Sedona Law 6 by Dave Daren (best non fiction books of all time .TXT) 📗

contraband. She doesn’t look so good right now.”

“Let’s focus on the arraignment,” Vicki sighed. “We’ve got our hands full with that.”

“Yeah,” I rubbed my face. “I just hope she enters the right plea. Because I don’t want to spend six months buried in paperwork, to prepare for a trial where she’s guilty as sin.”

“Maybe she’s not,” AJ shrugged. “Maybe she was just married to a distant asshole with a smuggling operation and she was lonely.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But, I don’t trust her anymore.”

“I think you’re taking this is a little too hard,” AJ said. “You’re usually much more rational.”

I raised an eyebrow in agreement but said nothing as I went back to work. She was right. The video was not proof of anything.

I spent the rest of the afternoon doing mindless paperwork, while Vicki planned our wedding on the phone. She and AJ went back and forth on color schemes and dress designs. Occasionally, I’d be consulted for an opinion.

“Vegas,” I remarked. “Little White Wedding Chapel. Elvis.”

They both laughed.

“No,” Vicki said definitively. “Absolutely not.”

“That’s my vote,” I smirked as I downloaded an attachment a client sent me.

“Then on to the honeymoon,” I winked.

Vicki and AJ burst into laughter. Vicki blushed and threw a wad of paper at me and I ducked.

“One track mind,” she said.

“Is there more than one track to be had?” I quipped.

“See what I have to put up with?” Vicki turned to AJ.

“Yeah, whatever,” AJ rolled her eyes. “My sympathies extend to you-- random getaways to Tahiti, that must have been awful.”

“I’m not going to lie,” Vicki laughed. “That Tahiti vacay was nice.”

“It wasn’t random,” I said. “It was a grief vacation. We had done three murder cases back to back. We needed to get out of town.”

“Uh--huh,” AJ mocked my voice. “‘I’m Henry and I used to know A-listers and now I’m loaded and I take random vacations anywhere I want.”

I smiled and just shook my head. She was sort of right.

“Where are you guys going for the honeymoon?” AJ asked.

“We haven’t decided,” Vicki said. “Cancun? Paris?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “That’s so cliche.”

“Okay,” she said. “Where do you want to go?”

I smirked. “The Grand Canyon.”

Vicki and AJ both groaned. We were about two hours from the Canyon, and it was a frequent day trip for Sedona natives. Last time we went, we ran into the Sedona police investigator and talked shop over dinner.

“If we go to the Grand Canyon for our honeymoon,” Vicki said. “I’m divorcing you.”

“I wouldn’t mind going back to Tahiti,” I said.

“I wouldn’t either,” Vicki said. “But, what about Europe?”

I shrugged. “In college I did a semester in Austria. Beautiful country.”

“I know a guy that owns a mountain resort in California,” AJ said. “It’s right near the vineyards.”

“Oohh,” Vicki said. “The vineyards. I grew up near Sacramento. The vineyards are great.”

Vicki and AJ continued to talk about vineyards and romantic vacation destinations for the rest of the day.

We locked up and drove the quarter mile home to our cottage.

“One thing I will miss once we build our house,” I told Vicki as we walked in the door five minutes later, “is the commute.”

“The commute,” she agreed as she unbuttoned her starched work blouse. She shook her long dark hair out and smiled faintly at me.

“Aren’t you going to get ready?” she asked.

“Get ready for what?” I replied.

She laughed. “I swear, Henry. That thing at your parents house. I told you like fifty times, it’s tonight.”

“You did not tell me,” I replied.

“Yes, I did,” she said. “The party. Phoenix. Coming back home…”

I had absolutely no recollection of this conversation.

“I swear, you never remember these things,” she laughed.

“I don’t think I’m the one with the memory problems,” I muttered. “Maybe you think you tell me and you don’t.”

“Uh-huh,” she said. “Blame it on the woman.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “When is this party?”

“In an hour,” she said as she took out her earrings. “Everyone’s going to be there.”

“Everyone?” I mumbled.

“Yeah,” she said. “Everyone.”

I groaned and headed toward the shower. The Irving family was one of those families where we knew half the town, and all of our relatives lived close by. So, when we had a big family gathering, there would typically be around fifty people. Fifty people, and their guitars.

About an hour later, we arrived at the scene, and a scene it was. The party had turned into a block party, and with a dozen or so kids in the street, some I was related to. Some I was not. We were about ten feet from the house when a soccer ball hit my windshield.

“Shit,” I muttered.

The ball bounced off, and the kids all looked at me wide eyed.

“Looks fine,” Vicki assessed.

“Yeah,” I mumbled. The windshield was fine, and the kids mouthed apologies. I just sighed.

I pulled into the driveway, which was already full of cars and people. I tried to park as far away from the street and flying soccer balls as I could get.

We got out of the car, and we could already hear the music from outside. Over the years, my dad had played with every musician in and around Sedona, and had developed quite a camaraderie of local musicians. Everyone that was anyone in the local music scene knew Moondust Irving. When we had parties, they all came out of the woodwork and brought their guitars and amps for an all night jam session. They typically played everything from the Beatles to Nirvana, with the occasional Metallica thrown in and from time to time The Ramones. But, they usually stuck with the classics.

The house was a modest one story peach house with no grass in the yard, only gravel. At