Free Wake Up Maggie by Beth Yarnall

Chapter One
    Standing over Chuck Puckett’s prone, naked body, sirens wailing in the background, I had done what I’d been dying to do for days—I kicked him square in the nuts. The pointy toe of my leopard-print, kitten-heeled pump had made a satisfying triangular dent. So satisfying that I kicked him twice more for good measure. The only thing I regretted about this later was the fact that the bastard was dead and didn’t feel my sharp retribution.
    Even hearing the words “Maggie Mae Castro, you’re under arrest for murder”, the taping of my perp walk—which had garnered over a hundred thousand hits on YourVid—being forced to wear a hideous orange jumpsuit after my clothes were confiscated as evidence, and being ditched by not one, but three public defenders, didn’t ping on my shame-o-meter. Sitting across the cold metal table from my new attorney, explaining why I’d tried to rearrange Chuck Puckett’s genitals while my lawyer defensively cupped his own, it suddenly dawned on me that I’d heard nothing about the skank ho bitch Chuck Puckett had been banging behind my back.
    “What about Crouching Slut, Hidden Man Stealer?” I asked.
    Regis Dilton, AKA the attorney, who was dumb enough…or smart enough—time would tell—to take my case, glanced up from his notes to stare at me over the rim of his glasses. “What?”
    “The slut Chuck Puckett was cheating on me with.”
    “The senator was cheating on you?”
    Oh yes, Chuck Puckett was an Arizona state senator. But not just any senator—he was the conservative, Christian-family-values senator who’d tried and almost succeeded in passing legislation to have creationism taught in schools. The irony of him being found naked and dead, wearing lipstick and a long, blond wig, might have been funny but for the fact that I was now the accused murderess who, according to the morning paper, had desecrated their golden-boy senator in some sick sexual death ritual.
    I filled in old Regis on finding Chuck Puckett in bed with his Asian sensation riding him like a prize bull and how she’d invited me to join them. I had declined the invitation of course, doing so with a lot of cursing and smashing…and maybe a little car keying. But when I got to the part where Chuck Puckett had lured me back to his mansion the following day with lots of pitiful pleading and how I’d shown up only to find the Jade Jezebel fleeing the scene of Chuck Puckett’s murder, I faltered. I was pathetic. I had also been set up. Of this, I was sure.
    Regis…not so much. “And you think this woman is the one who killed the senator, leaving you to take the fall. Do you have proof?”
    “Well, it’s not like I stopped to jot down her confession.” If I had gotten a hold of her, I would’ve earned the murder rap honestly and could truly bask in the joy of getting to know old Regis here.
    “Miss Castro, I suggest we stick to what we and the police can prove.”
    “What can they prove?”
    He stacked his hands on the table. “They caught you in the act of desecrating the body of an Arizona state senator. So there’s that.”
    “That’s all I did. And it wasn’t desecrating, it was…anger management. I’ve been told I might have an issue in that regard.”
    “No kidding. You were also in possession of a firearm.”
    “Um, hello. We’re in Arizona. Besides, it’s registered.”
    “To you?”
    “I didn’t shoot him.”
    “Miss Castro—” he exhaled as though he was having a little anger-management problem himself, “—you were found at the scene of a murder, in possession of a firearm, kicking the body of a beloved senator who’d been shot to death.”
    “Well, when you put it like that…”
    There was a knock on the door. Detective Barry opened it. “We’re releasing her. For now.” He threw that last part in to scare me. It worked.
    “I’m free to go?” I asked.
    Regis was already stuffing his notebook in his briefcase like he had better places to be. I could