The World According to Vince - Jane Harvey-Berrick Page 0,4

of weird how much she turned me on when she did that.

“Right,” I said, adjusting my pants as my trouser-snake sat up and took notice of Grace’s sweet face and glorious little titties.

“Stop staring at my chest!” she said crossly.

“Oh, yeah, sorry. It’s force of habit.”

She rubbed her forehead again. I hoped she didn’t have a headache.

“What time did you leave your condo?”

“Eight o’clock.”

She sighed and stared at the ceiling, before scratching a note on her legal pad. “And where did you go?”

“I was meeting this woman off Tinder at her hotel about 8.30pm. So we chatted for a bit, had a few drinks, did the business—twice—I had a quick shower and left.”

Grace stabbed at her notepad, leaving black squiggles all over it. Maybe lawyers were like doctors with their terrible handwriting.

“What time did you leave the hotel?”

“Nine o’clock.”

Her mouth dropped open. “You had sex twice and left the hotel half-an-hour after you arrived? Can anyone confirm that?”

I grinned at her. “Roxy could confirm it—she was counting her orgasms. Had to use both hands. To count, I mean.”

Grace tapped the pencil on the table in a fast, annoyed rhythm.

“And I mean, can anyone other than Roxy confirm what time you left the hotel?”

“Oh right, yeah. I asked the doorman about vegan restaurants in the area and he suggested a couple so I tipped him a twenty. He’ll remember me.”

She made a note of that, too, then looked up.

“And when you left the hotel, where did you go next?”

“Well, I was starving so I was going to check out one of the places the bloke at the hotel suggested, but I never got there.”

“Why was that?”

The anger reared up inside me again as I remembered what happened next.

“I was walking past this building and I could hear dogs barking, like really crying and upset. Turned out the place was an animal shelter but it’s not staffed at night. There was a notice on the door saying that they needed to re-home five of the dogs or they were going to be euthanized in 72 hours! That’s the fookin’ word they used, euthanized, like it wasn’t really murder. And all I could think was that those dogs needed to be saved! So I legged it over the wall, kicked open the door and started letting them out of their cages. That’s when the cops turned up.”

Grace stared at me, then looked down at my charge sheet.

“It says here that you’d gotten leashes on five of the dogs and had six puppies stuffed in the pockets of your jacket.”

“They were cold,” I said, leaning forward. “They were only little bugs, too small to put on leads.”

Grace’s lips moved like she wanted to say something, but the words didn’t come. Finally, she sighed.

“Vincent, what were you going to do with eleven adult dogs and six puppies?”

“Take them home with me,” I grinned at her.

She blinked several times. “And then what?”

“Ah, well, I hadn’t quite worked out that part, but I’m sure I could have re-homed them. Everyone loves dogs, right? Every family should have one—you can learn a lot from animals.”

She shook her head but I didn’t think she was disagreeing with me.

“Did you have any intention of selling them?”

“Course not!” I said, somewhat insulted. “I just wanted them to have a proper home, not live their lives in cages. It’s not right—they haven’t done anything wrong.” I had to swallow the lump in my throat. “It’s not their fault they got born at the wrong time in the wrong place.”

Grace’s eyes glistened.

“So, shall I tell the Judge that and he’ll let me go?” I asked.

Grace sighed again. “Oh, Vincent,” she said.

“That’s me name, don’t wear it out!” I grinned.

Grace didn’t smile. I wished she would—she had a smashing smile.

“Okay, here’s what’s going to happen. Tomorrow morning, you’ll be brought before a magistrate judge for an initial hearing. I’ll be there as your attorney, God help me. This is the arraignment and it’s when the judge decides if you’ll be held in prison or released on bail. You’ll also be asked to plead guilty or not guilty to the charges. I suggest, given the evidence, that you plead guilty to burglary and not guilty to larceny. The judge will post bail—we hope—and you walk out of there. The prosecutor won’t want his or her time tied up in court on this, so we’ll try to get it all down to plea bargaining. That means I try to persuade him or her of a lesser