And waited.

And waited.

“Jesus Christ, get in the goddamn car!”

Another family walked up and stopped to talk with the first family. That did it. She had neither the patience to wait for the Cleavers’ conversation to end nor the inclination to hike from the farthest reaches of the concrete parking lot in high heels. Nor the need to. She whipped the Lexus around to the front row and into a handicapped parking space, cut the engine, retrieved a blue handicapped permit from the console, and hooked it onto the rearview mirror.

She was not physically handicapped.

In fact, as every married man passing by couldn’t help but notice when she exited the sedan, Elizabeth Brice was physically fit and quite beautiful; her makeup and jet black hair remained perfect even after a long day in court; and her slim figure and shapely legs were showcased by her tailored suit with the short skirt. She always wore short skirts to trial.

Elizabeth Brice had graduated first in her class at Harvard Law, but she had learned the hard way that female lawyers do not win trials on brains and hard work alone. Women needed an edge, something extra to take into court with them, something to level the playing field, especially a female lawyer from New York trying to win in a Texas courtroom: the old joke that Texas had the best football players, politicians, and judges money could buy was no joke. Consequently, bench trials were more financial negotiation than courtroom drama-negotiations the good ol’ home boys inevitably won.

But jury trials were crap shoots. There was simply no way to predict what a jury of twelve bored and biased citizens being paid minimum wage would do. Thus, most lawyers hated jury trials; but Elizabeth A. Brice, Esq., loved them. Because she had an edge that no bald pudgy down-home Southern-fried good ol’ boy lawyer could possibly compete with in front of a jury: short skirts. Really short skirts that for the past two weeks had revealed her long, lean, StairMastered legs to the all-male all-moron jury that had spent more time examining her than the prosecution’s damning evidence.