Burn

The other man just shrugged. "You find a way when it is for your kid. He is 18 now, this is our last summer together before he leaves for school."

The Attorney slapped his brother on the back. "Tell him I am sorry I missed his last game, but I will be there this Saturday, and I want him to hit me a homer."

The other man nodded. "You coming to dinner Saturday? Mom is mad you missed last week."

The attorney got a bigger grin. "If you saw the date I had last Saturday, you would have missed Moms dinner too." He paused for a second. "Maybe you will see her. Tell Mom I am bringing a date to dinner Saturday, and PLEASE, tell Mom no talk about more grandchildren."

A late model car pulled up to the curb. The man with no tie waved at his brother while opening the car door. "Sure, like that is going to happen."

++++

The big lawman's suitcoat was thrown over his chair back as his pecked away one fingered at his desktops keyboard. His large fingers had always been a problem, but computers allowed for much easier error correction then the oceans of 'liquid white out' he used in the old typewriter days.

A middle aged female, also with 'Law enforcement' written all over her ample fame, dropped into a chair beside his desk.

"You finishing up the paperwork on that cheating bitch arson case with that asshat attorney and his brother?"

The Detective never stopped typing as he answered. "It's all kabuki theater whenever a lawyer has his client involved. They cannot help themselves. Besides that Attorney is better than most, we actually coach in the same PAL baseball league together."

The female nodded. "I love how you keep throwing in the line about having a cheating wife. You and your high school sweetheart will be married... what 30 years next fall?"

"31" the big Detective grunted.

"Damn" The female whistled. "If you committed first degree murder, the parole board would have you out by now."

Still typing away, he replied "I might as well stay in the joint, I'd never find another women like her to put up with me."

"Ain't that the truth." The female agreed. "Wish I could find me a lady like her. I'd marry her in a heartbeat"

Not taking his eyes off the ancient CRT monitor he said. "Don't matter, you couldn't get married in this state anyway."

Now the female sat up straight in her chair. "Don't you get me started on those fuckwads at the State Capital."

The lawman broke in, he had heard this rant before. "Not my circus, not my monkeys." He said with a mischievous glint in his eye.

The lady saw what he was doing, and slapped his broad back. "You just love to get me wound up don't you?" She saw him swing over to a nearby printer, and changed her focus, picking up a deskplate on his desk. "You think the hubby did the fire and tuned up the loverboy?"

The Detective stacked the papers from the printer into a neat pile. "Of course the hubby did it, no doubt. But I am going tell the ASA this is a dog of a case. Too much background noise with the boyfriend and scummy wife. Lots of local villains involved, no one has any sympathy for insurance companies, or banks. Especially if they suffered no damage."

"What about wifey and Loverboy?"

The detective put on his suitcoat. "Seems like justice was served without our intervention. Loverboy is gonna heal, but Docs said his junk ain't gonna work like before. The city will seize and sell what's left of that torched hulk to pay for clean-up costs. Empty bank accounts from those two means she gets less then squat, plus the divorce papers have adultery listed as cause, Not that it will have any bearing on the divorce, but it will humiliate the wife when word gets out to her church, work, blah, blah.

He turned off his CRT monitor and shut down his PC. "I ain't wasting anymore taxpayer money on this one. There are real crimes that need attention with real victims. The ASA on this one barely has ink dry on his law degree, I'll advise him to drop it. He'll listen to my point of view. New pups are easy to train."

+++

"Hi Dad. How did it go?" The young driver asked as his father buckled his seat belt.

"You Uncle handled it all." He turned toward the young man driving. "I never told you I am sorry about the..our house burning down."

The youth just snarled. "Our house? You mean MOMS house don't you?" He began to use a high pitched female mimic. "Don't run in the house, don't play in the yard, you are ruining the carpet, getting the garden messy, you are bothering the plants, disturbing the grass."

The Father just laughed. "It was not that bad."

The young man paused to check his blind spot before answering. "Hell Dad, that wasn't a home, it was a museum, a tribute to herself. Why do you think I spend most of my time playing baseball or at my friends?"

Dad studied his son hard. "Yes, it was quite a fortunate coincidence that you and all your baseball gear and favorite clothing was at your friends house the night of the fire."

The young man blinked. "Um well, that's because there is not a lot of room at Grandpas with both of us staying there. Plus you know me and my friend, we um.. are going to the same school, so we were just like..prepacking.. you know."

His father pointed at some gauze wrapped around his sons arm peeking out of his long sleeve shirt. "Son, it's kinda warm to be wearing long sleeves, don't ya think?"

When the lad did not answer the older man continued. "You need to put a moisturizing antibiotic on that burn."

"What Burn!" The young man exclaimed, pulling down his sleeve. "I got injured while sliding in head first to third base last game!"

Dad look at his son. "That is not what your Grandma said." He picked up the boys cell phone attached to the cars dashboard by a clip, and started punching in numbers. "By the way I saw one of your favorite bats is missing from your collection."

Putting the Smartphone back into the dashboard holder, the Father addressed the driver. "I understand what happened and will not bring this up again, unless you wish to speak with me about 'it'".

He pointed at the hanging smartphone. "I have programmed your Uncles cell number as #1 on your speed dial. You will call him IMMEDIATELY if anyone from any law enforcement agency contacts you. You NEVER speak with anyone in authority about this without your uncle the attorney being present. You got that."

The boy stared straight ahead, but nodded.

+++++

The Detective reached over to remove the deskplate his female partner was tossing from hand to hand and placed it back on his desk. "Come on lets head out. My wife is gonna kill both of us if we are late for dinner again this week, you know how she looks forward to you joining us"

As he rounded the desk to leave, the big man touched the deskplate that had been a gift from his wife.

It read:

"If you can't change the world, at least embarrass the guilty"