Sedona Law 4 by Dave Daren (ready to read books TXT) 📕

Dealing with the circumstances surrounding someone’s death had become commonplace for us. This was the fourth one I had handled.

“Do you think we’ll ever get used to this?” I asked Vicki. “Death?”

She was leaning against me with her legs crossed, and my arm draped across the back of her neck. She absentmindedly watched her foot as she shook her leg back and forth. I remembered how just hours earlier my most pressing thought was how she looked in that dress and those shoes.

“I don’t know,” she played with my fingers wrapped around to the other side of her. “Does anyone? Should anyone?”

We let the thought hang in the air for a while. Finally, Leonard called us in for statements. We told him what we knew, one more time for the record.

“It was a good tip about Beowulf being absent from the curtain call,” he told AJ. “And you were right. We confirmed with Chloe and the other dancer, Olivia, that they found the door locked at curtain call. Chloe said she had to get the key from the office because she was concerned about him.”

“Do you have any leads on the killer?” AJ asked.

A shadow passed across Leonard’s face, and he answered slowly, “We do.”

He made eye contact with me, and I knew what he was about to say.

“Julianna Spencer?” I asked incredulously.

“Yep,” he said. “She was there at curtain call, and now no one can find her.”

I remembered her being on stage, but I noticed that I hadn’t seen her yet backstage.

“You don’t really think--” I trailed off.

“Yeaah,” Leonard said and watched my face cautiously.

Julianna and I had had a complicated relationship back then. We were theatre compatriots, and we were never together. But we were... an undefinable something. Complicated. I raised my eyebrows as it occurred to me Leonard thought I might know where she was.

“I haven’t heard from her in years,” I told him. His face softened. I could get disbarred for lying about something like that, and he knew I wouldn’t risk losing my career by offering that information voluntarily.

“What’s the evidence against her?” I asked.

“The dagger was hers,” he said. “And there was a window left open, large enough to crawl out of. We’re trying to find her, see if we can question her. We’re going to work up a warrant in the morning.”

“Was there a motive?” AJ asked.

“They were heard to be in an argument minutes before the show,” Leonard said. “According to the other dancers, they were taking passive aggressive shots at each other on stage the whole performance.”

“What was the nature of the argument?” AJ asked.

“They didn’t know,” he said. “But it was pretty heated. Well, thanks for all your help on this. We’ll let you know if we have any more questions.”

“Please do, Leonard,” I told him.

Leonard nodded in that southern gentleman sort of dismissive way, and the four of us made our way out of the building through a side door.

The late night wind washed over us as soon as we hit the outside, and the parking lots were deserted. Sedona after midnight is like an Arizona ghost town of olden days. A tumbleweed might drift by, but life is as empty and barren as the open sky.

“Quite a different scene than what we came in to,” I said. I wrapped my arm around Vicki, and AJ and Landon walked beside us through a side lot. We were all somber, and AJ held her shoes in her hand. I spotted my car, one of the only three vehicles in this lot.

“You want us to give you a ride to your car?” Vicki asked, her voice hoarse from contemplative silence. They had had to park two blocks away because of traffic and protestors.

“Nah,” Landon said. “I think we need to clear our heads. The fresh air’s good.”

I nodded in silent agreement. I reached my car and unlocked it with the remote. AJ walked somberly with Landon’s arm around her. Her shoulders looked slumped, and I thought I saw her wipe a tear from her face. We had just seen the end of a man’s life. He was dead. And nothing the police found in the coming weeks would ever change that.

Chapter 4

Monday morning in the office came bright and early. By the time I woke, Vicki was already gone. She had to go in early to meet a client with an immigration case.

I took the morning slow and easy, and I stopped for coffee before making the five minute commute to our office. After living in Los Angeles for the better part of a decade, the lack of commute was one of the things I loved most about our new life here.

Our office is a quaint two room storefront in a revitalized historic district. It was downtown, about a quarter mile from where Vicki and I shared a cottage. When Vicki and I met, we worked in a crisp, modern space with all glass that smelled like business and moved like money. I couldn’t have chosen an office space different from where we came from.

I leased a wooden storefront sandwiched between a record store and a smoothie shop. The first time I saw this space, it reminded me of the time I visited the Abraham Lincoln museum where they have his actual office still preserved. I couldn’t go wrong with Abe Lincoln.

It ended up costing a fortune for its vintage appeal. I figured they wanted to put in a trendy boutique from some hip and indie local artisan that sold beaded necklaces and macramé planters on Etsy. I got it, it would boost the “cool” appeal of the downtown area, and a law office does nothing toward that. But in the end, I outbid them, and now I got the cold shoulder from the bead