Twenty pairs of feline eyes blinked at me.
“They’re used to being inside.” She hiccupped. “If the café closes down, they’ll have to go back outside in the cold and the snow, and they’ll never find forever homes.”
If I were anyone else, maybe the big, tearful brown eyes would have swayed me, but we lawyers were a sociopathic bunch.
“Hard pass.”
“Of course he will. Marius,” Aunt Frances said firmly and gestured to me. “Do your lawyer thing.”
The elderly woman turned to the stressed officer and said loudly, “Emmie has a lawyer now. You have to let her go.”
“I do?” Officer Girthman asked, confused.
“No!” one of the firefighters yelled and rolled his eyes as he and several other trooped in. The health inspector followed and began taking custody of all the cupcakes.
“Yes,” Aunt Frances insisted. “You need a warrant, or you can’t speak to her.”
I made a helpless gesture. “That’s not how any of this works.”
“Marius, I expected better of you.”
“Ow!” I yelped when Aunt Frances reached up to grab my ear.
“I paid a lot of money for you to go to law school. I need to see some results. There’s a good boy.” The elderly woman patted my cheek.
The police officer dragged Emmie to her feet. More officers were swarming in along with several bored firefighters put on crowd control.
“Can’t you blow something up, Emmie?” one of them begged.
“Poisoning your husband? Lame! There hasn’t been a fire all winter,” another firefighter joked then grinned when he saw me. “Hey, it’s Marius!”
“Luke.” I nodded, shaking his hand.
“Come from the big city to grace us with your presence? We should get a beer at the Christmas market after this.”
“He can’t,” Aunt Frances said. “He has a client to help.”
“Godspeed.” Luke saluted me then turned to grab a black cat off a shelf. “You aren’t supposed to be here, Salem.”
Resigned, I followed Aunt Frances as she power walked out of the café with the impromptu parade of police and senior citizens, down to the station along Main Street. For someone in her eighties, Aunt Frances was unreasonably spry.
Definitely has a lot more Christmases left in her. And I absolutely should have stayed in New York.
I hadn’t even gotten any coffee.
No one batted an eye at Moose perched on my shoulder, because people were carrying all sorts of random shit down Main Street. In one case, a whole family was carting what looked to be a drunken uncle, who saluted me with his beer can.
As we headed down the snowy street, where it looked like Santa Claus had gotten blackout drunk and vomited holidaycheer everywhere, I tried to get into my criminal-defense-attorney mindset.
Even though I had a cushy corporate position at Richmond Electric, where I oversaw multibillion-dollar buyouts and reviewed federal contracts, Aunt Frances refused to believe that was the job of a real lawyer. She said she had paid for me to go to law school, not be a secretary, because I didn’t look cute enough in a skirt for all that.
Aunt Frances and the seniors occasionally took a field trip to watch my pro bono criminal-defense cases in New York City. I’d take them to dinner on “that big lawyer salary,” during which they would give me helpful tips gleaned fromLaw and Ordermarathons.
“You don’t have any student loan debt,” Aunt Frances reminded me as I dodged tourists and locals. “You’re paying it forward. You remember Anya Pechowski?”
“No…”
“Yes, you do. You helped her son Alex get off on that mistaken-identity kerfuffle. She’s still so grateful. You’re a good person, and I know you can help Emmie.”
