Chapter Text
Hema’s revelation that there was a whole new unknown person in the case is good news. It will be good news, anyway, once Phoenix has the brainpower to make it work for his case. For now, the end of the work week has come, and it’s time to just go home and recover for a couple hours before starting bright and early tomorrow.
The bus stop is at least only a few yards from the entrance to the detention center, and the bus comes every ten minutes. When it sighs to a stop in front of him, Phoenix gets on in a haze and taps his bus pass.
The tiny screen lights up red. He tries again, to the same result.
“You’re out of rides on that,” the driver says.
Phoenix swallows. At some point in the past few seconds, a cold sweat has sprung up on all of his exposed skin. He tries to tap his bus pass again.
“Buddy,” the driver says more forcefully, failing to fix Phoenix’s understanding. They let out a thin breath. “Cripes, just go sit. Fix it for next time.”
The screen turns green. Phoenix swallows and shuffles further onto the bus and collapses onto the first empty seat he sees.
After the bus starts moving again, it takes Phoenix a few seconds to realize that the person next to him is tapping his arm, trying to get his attention.
“Your phone’s ringing,” they tell him, somewhere between bemused and irritated. “Can’t you hear it, guy?”
“My what?” Phoenix asks, struggling to keep up. Then he feels his phone vibrating, and takes in the sound of his tinny ringtone. He starts to dig for it in his pocket. “One second, sorry. My phone is…yeah.”
He flicks the phone open, clicks ‘accept’, and holds the device to his ear without checking who it is. With the way the bus is bouncing, he doubts his tired eyes could read the screen anyway.
“Hello?”
“Daddy?”
“Hi, Truce,” Phoenix says. He puts his palm over his other ear, pressing closer to the phone to hear his daughter better. “What’s going on, sweetheart?”
“Are you going to be here for dinner?” Trucy asks.
It’s a simple yes that she’s asking for, but Phoenix has a weird feeling. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”
“Yes,” Trucy insists. Despite this reassurance, Phoenix still remembers her crying, embarrassed about how scared she was that he wasn’t coming back from the hospital last night. Guilt churns in his stomach, though it could just be a stress ulcer. “I just wanted to make sure. So, are you? Polly said you were at the detention center.”
(With friends like these, who needs an ankle monitor?)
“It closed. I’m on the bus home.” Phoenix strains his ears for anyone in the background, or anything amiss. He doesn’t think he’s imagining the hum of other voices, more than one. More than just Maya, whose voice isn’t as low as the one he’s hearing. This is a mystery he’ll solve pretty quickly, as soon as he steps into his house, so he resigns himself to that fate and focuses on assessing how Trucy is feeling instead. He asks, “How was school?”
“It was fine,” Trucy says. “I mean, it was okay. But Mrs. Balkitz confiscated the riding crop Aunt Franziska gave me.”
Phoenix, despite everything, feels himself smile. The small change in his expression lightens the weight on his shoulders for a moment, even lessens the pinching headache in his forehead. He wonders if Trucy can hear the shift even while he does his parental duty and says, “I thought we agreed we weren’t going to take that to school.”
“I forgot it was in my bag!”
Phoenix doesn’t believe that for a second. Trucy keeps her props straight with the same militant precision of any propmaster. “Were you waving it around?”
“Only a little bit,” Trucy grouses. “I mean, how else was the trick supposed to work?”
Someone pulls the cord to request a stop. Phoenix looks up to check where they are, and finds it’s his stop, too. It’s lucky he heard the chime, or he’d have had to walk back a few extra blocks.
“I’m getting off the bus in a sec, okay?” he says. “I’ll be home before you know it.”
“I love you!” Trucy says. “See you soon!”
Phoenix says his goodbyes, then hangs up and puts his phone back in his pocket. Thankfully, the Trucy-boost to his mood lingers, distracting him from the way that the bus seat is designed to make his spine fall apart vertebra by vertebra. His legs tingle due to poor circulation, but he loves his daughter so it’s fine.
He staggers off of the bus at his stop. From the corner, he can see his building, and he knows which lit-up window is his. He focuses on that, and shuffles his way home.
Somehow, Phoenix makes it up the stairs and his key gets into the lock on the front door. He leans against the door, pressing it open with his body weight, and stumbles over the threshold into the warmth of his apartment.
There to greet him, directly in front of the door, is Maya. She’s in the middle of putting a shoe on.
“Hiya, Nick,” Maya says, and drops her foot to the ground. Her sandal makes a clunking sound as she balances on it to put on the other one. She moves her mouth into a smile shape, but it’s far from enthusiastic. “You made it.”
Phoenix nods, slowly, trying to step carefully around her hurt feelings without ignoring that they’re there. He hates being on bad terms with her, but he doesn’t think he can handle coming clean right now. “I can start making something for dinner, if you two haven’t eaten.”
“Don’t worry, dinner’s covered,” Maya says. She pauses to sneeze, with the volume and power of a steam engine. This prompts a “Bless you!” from Trucy, deeper in the apartment. Maya rubs her nose and looks up again. Her unhappy smile turns into more of a real Fey smirk; chin tucked, eyes sparkling. Phoenix is struck with a sudden fear.
“Trucy?” a man’s voice says, deeper inside the apartment. “Would you accompany Maya downstairs? I believe the food has arrived.”
Phoenix considers turning heel and running right then. His hand is still on the doorknob, so it would be easy and fast to disappear.
He promised Trucy he wouldn’t, though. And he can’t see her cry again this week.
“It would be my up-most pleasure!” Trucy’s voice cheers, her mondegreen making Phoenix’s heart squeeze with fondness before he has to re-focus on the more pressing matter.
“Why is he here?” Phoenix hisses.
“You wouldn’t talk to me,” Maya says, doing a bad job of whispering as always. Her smirk deepens. “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”
“Daddy!” Trucy exclaims, appearing at the door frame of the cramped entry hall. She’s dressed up like it’s a special occasion, in her newest purple cape and matching hat. The hat is hard to miss; it bonks Phoenix’s nose when she runs forward and hugs him around the middle. “You came!”
“I said I would,” Phoenix says. He wraps his arms around her shoulders and squeezes. Once he holds on, he doesn’t want to let her go. “What’s for dinner?”
“Our guest of honor ordered it,” Trucy says, and beams at him. She lifts her chin so far her hat starts to tip off. Maya’s there to catch it with a palm on the crown and squish it back down onto Trucy’s brow. “Go sit down! It’s a surprise.”
“Pretty great surprise, right?” Maya asks, that wicked smile still coming out from under her bangs. She sneezes again. Knowing her, she picked a bug up at the hospital. There are lots of germs running around over there. “Come on, Trucy, or it’ll get cold.”
Trucy lets go of Phoenix and follows Maya out of the apartment, wrenching herself out of Phoenix’s grip and vanishing before Phoenix can think about asking her to stay for a second.
The door shuts behind Maya. Phoenix sets down his briefcase and kicks his shoes off, dreading the sight he’ll see when he turns the corner. It’s not like hiding in the entry hall for the rest of his life is an option.
(It could be, Phoenix lies to himself. He could carve out a little space in the coat closet to inhabit, with some effort. And there, he could heat up cans of beans on his old camping stove until, at the right time, he would die of carbon monoxide poisoning.)
After a few muttered curses and a moment of slouching (the latter an impotent stab at stretching his terrible, malfunctioning back muscles), Phoenix walks to the corner and peeks into the rest of the apartment.
The table is set. Extravagantly so--or at least as extravagantly as can be managed with the dishware that Phoenix owns. Their one tablecloth is out, and there are blue streamers all around the place, draped between the light fixture and the curtain rod and the tallest bookshelf.
Worst of all, as he feared, Edgeworth is standing in his kitchen, coat off and sleeves folded up, his dumb jabot missing. He’s pouring hot water into teacups. Both the kettle and the teacups are clearly things that he brought to Phoenix’s apartment himself, because Phoenix has never seen the items in his life. Most shocking is the glimpse of bare neck that the lack of cravat has allowed for. Phoenix is pretty sure he’s been imagining that the fabric is just surgically attached to Edgeworth’s throat.
Phoenix was ready to make a meal, leave it for Maya and Trucy to eat, and crash into bed for a couple of hours until it was dark enough for him to visit the auto shop. Maybe somewhere in the middle there, he’d eat a couple of prepackaged cheese sticks from the fridge, if they didn’t turn out to be past their expiration date.
Nowhere in this plan did he account for sitting at a table with the three people alive who know him best.
“Ah, you’re home,” Edgeworth says.
Phoenix jumps. He disembarks from his bitter thought-train and finds Edgeworth looking at him, face uncharacteristically open. Almost relaxed, if that’s possible.
Even Phoenix isn’t too far gone to take in the implications of what’s happening. He may be set up for an intervention in the near future, and it may be the beginning of a tense period of bad feelings between him and his loved ones, but the fact is that Phoenix has come home to Edgeworth. And Edgeworth has made dinner for Phoenix’s family.
It’s…domestic.
Phoenix stammers, “Hi, uh, what…What’re--? Why are you here?”
Edgeworth’s lip twitches. Something about this is funny to him. “I was invited.”
Right. By Maya.
(Stupid games, stupid prizes.)
“It’s been a difficult week, for everyone,” Edgeworth says. “And it’s been a few days since I could sit down for a proper meal. Would you indulge me?”
This man…is so sneaky, when he wants to be. Phoenix can’t object now, or he’ll be the asshole. It’s Edgeworth’s sister who’s in the hospital. And he’s right--it’s been a hard week.
If Phoenix really tries, he can get through this dinner without losing his goddamn mind, and everyone will feel better afterwards with food in their stomachs.
“Sounds great,” Phoenix says, with the pitiful enthusiasm he musters. “Who’s with Franziska?”
“Detective Skye. You don’t need to worry about anyone for the next hour, Wright. Give yourself a break for that long, at least.”
“You first,” Phoenix challenges him.
Edgeworth doesn’t respond. He’s watching Phoenix analytically, compiling mental evidence by the second. “By the way, can I speak to you for a moment? It’s a discussion to be had sitting down.”
Great, Phoenix really needed some bad news right now, so he was about to ask Edgeworth the same thing.
“Sure,” Phoenix says.
When Edgeworth strides out of the kitchen and seats himself on the sofa, Phoenix follows and half-falls onto the same sofa when his back acts up halfway down. He turns it into a very natural and casual movement, nobody the wiser. Edgeworth’s side-eye means nothing.
“Detective Gumshoe told me you’d been asking for updates. He was unable to reach you at your office.”
That sounds right. Phoenix nods, though half of his brain is still caught on the fact that he needs to heat up a hot water bottle or something for his spine if he’s going to spend another night on the couch.
“Consider this my formal warning that I’m going to be taking Franziska’s caseload for the time being,” Edgeworth says. It’s hard to tell if he’s joking around or if he thinks Phoenix actually needs a warning. (All because of that one time Phoenix ran into the side of the witness stand because he wasn’t expecting to see Edgeworth at the prosecutor’s bench.)
Phoenix stops thinking about his back. His blood has gone cold. “Wait. Y-you’re taking the Otto case?”
Edgeworth nods. His eyes take in Phoenix’s, far too observant to be comfortable. Phoenix knows he can keep his poker face until the bitter end, but in the absence of truth-discerning magic, the only person who would be able to read him anyway would be Edgeworth.
“I assure you, I will be fine,” Edgeworth says.
“My client didn’t--”
“We shouldn’t talk about that,” Edgeworth says, though his glance sideways to the front door really means, not here. He’s right; the girls could come back at any second. “You still believe there’s a connection between Otto and my sister’s poisoning?”
It’s the only thing that makes sense to Phoenix, given that the Otto case was the last thing Franziska had to wrap up before leaving town. If Maya didn’t do it, and if it wasn’t related to the open case, then poisoning was such a gamble to take down Franziska. There’s a reason why it’s usually done by people close to the victim--that’s the type of person who can get someone to eat something even if it doesn’t look quite right.
It was a desperate act. And Craig couldn’t have done it, being in police custody. Someone else is stalling the Otto case.
“Wright,” Edgeworth says, pulling Phoenix back to earth. “Do you have any proof?”
All Phoenix has is a gut feeling. Edgeworth is right--there’s no reason for him to trust Phoenix and ditch Franziska’s case just on a hunch. Phoenix will need to get hard evidence by Monday, or Edgeworth will be the next one in danger.
“Please.” Phoenix swallows with difficulty. “Just be careful.”
“I will be,” Edgeworth says. His bemused look says, I’m not an idiot.
But Franziska isn’t an idiot either. It just took one slip-up to put her on bedrest, labeled a fall risk, with a dialysis machine--
“Wright.” Again, Edgeworth has to drag Phoenix’s attention back. This time, he reaches out and rests his hand on top of Phoenix’s, where Phoenix has it resting on his own knee. Edgeworth’s hands are not quite warm, but the pressure is steady, pushing down onto Phoenix’s leg.
“It’s going to be alright,” Edgeworth says, surprisingly gentle about it. “Nobody but you and the judge knows that I’ve taken the case. I appreciate your…concern, for me, but I think your daughter would agree that you are the one for whom you should be concerned.”
“Me?” Phoenix asks. It kills him, giving up the grounding touch, but he sits back and pulls his hand out from under Edgeworth’s. “I’m fine.”
He isn't watching Edgeworth’s face. It was painful enough watching Maya’s face get all sad when Phoenix shut her out earlier--he knows Edgeworth will have something similar going on, under all those layers of indifference he’s capable of putting up. Phoenix looks at the leg of the coffee table nearest him instead, like a coward.
Edgeworth inhales, preparing to contradict him.
“Alright, you know what? Fine. Let’s have dinner.” Phoenix caves before he can say anything that can be used against him. “Just give me a second.”
He gets up, fighting against the shrill twang of his busted lower back, and goes into his bedroom. With the door shut behind him, he takes off his tie and suit jacket. Then a feeling comes over him, and he picks up one of the pillows off his bed, shoves his face into it, and screams as hard as he can.
Five minutes later, Phoenix is seated at the table with Maya to his left, Trucy to his right, and Edgeworth across from him. The table is small, and they’re all crammed in close, but the proximity isn’t an issue for Phoenix. It’s more the way he’s going to be stared down by Edgeworth for the entirety of the meal.
“You didn’t have to do all this…” Phoenix says, voice hoarse, as he looks over the boxes and boxes of takeout. He’s never eaten at this restaurant--it’s far too expensive. The smells alone are making him feel too poor to be sitting at his own dinner table.
“Nonsense,” Edgeworth says. He opens the first box and passes it to Maya. She takes it and scoops rice out of it onto her plate. “Who would want to cook after a week like this?”
“So true, Edgey!” Maya says. She thrusts the styrofoam box in Phoenix’s direction, her eyebrows raised like this is a challenge. “Nick would’ve just made us eat spaghetti-o’s again.”
Phoenix takes the box. Steam rises up in his face, traces of cloves and cardamom making him want to climb inside the container and take a nap in there. His stomach forgets its reservations against eating food made by unknown hands. In fact, it grumbles loudly enough for everyone present to hear it.
Studiously ignoring the I-told-you-so on Maya’s face (and the what’s-wrong-with-you on Edgeworth’s), Phoenix gives himself a portion and then hands the box over to Trucy, freeing his hands to accept the next one.
Phoenix was prepared for awkward silence, but he shouldn’t have underestimated Trucy. She loves having guests, and she’s in rare form--recalling her week of school, recounting one of Apollo’s open cases with frightening detail, and even twinkling her fingers around before pulling an entire stapler out of Edgeworth’s ear. It’s the stapler from the office, meaning she’s been carrying it around since at least yesterday. The look on Edgeworth’s face probably made the entire endeavor worth the effort.
The tea that Edgeworth made goes un-drunk next to Phoenix’s plate. Or, it goes undrinked. Undrank--? He doesn’t touch it. Phoenix could use the caffeine, but something about the open cup isn’t very appealing to him.
Focusing on Trucy’s stories makes it easy for Phoenix to clear his plate. He’s surprised when he looks down and finds he’s eaten a proper meal for the first time in…several days. Whoops. Case time passes differently than normal life-time.
Maya and Trucy pile more food onto his plate before he can stop them. Then the conversation at the table takes a sharp lull, for the first time all night. Phoenix risks a sneaky glance around the table, and finds what he feared: the three other people at his table are looking at each other with loaded, meaningful expressions on their faces.
Before Phoenix can fake a phone call and flee the table, Maya takes a silent cue to strike.
“You’re quiet, Nick,” she says. She raises her eyebrows. “Feeling okay?”
Phoenix’s poker face sets itself without him needing to try. He fills his mouth with curry before he answers, to hide any remaining vocal tics. Edgeworth hates when people speak with their mouths full of food; it forces him to avert his eyes every time. If Phoenix keeps eating like a slob, that’s one less witness to whatever misdirections Phoenix thinks of.
“I should be asking you that,” Phoenix says. He looks pointedly at the growing pile of crumpled napkins next to Maya’s plate. “What’d you pick up?”
“It might be allergies. Pollen, probably,” Maya grumbles. She covers her nose and mouth with her newest napkin and honks into it. “Or someone at the hospital might’ve had something. It’s not as miserable as it sounds, though. Just a sniffler.” She shrugs, before she goes to refocus on her prior question.
Phoenix preempts her next attack by looking to his other side and asking, “Trucy, how free are you? Can you help Maya solve this mystery?”
“I’d give you the friends and family discount on my detective rates, Auntie Maya,” Trucy says earnestly, tapping her chin in thought, “but work is slow for me this month.”
“Work?” Edgeworth asks.
“The Wonder Bar’s closed for renovations,” Phoenix interjects, which Trucy nods to affirm. There will be no magic shows until the failing foundation of the building is entirely replaced.
“Ah,” Edgeworth says, no less confused. “And you need money for…?”
“I’m going to buy a laser cutter!” Trucy announces. “I need one thousand magic quarters. The quarters would cost basically twenty-five thousand dollars to buy from somebody else, but the laser cutter I want is only one thousand three hundred, plus the time it will take to assemble the coins myself. That’s savings.”
“I see,” Edgeworth says. “Would you like--”
“Absolutely not,” Phoenix cuts him off before the gift can be offered. He doesn’t have space for a laser cutter in this apartment, and he’s still holding onto flimsy hope that Trucy will lose interest if it takes too long to procure a thousand dollars by honest means. “She’s saving up for it herself.”
“It’s taking forever,” Trucy says, with big wide sad eyes fixed on Edgeworth. “Daddy only pays me in Daddy Dollars. I don’t even get an allowance.”
“You asked for a forward on your allowance to pay for your Gavinners merch, remember?”
Trucy sighs a tortured sigh. Perhaps this will be what makes her think twice about her next Phoenix-funded splurge on posters that will go un-hung and t-shirts that will go unworn. There’s a pile of limited-edition collectible keychains in Trucy’s bedroom that are collecting dust due to their ill-conceived depictions of a certain phallic-haired detective-guitarist shown with blood molded all over his plastic hands.
As though it kills her to get distracted, Maya begrudgingly asks, “...What are Daddy Dollars?”
While Trucy explains Daddy Dollars--Phoenix’s brilliant plan to stop paying Trucy real money for good behavior, impressive report cards, completed chores, basically anything that Trucy would previously have demanded legal tender as a reward for--Phoenix keeps his mouth full of food and avoids everyone’s eyes.
“If I give you a ride to the courthouse on Monday, how many…Daddy Dollars could I expect?” Edgeworth asks him with too much gravity.
Vindaloo goes down the wrong pipe. Phoenix doubles over himself, nearly tipping sideways onto the floor to laugh and cough and try not to go beet red all at once.
“What’s the matter?” Edgeworth asks, while Phoenix tries not to choke to death.
“Yeah, Nick,” Maya digs in, teasing, “what? What’s so funny?”
Phoenix sits up again, eyes watering. He picks up his tea and swigs it before he can think twice, just to soothe his throat. When his brain catches up a second later, and he freezes in place with ice in his veins, there’s nothing he can do but keep forcing out residual laughter as though he’s still present in the current moment.
He shouldn’t have drunk that.
“Nothing’s funny.” Phoenix coughs one final time into his closed fist, then wipes his eyes with the back of his wrist. “Geez. Woof. Okay. I’m good.” He swallows an uncomfortable sensation back down and tries to distract himself again. “I don’t know, Edgeworth. If I start giving them out all willy-nilly, they’re going to lose value.”
Trucy says, “I got ten for solving Polly’s last case.”
“Just ten?” Maya asks. “That has to break some kind of labor law.”
“Really?” Trucy asks, eyebrows knitting.
“Hey. They work differently from normal dollars,” Phoenix cuts in before Maya can disillusion Trucy any more. He cannot afford to go back to a normal allowance system.
“Yes, I’d have to assume there’s quite a disadvantageous conversion rate,” Edgeworth says. “What do they buy?”
Trucy beams. “Props, figurines, you name it! And sometimes we get ice cream at the place by the courthouse.”
Phoenix has taken two more bites of curry, but he’s still stuck thinking about the sip of tea he had. It was un-sugared, sans cream. Just water and leaves. It would have been obvious if there was something else mixed in.
Plus, it was made by Edgeworth. This is getting so out of hand--first Phoenix suspects his little sister, and then he fucking suspects Edgeworth? Next, Phoenix is going to be accusing Trucy or somebody.
It’s stupid of him.
He can’t stop thinking about it.
“--They’re pretty great,” Trucy says, in her way that means Phoenix can’t actually tell if she’s being facetious or not.
“Cool,” Maya says. She looks at Phoenix and asks, without missing a beat, “How many would I need to get a straight answer out of you?”
The conversation halts. Silence reigns. Really, the mood has been shot point-blank and left to collapse in a ditch. Edgeworth’s teacup halts halfway to his mouth, and Trucy covers her mouth with one hand as though surprised at Maya’s audacity.
The reactions to Maya’s question are what get to Phoenix. He shouldn't want to make his family nervous about asking him questions, even if they’re irrelevant questions that can just as easily be answered a week from now, when the answer will be much more palatable.
“Sorry,” Phoenix says after a long moment. He’s trying to plead Maya with his eyes to leave this alone. “They’re only redeemable for tangible items.”
“Wright,” Edgeworth begins, with a preachy cant to his tone that makes Phoenix instinctively wrinkle his nose. Phoenix looks over and Edgeworth is polishing his glasses. When he puts them on, his eyes stab holes in Phoenix’s own. “Ms. Fey is correct. A number of people close to you have noticed concerning behavior, and you seem determined to avoid this line of questioning.”
Et tu, Edgeworth?
“‘Concerning behavior’?” Phoenix parrots back in disbelief. Then, before anyone can start listing examples--or worse, produce some tangible evidence--he keeps talking.
“Refusal to testify is not an admission of guilt,” Phoenix says to him. And he gives both Edgeworth and Maya a look that he hopes conveys the sentiment of, please don’t do this in front of my kid.
“Don’t get off topic!” Trucy says, and looks at Phoenix as though she knows he did it on purpose. “Let’s go back. Polly said you gave him your case about the bank heist. And you didn’t even complain about it.”
Et tu, Trucy…?!
“You willingly handed over a case about a bank heist?” Maya asks, as though this is news of a terminal disease she’s just hearing about.
Phoenix coughs one last time. At least, he’s hoping it’ll be the last time. “If you want to learn about it, I’m sure Apollo will tell you.”
“That’s not what we’re concerned about,” Edgeworth says, his tone implying that Phoenix had better start spilling some beans.
Trucy nods solemnly.
The only escape route that Phoenix can see--to keep Trucy from crying, to keep Maya from pressing, and to get Edgeworth to mind his own business--is to act like the type of person nobody would want to be worried about.
A lawyer only cries when it’s all over, he reminds himself.
“Then what are you stressed about?” Phoenix asks, hardening his voice. “The only talent you all seem to have in common is at blowing things out of proportion.”
Simultaneously, everyone at the table recoils.
“That’s not fair,” Maya protests, at the same time that Trucy says, “That wasn’t nice,” which overlaps with Edgeworth scowlingly saying, “Maybe you aren’t taking it seriously enough.”
“I appreciate your…effort,” Phoenix says, keeping himself steady and even-keeled, “but this isn’t necessary. You two,” he says, gesturing at the other adults, “worry about Franziska and her kidneys. And you,” he says, looking at Trucy, “worry about your math homework. You’re all making up problems that don’t exist. Leave me out of it.”
Then, as though divine providence itself smiles on Phoenix’s expert boundary-setting, Phoenix’s phone starts to ring.
In the derailment caused by this interruption, Phoenix has to actively choose not to show the immense relief he feels. It’s hard to keep a straight face when he sees frustration mounting in Edgeworth and Maya’s expressions, when he knows this is a perfect get-out-of-jail free card.
(He doesn’t look at Trucy, in case she looks sad.)
“Oops,” Phoenix says, as he takes his phone out. “That’s me.” He pretends to check the caller ID even as he schemes on his impending escape; it doesn’t matter who’s calling, they’re his best friend and maybe his soulmate right now.
“Nick, wait,” Maya tries one last time.
Phoenix does a passable job of pretending to look apologetic as he rises from the table, fleeing from the rest of his tea and the cooling plate of second helpings. “Sorry, I have to take this.” He flicks his phone open and flees for the hallway, where he can shut his bedroom door behind him and try not to eavesdrop on his family talking shit about him out in the living room.
“Nicky, hey!” says Larry’s voice on the other end of the phone.
Phoenix locks his door and isn’t even faking his enthusiasm when he says, “Larry! Boy, it’s good to hear from you.”
All Larry needs is a reminder from Phoenix about what core class they ended up in together in freshman year; the professor’s name is a security question for Larry’s bank account. Larry doesn’t stop and ask why Phoenix is out of breath, and Phoenix bluffs so hard even he forgets why he feels like he’s having a heart attack. Phoenix gets through pleasantries, and then he hangs up less than five minutes later, and his heart is still racing but he’s free.
With the phone call over, Phoenix goes around his bed to the side Maya hasn’t been sleeping on, and he stretches out on top of the covers to wait for Edgeworth to leave.
It’s nice to be laying on a real mattress for the first time in a couple days. His head sinks into the pillow, and his eyelids start to droop as soon as he’s fully horizontal.
In the living room, he can hear the other three finishing their meal. Utensil clanking accompanies murmured words for a while, until Trucy and Maya bounce back from Phoenix’s rude departure and their volume increases to something resembling their previous jovial mood.
Phoenix can’t help it; he dozes. He dips into sleep, emerging when someone raps knuckles on the bedroom door.
“Wright?” Edgeworth asks.
Phoenix holds his breath, keeps his eyes closed. He doesn’t think Edgeworth would go so far as to open the bedroom door without permission, but it doesn’t hurt to be prepared.
“I’m leaving, so you can stop hiding in there.”
Phoenix stifles an indignant snort. He lets go of consciousness again, politeness be damned.
When he opens his eyes again, the sun is up again. Judging by the crick in his neck and the birds chirping, it’s still early morning, and the lack of noise in the rest of the apartment supports that theory. Phoenix rolls out of bed and finds a change of clothes before sticking his head cautiously out into the hall.
Maya’s asleep on the couch, snoring, one arm flung over her eyes.
Phoenix feels guilty for making her sleep out there, but it’s preferable to whatever conversation she would have tried to have with him after he iced Edgeworth out.
After a furtive get-ready routine, which mostly consists of mouthwash and splashing water on his face, Phoenix sneaks around the couch to the front door.
Phoenix moves with the stealth of the sneakiest ninja, which means he walks across the living room to the front door without stubbing his toe on anything, and without Maya stirring. He finds his bag where he ditched it last night, then puts on one sneaker without bending down to untie it first, but the other one is too tight to shove his foot into.
Groaning, he lowers himself down and begins to wrestle with the tight knot in the shoelace.
“Where are you going?” someone whispers.
Phoenix doesn’t let himself startle. He barely hesitates at all, just keeps tying his shoe. “I’m just going out for a walk.”
“A walk?” Trucy asks. Her feet are nearly silent as she approaches. “It’s early…”
Phoenix doesn’t respond.
Trucy prods, “Remember what happened last time you went on a walk?”
Phoenix still has the scars from that, actually--of hitting a telephone pole and then dropping into sharp gravel. Not the worst hit-and-run that’s ever happened to someone, really, if it’s a competition. He’s lucky he came away with it with only a sprained ankle and scratch marks on his right arm and leg.
“That won’t happen this time,” Phoenix promises her. He pulls the knot on his shoelaces tight and stands up to sling out one arm, prepared to give her a hug and then send her back to bed. “It’s early, sweetheart. You have sleep to catch up on.”
Trucy takes him up on the side-hug, but her suspicion hasn’t been allayed. “Where are you walking to?”
“Just around the block,” Phoenix says.
“So you’ll be back soon?”
“A couple blocks,” Phoenix amends.
“How many blocks?” Trucy asks. Then she holds up Phoenix’s bag, purloined from his side during the hug, and asks, wide-eyed with false innocence, “And why do you need this?”
Phoenix has to smile, even though he’s frustrated. She’s too smart for him. “Can I have that back, please?”
She doesn’t hand it over. “Something’s weird with you,” Trucy tells him.
“That’s a fine perspective to have.” Phoenix holds his palm out expectantly, willing to wait her out.
“Can I know what’s going on?” Trucy asks.
“Maybe when you’re older.” When Phoenix has had about ten more years to get some perspective on why his brain feels like this. He doesn’t have the words to explain to Trucy that there will always be spans of days or weeks when Phoenix is weird, when his mind starts working double-time to keep up with the same amount of goings-on, when Trucy will wish she had a real dad who knew what the hell he was doing.
He’s kidding himself if he thinks she hasn’t already learned that lesson the hard way.
Trucy watches him for another long moment. Then she pulls the bag towards herself, and it disappears under her cape. “I’m coming with you.”
“Truce--”
“Or I can wake up Aunt Maya so she can come instead,” Trucy says. She uses her thumb to gesture over her shoulder. “Do you want me to?”
Things are already happening at the auto shop by the time Phoenix gets there. Traffic is picking up, and there’s a squad car parked outside the shop, and Pinky is there in the lobby, glowering at the front desk computer’s screen.
A bell jangles when Phoenix and Trucy walk in. The lobby is separated from the garage by a small dingy door. It consists of a small waiting area, a stinky popcorn machine, and a reception desk next to some shelves with studded winter tires for sale. The popcorn machine is in the middle of popping new corn, which overflows from its pot into an empty chamber. Phoenix’s stomach grumbles.
Pinky looks up. “G’morning,” they say. “Who’s this?”
“I’m Trucy!” Trucy says. She beams. She’s still holding Phoenix’s bag hostage. “I’m his assistant.”
Pinky accepts this. They nudge a bowl of individually wrapped mints towards the two of them, and Trucy takes a couple. “Are you fixin’ to be a lawyer?”
“No, I’m a professional magician.”
While this exchange occurs, Pinky getting more confused by the word, Phoenix looks to his right, through the large window in the lobby wall that opens into the garage area. One of the garage doors is open, and a couple of officers are milling around outside.
“The pigs took all their pictures and evidence, and cleaned up the blood,” Pinky explains. “I’m going in soon to start cleaning up the rest of everything. If you want a look, now’s your chance.”
If Phoenix hadn’t gone through the rigamarole of losing and regaining his badge, he’d have been in here last night, scoping out the premises in a less legal way, before the police dismantled the scene. This morning, a more above-board approach seems better, even if it’s not as fruitful.
“Thanks,” Phoenix says. His head has started to hurt. He thinks it’s the smell of the fresh tires surrounding him. “Is everything pretty much the same as it was, besides the blood?”
Pinky shrugs. Helpful.
“Have you noticed anything weird?” Trucy presses.
“Now that you mention it,” Pinky says slowly, “yes. Our security system blipped last night. It marked that there was an entry at eleven, but it didn’t sound the alarm. That’s all I can think of.”
“Nothing was stolen?” Phoenix asks.
“Not that I could tell.” They shrug again. “It would’ve alerted the cops, unless someone disarmed it in time. Nobody besides me, the boss, and Craig have the code, though.”
Phoenix has chased flimsier leads than a security system glitch. He finds a genuine, if small, smile and says, “Do you have a system readout or anything for us, anyway? That’s a weird coincidence.”
“I’ll see what I can dig up,” they say. Then they nod their head sideways. “Door’s unlocked. I’ll be in soon.” They give Trucy a pointed look. “Make sure he doesn’t break anything.”
Trucy salutes, beaming. “Aye, aye!”
With that, Phoenix pushes open the door to start his investigation. Trucy follows hot on his heels.
On the walk over, Phoenix told Trucy exactly what he was looking for, and then they brainstormed a couple of wishlist items for the kind of evidence he can only dream of. For instance, he’d love to find a check for a hundred dollars made out to him, or a signed and notarized note from the murderer confessing to the crime.
“I’ll be ten minutes, tops,” Phoenix tells Trucy. “I’m just peeking around, okay?”
“Can I look too?”
“I don’t think I would be able to stop you from doing that.”
“Correct!”
Trucy peels away from his side and begins her preliminary wander through the garage. She steps carefully over some of the detritus that the murderer left in their wake, when they ransacked the place looking for something.
The chalk outline on the ground is near the broken lift. As Pinky said, the blood and brain matter has been cleaned up, sparing Phoenix and Trucy the sight. White cardboard indicators mark a few spots across the floor, their numbers corresponding to a list of evidence that Phoenix doesn’t have handy.
Phoenix was here earlier in the week, before Franziska… which is to say, he was here on Tuesday, when he first heard about the case. When he was here last, he was barred from entering because of some esoteric forensics examination-in-progress. On Tuesday, from his vantage point at the entrance, Phoenix took a fuzzy look at the broken window on the back wall, which someone asserted was Craig’s method of getting in and out of the shop. Phoenix also saw the utter devastation of the inside of the shop, with drawers overturned and storage shelves pulled into disarray.
If something has been stolen, nobody knows what it is yet. Given that nobody has noticed its absence, it could be something small or something inexpensive, or both at once. Until Pinky finishes cleaning up and taking inventory, nobody can say.
Crowded countertops line the back wall. The far end, nearest the door to the office, has thick canvas draped over it, which hangs low towards the ground like the world’s greasiest tablecloth. The rest of the counter holds messy piles of different-sized socket wrenches, some half-full plastic jugs of some fluid or another, and more than a few clipboards stacked haphazardly on top of everything else.
Not for the first time, Phoenix wishes he knew more about cars. Maybe then he would have a singular clue about what is and isn’t normal to keep in a mechanic’s shop.
He shakes his head to focus up. It’s too late to go back to before his birth and choose to be born into money--and to make choices to avoid developing a devastating phobia of operating a heavy motor vehicle. Instead, he can only observe as much of the shop as possible, and decide later what is and isn’t relevant to his case.
The shelves nearest to the lobby door are stacked with different sizes and shapes of plastic jugs, their bright and varied colors visible even in the low light. It’s one of the few parts of the garage left unaffected by the rampage. Someone around here keeps careful inventory. All but the bottom shelf are full; the exception only has a few empty spots.
“What’s antifreeze?” Trucy asks, appearing back at Phoenix’s side.
Phoenix sets his hand on the top of her head but resists the urge to tousle her hair. “It keeps the car from freezing.”
“The whole thing?”
“...Yeah. It’s like a force field. Why do you ask?”
Trucy points to the bottom shelf. Now that Phoenix is squinting to read the lettering, it turns out that the jugs do, in fact, seem to be full of antifreeze. “Some are missing.”
“Yeah, it looks like it,” Phoenix says. “But it’s getting cold out. People might just need more of it than coolant right now.” He succumbs to his temptation and musses up Trucy’s hair a little bit, smiling at her squawk of protest.
His attack on her hair sends Trucy away from his side again. She goes over to the broken lift, and responds to his nervous “Don’t stand so close to that!” with a disinterested “I’ll be careful.”
Phoenix keeps half of his attention on her while he makes a stop at the garbage can and peeks inside. It’s a large industrial-sized one, but the only thing that appears to be in it is a pile of burned popcorn. While Trucy is preoccupied with the chalk outline, Phoenix leans over to nudge cold burned popcorn out of the way and finds a bundle of newspaper wrapped around something.
Pride forgotten, Phoenix bends over further and tugs at the newspaper until the bundle unwraps a little. Inside, he finds large pieces of broken glass.
Broken glass, broken glass… Phoenix’s brain tickles with something he remembers from earlier in his investigation. He peers across the garage at the broken window that everyone seems to think Craig used to get out. If nothing else has been broken around here, the glass is from the window. And the discarded popcorn, which has all but burned to a crisp, is most likely from the lobby ten feet away.
“If you want some popcorn, they’re making a new batch in there,” Trucy says, suddenly right next to him.
Phoenix startles. “Geez. Give me some warning.”
Trucy snickers. “Don’t be shy. Polly likes trash too.”
“I don’t like trash, it’s just a good spot for--”
“--I keep telling him there are other places to look for clues, and everything,” Trucy continues, ignoring him, “but he always goes to the garbage first. Maybe he learned it from you.”
Phoenix tries to think of a way to defend himself. While he fails to do that, Trucy holds out a crinkly empty mint wrapper and all but forces it into his hand.
“The trash is right there,” Phoenix tries to tell her, but takes the wrapper anyway.
“Thanks, Daddy!” she says. Then she wanders off again.
Phoenix sighs. He looks to the sky, asking again for Mia’s strength, though he’d be kidding himself if he said he didn’t feel better with Trucy’s company.
The broken window is Phoenix’s next stop. It’s up above one of the work tables on the back wall, meaning that despite the sill’s height, it would have been possible to reach it and climb out without any sort of remarkable upper body strength.
It still confuses him that someone would do the work of breaking a window to escape if they came in the door just fine.
“Is that supposed to look like that?” Trucy calls.
Phoenix looks over. She’s pointing at a control box, presumably the one for the broken lift. The maintenance door is warped along one of the edges, the disturbed spot marked by a few spots that have been scraped clean of their red paint.
Window forgotten for the moment, Phoenix walks over to where Trucy is standing instead. “That’s definitely not right. It’s like someone tried to force it open.”
“Yeah, with a screwdriver,” Trucy says.
“Or a crowbar, or something,” Phoenix agrees.
“No, I mean, it was definitely a screwdriver.” Trucy points to a spot on the ground. A Phillips-head screwdriver sticks out from underneath a two-wheeled dolly, the metal part severely bent.
Phoenix crouches, knees cracking, to look at the screwdriver in question. It’s pinned, so that means the dolly was moved for some reason. “Was the door open?”
Trucy reaches out a gloved hand and tugs on the maintenance door in the metal console. It pops open easily, as though it were barely holding on to its locking mechanism. “No, but now it is!” she says.
Phoenix has no delusions of mechanical-engineering grandeur. The mess of wires inside, though, looks…unkempt. Some bits of the panel hang loose from their designated positions, and more scratch marks decorate the inside of the console. In the midst of all this tampering, the car lift is still very, very broken.
“Were they trying to fix it?” Trucy asks. “Or break it?”
“Depends on who did it, I guess.” Phoenix raises his voice to get the attention of one of the officers lurking around outside the garage. “Excuse me? Do you know anything about this lift?”
The officer barely gives him a glance. Ouch.
Trucy pulls a ziplock bag out of Phoenix’s backpack, which she’s still retaining custody of, and puts the screwdriver in it herself. “I’ll get this dusted for prints.”
Sometimes, Phoenix feels like he’s her intern. “Thanks, Trucy. That was a good find.”
“Did you find anything in the trash?”
“Just trash.” That reminds him, though, that he wanted to give the broken window another look-see. “Help an old guy up, would ya?”
Trucy pops up on her young, functional legs. She pockets their new evidence before she steps on the toes of Phoenix’s shoes and holds both her hands out for him. Phoenix takes hold, and she groans and strains theatrically as he staggers back upright.
“Oof!” Trucy complains.
Phoenix makes a show of knocking into her, as though it’s a choice he makes and not one born of him experiencing brief dizziness. “If you’d teach me your levitation trick, you wouldn’t have to help me up all the time.”
“I’m taking that trick to the grave,” Trucy tells him. She lightly shoves at him. “You still haven’t gotten the smashed cup trick down, and you think I’m telling you about flight?”
“I’m trying my hardest!” Phoenix insists. He isn’t. He just loves when Trucy patiently (or not-so-patiently) tells him the steps again, her hands guiding his, and her laugh when he inevitably messes the trick up.
He pats her head. “I’m pretending not to have hurt feelings.”
Trucy breaks away and says, “The back counter looks weird. Let’s look over there, Daddy.”
Phoenix follows Trucy over to the back wall with the broken window. He looks along the length of the workbench, taking note of the canvas draping now that he’s closer to it. Beyond the fabric, under the bench, is all shadows.
Phoenix slowly crouches and lifts the flap of canvas to have a closer look, half-expecting a big rat or a clown to jump out at him.
It’s not just storage under here. There are also bumps and blobs of some kind of sleeping setup, plaid blanket and pillow and all. It’s not what he thought he would find--for one, there are no shards of broken glass. If the window broke after the murder, then someone set this up and has been sleeping here since then.
“That looks comfy,” Trucy remarks next to his ear. She squishes her hand into the insulated fabric. “Do you think the person at the front desk sleeps here? It kind of seems like the kind of place Detective Gumshoe probably sleeps in.”
Don’t let him hear you say that, Phoenix thinks, wincing. “I would hope he has a little bit of a higher standard for a bedroom than a crime scene.”
“Umm,” Trucy says. “Well, one time, Polly and I saw him crawl out from behind the vending machine in the Criminal Affairs Department and he showed us he has a crawlspace nap zone in there. He said it’s just for emergencies.”
“At least that’s in his workplace.” Anyone who would willingly sleep five feet away from a chalk body outline unsettles Phoenix, automatically. Gumshoe is definitely the type to take power naps during his break, but not to that level.
Trucy argues, “Well, this is in Pinky’s workplace.”
Why would they set up a bed here after the murder, though? More likely, whoever set off the security system was the one who did this. If it wasn’t Pinky, then it was someone else with the security codes--but it couldn’t’ve been Otto or Craig,
Phoenix lifts the flap of canvas higher to let more light in on the sleeper’s undertable cave. No broken glass, still, but Phoenix does spot a small pile of junk up by the pillow.
“What’re those?” Trucy asks, having noticed the same things.
Phoenix tugs on the sleeping bag to pull the items over without touching them with his hands. When they come nearer, they’re easier to take stock of. There are three things, altogether.
First, a rectangle of white plastic, marked only by a small black owl insignia in the center. The back is blank save for a black metallic stripe that tells Phoenix that it’s a keycard. Which is odd, because there’s no keycard access in the shop. Not that Phoenix has seen, anyway.
Second, a wallet that has been emptied of all ID or payment methods. All that Phoenix finds inside are some sandwich shop loyalty cards, all half-punched, and in a small pocket, exactly eighteen cents. A dime, a nickel, and three pennies.
Finally, under the wallet and keycard, there’s a receipt for services from the exact shop they’re standing in right now. The ink has been rubbed against something--probably the inside of a pocket--to the extent that most of it is illegible. But there’s a transaction number, which Phoenix should be able to match to the service record he got a picture of yesterday.
“Jackpot!” Trucy gasps.
The sleeping nook turns out to be the highlight of their snooping; nothing else reveals itself. When they gather themselves to leave, Pinky is in the midst of talking to the officers in charge of the crime scene, so Phoenix and Trucy make a quiet exit instead.
Phoenix tries briefly to convince Trucy to just go home and catch up on homework, but Trucy refuses. She then reveals that her assignments have been concealed within her cape for the past few hours, so she’s all set to accompany Phoenix to the office instead.
She doesn’t come right out and say it, but Phoenix knows he’s being monitored. This goes beyond Trucy’s occasional burst of clingy behavior. For the majority of the afternoon, Trucy lies on Phoenix’s office couch and kicks her feet and keeps Phoenix company while he files the eight thousand pieces of paperwork he has to get in order for his two cases this week.
The afternoon wanes, and so does Trucy’s patience. (So does Phoenix’s ability to tolerate his desk chair.) As Phoenix starts taking more frequent breaks to stretch and suppress groans, Trucy pipes up and says, “I’m hungry.”
Phoenix takes his wallet out and starts looking for cash to give her. “Do you want to run to the diner?”
“No,” Trucy says stubbornly, “I want dinner with you. We have leftovers at home.”
“I’m still pretty behind on my work,” Phoenix says with some contrition.
“You’re avoiding our house.”
“What? No I’m not.”
Trucy says slyly, “Aunt Maya texted and said the hospital is letting her stay overnight with Aunt Franziska. So we can go home now if you want.”
She can read him like a picture book. Phoenix caps his pen and ignores the newest twinge in his lower spine and just watches her silently, waiting for her to make her next move.
“Are you fighting because she’s hiding something from you?” Trucy picks at a run that’s forming the knee of her tights. “Because she has a secret, I think.”
“That wouldn’t be any of my business,” Phoenix says. “She thinks I’m hiding stuff from her, actually. It’s been a long week, right? We just need some time to cool off.”
“But it isn’t going to cool off. Your case for Aunt Franziska is making you all…”
“Is making me what?”
“All…sweaty.”
Phoenix wants to laugh. He’s too sore. “I guess it is. But I want to do this for her. For her and Maya. I promise I’ll tell you all about it after it’s over.”
“Promise?”
“Yeah.” Phoenix reaches over and turns off his desk lamp. “Are you ready to go?”
“I’ve been ready for two hours,” Trucy says, with no hint of resentment despite her words. She pops up off the couch.
“You finished your math homework two hours ago?”
“Oh, no, I haven’t started that yet.” Trucy bounds forward and deposits a crooked folded crane on the edge of Phoenix’s desk. “I’m just bored! Let’s go.”