Lilly's Law

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 the breaks, he thought, resigning himself to his short-term fate. Mike shut his eyes once again and tried to tackle that mental to-do list, but thoughts of Lilly crowded it out. Lilly in her robe, out of her robe, hair up, hair down, with glasses, without glasses, with clothes, without clothes…without clothes…without clothes.…

Dear God, what was he going to do about Lilly, anyway?

What a miserable way to end a perfectly bad Friday!

“NO, I DIDN’T KNOW he owned the newspaper here. Do you think I would have accepted the job if I’d known there was a chance I’d run into him?” Lilly paced barefooted across the black-and-white-checkered linoleum floor in the circa 1935 kitchen, scrunching her cell phone to her ear and shaking a bottle of apple juice. “Sure, I saw the name on my docket, but it’s a pretty common name, you’ll have to admit, so I didn’t think much about it. I mean, who would have ever guessed that Mike Collier—the Mike Collier…my Mike Collier—would end up at a newspaper here in Whittier? The town’s what? Fifty thousand people, tops? The Mike I’ve known and despised would have never settled in a place like this. Not enough people here to railroad, not enough action or sensationalism, which is what he thrives on.”

“So are you gonna stay?” Rachel Perkins asked. “Even with Mike there?” Rachel was Lilly’s best friend, the one she’d met on the first day of first grade and spent some part of almost every day with, in one way or another, ever since. “And if you do stay, am I gonna have to come to Whittier to make sure you don’t you-know-what again with Mike? Because you know how you are about him.” She laughed. “And I know how you are about him even if you won’t admit it, which you won’t. And I’m betting doing you-know-what with you-know-who has been on your mind a time or two already. Hasn’t it?”

“No,” Lilly snapped. She opened the fridge and pulled out a bowl of last night’s leftover tuna noodle casserole and sniffed it just to be sure. “How I used to be isn’t how I am now. The first time between Mike and me was, well…” She popped the casserole in the microwave oven and set the timer for a minute. “Lust,” she admitted. “I was twenty-two and stupid, and he was twenty-four and convincing.”

“Convincing, Lil? You mean drop-dead, don’t you? ’Cause he was, and you almost did drop dead every time he looked at you. Remember? And I’m betting he still is drop-dead, maybe even more than he used to be. Is he?”

“Well, he was pretty cute, and I suppose you could say he still is, in an older sort of way,” Lilly admitted grudgingly. Pretty cute, pretty sexy—actually the sexiest thing she’d ever met in her life. Then and now. And back then all he’d had to do was crook his finger and she’d gone running. Good thing she’d taken off those track shoes the second time they’d…Yeah, yeah. Another big mistake, second time around. But the shoes were off now for sure.

“Pretty cute?” Rachel asked. “It’s pheromones, Lil. He emits them and you can’t control yourself. You just sniff them right in, you know that. And if you ask me, you always liked sniffing them in,” she said. “And yeah, I know it wasn’t love, at least that’s what you told me a billion times. But if it wasn’t love, it was certainly something like it, and I voted for love back then. Still do.”

The microwave dinged and Lilly popped open the door. Her leftovers were steamy, so she let them sit while she trudged over to the fridge for…She opened the door, looked for and found the rest of a salad left over from the night before. If it wasn’t wilted beyond recognition, it would suffice as the remainder of her dinner. If it was wilted, she’d eat crackers. “It was a mistake, okay? A mistake and I learned my lesson, especially the second time. I mean, we had a couple of drinks and yes, I suppose I was still attracted to him—then, not now. But that was a long time ago.”

“And you’ve gone out with how many men since a long time ago?”

Lilly plunked the salad down on the kitchen table and returned to the microwave for her tuna noodle. “Dozens,” she lied. “I just forgot to tell you.”

“Well, girlfriend, you don’t lie about that any better than you lie to yourself about Mike. And I’m betting you’re already getting that same old tingly thing for him like you used to.”

“Am not.”

“Sweetie, tell yourself anything you want. But I know the truth and I say go for it. Most people don’t get a third chance.”

“The only thing I’m going for is my tuna casserole, which is getting cold.”

Rachel issued a deliberate huff of futility into the phone, one meant to be heard across the fifty miles between them, and one Lilly knew well. Then she did it a second time for effect.

“Knock it off, Rach,” Lilly grumbled. “I’m fine, dandy. Impervious.”

“School doesn’t start for a couple weeks, Lil. I’ve got all my lesson plans together for the first semester, so I’m free to come chaperon you two, or nag or keep you out of the line of his pheromones, if that’s what you intend on doing.”

“I don’t need you to chaperon, or nag,” Lilly stated flatly. “I’m fine.”

“I’d give you my opinion of what you really are, but you’d hang up. So I’m going to shut up and let you go eat. Just watch out for the pheromones, if that’s what you really want, and those are my last words on the subject of Mike Collier. Now I’m going to sit in a dark corner and wonder why I don’t have somebody in my life who’s as crazy about me as he is about you.” Before Lilly had a chance at a comeback, Rachel had clicked off.

Lilly’s casserole was barely warm by the time she got around to it, and as she speared a chunk of celery, she punched into her voice mail. “This is your mother—” as if she didn’t recognize her mother’s voice “—calling to remind you not to forget to send something for Aunt Mary’s birthday next week. Kisses, sweetie.” Beep. “If you’re in the market for replacement windows, call—” Beep. “Lilly, how about stopping by Saturday evening for drinks and hors d’oeuvres. I’m having a few people over around seven.” That from Ezra Kessler, her former law school professor and the person who’d recommended her for the pro tem job. Beep. Then a message from…no, not Mike! “Look, Lilly. I need to see you…need to see you…need to see you.…” She listened to it, then listened again. And the third time she listened her appetite quit, so she sat the bowl of casserole down on the floor for Sherlock, her basset hound.

In spite of the doughy lump of dread shaping in her stomach, Lilly’s heart skipped a beat. Headache time…need an aspirin and…She hit the redial button on her phone. “Rach, help!

3

Just when she was finally dozing off from Friday night—Saturday morning!

IT WAS BRIGHT AND EARLY Saturday morning, just a little after seven, when Lilly, still bleary-eyed and fuzzy-brained, stumbled to the front door and threw it open, only to be greeted by Mayor Lowell Tannenbaum waving a newspaper at her. He was tapping his left size-thirteen frantically on the concrete, holding the headlines straight out in front of him so she couldn’t see his face. But she knew it was him from the overall testy disposition circling around him like a swarm of hungry mosquitoes. “I think we could have a real problem here, Judge Malloy,” he screeched from behind the newspaper.

He could have started off with a friendly little hello, Lilly thought, or “Excuse me for barging in at this ungodly hour.” Or “I’ve brought you a cup of Starbucks to drink as we go over a serious problem.” That one would have been her choice. But no. He was straight to the point, snarling and snapping like a churlish Chihuahua. On the bright side, that did clear the fuzz right out of her brain.

“Just look at the headlines about—” his whole body shook in rumbling fury “—about what you’ve done.”

Lilly did look, not surprised about what she saw. Journalist Jailed For Illegal Parking. “So I made the headlines.” She yawned. She’d expected to. She was dealing with Mike Collier, after all. This was his norm. Not making headlines would have been the unexpected. “What’s the problem?” Other than the fact that she wasn’t ardently engaged in her every Saturday morning Starbucks fix.

“Read on,” the mayor snapped, shaking the paper.

Lilly snatched it out of his hand, pushed her hair out of her eyes and glanced at the first paragraph.

In a turn of events that shocked the entire city to its very core, Journal owner and investigative reporter, Mike Collier, was jailed Friday for failure to pay the fine for several parking tickets.

“Several?” she exclaimed. “Hello…try nineteen.”

“Just read,” Mayor Tannenbaum hissed.

“‘It’s a travesty of justice all the way around,’ Collier stated in an exclusive interview.”

Lilly shook her head. “The only travesty here is that it took nineteen tickets to get him into court. He should have been hauled in at five or six.”

“Keep reading.”

“According to Collier, ‘It’s a political move. I was robbed of my rightful parking space, then jailed because I had the courage to stand up for my convictions as well as my place to park.”’

“Poor baby,” Lilly laughed. “The courage to stand up for his convictions? I threw him in jail because he and his convictions were in contempt of court.” He’d refused to pay and he’d stepped over her yellow line.