by Dave Daren
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Chapter 1
The light trickled in through the large windows that overlooked my desk in my office. It wasn’t the biggest of the three that the Landon Legal office space had to offer, but I’d gladly let my colleagues duke it out over the largest space if it meant I could have access to the view.
Maybe it wasn’t the sort of view I’d get if I worked in some skyscraper in some major city on the East or West coast, but from the vantage point of my office, I had a view of the main street in the historical district of Crowley and plenty of light to keep me from withering to dust like some sort of ill-looked after plant.
My office was neater now than it had been at my former, open plan space I’d had next to Hazel’s Heavenly Treats, and I thought that probably had to do with the fact I actually had places to store things now. Unlike my former office, the new Landon Legal had plenty of room for me as well as my paralegal Evelyn and my co-counsel, Brody.
The only case we’d worked together in the building next to the bakery had left us crowded on top of one another in one room for weeks on end while we tried to stretch a shoebox’s worth of space into a mansion.
But, we didn’t have to worry about that now.
I’d kept my large desk chair and had even tried to design the rest of my office around its aesthetics. I’d never been one for interior design, but I’d made an effort, and I thought it looked good.
I had found some nice bookshelves that I was able to line the wall alongside my desk with, and I kept them stuffed full of legal books that I’d probably never need again, but it made me feel more professional.
At the insistence of my mother, my degrees hung on the wall behind me between the wide frames of the windows, and below the degrees, I hung a framed, messy drawing of butterflies that had been so carefully created by Emma Shepard.
A few months before, I’d worked to settle a case with Knox Chemicals that Emma’s mother Clara had approached me with. The case had broken national news and led to a serious investigation into the petrochemical plant that ended in the plant’s closure.
To show her thanks for getting her neighborhood safe drinking water and a hefty chunk of cash for their trouble, Emma had drawn me an entire series of butterfly artwork on reams of construction paper. I kept them all, but only the first she’d given me hung in my office in a place of pride.
The Piney Crest case hadn’t been the first I’d won in Crowley, but it had been the start of a new life. Thanks to the success and publicity of the case, Landon Legal, my private law firm, had been able to move to a new space. I’d been able to keep Evelyn and Brody on, too, and we’d had a heavy influx of cases to juggle since then.
Sometimes, if I thought about it for too long, I thought I might be dreaming, and someone was sure to pinch me awake at any moment. But so far, I still had my new office with its view and two employees who had become like family.
I shifted in my desk chair and listened to the leather groan with the movement as I drummed my fingers against the flat top of my desk. My eyes lingered on the scar across my knuckles for a moment, and I felt a phantom pain from the shattered glass, or maybe I imagined it.
The Knox case hadn’t been easy, and I had the marks left to show for it.
Instead of dwelling on the past, I glanced at the little calendar on my desk. In my own tiny, scribbled writing, I saw that I had marked the time down right for the meeting with my next client.
I checked the heavy watch on my wrist and exhaled a slow sigh. According to both my tiny desk calendar and my digital planner, my meeting with one Natalie Morgan should have started ten minutes ago.
It was almost strange for me to think about how far I had already come during my year or so in Crowley. I’d gone from struggling to keep clients lined up to debating the merits of cancelling appointments and moving on to the next one when a client was ten minutes late.
I checked my watch again as if the time would have magically turned back. The uncaring watch face still read 10:40.
I sighed and fiddled with the dark leather band and tightened it slightly around my wrist. I hadn’t been the one to set Natalie’s appointment, that had been Evelyn, and so I wasn’t too sure as to what she even needed to meet with me about.
Sometimes, when things were particularly slow after a long day, Brody and I would watch the stream of traffic that always bustled around our area of town, and we’d guess as to what each person would ask for if they came into our office. Divorce. Child support. Getting a dog back from an ex.
On occasion, someone we’d speculated about would actually come into Landon Legal, and more often than not, I’d be right about what they’d need.
I continued to drum my fingers against my desktop and shifted in my seat again. From my office, I could hear Brody loudly talking with someone on the phone. I assumed it was his wife, because more often than not, when Brody’s thick Texas drawl grew even slower, it was because he was on the phone with his wife.
I’d met his wife a handful of times now, and it always struck me as funny how opposite they seemed.
Brody was a large, commanding man, still built like the linebacker he’d been in college before he’d felt drawn to law. He wore a cowboy hat over his salt-and-pepper brown hair, and on more than one occasion, I’d even seen him accessorize with a bolo tie.
In contrast, his wife was a petite blonde that looked like she’d blow away if the wind blew too hard in her direction. Leslie Lucas was an unfailingly put together woman that I’d once seen throw a perfect spiral across her well-manicured backyard without so much as knocking a curl out of place.
They might have seemed like opposites, but they were clearly perfect for each other. They’d have to be perfect for each other to have stayed together through the college admissions scandal they’d been embroiled in, thanks to Brody’s attempt to bribe their son’s way into the University of Texas that went down a few years before I stumbled to his doorstep to plead for help on the Knox Chemical suit.
I gave a deep sigh and shifted in my seat once more to try to fight the restless feeling that threatened to make itself at home in my legs. I’d been able to resume my usual routine of a morning run after settling the Knox suit, and had even started running in locally organized 5Ks and even the sporadic 10K, but thanks to an overload of clients that needed to be seen, I’d had to forgo my run that morning.
I checked my watch again to see that it was now officially 10:45. I always tried to give clients at least 15 minutes before I moved on. I planted my hands against the edge of my desk to push myself up to my feet with a deep groan as I stretched the kink in my back out in the process.
But before I could make my way out into the waiting area and then into Evelyn’s office, hell, before I could even step foot out of my office and into the hallway, a tiny woman came crashing into my doorway.
She looked out of breath, and her spiky head of black hair stuck up in every direction. Her brown, iron-on patch-covered messenger bag threatened to slip from her slight shoulder and the gauzy, breezy white blouse she wore looked like it might slip down her arm with it. She was deeply tanned and equally as deeply freckled, and she held out a ring-laden hand as she tried to catch her breath.
I froze where I stood,
and my own mouth opened as I tried to find something to say past her desperate gasping for air.
However, before I could ask any sort of question as to what was happening, she managed to get a sentence out.
“I am--” she sputtered before she stopped to suck in another breath. “So sorry I’m late. My car wouldn’t work, and I tried to call a Lyft, but I’ve got like, a not super great score on there because I got into a fight with one driver about why outdoor cats are like, ecological menaces, and that it doesn’t matter if his grandparents have feral barn cats, they’re killing the-”
I cleared my throat because it didn’t seem like the woman I presumed to be Natalie planned on stopping her one-sided conversation any time soon. I couldn’t help the amused smile that tugged at the edges of my lips despite myself.
“You must be Natalie, then?” I interjected with a raised eyebrow as I lowered myself back down into my desk chair and prayed the leather didn’t make that damn squeaking sound.
But the leather made the damn squeaking sound just to spite me.
The woman blinked her wide eyes a few times before giving me a curt nod and a sheepish smile. She then shuffled into the office and toward my desk with one ringed hand extended. Her wrist was covered in thin, yarn braided bracelets and leather bands, and I felt like I’d already gotten a pretty fair estimation of her personality.
If I were to see her on the street while Brody and I played our guessing game, I’d say she was here because of some pollution complaint, and had chosen me thanks to the suit against Knox Chemicals.
I gave her tiny hand a firm shake and smiled as I gestured for her to take a seat across from me.
She shot me a grateful look as she sank into one of the two low-backed chairs across the desk from me. Her chair, I noticed, did not make any sort of undignified squeaks or groans.
“Natalie Morgan,” she introduced herself. Now that she wasn’t panting, her voice was substantially steadier.
I let myself take a better look at her face and was almost surprised to see that she was simultaneously older and younger than I’d figured. I figured she was somewhere in the mid-20s range, so, only a few years younger than me.
“Archer Landon,” I replied with a kind smile. “And don’t worry about being late. Happens to the best of us. So, what makes you need a lawyer, Ms. Morgan?” I folded my hands on top of one another on my desk, and like always, I kept my scarred hand on the bottom.
Natalie blew a tuft of unruly black hair from her eye line and seemed to sag into the chair, just a little as she picked at a patch on her bag.
The patch was neon-green and, after a moment of careful studying, I realized it was of the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Below the creature’s toxic-green body were the words ‘Please Keep the Lagoon Clean’ in a vibrant pink font.
“Uh, it’s just Natalie,” she corrected with a little laugh trailing her words. “Ms. Morgan was my mother… Sorry, that was a bad joke. Um, I’m not even sure where to begin.”
Her fingers continued to pick at a fraying thread on the patch as she looked up at me a bit helplessly. I pursed my lips before I smiled to try and calm her obvious nerves.
“Is this about money?” I tried. “Something like child support or alimony? Are you looking to file for divorce or get a prenup? Would you like to draft a will? Is it about stolen property? Is there any sort of problem with your local water supply?”
I tried to cycle through every potential reason I could think of for her to sprint to my office instead of calling to reschedule her appointment, though I had to admit that any of those reasons didn’t seem to require so much drama.
Natalie perked up, just a little, and some of the cloudiness that had fallen over her expressive face cleared, and she pointed at me.
“That one,” she said with an eager nod.
I almost smiled because my guess had clearly been correct about the ecological slant to her visit. She wasn’t the first person I’d had approach Landon Legal about their eco-warrior quest.
“Stolen property,” she clarified.
My entire viewpoint tilted, just a little, and I blinked in surprise. I cleared my throat to compose myself and then raised an eyebrow.
“Stolen property,” I repeated, just to make sure I’d heard her correctly.
It’s not that I didn’t believe her, it was just surprising to hear considering what I’d already assumed. But surprises like that were the reason I didn’t gamble.
She nodded and shifted forward in her seat. She finally pulled her gaze away from the patch, and her fingers drifted to her forehead instead to brush away a few strands of hair.
“Yeah, sorry, I wasn’t sure how to like, conceptualize what happened out loud,” she said which only led me to further confusion.
I wasn’t old enough to be this lost around someone young, was I? Surely stolen property wasn’t that hard to explain?
“Just do your best to tell me what happened, and we can piece together everything else,” I encouraged before she could get lost in her own side tangent again.
Natalie gave another determined nod, and her flyway hair bobbed with her.
“So, my boyfriend, well, he’s an ex-boyfriend now, was… okay, to be honest, he was a drug dealer,” she said with a clear hesitance to reveal that information.
I worked to keep my expression neutral and rolled my hand in a gesture for her to continue.
She didn’t seem to notice anything off about my expression, or so I assumed, because she took a deep breath and then moved on.
“Okay, right, so, my ex,” she breathed out the words and started to pick at her Black Lagoon patch again. “His name was Race, which honestly should have been my first warning sign, because like, what respectable grown man is named Race? That’s a sport, not a name.”
She seemed to realize her words and blanched, just slightly, before she gave me a sheepish smile.
“Archer is like a profession that’s sort of also a sport, so it’s totally different,” she back-pedaled, and I found myself simultaneously charmed and exhausted by her presence.
“Anyway, Race was a dealer, and as soon as I found out, I dumped his ass,” said Natalie. “I wasn’t going to let him keep mooching off me and taking up space in my driveway with his shitty ‘85 Honda Civic. And goodie for me, he ended up getting caught up in shit with the police, and for some reason, the asshole marked my apartment down for some of his mail.”
I couldn’t quite figure out where her story was going, but I wouldn’t lie and say I wasn’t at least mildly amused. Natalie Morgan struck me as the sort of woman who approached everything with the same level of zeal and vocal fillers.
Luckily, she didn’t need me to urge her along now.
“And because of that, a bunch of cops showed up at my place at like, two in the morning and started shoving a warrant in my face,” she said with a disbelieving huff, like the gall of the local sheriff’s department still astounded her. “I couldn’t not let them in, so like, a bunch of deputies stormed into my apartment, and I’m in my pajamas as they start tossing everything around.”
I held up a hand to stop Natalie when she paused to take another breath.
“I’m sorry, I might be misunderstanding things,” I said. “Did your boyfriend take anything of yours?”
I furrowed my brow as I waited for her answer, though I couldn’t see where else the story was going.
Natalie blinked as if surprised that I’d spoken, and then gave a shake of her head that ruffled her hair like the feathers on an angry pigeon.
“Ex, and no, Race didn’t take anything, or at least, I don’t think he did,” she amended. “The deputies did.”
I gave a slow nod as I tried to put the pieces together.
“Right,” I began with a deep sigh. “Unfortunately, they legally have the right to take things they suspect might have been part of a crime, or purchased using money from illegal activities. It’s called civil asset forfeiture.”
I couldn’t help the
sympathetic expression that had worked its way onto my face as I explained things to Natalie. She looked like she’d had a stressful ordeal, and I couldn’t blame her for not having a strong understanding of the law.
Natalie shook her head again.
“No, like, I know that,” she cut me off. “I Googled it after they left because they kept saying they had a right to take my stuff because Race lived there, which he didn’t, and I tried to tell them that, but they wouldn’t listen. He was just a moron who used my address for the shitty timeshare mailers they wouldn’t stop sending to his apartment.”
She leaned forward to rest her elbows on my desk, and I had to fight the urge to match her pose.
“Like, they took my TV and stuff like that,” Natalie said. “And my laptop, too, which I’m a little mad about, but they took personal stuff too. I had a ring, um, obviously not one of these.”
She wiggled her fingers to show all the rings she was currently wearing.
Natalie shifted and reached down to pull something out of her messenger bag. She adjusted herself in the seat again as she removed her phone from the bag and quickly punched in her passcode. I noticed that the nail polish on her thumb was black and chipped as she extended her newly unlocked phone toward me.
“This ring,” she said. “It belonged to my mom, and when she died, it went to me. The deputies took it right off my night stand.”
Some of the high-paced fervor in her voice had mellowed into something I couldn’t quite place, but it was something softer and sadder. She nudged her phone toward me again, and I graciously accepted the device to get a look at the photo.
The picture was clearly zoomed in quite a bit, but I could still clearly see the ring on what looked like Natalie’s hand. The ring itself was made up of a thick, silver band laced with etched vines and a dull blue stone set in prongs. It clearly was old and probably well overdue for a cleaning, but it was beautiful.
“It’s not worth anything,” she said with a frustrated edge to her tone. “It’s costume jewelry. Just a piece of steel or something and colored glass, but she loved it, and I wore it every day. I told the deputies it had nothing to do with Race, and I even offered to show them pictures of my mother wearing it, like, pictures with dates, too.”
