by Dave Daren
But he seemed searching after high school and was now in his third semester “off.” But, he had produced a student film for the Sedona Film and Wine Festival last month, and it had gotten good reviews. It really awakened something in him, I think. I was glad to see him find something that he could be passionate about. Although libertarian political outrage and government corruption may be helping him find his voice, sometimes he just as quickly, retreated to his teenage shell.
I joined him in the kitchen where there was an ample food spread laid out for the party. “
“Hey,” I said as I made a plate of chips. “Congratulations on your trip.”
He nodded. “Thanks.”
A silence ensued. Phoenix shrugged then blurted out, “I don’t know what to say a lot of the time. Everybody’s asking me about the trip, and everyone thinks it’s cool, and it is, and they want me to talk about it, and I don’t know what to say. And then I feel bad, cause they’re just trying to be nice and all. But, then, I just blow it ‘cause I can’t think of anything to say. I’m just so awkward, and I hate that. I wish I could just talk to people.”
I laughed. “Don’t worry about it. Once you go on the trip, you’ll have so much to say, people will wish you would just shut up already.”
He laughed and nodded. “What made you decide on South America?” I asked.
“I don’t know, just after the movie, I started talking to a lot of charities and people out there doing stuff. And I wanted to be part of the solution, instead of standing around complaining about the leaky sink.”
I smiled. A month ago, we had stood in this kitchen, and I had used that metaphor to describe people that complain about problems without doing anything about it. He looked at me knowingly.
“Somebody told me that one time,” he said.
“That somebody was pretty smart.”
He laughed. “He has his moments.”
I smirked and slapped his back
“Have fun out there. Be safe,” I said as I headed back into the living room.
“Thanks, man,” he said.
I looked around for Vicki who seemed to be lost somewhere in the sea of people. There were post-burnout hippies with long hair, and cowboys with guitars, mixed with suburban moms in yoga pants, and the occasional businessman. I finally found Vicki talking to a tattoo artist with long stringy black dreadlocks and covered in his own designs.
“So,” he said. “If you got a small one on your neck, it would still look good.”
“Hey,” I said, and I looked at her quizzically. “Thinking about a tattoo?”
She pursed her lips in thought. “I don’t know. It could be cool. I was thinking about something right here.”
She pointed to a spot at the base of her neck. “I don’t know what I’d get, though.”
The tattoo artist smiled and nodded. “Where a person gets a tattoo says a lot about them. Someone that gets a tattoo on their neck is usually said to be daring and makes bold decisions.”
She raised her eyebrows at me. “See? I’m bold and daring.”
I groaned. “Come on Vic, tattoos are not you.”
She smiled. “Well, maybe they are.”
The artist gave her a card. “Call me if you decide. I’ll give you a good deal.”
His phone rang, and he excused himself to take the call.
Vicki turned to me. “You’re such a stick in the mud sometimes, Henry. Live a little.”
“I guess,” I said. “Maybe you should get a Chinese character.”
“I’m Korean, Henry.” She looked displeased with me for a second before my grin gave me away.
“Yeah, that would make it ironic and hip,” I joked.
Before Vicki could respond with some witty retort, my sister appeared.
“Hey guys,” she smiled.
Harmony had long brown hair, and big blue eyes. She wore black leggings, and a floral tunic with black flats. She had the remains of paint on her fingers, and I noticed a bit of it in her hair. She was a brilliant artist, that currently worked as an art teacher. She worked at a progressive school where they didn’t believe in actual classes. They believed that kids could learn skills naturally, provided the right opportunities. This required an ample playground, plenty of hiking and biking trips, and lots of “guided play time,” whatever that meant.
Harmony’s role was to take the kids out on a regular trips to draw and paint scenery. I could understand the logic of taking kids out to draw and paint Sedona landscapes. But, I didn’t understand how you could learn to read on the playground. You could certainly learn lots of curse words on the playground, and maybe the facts of life, but reading, no.
Harmony, however, found her job fulfilling and rewarding, and that was all that mattered. The murder case had been hard on her. She had been painting in an art gallery late one night, and then the security footage showed her stepping out of the building to a side area. Then, she came back in. Under normal circumstances, this would be inconsequential.
But, in the morning, a dead body was found in that same side area. The body of an art critic with whom she was known to have bad blood with. With no evidence of the real murderer, it looked pretty bad for Harmony.
Sedona’s law enforcement community didn’t do her any favors. They were ready to call a spade a spade, and wrap it up nice and pretty with a crappy plea deal. It seemed the whole town turned against her and was ready to lock her up. It took Vicki, AJ and me to prove her innocent.
Since then, Harmony has come alive, even brighter than she had been before. She said something to me once about it. She felt like she saw how much she valued freedom after she thought she wouldn’t have it and started living life to the fullest.
“How’s the job going?” I asked.
She smiled. “I love it. It’s so much fun. The kids are always saying weird stuff. Like, we had this assignment to draw what you want to be when you grew up. This one six-year-old drew a tornado.”
Vicki and I laughed.
“So, what are you guys up to?” my sister asked.
I took a deep breath. “Well, I’m representing Alister O’Brien now.”
“Didn’t he just die?”
“Wow,” I said. “News travels fast. Yes, he died while falling off of his zebra.”
“So it’s true then?” she asked.
“Unfortunately it is true,” I said. “We were there.”
Harmony laughed. “I heard he sang an Irish song and then did a leap with the zebra?”
Vicki and I shared a laugh.
“That’s about how it went,” Vicki told her. “It was a great way to go, if you’ve gotta go.”
“I didn’t even know you could ride a zebra,” Harmony said.
“You can’t, really,” I told her. “But if you have enough money, though, you can pretty much make anything happen.”
We all laughed and then Harmony appeared to remember something.
“Hey, so I’m doing this thing now, I thought you guys might like,” she said.
“What thing?” Vicki asked.
“It’s a couple’s thing,” she said.
“Oh, no, Harmony,” I said. “Not some lame house party.”
“No, no,” she said. “It’s cool. It’s at my art gallery. It’s called Wine Wednesday. Couples come, and we give you a paint class, and you do it together, and we have wine and snacks. We’ve done one so far, and it was a lot of fun. You should come.”
“Ohh... that does sound fun,” Vicki said. “When’s the next one?”
“It’s every Wednesday at seven,” she said. “You have to reserve a spot, because they fill up fast. We’ve got a lot of people signed up for next week, so you’ll have to call in.”
Vicki told her to reserve us a spot for next week. Vicki and I have worked so much since we moved here, we haven’t had much time for a social life. It would be good to get out and start meeting people. In the living room the band was picking up steam. Everyone cheered as it sounded like a fun rendition of the
Beatles Yellow Submarine.
“Let’s go in there,” Harmony shouted above the noise. She motioned to me and grabbed Vicki’s arm and took her into the living room. I followed them casually.
The song lends itself well to sing alongs, and so much of the party cheered and migrated to the living room. By the first chorus, the group of about fifty people crammed in view of the living room, clapped and sang the infectious chorus.
I leaned against the wall, and watched as Harmony and Vicki, and a crowd of others sang and danced, flushed and laughing. Vicki motioned me in, but I waved her off. She rolled her eyes and continued to dance with Harmony. I was never much for dancing.
The song went on for about fifteen minutes, and I couldn’t help but think it sort of resembled life in Sedona. Yes, if life in Sedona could somehow be categorized, I would definitely say it was like living in a yellow submarine.
It was then that I got a call from Earnie Green, Alister’s business partner. I had met Earnie once and saw him that day at Alister’s party. But, I had little contact with him since.
“What’s going on?” I asked as St. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band now blared live in the background. I plugged my other ear as I searched for a quiet spot in the house. This was a difficult feat to accomplish.
“We’ve got to get the will read,” he said. “And soon. These people are going to kill each other.”
I laughed and finally found a spot in where I could hear without straining. It was in Phoenix’s closet.
“Yeah, they came to my office this morning,” I said. “They were quite ready.”
“I heard about that,” he said. “And that was only half of them. From what I hear, there was a catfight, and I can’t get a straight story, but someone got thrown through a window? I don’t know.”
“Yikes,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “Everyone is on edge about the will, and they’re duking it out.”
“The man is not even cold in the ground,” I said.
“I know,” he said wistfully. “They don’t care.”
“Well,” I said. “The funeral is tomorrow. Let’s make the appointment for a week from now, next Monday.”
“Sounds good,” he said. “Maybe now that they have a date, they’ll stop throwing each other through windows.”
“I doubt it,” I said.
“We can hope, can’t we?” he replied.
I laughed and ended the call. The party was heating up now, and psychedelic electric guitar runs of Sgt. Pepper filled the house and took over the block. The only thing I could think of, though, that I whatever was in that will, I doubted it would make anyone happy. This was going to be a legal battle, I could already tell.
Chapter 4
Alister O’Brien’s funeral was on a Sunday. It was going to be a lavish affair held at the lake, but traffic through the city was a bear.
“Geez,” I muttered. “Where did all of these people come from?”
Half of central Arizona was turning out for the event. Which is what the funeral was turning into, an event, particularly one that clogged up the streets.
Only about a thousand people were invited to the funeral service, but a public memorial was to be held at St. Paul’s Cathedral. I had been spent the last few days fighting for road space with virtual everyone. Everyone from copper executives to rental trucks all bustled about town as the church prepared with extra seating, and standing room only areas.
Vicki laughed. “Sedona’s making you a soft driver. You can’t handle traffic anymore.”
I laughed. “Are you kidding? I lived in L.A. Of course I can handle traffic. It’s the hippies out here that can’t, and they act like they’ve never seen another vehicle before.”
Vicki and I were invited to the funeral, and we thought that was sufficient to pay our respects, and we should forgo the public memorial. After all, we barely knew the man, and given that our status as part of his “team,” was still a bit controversial with his children, we thought we would leave the power struggles for another time. We were now headed across town to the marina where the service was to be held.
The old pickup truck in front of us sat patiently waiting at a green light. I leaned on my horn, and the truck slowly came to attention and meandered down the road.
“See,” I said. “It’s this kind of stuff which is fine on a daily basis, but you get the streets congested, and it’s madness. This is almost as bad as the film festival.”
“Oh, geez,” she said. “The film festival was awful.”
“All the way around,” I said as we arrived to the address on the GPS. “Well, except for the films themselves.”
On the northside of the marina, there was an elegant banquet hall. It was a picturesque glass building done in the reminiscent style of Frank Lloyd Wright. It had high ceilings and views of the water and Sedona’s natural beauty. People frequently used this place for occasions like weddings, bar mitzvahs, proms, and now apparently funerals.
For today’s affair, exotic floral arrangements adorned every surface and staircase, and food and wine flowed copiously throughout the hall. When Vicki and I walked into the building, and it looked like a conference. Hundreds of people milled about in suits and formal wear, eating hor'dourves and drinking wine. They tried to keep the tone somber, but with so many people, the volume in the room rose steadily.
“Geez,” I told Vicki. “I wonder how many of these people even still talked to him.”
“I know,” she said. “Probably none of them.”
I spotted Earnie in the crowd and smiled as we made our way toward him. Earnie was tall and lanky in his late forties. He had dark hair and angled features that suggested a strong ethnicity that I had finally placed as Greek.
“Which of the O’Brien kids arranged this?” I asked.
“Are you kidding?” Earnie replied. “Those delinquents couldn’t arrange a pizza delivery.”
I laughed because I knew it was true.
“No,” Earnie continued. “The services were all arranged by Cindy Greenwood, his longtime executive assistant. The only reason Alister held it together was because of that woman. People joke that she is Alister’s first lady. They call her Jackie Onassis O’Brien.”
“Is that right?” I laughed.
“Yep,” he said. “Watch out for her. Oh, by the way, we’ve got a reserved section up front, we put seats down for you.”
“Great,” I said, even though the last thing I wanted to do was cause attention to ourselves at this event. I was about to ask him more about Cindy, but someone I didn’t know caught Earnie up in a conversation, and Vicki grabbed my attention.
“Let’s go find our seats,” Vicki said.
“Good idea,” I replied.
We picked our way through the crowd and resisted the urge to network. Instead we quietly entered the room and smiled politely. An usher handed us programs, and we found the reserved seating section. We selected two seats that looked non-intrusive. We sat quietly and tried to blend in. Shannon O’Brien saw us and gave us a dirty look before turning away.
“Where’s an ampersand paperweight when you need one?” I muttered to Vicki.
She laughed. “You’re so bad.”
We buried ourselves in our programs and tried to look reverent. I glanced through the document and thought about how this was the second funeral I had attended since I had been back.
The first was for Clifton Melbourne, a man whose death allowed our legal team to bring to light on an embezzlement scandal. I remember after Clifton died, being touched at the outpouring of honor and devotion people gave him.
But with Alister, this was a different story. I somehow got the feeling that none of the people here really cared about him. People wanted to be seen with him. People wanted him to know them. But, no one really wanted to know Alister. I wondered why that was.
An overture on an organ signaled the service was beginning. The volume quieted and seats started to fill. Earnie and presumably his wife, joined us in
reserved seating.
“This is Gina,” he told us.
Gina smiled politely, a prim and proper upper class woman, decked out in silver jewelry, and a tasteful black knee length black dress.
“Nice to meet you,” she said as she shook our hands. “Sorry it is under these circumstances.”
“Likewise,” I said.
Earnie sat down and just stared blankly into the distance. Gina noticed his expression and rubbed his hand. I noticed he gave her hand a gentle squeeze, and they sat in silence.
I turned to Vicki and wrapped my arm around the back of her chair. I sighed and studied the program. All the O’Brien siblings sat cartoonishly on the front row, and it looked like a couple of them had significant others in tow. Then there were Alister’s girlfriends, Mila and Emily, dressed in black and wearing netted veils over their faces.
At one point, Emily’s dark glasses slipped off her face, and before she could replace them, I caught a glimpse of a decent shiner on her left eye. I concluded she must have been the one through the window.
Thomas Earhardt, Alister’s previous lawyer, passed us on his way to his spot in reserved seating. I smiled politely at him. He looked genuinely pained, and I felt for him. How could a person work faithfully with a man like that and be dismissed at the drop of a hat over a game of frisbee golf? I hoped our presence at the service didn’t rub salt in the wound.
The organ playing finished, and the crowd was now seated and hushed. A reverend in a black robe and white clerical collar took the stage and began the service with a prayer. Then he brought up a woman who did a beautiful Irish hymn. Most of it was in Gaelic, but she brought down the house anyway, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the place.
Then, the reverend came back and started talking about death and life and eternity. I didn’t hear much of it since I was lost in thought. I just wondered how a man like that could be so alienated, so closed off in his ivory tower. How did a man get like that? Was that what happened when money corrupts? Is that what happened to his kids? I didn’t know, and from this vantage point, I had no way to know. It still bothered me though. What made that final difference in death between a man like Clifton, and a man like Alister?
