Everyone broke, and we laid out the food, and people dug in. Then I started to get the verbal report of what was in those tapes.
“He was telling alien stories,” one guy said. “It was entertaining.”
“Alien stories?” I repeated with a frown. “Did he say he was kidnapped by aliens?”
“No,” the man shook his head, “he was just telling this story like it was a movie or something.”
“Huh,” I mumbled as I took a bite of my food.
“I’ve never heard so much boring music in my life,” another person grumbled.
“I second that motion,” someone else muttered.
“I think it was good,” another guy said. “I think it inspired me to start working on my synthesizer.”
There was a loud groan, and several napkins were hurled in that guy’s direction.
“No, Jack,” someone said. “Do not, and I repeat, do not, bring out your synthesizer.”
As the conversation derailed, Vicki flitted around handing out cash, and the mood lifted. The guys’ stayed around for another half hour, and then started to clear out. Fortunately, it was decided they would leave their equipment for tomorrow’s volunteers.
Once everyone was gone, except Vicki and AJ, I slumped in a chair in the conference room and looked over the wreckage. It had been quite a day.
“These are the ‘done’ tapes?” I asked as I cleared out the clutter all over the table.
“Yeah,” Vicki replied. “Our system went to hell, just so you know.”
Vicki and AJ moved to clear out coffee cups and food trash and I stared off in the distance trying to figure it all out. I just felt like we were right on the tip of the answer. If I could only get that one last piece. I mulled over and over the facts, the evidence, the people, and the conversations.
“We need to talk to Allen,” I sighed.
“You wouldn’t believe this,” Vicki said as she peered over her phone screen. “I sent out feeler e-mails looking for Allen. I just got a response. Allen left the country the morning of the murder. He’s in Germany.”
“Germany,” AJ echoed. “Seriously?”
Then she started laughing.
Vicki and I looked at each other, and AJ just laughed harder and harder. Then Vicki and I started laughing because AJ was laughing, and the three of us sat in the conference room and died laughing for no reason.
That was when it hit me.
My team was running on close to twenty-four hours with no sleep. As much pressure as we were under, we still had to take care of ourselves.
“Fuck it,” I decided. “Let’s go home, guys.”
“Fuck it,” Vicki and AJ said in unison as they grinned.
Then we cleaned up the food mess, locked the doors, and drove home.
Chapter 18
What made me decide to hire Jim Hurley to design our home was not his portfolio. It was not his personality. Or his price. Or availability.
No. It was the roosters. The god damned roosters.
Sunrise came at five forty-two that Saturday. I did not want to know this fact. I preferred to be blissfully ignorant of the exact point between day and night. But blissful ignorance was not in the cards on this day, or any day in the foreseeable future.
My girlfriend was a sophisticated L.A. woman, beautiful, full of class, grace and poise. But, on this day, I found out how capable she was in using every curse word and insult in the English language.
We never fight. So far, we’d been one of those couples who got along splendidly. But on the day of the roosters, I got a full glimpse of what it might look like, should I ever push Vicki to her breaking point.
It was not pretty.
After a barrage of cursing and screaming, she stormed out of the cottage, barefoot, in her tank top and with her hair thrown on top of her head, and from the window, I saw it all. She literally ran up the steps of the house next door and pounded on the door so loud, I could hear it from inside our bedroom.
Petunia opened the door in her robe and squinted from the light. I heard muffled arguing for a couple of minutes, and then Vicki calmly came back inside and climbed into bed.
The roosters were silent.
“What happened?” I asked hesitantly.
“The roosters will no longer be a problem,” Vicki replied simply.
Then she rolled over and went back to sleep, and that was all I heard of the rooster that day.
But I pulled out my phone and sent Jim Hurley an e-mail. Then I also went back to sleep.
Later that morning, we arrived at the office freshly rested, despite the rooster debacle. AJ arrived shortly after us, and she also seemed more alive.
“Landon apologized for everything,” she sang as she sashayed into the office.
“That’s good,” I said as I sipped my coffee. “Did he admit he was jealous?”
“No,” she rolled her eyes, “but he was all like, ‘I’m sorry, baby, I’m such an asshole. I just miss you is all.’ And I was like, ‘Uh, yeah, you are.’”
“Well,” Vicki chuckled, “I’m glad it worked out. How’s the play coming along?”
“I showed Horace what I have,” AJ said as she made a cup of coffee, “and he loved it. Not that his standards are high, but it was still good to hear anyway.”
“I wrote a one act play one time for a theatre class in college,” I remarked as I rubbed my chin. “Everyone had to act it out for our midterm project. It was a lot of fun.”
“Was it weird having your classmates memorize your words?” AJ asked.
I laughed. “Yeah. It actually was weird. You don’t realize your own speech patterns until
