That was the non-traditional school Harmony taught at.
“Yeah,” he laughed. “They don’t have classes there. I don’t know what kind of school that is. My sister’s weird.”
“Mine too,” I chuckled and held out my hand to him. “Thanks for the help. What’s your name?”
“Alex,” he answered as he walked over to shake my hand. “Alex Badillo.”
“Thanks, Alex,” I smiled, “I appreciate it.”
“No,” he replied, “I’m the one who appreciates it. My sister’s pretty broke up. If the murders are connected, it would really help her to know.”
“Hopefully, we can get her the answers she needs,” I told him before I glanced at Vicki. “Vic, you good?”
She winked. “I got this.”
So, a few minutes later, I left the office and walked to my car. I didn’t even realize how late it had gotten until I got outside. It was already late afternoon. I was glad I’d bought another day. I knew I would find something. We were circling around too many elements not to find anything.
I texted Harmony to tell her I was coming out there, and I asked her if she had any student named Morales. She didn’t answer right away, so I drove out to the Horizons school. I’d never been there before, and I had a feeling this would be interesting.
The campus for Horizons was a sprawling gray brick building, nestled into ample green foliage and red and orange rock. I walked up the pathway to the entrance, along hilly gravel walkways with gray cobblestone built all around. By the time I reached the front door, I’d entered deep into a natural landscape, with trees rising on the hill above, and painted desert shrubs persevered at every angle. The building, the only human ortifice in sight, was built so deep into its surroundings, it almost seemed to apologize for its existence.
The entrance was a hidden glass door, and I walked through it and was instantly greeted by piped in relaxation music and dim lighting. It almost felt more like a massage spa than a school. The lobby had that uber contemporary look, with chairs that looked more like design pieces than furniture, and abstract sculptures that made me wonder if this place was for children.
I found an employee, a fresh faced twenty year old, with a bright smile, a uniform polo, and khakis. I noticed her silver name plate read “Eva.”
“Hi,” I stopped her. “I’m looking for the student art show?”
“Yeah,” Eva smiled and patted a clipboard, “you’ll have to sign in here, and I’ll need to see an ID. Who are you here to see?”
“I’m Harmony Irving’s brother,” I replied.
“Harmony!” she exclaimed with a grin. “We love Ms. Irving! She’s just so much fun!”
I smiled. Yeah, this woman would be friends with my sister.
“I guess she’s alright,” I joked with a wink.
Eva giggled and cocked her head at me. “You’re the lawyer brother, not the filmmaker one, right?”
I chuckled as I signed in. Sure, since my L.A. years, I had relaxed from business formal to business casual, but I certainly didn’t think I looked like a filmmaker.
“Yeah,” I replied, “I’m the uptight lawyer. The filmmaker would be Phoenix, who’s in South America right now.”
“Phoenix,” she repeated with a sigh. “You guys have the coolest family ever.”
“I dunno about all that,” I said as I handed her my driver’s license. I hadn’t gotten around to going to the DMV in the last eight months, so I still carried around my California ID.
“Los Angeles?” Eva asked as she entered my information into a computer. “I take it this is not a current address?”
“Sure it is,” I joked. “It’s just a hell of a daily commute. Traffic’s a bitch.”
She laughed. “We have to put you in the system. Write down your address.” Then she handed me a sticky note, and I jotted down my Sedona address.
“Harmony’s said a lot about you,” the girl added. “She said you know people in the movie industry.”
“I did,” I shrugged, “but not anymore.”
“I’m a scriptwriter,” she explained with a smile, “or at least trying to be. Do you think sometime you could look over my script, and maybe, if you think it’s good, pass it along to someone?”
I chuckled and handed her the sticky note. “I don’t know those kinds of people anymore.”
“That’s a shame,” Eva said with a frown. “I’ve been writing this movie for two years.”
“Two years?” I echoed as I blinked in surprise. “What’s it about?”
“It’s about the year I spent as a volunteer English teacher in Korea,” she answered.
“That is a unique experience,” I mused.
“I thought so.” She nodded. “Sometimes, our students would be children who defected from the North. It was a heartbreaking story. So, I wrote this book about a North Korean family who defects into a commonwealth community like Tranquility, you know, that place where they make kombucha?”
“I know Tranquility well,” I replied.
“Oh nice,” Eva smiled, “Kristen McGrath is a good friend. She’s so great. Anyway, I spent a year writing this novel and even stayed at Tranquility for a couple of months, and came up with this really, really, solid piece of work. Then I tried to sell it. And you know publishers don’t deal with prospective authors, right?”
I shrugged. “I didn’t know that, but okay.”
I wasn’t sure why this girl was getting into all of this with me.
“So, you have to work with an agent,” she explained. “These agents require you to put together this whole proposal package, with all of this marketing material, that when it’s done right, it takes months to prepare. So, I jumped through all of their hoops and pitched the finished manuscript. And I still got a bunch of rejection e-mails. Encouraging, but rejections nonetheless. The agents all told me, it was ‘good but not great.’
