Sedona Law 5 by Dave Daren (e book reader android .TXT) 📗

contract graphic designer who had moved to Chicago for art school. But, during his brief period in and out of our office, he had started dating AJ. Last month, though, he was home for a brief break and did some work for us. That is, he followed us around for weeks doing a documentary to prove, once and for all, that the Illuminati and the Clintons, particularly, were behind a murder we were litigating. When he didn’t single handedly bring down the global elite, he was disappointed and went back to Chicago for the summer term.

“How is he doing?” Vicki asked AJ.

“He just got into the dorms a few days ago,” she replied. “His new roommate made an electrical generator out of an Easy Bake oven, and doesn’t use money.”

“He doesn’t use money?” I asked incredulously.

“No,” she said with a shake of her head. “Since U.S. currency is fake--”

“U.S. currency is not fake,” I sighed. “It’s just not backed by anything.”

“So, it’s fake,” AJ said. “Anyway, he believes the dollar is a scam and unreliable, so he instead pays for everything in bitcoins and gold.”

“I don’t know how that works,” I muttered.

“Me neither,” she said. “I think he works on the dark web, and he gets paid in bitcoin, and when he has to have U.S. currency, he uses that to buy Visa gift cards. I don’t know.”

“Sounds like a lot of effort to make a useless economic statement,” I said. “Also sounds like they might be kindred spirits.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “According to Landon, he invests in all kinds of currency, and he’s got all of this built up wealth in alternative money. It’s confusing, but this guy really knows what he’s doing.”

“Sounds fishy,” Vicki said. “Those dark web guys, they’re a whole new breed of shady.”

We didn’t have a heavy caseload at the moment, which was helpful. When we were busy, we were swamped. So, when things slowed, like right now, we could bullshit through an afternoon. We had a couple of trusts we managed, and a will Vicki was working on, but that was the thing about being a legal firm in a town of ten thousand people. In a given time, there were only so many lawsuits pending.

I spent the rest of the afternoon writing up the audition application for the upcoming Sedona Idol competition. It was put on by a local recording label call RedRock Studios, and they would start taking applicants at the Independence Day festival.

But the studio wanted the application to be ironclad.

All the finalists would be given a premium publicity package on local media, but they would, however, owe the studio ten percent of all their music royalties for the next five years, unless they paid a buyout fee of five thousand dollars.

The winner would get a three album recording contract with RedRock Studios, and thereafter, RedRock would get a percentage of all their music for ten years, unless they paid a buyout fee of ten thousand dollars, or ten percent of their music’s net worth, whichever was greater.

It was a crappy deal, I thought, but I didn’t make the rules. I just wrote up the contract and put it an eight point font that not a single one of the applicants would ever read, and then I collected a nice check from RedRock Studios. That was one client I didn’t mind invoicing.

We ended the day on time, and I enjoyed the relaxed pace of a nine to five day for once. It had only been a couple of weeks ago that we wrapped a monster case involving a call girl, a state senator, and a kinky madam who was missing a few screws upstairs. We weren’t on the schedule for the film rehearsal tonight, and I was looking forward to a chill night in with my lady.

But she had plans otherwise.

“Did you get the text from your mom?” she asked.

“No,” I said with a frown. “What text?”

“You seriously never keep up with these things,” she laughed. “I swear, if I weren’t here, you would have no personal life. They’re having a big family dinner at your parents’ house.”

I rolled my eyes. “Is everyone going to be there?”

“Sounds like,” she said with a grin. “So, put on your party face.”

I laughed. “I’m glad you enjoy these things.”

“I enjoy them,” she teased, “because you can’t admit it, but secretly you enjoy them.”

“Uh,” I said, “I don’t know about that. I had some serious plans for Netflix and chill.”

She laughed and winked. “They’ll be plenty of time for that later.”

We got in my car and drove the twenty minutes out to my parents house. The Irving manor was a modest building in a subdivision, and today as we drove up, it was …

“Lavender,” I announced as I saw the new color of the house. “That’s a new one.”

“What was it last month, pink?” Vicki asked.

“I think,” I replied, “and blue, the month before.”

“What color was it when we moved out here?” she mused with a tilt of her head.

“Green, I believe,” I said.

“Hmm,” she hummed.

The drive and lawn were packed full of cars, which wasn’t difficult to do these days. My nineteen-year-old brother Phoenix had at one time decided grass was bad for the environment, and so they replaced all the grass on the front lawn with gravel.

His logic escaped me.

Phoenix was currently motorcycling through South America on a one year vision quest to find himself, but so far in three months he’d only found Buddha.

I parked along the curb, and when we got out, it was clear the party had already started. A party at the Irvings was no small affair. We could hear the music outside the driveway, and a handful of twenty year olds and my various distant cousins,