“First of all,” Vick said. “Do you have anyone to post bail for you?
“Yeah,” she said. “I think I can.”
“Okay,” Vicki said. “The first step is posting bail. Once we have you out, it will be easier.”
“Cool,” she said and she rose. “People say you guys are the best in Sedona. You think I have a chance?”
“If you didn’t do it,” I said. “Then yeah.”
“Thanks,” she said and an odd expression crossed her face.
She went back into the bowels of the building and Vicki and I went home.
“Where did the Irwin Montague link come in?” Vicki asked as we drove back to the cottage.
“Elephant tusks are frequently snuck inside art pieces,” I said. “Reba was mainly embezzling to pay off the cartel to leave him alone because he was smuggling drugs across the border for Sean Drake.”
“So the likelihood that he was involved in the ivory trade is pretty high,” she said.
“At one point,” I said. “The feds were looking for Irwin and he disappeared. I guess now that the heat has died down he’s come home and is back to his tricks.”
“I can’t believe we’re going back to the whole Clifton Melbourne case,” she said.
Clifton Melbourne was our second big case after Harmony. He was found dead in a suitcase at a yard sale, and the poor guy that was hosting the garage sale got arrested, and we had to defend him. Irwin Montague ended up being involved in the whole scandal, and the one loose thread that never got solved.
“But,” I said. “We don’t know that he’s involved with the elephant tusk smuggling.”
“Right,” Vicki said. “But it seems odd timing for James to mysteriously die the day before this comes out.”
“I know,” I said. “Too odd. It makes me think she is hiding something.”
“Or,” she said. “It could have been all on him, and she knew nothing about it.”
“In that case,” I said. “We’ve got to find out who he was dealing with. Someone somewhere knows something.”
“We’ve got to get the tapes from that night,” I said.
“Totally,” Vicki said. “We’ll also need the coroner’s report. Kelsi can get that for us.”
“Right,” I grinned. “Here we go again.”
She laughed. “Another big case.”
I took her hand across the center console and brought it to my lips. I couldn’t think of anyone better to be on this journey with me than her.
Chapter 5
It was Monday morning and our office was busy. After being in Tahiti, and then the lull of coming back from vacation, it was great to be busy at work again.
We also needed the work. Our bank account was fine, but it wouldn’t be if I kept running off on expensive vacations.
“So we need to find out who the Matthews knew,” AJ said.
I leaned back in my chair and sipped coffee from the Batman mug Vicki had bought me when she had originally furnished the office.
It was early, and we were in our morning strategy meeting. Although we would never have called it that. Meetings in our office were typically informal and conversational.
That’s one thing I really loved about our firm. Compared to the firm Vicki and I met at, and even the ones I had interned in in law school, we were super laid back and chill.
“I would start with the band members,” I said. “They all just got back from Africa.”
“We need to get that itinerary too,” Vicki said. “We also need to find out what species of elephant the tusks were from, and if those species were native to the countries they visited.”
“I found the tour schedule,” I pulled up webpage and printed it out. “We’ve got several dates in South Africa, and it looks like one date in Nairobi, which is in Kenya. And then it’s like there was almost a week break, before going to Congo, and then Radio City Music Hall in New York.”
“So they spent a week in Kenya doing nothing?” Vicki clarified.
“Pretty much,” I said. “AJ, go through the band’s social media and find out what they posted on those dates.”
“Gotcha,” she said. “And James Matthews played Radio City Music Hall? I didn’t know he had been that big of a deal.”
“He was probably wasn’t,” I guessed. “He probably played like on a weekday morning to like thirty Facebook followers.”
“Yeah,” she confirmed. “That date was a Tuesday.”
I laughed. “So pretentious.”
“So it looks like there are two main types of elephants,” Vick stated as she read. “African and Asian. Then, there are also African forest elephants, which are slightly different than the other African elephants.’
“We need to find out what species of tusks we have,” I said. “Do we have photos?”
“Yes,” AJ said. “They’re in the police report.”
“Good,” I said. “AJ, you take on the elephant research. Find out what kind of elephants we’re looking at. Where they live, and if those habitats fit our tour schedule.”
“Got it, “she said.
“Also,” I said. “Come up with some kind of tagboard. I want to visually map out where these guys were and when and what they did while they were there.”
“I can go to the copy mat and get them to print up a big map of Africa,” she said.
“Perfect,” I said. “Vic, let’s get a list of people other than Irwin Montague, that James knew, or that Kelsi knows, that would have been involved. I’m sure Irwin had something to do with it, but I doubt we can get him to talk.”
“Right,” Vicki said. “Especially if the feds are still on to him about the embezzling.”
“Exactly,” I said. “So we’re going to work around him. Find out who he was aligned with first, build a net around him, and once we’ve got him backed into a corner, we’ll subpoena him.”
“What is our
