February 28, 2012

From “13 Counts” by Harry Lemuel Franks

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He never wanted for business, and the kids’ parents tended to pay well–very well. Helicopter parenting did wonders for his bank account as investment bankers fretted that their children might acquire criminal records for youthful hijinks before they could take over the family business.

Sometimes, though…

Stevens looked through the police report. His latest client had gotten into an altercation at a house party in the student ghetto (over a boy) and she’d been caught trying to cut her romantic rival’s brake lines with a pair of scissors. Red-handed, she had stabbed her discoverer in the leg with the aforementioned shears and fled in her car–in the presence of 8-10 witnesses, no less!–causing minor scrapes and damage to other vehicles in her wake. One of the witnesses had actually been a reporter for the student newspaper, allowing the incident to be blown up and lurid on the next day’s front page (“SOUTHERN MICHIGAN STUDENT STABBED IN ATTEMPTED MURDER”) with exclusive pictures.

The girl in question had blown a .10 when she’d been taken into custody–12 hours after the incident!–and been found carrying an aspirin bottle filled with Ecstacy and methamphetamines. So there were no less than 13 indictments or other charges facing the girl, and her father had literally faxed a blank check from his tri-state plumbing supply business that morning.

Stevens sighed, and began composing a short press release for the SMU student paper.

 

December 6, 2010

From “The Trintle Cases” by Logan G. Kellytrine

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Gerald looked at the mountain of paperwork and heaved a tired sigh. Estate law was never pretty, but it became geometrically less so the more heirs and more money was involved.

At least the content of the various briefs was somewhat unusual. In contrast to most intestate cases, which tended to be single people or those felled by thunderbolts in their prime, the Trintles had maintained no less than two wills among them–it was only their sudden and bizarre ends, one after the other, that brought the case to court.

Harvard Trintle, who’d pulled himself up from a family of twelve to dowager head of a major accounting firm, had died simply enough–he’d had a heart attack on his motor yacht, apparently while trying to heft a gas can. The unusual thing was where the yacht was berthed: the port of Aden in Yemen, nearly 8000 miles from Trintle’s registered port of Boca Raton, FL. Harvard’s will left 100% of his estate to his widow.

Agnes Trintle had thus inherited millions in cash and real estate…a fact which she had only learned two days after being committed by her only child. Agnes had apparently had a psychotic break, and had been brought in raving about how a being named “Repre Demanoni” was conspiring to send the children of Earth, including her son Harold, to the moon. This would, according to Agnes, revitalize the flagging lunar radiance at the cost of billions of innocent lives. She died not long afterwards, apparently after an allergic reaction to her medication–or, rather, the peanut butter that it had been hidden in. Her will left everything to Harvard, or–if he predeceased her–to Harold.

And Harold Trintle, the last of his line, had no will at all, being as he was only 35 years old and unmarried. He spent wildly of his parents’ cash, having apparently been kept on a rather tight leash up to that point. He had apparently perished in the crash of a newly-purchased Lamborghini on a road near Bristol some months later–“apparently” being the operative word because the car had been plastered against a cement barrier to such an extent that identification of the occupants was more art than science. As an adoptee, Harold had no DNA to test against, though his personal effects were found in the car and he was booked into a local inn under the curious name “Finello Unsubject.”