Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 94624 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94624 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Hello, all. Welcome to He Said, he said for August 2024.
On Thursday night, since Sam was in Cancun on his getaway with his friends that included Duncan, Dane, Chris, Pat, and Chaz, as well as many others I couldn’t name, I suggested to Aja that we have dinner out. We invited Dylan too, since her husband was on a chartered fishing boat with all the rest of them, and the three of us, drinking in celebration of them, went out for Mexican. Down to the 2800 block of W Cermak we went, and had margaritas, and then more, and chips and salsa and guacamole, and shrimp ceviche and finally tacos. Normally, Sam feasted on steak fajitas, Duncan on slow-roasted pork tacos, and Dane on either goat or salted cod. I loved La Casa de Rojas, but I much preferred the nachos supreme and smaller bites. So we shared and were having a great time when my daughter popped in because she tracked me on her phone.
“It’s nice to see you,” I said as she took a seat beside me in the booth and then leaned sideways to kiss my cheek.
“You too,” she rushed out, and then looked at the two women who, along with her grandmother, had helped her through all the pivotal female moments in her life. All the things that Sam and I didn’t have ready answers for; they had been there. “When the waiter comes back, I want a margarita.”
“Isn’t it a school night?” I teased her. “And hello, you’re only nineteen, my darling.”
“That’s true, we’re not at one of my events or a private party,” she said, nodding. “Better order me a virgin one.’
My daughter was not much of a drinker—other than at this past New Year which had been, as she stated, a private function. But normally, at home, if she wasn’t driving there would be a glass of wine here, a daiquiri there. But it would be all the way until her next birthday, not the one coming up this year at the end of November, until she could drink in public.
“You drink out in the world?”
“No one ever looks twice when Uncle Aaron orders me a Moscato.”
“Such horrible modeling he’s doing.”
“Will you please just order me a virgin margarita on the rocks when the guy comes back?”
“Fine,” I grumbled as she elbowed me gently in the side.
“What are you doing over here on a school night?” Aja teased her.
“I just had dinner with Uncle Aaron,” she answered. “He’s been so busy putting together a real estate deal in Singapore for the last month that I haven’t gotten to see him since he fired Quentin Alcott back in July.”
“Who?” Dylan asked her.
“He was this total douchebag who tried to roofie my friend Talia at a party.”
“Oh dear God.” Aja was horrified, as we all were.
“And you saved her?” I asked.
Hannah shook her head. “She saved herself, but she actually called one of Dad’s new marshals,” she told me, beaming. “He was awesome, went right over there to pick up his friend’s sister. That was nice.”
“Go back to this Alcott asshole,” Dylan prodded her.
“Well, even though we all knew Alcott had put something in Talia’s glass, we couldn’t prove it because there’s that whole chain-of-custody thing. You have to be able to say that whatever it was, a knife, a glass, a screwdriver––”
“A screwdriver?” Aja gasped.
Hannah nodded. “Dad says when people go off, they use whatever’s handy.”
“That’s horrible,” Dylan assured us.
“Yeah,” Hannah agreed, “but so you have to be able to account for every second of whatever it is you have in your possession.”
“What if you find a knife at a murder scene?” Aja wanted to know.
“Well, when the forensic team finds that weapon, they seal it in a bag, put their name on it, the time, date, everything. Then when whoever opens that bag at the lab, they have to log all that same stuff so whoever is trying the case can say, Aja found the knife at this time on this date, and the pictures you took show where it was and what it looked like. Then there’s new pictures when you open the bag, and all of that has to match.”
“I see,” Aja murmured.
“But because Talia was away from her glass, and there were no pictures except for the ones I took, even though Del, that’s Dad’s marshal,” she explained, smiling, “took the glass to work and gave it to the marshals on duty, the chain of custody was already messed up. Plus, Del, who is Talia’s friend, had it in his custody, and a good defense attorney can say that he wanted Alcott to get in trouble, so he put the Rohypnol in the glass afterward.”
“So this chain-of-custody business, in theory, gets rid of all the hearsay.”
“Yes,” my daughter told me. “So we couldn’t prove Alcott did it, but Del heard him allude to the fact that he did while he was out in the hall, and c’mon, Talia was fine before she got a drink from Alcott.”