not taking advantage,” he protested. “Just trying to get by the best I can.”
“When I went to jail I sure wasn’t offered anything like this just to get by.” Lilly said.
Fritz gasped. “Oh my God! Did they make you wear orange with your red hair?”
Ignoring Fritz, Lilly continued, “Remember that jail cell, Mike—the one I shared with a prostitute, a shoplifter and an ax murderer? One toilet, one sink, two bunk beds and no blueberry muffins.”
Mike grinned, holding out a muffin through the bars. “She was a husband beater, not an ax murderer. And if I recall, you were there…what? Two hours?”
“Three. Three hours longer than I should have been. And get that muffin out of my face before I add the charge of bribing a judge.”
Pulling it back, Mike took a bite, then strolled casually over to his cot and sat. “So what brings you to my neck of the cell block, Lilly? Feeling guilty about something…like throwing an innocent man in jail?”
“Yeah,” Fritz said. “You bully!”
She glanced over at Fritz and gave him her best bully frown, which browbeat him back to his work. “Shouldn’t that be your department, Mike? Feeling guilty? Especially after what you did to me?”
“You too, sweetie?” Fritz chimed in again. “Want to know what he did to me? He dragged me out of the middle of the best date I’ve had since 1997, and just when we were…” He stopped in the nick of time, biting his quivering lower lip.
Trying to force a little bit of sweetness into her smile, Lilly gestured to Juanita Lane, who was stationed down the hall at a desk, her feet propped up on a plastic step. She was reading the morning paper, drinking a Starbucks, munching on a fresh blueberry muffin. “Could you get someone to remove this stuff from the hallway, please?” she asked, pointing first to the desk, then Fritz.
“And you would be who?” Juanita asked in a blasé tone, in between bites.
“I would be the judge who put Mr. Collier here, and I would be the judge who prefers to see my prisoners treated like prisoners, not houseguests.”
Juanita gave her a lackadaisical once-over. “Most of the judges who come in here are dressed like judges,” she said. “Guess I didn’t take you to be one, not in…” She didn’t finish the sentence. It was implied. Not in jeans, a T-shirt and all that untethered red hair. “Give me a couple of minutes, Your Honor. I’ll see what I can do.” Grumbling, Juanita picked up her coffee instead of the phone.
“You’re taking away my secretary, Lilly?” Mike said, shaking his head, sighing even though the sparkle in his eyes betrayed the tease. “You would rob me of my only tie to civilization? My only means of making a living?”
“Should I take a break, Mike?” Fritz asked, glaring at Lilly. “Come back later, when she’s gone?”
“You do that, sweetie,” Lilly said, spinning around to shut the lid of the laptop. “Take a break, but don’t come back. Mike’s office is closed for the weekend.”
“Is that okay, Mike? Can she do that?”
“She’s the law in these parts, Fritz. Guess she can do pretty much what she wants.”
“What I want?” Lilly sputtered, watching Mike fall back into a pile of pillows on his cot. One pillow was issued per jail cot, but he had at least ten. “Looks to me like you’re the one who’s getting to do pretty much what you want.”
“What I wanted was to spend today getting out the Sunday edition,” he commented, kicking off his shoes. “So far we have two stories—one about a trash fire over on Elm Street that spread to a pile of tires. Probably my lead, since the story about the scanner at Gilroy’s Market going wacky and charging Mrs. Patterson $790 for a can of cling peaches doesn’t have quite as much edge to it…unless you’re Mrs. Patterson.”
Waiting until Fritz had gathered his belongings—name-plate, picture of his poodle and a bud vase with a single rosebud—and trotted away, Lilly finally pulled Fritz’s office chair up to the bars and sat. “I’m not even going to ask what happened to you, Mike—why you ended up doing stories on cling peaches—because frankly, I don’t care. And I don’t care that you can’t park your car outside your office, or that your Sunday edition won’t get out. But what I do care about is the way you’re mocking not only me, but the whole judicial system here in Whittier. And that’s so like you… ‘Judge Malloy may have been within her legal right to sentence me to jail, but all I can say to the good citizens of Whittier is, better not cross over her line or you may end up here, too.”’
“That’s why I’m here, isn’t it? For crossing your line?”
“You crossed over my line years ago, Mike. Problem was I couldn’t do anything about it back then.” She grinned wickedly. “Times sure have changed, haven’t they?”
“And you’re really liking the feel of all that power, aren’t you?” He gave her a lazy grin. “Didn’t expect it from you, Lilly. But all that power sure makes you hot and sexy.”
“What?” she sputtered, caught off guard until she realized the voice was back. Like she really needed that and Mike Collier at the same time—those disobedient little innuendos, naughty little suggestions, popping in and out in all the wrong places. Another one of those Mike Collier consequences.
“I said I didn’t expect it from you.”
Shutting her eyes, taking in a deep breath, she opened them again slowly, then said, “You may not have expected it from me, Mike, but that’s the way I am now. Older and a whole lot wiser.”
“With perky breasts.”
She gulped. “Huh?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
Drawing in another deep breath, she continued. “The thing with you, Mike, is that you take advantage because you can. Just look at this place—the desk, Bambi the boy secretary—”
“Fritz,” he corrected.
“Fritz and blueberry muffins. You always get away with it. Always have and you expect that you always will. Well, it’s my turf this time, and no more getting away with it.”
“So what you’re giving me here is the this-town-ain’t-big-enough-for-the-both-of-us speech?” Mike crossed one leg over the other and cupped his hands behind his head. “Get outta town or else.…”
“Indianapolis has three-quarters of a million people and it’s not big enough for the both of us,” she quipped. “I’ve got a good start here and you’re already messing it up. I own a nice little house, have a good job, and I’m trying to find some roots.”
“At least you have a house. I’m sleeping underneath my printing press. And I have a boy secretary named Bambi—”
“Fritz.”
“Think they’ll mind if I take some of these pillows home with me?”
“See how you are?” She huffed out an impatient sigh. “Always trying to avoid the subject.”
