by Dave Daren
“Well,” she said. “I had a friend who was a freelance hair and make-up artist, did weddings and photo shoots. I would help her out when she was swamped, so she trained me in contouring and brush strokes and a lot of stuff can be transferred to traditional art.”
I was impressed. “I would never have thought about that.”
She grabbed my canvas, “So now, what is this?”
I laughed. “It’s abstract and interpretative.”
“Uh-huh,” she said. “I interpret it that you spent the whole class socializing and didn’t do your work.”
Toby jumped in. “I was complicit in these crimes, your honor.”
“Ah,” she said. “An admission of guilt.”
I winked. “So now am I in trouble, your honor?”
She shot me a sensuous look. “Your sentencing will be later on when we get home. I suggest you throw yourself on the mercy of the court and I might not throw the book at you.”
Toby whistled, and I just laughed. The crowd started moving toward the door, and we followed them, but Harmony abducted us on the way out, hugged Vicki, and squealed.
“I’m so glad you guys could come,” my sister said. “What did you paint? Let me see.”
“I had so much fun,” Vicki showed her the painting. “Thanks for inviting us.”
Harmony gushed. “It’s fabulous. I love it,” she turned to me. “What did you paint?”
“He socialized the whole class,” she said.
“That doesn’t surprise me,” she said. “In school, he was always getting in trouble for talking.”
“I did my work,” I insisted.
“Yeah, eventually,” Harmony said.
“Interesting touch with the live model, by the way,” I said. “Where did you find her?”
“Oh,” she shrugged. “It’s like that out here, you forget. Everyone’s some kind of artist and looking for a buck.”
“I do remember that,” I smirked.
“Yeah, you would,” she said. “From your Shakespeare on the Street days.”
“Shakespeare on the street?” Vicki asked. “I am learning so much about you.”
“Hey,” I said. “Your parents are in town, the shoe is on the other foot now. ‘Ban-gap-sum-ni-da, ‘kam-sa-ham-ni-da.”
“What is that?” Harmony asked.
Vicki groaned and rolled her eyes. “That is some really shitty Korean. We’re leaving now.”
I laughed as we headed out to the car. We arrived home late, Vicki ‘punished me’ for like an hour despite my guilty plea, and then we settled into bed. Vicki fell asleep quickly, but I laid awake for a while. The last couple of days we had been living separate lives, and I didn’t like it. I missed her.
In addition to that, I was really worried about the trustee meeting. I don’t know why Alister named me as the chairman of the board of trustees. It was one of those weird Alister things. I guessed he was probably trying to stick it to someone, and I got caught in the middle. I didn’t know who, but I suspected their wrath would eventually find me. I couldn’t sleep at all, so I gave up and opened my computer to the list of trustees. I hadn’t met them all yet, and I wanted to be at least somewhat familiar with who they were.
First of all, there was Marvin Iakova. Marvin is a legend in Sedona, and tons of people said he is the Rupert Murdoch of the state. He owned Starbright Media, which is the parent company to pretty much all the media in Arizona. All the newspapers, news sites, television stations, and radio stations in Arizona all have connections to Starbright, and most are directly owned by him. Anyone who wanted to maintain a net worth of seven figures or more had to, at some point or another, go through Marvin.
Then there was Quentin Alucio, who by all appearances was just an old rancher. But he had inherited Red Matador Cattle. Red Matador was originally Southwest Cattle, which had been the premier cattle company in the western United States for more than a hundred years. The executives at Southwest had at one time been so powerful that they could demand an audience with the President of the United States, and get it. Southwest was broken up in the forties by an antitrust case that left the Alucios with the southern half, called Red Matador. Under Quentin’s father, Red Matador had been contracted as the primary supplier for the Emberland Meat Corporation, which is now the number one supplier of cheap meat to all the top fast-food chains in the United States.
Jake Vandergraaf was only the regional vice-president of Coconino Bank and had been for twenty years. But, before that, he had been a Wall Street stockbroker for over a decade, and had worked for the SEC. There was also something on his bio about JP Morgan, American Express and Capital One. Oh, and a side note, he had gone to Harvard Business School.
I had spent time with Earnie, but his bio was intimidating. Earnie was a business school graduate from Notre Dame who took Alister’s struggling copper mill and made it a global enterprise, acquiring locations in Indonesia, Chile, and multiple locations throughout Africa.
Earnie spent two decades bouncing around the world managing Alister’s global empire until 2010, when both men bowed out, sold their shares, and collected their bounties. Since then, Earnie played advisor to Alister’s many schemes in business and investment banking. The lack of success of such schemes I would likely attribute more to Alister’s eccentricity and impulsivity, rather than a lack of sound business advice from his right-hand man.
George Tacari had been the mayor before Andrea McClellan. Before that, he served as the chairman of the Grand Canyon Advisory Commission, which meant he ran the Grand Canyon for the federal government.
Albert Muholland had been a state senator for several terms, but had been a real estate mogul before that. About half of the property in Sedona, he either now owned or had owned at one time. There is a theatre downtown that bears his name.
And then there was me. A twenty-eight-year-old UCLA law school graduate who had worked for five years as an entertainment lawyer, and six months ago started up a fledgling law firm in Sedona. What the hell was I doing on this list? More importantly, why did Alister want all of these important men to run the zebra’s fortune?
“Henry,” I heard Vicki calling out. I woke with a start and didn’t even realize that I had fallen asleep.
“Henry,” she shook me again, this time with urgency.
I groggily sat up. “What?”
My laptop lay open next to me on the bed, and I grimaced. I could have rolled on over on it in the middle of the night. Vicki sat down next to me. She was fully dressed in jogging clothes, but the look on her face brought me to full consciousness.
“What’s going on?”
Wordlessly, she tossed me a disposable flip phone.
“What is this?” I asked as I opened it.
“This,” she said, “was taped to our front door this morning.”
I eyed her. “This is not a ransom note.”
She nodded. “Check the text messages.”
I scrolled around to the text menu. There were only two, from a blocked number.
If you ever want to see the zebra again, you will pay ten million dollars at a location to be announced. Text back if you understand. If we don’t hear back in twenty-four hours, the zebra gets it.
A second text message followed. It was a simple GIF of a bloodied dead zebra. I flipped the phone shut.
Chapter 12
Vicki sat on our bed, and she held the disposable phone in her hand. I drew a long deep breath.
“What do we want to do?” she asked.
“First,” I said as I rubbed my forehead. “We need to call the police.”
“Yeah,” she said. “We need to give them an update at least.”
“Right,” I said. “Even if they don’t do anything, which they won’t, those records need to be accurate.”
“Exactly,” she agreed.
“Then, I need to call to Earnie,” I said. “I want to move up the trustee meeting, and we can all brainstorm on what we plan to do.”
“Right,” she
agreed. “Okay, I’ll take care of the police, you take care of Earnie.”
I stumbled out of bed, made a cup of coffee and then got on the phone with Earnie.
“We’ve got a problem,” I grumbled as I slumped into the couch with my coffee.
“Just one?” he asked. “Cause if it’s just one, fuck it, I’m going to Boca.”
I laughed. “Don’t book that flight just yet.”
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“We just got our ransom note,” I replied. “In the form of a disposable phone. They want ten million or they kill the zebra.”
“Jesus!” he exclaimed. “First the tiger, now this? This is real.”
“Unfortunately,” I said, “this isn’t my first rodeo with this kind of thing.”
“You deal with this on a regular basis?” he asked incredulously.
“A semi-regular one, unfortunately,” I answered. “The last one was a deranged drug dealer.”
“Alright,” he said. “You’re the expert. So what do we do then?”
“In this case, I would say the board needs to be notified. This gets a little complicated considering we haven’t exactly set the board in place yet.”
“Right,” he said. “That’s not for another couple of days.”
“They’re giving us twenty-fours to respond,” I said. “So we need to call an emergency board meeting and discuss how we want to handle this. Can we get everyone together today?”
“I can try,” he responded. “But these guys are on the board in the first place because they’re good at what they do, which means they’re really busy people.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said as I remembered what I had read last night. “Do what you can, even if we have to cut a couple guys, as long as we make quorum.”
“Alright,” he replied. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thanks, Earnie,” I said. “And I’ll try not to ask you to come to the mansion anymore.”
He was quiet. “When this is all over,” he finally said. “I’m leaving town. I need a change of scenery.”
“I hear you,” I said and I took a long sip of my coffee.
“The wife and I bought a hut in Tahiti years ago,” he said. “We’ve only been once. We’re talking about moving out there for good.”
“Tahiti?” I asked. “That’s a change.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Gina loves the beach, and I need to get away.”
“Retirement,” I said. “Sounds really nice right now.”
He laughed. “What are you talking about? You’ve been out of law school for about ten minutes! You’ve got a long way to go before you can start talking about retirement!”
“Don’t I know it,” I said. I heard call waiting beeping in on my phone. I glanced at the screen. Manuel. I needed to get with him. “Alright, Earnie, thanks, I’ll see you at the meeting.”
“See you,” Earnie said.
I ended with Earnie and flipped over to Manuel.
“Manuel,” I said. “How’s it going?”
“Good,” he said. “The zookeeper did an inspection, and the animals all checked out.”
“So that’s good news then,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “They still have to clear it with their boss, but they think they can take the animals as early as tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” I said. “That would be fantastic.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Do we have any word on the zebra?”
I decided I wanted to hold off on telling Manuel about the ransom. I doubted he was involved, but he wasn’t totally off the suspect list.
“We don’t have any leads on it, no,” I said. “We’re meeting with the board of trustees hopefully today, and we’ll decide on a plan of action. Let me know if you run across anything.”
“Okay, thanks,” he said.
“Thanks, Manuel,” I said.
I ended the call, showered, and dressed for the day. I hoped that the trustee meeting would be fruitful and give us some concrete direction on where to go with the zoo and the estate. That was one of the good things about having such experienced businessmen on the trust. At least they wouldn’t let me screw it up, so long as I listened to their advice.
The Parks planned to stay another couple of days, but Vicki decided that with everything going on, she needed to come in to the office. This was good, because I needed her help, and I didn’t relish the idea of pulling the boss card on my girlfriend.
“Okay,” she said, as she sat on the couch with her computer. “The presentation is finished.”
“What do we have?” I asked, and I took a seat next to her as she brought the presentation up on full screen view.
All of our tables and figures looked right, based on the documents we had, and I thought we had a pretty good three-stage plan for liquidating the estate. It was all laid out in a calendar format with dates and figures.
“This is good stuff,” I said. “I think it lays out a pretty decent plan. I’d like to get a printed and bound copy for all the trustees. Something for them to hold during the presentation.”
“We can try to squeeze that in,” Vicki said. “There’s a copy mart down the street.”
I sighed. “Now all I’ve got to do, is go into that room and sell it.”
“That’s your specialty, Irving,” she said.
“It used to be,” I said. “But somehow, I’m starting to feel like I’m swimming in a deeper pond than I was in L.A. It’s odd.”
“You are,” she said. “You’ve changed since we’ve been here.”
I raised an eyebrow. “How so?”
“You’re more grounded and stable,” she said. “In L.A., you were confident and cocky, and flashy and sexy.”
“I’m not those things now?” I asked.
“You are,” she said. “But it’s deeper. It’s like you’re more comfortable with yourself, so you don’t need all that flash and flair. And it’s made you so much more attractive to me.”
I blinked in surprise. I wasn’t used to discussing my feelings, and I certainly wasn’t used to someone discussing their feelings about my feelings. Given the insecurities I had about the trustees, I needed to hear that. But I still didn’t know how to respond.
“Well...” I said. “I guess if it makes me hotter.”
“Get out of here,” she laughed. “Go to work. You will be so not hot if you’re broke and unemployed.”
“So, what?” I laughed. “You wouldn’t stand in the soup line with me?”
“Uh, no,” she said. “Sorry, I’m no gold digger. But a guy’s got to have a J.O.B to get with this.”
“What happened to ‘richer or poorer’?” I giggled.
“Did I forget us getting married at some point?” she replied
I laughed and pecked her on the cheek. “I’ll see you at the office?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I’ll be just a few more minutes.”
I drove out to the office and on the way, noticed ads for the Craft Beer Fest coming up, which I had completely forgotten about. It was a Sedona tradition that wasn’t nearly as well hyped and funded as the Film and Wine Festival we had just been through. It was just a one-day event that would bring everyone in town out for a few drinks. I didn’t know if Vicki and I would have time, but it would be a fun event to go to if we did.
I arrived and filled in AJ on the ransom note.
“No way,” she said. “They’re holding the zebra for ransom?”
“Yep,” I said. “I somewhat knew they were going to do this anyway. But, at least we’ve got a lead.”
“You said a phone, right?” she asked.
I tossed her the phone and then made a cup of coffee. She rifled through it and my own phone buzzed with a text. It was Perry McGrath. He said that they were presenting at the Craft Beer Fest and were inviting us all out. I didn’t know if that was something we would have the time or inclination to attend as a firm, so I set the phone down and finished making the coffee while I contemplated a response
.
“Wow,” AJ said when she read the ransom text. “This is insane. But it’s actually the worst thing they could have done for themselves.”
“Why?” I said.
“I’ve got a friend who’s a big electronics geek,” she said. “It’s not that hard to get a GPS point on a disposable number--the number they’re texting from. You just have to know what you’re doing.”
“And your friend does?” I asked.
“I think so,” she said. “I’ll take it over to him.”
“Great,” I said. I toyed with the phone in my hand and stared off into the distance of the room.
“Henry?” she asked as she held out her hand. “The phone?”
“AJ,” I replied, “What are you doing here?”
She looked at me dumbfounded. “I... work... here?”
“I know, but why? Why are you working here?”
“Well,” she fumbled. “I don’t know. Go Team HAV?”
She referred to a moniker we had come up with for our firm in the very earliest days when we were working out of my parents’ treehouse to defend Harmony.
“Yeah,” I said. “I know you’re in school and everything, but you do a good job.”
“Thanks,” she said.
“You come in early every day, usually before Vicki or me. You’re always on top of your game, trying to figure things out. I guess what I’m asking is, what are your career goals? Because if you want to travel the path to be a litigator, there’s some certification that I can help you get now. I just want to know where you see yourself going long term.”
She sighed and settled into my guest chair. “Well, it’s odd that you bring this up today, because Landon and I were talking on the phone about this very thing last night.”
My heart leapt in my throat. What did Landon have to do with this? Was she quitting and moving to Chicago?
“I don’t think I’d be a good lawyer,” she said. “I couldn’t do what you do. But I’ve always loved detective stories and mysteries. I want to eventually open my own firm as a private investigator.”
“So you want to investigate crimes as a career?” I said.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’ve been looking into PI programs. You have to have a bachelor’s first, though. So that’s where I’m at.”
