I wake up to cat breath. Before me is the venomous stare of one hungry feline and the ominous cadence of a thumping tail. Delilah is Shane’s cat. She is staying at my place, though true to the laws of the jungle, what is hers is hers and what is mine is hers. Shane is off to “work” and I’m on vacation from the 9-to-5 hustle of the law firm. Contrary to assumptions, I am neither a secretary nor a paralegal. I am a lawyer, and I’ve worked both sides of the aisle of criminal law.

I slide the food dish in front of Delilah, who stares at it because God forbid, she should have to show a little gratitude to the “other” human. This Yin and Yang of domesticity with Shane living with me has demanded a lot of me. While I wait for the coffee to brew, I think it through. Relationships have never come easy to me. Men are threatened by an educated, successful woman. My own father couldn’t understand why I didn’t settle down, or become a teacher or a nurse, like so many of my girlfriends.

I don’t think I threaten Shane’s ego, although I wonder whether what I bank each month is an issue for him. I hope not. Shane says he understands, but I don’t think he does. I have to be a better lawyer than the men at the firm. I’m held to a different standard, while tolerating the sexist crap. I’ve had the C-word taped to my phone. I’ve been told that I stole a job that should’ve gone to another man. They say my looks have given me an advantage with judges and jurors. I am first in billable hours each month, yet I am called ‘honey’ or ‘sweetheart.’ I feel their eyes on me as I walk past their offices. They can all go to Hell.

I fish for a Pop-Tart and work the toaster. I have two items on my agenda today.

It’s a working vacation, and I promised Shane that I’d review the legal paperwork related to the case he’d taken. I wasn’t happy that he hadn’t told me about it, but I don’t hold it against him. Shane has The Itch. He’d given up the PI trade to manage his friend’s rental properties. The Meechum case offers him a break from the tedium of bookkeeping and phone calls. A guy like him can’t sit still, though I’m glad the job gives him a steady income and stops him from being shot at by his clientele or former colleagues in the Boston Police Department. Shane Cleary was Boston’s own Serpico, though he won’t talk about it, just like he won’t discuss his service in Vietnam.

I munch on the breakfast pastry and sip Juan Valdez’s brew.

The bankers boxes await me. It’s an intimidating case. The kid’s been convicted of murder after the two other defendants had fingered him for a plea deal. His fingerprints were on the murder weapon. I’ve told Shane that the best avenue for an appeal is to focus on the DA’s systematic exclusion of Blacks from the jury. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 said that Blacks could not be excluded from serving as jurors. However, federal law has allowed lawyers the right to peremptory challenges, which the DA in Meechum’s case utilized to exclude all but one Black man. No one mentions Black women. I had to remind Shane that women did not serve on any jury in Boston until 1950.

My second item of the day is to spend time with Shane’s friend Sylvia, who runs a soul food restaurant in Dorchester. Sylvia is John’s wife, another friend of Shane’s. While there, I might run into Lindsey, Shane’s surrogate father. He’s a professor who was stripped of his ivies because he’d been caught in flagrante delicto with a female student during office hours. Because of Lindsey, Shane can quote T.S. Eliot and Gerard Manley Hopkins. He also knows Latin better than most judges. Sylvia is teaching me how to cook, but not the Julia Child stuff. Our next adventure together is how to make flan.

I decide the legal disaster can wait. I’m anxious to break eggs. Since my mother died, I’d never learned how to cook. I mean, I really don’t know how to cook. Shane jokes that I am the one person in the world who lost the recipe on how to make ice cubes.

Hush Hush, A Shane Cleary Mystery #3
Genre: Traditional
Release: January 2022
Purchase Link

Shane Cleary is living a comfortable life. He has money. He has a girl.

But a visit from a friend shakes up his status quo. Chess may be the metaphor, but the case is one that lifts the lid on problems nobody in Boston wants to talk about.

Murder. Race. Class. It’s all Hush Hush.

Neither the crime nor the verdict is simple, and yet it is Black and White.

Shane will need more than a suit of armor if he wants to play knight. Can Justice be found? And at what cost?

Meet the author
Gabriel Valjan is the author of the Roma Series, The Company Files, and the Shane Cleary Mysteries. He has been nominated for the Agatha, Anthony, Silver Falchion Awards, and received the 2021 Macavity Award for Best Short Story. Gabriel is a member of the Historical Novel Society, ITW, MWA, and Sisters in Crime. He lives in Boston. Connect with Gabriel on Twitter at @GValjan. 

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