Heat Wave by Judith Arnold

be right.
    “Knock-knock.” Annie, the firm’s paralegal,
cracked his office door open and swept inside, her slim laptop
tucked under her arm. “I finally got Jerry Felton to agree to let
the bank release his account records for the past three years. It
wasn’t easy. I think I deserve a raise.”
    “Absolutely,” Caleb shot back. “When the
firm gets a gusher of income, we’ll discuss it.” He could have
increased the firm’s income by charging Meredith for taking care of
her citation—but not by enough to bump Annie’s pay. “When can I
access his bank accounts?”
    “Felton said he’d go into the bank tomorrow
and sign a release. Let’s hope he actually does.”
    Caleb peered up at his trusty assistant. As
always, she looked unruffled, her plain brown hair held back from
her face with a barrette, her crisp white slacks and bright green
polo shirt lending a decidedly preppy flair. “Is there a chance he
won’t?”
    “He gave me a song and dance about his loss
of privacy. I told him he’d lose a lot more privacy if he wound up
in prison. I told him he’d have to go to the bathroom in his cell,
without a door. Everyone would see him sitting on the can. I think
I scared the stuffing out of him.”
    Caleb grinned, but that stubborn, distracted
wedge of his mind wandered off again. “Did you ever get a song
stuck in your brain?” he asked.
    Annie placed her laptop down on a corner of
his broad oak desk and settled into one of the upholstered chairs
facing him. “Are we talking about any song, or a particular
song?”
    “‘ Heat Wave,’” he told her.
“I think it was a Motown hit, back in the sixties.”
    “Oh, sure—I know that song. Linda Ronstadt
did a cover of it. My mother’s a huge Linda Ronstadt fan. ‘Burning
in my heart,’” she sang.
    “That’s the one.”
    “How did it get stuck in your brain? Are you
listening to oldies radio these days?”
    Caleb shook his head. “I was in the Faulk
Street Tavern the other day, and it played on that jukebox against
the wall there.”
    “Oh.” Annie grew serious, her dark eyes
widening with something that could be interpreted as alarm. “The
magic jukebox.”
    “What?”
    “The Faulk Street Tavern jukebox. It’s
magic.”
    Caleb snorted.
    “Seriously. They say that sometimes it’ll
play a song that casts a spell on someone in the room.”
    Stifling his skepticism, he asked, “What
kind of spell?”
    “I don’t know. You can’t control what it
will play, and you can’t control if it casts its spell on you. It
never cast a spell on me.”
    Caleb wasn’t given to mysticism or woo-woo
crap. His only interest in magic was figuring out how tricks were
performed. Sleight of hand, distraction, razzle-dazzle showmanship,
special equipment—a sleeve with a pocket stitched into it that held
colorful scarves, or a sword with a retractable blade, or a stacked
deck of marked cards. He could appreciate a good performance. But
he sure as hell didn’t believe in magic.
    “Then again,” Annie needled
him, “unlike some people, I don’t hang out in bars.”
    “I don’t hang out in bars, either,” Caleb
said, hating the defensive edge in his voice. “I was there only
because our air conditioning wasn’t working.”
    “And the only place you could think of with
working AC, in the entire county, just happened to be a bar.”
    “I wanted to go to Felton’s office, but he
didn’t want to be seen talking to a lawyer there,” Caleb explained.
“He was the one who suggested that we meet at the tavern.”
    “Right.” Annie’s lips curved
in a mischievous grin. “They don’t call that lawyers’ organization
the American Bar Association for nothing.”
    “Ha ha.” As if Caleb hadn’t heard that
joke—and a million other lawyer jokes—plenty of times before.
“Forget about the raise, Annie. You’ve just un-earned it.”
    “I wasn’t holding my breath,” she said with
a shrug, opening her laptop and tapping a few keys. “Sheila