As soon as Elise wanted a promise from me, I knew I wasn’t going to want to agree to whatever she was about to ask. That was the only reason she’d want a promise ahead of time. If the help she needed was something I wouldn’t normally object to, she’d have had no reason to insist on a promise up front.
But I also knew Elise well enough to know she wouldn’t ask me to do anything immoral or illegal. Whatever she wanted might make me uncomfortable, but it wasn’t likely to get me arrested.
I’d promise, with one caveat. “I promise I’ll help as long as it doesn’t require me to lie to Mark.”
Elise’s lips narrowed to the point where they almost disappeared. She hadn’t wanted her family to know anything about what was going on, but she’d also hated me when we first met, in part because she thought I’d mistreated Mark. She couldn’t hold it against me that I wasn’t going to lie to my future husband about whatever she was bringing me in to.
Her lips relaxed. “Fine. It’s not something you’d be able to hide from him anyway.”
She didn’t reiterate her request that I keep this a secret from the rest of the family, so hopefully she’d given up on that idea as well. Fair Haven was too small a town to expect anything to stay top secret for long anyway.
“What do you need me to do?” I asked.
“Mom?”
Elise spun around, and I leaned sideways to see past her. Arielle bounced on her toes through the kitchen doorway, hair plastered against her face and a limp towel around her shoulders.
“Hi, Aunt Nikki.” She waved at me, then turned her attention back to her mom. “Can we have popsicles?”
Elise’s expression softened. It was almost like magic, watching her with her kids. All the hard lines in her face disappeared, and she always looked ten years younger.
Not that it surprised me. Her kids were smart, precocious, and two of the best-behaved munchkins I’d ever met. Even though I’d never met Elise’s ex-husband, they seemed to take strongly after the Cavanaughs. It still melted my heart hearing them call me Aunt Nikki. They’d begged for the privilege as soon as we announced our engagement.
Elise held up a finger. “You can split one. I don’t want you full for lunch.”
Arielle grinned and sprinted off. The towel flapped behind her like a cape.
Elise leaned against the wall. The fine lines were back in her face, more noticeable now than they had been before Arielle’s appearance. “Chief McTavish had to suspend me because I used police resources for personal reasons.”
She stated her infraction like she was reading from a police report.
Since she didn’t try to defend it, it had to be true. Using police resources for personal reasons could mean a lot of different things, though. “I get the feeling you weren’t photocopying coloring book pages on the copy machine.”
Elise shook her head. “I was looking into a case where I think the person charged with the crime is innocent.”
It could have been a lot worse. Basically, she’d gotten a slap on the wrist because she was spending work time and, potentially, other officers’ time to continue investigating a case the county believed no longer required police involvement. She’d probably also done background checks on other possible suspects. She must have spent a lot of time digging for it to result in a suspension rather than a reprimand—though, as she said, Chief McTavish also wanted to protect her from coming under suspicion of worse.
More interesting to me than what she’d done to get in trouble was why she’d done it. She’d have known she was taking a risk.
Elise liked to make things right. If she’d missed something or felt she’d been biased against the person they arrested, it made sense that she’d try to fix it now.
“Were you involved in the original investigation?”
“I wasn’t,” she said.
I waited for more, but nothing came. She’d angled her body subtly away from me. The blank expression of a trained police officer who wanted to give nothing away covered her face.
That line of questioning, clearly, was closed.
I’d leave it be for the moment. She still hadn’t told me how I played into all of this, but I had a sneaking suspicion. “Since you can’t investigate anymore, you want me to.”
“In a manner of speaking. He needs a lawyer.”
If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought it was a conspiracy, that my parents had bribed Elise. I did know better. She did not want Mark and me to move to DC. When we told her about Mark’s job, I thought she might cry, and Elise cried even less than I did.
My parents’ involvement aside, if she felt the man was innocent and she wanted him acquitted, I was the wrong person to hire.
“I’m not a good lawyer, Lise. I was never the lead on a case when I worked for my parents. I couldn’t string two coherent sentences together in front of a jury.”
Her left eyebrow arched up. “Everyone in the family knows your parents offered you your job back. They wouldn’t have done that if you’re as bad at it as you think.”
“They think I’ll get better with practice, which isn’t the same as saying I’m competent now.”
Her eyebrow stayed triangled. “Even if I believed that, which I don’t, any lawyer is better than him defending himself. That’s what he’s threatening to do. He says he can’t find another lawyer who’ll take his case, and he doesn’t trust the public defenders to believe he’s innocent and dig up the evidence to prove it. They’re too busy and jaded.”
Everyone was entitled to representation, but the number of things Elise had already withheld from me made me even more certain taking this case would be a terrible idea. “Why doesn’t he have a lawyer?”
“His lawyer quit. He said the case wasn’t one he could win.”
That I didn’t believe. No criminal defense attorney I knew turned down a paying client because they didn’t think they could win the case. In a lawsuit where you only got paid if your client won, maybe. But this wasn’t a lawsuit.
Elise hadn’t shifted position an iota, though, so she believed his story at least.
It seemed I wasn’t going to get the answers I needed from Elise. Nor was she going to be swayed by my arguments. “I’ll talk to him. I can’t take someone on as a client without their consent anyway. But that’s all I’m promising for now.”
Elise ran a hand over her ponytail as if she wished it was in a work bun. I’d always suspected the neatness of her attire for work gave her a sense of security and control.
“That seems fair,” she said.
“I want one more thing though.”
Elise’s eyes narrowed. “What?”
“One of those popsicles.”