Protecting the Boss

by Beverly Long

  She shook her head. “He survived the crash.”

  She spoke so slowly, so distinctly, that he could almost hear a drumbeat between each word. “So he was able to tell you what happened.”

  “Not really.”

  They weren’t getting anywhere quickly. “Can you tell me what you do know about the crash?”

  “It was a clear day. They’d been flying in the morning and had taken a break over the lunch hour. The crash happened shortly after they took off in the afternoon. Witnesses said they were banking for a turn and suddenly the plane went nose-down. They were able to issue a Mayday call but this was a small airport, with no air traffic operators on duty. The distress call was picked up by a regional airport but by the time help could be summoned, the plane had already crashed. The NTSB found no evidence of mechanical malfunction, although—” she paused “—I’m not sure how they could have. The plane was ripped apart.”

  He knew what that plane had looked like. Probably had been a debris field that stretched for hundreds of feet.

  “The finding was pilot error,” she said.

  That was generally the finding if there were no mechanical issues. “What did the pilot have to say about that?”

  “Not much. He couldn’t dispute the findings. He suffered a serious head injury, along with other very serious injuries, and has never been able to provide much detail.”

  None of what she was telling him was super surprising. Commercial aircraft almost never crashed but with smaller airplanes, those in the general aviation category, it was a different story. There were plane crashes literally every week and, unfortunately, way too many fatalities. And more times than not, the reason was pilot error. It was no different than a guy who might miscalculate how slick a wet Vegas street was and slam into the back of a line of stopped cars. Pilots, many with limited time in the air, made bad decisions, generally as a result of not being familiar with the plane, the terrain they were flying over, the weather conditions, or the airport they were landing at or taking off from.

  “And now somebody is calling to tell you that there is more information. Can I hear the message?”

  “I guess.” She picked up the phone. Put it on speaker. Played the message.

  It was a man’s voice. He spoke quietly, as if there might be the potential that he’d be overheard. There was no obvious regional or ethnic accent. “Your parents were killed. It wasn’t an accident. You better wake up and start smelling the roses.”

  “Play it again,” Seth said.

  She did.

  “Again,” he prompted, thinking he might have picked up a little background noise the second time.

  “No,” she said. “We’ve heard it enough. The words aren’t going to change.”

  He didn’t want to push her. She looked very fragile. “You don’t recognize the caller’s voice?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Is it possible that it’s the pilot? You said he had head injuries. Maybe he’s... I don’t know, maybe he’s delusional.”

  “It’s not the pilot,” she said.

  “How can you know that for sure?” he asked. It was the most likely person to have information about the crash. The only person who had been there.

  “I would recognize his voice,” she said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I would think so,” she said. “Given that I almost married him.”

  Chapter 5

  Seth scratched his head. “Come again?” he said.

  She sighed. She so rarely ever talked to anyone about this. “We were engaged. At the time of the accident.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Twenty. We’d been dating since I was seventeen.”

  “But suddenly you had responsibility for Abigail.”

  “She was fourteen. It was devastating for her.”

  “You’d lost your parents, too. And your fiancé was flying the plane. Couldn’t have been a walk in the park for you, either.”

  She said nothing.

  “So what happened between you and...the guy?”

  “He recovered. A couple surgeries, so much physical therapy. But he was young and healthy and he worked really, really hard.”

  “Who ended the relationship?”

  It was a very personal question but she wasn’t surprised. She got the feeling that Seth considered very few topics as off-limits. “I did.”

  “Because you couldn’t forgive him?” he said.

  “Sort of,” she said, looking at her shoes. “Not for the crash. That was an accident. He adored my parents.”

  “What then?” he asked.

  “I couldn’t forgive him for continuing to fly planes.”

  Now, it seemed, Seth had nothing to say. He just stared at her.

  “Seth Pike speechless,” she said gently. “Why do I think that doesn’t happen very often?”

  He shrugged. “You gave him an ultimatum and maybe he came back with the only answer that he could have. A pilot, somebody who loves to fly, can’t just give it up.”

  “I understand. But for me, that was the wrong answer.”

  “It might have been easier for him to give up a kidney. Or both kidneys. Throw in a spleen.”

  He didn’t say it unkindly. More so just knowingly.

  “We should go,” she said.

  “What was your fiancé’s name?”

  “Logan Lewis.”

  “And you’re a hundred percent confident it’s not him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe you should call him. See if he’s gotten a similar message.”

  She had not spoken to Logan in over ten years. Once their engagement had ended, there had been the intermittent card or brief conversation for the first couple of years, as if neither one of them could completely cut the cord. But then even that had stopped. Her college roommate had married his best friend. And while Megan was still friends with Didi, and made a point to see her when she was in New York, where the woman had moved after college, by some tacit agreement they never discussed Logan.

  What would he say if she called him out of the blue?

  But perhaps not out of the blue? Not if he’d gotten a similar message.

  But surely if there was something new, Logan would have called her. He’d been a nice guy. That was likely to still be true. While she and Didi never discussed it, she was confident that he’d moved on, probably had a wife and kids and a pretty house in the suburbs.

  “I don’t want to call him.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “I have no idea.”

  He stared at her. “Would you know how to reach him if you wanted to?”

  She nodded. “We have a mutual friend. But I’m not going down that route.”

  He didn’t argue. Instead, he reached for her phone. “There’s a number.”

  “I suppose that’s why I didn’t give it a second thought before I listened to the voice mail.”

  “You’re sure you don’t recognize the number?” he asked.

  “It seems sort of careless, doesn’t it?” she said, her tone thoughtful. “In this day and age when everybody has caller ID, to call from a number that displays. I’m sure there are ways to block that.”

  Yes. He knew a bunch of ways. And most any idiot who did some research online could figure it out, too. “Let’s do a reverse lookup.”

  Using his own phone, he brought up the website and entered the number. It took just seconds. “Marta’s Deli in Los Angeles. Does that mean anything to you?”

  She shook her head. “No. I mean I’ve lived in California for my whole life and I’ve certainly been to Los Angeles a bunch of times. But I don’t recall that business. Of course, I might not remember a deli. I’ve had a lot of turkey sandwiches in my time.”

  Again he used his sma
rtphone, this time to pull up the home page for Marta’s Deli. It was simple with a clean design and some nice photos of food. He clicked on the About Us tab and found a picture of Marta. “Do you know this woman?”

  Again, she shook her head.

  He pulled up the address. “Recognize this street?”

  She shook her head. “It’s a big city.”

  “Call the number,” he said.

  “What if someone else answers? I don’t know who to ask for.”

  “Tell whoever answers that you got a message from this number but you couldn’t understand it and you’re trying to reach whoever left it.”

  “This can’t be right,” she said. “Why would someone from there—a place I’ve never been to or even heard of—call me and leave a message like that?”

  He shrugged. “Call,” he said. “Leave your phone on speaker so that I can hear.”

  It rang three times before it was answered.

  “Marta’s Deli. How can I help you?”

  It was a woman’s voice.

  “Hello. My name is Megan. I’m calling because I received a message from this number but I’m having difficulty understanding it. I was wondering if you might be able to help.”

  “A message?” the woman said. “From me?”

  “Uh, no. It was from a man. I wasn’t able to catch his name.”

  Seth nodded at her. She was doing very well.

  “I’m sorry,” the woman said. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to help you.”

  “Is there someone else who might be able to?” Megan asked. Her voice rose at the end.

  “Stay calm,” Seth mouthed. Always easier to get ants with sugar.

  “I just...want to make every effort,” Megan said. “It sounded as if it might be important.”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t help you. I own the place and there’s no men working here today. We don’t let customers use our business phone. So I’m pretty sure you’re mistaken. But...um...good luck.” The woman hung up.

  Megan looked at him.

  “You did a good job,” he said. “She sounded pretty legitimate. I suppose it could be some technical glitch with the phone, and an incorrect number is displaying, but that seems far-fetched. We could do some research on that.”

  “No. We’re not doing that.” She put her phone back into her purse. “I don’t want to spend any more time on this. It was...a stupid message.”

  “Don’t delete it.”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “You can’t ignore this,” he said. “You should probably report it to the police.”

  “No,” she said quickly. “I’m not doing that.”

  “But—”

  “No,” she interrupted him. “In today’s world, I suspect there are many, many crank phone calls or emails or text messages every day to multiple people. That’s all this is. It wasn’t a threat.”

  Maybe not an explicit one. “‘You better wake up and start smelling the roses,’” he repeated. “If it’s not a threat, is it a clue? A call for action?”

  “I know what it is. It’s somebody just trying to...” She paused. “Trying to unsettle me.”

  “‘Unsettle,’” he repeated. It was a very odd word choice. And it reminded him of his conversation with Bobby Bayleaf. Megan had reported a threatening conversation below her apartment window. Had that unsettled her?

  But he didn’t really want to throw that in her face. Didn’t want her to know that he’d been checking up on her. “Megan,” he said, then stopped when two cars, the first, a new-model black sedan and the second, oh, my goodness, a spanking-new BMW B7 with metallic blue paint, pulled in to the no-parking zone. Both drivers got out and tried the door of the building. Seth motioned to Megan that he’d get it.

  “Rental car delivery for Megan North,” one man said.

  “Great.” Megan stepped up and was smiling and acting as if the odd phone call had never happened. “Do I need to sign anything?”

  The second man pulled a form out of his breast pocket and handed it to her. Then he handed her a key fob. “Just drop it off at our branch at the airport when you bring it back.”

  They left and got into the boring black car. Seth watched it pull away from the curb.

  “This is our rental car?” he said.

  “If I’m going to drive, I like it to be in something that responds well and—” she stopped, looking a little embarrassed “—something that looks good.”

  “You’re a car chick,” he said, honest awe in his voice. Just because he drove an old Jeep, it didn’t mean that he couldn’t appreciate the finer things in life. “You know, I’m free the Saturday after next. How about you and I get married?”

  She rolled her eyes. “We should get going. We’ve got a big drive ahead of us.”

  He reached for the bags. He was willing to sideline the conversation about the strange phone call. It did not mean that he’d forgotten it.

  * * *

  She opened the trunk and Seth loaded their luggage. It was full by the time he got finished.

  She got in the driver’s side, adjusted her mirrors, and found the headlights and windshield wipers. While she was doing all that, he was programming their next stop into the GPS.

  She pulled out, signaled, made a nice neat turn and accelerated smoothly. Absolutely nothing to give away that her stomach was in knots.

  Who would play such a cruel trick on her to leave a message like that? Who disliked her so much? Was it more of the same that she’d been dealing with these past weeks? Was somebody trying to make her lose her mind?

  She wanted to tell Seth everything. She really did. But would he believe her? Would he think she’d been imagining things? He absolutely couldn’t believe she was imagining the message. He’d heard it. Did that mean that the person responsible for this had become careless and would soon expose himself? Or more aggressive, maybe upping the stakes by taking a chance that others would hear the message?

  She could not ignore that there could be another possibility. Was there new information about the crash? It had been fifteen years. That seemed rather a long shot.

  “It’s just super odd that after all these years you’d get a voice mail like that,” Seth said, proving that she wasn’t the only one rehashing the call in her head.

  “Yes, odd.”

  “From a number that claims it is impossible that the call came from there.” He moved his seat back to make room for his long legs. “Like I said, the website seemed pretty legitimate. What did you think about what Marta told you? What kind of vibe did you get?”

  “‘Vibe?’” she repeated.

  “Gut reaction,” he said.

  “I got the feeling that she didn’t know what I was talking about. So I think that’s the end of that.”

  “After what happened last night, I’m going to repeat my suggestion that you should at least make a police report.”

  She turned to give him a quick look before focusing on the road again. “There is no reason to think the two things are connected.”

  “Agree. But two odd things.”

  His words hung in the air. “Listen, Seth. The next twelve days are going to be exhausting. I do not have time to make a police report or to be available for any of their follow-up questions.”

  He didn’t say anything for at least five minutes. Finally, he sighed. “I’m only agreeing to this because there wasn’t an explicit threat. If something like that happens, all bets are off.”

  “I’m not a fool,” she said.

  “I never thought you were,” he said. He leaned back in his seat. “If you want me to drive, just let me know.”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “But I will turn on some music. Keep myself awake.”

  “Sounds good. It’s roughly an hour and a half to Kingman, Arizona. That would prob
ably be a good place to get some dinner. Maybe a nice steak.”

  “I wasn’t planning on stopping,” she said. “We could just get something in our rooms once we arrive.” That’s what she usually did when she traveled.

  “Nope,” he said, acting as if he had every right to make that decision.

  “I’m not crazy about steak,” she said.

  He gave her a look that made her think she might have two heads. “I’m starting to get nervous. What is it that you like to eat?”

  “Salads. Seafood. Some pasta. All very normal foods.” She paused. “With the exception, of course, that every once in a while, I love a bat wing fried in whale blubber.”

  He smiled. “I’ve always preferred my bat wings to be poached.”

  “I only poach eggs.”

  “A purist,” he said.

  She supposed it was a little unreasonable to expect him to miss dinner. He was in good shape with plenty of muscles and he likely could burn through a couple thousand calories without blinking an eye. “Fine. Find a place and tell me when I should turn.”

  “On it,” he said, picking up his phone again.

  She settled in for the drive. Ninety minutes later, she saw her first sign for Kingman.

  “That’s the exit you want,” he said.

  From there it was a couple rights and one left before she pulled in to the Purple Onion. It was a rather nondescript brown wooden building but the parking lot was full of cars, which was always an encouraging sign. She found a place to park.

  Seth straightened up in his seat and opened his door. Once out of the car, he motioned for her to precede him into the restaurant.

  It was dark inside and the booths were a burnt-orange leather. “I expected purple,” she said over her shoulder as the hostess led them to a table.

  He didn’t respond. Once they were seated, he picked up the menu. She did the same.

  Her stomach grumbled and she knew that he’d been right to insist that they stop. She found a couple things that would be fine and settled on shrimp and roasted tomatoes over linguine. He already had his menu at the edge of the table.

  The waitress approached. “Good evening. My name is Clarice and I’ll be taking care of you tonight.”