Free The Zen Man by Colleen Collins

block table, snagged a stool. “What’s that?”
    “It’s where they tell you your charges and set up more important hearings.”
    I waited for him to ask more questions, but he didn’t. Just sat there, swinging his boots against the linoleum, staring at us. From the dining room came a low droning noise. Mavis snoring from her doggie bed.
    “What’s up?” I finally asked.
    He threw up his hands, the movement causing the red, green, and yellow-beaded bracelet to clatter slightly. “About the night that chick was…you know…” He squeezed shut his eyes, a pained expression on his face.
    “Murdered?” I prompted.
    He nodded, reopened his eyes. “Yeah. One eighty-seven.” He looked up at the ceiling, scratched his head as though confused by whatever he read up there. “I was there.”
    I felt as though I’d been sucker punched. “What?”
    He gestured lamely over his shoulder toward the window. “I was out there…that night.”
    It flashed through my mind to grab the recorder, but I couldn’t remember if I’d left the damn thing in our bedroom upstairs or in the car. Didn’t matter. No way I’d interrupt this…confession? By the time I got back, he might have changed his mind about talking.
    “When you say
out there,”
I asked, carefully modulating my voice, “where exactly do you mean?”
    He squinted at me. “In the hot spring pool.”
    “With Wicked?” shrilled Laura, half-rising. The laptop started to slide off her seat. She grabbed it and remained hunched over, clutching it to her thighs, a horrified look on her face.
    “With Wi—Wicked?” repeated Garrett, also rising, looking as horrified as Laura.
    “That’s the nickname of the woman who was killed,” I quickly explained. “Look…” I stood, too. Too weird. “Sit back down, everyone, let’s take this from the top.”
    “Could one of you grab me a bottle of that fruit-flavored water? My mouth is, like, mothball-dry.” Garrett settled back onto his seat.
    As Laura hustled to the fridge, I set my pad and pen on the table. “Mind if I take some notes?”
    Garrett shrugged. “Go for it.”
    I sat across from him, picked up the pen. “Take it from the beginning of the evening…” My heart jack-hammered against my ribs. Jesus, Garrett the murderer? If he couldn’t get it together to finish the rock design in that pool, how in the hell could he plan a killing?
    “Word,” he murmured, accepting the bottle from Laura. He unscrewed the cap, took a long swig. Finally, he set down the bottle, burped, and looked at me dead-on.
    “Well, man, I’d finished a long day at work…”
    Laura, walking behind Garrett back to her chair, rolled her eyes on “long day at work.”
    “Then Zig had to go to a wedding. He was the best man.”
    Ziggy, Garrett’s side-kick, single employee, and fellow cannabis lover.
    “What time did Ziggy leave here?”
    Garrett shrugged. “Two or three, I guess.”
    I thought back to that afternoon. Laura and I had been preparing for the retreat, washing wine glasses, looking out the kitchen window. I didn’t recall seeing either Garrett or Ziggy on the property that afternoon. Which seemed odd as all the hot pools were in easy view from the kitchen window.
    “And what did you do after Ziggy left?”
    “I was having visions of the most righteous rock design, then I crashed in the pit. You know, the unfinished pool. When I woke up, it was dark.”
    “Do you know what time it was when you woke up?”
    “Like, uh, six. Hadn’t slept much at all the night before. Big party at C.J.’s, had been up most of the night.”
    “C.J.—?”
    “Chris Jameson. Snowboarding buddy. Lives in Golden.”
    I’d call Chris later, confirm the story. “So you woke up around six, and then what did you do?”
    “Selected some tunes on my iPod, laid back to groove.”
    “Must’ve been cold in that pit.”
    “Oh no, man. I had a sleeping bag. Goose down. Good for up to twenty below.”
    Considering it’d been in the