by Dave Daren
We lived about a quarter mile from our office, which was in the downtown district. So, my jogs usually took me through downtown and back. I rounded the corner and downtown came within view. I decided to jog to our favorite coffee shop, Jitters, and pick up breakfast and bring it back home.
I was halfway to Jitters when my phone buzzed. I thought it might be Vicki, so I checked it. My heart sank as I recognized the number. It was one of the extensions at the jail. It would be another client, and my instinct told me it would be about James Matthews’ death.
“Henry Irving,” I panted. I stopped on the sidewalk and leaned over to catch my breath.
“Mr. Irving, my name is Kelsi Matthews,” she said. As soon as I heard the word Matthews I knew.
“My husband was James Matthews,” she continued.
“Yes,” I said. “I was there last night. I’m sorry for your loss.”
“I know you were there,” she said. “That’s why you were the first to come to my mind. They introduced you.”
“What can I do for you, Kelsi?” I prodded.
“I need a lawyer,” she blurted out.
“Uh-huh,” I replied. “What’s going on?”
“It’s the FBI,” she said. “They’ve been harassing us for years. Now they think we’re in a smuggling ring.”
“A smuggling ring?” I repeated.
This was different. I thought this would have to do with James’ death.
“And it’s such terrible, horrible timing,” she burst into tears on the phone. “I can’t handle this, Henry. I feel like I’m going to break in two. I...this is too much for me.”
She started to weep on the phone, and I needed to get control of the conversation.
“What specifically are they charging you with?” I asked.
“They confiscated some illegal elephant tusks,” she said. “The whole band just got back from an African tour. So, now suddenly it’s me? This is preposterous.”
I had an extreme distrust for the Sedona Police Department, but the Feds typically knew their stuff.
“What evidence do they have against you?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “It’s all confusing. I just can’t do all of this right now. This is just too much to bear.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll meet with you at the jail.”
“Thank you,” she said and her voice held the slightest sultry note. “I can’t do this alone.”
“No,” I said. “Not with these charges you shouldn’t.”
“Thank you, Mr. Irving,” she gushed.
“I’ll be in touch, “ I replied abruptly and ended the call.
From time to time, I had clients come on to me. I knew Kelsi was a bereaved widow that had no control over her emotional state, so I gave her a free pass. But it was still a red flag that I needed to be careful with this one.
Vicki was definitely coming with me to the jail. I called her as I jogged back home. I groaned when she didn’t answer. That meant she was still asleep. She was a bear to wake up in the morning.
I arrived back at the house, and sure enough Vicki was still sound asleep.
“Vic,” I called out as I undressed for the shower. “Get up. We’ve got to go the jail.”
She threw a pillow at me. I caught it, laughed, and then flopped on the bed.
“Oh, God,” she mumbled and rolled over. “You smell.”
I laughed mischievously and then edged right up into her personal space.
“Henry,” she yelled. “Get away. Seriously. You smell like..ugh.”
I laughed and she threw another pillow at me. But she was awake now, and laid back on a pillow. I edged my offensive body odor a few inches away and grabbed a pillow.
“James Matthews wife is in jail,” I told her.
She rolled her eyes. “Fifty bucks says she killed him.”
“No bet,” I replied and she laughed.
“She says she’s been arrested for smuggling elephant tusks,” I told her.
“Elephant tusks?” she repeated. “That’s one we haven’t had before.”
“Right?” I muttered. “We got murder. Tigers. Zebras. Feuding girlfriends. Art scam. Mobsters. Car chases. Meth dealers. But, nothing on elephant tusks yet.”
“Have the charges been filed?” her voice was still hoarse with sleep.
“She doesn’t really know,” I said. “She’s a basketcase.”
“I’ll bet,” Vicki mumbled.
“She wants us to go down there,” I said.
“She have bail yet?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “We’ll find out more once we get there.”
She nodded slowly, and rubbed her face. “I thought today was going to be relaxing.”
“Apparently not,” I said as I rose from the bed. “I’m going to take a shower.”
“Please do,” her morning voice still croaked. “I’ll put on some coffee.”
Once I got out of the shower, Vicki was fully dressed and transformed into superwoman mode.
“I’m making breakfast,” she said. “It’s eggs and…”
“Eggs and what?” I laughed as I looked into her sad little pan.
Vicki and I were both horrible cooks. So we just didn’t do it. We ate out virtually every meal. This was fine for us, because even if we did cook, we wouldn’t have the time for it anyway.
All of this meant we didn’t really keep groceries either. So on the rare occasion that Vicki decided to think perhaps she was Martha Stewart in a previous life, we didn’t have the supplies.
Now we both peered into the yellow goo solidifying in the frying pan.
“Hmm,” I said as I picked a bite out. “You know I love you, baby. But, I just don’t think this is edible.”
She nodded and swished the pan around as if she could somehow undo the chemical reactions that had come and gone.
“Fine,” she said.
She tossed the pan in the sink and rinsed it.
“Let’s go get a woman out of jail,” I said as I rubbed her drooping shoulders. “We’re better at that.”
She laughed and we walked out to my car.
“You know,” she said as I backed out of our driveway. “I do think we should take those cooking classes. It would be fun.”
She had mentioned that before we left for Tahiti. I had marginally agreed to it at the time, but now the idea seemed superfluous.
“I don’t know,” I sighed. “Would we have time? We’re planning a wedding, and building a house, and now we might have another big case.”
“Okay,” she said. “How about one session, and we’ll see if we like it?”
“Alright,” I said. “But if I hate it, I’m spending the rest of the class outside on the phone.”
“You’ll do that anyway,” she said.
“I don’t know that I like you knowing me this well,” I replied.
She just laughed.
We arrived at the Sedona Police Department in the mid morning. Usually visiting clients in jail was a dismal, lonely affair populated by bored small town officers. But today was different.
“Oh my god,” Vicki said.
About ten law enforcement vehicles sat empty, running flashing lights.
“FBI,” I said. “State Troopers, Sheriff’s office, and SPD.”
“Wow,” Vicki said. “She’s in a shit load of trouble.”
“Smuggling contraband overseas,” I said as I parked. “Yeah. That’ll get you in some hot water.”
We walked in through the glass doors, and it was mayhem. It’s usually pretty much empty, and I just sign in, make small talk with the officer on duty and they go find whoever I want. But, as soon as I walked in.
“Sir,” a voice barked in my direction from somewhere. “Sir, Ma’am, you’re going to have to step over here.”
I finally placed a person with the orders. It was a petite black woman in an FBI vest with a metal detector wand. I held up my palms in surrender, and she approached both Vicki and me. T
hen three other officers swarmed us.
Someone demanded I place my bag on a table, and then some guy frisked me up and down with a detector wand. I found myself involuntarily relieved of shoes, socks, belt, phone, keys, and wallet. I was basically mugged.
I glanced over at Vicki, and she frowned as she was getting the same royal treatment that I was. She was now barefoot, and the pockets on dress slacks had a tiny metal rivet that kept setting off the wand and this caused great concern. There was talk of a full body search.
The FBI was fully within their rights to search anyone going into the jail when they have a suspect in custody, so there was not much I could do. But a full body search? I had to at least try.
“My name is Henry Irving,” I said, “and I’m an attorney. Would you mind telling me what the premise of this search is?”
“You’re a lawyer?” the tiny woman with the wand eyed me warily.
“We both are,” I said. “We’re here to see our client, Kelsi Matthews.”
The search stopped and the milieu of federal and state agents glanced at each other, and then the petite woman waved further into the station.
“Go on in,” she ordered and then she yelled into the room. “Legal counsel for Matthews.”
“Thank you,” I responded as I grabbed my clothes and personal items and hobbled barefoot across the filthy linoleum to the nearest empty chair.
I was so used to the laid back and familiar manner of SPD, the formality of federal and state agents was grating. Vicki and I dressed in silence and then saw ourselves back to the visitors room.
“Could we get a copy of the arrest report and charges?” Vicki asked the officer at the front desk.
I had forgotten to ask for that. Bernice was her name, and she was usually chatty and bored. But today, she was super professional and silent as tapped keys and handed us paper off a printer.
“Thanks,” Vick said and she slipped back in the room. She glanced through the papers and I read over her shoulder while we waited for them to bring Kelsi in.
“She was arrested after an unnamed witness was arrested for trying to sell elephant tusks in a sting operation. The unnamed witness was given a plea bargain for naming Kelsi and James as suppliers,” Vicki summarized as we both read it.
“What do they have as evidence?” I asked.
“It sounds like...” she flipped through the pages. “When they searched her house, they found it in the backyard.”
“Where do you see that?” I skimmed the sections on the document, and she pointed.
“Whoa,” I said. “There was a portable shed in the backyard with more than 40 elephant tusks.”
“Where do you sell those things?” Vicki wondered.
I didn’t know much about the smuggling industry so I pulled out my phone and searched it.
“Holy shit,” I muttered. “So, you sell it to China or other Asian countries because they believe it’s beautiful, rare and has healing powers.”
“Right,” she said.
“But here’s the thing,” I smiled. “So ivory sells for about $1,500 a pound, and elephant tusks get this...depending on the species of elephant, a tusk can weight between one hundred and two hundred fifty pounds.”
“Whoa,” she said. “So a single tusk is worth about $150,000.”
“On the low ened,” I nodded as I scanned the web page. “But it all depends on the size of the elephant itself, how healthy the elephant had been, all of that.”
Vicki had her calculator up. “But at $150,000 a tusk, forty tusks is like six million dollars.”
I whistled. “This isn’t going to be a slap on the wrist case. Millions in contraband smuggled overseas? Someone’s going to prison for a long time.”
“And if you’re half as good as I think you are,” Kelsi entered the room, “it won’t be me.”
“Hello Kelsi,” I smiled.
Kelsi looked every bit the part of the waify hipster model wife. Her arrest paperwork put her in her early thirties, but she looked in her mid twenties. She was overly slender, with long blonde hair but unkempt enough to be rocker chic as opposed to Barbie doll slick. Even in her blue jail scrubs, she walked with the smug confidence of the overly intelligent.
“I have two kids at home,” she said as sank into the chair. “And they need their mother. This is bullshit. I didn’t smuggle ivory tusks. We’re fucking...vegans for Christ’s sake. Everyone who knows us, knows that. We’re green, we recycle. I drive an electric car. James even did a benefit for the wetlands. Honestly, the sight of animal teeth in my garage made me physically sick. It reminded me of the Nazi concentration camps when they would show pictures of confiscated eyeglasses and I think they harvested teeth too. I don’t remember. But that was all I could think of when I saw those tusks. Someone going around ripping out animal teeth, and collecting them. And then leaving them in my garage? It’s straight up fucking sadistic and evil. I don’t who’s trying to fuck with us, but this is a sick fucking joke.”
Some clients we had to pry the truth out of them. But this one was ready to talk. Okay. I could handle that. It didn’t necessarily make anything she said true. It just was a place to start.
“Do you have any ideas on who might have placed the contraband in your garage?”
“No fucking idea,” she said.
I didn’t believe her. But something I had read in one of online articles gave me an idea.
“Do you know Irwin Montague?” I asked.
She broke eye contact for just a second and then looked at me again.
“The art dealer?” she asked. “Sure everyone knows him.”
“How well do you know him?” I asked.
“I know that you sent his mom to prison,” she said.
I raised an eyebrow. This one was feisty.
“I didn’t send her to prison,” I corrected. “She embezzled millions of dollars and let an innocent man be framed for a murder. So, I exposed her criminal acts.”
“Whatever,” she shrugged. “Reba McQuaid might have had some screwed up ideas. But she’s been through a lot. Sending her to prison really tore that family apart. Irwin’s really fucked up about it.”
Reba McQuaid had been embezzling millions of city funds over decades, some of it went directly to her son to cover his misdeeds. Of course he’s screwed up about it. His financial pipeline just dried up.
“We’re not here to talk about Reba McQuaid,” I said. “We’re here to talk about you. Because right now, the US government thinks you smuggled illegal ivory into the country. The seizure hasn’t been valued yet, but it could be worth millions.”
“What?” her face paled. “M-millions? I’m a photographer, a make-up artist, and I model on the side, and I’m a mom. A million dollars might as well be a billion for all I know. This is just crazy. Dude, you guys have got to help me.”
“First of all,” Vick said. “Do you have anyone to post bail for you?
“Yeah,” she said. “I think I can.”
“Okay,” Vicki said. “The first step is posting bail. Once we have you out, it will be easier.”
“Cool,” she said and she rose. “People say you guys are the best in Sedona. You think I have a chance?”
“If you didn’t do it,” I said. “Then yeah.”
“Thanks,” she said and an odd expression crossed her face.
She went back into the bowels of the building and Vicki and I went home.
“Where did the Irwin Montague link come in?” Vicki asked as we drove back to the cottage.
“Elephant tusks are frequently snuck inside art pieces,” I said. “Reba was mainly embezzling to pay off the cartel to leave him alone because he was smuggling drugs across the border for Sean Drake.”
“So the likelihood that he was involved in the ivory trade is pretty high,” she said.
“At one point,” I said. “The feds were looking for Irwin and he disappeared. I guess now that the heat has died down he’s come home and is back to his tricks.”
; “I can’t believe we’re going back to the whole Clifton Melbourne case,” she said.
Clifton Melbourne was our second big case after Harmony. He was found dead in a suitcase at a yard sale, and the poor guy that was hosting the garage sale got arrested, and we had to defend him. Irwin Montague ended up being involved in the whole scandal, and the one loose thread that never got solved.
“But,” I said. “We don’t know that he’s involved with the elephant tusk smuggling.”
“Right,” Vicki said. “But it seems odd timing for James to mysteriously die the day before this comes out.”
“I know,” I said. “Too odd. It makes me think she is hiding something.”
“Or,” she said. “It could have been all on him, and she knew nothing about it.”
“In that case,” I said. “We’ve got to find out who he was dealing with. Someone somewhere knows something.”
“We’ve got to get the tapes from that night,” I said.
“Totally,” Vicki said. “We’ll also need the coroner’s report. Kelsi can get that for us.”
“Right,” I grinned. “Here we go again.”
She laughed. “Another big case.”
I took her hand across the center console and brought it to my lips. I couldn’t think of anyone better to be on this journey with me than her.
Chapter 5
It was Monday morning and our office was busy. After being in Tahiti, and then the lull of coming back from vacation, it was great to be busy at work again.
We also needed the work. Our bank account was fine, but it wouldn’t be if I kept running off on expensive vacations.
“So we need to find out who the Matthews knew,” AJ said.
I leaned back in my chair and sipped coffee from the Batman mug Vicki had bought me when she had originally furnished the office.
It was early, and we were in our morning strategy meeting. Although we would never have called it that. Meetings in our office were typically informal and conversational.
That’s one thing I really loved about our firm. Compared to the firm Vicki and I met at, and even the ones I had interned in in law school, we were super laid back and chill.
“I would start with the band members,” I said. “They all just got back from Africa.”
