by Dave Daren
There is nothing like Sedona coffee snobs. It’s sort of what we do. We’re all about the artisan coffees, and the different beans, and how they’re grown, and how it all works together to create a perfect, unique flavor.
When I moved to L.A., there were certainly the coffee snobs and indie coffee shops. But I was shocked to find that people actually drank mainstream coffee. We have a couple of Starbucks in Sedona, at least I think. But, no self-respecting person would ever admit to darkening their doorways. They exist, as near as I can tell, for the tourists from L.A. to patronize.
Jitters has its own brand, created by a local family farm. I swear, it is by far the best coffee I have ever tasted. Those years I spent in LA, Jitters was one thing I really missed about Sedona. I turned Vicki onto it when we first moved here, now we don’t buy any other brand.
I bought a steaming cup of Red Rock Blend and then threw in an extra half pound bag as my contribution to our fake kitchen stock. Then I walked the twenty yards to our office. AJ was already there.
“I came in early because the county said they would have the death certificate available today,” she told me. “I wanted to get it first thing, because I knew we were going to need it.”
I nodded and took a luxurious sip of coffee. “Perfect. We’ve been needing that. It’s going to allow a lot of things to happen.”
“I also decided to go through the video,” she said. “We have a lot of work to do. Like selling all of his assets and setting up the trust for Daphne.”
“I think she already has a trust, actually,” I said.
“Yeah,” AJ said. “But it’s not as much as she wanted, and Gareth and Shannon I guess are getting cut off?”
“Yes but first I have to cut a check to the Amish people and the rehab facility.” I blinked, laughed, and shook my head. “This is going to be fun.”
Vicki walked in and looked frazzled, but before she could say anything about her grocery run, Mila and Emily came crashing through the door. They looked wilted and even a bit old. Their eyes were swollen like they had been crying, and their make-up was smeared.
“This isn’t right!” Mila yelled at me. “This is wrong and you know it!”
I shrugged. “My opinion doesn’t matter. It was his money, and he can do whatever he wants with it.”
“Where are we supposed to go?” Emily said. “You are selling the house!”
“We will be selling the house, and it's not really my business where you go,” I said. “Right now, my primary concern is setting the estate board, and they will be selling the house, and then we want to arrange the trust for Neptune.”
“The zebra? All you care about is the zebra?” Emily shot at me. “What about us? You’re just going to throw us to the curb?”
“I don’t have any choice in the matter,” I said. “And if it makes any difference to you, I personally don’t like the zebra any more than you do. But, like you, I don’t have a say in the matter, either. You can stay in the house for the time being, and we will give you a thirty day notice when we need it vacated.”
“I’m not going to wait around for that bullshit!” Mila yelled.
“Me neither!” Emily said.
“We’re leaving,” she said. “You’ll be hearing from our lawyer!”
“Who’s that?” I asked, suddenly interested.
“He’s the best!” Emily said. “His name is… uhh…”
“Toby Lithgoe!” Mila added with a smug look on her face.
They turned on their heels and left the office.
“Wow,” I remarked. “They sure showed me.”
Vicki and AJ laughed.
“Toby, huh?” Vicki said. “It will be just like old times.”
I laughed. Toby was an old high school friend who also became a lawyer. He had had a pretty good corner on the market until I got here. Now, in the six months I had been home, I had already beat him twice.
“I smell a bluff,” I said. “Toby’s cocky, but he’s not stupid. I doubt he’s up for a round three ass kicking.”
“Well,” Vicki said. “It looks like it’s been a busy morning already.”
I smiled. “How did the grocery shopping go?”
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Okay,” I said. “We need to get a complete list of all the bank records from Earnie.”
“I already did,” AJ said. “I sent them to your e-mail.”
“Great,” I said. “The next thing we need to do is get rid of the zoo. We need to find a sanctuary for the animals to be donated. AJ, get on the phone and find animal rescue places.”
“Got it,” she said.
“Vicki,” I said. “We’ll need to track down the deeds to all the properties he owned.”
She clicked through her e-mails. “Cindy sent over a list of everything at some point.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Now that we have a death certificate, we’ll have to get the deeds so that we can get them all transferred to the ownership of the trust. Thomas should have everything, so find out what his office has, and we’ll go from there.”
“Okay,” she said.
“I’m going to call Earnie,” I said. “We need to set up a board meeting with the talking heads named in the trust.”
We all set to work on our respective tasks. Based on the documents I now had from Cindy, the trust should be seven different executives and bankers he had worked with over the years, and I wasn’t surprised to see they were all men, no women.
“Good morning, Earnie,” I said after I dialed him. “How are you feeling about the will this morning?”
Earnie snorted. “I got Alister’s bratty kids sending me nasty text messages. Geez. Don’t blame your daddy issues on me.”
“Yep,” I agreed as I thought about the display with Emily and Mila. “I know what you mean. We’ve got to coordinate on this trust thing.”
“For sure,” he said.
“Okay,” I said as I looked at my list. “We’ve got seven names here. I’ll send you that list. Let’s try to coordinate a meeting for some time next week.”
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s a good time frame.”
“Can you drive this? You know all of these guys,” I asked.
“Perfect,” he said. “I’ll let you know.”
“Thanks,” I replied as I clicked the button to forward him the e-mail.
“Thomas has boxes of records for us,” Vicki said as soon as I got off the phone. “All the deeds should be in there.”
“Perfect,” I said.
“I’ll head over there and pick them up,” she said.
I nodded and I heard AJ on the phone coordinating with an animal rescue center. We needed to get the permits for the zoo transferred, so that we could donate the animals. I started looking up how that would work, when my phone buzzed. Perry McGrath, the kombucha client.
“Perry,” I greeted him. “Good to hear from you.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I just got off the phone with Earth Market.”
I leaned back in my chair. “How did that go?”
“They want to send over a distribution contract,” he answered. “I was under the impression we would all draft it together. I guess it’s a take it or leave it kind of deal.”
“It’s not,” I said. “This is standard procedure. They’re going to send you a standard contract, but you’ll have the option to amend whatever you want. You’ll go back and forth for a while until both sides have gotten thoroughly screwed.”
He laughed nervously. “Is that how it goes?”
“No, I’m just kidding,” I said. “Well, sort of. Have them CC it to me, and then I’ll look it over, and get back with you on my recommendations. Then we’ll go from there.”
“Sounds good,” he said.
“And, give them my number and have them direct any further communication on the contract to me,” I said.
“Perfect,” he said.
We said our goodbyes and ended the call. I went
back to the information on animal permits. I was just about to give up on the fruitless endeavor, when Vicki walked in the door carrying an armful of file boxes.
“Merry Christmas, people,” she said as she set them on the floor. “This is all the stuff from the O’Brien estate.”
“Nice,” I said.
AJ was still on the phone, but Vicki and I rifled through the documents. There were the property deeds, vehicle titles, trust fund documents, animal permits, everything we would need to liquify all this man’s assets and cut his kids out of his estate. We started cataloging it all and tried to reconcile what we had versus what Cindy’s spreadsheets showed we were supposed to have. My phone buzzed again, and the number on the screen was unfamiliar.
“Henry Irving,” I answered.
“Hello, Mr. Irving?” the voice on the other end was frantic.
“That would be me,” I said.
“This is Manuel Acosta,” he said, in heavily accented English. “I’m the zookeeper for the O’Brien zoo.”
“Hello, Manuel,” I said. “I know you’ve had some questions about the future, and I do have it in my plans to get with you soon. Just give me some time.”
“There is no time,” he said. “I came in to work this morning, and he is gone.”
“Who is gone?” I asked.
“Khan,” he said.
“Who is Khan?”
“The tiger, Mr. Irving,” he said. “One of the tigers, he has escaped.”
Chapter 8
“Shit,” I told Manuel. “When did he escape?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I got in this morning, and he was gone.”
“Okay,” I said and grabbed a pen and notepad. “What is the procedure for this?”
“What?” he asked.
“There has to be a protocol, a backup plan for when the tigers escape,” I said. “What is that plan?”
Vicki and AJ had overheard enough of the conversation that they were hanging onto my every word, eyes wide and mouths agape.
“Well,” Manuel stumbled. “I learned it when I came here, but that has been years, I do not remember.”
“You don’t have drills or practice?” I asked.
“No,” he stammered, desperation in his tone. “I do not remember. I take care of animals, I feed them, I call the vet when they are sick, but I don’t know of an escape plan.”
“Okay,” I said. “Calm down. Who is the vet you call?”
“Dr. Paulson in Flagstaff,” he said. I could hear papers rustling. “I am looking for the number.”
“Great,” I said. It was unlikely that a vet in Flagstaff could be much help in this situation. But considering what little I knew about tigers, any information they could give us about this animal could be useful.
I scrawled on a sticky note, “Animal control,” and handed it to Vicki. She took it and nodded and got on her computer.
“Okay,” Manuel came back on and gave me the vet’s number.
“Thank you,” I said.
Vicki was already on the phone with animal control. “It’s a Bengal tiger,” I overheard her say.
I handed the sticky with the vet’s number to AJ. She got on the phone.
“Alright, Manuel,” I said. “Is there anything about this tiger that could tell us where it might have gone?”
“He is old, and has arthritis,” he said. “He has likely not gone far. But, in the wild, sick tigers are more dangerous, because they are weak and see humans as easy prey. But, Khan has been raised in captivity. He is old and is used to humans.”
“Okay,” I said. “Do you have any tranquilizer guns or anything on site?”
“I have one,” he said. “But it’s only meant for protection here on the grounds.”
“Get it loaded,” I said. “And get ready, we’re sending animal control over there.”
I overheard Vicki giving out the O’Brien address.
“Thank you,” he said. “I am so sorry, Mr. Irving, I don’t know how this has happened.”
I didn’t have much patience for apologies. We had a tiger on the loose.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Just focus on what we can do moving forward.”
I got off the phone and sighed and leaned back in my chair.
“Henry,” Vicki said. “Don’t hate me, right now.”
“What?” I said. “Nothing good ever comes from that preface.”
“My parents are landing in Flagstaff in an hour,” she said.
I rubbed my face with my hands. “We have an escaped tiger, and your parents are here.”
“Yep,” she said. “Welcome to Sedona, mom and dad. Try not to get eaten.”
I laughed, and she groaned and headed out the door.
I called Earnie. “We got a problem.”
“I heard,” he said. “I just got a call from animal control. Alister was the only one around with a permit, so once they started getting calls about a tiger sighting, they immediately figured out it was us.”
“Right,” I said. “How many tiger sightings have there been?”
“So far, two,” he said. “It was seen in the woods behind the mansion and then crossing the road. But now they’ve lost track of it. It’s a big news story.”
“Shit,” I said. “And I thought today was going to be easy.”
He laughed. “Check The Herald. They’ve got the story going.”
He was referring to our daily news site that was actually quite informative and reputable. I had used it before for cases, so I already had it bookmarked on my taskbar. I clicked on it and immediately saw our tiger on the landing page. Escaped Tiger on the Loose, read the headline.
“This is a terrible photo,” I told Earnie.
It was a low-resolution image taken from far behind of the tiger on the roadway. The animal was mainly on the side of the road, headed toward the treeline. Without the power of suggestion in the headline, it would otherwise take the viewer a couple of minutes to pick up the subject of the photo.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s the only one available. A motorist caught that, I’m guessing it’s the same guy who reported it to animal control.”
I clicked on the story and skimmed it. It was a stock brief, maybe 250 words, which laid out everything we knew already. They had, unfortunately, already connected the tiger to Alister’s collection. This meant the connection to our team wasn’t far behind. I noticed then that AJ was looking at me wildly.
“Hold on a sec,” I said to Earnie.
“What?” I said muffling the speaker.
She brought me her computer screen. On her Facebook feed was a photo of the tiger forlornly sitting in a McDonald’s parking lot. The status read, “McTiger?” It was posted three minutes ago.
“We found it. It’s at a McDonald’s,” I told Earnie. I gave him the cross streets based on the surrounding locations in the picture.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m going out there. I’ve got the tranquilizer from the mansion. Meet me out there?”
“Great,” I said.
I was sure animal control had already been alerted to the situation, but I called them anyway as I headed out the door.
“We’ve got a sighting of the tiger at the McDonald’s,” I said.
“Yeah,” the girl on the phone said. “We did get that report about ten minutes ago. We’ve got a team on our way out there.”
“Thanks,” I said.
I hopped in my car and headed out to the McDonald’s. I was ill-equipped to go chasing tigers, and Vicki would tell me not to if she was around. However, I was largely responsible for this animal, and once the tiger was subdued and the paperwork was filed, my name would have to be all over it. I figured I should be in the middle of the fray, and somewhere in my head I was worried they might kill the poor cat.
When I arrived to the location, it was already a scene. There were camera news crews, vans, police cars, and police tape blocking off the area. The tiger was nowhere to be found. Everyone was standing around, so I
figured it was safe to get out of the car. I got out and found Earnie.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“It got away,” he said. “They think it might have gone up the red rocks.”
“Geez,” I said. “How long ago was that?”
“Between the time it was reported, and the time everyone got here,” he said.
“This tiger is fast for an arthritic old cat,” I said. “We need to control this situation.”
“Agreed,” he said.
“Where’s animal control?” I asked.
He pointed toward a couple of guys standing around in hard hats and knee high rubber boots.
“How are you guys doing?” I approached them.
“All media on the other side of the police line,” one of the guys ordered me.
“I’m not media,” I said. “I’m the guy responsible for the tiger. Henry Irving,” I held out my hand.
“This is your tiger?” another one of the guys asked in an accusing tone.
“No,” I said. “It was Alister O’Brien’s tiger. Since he is now deceased, I’m part of the legal team getting the tiger out of here.”
“Well, you need to get your shit together, man,” he said.
I raised an eyebrow. My phone buzzed. It was AJ. “Hold that thought,” I said to the animal control officer.
“What’s up?” I answered.
“Don’t ask me how I know this,” she said. “But there are some meth heads in a trailer up in the red rocks that say they found the tiger, and they currently have drugged it.”
“They drugged it?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “They threw meat at it, and put something in the meat, I think.”
“Geez,” I said. “But I’m going to do the obvious and ask how you know it.”
“I know everyone in this town,” she said. “Some of them happen to be meth head distant cousins that live in trailers in the red rocks. They called me, because they hate cops, and they know I work for a lawyer, so they wanted to know if they would get into trouble for ‘other things’ if they reported the tiger.”
“Got it,” I said. “You have a location?”
