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

“Eight tapes, huh?” she asked with a frown. “That’s odd. Why eight?”

I laughed. “No. It’s a type of tape called an eight track. There’s about a thousand of them.”

“A thousand tapes?” she repeated, and her eyes nearly bulged out of her head. “How are we going to go through all of that?”

“The police are going through some,” I told her, “but we’re going to do the lion’s share of the work here.” Then I connected the hi-fi system and motioned to AJ to follow me. “I’ve got about five boxes. We’re going to have to lug them all in.”

“Fun,” she sighed.

AJ and I made several trips bringing in boxes of tapes, and when we were done, they laid all over our conference table.

“This is starting to look like Jerry’s office,” she remarked.

I smirked. “This is how we know we’re on the right track. So, let’s dig in.”

“First, let’s develop some kind of system,” she said as we stared at the boxes.

“Good idea,” I agreed, but then I looked at the dusty boxes of hand lettered cases and was at a loss for how to come up with a plan.

“Okay,” she sighed after a moment, and then she shook her head. “You’re right. Let’s just dig in. There doesn’t look to be any rhyme or reason to this stuff.”

I picked up the tape with the most recent date. “I wonder how he even found these ancient tapes.”

“I guess you could find them online,” she mused with a shrug.

I inserted the tape into the machine, and the VU meter on the amplifier lit up. AJ and I sat around the conference table and listened for the playback.

A computerized voice came through, “August 19, 2018.”

And then, the trance chanting began.

It was a high soprano, and I thought it must have been one of those mezzo sopranos that broke glasses. I didn’t think those existed until I heard this tape.

AJ just busted out laughing. “What language is that?”

“I don’t even know,” I said. “I think it might be Hindi?”

Behind the trance chanting, was a keyboard background, and then it turned into some sort of Hindu chanting with techno in the background. But it wasn’t even good techno. It was the kind of techno that had the potential for greatness, but was about two Casios short of anything danceable.

“Wow,” I snorted. “This is really, really bad.”

AJ and I both snickered until our ribs ached.

“Hindu techno,” she gasped with a shake of her head. “Who would have thought. And from Jerry Steele’s safe. Do you think he recorded this?”

“I don’t know,” I said as I wiped my eyes. “I can’t think of why else he would have it in his safe.”

“Maybe it was his secret band,” she theorized. “You know one of those one person bands you can do on your computer.”

“Anything’s possible,” I admitted. “Let’s look at what else we’ve got.”

We went to the next tape, and it was the same thing. Trance chanting in Hindu, this time with an alto voice, and some kind of odd pop stuff with a satir mixed in.

“This sounds like Bollywood pop,” AJ said.

“Have you followed Bollywood culture?” I asked.

“A little,” she replied and tilted her hand from side to side. “I watched a couple of their films. I would love to say I’m cultured and hip and watch it every Tuesday, but the truth is, I couldn’t get into it.”

“I never got into foreign films either,” I said. “We’ve got enough film on our hands here.”

AJ did a goofy Cleopatra dance around the room to the music, and I laughed. Then she did a silly hip shaking dance, and the next thing I knew, I joined her with my best Michael Jackson moves, which were admittedly pretty bad. We pranced around the room doing the goofiest of dances to the worst in Hindi tencho pop.

That was what we were doing when Vicki walked in.

“What the hell is this?” she asked as she stood there with her hands on her hips.

AJ and I both dissolved into laughter.

“Are you guys drunk?” Vicki laughed.

“Drunk on life,” I chuckled with a grin.

I grabbed Vicki and pulled her into the room, and we both died laughing doing that John Travolta two fingers across the eyes thing. Then the Hindi tencho satir pop tape finally ended, and we all caught our breaths.

“Where did you guys find this stuff?” Vicki grabbed some of the tapes and looked at the dates.

“Jerry Steele’s safe,” I told her. “We think it was his secret one man band.”

Vicki flipped through another box of tapes and shook her head at the labels.

“Jesus,” she said. “How much bad art can one man make?”

“The world wasn’t ready for his vision,” I replied with as straight a face as I could muster.

“We got through that tape,” AJ said. “Now like 699 more to go, right?”

“We’d better get cracking,” I laughed.

AJ turned on the next tape, and it was the same stuff. She turned the volume on low, and I caught up with Vicki.

“How did it go with Clare and Leila?” I asked.

“Eh,” Vicki shrugged, “Clare didn’t show, but I spent a lot of good time with Leila. She told me Clare’s a straight up nutbag.”

“Clare told me as much herself,” I laughed.

“No,” Vicki said as we sat down with Hindu pop running in the background. “She disappears for days at a time. Sometimes a couple of weeks.”

“Isn’t Thad in school?” I asked as I cocked my head to the side.

“That’s the thing,” Vicki said. “Clare will leave him with neighbors, or friends, and go off on these trips.”

“What does she say these trips are?” I questioned.

“She says she goes on ‘stress vacations,’” Vicki replied with