Sedona Law 4: A Legal thriller

by Dave Daren

  “Okay,” she said. “Fair enough. How about Andrea McClellan?”

  “The mayor? Oh, Jesus,” I said. “We’re having her over for our fake dinner party?”

  “Yeah, her husband and two kids, too,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said, “then we’re going to need a bigger place. Much bigger. With a pool and shit.”

  She laughed. “Now we’re talking. Hot tub.”

  “Oh, yes,” I said. “I want one of those decks with an outdoor kitchen for pool parties.”

  “We don’t even cook,” she said.

  “I would cook if I had an outdoor kitchen,” I said.

  “No you wouldn’t,” she replied.

  “You’re right, I wouldn’t,” I admitted. “But it would look cool.”

  “I can totally see you hosting some barbeque pool party,” she said. “And you would be wearing one of those dorky aprons that says ‘kiss the cook.’”

  “Oh, God, no,” I said. “No, no, no.”

  She laughed harder and had to stop and catch her breath before she finished. “And you would stand around and hold the spatula and talk the entire time. Not a scrap of cooking would get done, and all your guests would starve. But you would solve a murder, though... waving around your clean spatula.”

  “First of all, my apron would not be dorky,” I corrected her.

  “Oh, the dorkiest,” she said. “A white one, with a French chef on it.”

  I groaned and covered my face. “Just for that, you’re paying for dinner tonight.”

  “Oh, I am so buying you that apron,” she said.

  I headed off to the shower to wash the long day of psychics, and ghosts, and senate bills and angry filmmakers off me.

  “What do you want to eat?” she called out after me.

  “Surprise me with something good,” I said.

  In the end, she stole Landon’s idea and ordered delivery from Fifth Street Bistro. Over a California sushi roll and cauliflower rice, we settled in for our usual evening of take-out and binge watching. We curled up in our bed and flipped on the TV.

  We had started the year with Mad Men, and we finished that. Then we moved to Game of Thrones. Now, we were on to Vicki’s latest choice, Downton Abbey.

  It was a British show, put on by the BBC, but the negotiations for the American release were done through our firm in L.A. I didn’t have any hand in it, but several of the partners I worked with did, and Downton Abbey was all the rage in the firm for a bit.

  I saw a couple of episodes at a screening party we were all invited to attend, and I didn’t like it then. If I remember right, I only went to impress some woman, and I spent the entire party strategizing on how to get her to go home with me. She ended up going home that night with someone else, and they have since married and divorced.

  But, watching the same episodes with Vicki was different. Doing everything with Vicki was different. The subtle British humor that I found boring at a screening party full of narcissistic entertainment executives, now in our cozy little lamplit haven, I found entertaining and relaxing. For the first time in a long time, maybe ever, I was home.

  We ate and watched British aristocrats in the 1910s live their lives, until we fell asleep. Somewhere around midnight, I awoke and switched off the TV. She had fallen asleep in the crook of my arm. I watched her sleep, and my heart swelled. A thought occurred to me that had kind of been rolling around in my head for a while.

  I was in love.

  Chapter 6

  “I just think we’re sitting on something really big here,” Landon was in our office. He sat in front of my desk, casually slouched with one ankle draped over his knee, and shook a big clunky combat boot.

  He wore black jeans, an open red plaid button down, and a white t-shirt advertising a craft beer brand I had never heard of. His dark hair was pulled into a red beanie, and he wore green gauges in his earlobes, and he had a silver stud poking out of a black scruffy beard. He stroked his chin, and his expression was bright and animated. It was so much different from the first time I had met him, morose and cynical.

  “What’s the angle again?” I asked.

  “It’s a documentary on the whole murder trial,” he explained. “Kind of like a reality show.”

  “Hmm…” I said. “You want to make a reality show out of our legal team?”

  “Nah, nah,” he said. “It’s not a reality show exactly. It’s more like how you defend the unjustly accused. Get it all on film, you know, cause if more happens, you know…”

  “What do you mean ‘if more happens’?” I asked.

  “Well, you know,” he nodded at me like I should know, “if... uh... you know, we run across more to the story, we’ve already got it on film.”

  “By that you mean if we find out that the Illuminati conspired to kill Beowulf?” I tried really hard to cover my sarcasm, I really did.

  He cleared his throat. “I think it goes a lot deeper than you think, than all of us think. I really believe this could be our Ed Snowden moment, you know?”

  I sighed. “Landon--”

  “I know, you don’t believe, Henry,” he interrupted. “That’s cool. It takes people a while. But all I’m trying to do here is expose corruption. Think of it that way. You’re on board with that, right?”

  I rolled my eyes at his patronizing concession. “So you want to do a documentary on corruption?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “How a person can be unjustly accused of a murder, and what the defense team does behind the scenes to prove their innocence.”

  I still wasn’t sold. “And what do you want to do with it?”

  He hesitated as he formed his answer.

  “Assuming that we don’t uncover a government plot, and you make millions selling it to mainstream media,” I clarified.

  “Well, barring that, I’m taking a documentary class in the fall,” he said. “I’ll use it as my subject.”

  “Education, huh?” I said. “You got me on my soft spot.”

  He laughed. “Ahh... is that where it is? Yeah, they like edgy, aggressive subjects for this class. It could get me a scholarship, and if it’s good enough, an internship.”

  “Now you’re just bullshitting,” I laughed.

  “Ah, come on, man,” he said.

  “Alright,” I said. “If it’s for education. But you’ll have to sign an NDA stating that you won’t show a frame of it to anyone outside our team until after the case is closed.”

  “Got it,” he said.

  “And also I reserve the right to use any of the footage as evidence, or even in court,” I continued.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Totally, feel free, man.”

  “And,” I said. “I want to see the final product, and it may, in no way, put us in a bad light.”

  “Oh, dude, I would never do that to you,” he said.

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “Right,” he said. “You’re a lawyer, you’re all legal and proper and shit. Right, no negative light, got it.”

  “Alright,” I said. “You got yourself a deal. Vicki will get a signed agreement worked up for you.”

  “Cool, man,” he said.

  Vicki smirked at me, and I shrugged. I noticed AJ doing a “yes” motion with her fist.

  “So now that we’ve got that settled,” AJ said, “Can we go over the suspect list?”

  “Perfect,” I said as I rubbed my palms together. “What do we got?”

  She gestured for us all to gather in the conference room, and Landon looked awkward and shoved his hands into his pockets and shrugged.

  “Yeah,” I told him. “Go ahead and set up. Get what you can.”

  “Cool,” he smiled and went to get his camera.

  Vicki and AJ looked at each other and laughed, and within seconds, our office looked like a department store make-up counter.

  “Guys, there’s nothing to worry about,” I insisted. “Just be natural.”

  “Ugh, you’re such a guy, Henry,” Vicki said as she uncapp
ed a tube of lipstick.

  “I didn’t hear you complaining about that last night,” I muttered.

  She blushed, and the whole room, including myself, dissolved into laughter.

  “Holy shit,” Landon said. “I didn’t know Henry Irving could make an off-color joke.”

  I laughed and turned to Landon. “You’re the one that started all this mess. Are you gonna set up or what?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he had the camera powered up now.

  “Alright, ladies, let’s move to the conference room when you’re all glammed up,” I said.

  Landon and I went into the other room, and I looked over the notes I had on the case so far. It was all a bunch of half connected dots and assumptions, and I wasn’t even sure we were going in the right direction. Landon rigged up a tripod with books and furniture, and then Vicki and AJ showed up.

  “So where are we with the suspect list?” I asked AJ.

  She produced a tagboard with photos, and Vicki joined me at the table. I ignored Landon and after a few seconds, it became business as usual.

  “Chloe, Julianna, Olivia, and Beowulf were the four dancers that we know were lovers,” AJ said.

  “They are all still in town, right?” I asked.

  “Correct,” she said “The dance troupe is a budget affair, so they were all staying in private homes as opposed to hotels.”

  “Are they still at these houses?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “They’ve been ordered not to leave town for the time being. Chloe is staying at Michael Knapp’s house.”

  Michael Knapp was the director of the performance art league.

  “She was the one that discovered the body,” AJ said. “She was clearly upset. Then there was Olivia, she was the one that was on her phone in the green room when the body was discovered. She is staying at a Mooreland House.”

  I laughed. “I didn’t know they were still operating.”

  “Oh, Mooreland House?” AJ asked. “Every high school art nerd in Sedona wants to live at Mooreland House.”

  “It was like that when I was here, too,” I said. “I didn’t know it was still there.”

  Mooreland House was an art house just a few blocks down. They bought a brownstone condo, and artists, musicians, actors, all can apply for an internship and live there completely free while they pursue their art. The art league runs it, and typically, they favor young singles in their high school or college gap years. Exceptional interns can apply for semi-permanent status and work for the art league or film festival.

  “Oh, it’s still there,” she said. “They had an intern go out of town for a week, and so the art league put her there in his spot.”

  “Okay,” I said. “So Chloe’s at Michael’s, Olivia’s at Mooreland, and what else do we have?”

  “Julianna and Beowulf were both supposed to stay with a girl named Erin Kramer,” AJ said. “Of course, neither of them made it. But, it would be worth it to talk to her, find out what kind of correspondence they might have had.”

  “Right,” I said. “Have we set up interviews with any of these people?”

  “Not yet,” she said. “I just got all their numbers from Michael. But, since they are all stuck in town because of the murder, I am sure they don’t have a full social calendar.”

  “That would be a good assumption,” I said. “And then there’s Judith.”

  “Right,” she said. “I did get into contact with her. We’ve got a meeting scheduled for tomorrow morning.”

  “In the morning, huh?” I said. “Thanks for setting that up. I’ll talk to her.”

  “She’s a nutcase,” AJ said. “She wrote this book. It’s called Devils and Goddesses--The War Between the Sexes. I read some of it. The whole thing is straight up man bashing.”

  “Hmm...” I said. “Maybe that’s not the best idea.”

  “I’ll talk to her,” Vicki said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Might work a little better.”

  “I want to know what Michael Knapp knows,” Vicki said. “We haven’t even talked about that angle.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Well,” she said, “he was the original contact for the team, and it blew up into a media circus. One of the ideas we’re circulating around is that the murder was planned by Marvin for a publicity stunt. He dealt with both Marvin and Beowulf. Were there any indicators that something wasn’t right?”

  “Good thinking,” I said. “See if you can get an interview with Michael. Find out what he knows.”

  “Okay, what else?” I asked.

  “We’ve also got Marvin,” AJ said with hesitance. “I hate to add him to our suspect list, but right now he’s top of the list. And we’ve got to handle him delicately.”

  I sighed. By delicately, she meant, out of everyone, it would be me that would have to investigate the media mogul of conspiracy to commit murder. It wasn’t a task I particularly wanted.

  “Let’s wait on that,” I said. “We want to build a solid case before we let him know that we think he’s a suspect.”

  “Do we even have to let him know that’s what we think?” Vicki asked. “If you framed it as innocently asking questions to get his perspective on it, he probably wouldn’t be spooked.”

  “Good point, I can just say I’m doing my due diligence and talking to everybody who is even remotely associated,” I agreed.

  “Finally,” she said. “We have State Senator John Malone. He’s not a suspect, but he’s a person of interest.”

  “Right,” Vicki said. “I did some research on him. John Malone used to be on the board of directors at Starbright. He only resigned when he decided to run for political office.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Iakova owns Malone. For our purposes, they’re basically the same.”

  “His entire re-election campaign is about limiting the power of media legislation and expanding free speech laws,” she said.

  “Plus, the typical stuff which favors big business,” I said. “Is the legislature in session? Is he here or in Tucson?”

  Vicki and I pulled out our phones, and she found it first.

  “No, they are not in session,” she said. “And, he’s got an office in Flagstaff.”

  “Great,” I said. “Let’s set up an appointment with him. By the time we can actually get in to see him, we’ll have a clearer picture of where he fits in.”

  “Got it,” Vicki said.

  “Alright,” I said. “I think we’ve got our work cut out for us. We need to do interviews with all the dancers, see what they know, what they don’t. Vicki, get with Knapp, and whoever else on the league that we might need to talk to. AJ, get with Erin Kramer. I don’t think she knows anything, but if she’s even got an e-mail, or a text that can give us a clue, it will be worth a conversation. And, we’ll wait on Iakova and Malone until we’ve got our big guns loaded.”

  “Great,” AJ said.

  “Sounds good, let’s get on the phone, people,” I said. “Let’s kick up some dirt.”

  With that, the three of us adjourned to the main room, where we made our respective calls. Landon buzzed around with a camera and set up shop on the side of AJ’s desk.

  I called the number we had for the first dancer, Chloe, and set up an appointment to meet with her that afternoon.

  “We just want to talk to you about that night,” I said.

  “Julianna didn’t do it,” she said. “I know her. She would never do something like that.”

  “Well,” I said, “that’s why we need to talk to you. We want to go over everything you remember about that night, and any connections that may help us get to the real killer. It will bring justice for Julianna and for Beowulf.”

  She started crying, and I sighed. These interviews were going to be harder than I’d anticipated. I also called the other dancer, Olivia, and she was a soft spoken wispy girl.

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s so good to hear from someone from the investigation. Chloe and I have been tortured for days.
We haven’t heard anything from anyone since the first day that the police questioned us. Do they have any idea of what happened?”

  “I am not aware of what the prosecution is doing,” I said. “Our job is simply to clear Julianna.”

  “Julianna and I were very close. I know she didn’t kill Beyo. You can come anytime,” she said. “All I do is sit here and play that night over and over again. It would be nice to have a fresh ear to talk to about what happened.”

  I finished up with Olivia and turned to Landon.

  “We’ll film the interviews,” I said. “It will work better than taking notes.”

  He grinned. “That works for me.”

  I grabbed my bag, and he looked surprised.

  “You want to go now?” he asked.

  “Yep,” I said. “Those dancers are ready to talk. We’ll start with Chloe.”

  Landon and I settled into my BMW and drove out to the address I had for Michael Knapp, where Chloe was staying.

  “I can’t believe we’re investigating Michael Knapp,” Landon mused.

  “We’re not investigating anyone,” I said. “Right now we just want to know if they know anything relevant to the case. These interviews are all friendly. We want them to speak freely.”

  “Well, yeah,” Landon said. “But Knapp replaced McQuaid.”

  I laughed. “I forgot you were involved in all of that.”

  He flipped on the camera and turned it on his face. “Now we’re on our way to Michael Knapp’s house to interview a dancer named Chloe. Michael Knapp is the head of the Performing Arts League. He’s only been there a few months, because we found out that the last head of the performing arts league was a lying, stealing, sack of shit scumbag. So, we all helped put her behind bars. Now, he’s had this dancer staying with him, and there’s been a murder. So, we’re going to talk to her, see what she knows.”

  He turned the camera on me, and I smiled and winked at it from behind the wheel.

  “No comment,” I said.

  “Eh,” he shrugged and filmed out the window. “B-roll footage anyway.”

  The GPS led us down a long country road with cows and horses, and long white fences. We finally arrived at a picturesque log cabin. The house rose on stilts about two or three feet off the ground. In a reddish orange tint, the logs matched the natural landscape, and the green roof blended in perfectly with the rising pine trees that surrounded it. The lamplight coming out from the windows looked like warm bursts of fire, and the wraparound porch practically begged visitors to stay for a long, leisurely cup of coffee.