Lucky Justice: 3 Crime Stories

By Teresa Hubley

Lady Justice and Lady Luck duke it out for the fates of 3 parties in search of the Lady “Fortune” in this story collection. In “Luck Be a Lady,” two escaped criminals have it made until they take the wrong turn. In “Let Them Eat Cake,” a hired killer considers one more risky job. In “the Desk Audit,” a team of investigators trails a fraudster ready to reply with force.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Teresa Hubley
• Release date: Feb 12, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458061324

Teresa Hubley

Teresa Hubley was born in Minneapolis and moved every couple of years after that, winding up in a handful of small Midwestern towns, suburban California and even west Africa. As an adult, she acquired a doctoral degree in anthropology and has lived most of her life in Maine, where she works in the health field. She usually has too many books to keep track of going at any time on her reading list. Favorite authors include Charles Dickens, E.M. Forster, Agatha Christie, Elizabeth Peters, and Dave Barry. Lunch out with Teresa and her family usually includes the reading of a few pages while the meal is delivered. When she's not reading or writing, she might be drawing, going for a long walk, or sneaking a guilty pleasure moment playing games on her tablet.

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Lucky Justice: 3 Crime Stories

Published by Teresa Hubley at Smashwords

Copyright 2011 Teresa Hubley

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Table of Contents

Luck Be A Lady

Let Them Eat Cake

The Desk Audit

The Tip

The Hand-Off

The Ride Into Twilight

The Showdown

Picking Up the Threads

The First Bite

Another Show

Threads Unraveled

The Tapestry Revealed

Luck Be A Lady

It may be that the Saturday night jailbreak was the first time Clayton Fawkes ever fooled anyone, which is exactly why he fooled them. Fawkes and his partner, Sven Robeson, were the only inmates in the county jail that night. The jailer, tired of spending his weekend nights shooting scrap-paper baskets in the bare, over lit office, was overjoyed by his cousin’s invitation to dinner and a movie. There was every chance that the big boss, Sheriff Langerhan, would not show up until 10ish the next morning. No one would be the wiser that the prisoners had been left to their own devices. And anyone who knew the case knew the devices weren’t too sharp.

Fawkes and Robeson had been in lock-up one week after their capture while robbing the county credit union. On film, they looked like just another pair of blank-eyed, low-life morons. Their eyes alone made them appear dull, having no shine to them and being half-shrouded by heavy lids. Both men were close to 6 feet tall, wore their blondish-brown hair in a shaggy mop and had recently tried their hands at growing beards. They looked like any one of a hundred or so high-school educated gas-pump jockeys in the county seat. The robbers had not planned much beyond, Give me all your money. They apparently never heard of a silent alarm and weren’t ready to return fire on the sheriff and his deputies. They also had a getaway car with not much spark. The whole thing culminated in a low speed chase that resulted in the robbers being run off the road into a ditch.

Given the facts, the jailer was supremely confident that Fawkes and Robeson would stay put all night. When he left, he paused to note their disposition. Both lay supine on their cots, Robeson asleep and Fawkes engrossed in an ancient copy of Popular Electronics from the jail’s vast trove of magazines.

As soon as the jailer was out the door, Fawkes jumped to his feet and stretched, tossing the magazine aside. Robeson sat up and turned towards him. They were in separate cells but had no plan to let that fact truly divide them. The two commenced to patient tinkering with the locks on the cell doors. Their tools were bent forks, secreted under their mattresses after a meal. They found the locks, like everything else in the jail, outmoded and easily overcome. The desk drawer where the jailer kept keys for the candy machine yielded nicely too, giving them access to a whole box of silver change and all the snack foods they could stuff in a bag. They traded prison jumpsuits for their own clothes, which they found stuffed in a box in the closet.

Likewise, the two found the sheriff’s old pick-up truck parked behind the jail and it posed them no problems. They were able to hot wire and turn over the truck’s engine in a very few minutes. Fawkes was careful, however, to pull out quietly, no lights, no sudden squeal of the tires. The truck coasted for a block before Fawkes dared turn the lights on.

Robeson bounced in his seat letting out a satisfied Yeah every time he hit. Eventually, however, he stopped and a puzzled look flowed onto his face.

Why do we keep turning? Robeson asked.

To keep the ‘County Mounties’ off our trail.

Where are we going?

The last place they’d look.

Where’s that?

That’s the beauty of it, Fawkes replied, grinning. I don’t even know myself. That means we won’t leave any clues!

Right, ‘cause we don’t have any! That is genius, man. You had me worried when they nailed us at the bank but I guess that was just their dumb luck. We really can outsmart those dopes.

Fawkes’ plan was