Sedona Law 2 Read online

  “Landon is like basically running the film festival next week,” AJ explained with a broad grin. “His family is on the board.”

  Landon shrugged sheepishly. “I’m not running it,” he corrected.

  “Well, he’s basically running it. He does everything.” AJ rolled her eyes at him, and Landon winced.

  “Not everything, I just--”

  Suddenly, his phone went off in his pocket, and I glanced at it. Of course, the latest iPhone. What else would he have?

  “It’s my boss,” he muttered, and then he excused himself and took the call.

  AJ looked at Vicki, whose mouth had dropped.

  “He’s perfect for you!” Vicki squealed.

  AJ squealed back, and I rolled my eyes and glanced over at Landon and saw he was walking back into our circle. His face was white, though, and it looked like someone had just told him that his favorite band broke up.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Naw man,” he said hoarsely. “My great grandpa Clifton Melbourne has been murdered.”

  “What?” Vicki exclaimed as she covered her mouth with her hands.

  Landon stared off into the distance and blinked in shock. “The police just found his body. Stuffed inside a suitcase.” The three of us stared at Landon who just shook his head and stared at his phone. “At Horace’s yard sale.”

  Chapter 2

  It was midnight. Vicki and I were still awake, binge-watching Mad Men, eating Valentine’s Day chocolate, and finished topping off the spilled wine bottle.

  “So, tell me,” I asked her, “Why are all the women in love with Don Draper? He’s kind of a jerk.”

  She looked at me like I had two heads. “Are you serious? Yeah, he’s kind of a jerk, but he’s got this sex appeal. It’s like … uh … it has to do with--”

  She was saved from further fumbling over her words by my phone ringing.

  “Hold that thought,” I said around a mouthful of chocolate while I grabbed the phone off the charger.

  “Yeah?” I said to the unknown number.

  “This is the Sedona County Jail,” the recording greeted me. “You have a collect call from Horace Uvalde. Do you accept the charges?”

  I accepted the call on speaker so Vicki could hear. “Horace?”

  “Henry,” he choked out. His voice was gravelly and tired, not at all like the virile, burly man who had finagled me to perform in his “avant garde” one-act play a few months ago. “I need a lawyer, and you’re the best. I don’t have anybody else to turn to. Can you help me?”

  I turned to Vicki, and she immediately moved to get dressed.

  This was going to be a long night.

  “We’re on our way,” I told Horace.

  Vicki and I got dressed and headed down to the jail.

  “I’m sorry this is our Valentine’s night,” I said with a shrug.

  We were settling into my BMW that I had finally driven back from L.A., and man, I had missed it. The all-leather interior and satellite radio were welcome changes from the rentals and the Volkswagen bus we had been driving around.

  Her eyes lit up at my apology. “No, this is perfect. This is who we are.”

  I laughed. “That’s really sad. Maybe we need to take up some hobbies.”

  “Like what?” she pondered.

  “I don’t know, like mountain biking or something,,” I said. “I’m starting to feel like Kiefer Sutherland in that show 24. All we ever do is go around putting out fires.”

  She laughed. “Okay, so how about, this … ”

  Then she unbuttoned her seatbelt and leaned over the console. I felt her body rub up against my arm and her tongue on my ear. Her hand traveled up my thigh, and I swore as I almost swerved into oncoming traffic.

  “Jesus, woman, you’re going to kill us both,” I muttered.

  She just laughed.

  We arrived at the jail, and I had flashbacks of picking up Harmony here. It was the same orange-red paint theme I remembered, and in the middle of the night it was even drearier and deader than it was last time. The bullpen of empty desks looked like the apocalypse had hit. The only surviving life form was one bored officer with a gallon-sized coffee thermos. When we walked in, she pretended like she wasn’t watching Netflix on the tablet hidden on her lap, but it was too late. In the five seconds of audio I heard, I had already identified the show and episode.

  “Moriarty,” I told her. “He’s the killer disguised as Molly Hooper’s boyfriend.”

  “Can I help you?” she asked with a scowl, obviously not amused by my uninvited spoiler.

  “We’re here to see Horace Uvalde,” I stated. “I’m his lawyer.”

  She looked irritated at having to do something and picked up a receiver.

  “Mike, someone’s here for Horace,” she said. “It’s his lawyer.”

  She waited a beat and then hung up. We signed in, and I asked for the police report. Without a word, she printed it off and handed it to me. Then she took us back to a visiting room and motioned for us to take a seat.

  “He’ll be right out,” she said without ever really seeing us.

  Our client showed up a few minutes later. Horace was normally the type of guy no one would want to mess with. He was burly, with a thick mustache, and his big meaty arms were covered with tattoos of half naked women and the like. He had a penchant for hanging out in cowboy bars and had seen his share of drunken fights, one of which I had unfortunately witnessed. But today, he looked scared out of his mind.

  “I didn’t do it,” he said as he looked me square in the eye. “I know it looks bad, but I don’t know what else to say. I didn’t kill anyone.”

  Vicki spoke up. “Well, tell us what you know happened.”

  He sighed. “All’s I know is, I’ve collected a lot of odds and ends over the years for the theatre. Props and set pieces. We don’t have much in the way of a budget, so I pretty much pay for everything out of my own pocket. So, when the show’s over, I’ve got all this stuff, and we don’t have room to store it all in the theatre. So, a few years ago, I rented a storage room and started keeping things there, and even that was starting to fill up. So, I was watching one of those shows on TV where you sell all your old junk and make a lot of money. You know?”

  He nodded to us, like it was important we know the show.

  “Yeah, of course,” I said.

  “So,” he continued, “I decide to clean out my storage, and then clean out all the old theatre pieces I’ve got in my house, too. And, while I was at it, I figured I’d throw in other stuff, like old coffee makers and such. So, come Saturday, I had a pretty good yard sale going. It was busy, lots of customers. These two gentleman ask me how much for the suitcase.” He looked down at the table and then back up at us.

  “Go on,” I urged him.

  “I swear to you, I never seen that suitcase in my life,” the intimidating man said. “I know I hadn’t. But, at the time, there were people everywhere, and people handing me money in all directions, I just figured it was an old set piece I forgot about. So, I made up a price. Then the man opens it up to look inside, and … ”

  Vicki politely handed him a tissue.

  Horace choked up. “Out comes Clifton. All dead and shriveled. Everybody started running and screaming, and I was just as shocked as anyone. The next thing I know, there were cops in my driveway, and then I’m in here and people are talking about murder charges.” The big man started weeping. “I didn’t kill him. I woulda never done such a thing.”

  “Do you have any idea who would?” Vicki asked as she gave the big man a hug.

  He shook his head, and I started skimming the police report.

  “Well, apparently, the neighbors said you had threatened to kill him before,” I said as I glanced back up at Horace.

  Horace looked horrified and then angry. “Who said that? Which neighbors?”

  He reached to grab the papers out of my hand, but a guard stopped him.

  “No touching,” the guard barked
and approached us with a nightstick.

  Horace held up his arms in a ‘I surrender’ gesture and sat back down.

  “It doesn’t say who said that,” I lied. The names were all right there. “But apparently you threatened Clifton before.”

  Horace’s expression froze in horror. “Well, sure, we had our differences, yeah. But, that’s just something people say sometimes. I didn’t mean it.”

  I read off more. “According to this, you once chased him down the block with a shotgun. You fired what you called a ‘warning shot’ and said if he ever came on your property again, it would be for real.”

  “Well,” Horace chortled, “geez, that was once a long, long time ago. I didn’t mean it, I was just under a lot a pressure ‘cause we were building a shelter for Y2K and what not.”

  Whoa. Y2K? I was in high school then. There had to be a statute of limitations on verbal threats.

  “It also says here that you and Clifton have been enemies for a long time,” I read.

  “Well, that’s ‘cause of the land,” he argued, and his tone started to perk up into righteous indignation.

  “What land?” I asked.

  “Well, he’s got a plot of land, a lemon grove on the outside of town that he claims is his, but it ain’t. His great-grandfather stole it from my great-grandfather in 1902. We’ve been trying to get it back ever since, but the goddamn sonofabitch don’t have no respect for what’s right. That’s why I chased him off my land. He ain’t got no business on my property.”

  Vicki and I looked at each other, and Horace continued his rant.

  “Then, what’s worse, in the city council meeting last month, he tried to shut down my theatre!” Horace’s voice rose, and he pounded the table. “We’re both on the Sedona Art League, and he filed a motion with the city council saying that it was … ” Horace searched the ceiling for words, and then quoted, “’Not significantly contributing to the overall artistic aesthetic of the community, and should be replaced with a more suitable alternative.’ Can you believe that?”

  “Well, as you know,” Vicki chided gently, “Clifton has passed.”

  A shadow crossed Horace’s face.

  “I didn’t kill him,” he whispered. “I don’t know what else to say. Can you help me?”

  I looked at Vicki. She shrugged. Horace coughed, and his throat wheezed. I noticed the jumpsuit was short sleeved, and even in my jacket, whatever heat was on in the building did little for the February chill.

  “Let’s get you out of here,” I said.

  Vicki and I stepped out of the room, and I got on the phone with the bail bondsman. Vicki started chatting up the officer about her manicure, and the ice seemed to melt just a bit.

  It took a few tries to find a bail bond place open that late, but I finally got one. They could come out within the hour. In the morning, we would meet with Horace again. Besides, we needed to get with AJ since we were taking on a big case like this.

  We got into the car, and Vicki started talking.

  “There’s been no murder weapon found,” she said, “but the prosecutor wants to wrap this one up quickly because they don’t want to have a scandal for the film festival next week. They will be desperate for a plea bargain.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  “Bernice told me,” she replied.

  “Bernice,” I said. “Is that the woman from the front desk?”

  “Yep.” Vicki nodded. “She also said the city council gets a hefty stipend from the state for hosting the festival. They’re using a lot of it to do the downtown gentrification projects. So there’s a lot of pressure to keep the murder quiet. Something like this could stall their funding.”

  “Follow the money,” I sighed.

  “Follow the money,” she repeated.

  “All of this from Bernice?” I asked.

  “It’s funny what a woman will tell another woman once you get her talking about hair, nails, or shoes,” Vicki said with a sly smile.

  We arrived home somewhere around two a.m. Mad Men was still paused on our bedroom television, and candy wrappers littered the bed. The night sure had taken a twist from how it started. I switched off the television, and we went straight to sleep.

  I awoke the next morning to a text from my mother: Family dinner tomorrow night. Are you two coming? I rolled my eyes. She had been texting me about this for a week.

  The dinner was about Phoenix’s film, which I still hadn’t gotten around to watching. I hadn’t given her an answer mainly because I was working up an excuse not to see Saffron and Moondust. Things had gotten better with them since Harmony’s trial, but there was still lingering damage on both sides that we were all still working through. It was honestly exhausting.

  Vicki and I met AJ and Landon for breakfast at Jitters, our go-to coffee shop. When Landon walked up to our table, he stood right in front of me, looked me dead in the eye, and said, “Phoenix Irving is a genius.”

  AJ agreed. “The dude’s boss.”

  I smirked. “Phoenix has his moments, but I don’t know about … genius.”

  “Nah, man.” Landon shook his head, eased into a chair, and stroked his beard.

  “Are we sure we’re talking about my brother?” I asked half-jokingly. “What’s it even about?”

  “His film is like … epic man,” he continued. “What he captured about the quote unquote, war on drugs, and how it’s all a government cover-up, is dead on. The government could stop the drug trade if they wanted, but so much drug money ultimately ends up back in the CIA that the war on drugs is just a front. The drug lords, the cartels, they’re all getting dirty money from the US government, and it’s all interconnected. The CIA basically invented the cocaine market. And then, they turn around and criminalize it, and ruin the lives of Americans. What they are saying with that movie, it’s a message that needs to be heard, man. It needs to be heard.”

  Landon pounded the table with his fingertips for emphasis.

  “I … actually haven’t seen it,” I admitted.

  In fact, I remembered with guilt the untouched DVD was still rolling around in the side compartment of my car door, where I’d stashed it right after he handed it to me.

  “You need to see his film. Like right now, man.” Landon sighed.

  “But I don’t think it was his film exactly,” I clarified. “I think he just worked on it.”

  “He co-wrote the script with Jeremiah Ogilvie,” Landon said.

  I had no idea who Jeremiah Ogilvie was, but he was apparently someone I should know.

  “We watched it last night,” AJ said. “Dude, man, like … dude.”

  “It’s legit man,” Landon nodded deeply. “Those dudes know their shit.”

  I shrugged. I had never looked at Phoenix that way. He was only a kid when I went off to law school. Now, he was twenty and in his fourth semester “off” from college. Maybe he was coming into his own a bit.

  I also had not previously known AJ to use words like, ‘dude’ and ‘like.’ On top of which, this was a girl who was so straight-laced about following the rules that, until a few months ago, she wouldn’t even go into a bar because she was underage. Now she was praising the merits of drug legalization?

  I wasn’t quite sure about this Landon character, and I was surprised to find I was feeling a little protective. I needed to remind myself I wasn’t her older brother. I was her boss, and not in the hipster slang sense. In that sense, I wasn’t particularly fond of her apparent drug sympathies. I hoped it was just a phase, an unfortunate side effect of being, well, nineteen.

  “I will definitely have to watch the film,” I said. “Now, about today’s agenda: Clifton Melbourne.”

  A rather rushed article was currently running on the front page of The Herald, the Sedona daily news site. Vicki read it to us all from her tablet.

  “… When the two yard sale patrons, Jarvis Montague and Irwin Paulson, tried to examine the suitcase, they noticed its weight.

  ‘It felt like it was
full of bowling balls,’ Montague said, ‘but the suitcase was a gorgeous piece. It was a brown, antique, vintage trunk made of snake skin. The finish on it, for the age … was just … phenomenal. I wanted to have it appraised.’

  Then they opened it to examine the inside, and the body came tumbling out. There were several other customers at the yard sale, and when the two men reacted, it caused a stir.

  ‘It was sickening … just sickening,’ said Jessica Walters, who had been out bargain hunting that morning until she found herself vomiting in the grass when the body was revealed. ‘It’s just not the way the world is supposed to work. You just don’t die like that. Everyone’s gotta go sometime … but not like that.’

  Homeowner Horace Uvalde appeared to be as shocked and disheartened as everyone else. But Montague called the authorities, who immediately questioned Uvalde and took him into custody.

  ‘I would never do anything to harm anyone,’ Uvalde told The Herald. ‘Sure, Clifton and I had our differences, but a man’s life is a man’s life. I mean, in the end, that’s all a man’s got, right, is his life?’

  But according to neighbors and associates those differences ran deep.

  ‘Oh, yeah, they hated each other,’ one neighbor said. ‘Everybody knew that. Horace once threatened Clifton with a gun if he ever set foot on his property again. Everybody on the block heard him yell it. He even fired a warning shot and sent Clifton running to his car.’

  Terri McDowell, of the Sedona Arts Society, said it was a known fact that they were not to allow the two men to be in the same room. ‘Horace was theatre and Clifton was film. And that was all you needed to know. If someone didn’t respect that, well then God help us all.’

  Kevin Parker, of the Sedona Film Society, worked closely with Clifton. “I can’t believe it came to this. Horace was always trying to compete with Clifton because of that joke of a theatre. I think he somehow thought they were colleagues of some sort. Not even close. Clifton was a visionary, a genius. A brilliant businessman, a gifted artist. Horace was just a joke. That Clifton even gave the sniveling punk the time of day was a gift. And that he took it out on him … in this … horrific manner. I can’t even begin to describe…”