Bending the Rules Read Free

have the same stake in the outcome of today’s meeting as the rest of you. But I was at the Hardwire when Jerry caught the kids, and frankly I was disturbed by how young they are. The officer who came in response to your call, Jerry, said this is their first brush with the law. Rather than see them thrown into the system I’d like to offer an alternate solution that directly relates to your question.”
    All the merchants involved in Friday night’s excitement gave her their undivided attention. De Sanges’s eyes narrowed.
    “I think it might benefit all of the businesses to give the kids something to keep them busy,” she said. “To provide them with an artistic outlet that I believe we’d find more palatable than tagging—which I freely admit I don’t get. At the same time we could teach them to take responsibility for their actions.”
    “How?” Garret asked.
    “First by having them clean up the tagging with a fresh coat of paint that they either have to provide themselves or work off by sweeping or handling other odd jobs for the businesses they defaced.”
    “I like that so far,” Penny said thoughtfully. “Except Marlene’s place is brick, so how does that benefit her?”
    “There are gels and pastes that dissolve paint from brick, and the same rules would apply—they’d supply whatever’s needed.”
    Almost everyone nodded—including Jerry. But he also pinned her with a suspicious look. “So where does the ‘artistic outlet’ part come in?”
    Poppy knew this was where things could go south. But it wasn’t for nothing she’d grown up with parents who got involved in causes on a near-daily basis. Not to mention the way her idea tied in to her own personal passion: bringing art to at-risk kids. Drawing a deep breath, she gave Jerry her best trust-me smile, then quietly exhaled. “I propose we keep them off the streets by letting them paint a mural on the south side of your building.”
     
    O H , FOR CRI’SAKE . Jase leaned back in his chair and examined the woman he had privately labeled the Babe. Which, okay, wasn’t exactly a hardship since the whole package—that lithe body, exotic brown eyes and cloud of curly Nordic-pale hair—was very examinable.
    He knew from experience, however, that she was a pain in the ass. And didn’t it just figure? She was a damn bleeding-heart liberal to boot.
    Earlier, when he’d walked in and seen her chatting up one of the guys in this group of small-business owners, you could have knocked him off his feet with a blade of grass. He hadn’t understood why she was here, since as far as he knew she wasn’t a merchant herself. Hey, as far as he could see, she didn’t do anything useful. Of course, since he had firmly resisted the urge to run a check on her after their previous run-in, he could be wrong about that.
    In any case, the president of the Merchants’ Association had explained it when he’d said that Calloway was a board member.
    Well, of course she was. He should have figured that out for himself after meeting her and her two rich-girl buddies last fall, when they’d used their connections with the mayor to have him yanked off a job where an old lady had been hospitalized by a mugger in order to look for their missing tea towels.
    Okay, so it had turned out to be more than that—a lot more. But contrary to the Babe’s accusation that he couldn’t be bothered to do his job, he had been following the exact letter of the law when he’d told her there wasn’t much he could do for them. But he’d nevertheless been digging into Gordon Ives’s background when he got the call that a patrol officer had just arrested the man for another break-in at the Wolcott mansion—this one involving a threat against Jane Kaplinski’s life.
    All of which had squat to do with today’s situation. He listened for a moment as Calloway outlined her harebrained scheme. He kept waiting for someone to shoot it down, but when he instead saw several of the