Bending the Rules (3 page)

“Yeah, they start ’em young these days,” he agreed.

“It’s not as if they committed a violent crime—they didn’t mug an old lady or attempt to rob someone at gunpoint at the ATM machine.” Her eyes narrowed. “Or commit a burglary of any kind,” she said with slow thoughtfulness, and he could almost smell the circuits burning as she followed that thought to its logical conclusion.

“They didn’t commit a burglary,” she repeated, gazing around the table at the other occupants. Then she looked him dead in the eye. “So why are you sitting on this panel, again?”

Excellent question. When Greer had offered to put his name in for the mayor’s task force he’d given his lieutenant an immediate and firm “Thanks, but no thanks.” Then, like an idiot, he’d let Murphy—the old cop who had stepped in years ago to take him in hand before the de Sanges genes could screw him up entirely—talk him into changing his mind. Murph had insisted that if Jase wanted to wear those lieutenant bars himself someday—which he did—he needed to start making his name known to the powers that be. And a good way to do that was to be part of these task forces—even if this particular one was more about election-year public relations than the war on crime.

So here he sat, proving once again that no good deed goes unpunished.

Not letting his thoughts show, however, he merely met her suspicious gaze with the cool straightforwardness of his own, evincing none of his reluctance to be part of this dog-and-pony show. “Because this is how we so often see it begin. Baby street punks grow up to be full-fledged street punks. Today it’s tagging or stealing some other kid’s lunch money at school—if they even bother to show up at school, that is.”

“So perhaps we should make that a condition of my proposal. No school, no participation in the art project.”

Slick, he thought with unwilling admiration, but said as if she hadn’t spoken, “Tomorrow it’s mugging some little old lady in the parking lot at Northgate.” Pulling his gaze away from the Babe’s, he included the entire table of merchants in his regard. “Or right here in your own community.”

Okay, so maybe he was overstating the case a little, adding a dash of drama to get his point across. He was so tired, however, of watching punks bend the rules and not merely not be called on it but get special treatment for their efforts as well. That was just bogus. And it happened too often.

Still, he was surprised at the impact his words had. The business owners’ voices started buzzing around the table as they discussed the repercussions of allowing hardened criminals into their neighborhood business sector.

Wait a minute. His brows snapped together. Had he given them that impression, that the boys in this case were hardened criminals? Jesus, de Sanges, the Babe is right about that much at least. They’re kids who committed their first offense.

As if she could read his thoughts, she repeated to the group around the table, “They’re kids, you guys. Barely past puberty kids without a single police record between them. Please keep that in mind.”

“I’m keeping in mind that Detective de Sanges said that’s how all street punks start,” the man who had been introduced as the manager of Ace Hardware said.

“I didn’t say all,” Jase disagreed. “But I do see enough juvenile offenders to make it one factor to consider.”

“Surely,” Poppy insisted, “most of those that you see are involved in an actual robbery or mugging.”

“True. Most—but not all—are.”

“Does anyone else have an argument, either pro or con, that they’d like to throw out for discussion?” Garret asked.

“I’d just like to reiterate that these are kids who have never been in trouble with the law,” Poppy said quietly. “I’m not saying let them skip out of their obligations. Just, please, let’s not be the ones to give them their first police record.”

“Anyone else?” Garret asked. Getting no response, he said, “Does anyone plan on pressing charges?”

When no one said anything to that, either, he said, “I’ll take that as a provisional no.” He turned to Poppy. “Can I hear an official proposal?”

She straightened her shoulders, which had temporarily slumped. Shook back hair so thick and curly the entire mass quivered. “I propose we teach the three boys who tagged your businesses a sense of accountability by making them cover or remove the vandalized areas with paint and/or paint dissolvers that they provide at their own expense. I further propose—”

“Let’s do this one motion at a time,” Garret interrupted. He looked around the table. “Would anyone like to second that?”

“You can’t just turn kids that young loose with buckets of paint and a few brushes and hope for the best,” Jerry said to Poppy. “Are you willing to supervise the project?”

Jase figured this was where her idealism would meet the reality of giving up her salon appointments or charity boards or however she spent her days in order to ride herd on three kids who—if his own experience was anything to go by—would be far from grateful.

He sat back, waiting to hear how she planned to get out of it.

But she merely gave Jerry a serene dip of her head. “Yes.”

“I’ll second the motion, then.”

Garret looked at Jase. “Since we invited your and Poppy’s opinions, we agreed to give you both a vote in this as well.”

He was too astounded by the way Calloway had busted his expectations to respond.

Garret turned his attention back to his group. “All in favor?”

Poppy and seven of the eleven merchants raised their hands.

“Against?”

The remaining four raised their hands. Jase abstained.

“The ayes have it.” Garret gave Poppy, whose smile was so bright Jase was tempted to whip out his shades, an avuncular smile. “I take it you have more to say?”

“Yes. I further propose we take this opportunity to teach these boys a more constructive way to decorate the buildings in their neighborhood. A way that, in the end, will benefit the entire community by giving us something we’ll all enjoy looking at, and incidentally perhaps give them the self-esteem to redirect their creative urges in a more acceptable direction.”

“Again, I have to ask,” Jerry said. “You supervising?”

“Yes.”

“I second the motion,” Penny said.

“All in favor?”

Poppy and five merchants—one of them Jerry, the owner of the building she proposed the kids paint—raised their hands.

Garret looked around the table expressionlessly. “Against?”

The six remaining merchants raised their hands, and all eyes turned to Jase to break the tie.

He should abstain again and let them fight it out among themselves. What the hell did he care if they rewarded these kids?

Except…

He knew from personal experience what chaos could come from bending—never mind breaking—the rules. He fought the temptation to do so every day and saw no reason to pass that temptation down to another generation. Teach them young to stay on the straight and narrow—that was his motto.

Raising his hand, he threw in with the against group.

CHAPTER TWO

Well, there’s a perfectly good fantasy blown to hell.

“I
CANNOT
believe I was attracted to that stiff for even a minute!” Poppy dumped her big tote onto the floor of Brouwer’s Café, a pub that specialized in international beers. Pulling a chair away from the table Ava had scored near the long wood-topped bar, she dropped into it.

“What stiff?” Ava demanded over the raised voices of the crowd around them.

“Poppy!” Arriving at the table almost on her heels, Jane gave her an incredulous look. “You beat me here. How did that happen? You’re never on time.”

“She’s mad at some stiff,” Ava said. “It must have motivated her.”

“Yeah, I gathered as much when you called.” Jane hooked her bag over the chair rail and sat down, giving Poppy a concerned once-over. “That you’re seriously hacked off, that is. What gives?”

At the thought of what—or rather who—“gave,” her heart sped up and her hands wanted to clench. She flattened them against the wooden tabletop. “Guess who’s on the committee with me?”

Ava leaned into the table. “What committee?”

“The one to do with those kids who were caught tagging the businesses she designs boards for,” Jane reminded her.

“Oh, yeah. Sorry. You’ve got so many irons in the fire these days that I forgot about that for a sec. How did it go? Not great, I’m guessing.”

“Not great.” Her involuntary laugh tasted bitter and her fingers curled in toward her palms. “Oh, trust me, it was a tad worse than not great. It was a damn cluster f—”

The waitress, who’d had to weave her way through the throng of power-hour drinkers to reach their table, arrived just as she was about to cut loose with a truly grand-scale vent. “Get you ladies a drink?”

“I’d like the Leavenworth Blind Pig Dunkel-thing,” Ava said.

“Weizen,” the waitress supplied. “Dunkelweizen.”

“Yes. Thank you. One of those.”

“I’ll take a Fuller’s.” Poppy drew a deep breath and blew it out, but she was still so irate she barely glanced up from her hands, which were once again firmly splayed against the tabletop, her fingertips white from her effort not to make a fist. “And a large pomme frites with the pesto aioli.”

“Ooh. We’re eating, too?” Ava wiggled with pleasure. “I’ll have the Lembeck salad.”

“I’ll just have a Diet Coke with a lime, please,” Jane said.

Ava’s head whipped around to stare at her friend. “That’s it?” she demanded as the waitress nodded and moved on to the next table. “Please tell me your skinny butt’s not on a diet.”

“My skinny butt is not on a diet,” Jane obediently parroted. Then she grinned, her face radiant with newlywed happiness. “In fact it’s spuds-and-sausage night at Dev’s folks and Mama K. hates it when I don’t eat enough to burst. I’m just reserving all the stomach room I can.”

That jerked Poppy out of her dilemma, and she grimaced at her own self-absorption. “You have dinner plans with your in-laws and you showed up for me?”

“Well…sure. We’re the Sisterhood, aren’t we?” Scooping her shiny brown hair behind her ears, she laughed. “Besides, this isn’t exactly altruism at its finest. The Kavanaghs never eat until around seven anyway, and Devlin’s riding over with his brother.”

“Which one? Bren? How’s he doing?” Jane’s husband, Dev, had returned from the Continent last year to pitch in at Kavanagh Construction, the family business, when his oldest brother’s cancer treatment called for chemotherapy. Jane and he had met when he’d headed the Wolcott mansion remodel, a project so huge it was still ongoing several months later. They’d had a rocky beginning and Poppy loved seeing her so flat-out happy.

“No, Finn, actually. But Bren is doing great. He’s finally done with chemo, his oncologist is very optimistic they got all the cancer and his hair’s even starting to grow back in.”

“That’s excellent news.”

Ava flashed a smile. “I saw him the other day and he’s got downy fuzz all over his head. If he wasn’t such a big guy, he’d look like a newborn chick.” Then she pushed back from the table. “I’ve gotta use the ladies’.” She leveled a stern look on Poppy. “Don’t you dare spill a single juicy detail until I get back.”

“There are no juicy details,” she muttered to her friend’s departing back. Her thoughts turned inward to the day’s earlier events, however, and she wasn’t even aware of watching Ava cross the room. Only in the most absentminded way did she track the redhead’s progress by all the male heads that swiveled to watch her go by.

“I never get tired of seeing that,” Jane said.

“What?” she asked. Then realizing what she was staring at, she nodded. “Oh. That. Yeah, I know.” They grinned at each other. Because fueled by eat-your-heartout, revenge-inspired determination after being the butt of a humiliating bet when she was eighteen, Ava had changed a lifetime of bad eating habits. She’d refused to call it a diet, though, and she hadn’t made the mistake so many full-figured women did of trying to whittle herself down to a toothpick-thinness unsuited to her bigger-boned frame. She’d stopped actively losing weight once she’d reached a size twelve—or what would be a fourteen, they liked to tease her, if she bought her clothing in the less pricey shops that the rest of them patronized.

But the actual size wasn’t the point. Ava had curves, she wasn’t afraid to accent them and men all but tripped over their tongues whenever she went by.

Apparently she didn’t believe in wasting time when there was potential gossip in the offing, either. Back in under five minutes, she demanded even as she took her seat, “So let’s hear it. Who’s the stiff? And what on earth did he do to get you so bent out of shape? This is not like you.”

“Yes, well, you can thank Jason de Sanges for my mood,” Poppy said through her teeth. “That rat bastard wrecked—”

“Detective Sheik?” Jane snapped upright. “That’s who’s on your committee?”

“Oh, no. Not now.” Her eyes slitted. “Thanks to him, the committee is no longer necessary. He torpedoed my wonderful plan.” She explained how he’d slanted the information he’d given the committee to make the three teens sound like hardened criminals.