Sedona Law 5 by Dave Daren (romantic novels in english .TXT) 📕

“You hit the eject button, there, millennial,” he teased.

“Hey,” I chuckled, “my dad’s a guitarist who opened for CCR. I know how to use a cassette player.”

“I know Moondust,” Durant replied. “That’s your dad, huh?”

I nodded and hit the eject button. That hard, burning electrical scent common to cassette players came back to me. I didn’t use these when I was a kid, but we had one or two laying around. From time to time, my dad would show us an old bootleg live album on a tape, and if I liked what he showed me, I would go download it.

“Irving, yeah,” Durant laughed. “I should have put those together. Well, CCR’s some shit music, and Moondust tells that story about twice a year. But he can play, that’s for damn sure.”

I found a hi-fi player set up in a component cabinet. I hit the power button, and true to form, it took several seconds to come up. When it did, it buzzed with digital VU meters and several components.

“These things are designed to play multiple sound sources,” I said, and I could almost physically feel the neurons firing in my head. “What I want to know, is what he had on record.”

“What do you mean?” Durant asked.

“He’s an audiophile and a reporter,” I replied. “He wants everything ‘on the record,’ or caught on tape. If he was in trouble, he would have something, somewhere here.”

Durant nodded slowly and glanced around the room. “Good luck finding anything in here.”

“No.” I shook my head. “If you were going to record someone threatening your life, or blackmailing you, what would you do with it?”

“Put it somewhere for safekeeping,” Durant said.

“Safekeeping,” I echoed with a nod. “That’s great. Did he have a safe?”

Durant turned to the two officers, who had been largely picking through junk for no real reason.

“Yeah,” one of them said. “There was one in the bedroom. But we don’t have a combination.”

“I have an idea of what it might be,” I responded. “And if not, I know who would know. Where’s the bedroom?”

One of the officers pointed the way, and we all followed them. The bedroom was just as bad as the rest of the house, only this one smelled worse.

The bed looked like the linens hadn’t been washed in years, and it was covered in clothes, papers, and food trash. A seventy-two inch plasma television took up an entire wall, and it still ran a screensaver from the last night Jerry had spent here.

I picked my way through the carpet of beer bottles and clothes, and I approached the closet where the officers revealed a six foot black electronic safe.

“You know the combination?” Durant asked.

“I can try,” I murmured as I pulled up on my phone the license plate keypad combination Horace gave me. Then I quickly punched it into the safe.

It didn’t work.

“Shit,” I cursed.

My next plan was to text Leila, but she might not have it. But she would know likely places to start. Birthdays, anniversaries, and …

Suddenly, I remembered seeing Thad’s birthday party on Facebook.

“Hold a sec, guys,” I said as I pulled up Facebook on my phone.

I found Clare’s profile and scrolled through her photos until I got to Thad’s birthday pictures. He and several friends went dirtbike riding through the Red Rocks on October 10.

“Let’s try 10-10-09,” I said.

Durant put in the code, and boom. It opened.

“For such an artistic mind,” I chuckled, “he’s not that creative when it comes to passwords.”

“I don’t know if I’d ever call him creative at all,” Durant snorted.

We opened the safe, and the four of us--me, Durant, and the two officers--saw the contents. Inside wasn’t money, jewelry, guns or passports. Jerry’s safe was full, six feet high and three feet deep, with eight track cassette tapes.

“All the shit in this house,” I said with a frown, “packed high and low, and this is what he wants to protect? Why?”

Durant nodded thoughtfully. “They’re all dated,” he pointed out.

He was right. On the cases of each tape was an adhesive label with a date. They were arranged by year, and it looked like pretty much every day for several years. I couldn’t tell how far back it went.

“We need to listen to all of this,” I said. “All of it.”

Durant stared at the tapes, and then turned to the officers. “You heard ‘em, men. Let’s get these tapes loaded up.”

The officers sprung into action, and we all loaded up boxes of eight track tapes. We must have taken close to ten file boxes of tapes. While the officers continued to load, I snooped around the museum area for something that could play the tapes. Finally, I snagged the high-fi system, which had an eight track component.

“Alright,” Durant said once we’d loaded up everything. “We’re gonna split this up. Your team do these boxes, we’ll do these.”

“Sounds good,” I replied with a nod.

I took a trunkload of boxes and the hi-fi system back to our office. This project was going to take the rest of the week.

But I had a hunch I was right.

Chapter 9

When I got to the office, AJ was there, but Vicki had left with Leila.

“They’re going to your mom’s yoga class,” AJ told me. “They think Clare might be there. They might be able to get something more out of her.”

“Good thinking,” I said.

“What is all that?” she asked as she pointed to the hi-fi system under my arm.

I smiled. “Our new project.” Then I put the system in the conference room and started to connect it.

“Okay,” AJ leaned against the wall, “I’ll bite. Care to elaborate?”

I chuckled as I unraveled cords. “Jerry’s safe was