Sedona Law 3

by Dave Daren

  “Hey,” I said. “I got this, if you want to…”

  He nodded, and his face was full of shadows. “Yeah,” he said. “Feels like losing him all over again.”

  He didn’t wait for me to respond, he just wandered off in the direction of the house.

  After he left, I didn’t see any sense in standing around at the empty zebra corral all by myself. I went inside the house and mulled around in the Great Room and waited for the cops to call me. While I waited, I noticed the housekeeper, Elena, watching me. She pretended to dust in the Great Room, but it seemed like she was working up to tell me something.

  I was about to open the dialogue with her when my phone buzzed. The cops had arrived. I went out to meet them. It was just one sheriff’s deputy.

  Deputy Thomas Walker was a scrubbed-clean white-bread kid, with red hair, freckles, and a boyish grin.

  “How long have you been in the force?” I asked as I noticed his cop donut belly.

  “About six months,” he said.

  “What did you do before that?” I asked.

  “I worked at Best Buy,” he said. “I still work there on the weekends so I can keep my discount.”

  I nodded. If the zebra needed printer ink, I guess we would be in luck.

  “People knock it,” he said. “But hey, I make more at Best Buy than at the police department. So if you know anybody who needs a job, let them know.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.

  Suddenly, Sedona law enforcement made so much more sense. I took the deputy out to the corral where he filled out a lot of forms, asked me a bunch of obvious questions and snapped a few photos. Then he handed me a carbon copy of the report.

  “Thanks,” I said. “You think you’ll find anything?”

  “Probably not,” he said. “Only so many places to hide a zebra so it’s likely to turn up one way or the other.”

  “Thanks for the honesty,” I asked.

  “You bet,” he said and headed back toward the house and his car.

  It was getting late, so I texted AJ to lock up, I wouldn’t be back in the office today. It was actually past time for me to leave for the gallery. I called Manuel to find out where he was with the zookeepers.

  “They aren’t finished yet,” he said. “They are doing physicals on the giraffes.”

  “How much longer do they think they will be?” I asked.

  “A few more hours,” he said. “But if you need to go, I can handle it here.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Call me in the morning let me know how it went.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  I walked the quarter mile back to house and then showed myself in and out the mansion and to my car. It was already dark by the time I got to the art gallery.

  The gallery was in Sedona’s trendy art district, in between a funky thrift store and some sort of southwestern restaurant with a string of chilis hanging from the patio roof.

  The buildings in the art district had a little more design and shape to them than the rest of the town, and instead of the Sedona oranges and tans, the colors gave way to purples, blues, and vibrant reds. I approached the gallery, a modernly designed building with high windows and geometric architecture.

  As I walked in, Wine Wednesday was already in full swing. The room was a brick and glass paneled room, with paintings and sculptures hanging on every available surface. Upbeat music played, and people were everywhere, with the wine flowing, and laughter just a bit louder.

  Near the middle of the room, art deco sofas created a niche sitting area now occupied by marginally buzzed members of Sedona’s up and coming younger generation.

  It’s always an odd moment when you realize you don’t belong in that crowd anymore. You think you’re still young and hip until the latest batch of newly minted twenty somethings shows you how wrong you are. Fortunately, I had already had enough of those moments to remember the lesson, and instead looked around for my lovely lady. I found her in a corner near an easel chatting with the police investigator Leonard Colby and his girlfriend Julie.

  “Hey, guys,” I greeted them and wrapped my arm around Vicki.

  “Hey,” Vicki greeted me. “I was starting to wonder if you were going to make it.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’ll tell you about it later.”

  “Hey, there, Henry,” Leonard said “Keeping a close eye on those tigers, right?”

  I winked at him, but his bad joke really irritated me. Leonard was tall and skinny, with a thick mustache and a thinning head of brown hair. This scared me a bit, as Leonard had actually been only one class ahead of me in school. Surely we weren’t at the going bald age, right?

  I remembered Leonard as being an English buff, with a penchant for going around switching between dialects of Elizabethan poetry, and the American South. It was as odd as it sounds.

  Several months ago he had started dating Julie, a sort of goth poet type who taught middle school, and was a good five or six years younger. At first glance she seemed way out of his league, but now seeing them together at the gallery, something about them seemed to fit.

  “How are you guys doing?” I asked.

  “Julie was telling us about the poetry book she just released,” Vicki said.

  “Poetry?” I asked.

  “It’s just an experiment,” she said modestly. “Henry, do you need a glass of--”

  Before she could finish the question, the music shut off, and my sister’s voice came booming through a microphone and into the PA system. “Alright, Alright, people,” she said. “Welcome to Wine Wednesday.”

  This was met with cheers all around. The crowd quieted and formed a group around the platform where she stood.

  “At the back, there are plenty of refreshments and…adult beverages,” she said euphemistically.

  This last part resulted in some applause, particularly by members of the crowd who had already begun to imbibe. I glanced at Leonard to see if he showed any reservation on his face. He did.

  “Drink responsibly, y’all,” he yelled out.

  Everyone laughed as they all knew who he was.

  “I don’t feel like arresting nobody tonight,” he finished.

  “Yes,” Harmony said over the microphone. “Please drink responsibly. Don’t drink and drive and all of that. Otherwise, you’ll end up having to hire my brother over there to get you out of a DUI.”

  I held up my hand and nodded vehemently as everyone laughed hysterically.

  “And I think he charges about four hundred dollars an hour,” she said. “So you don’t want to do that, folks.”

  “On the contrary, drink and drive, please,” I joked. “I’m remodeling my kitchen.”

  The crowd roared and booed, and Vicki and I both laughed.

  “But we’re not here to talk about that,” Harmony said. “We’re here to have some fun!”

  She did a little dance move, and everyone in the room cheered.

  “There should be enough easels for each couple,” she said. “We have twenty-five couples, so there should be twenty-five sets of mini-easels. Everybody take five, find an easel and get settled in.”

  The music came back on, and Vicki and I looked around. There were long white work tables, each with three pairs of mini-easels mounted on them. On each easel was a board with a blank piece of paper attached to it, with a wicker basket of paint supplies nearby.

  “This one looks good,” Vicki shrugged and randomly picked one. We staked our claim and sat down on the stools in front of our easels.

  “Okay,” she said. “I haven’t seen you all day.”

  “I know,” I said. “It’s weird. I feel odd, unbalanced.”

  She laughed. “So now what was with the cops?”

  “Neptune’s missing,” I said. “It appears we have a zebra abduction.”

  “They stole the zebra?” she said aghast.

  “Yeah,” I said. “And we’ve got no clues.”

  “What do the police say?” she asked.


  I snorted. “They’re not going to find anything.”

  “Well,” she said, “I say we wait and see if they make themselves known. Because what else would they want from a millionaire zebra, other than his money?”

  “Right,” I said. “So we should just wait it out.”

  “I think so,” she said. “Because taking care of a zebra couldn’t be easy. For starters, what do you feed it? I mean, it’s not like you can buy a bag of zebra feed at Costco.”

  “Zebras eat grass,” I said.

  “But then you have to have enough grass, and we’re in a desert,” she said. “So, it’s got to be a massive pain to keep this thing. It won’t be long before they want to get it off their hands.”

  I nodded in agreement.

  “Well, well,” I heard a familiar voice say. “If it isn’t Henry Irving.”

  “Hello, Toby,” I said as I turned around.

  Toby Lithgoe was another one I had grown up with. With his striking blue eyes and disheveled blond hair, he could have been a male model. He probably should have been one because it would have been a better profession for him. Instead, he grew up to be a mediocre lawyer.

  In high school, Toby was one of those smart jerks that sat in the back of all the AP classes, drew dirty pictures in textbooks, and made everyone laugh with inappropriate jokes. Yet, when called upon for an answer, he could BS his way to a fairly intelligent response. That pretty much summed up the way Toby approached life, although now he added ambitions for money and politics to give it all meaning. Tonight he was with a date, a strikingly gorgeous tall, slender brunette who wore a short skirt and a halter top with beaded fringe.

  “This is Cassandra,” he said and shot me a knowing look. “She’s a model. Baby, meet Henry and Vicki.”

  “Hello, Cassandra,” I greeted her and shook her hand and Vicki did the same.

  “Hello,” she said. Her voice was soft, and every move she made was purposeful, with poise and grace. They sat down at the station next to us.

  “Well, how did you two meet?” Vicki asked her.

  “On a photo shoot,” he said, and I saw Vicki shift uncomfortably in her seat when Toby answered for her.

  I raised an eyebrow and was about to ask what he was doing at a photo shoot, but then the music ended and Harmony came back on.

  “Alright, people,” my sister announced with flair. “Does everyone have their easels?”

  No one objected, and she eased onto a stool in front of her own easel. She was wearing a headset microphone now, and she clicked a remote for a projector in the ceiling. Her blank canvas came up in a screen image that took up the entire wall in front of us.

  “I’m Harmony Irving,” she said. “I teach art here in the gallery three times a week, and I’m also an art teacher at Horizon’s school. Tonight we’re going to practice sketching and painting the human form. We have with us a live model, Evelyn?”

  Evelyn came out in a red bathrobe, and two aides carried in a light blue divan styled couch, and set in down in front of the room.

  “Thank you,” Harmony said to the aides. “Evelyn, would you give us a pose?”

  Evelyn dropped her robe to reveal her completely nude figure, and my mouth dropped in shock. I looked around the class and no one seemed to notice that they were staring at a naked woman. Even Vicki just watched, completely unconcerned.

  Evelyn then posed on the couch. She looked to be in her late twenties, perhaps, and about five foot six, with shoulder-length blonde hair. She also appeared to be somewhere around twenty pounds overweight. I wouldn’t have noticed, of course, had I not been tasked with contemplating her body.

  “I will walk you through the strokes on the screen,” Harmony announced, “but if you feel comfortable, feel free to branch out on your own.”

  Comfortable wasn’t a word I would have used to describe how I was feeling at the moment. I turned to Vicki who finally smirked at me.

  “Aren’t we just supposed to do like the Eiffel Tower or something at these things?” I muttered and scratched my head.

  Julie walked by and heard the comment and laughed. “Maybe in L.A., but this is Sedona. This is real art out here.”

  “Right,” I said. “What else would it be?”

  I cleared my throat, gulped down my wine glass, and grabbed my pencil.

  “Welcome home,” Vicki said. “These are your people.”

  “These are… my people,” I laughed. “Let’s do this.”

  Harmony clicked on some yoga music and then demonstrated the pencil strokes on the screen. I dug in and figured out why no one was bothered. This was actually not a sexual experience at all. I spent half of the workshop trying to figure out how to draw this woman’s kneecap. After a few frustrating minutes, I noticed Toby and Cassandra in stifled laughter next to us. I looked over to see what they were doing.

  Toby had already messed up his canvas with the first strokes, and now just goofed around with the paints. Cassandra’s painting started out like the instructions, but then she started adding her own design to it, and it looked entirely different. I wasn’t even sure she was still painting the model.

  Vicki was immersed fully in the project, watching Harmony with rapt attention, and she carefully replicated every stroke with precision down to the wrist movement.

  Toby flirted with Cassandra all night and made her laugh so hard she started to cause a scene. So she excused herself to get refreshments. While she was gone, Toby turned to me.

  “So, Henry,” he said. “You came up the other day.”

  “Oh yeah?” I said. “Did it have anything to do with a zebra or a tiger?”

  He laughed. “Well, I did hear about all that, but that’s not what I was talking about.”

  “What happened then?” I asked, glad that my name and career had not become completely synonymous with eccentric old coots and their African wildlife.

  “Yeah,” he said, then glanced over at Cassandra still at the refreshment booth, and then leaned a little closer to me. “You know those two hot chicks that were dating Alister O’Brien?”

  I snickered. “Yeah, I do.”

  Toby whistled long and shook his head. “Damn. Day-amn,” he repeated. “Alister was a crazy old fuck, but he knew how to pick ‘em.”

  “Emily and Mila,” I said. “Not too much going on upstairs.”

  He laughed. “You’re right about that. But, they came into my office the other day, saying they had a lawsuit and they had been screwed out of a will and all of this. I was going to take them both on too. Pro-bono, if you know what I mean.”

  I laughed and shook my head. “You’re awful, Toby.

  “You know what I mean, though,” he stated.

  “I do know what you mean,” I said.

  “But anyway, when then they told me they were suing you,” he said. “And I was all like, fuuuuck, no.” He whistled and shook his head. “I told them, Henry Irving is one bad hombre. It kinda sucks though too, ‘cause they were super-hot.”

  I laughed. “Well, I appreciate that, Toby. But, they did find someone else.”

  Toby raised an eyebrow. “Really? Who did they find?”

  “Aiden Prescott. Have you heard of him?” I asked.

  Toby blinked and shook his head. “Holy hell,” he said. “He’s not like us, man, you know, hardworking, ethical lawyers. That dude created the concept of the ambulance chaser.”

  “Really?” I asked while I did my best to stifle laughter at the irony of Toby calling himself both hard working and ethical. “What do you know about him?”

  Cassandra showed back up, sat down at her stool, and handed him a paper plate. “I got you some cookies,” she said.

  He smiled at her and took the plate. “Thank you, baby.”

  Then he turned back to me. “So last year, there was this whole scandal with him. He had a client sue the city because she slipped on the steps of City Hall and broke her leg. But during the case, there was this whole investigation, people were claiming that he stood ar
ound with a bottle of water and squirted the steps as people were coming down. When they would slip, he would offer his services to sue the city.”

  “Geez,” I said. “How did he not get disbarred?”

  “There were all these people who came forward,” Toby said. “But he discredited all of them, and so no one could prove anything. In the end, the lady won the suit for half a million.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said.

  “Exactly,” Toby agreed. “But he’s so slick, he covers his tracks. Then there was the thing three years ago, I think. A lot of ladies he worked with came forward, and said he had been inappropriate with them, and had told them he would ruin their careers and stuff. I mean, you know, I play the field and all, but if she’s not into it, that sucks for her, but it’s cool or whatever.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m just saying he’s a sleazy scumbag. Just, you know, watch your back and all.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Thanks for the heads up, Toby.”

  “Anytime,” he said.

  Toby went back to Cassandra, who was now starting to look annoyed at being abandoned for a few seconds, and I thanked myself that Vicki wasn’t as high maintenance.

  “Sorry, baby,” he said. “Work stuff.”

  I went back to Vicki who had now almost completed the painting and seemed not to notice the discussion I had had with Toby. I was amazed at how good her painting looked.

  “That looks realistic,” I said.

  She smiled slightly but mainly looked irritated that I was breaking her concentration. I looked at my own painting, which had about a dozen brush strokes that were variations on the kneecap. I wondered if I could turn this into something else. I was still analyzing how I could salvage this painting when the class ended.

  The music came back up, and Vicki proudly looked over her perfect painting.

  “It’s actually different than the model,” I said.

  “I added some of my own ideas,” she said.

  “Did you ever take art?” I asked.

  She shook her head.

  “So you’re just that good?” I asked.