by Dave Daren
“Hey, there,” I greeted her. “What are you up to?”
“I’m just keeping busy,” she shrugged as she brandished the paint rollers in the air. She seemed happy, but I could see a tiredness around her eyes. The stress was probably affecting her a lot more than she wanted to let on.
“Happy to hear that,” I acknowledged. “Where are mom and dad?”
“Mom’s at work at the yoga studio and Dad’s taking a course on opening his third eye,” she replied.
“It’s good that they’re keeping busy, too,” I said. “Do you mind if I interview you about the night of the murder?”
“Sure,” she hopped down from the couch into a sitting position. “What do you need to know?”
“I’m pretty much looking for an on-the-record play-by-play of the whole night,” I told her as I sat down beside her and grabbed a pad of paper and pen. “Start at when the gallery closed to the public. It’s super important that you get these details rights, and if you aren’t sure about something say that you aren’t sure. It’s better to be unsure about information than to say something the prosecutor can prove wrong, even an innocent mistake can be twisted to make it look sinister.”
“Okay,” she nodded. “The gallery closed down for the night at eight, and I went in after hours to work on some new stuff. Maybe around ten?”
“Why so late?” I asked.
“I work better at night,” she shrugged. “I’m more creative then.”
“Is this your typical schedule?” I dug deeper.
“Yeah, I’m a night owl,” she answered. “All my friends know exactly where to find me at that time.”
I made a note on my pad of paper. All her friends knew where to find her, and I was beginning to guess that people who weren’t so friendly to her knew she’d be there, too.
“You are on the security footage at the time,” I confirmed, “but you’re off camera a lot as well. Most notably, two o’clock, the time of the murder.”
“I was in the gallery working from ten till about two-thirty,” she explained.
“You left right after the murder took place?” I frowned at yet another fact that made her look suspicious.
“Well, I didn’t know I was lining up with the murderer’s schedule,” she pouted. “I left out the front door and locked up, I had no idea a murder had taken place in the alley. But yeah, that’s usually when I leave, Gerard knows that. I ran it by him before I went in.”
Suddenly, Phoenix exited his bedroom with his bedhead hair sticking out wildly and slouching with fatigue even though it was well into the afternoon.
“Hey, Phoenix,” I greeted him. “You just waking up?”
“Time is a social construct,” he replied groggily.
Phoenix shuffled to the kitchen, grabbed a leftover takeout bag from some burger restaurant off the counter, and shuffled back toward his room.
“Aren’t you a vegetarian?” Harmony called after him.
“Duh, meat is murder, Harmony,” he called back before closing the door on us. “And this is a veggie burger with cashew cheese because dairy is rape.”
Phoenix left us alone again. I was thankful to have him there to dispel the tension of the situation if only for a moment.
“Let me ask you something else,” I continued with Harmony. “Do you know about specific people who buy your art? Specifically anyone by the name Danila Udinova?”
“Not really,” she shook her head. “I know I have one patron in New York who’s gotten really into my stuff recently. That might be an Udinova, but Gerard’s really in charge of that stuff. He meets with the buyers and arranges the sales, and I just make the stuff.”
“Do you know if he ever met with Danila Udinova in the gallery?” I asked.
“If Gerard meets with someone in the gallery, he usually introduces them to me,” she said. “He thinks it pressures them to buy, but I don’t remember meeting anyone by that name in person.”
“Is it strange in the art world for someone to take this much interest in someone’s art, but to not want to meet you or see your work in person ever?” I asked.
“Huh,” she considered. “I guess that doesn’t actually happen unless the artist is very, very famous.”
“Thanks, sis,” I told her sincerely as I finished writing the last of my notes. “I’m sorry you had to relive that.”
“There’s not much to relive,” she shrugged casually. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Fair enough,” I nodded.
“And Henry,” she began before I could stand up, “I don’t know if I’ve said… thanks for doing all this.”
“No need to thank me,” I waved her sincerity away.
“I know,” she accepted, “but I’m doing it. So thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” I responded genuinely.
I made my way back to the treehouse to join Vicki’s study session. I stepped into the backyard where the sun was setting over the red Sedona mountains in the distance. Just as I paused to take in the scenery, my phone alerted me of a call from AJ.
“Hey, AJ,” I answered.
“You know, based on movies and stuff, I’d thought stake-outs would be more interesting,” AJ remarked. “I started trailing him outside Slingers, and he hasn’t left. It has been hours. My foot is cramping.”
“What’s he even doing in there for so long?” I asked. “He’s hardly their demographic.”
Justin didn’t exhibit the cowboyish nature that Slingers otherwise seemed to require of his patrons, so it was strange that we’d find him in there so often.
“He came here on foot and not in his car, so it’s harder for him to leave,” AJ pointed out.
“No car?” I asked.
“No car,” she confirmed.
“Do you remember what he was doing in there when we first met him?” I asked her. “Was he even drinking?”
“I don’t think he was drinking, especially since he drove home afterward. But when we saw him, he was finishing up a poker game,” she recalled.
“Think his debt issue has to do with all this gambling?” I asked.
“That’s all it could be,” AJ explained. “His leased apartment is modest, and he doesn’t go to many others places. His debt must be almost entirely gambling-related. And his DMV records show that he doesn’t own his car anymore, so he must have gotten rid of it in the last week or so. He could’ve sold it off to pay off his debts.”
“Do you think you could find out who owns his car now?” I asked her.
“It hasn’t been listed on the state site yet with a new owner,” she responded, “but I’m predicting it’s someone named Udinova.”
I realized my investigative assistant was probably correct, but we hadn’t told her about the car chase yet.
“So now what?” she asked.
“Thanks for your help, AJ,” I told her. “Feel free not to drop by the gallery tomorrow morning. Just email Gerard’s and Udinova’s background checks to me.”
“What?” she gasped. “Why not?”
“Personal day,” I replied. “Vicki and I have a bar exam to pass.”
Chapter 12
After saying goodbye to AJ, I climbed back into the treehouse. Vicki was hard at work studying, with her flashcards and study guides spread out around her, and she didn’t seem to notice that it was beginning to get dark. I took up a flashcard and sat down across from her.
“Wanna take a smoothie break?” I suggested.
“Last time we went out for a break, we almost died,” she recalled without looking away from her study materials. “I am not about to die over a smoothie before I even become a lawyer.”
Per her wishes, we studied for the bar together well into the night without taking any outings. After the sun went down, Harmony brought us some food as we worked so we wouldn’t starve.
“What are you guys up to?” she asked as she climbed up to the treehouse to deliver a box of store-bought cookies. She was an artist, not a chef.
“Taking
a practice bar exam we downloaded online,” Vicki replied. “It’s making me want to dismantle the legal system as we know it, but thank you for the cookies.”
“And how are you?” Harmony directed to me as she perched at the top of the rope ladder.
“I’m opposed to dismantling the legal system, because that would mean we would have a whole new system to study,” I said.
“Good point,” Vicki conceded.
“Thanks for the cookies,” I said as I watched Harmony position herself to leave.
“Anytime. It's the least I can do for you guys,” the artist replied and then crawled down the rope ladder.
I turned to Vicki. “Alright, time to get back to it.”
“Do you think Harmony’s weird boyfriend has anything to do with the murder plot?” Vicki asked with a mouthful of cookie as she scanned a textbook. “He’s got an anger to him.”
“I originally wanted to think so, but I’m not so sure anymore,” I admitted. “I think it’s just the biological programming of my brotherly DNA forcing me to dislike my sister’s boyfriends.”
“Especially if it looks like he crushes aluminum cans against his head when he’s angry,” Vicki added. “Everyone else in Sedona seems so relaxed, have you met anyone else in town who has zero chill?”
“There is this one guy, Horace,” I recalled the man who’d started a fight at Slingers. “Met him with AJ at the bar, he owns a small theater in town but he looked like he ate nails for breakfast.”
“You should’ve gotten his number for me,” Vicki joked.
“Careful, he doesn’t seem like the most chivalrous guy and if he started acting too forward with you, I’ll have to beat him up to defend your honor,” I smirked.
“Awww, it’s super nice of you to offer to imaginarily beat up my imaginary boyfriend who is an imaginary jerk,” she said and stuck her tongue out at me.
“Point taken,” I quickly responded with equal sarcasm as I took a bite of a cookie. “I won’t stand between you and him. True love can’t be suppressed.” We giggled for a while, finished our cookies, and then got more serious about the practice tests.
We bent down over our study materials again for several quiet hours. Night fell around us, and we flipped on the Christmas lights lining the walls. After another several hours of studying, I struck up a conversation with Vicki over her textbook.
“Do you feel ready?” I asked her.
“I don’t know,” she shrugged. “I feel like I know what I need to, but that’s how I felt when I took the California bar, and we both know how that turned out.”
“Do you want me to quiz you again?” I offered.
She reached for her cell phone.
“It’s so late,” she noted after squinting at the screen. “I think I’ve been quizzed over every possible legal topic except the structural integrity of a courthouse.”
“I can add that to the flashcards,” I teased.
“I think I’m going to call it a night,” Vicki laughed as she flipped her text book closed and crawled over to the ladder. “If I don’t know it by now, I’m hopeless. I’m going to brush my teeth, be back in a second.”
“Sounds good,” I said as she climbed out of the treehouse to get ready for the night.
I settled myself into the mattress in the treehouse just as my phone went off. AJ had emailed me what she’d found from trailing Justin. I looked over her research, it was mostly what we’d already discussed about his habits but she summarized it, and I was pretty impressed with how thorough it was. She did have a talent for this, and I thought about how lucky we were to find her until I drifted off to sleep.
Vicki and I woke up promptly at six in the morning and ate a quick breakfast after we showered. Then we drove to the testing facility in Phoenix to take the exam. Vicki slept for most of the two-hour drive, but I didn’t fault her for it since we’d only gotten three hours of quality shut-eye, so I tried to avoid bumps as I drove to keep her from waking up. I spent the solitary hours behind the wheel alternatively going over Arizona law and Harmony’s case. I was feeling a tad overwhelmed, but an appetite for an enormous workload is one of the reasons Sanchez made me the youngest junior partner at the firm in the first place.
I knew I could do this, nothing could stop me.
As we neared Phoenix, picturesque red mountains and desert skies gave way to cookie cutter housing developments and national chain restaurants. I found myself missing Sedona quite a bit even though I’d barely left it.
When we arrived at the Phoenix Convention Center, it was nearly nine in the morning. I reached over to the passenger seat and gently shook Vicki awake.
“Hey,” I said softly, “rise and shine. It’s time to conquer the world.”
“Ugh,” Vicki groaned as she was roused from her sleep. “My brain is so full of case law and statutes, I literally just dreamed about a courtroom. There wasn’t even anything happening. I was just in an empty courtroom. Totally naked, of course.”
“Oh?” I asked as I smirked at her.
“Just making sure you were paying attention,” she said as she stuck her tongue out at me. “I, for one, feel like I’m going to forget everything as soon as I sit down.”
“Once you pass this test, you can forget everything you’ve been cramming into your head,” I told her encouragingly.
Her tone suddenly got very serious, and she looked me right in the eyes. “I didn’t study all this stuff to pass the bar here for one case, Henry. I told you when I got here I was here to start something new, and I haven’t changed my mind.”
“And I have not changed my mind about my refusal to put down roots here,” I responded calmly. “You know full well I’m going back to LA as soon as this is over.”
“We’ll see,” she said to me with a wink.
“Alright, alright, let’s do this.”
We stepped out of the car and approached the Convention Center. It was a massive red brick building with slanted walls and an asymmetrical structure surrounded with precisely placed palm trees. It rapidly became clear to me that we weren’t in Sedona anymore. For one thing, there were a lot of people here crowding the entrances. I imagined Harmony would complement the architecture if she were here. Either that or she would hate it with a fiery passion, but I didn’t understand visual art.
Vicki and I signed in and waited outside the testing room for the essay portion of the bar exam. As we waited among a bunch of recent, hopeful law school graduates, I scrolled through my phone so I could read the information AJ had sent to me. I studied Justin’s crazy amounts of debt and AJ’s theories about where it came from and how he planned to pay it off. From AJ’s research, Justin’s solution to his gambling problem was, evidently, more gambling.
“I feel like you can look at that in a few hours,” Vicki commented as I held the phone too close to my face.
“This is important,” I muttered without looking up at her.
“Yes, it is, but much more useful if you focus on the bar and can help Harmony in court,” she reminded me in a motherly tone.
“When did you become such an adult?” I asked.
“Oh please, I’ve always been more mature than you, and you know it,” she said and stuck her tongue out at me.
“Says the woman with her tongue sticking out,” I teased. Reluctantly, I put my phone away as the test takers were ushered into a stark white room lined with long wooden desks.
“Moment of truth,” I told Vicki before we parted ways.
“More like a six-hour day of truth,” she amended.
Over the next several hours, Vicki and I threw ourselves into the Arizona bar exam. And overall the exam was… surprisingly easy. Not easy, exactly. It’s a substantial amount of effort to put ideas into words and recall the exact cases and statutes, but it’s not the day of rocket science that I was anticipating from my harrowing California experience.
In the middle of the day’s essay portion, I looked across the room at Vicki. We made eye contact, she gave me a co
nfident smile, and I hoped she was finding this as surprisingly simple as I was. Since we had already passed the Multistate Bar Exam in California, we were thankfully spared having to take it here and wouldn’t have to stay the night and come back tomorrow.
After the end of the test, I waited outside the testing room for Vicki, grateful to be out of the white, clinical testing space and back into the intense Arizona daylight. The other people in the hall seemed nervous, but I felt supremely confident, despite only having really studied for a few days.
Vicki filed out with the crowd, and I hoped she shared the same level of confidence I did. She trotted over after she spotted me, weaving through the crowd of tense test-takers. The smile on her face told me everything I needed to know before she had a chance to say it.
“That was way easier than the California bar,” she gushed. “Why didn’t I just leave California this whole time?”
“That was much easier that second time around,” I agreed. “The California exam is designed to break people and get them to move somewhere else, otherwise the state would be flooded with the thousands and thousands of law school graduates each year.”
She jokingly frowned. “Are you saying they successfully weeded me out?”
“You’re no weed,” I said with as much charm as I could muster. “Maybe you’re just a desert flower who needed to come to Sedona in order to bloom.”
“Wow,” she responded sarcastically, “I thought you were supposed to be a good actor or something. That was the cheesiest thing I ever heard.”
“You’re wounding my pride,” I told her as I snickered.
“Anyways, the point is, we’re officially lawyers, most likely, because I absolutely just murdered that test,” she stated confidently.
“I think you might be right,” I said as I gently moved Vicki backwards, out of the way of the crowd of hopeful lawyers.
One of their voices carried over to us as he filed by. “I have no idea how I did,” he lamented to a friend.
