Plane in the Lake

by Neil Turner

  Sapphire seems a little startled.

  Penelope sits back, carelessly throws one leg over the other, smiles, and says reassuringly, “It helps us capture the information accurately. No need to be nervous. Okay?”

  Sapphire smiles tentatively and nods.

  “Are you ready?” Penelope asks Joan, who presses the Record button on the digital recorder and positions her fingers over her court reporter thingamajig.

  “When did you last see or speak with Megan Walton?” Penelope asks once the preliminaries such as date, time, and names are out of the way.

  “The July Fourth weekend.”

  A teeny lifting of Penelope’s eyebrow mirrors my own surprise. September had intimated that her daughter and Megan Walton were BFFs. How likely is it that best friends, especially best girlfriends, wouldn’t see each other for over two months?

  Penelope is on my wavelength. “Were you both in Chicago over the summer?”

  “I think so.”

  Penelope leaves it there and asks, “What did you wish to share with us about Megan?”

  September steps in. “Would Megan’s phone be usable if they found it?”

  Sapphire rolls her eyes. “For God’s sake, Mother, I told you they don’t need Megan’s phone to see her social media feeds.”

  September shoots her daughter an indulgent smile and then looks from me to Penelope and back again. “Everything these kids say or do or even breathes is on social media nowadays. Did you know?”

  I nod. Hell, even I know that.

  Penelope refocuses on Sapphire. “What did you want to tell us about Megan?”

  “Have you seen her social media accounts?” Sapphire asks back.

  Penelope shakes her head. “Megan’s accounts were shut down immediately after the accident.”

  “That’s not surprising,” September says with her mouth twisting into a spiteful grimace. “That girl was the epitome of the spoiled high school rich bitch who grows into an irresponsible party girl. Megan didn’t give a damn about other people. You have no idea how that little witch simply brutalized poor Sapphire during high school. It’s just like her mother to hide the evidence by shutting her social media accounts down.”

  This is some sort of high school Mean Girls vendetta? Please, God. Spare me.

  September’s face morphs from spiteful to hateful with her next outburst. “If someone had put that girl and her bitch of a mother into their places years ago, perhaps none of this would have happened.”

  This dates back to Mommy’s high school trauma? There better be more to this than September hoping to stick a knife in an old rival.

  Sapphire seems to be embarrassed by her mother’s bullshit. She ignores September and leans in to say, “There’s something from last spring you probably need to see.”

  “What’s that?” Penelope asks.

  “Megan was bragging about bribing her way into whatever she needed—a qualification or something—to fly the planes her uncle’s tour company uses.”

  Even sleepy-headed, hungover me is electrified by this revelation.

  Penelope sits up straighter and asks, “Megan said she paid a flight instructor to get her rating for the Cessna 210?”

  “Is that the kind of airplane Megan was flying when she… she crashed?” Sapphire asks.

  “Yes, it is,” Penelope replies softly.

  A veil of sadness washes over Sapphire’s face.

  “Do you remember who else might have heard Megan talk about that?” I ask.

  “Oh, everyone,” she replies.

  “Was this at a party or something?”

  Sapphire shakes her head at me. “Megan posted about it on social media.”

  My spirits sink. All record of Megan’s social media has long since been scrubbed by her family. Sapphire leans across the table to Penelope with her cell phone in hand, taps the screen a few times, does a finger swipe or two, and presents the screen for inspection. I inch sideways to look. Apparently, not even the Walton family has the clout to erase all record of their daughter’s social media presence.

  “I’m in!” exclaims a social media post under a photo of a smiling Megan Walton. “Uncle Jonathan had to pay the asshole instructor a boatload of money to get him to pass me, but I’m rated on Cessna 210s! Yay! Come fly with me on Windy City Sky Tours starting next Thursday!”

  Penelope gets Sapphire to text screen shots of a couple of dozen pertinent posts, befriends her or whatever they call it on this year’s hot social media app, and thanks her for coming in. I’m happy to usher September and her daughter out of the office. What we’ve just heard may well put Billy and Rick in the clear. Great news! I’m almost as happy to see the last of September Larkin.

  My good spirits evaporate by the time we set about returning my office to a respectable executive suite.

  Penelope notices. “What’s up, partner? You look like a ghost just walked over your grave.”

  Penelope’s mention of ghosts and graves is distressingly apt for the realization that just blindsided me. What will Joe do if Billy and Rick win? Would their victory be a death sentence for my daughter? My mind swirls from one depressing thought to another while I imagine a slew of frightening possibilities. I take Penelope’s hand and lead her to my desk after we finish putting my office back together. After she settles into a guest chair, I lean my butt against the desk and look down at her. “We need to talk.”

  “About?”

  I walk around the desk and drop into my office chair, then dip my head and rub my temples while I search for the words to tell my partner that we can’t win the R & B case… at least not yet. Do I tell her everything? Does she need to know about Matteo Giordano? In the end, I realize there’s no way to dance around the crux of the problem, which is Joe’s demand that we throw the R & B case. I draw a deep breath, cast my eyes to the ceiling in what might be an actual prayer for mercy, and then drop them to study Penelope while I launch into the story of Joe. Once I start spilling my guts, I don’t stop until she knows everything, right through to Matteo Giordano’s parting words last night.

  By the time I finish, her facial expression passes from initial shock and disbelief to bewilderment and finally hurt. “I can’t believe you haven’t shared a word of this with me, Tony. I’m your partner. I’m your friend.”

  I repeat the parts about Joe threatening me if word of his visits got out.

  “Joe warned you not to speak with the police, so I understand why you didn’t tell them right away. But me, Tony? You don’t trust me?”

  I apologize, rationalize, and make every excuse I can think of, but I know damned well I should have spoken with Penelope the morning after Joe first appeared in my living room. She deserved that. Billy and Rick deserved it, too. I get up and fix myself a coffee. Penelope declines my offer to get her one as well. I snag a couple of muffins before I sit down again.

  Penelope leans back in her chair, crosses her legs, and runs her hands through her hair several times while she thinks. Is she going to throw my ass out and terminate our partnership right here and now? I sample my coffee while I await my punishment.

  Penelope finally meets my gaze and surprises me by asking, “Have you got access to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars?”

  She’s not throwing me out? I shake my head. “Not in cash, no.”

  “Liquid investments?”

  Again, I shake my head. “I’ll call my investment guys on Monday morning to see what I can get my hands on quickly.”

  She gives me a long look. “What about the Titan settlement?” She’s referring to the million dollars she’d extracted from Titan Developments in a lawsuit over the harassment and other skulduggery that had been employed in the effort to drive my parents and their neighbors out of their Liberty Street homes.

  “All Papa’s,” I reply.

  “All of it?”

  “His house. His money.”

  She shakes her head softly and gives me a gentle smile. “I suppose that shouldn’t surprise me
. It was the decent thing to do.”

  Have I just been called decent? By someone I’ve just betrayed?

  “What about the Fleiss Lansky settlement?” she asks next, referring to my payout from the wrongful-dismissal suit. While satisfying and nothing to sneeze at, the settlement hadn’t produced anywhere near as big a payoff as the Titan action did. A good portion of the Fleiss Lansky windfall was gobbled up by legal fees and a mountain of credit card debt I’d run up while unemployed. More was invested in our legal partnership.

  “What’s left is invested,” I tell her. “I’ll find out how much of it is accessible—and how quickly—on Monday.”

  She nods, then strikes her thinking pose. “You know, that quarter million this Matteo guy demanded is really for Francesco’s benefit.”

  I nod.

  “Francesco has all that Titan money, plus the house. At the risk of sticking my nose somewhere it doesn’t belong, this is really his issue. He’s the guy who shot the man in Italy way back when. He’s who the killers are after now. Right?”

  I nod again.

  “Seems to me that Francesco should be the guy footing the bill for his own safety, Tony.”

  “I don’t disagree.”

  “Then that problem is solved?”

  “You’d think so, right? He’s got the money in CDs at a few different banks.”

  Penelope looks relieved while she mimics ticking an item off an imaginary list. “Perfect. One down.”

  “I wish it were that simple,” I mutter. “In the rush to sneak Papa out of the country, I didn’t get him to execute a financial power of attorney.”

  She groans. “So, all that ready cash and no way to get at it.”

  “Right,” I confirm before getting up to score another couple of muffins.

  “Can you send the paperwork to him wherever he is now?” she asks.

  I haven’t told her that Papa landed in Penne, Italy. I do now. “We’re not in contact, though. Too risky.”

  She slumps lower in her seat and mutters, “Darn it.” Then she brightens. “I’ve got some money in IRAs and a few other investments. I’ll round up what I can if you’re short.”

  I feel like even more of a heel now than I did five minutes ago. How the hell did I not realize that I could trust Penelope with anything and that she’d be solidly in my corner come what may?

  “Okay, I think we’ve taken that talk as far as we can at the moment,” she announces while reaching across my desk to snag a muffin. “What about this Joe guy? How do we balance Brittany’s safety against Billy and Rick’s interests?”

  I turn my palms up, collapse back into my seat, and brush muffin crumbs off my shirt. “I haven’t got a damned clue. I’ve been thinking about it for days and haven’t come up with anything workable.”

  “I can’t believe you’ve been shouldering all this alone, Tony. You should have come to me.”

  I nod gratefully. “I know that. Now.”

  “What do the police say?”

  “They’re still investigating. They haven’t gotten anywhere.”

  “That’s frustrating,” she mutters in disappointment. “They’re usually all over missing kid cases and, well, after what happened to Bobby, you’d think they’d have a little more sense of urgency.”

  “They don’t know everything,” I tell her softly.

  Her eyes narrow. “Pardon me? What haven’t you told them about?”

  “Giordano.”

  She dips her head and rubs her forehead between her thumb and fingers. “But he explained quite a bit you didn’t know, didn’t he? Put some things in proper perspective?”

  “True.”

  “You need to tell Jake Plummer about him, Tony.”

  “What if Joe really does have eyes and ears in the police department?” I counter. “He knows Pat and Bobby’s parents filed missing person reports, so he doesn’t blame me for Jake knowing that the kids are missing. If Jake gets wind of Giordano and Joe finds out, though, things could get dicey.”

  “Assuming Joe even knows about Giordano.”

  “Of course, he does!”

  Penelope looks at me in pity. “This guy’s really gotten to you, hasn’t he?”

  One might say so. I think back to Jake telling me that Joe is hardly Superman. Maybe Penelope has a point.

  “You’re not thinking straight, Tony,” she continues. “The police are the guys to trust here, not this Joe character. You’re playing right into his hands.”

  “I don’t want her to get hurt.”

  She gets up and comes around the desk and rubs a hand in soothing circles around my back. “Then you need to get the police involved with everything, partner. Trust them to play their cards close to the vest.”

  “And if they don’t?”

  “They will,” she assures me. “A final thought?”

  “What’s that?”

  “We can’t leave Billy and Rick twisting in the wind. We have a responsibility to them that we can’t put off indefinitely.”

  “Brittany’s safety comes first!”

  She nods sympathetically and lays a hand on my shoulder. “Agreed, but we don’t know how things really stand with Brittany.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “As much as I, or anyone, hates to consider it, we need to be alive to the possibility that Joe may have already killed her.”

  I can tell how much it pains her to have this conversation, but I’m still pissed at her for giving voice to the unspeakable.

  “It’s possible that Joe plans to use the time he’s bought to make a play to put the screws to our client, Tony. We can’t give him the opportunity to do so.”

  I can’t believe she’s prioritizing a civil lawsuit over the safety of my daughter. “We’ve got Sapphire’s deposition.”

  Penelope settles her hands on my shoulders and gazes into my eyes. “And if Joe knows about that?”

  The possible answers are all varying shades of disaster. “We’re giving him time to eliminate Sapphire.”

  She nods.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “We know who Joe is,” Jake Plummer announces triumphantly that afternoon as he settles into a seat in the cramped office at Zack’s Used Books. We figured meeting here would be safe, with me coming in the front and him slipping in the back door from the alley. Zack Menzies runs his bookstore from a small steel desk wedged into a tiny office that also holds a trio of four-drawer file cabinets. The building has the peculiar smell of burnt dust caused by ductwork in dire need of cleaning.

  “What’s his real name?” I ask.

  “Giuseppe Vitale.”

  “So, he really is an asshole named Joe,” I mutter, Giuseppe being the Italian equivalent of Joseph.

  “Yeah,” Jake mutters with a wry smile. “Right on both counts.”

  “Are you picking him up?” I ask tentatively. My initial burst of excitement was immediately tempered by the realization that this could be a bad thing. Like the dog that finally chases down that elusive car, the outcome of the encounter may prove tragic for the pursuer. In this case, Brittany’s death could well be an unintended side effect of catching up to Joe. Which is backward thinking, I suppose. How else will we get her back?

  Jake shakes his head. “We know who he is but not where he is. We’re looking, though. So is the FBI. The question is: Now what? Even if we do locate him, do we move in on him? That could put Brittany in mortal danger if….”

  I have no difficulty surmising the unspoken next three words: she’s still alive.

  “Then there’s your father to consider. A lot of moving parts in this thing, all interconnected in some way.”

  I nod.

  “Makes it hard to know what to do,” he says unhappily.

  “I know.” I relate the story of Sapphire Larkin’s visit. “Penelope and I don’t know what to do next.”

  Jake shakes his head and frowns. “Ain’t that a bitch? You’ve finally got the bastards by the balls, and you’re scared to s
queeze.”

  “Penelope raised the possibility that waiting might put Sapphire at risk.”

  “How so?”

  “Gives Joe time to track her down if he gets wind of her story.”

  Jake blows out a long sigh. “Your partner has a point. Then again, Joe probably doesn’t know anything about Sapphire.”

  “But he might. Can’t you take her into protective custody or something?”

  Jake dips his chin and rubs his hands over his face. “I’ll look into it.”

  “If we sit on the information and we lose her, we’re doing Billy and Rick a disservice for nothing,” I continue. “Especially if Joe already killed Brittany.”

  Jake winces. “We’ve been kicking options around with the FBI. It’s hard to know what to do, you know? Nobody wants to put Brittany at risk, but the longer she’s gone, the better the odds become that something bad will happen.”

  “Or has happened,” I add morosely.

  He nods. “We wish we had more information to work with.”

  I can’t hold his gaze and drop my head to study the floor. There’s still Matteo Giordano to discuss.

  Jake stirs, and an edge creeps into his voice when he says, “Now is the time to come clean if there’s anything else you haven’t told me, Mr. Valenti.”

  The use of my surname brings my eyes up to his. He’s angry.

  “Your daughter’s well-being may well depend on us knowing everything there is to know.”

  “There is one other thing.”

  “Damn it!” he exclaims with disgust before I get another word out, which kind of pisses me off.

  “It just happened on Friday night,” I say defensively.

  He throws his hands up in the air. “Today is Sunday!”

  “When were you planning on returning my call from yesterday?” I retort. I’d heeded Penelope’s plea and called Cedar Heights PD, leaving a message for Jake to call me ASAP.

  He looks confused. “Yesterday?”

  “Yesterday.”

  Anger flashes across his face. “Sorry, then. Mind you, you could have called my cell.”