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

premiere drunk and whining over losing some chick. Years later, I had a vague recollection of seeing her at that party, but I had always remembered our friendship starting in the coffee room. Our relationship started with the murder charges. Great story on a wedding program.

“Yeah,” I teased. “We should have the wedding at the jail.”

“Oh my god,” Vicki buried her face in her hands. “I can’t even with you right now. I can’t even.”

We both worked in thought for several minutes.

“Too bad about the art gallery,” Vicki muttered. “That would be a great place to get married. Could be romantic, if there hadn’t been the whole murder outside and all.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I think that would be hard to get over.”

We let the wedding locales percolate for a while. I faxed Hal Durant the coroner’s report, and I started researching African poisons online. I spent the better part of the morning doing that, and then AJ returned with Phoenix following her on a dirtbike.

“Hey guys,” I greeted them as soon as they walked in.

“How was the meeting?” Vicki asked them.

“Productive,” was Phoenix’s answer.

He grinned at me, and then slapped down a coil bound book.

“This is the business plan,” he said.

I nodded with approval as flipped through the book. It must have been close to a hundred pages. There were charts, and graphics, and subheads, and sections.

“You typed all this out?” I asked.

I couldn’t picture Phoenix typing anything longer than a Facebook status.

“Well,” he shrugged. “I found a template online and we’ve been doing a lot of group brainstorming. So, it’s not been too hard. But the most important part, is page 92. The budget.”

“The budget,” I said.

I flipped to page 92 and looked at his final number. I knew enough about small business costs to know that his number was actually a little conservative. I scanned his itemized list and noticed a lot of costs that he hadn’t even considered.

But he stood in front of me, with his hands on his hips, and grinned from ear to ear.

“Good work, Phoenix,” I nodded with approval. “I’ll look this over, and let you know what I think.”

“Cool,” he nodded.

He shared a smile with AJ before he left the office. AJ grinned and silently opened her laptop, and I could tell she wasn’t going to get a thing done.

“How did it go?” I asked.

“Great,” she said. “Leila, Landon and I are all on board. Paradigm Productions is a real thing. I can’t believe it. Less than a year ago, I was just some girl with a blog. And now, I’m a scriptwriter for a film studio?”

“You going to leave us for a film studio?” Vicki asked.

AJ shrugged. “I don’t plan to. It’s a startup, more of a startup than this. But, if I did, it wouldn’t exactly be leaving you, Mrs. Irving, considering Paradigm Productions is a whole Irving thing.”

“An Irving thing,” I mused. “I like it.”

“And don’t let him fool you,” she winked at Vicki. “Henry’s all like ‘I don’t have time to run a movie studio, blah, blah, blah.’ That is some bullshit. You know, as soon as he gets five minutes, he’ll be over at the studio, poking around, with his control freak issues.”

Vicki laughed. “I know. I just hope Phoenix knows all of this.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’m not that bad.”

“Yeah?” she said. “Phoenix wants to draw up contracts for all the studio principals. We came up with notes, and I told him I’ll start on drafting those today.”

“If you can give me those notes,” I sighed. “I’ll draft those. I want to make sure that--”

Vicki and AJ burst into laughter and I realized the joke was on me.

“Fine,” I said. “I’m a control freak.”

“Yes you are,” Vicki said in a saccharine filled patronizing tone. “And we still love you.”

“I don’t even know who you are right now,” I muttered.

We silently worked for several minutes and out of the blue Vicki repeated AJ’s words.

“Mrs. Irving,” Vicki mused. “I like it.”

I smiled. I had watched her face when AJ called her that and she had appeared a bit surprised. I had never had a conversation with her about the whole surname thing, but I was glad she decided to take mine. I would like to think I was super progressive and modern, and could be all ‘it doesn’t matter,’ but honestly, I wasn’t.

“The Irving’s are moving up in this town,” I said. “It’s a good name to have around here.”

“Oh, God,” Vicki rolled her eyes. “Listen to that ego.”

AJ giggled. “So what went on while I was gone?”

Vicki filled AJ in on the James Matthews murder development.

“No,” she gasped. “This is like a soap opera. Poison? Come to think of it, he did snack a lot on stage.”

“We originally saw that on the video,” I said. “But we never came to any conclusion.”

“But if the murder and the smuggling are related,” I said. “We’ve got a much bigger case on our hands. Much bigger.”

Chapter 14

I had never been inside Julianna Spencer and Gabriel Montoya’s house. Harmony would have loved the building, I thought as I pulled up to the parking for the game night.

“It’s the Jenga condos,” Vicki quipped.

It did look like a round of that game. It was a white building comprised of about a dozen concrete rectangular boxes stacked on top of each other at odd angles. One wall of each box was an open window, giving a tinted view of the lighted inside. From the parking lot, they looked like ultra-modern apartments inside.

“This is what happens when we give in to artsy fartsy,” I said.

“My crystal ball says that in ten years’ time, we’ll own one of these buildings,” she said.