Lilly wore her judicial robe well, and in spite of everything, he was happy for her. But she should have done so much better than that moldering little traffic court in a dark basement corner, and Mike knew he owned a big part of the responsibility for that lesser destiny—lesser than she deserved. “Yeah, Judge Lillianne Malloy. We go back a ways and she’s not going to go easy on me for old times’ sake. Not in this lifetime, anyway.”

      “Bad history, I’m guessing?”

      Mike winced. “Defining it as bad is pretty damn optimistic. The list of how I’ve done that lady wrong…well, it fills up both sides of the page in small print, that’s how bad it is.”

      Roger let out a low whistle while closing the cell door behind Mike. “Well, with your current run of parking tickets, I’d say you’re in for some real big trouble, my friend. And that judge—your friend Lilly—she has a tough reputation, if you know what I mean. She’s strictly by the book and nobody gets the soft end of her gavel. I understand she’s sentencing them right and left in her court.” He slipped a copy of his Mike Gets Busted story through the bars to his boss, then stepped back. “I really hate leaving you here like this, but, well…” He shrugged. “Anything I can get you before I go home?”

      Mike shook his head, dropped down on his cot and resigned himself to the lumps and bumps. The only good thing that could be said for the long weekend ahead was that he’d be able to catch up on some much-needed sleep. Tight money at the Journal these days meant he had a staff too small to run the paper, which meant he wore lots of hats, which meant he worked lots of hours. And all that meant he never got away from his job, not even here, in jail. So maybe this imposed furlough was a good thing. Sleep, perchance to…to what? Dream of Lilly? Not a chance in hell.

      Not a chance in hell on the sleep, either, he discovered almost immediately. Sure, he shut his eyes and tried to clear his head, but his to-do list replaced the mental void he’d hoped to achieve, with all the to-dos that wouldn’t be getting done for the next two days trying to pound their way to the forefront of his mind lest he might forget about them. Which he never did. Edit the piece about the new thrill ride inspection regulations at the county fair; cover the high school preseason football game and get a statement from the coach; interview Mayor Lowell Tannenbaum for whatever Mayor Tannentwit wanted to be interviewed about this week. Certainly not the type-A assignments Mike had gone after in Indianapolis, not even close. But he’d been a different kind of journalist back then. And not the kind he’d set out to be at the beginning. That realization had hit him the day he’d watched the cops handcuff Lilly and cart her off to jail.

      Two weeks after that awful day he’d given up journalism as he’d come to know and practice it, and had bought his struggling hometown newspaper. And after that, life was good…poorer than dirt, but good. Sure, he missed some of the big-city excitement. Missed a lot of it, actually. There was no substitute for the adrenaline buzz that came when he broke a huge story or saw his byline tacked on to a red-letter article. But that was then, and now he owned a small daily paper where the biggest story this week would be about its owner sitting in jail over a few stupid unpaid parking tickets.

      Them’s