by Dave Daren
“Well, I’m definitely going to plead not guilty,” she said.
At the moment, even hearing her voice grated on my nerves. I didn’t love what I had just uncovered about her, and I didn’t know what else she might be lying about. If the jury found out what I knew about her and Roy, she would look to be as unreliable as I found her to be.
We weren’t dealing with the Sedona PD, this was a Department of Justice prosecutor. The DoJ has a ninety-six percent conviction rate in cases it brings to trial. These guys were as sharp as tacs. They would find out about her relationship with Roy. Hell, they probably already knew.
“Right,” Vicki said. “If that’s the plea you enter, we only have a couple of options. We can try to get the case dismissed, or we’ll go to trial.”
“Are you suggesting I lie?” Kelsi asked incredulously.
“No one’s suggesting that,” I jumped in.
I leaned against the back of Vicki’s desk where Kelsi sat. I crossed my ankles and looked into her pleading eyes.
“We don’t want you to lie,” I repeated. “But, are you being completely forthcoming?”
“Yes,” she said. “I don’t know anything about smuggling.”
“Right,” I said. “I understand that. But, we have some evidence that’s not directly related to the case, but if it fell in the wrong hands, can compromise your position in front of the jury.”
“What evidence?” she said.
“What’s your relationship with Roy?” I asked.
“Uh,” she shrugged. “He was just James’ manager.”
“But you knew him before he did that,” I stated.
“Well,” she said. “I’ve known him a long time. I used to play, and we traveled in the same circles at some point.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Is there any reason he might have to be vindictive toward you or your marriage?”
“What?” she asked incredulously.
I pulled out my phone, and pulled up the file Gary had sent me, and played it.
“What is this?” she asked as I handed her my phone.
“It’s a rehearsal,” I said. “Watch behind that counter, just off camera.”
She watched impatiently. The clip was much longer without Gary forwarding to the time stamp. Then she suddenly gasped and then blinked and handed me the phone. I stopped the video, and she bit her lip and avoided eye contact.
“I don’t care what you do in your personal life,” I said. “That’s your business. But, when you’ve got a felony, a love triangle, and a death, all in one band, we need to know what’s going on.”
“Okay,” she said. “Roy and I had something, I don’t know what it was, a long time ago. Whatever it was, it didn’t work out. He can be charming, but at his core, he’s an asshole. So, I moved on, and he left town. I met James, got married, had Elias, our oldest, and then Roy shows back up. James wants a ticket out of Sedona, and I knew Roy could get him there, and so against my better judgment, I went to see Roy to ask him about it, and we rekindled what it was. He’s disgusting and old and... ugh. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. So Roy managed James’ band, and I told him we had to stop. And we did for a while...but…”
Her voice trailed off, and she looked at Vicki for sympathy. I glanced sideways at my fiancee, who damn well better not be empathetic to this cheating wife story.
“I think Henry’s right,” Vicki replied. “If the jury hears about this, you could lose credibility. Was the affair going on when you went to Africa?”
“No, no,” she shook her head. “By then, it was all over.”
I sighed and leaned my head back and then looked back at her.
“God damnit, Kelsi,” I said. “We’re trying to help you, but you’ve got to help us.”
“What do you mean by that?” she asked.
“We’ve got a witness that says they saw you and Roy in the pool in Africa,” I sighed.
“What?” she gasped. “Who?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “All that matters is if the prosecution gets the witness to testify. Then, you look like you were screwing around on your husband with the tour manager, and while it might be sexist as hell, no one, especially not a jury, ever sympathizes with a cheating wife.”
“I don’t know what this mysterious witness saw, or think they saw,” she said. “But, Roy and I were talking about--”
“It doesn’t matter, Kelsi,” I interrupted her. “There’s video footage, and a witness. It doesn’t look good. But we’ll try to spin it the best way possible. Keep the jury’s eye on the ball, the real case. Just because you might have had a dalliance with another man does not mean you were part of an international smuggling ring.”
“Exactly,” she said. “What does Roy have to do with the smuggling?”
“We’ll find out when we see what evidence the prosecutor has against you,” I replied.
“They won’t have any,” she pouted.
“Don’t push your luck,” I shot her a wry look. “Just be ready for the arraignment in the morning.”
“Thanks,” she said sarcastically.
She left the office and Vicki and AJ turned to me with shocked expressions.
“What was that?” Vicki asked.
I shook my head and rolled my eyes.
“Gary,” I said. “He saw them in a hotel pool in Africa and caught accidental footage of them kissing. Roy swears up and down that there was never anything going on between them. But, I think they’re both liars.”
I pulled up the video clip, and AJ and Vicki both watched the footage. I was tired of seeing it. Something about being an almost married man made me particularly impatient with a cheating wife. I was glad Vicki wasn’t the type. I had never once my doubts about her in that respect. The whole incident made me appreciate her that much more.
I turned off the clip and rolled my eyes.
“Well it doesn’t prove anything,” AJ said.
“No,” I said. “But James is dead, and there’s a backyard full of smuggled contraband. She doesn’t look so good right now.”
“Let’s focus on the arraignment,” Vicki sighed. “We’ve got our hands full with that.”
“Yeah,” I rubbed my face. “I just hope she enters the right plea. Because I don’t want to spend six months buried in paperwork, to prepare for a trial where she’s guilty as sin.”
“Maybe she’s not,” AJ shrugged. “Maybe she was just married to a distant asshole with a smuggling operation and she was lonely.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But, I don’t trust her anymore.”
“I think you’re taking this is a little too hard,” AJ said. “You’re usually much more rational.”
I raised an eyebrow in agreement but said nothing as I went back to work. She was right. The video was not proof of anything.
I spent the rest of the afternoon doing mindless paperwork, while Vicki planned our wedding on the phone. She and AJ went back and forth on color schemes and dress designs. Occasionally, I’d be consulted for an opinion.
“Vegas,” I remarked. “Little White Wedding Chapel. Elvis.”
They both laughed.
“No,” Vicki said definitively. “Absolutely not.”
“That’s my vote,” I smirked as I downloaded an attachment a client sent me.
“Then on to the honeymoon,” I winked.
Vicki and AJ burst into laughter. Vicki blushed and threw a wad of paper at me and I ducked.
“One track mind,” she said.
“Is there more than one track to be had?” I quipped.
“See what I have to put up with?” Vicki turned to AJ.
“Yeah, whatever,” AJ rolled her eyes. “My sympathies extend to you-- random getaways to Tahiti, that must have been awful.”
“I’m not going to lie,” Vicki laughed. “That Tahiti vacay was nice.”
“It wasn’t random,” I said. “It was a grief vacation. We had done three murder cases back to back. We needed to get out of town.”
&
nbsp; “Uh--huh,” AJ mocked my voice. “‘I’m Henry and I used to know A-listers and now I’m loaded and I take random vacations anywhere I want.”
I smiled and just shook my head. She was sort of right.
“Where are you guys going for the honeymoon?” AJ asked.
“We haven’t decided,” Vicki said. “Cancun? Paris?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “That’s so cliche.”
“Okay,” she said. “Where do you want to go?”
I smirked. “The Grand Canyon.”
Vicki and AJ both groaned. We were about two hours from the Canyon, and it was a frequent day trip for Sedona natives. Last time we went, we ran into the Sedona police investigator and talked shop over dinner.
“If we go to the Grand Canyon for our honeymoon,” Vicki said. “I’m divorcing you.”
“I wouldn’t mind going back to Tahiti,” I said.
“I wouldn’t either,” Vicki said. “But, what about Europe?”
I shrugged. “In college I did a semester in Austria. Beautiful country.”
“I know a guy that owns a mountain resort in California,” AJ said. “It’s right near the vineyards.”
“Oohh,” Vicki said. “The vineyards. I grew up near Sacramento. The vineyards are great.”
Vicki and AJ continued to talk about vineyards and romantic vacation destinations for the rest of the day.
We locked up and drove the quarter mile home to our cottage.
“One thing I will miss once we build our house,” I told Vicki as we walked in the door five minutes later, “is the commute.”
“The commute,” she agreed as she unbuttoned her starched work blouse. She shook her long dark hair out and smiled faintly at me.
“Aren’t you going to get ready?” she asked.
“Get ready for what?” I replied.
She laughed. “I swear, Henry. That thing at your parents house. I told you like fifty times, it’s tonight.”
“You did not tell me,” I replied.
“Yes, I did,” she said. “The party. Phoenix. Coming back home…”
I had absolutely no recollection of this conversation.
“I swear, you never remember these things,” she laughed.
“I don’t think I’m the one with the memory problems,” I muttered. “Maybe you think you tell me and you don’t.”
“Uh-huh,” she said. “Blame it on the woman.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “When is this party?”
“In an hour,” she said as she took out her earrings. “Everyone’s going to be there.”
“Everyone?” I mumbled.
“Yeah,” she said. “Everyone.”
I groaned and headed toward the shower. The Irving family was one of those families where we knew half the town, and all of our relatives lived close by. So, when we had a big family gathering, there would typically be around fifty people. Fifty people, and their guitars.
About an hour later, we arrived at the scene, and a scene it was. The party had turned into a block party, and with a dozen or so kids in the street, some I was related to. Some I was not. We were about ten feet from the house when a soccer ball hit my windshield.
“Shit,” I muttered.
The ball bounced off, and the kids all looked at me wide eyed.
“Looks fine,” Vicki assessed.
“Yeah,” I mumbled. The windshield was fine, and the kids mouthed apologies. I just sighed.
I pulled into the driveway, which was already full of cars and people. I tried to park as far away from the street and flying soccer balls as I could get.
We got out of the car, and we could already hear the music from outside. Over the years, my dad had played with every musician in and around Sedona, and had developed quite a camaraderie of local musicians. Everyone that was anyone in the local music scene knew Moondust Irving. When we had parties, they all came out of the woodwork and brought their guitars and amps for an all night jam session. They typically played everything from the Beatles to Nirvana, with the occasional Metallica thrown in and from time to time The Ramones. But, they usually stuck with the classics.
The house was a modest one story peach house with no grass in the yard, only gravel. At one point, Phoenix had decided grass was bad for the environment, and had requested the family’s lawn be replaced with a more environmentally friendly choice. I never did get the reasoning behind that.
We walked the drive and were greeted by a milieu of various acquaintances, every last one of them asking to see Vicki’s ring. It took us fifteen minutes just to get through the yard and in the front door.
As soon as we opened the door, the blast of live music hit us full in the face. My family believed in the sort of original boho chic method of decorating, pastel colored walls, with murals by my sister, along with do it yourself furniture restoration projects. But, it was hard to pick this out among the throngs of partygoers that filled the house.
Everywhere we looked, people milled around, drinking home brewed kombucha from paper cups and eating vegan hor d’ourvres on disposable plates. My family wasn’t vegan, per se, but they did believe in natural food.
Right now, the going soundtrack was the Beatles song, Penny Lane. Although this version was curiously improvised with distorted guitar, likely courtesy of some screamo band guy that I had gone to high school with.
My sister Harmony gushed when she saw us. Her near prison stint had done something to her. She had always been friendly, but it had given her a zest for life she hadn’t had before.
More recently, Vicki and I had had dinner with her, and she explained that while she of course didn’t kill the art critic at the center of her legal case, his death in itself had been difficult on her sensitive artist’s soul. In the months following the case, she had read a lot of self help books centering around the whole finding the silver lining theme. It had helped her reconcile her own near prison experience and live life to the fullest. Now, she was this constant burst of energy and zest.
“Vicki,” Harmony hugged Vicki and Vicki just laughed.
My sister had always been a physically affectionate person, even when we were growing up. Vicki wasn’t particularly like that, but she had gotten used to it being around Harmony.
“So good to see you,” Vicki greeted her back. She gestured toward Harmony’s skirt. It was a cotton flared, with Pollock type paint splatters.
“Is that yours?” Vicki asked.
Harmony worked as an art teacher at a private school, but had a side gig designing and selling clothes on Etsy.
“It is,” she laughed. “What do you think?”
“Love, love, love,” Vicki enthused.
I held back a smirk. My fiancee and sister were an interesting combination when they got together. Vicki was an intelligent, ambitious well spoken, serious career woman. But when she got around my sister, she suddenly turned into a Kardashian. Their relationship confused me. Vicki and Harmony descended into the land of fashion in hyperbole, and I gave Vicki a quick wink and dismissive pat on the shoulder and disappeared into the rest of the party.
I had almost made it to the living room, the beating heart of the party, which was now live broadcasting U2’s Walk On, and Phoenix found me.
“Hey,” he shouted above someone’s emotional Bono imitation, “I need to talk to you.”
“Yeah,” I shouted back.
I knew what this was about.
“Come outside,” he yelled.
He carried an unmarked brown beer bottle, that I knew came from an unlicensed brewery somewhere around here. My dad bought from one. I got the impression then as I did now, that said unlicensed brewery was actually a client of mine that was officially known to sell kombucha. But unofficially, well… the less I knew, the better.
My brother took a long sip of the bottle as we tried to make it through the throngs to the backyard. We finally found a semi quiet space on a wooden bench overlooking my dad’s new garden.
“So,” Phoenix rubbe
d his hands together. “I’ve been thinking about your investment offer.”
“Yeah,” I said. ”It’s not a bad deal. I’ve done it with another company, just not my own money.”
“Whose?” he asked.
“A very affluent zebra,” I replied. “So, clearly, I know what I’m doing.”
“Yeah,” he nodded. “That’s the thing. I’m in.”
“You’re in?” I felt the side of my lips rise in a grin.
“Yeah,” he said. “You’re not going to tell me what to do and shit, right?”
“I hadn’t planned on it,” I said.
“Cool,” he held up his hands in a fist bump. “Let’s make movies.”
I bumped his fist and nodded. “Let’s make some movies. You have a business plan?”
“I’m writing it now,” he said. “I talked to AJ and Leila like you suggested. They’re a little skeptical, but they’re in.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t know Leila too well, but AJ’s a very practical, organized person. She’s probably skeptical because the plan’s disorganized. Get it organized, she’ll be in.”
“Good tip,” he nodded.
“How much you need?” I asked.
“I...I haven’t figured that out yet,” he smiled ruefully and ruffled his hair.
“Come up with a budget,” I said. “Get it to me. I’ll look it over, suggest any changes. Once we’re on the same page, I’ll write a check. I’ll also get the small business paperwork started.”
He sighed. “Yeah. That’s a good thing, because I don’t know how to do all of that.”
“Sounds good,” I said. “What’s your first project?”
“That’s the other thing,” he said. “AJ is working on a screenplay draft of Harmony’s story.”
“The art critic who was murdered by the mob?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s a sexy story. Change a few details so that the people around here aren’t too bored with it.”
“What’s Harmony think about that?” I asked.
“She’s into it,” his tone was qualified. “She thinks it’s a cool idea, but I think she wants to see the final script to make sure it’s not embarrassing or anything.”
“For sure,” I said. “We probably all feel that way.”
