by Dave Daren
I was really happy that Vicki was here.
I went to enter my home and found that the door was locked. Of course it was locked. My family hadn’t locked the front door in the entire time that I’d known them, but I guessed that Harmony’s arrest had them more than a little spooked.
I reached up to ring the doorbell.
“You don’t have a key to your own home?” Vicki noticed.
“I don’t live here,” I explained.
“Yeah, sure, but it’s your family’s home,” she said.
“I just got here.”
“But you’re obviously going to stay awhile,” she said. “Shouldn’t they have given you a key? Your sister’s key, maybe. It’s not like she’s hitting the town right now.”
“Vicki, I didn’t ask them for a key,” I suggested.
“Ooh, touchy,” she observed.
“It’s not touchy!” I defended. “It’s just--”
The door swung open, and we stopped bickering immediately.
“Awwww, a lover’s quarrel,” Harmony sighed with relief when she saw us together. “It didn’t occur to me until after I sent her to you that she could’ve actually just been, like, a kidnapper or something and been lying about knowing you.”
“Oh no,” Vicki laughed as she wrapped her arm through mine. “I never lie about important stuff.” Vicki joked. “I’m super in love with this guy.”
“Stop being weird,” I said as I pulled my arm away from Vicki. “Harmony, meet Vicki Park, she’s my paralegal in Los Angeles, and she took some time off to harass me.”
“We did already meet,” Vicki said as she reached out to hug my sister. “We are going to get you acquitted. Your brother is a brilliant attorney.”
“Thanks,” my sister said as she returned the other woman’s hug and mouthed the words “I really like her” to me so that Vicki couldn’t see.
I rolled my eyes.
Once the two women finished hugging, Vicki and Harmony shuffled into the house, and I followed them.
“Who’s that one?” Vicki indicated the living room sofa. “He doesn’t look like any of you.”
I ventured further into the house, expecting to see Phoenix on the couch. Instead, I see a stone-faced stranger. He did not rise to greet us. Instead, he just gazed up at us with distrustful eyes. He had a shaved head and sharp features as if he would puncture a pillowcase if he rested his head on it.
“I… have no idea,” I realized.
“This…” Harmony rushed past us and circled her arm around the stranger, “is Freddie. He’s my boyfriend.”
“Your what?” my eyebrows shot up to my hairline.
“Ooh, drama,” Vicki delighted.
“No, it’s not drama,” I dismissed her. “I just didn’t know you had a boyfriend is all. Is he new?”
“No, we’ve been dating for--”
“I can speak for myself, babe,” Freddie put a hand up to stop her.
Vicki and I exchanged uncomfortable glances. And Vicki was not the type to let her discomfort go unspoken.
“She was just stating a fact about the both of you,” she defended my sister. “She wasn’t speaking for anybody.”
“We’ve been dating for about six months,” he continued speaking to me without having noticed that Vicki had spoken.
“That’s… great,” I mused. For some reason, I felt I had to be careful with my words.
“And it’s been the happiest six months,” he added, though his expression remained stony and intense.
“That’s… great to hear,” I responded as earnestly as I could manage.
“You seem surprised,” Freddie raised an eyebrow.
“A bit,” I admitted. “I just haven’t heard about you yet is all.”
“Henry doesn’t really come by to visit very often,” Harmony explained quickly, seemingly unphased by Freddie’s intensity. “I haven’t really gotten a chance to tell him with all that’s been going on.”
“Was that the front door?” I heard my mother’s dreamy sing-song voice call out from one of the bedrooms.
“Yes, hi, hello!” Vicki jumped at the chance to partake in a conversation that wasn’t this one.
My mother entered the room, my father following in step behind her.
“Who’s this?” she asked and gestured to Vicki.
Vicki took in the clear hippie influence in my mother’s appearance and my father’s “LEGALIZE IT” t-shirt with great delight.
“I’m Vicki Park, a friend of Henry’s,” she introduced herself. “It is such an incredible delight to meet you all.”
Vicki held out a hand. My mother and father each took turns shaking it it, enthused by Vicki’s energy.
“Good to meet you, Vicki,” my mother said joyously. “Your aura is such an interesting shade of purple.”
“Well, I have partaken in some very purple activities recently,” Vicki played along before turning to my father. “So you were active in the medical marijuana legalization campaign, then?” she asked as she pointed to his shirt.
“What?” he frowned.
“Your shirt.”
“Oh!” he gasped as if he just noticed it. “The shirt is not only about marijuana and the other medicines provided by mother earth.”
“What is it in regard to?”
“Oh, nothing and everything in particular,” he waved his hand through the air in front of him to illustrate the philosophy behind his fashion statement. “It is not laws that govern us, but ourselves who govern the laws, and what we choose to fashion into our own laws is a reflection of our society for better or worse.”
“Ohhh,” Vicki drew out her reaction. “A ‘who watches the watchmen’ sort of thing.” She turned to make excited eye contact with me, but I didn’t give her the satisfaction of my amusement.
“Wow, Henry,” my dad said as he turned to me, “your friend really gets it, man.”
“Your family sure is an interesting bunch,” Vicki told the whole room. “I am so endlessly delighted to have met you all. You’re much more exciting than Henry. It’s hard to believe he came out of you.”
“Oh, don’t we know it,” my mother concurred with a laugh. “When he turned down Julliard to study pre-law, we knew he was a little different from the rest of us.”
Vicki frowned at this. She’d simply been teasing me, but she’d picked up on actual disappointment in my mother’s voice.
“I didn’t actually mean--”
“It’s alright, Vicki,” I told her quietly.
It was not in her nature to let things go, but I continued speaking before she could start to attempt to decode my complex relationship with my family.
“Vicki needs a place to stay,” I shifted the subject quickly. “What’s the best hotel in town these days?”
“Oh, well you’ve come at exactly the wrong time, I’m afraid,” my mother responded. “Sedona tourism season has booked up all the hotels in the area for the fall. You’re not going to be able to find a decent vacancy for weeks.”
“Oh,” she responded with her chipper demeanor momentarily halted. “Well, um, maybe there’s, like, a student hostel or something in the area?”
“Or the spacious back of a hippie van?” I taunted.
“There’s not going to be free space anywhere,” my mother assured her, “but we wouldn’t have you sleep out in the street. You can stay with us.”
Vicki took stock of the modest house. I could see her brain working, counting up the number of doors and probably the number of bedrooms.
“I wouldn’t want to impose,” she said modestly.
“Oh, well, you’ll have to, sweetie,” my mother insisted. “You’re not going to find a place to stay anywhere else.”
“Well, I suppose I can’t turn down your generosity,” she admitted. “With Henry and Macho Man here, though, are you sure you have enough room for me?”
Freddie scowled at his new nickname, but I managed to keep my amusement at it from showing.
“Oh, we
are filled to the brim,” my father confirmed. “The bedrooms are filled up. But you can stay in the kids’ old treehouse in the backyard! You are going to love it. The treehouse is our tribute to the natural housing that Mother Earth provides.”
Vicki blinked a few times. I tried with limited success to contain my amusement and only barely stifled my laughter.
“That is… so nice of you,” Vicki managed to say. “Thank you.”
As things started to calm down for the moment, I felt a sudden wave of exhaustion wash over me. I hadn’t slept since I’d arrived in the airport early in the morning, and I had been far too antsy to sleep on the plane. I yawned and stretched my arms up over my head.
“Well, it’s been quite a day,” I announced. “I think I’m going to turn in for the afternoon.” I moved to my right to the door I recognized as my childhood bedroom.
“Where do you think you’re going?” my father stopped me.
“To my room?”
“Oh, that’s not your bedroom anymore, sweetie,” my mother said. “In fact, it’s not a bedroom at all anymore.”
I completed my journey to the room I’d thought would be my temporary quarters. I pushed the door open, and the scent of nature and flowers and growth and clean water washes over me all at once.
In the space I remembered as my old bedroom, green plants I didn’t recognize, succulents in tiny little bowls, and artificial rock formations with clear water cascading over them lined the edges of every wall and most every square foot of the floor. If I were to venture into the room, I’d barely have room to turn around.
Vicki appeared beside me.
“Whoa,” she whispered. “How do they deal with the mold?”
Now my parents appeared behind me.
“You’d been gone so long, after all,” my mother explained. “We took the opportunity to convert your old room into an indoor zen garden and meditation room. The energy of the room is totally different now, spending time in there will center your chi and align your chakras quite effectively.”
“Wow,” I took that in. It was a sensible thing to do, really. The zen garden part, maybe not, but converting my room into something that actually got used seemed sensible enough.
“I guess I’ll just stay in the…” I trailed off. There wasn’t really anything else.
“You’ll have to stay in the treehouse with your friend!” my dad proclaimed.
“Oh, this is going to be awesome,” Vicki giggled as she poked me in the arm with a long fingernail.
Chapter 5
The whole Irving family had built the treehouse together when I was about seven. Since I’d been so young, I could only imagine that I hadn’t actually been that much help. Harmony had been a few years older, so she was old enough to know what she was doing and had taken to the task with much enthusiasm. The crafting, decorating, and the painting really spoke to her. The whole project was one of my parent’s more practical family bonding plans.
Vicki and I stood side by side, looking up at the collected efforts of a group of children and their hippy parents from two decades ago. Vicki threw her duffel bag of stuff she’d brought from California up into the treehouse opening, and it creaked when it was met with the new weight.
“Will it support both of us?” Vicki asked doubtfully.
“I hope so,” I said. “If we fall out and die, Harmony will look even more suspicious.”
The treehouse was a simple 150-square-foot cube nestled in the branches of the big oak tree behind our house. Dozens of beams and plants stuck out of the ground and other branches of the tree had lodged into its base and sides in an attempt to support its weight. I’d believe that more wood went into holding up and building the tree house than was actually present in the tree. Colorful tapestries and fabrics were draped over the tops and sides of the walls and laid out across some support beams, adding a pop of color to the wooden, brown ordeal. Some of the tapestries seemed a bit worse for wear, but the actual wooden roof was fairly weatherproof, not that there was much rain in Sedona. A rope ladder hung from the only opening we’d thought to carve into the whole affair.
“Well, up we go then,” Vicki sighed.
She bent over and detached her red-bottomed high heels from her feet. When she stood back upright, she was four inches shorter than she once was.
“Hold these,” she brandished the shoes into my chest. I caught them before they fell to the ground, which I guessed technically meant she was correct in expecting me to do as she ordered.
Vicki fearlessly approached the rickety rope ladder. Without pausing to reflect on her own mortality, she placed her well-pedicured foot onto the first rung and launched herself up the ladder. The rope ladder swung back and forth suddenly as if surprised to have a new visitor.
“Wait a few seconds before following me up,” Vicki requested as she tried to adjust her grip. “I’m in a skirt and I don’t want you looking where you shouldn’t.”
“Wait, I thought we’ve been dating for a few years?” I asked as I watched her struggle up the ladder. “Shouldn’t I be able to see--”
“Ugh,” Vicki groaned. “Don’t be an ass.”
“You know, your ass is pretty nice,” I commented as I glanced up at her.
“Stop looking!” she laughed as she reached down with her left hand to push the hem of her skirt lower.
Vicki finally reached the top, and she seemed to feel like this was something of a victory for herself.
“Catch these,” I said as I tossed her shoes up.
“Wahh!” she cried as she reached out to grab her shoes. She caught the left one in her hand okay, but the right bounced off her shoulder, and she had to spin around to try to get it. The shoe almost ended up falling back down, but she managed to catch it at the last moment.
“Hey!” She cried out. “Those are Louboutins!”
“So?” I laughed as I started to climb the ladder. It was built with child-sized people in mind, so my six-foot-one figure towered over almost half of it and seemed like using it was a dangerous idea.
“Firstly, didn’t anyone ever tell you not to mess with an Asian woman’s shoes?”
“Uhh, I don’t know what being Asian has to do with your shoe--”
“Secondly, do you know how much these cost?”
“Probably more than this treehouse,” I laughed as I pulled myself up to the next rung. It swung back and forth with my full weight, but I managed to hang on and push forward until I finally was able to pull myself into the treehouse, collapsing onto my back.
“Glad you could make it,” Vicki greeted me from deeper inside the treehouse. “Check this out.”
Vicki flipped some switch, and a string of Christmas lights lit up the tiny box. I opened my eyes and took in the old place. Blankets and tapestries lined every inch of the wall and cast the string light into different colors. The floor was covered in old mattresses, and an excess of pillows and cushions were strewn around the place with seemingly no pattern, unless it was one that only Harmony understood.
“It’s actually kind of cool,” Vicki decided. “For a group of kids, I mean. The lack of air conditioning is going to really grate on me the next couple of days. I don’t know if it’s occured to you, but Arizona is ridiculously hot during the day and super cold at night.”
I pulled myself onto one of the mattresses and grabbed one of the stray cushions to put under my head.
“It’s occured to me,” I replied groggily. My eyelids felt heavy, and I felt myself beginning to drift off.
A cushion landed squarely onto my face.
“No sleep yet, Henry,” Vicki commanded. “We’ve got information to go over.”
Begrudgingly, I pushed myself up to a sitting position, but I didn’t complain. Vicki was the first competent person willing to help out, so I wasn’t about to turn that down, no matter what hour of the night that help came in.
“Fill me in on every detail you know about the case,” she asked. “If Harmony didn’t do it, we have to figur
e out what really happened if we want to have any chance of convincing a jury.”
“The case against Harmony rests on the victim being murdered near her gallery, security footage of her covered in what appears to be blood, the forensics report on her clothing confirming it to be blood, and the murder weapon being found among her art supplies,” I listed for her.
“So...” she considered. “We need to see the security footage, do a full interview with Harmony to understand where she says she was and what she was doing that night, get the forensics report on the blood and the weapon, as well as obtaining a copy of the full crime scene report with their detective’s timeline of events.”
“Right,” I agreed. “Presumably, her public defender can at least get us copies of all those things. We’re going to need to hire our own forensics specialist to do their own report on her clothes. We’ll also need to subpoena cell phone GPS records to show exactly where Harmony, or at least her cellphone, was when the murder happened.”
“But we don’t have subpoena powers,” she concluded glumly.
“Her public defender is lazy and disinterested, but I’m confident if we do the paperwork he will sign off on the request,” I countered.
“We’ll be the world’s most overqualified paralegals,” she chuckled.
“You already are,” I said with a smile, and her cheeks blushed a bit at the compliment.
“Changing gears a bit, assuming she isn’t the murderer who else is there that could’ve done it?” she posed the question. “Brutally stabbing someone to death with a knife isn’t usually done in a robbery, it was definitely a crime of passion.”
“There're tons of other artists that the critic offended,” I replied. “There’s a laundry list of people who would’ve had bad blood with him. The police have a hard on for the fact that Harmony joked that she was going to kill him right before the murder.”
“Okay, so that adds hundreds of other artists to the suspect list,” Vicki determined. “That’s something. But what about that roid rager in your house?”
“Freddie?”
“Yeah,” she nodded. “You don’t think he was suspicious?”
