Come Fly With Me

by Sandi Perry

  Chapter 40

  "Emily, I was just thinking how the weekend is going to be so stressful with the unveiling for my father on Sunday, would you be okay if I took the day off tomorrow and gave myself a small treat?"

  Emily nodded, "Absolutely. I think that's a good plan. I'll be coming to the cemetery on Sunday, it's at noon, right? But a little tutorial, please, I'm not clear on what happens at an unveiling ceremony."

  "Well, since religious Jews bury their dead right away, there's no time to prepare a headstone." She studied her hands. "At any point during the first year, the monument gets erected and there's a small gathering and prayer service at graveside. A thin covering is traditionally placed over the stone and it's removed and thus unveiled for the first time. The first eleven months after a parent dies, the sons say Kaddish, which is a prayer to have the soul accepted to heaven. Jeremy tries his hardest to say it every day."

  "What happens the last month of the year? It doesn't sound right to skip out on the last month."

  "That part I found interesting. It seems that the last month, all the prayers of the previous eleven months are meant to sustain the soul. We'd like to think that no one needs beseeching to get into heaven for all of the twelve months. Hopefully, they have some merits accrued from their years on earth," Allison concluded as she gathered her bag and shut down her computer.

  "It's been a hard few months; take the weekend, it's a good idea," Emily said.

  "Thanks," she said as she threw her cell in her bag. "You know, I frankly didn't see the need for all the rituals at the beginning, but you know, they began to make sense and comforted me." She took a final look around, "Anyway, I'm finished here, and I'm going to run past RossAir. I'll see you Sunday, Emily," she hugged her friend. "I can never express to you how valuable your friendship has been to me these past—has it really been five years?"

  Emily nodded, "Stop, Allison, please."

  "No, you need to hear how special you are, and you know what? You're a hundred Bettys to my Veronica—I'd be so lost without you."

  She went to the curb and hailed a cab. On the way to the office, her BlackBerry pinged. Scrolling down to her work e-mail, she was shocked to see a response to an ad she'd sent out many months earlier. With her heart hammering wildly, she called Scott to file a flight plan and directed the cabdriver to continue on to Teterboro airport.

  Chapter 41

  Allison stood on the cliff overlooking Frenchman Bay in Bar Harbor. The water was sparkling serenely, the late April sun sending crystals of light skipping across it. She smiled as she saw the whale-watching boat come back in to dock. If she had been around earlier, she would have told the intrepid watchers that a pair of very sturdy sea legs was a requirement for the rough open waters. She had thrown up practically non-stop the first time she had attempted it. The kayakers were enjoying some smooth rowing a bit closer to shore. She turned away from the water and looked over at the cottage where it sat further up the embankment. She couldn't believe her father had kept it up all these years. She steadied her breath and walked up the hill and around to the front. Mr. Treumann, the property manager, was to meet up with her shortly to give her the keys. She stood on the open porch a short while until a car pulled up the gravel driveway.

  "Ms. Ross?" A balding man wearing a blue shirt, khakis and a windbreaker made his way toward her, hand outstretched. "I was deeply saddened to hear of your father's death. I have a set of keys for you and some instruction as to general upkeep. And of course, our services are available for the winter months, should you choose to remain with us."

  "Thank you, Mr. Treumann, that won't be necessary. I'll be selling the cottage, but I will forward the information to the new owner."

  His face fell, but he quickly caught himself. "So, if there's nothing else, I'd best be going. Oh, I almost forgot. Everything is in good working order, but there's no electricity. You might be needing this," he handed her a flashlight with his company's logo on it. "We tend to get a lot of power outages around here, so we generally offer them to our clients as a small gesture. Good luck, now," he waved good-bye and left.

  Wow, are people just friendly here? She wondered. Or are those only the people that you pay to be friendly.

  She unlocked the front door and took a deep breath before she tentatively crossed over the threshold. Heading straight for the kitchen, she stood still, reverently stroking the cool, smooth limestone countertops. Uncle Joey used to sit on the counters and her Bubby would shoo him off. "Ach! That's for food—use the chairs, there are eight of them," she'd say. Then he'd jump off, pull her into a waltz, and she'd playfully bat him away with a huge grin on her face. How she remembered the argument when her father had told her he was redoing the kitchen. Her father had wanted her Bubby to have state of the art equipment so she could do her favorite things, which were cooking and baking enough to feed an army. Allison almost laughed aloud when she recalled her Bubby responding, "I thought you brought me here for a vacation, and now you want me to stand around in a boiling, hot kitchen all day!" Her Bubby had been nothing if not dramatic.

  Of course, her father renovated the kitchen anyway, albeit without her input because she was adamant that she would NOT be using it. The first weekend they came up to the newly renovated cottage, her grandmother managed to sit outside in the back for an entire two hours before harrumphing and marching inside, complaining nonstop about how if she didn't make them some food everyone would starve. Allison had felt sorry for how hard her Bubby was always working in the kitchen, slaving away over the most delectable fresh-picked blueberry pies and raspberry-apple cobblers. Only many years later did she realize that it had been her grandmother's biggest pleasure. She could never sit around idly; it wasn't how she had been brought up.

  Allison continued her survey of the room as the warm memories flooded back. Everything seemed more compact, well she was quite a bit taller than she had been the last time she had seen the place. There was plenty of sunlight still streaming from the windows, but there were a few dark corners and Allison calculated that if the buyer were much later there would be little point in trying to show the house anymore today. She had thought ahead and booked a room at the Atlantic Oceanside. As long as she was back in New York by Saturday night to ready herself for the unveiling, she could make a mini-two day vacation out of it. She had run out of town without even telling her mother of her change of plans, so Allison was reaching for her cell phone when the front door opened. She turned her head and was shocked to see Paul Franklin coming toward her.

  "Hello, Allison," he said.

  "Paul, what are you doing here, are you the buyer? You're the one who responded to my ad to sell the cottage?" she asked bewildered.

  "Yes, but I won't be buying what's rightfully mine—what was supposed to have been mine from the beginning. I can see by your expression that you have no idea what I'm talking about. Did your father ever tell you how he met your mother? "

  Allison nodded, "Of course, he met her in college. But what does that have to do—"

  "Tut, tut. I'll be the one leading the conversation here. Just be quiet and listen."

  Something in his tone sent a shiver down her spine. She swallowed over the rising panic in her chest.

  "Pay attention," he admonished. "As it happened, your mother and I were on a date when your father walked into the restaurant. Before I knew what hit me, he was joining us for dessert and three months later, they were engaged. He spent his life married to my woman. Stole her right out from under me. I always thought he offered me the job at the firm out of guilt. That's how stupid I was. He was really after my father's country club buddies. Those contacts proved to be very valuable and ultimately were responsible for RossAir taking off. The business should've been mine." His mouth opened wide as he sprayed his shirt with spit. "Everything should have been mine."

  Allison opened her mouth to speak.

  "It's still my turn," Paul said as his eyes darted around. "I was restless and unfocused after college,
and I joined the army on a whim. Care to guess which division I joined?"

  Allison straightened her shoulders as the pieces began to click and fixed him with a cold stare. "I'm so glad we're having this little chat. I was wondering why someone would make the cowardly choice to shoot out a streetlight rather than putting a bullet through my father's head. But no matter, really; I'm glad I have the chance to thank you now. You saved me the jail time."

  It was Paul's turn to look bewildered, "You knew it was me? You're saying thank you?"

  "Correction. I suspected it was you, and we both know what a bastard my father could be. It was only a matter of time before someone did to him what I had been dreaming of doing for years. There was no way he was giving RossAir to anyone, especially not a woman, as long as there was air in his lungs. I wanted what was rightfully mine just as much as you did."

  "But you were ill-prepared. You whined like a baby when you took over."

  "It was all an act." Just like this is now, she thought, as her heart was beating out of her chest. She looked into his lifeless eyes. "Too bad you didn't come to me earlier—we could have planned this much, much better. Take the cottage; I've had nothing but heartache from it." She started to walk toward the door, "I'll tell no one of our conversation."

  "Don't take another step," he said.

  In the growing dusk, she spotted the glint of something silvery in his hand and swallowed hard. He wasn't buying her act, she realized and started to back up slowly. "Too afraid to shoot my dad but you'll shoot an unarmed woman? And I always thought you were a gentleman, Paul."

  "I'll do the thinking now!"

  "I understand why you felt deceived, but that's a long way from murder. Why would you do something like that?" she was desperate to stall him.

  "Your father was priming to take the company in a whole new direction. I could read the writing on the wall, and I saw he was promoting Alex Coventry as a replacement."

  "Replacement? My father wasn't retiring, you're mad. He was your friend."

  "Your parents wanted to travel and the years growing and babysitting the business were starting to wear him down. And we were friends." His eyes were blazing as he gained on her and leaned his face into hers. "But he screwed me; I never got my rightful share. It was time for me to run RossAir, not some hillbilly." He grabbed her arm roughly.

  "Let go of me!"In the struggle, he hit her on the head with the pistol and she blacked out. As she fought to swim to the surface of her consciousness, she realized her arms and legs were bound. Smoke tickled her nose and she opened her eyes a slit to see Paul casually leaning against the island smoking a cigarette as if he had every right to be standing there. If her Bubby were alive now, she'd beat him out of the room with a broom for smoking in her beloved kitchen. She said a silent prayer, begging her father to look down and keep her safe and said a tear-filled good-bye to her mother, Jeremy and Kenyon.

  A strange sense of calm started to overtake her, almost as if this was how it was supposed to end. Tragedy had seemed to mark its name on her life early on. Maybe this is fate, I've come full circle and now I'm atoning for the great sin of my childhood. She thought about Emily and Kaitlin, even Michael Essex. The lump in her throat got larger as she realized she'd never know what would have happened with Alex, if only she had let it.

  She smelled smoke again—serious smelling smoke. She decided to try to reason with him, "Paul, you can't run the company from jail please stop this nonsense and put out the fire. We'll settle this with the lawyers. Please see reason," she pleaded. "I have to say, you haven't exactly come up with the greatest plan. As it stands now, Alex is going to run the company anyway. You'll accomplish nothing but to secure a jail sentence for yourself."

  "Let me worry about myself," he shot back.

  She frantically searched her mind for something else to say, "So, the embezzlement—the fifteen thousand was you?"

  "Yeah, that was fun. I was hoping everything would be pinned on Bradley—the money, the murder. Then you chose to ignore the whole episode. That was a weak moment of leadership on your end, Allison."

  "Well, you seem to have a lot of opinions about my leadership abilities. How about you untie me and give me another chance?"

  "I'm no fool. Neither one of us is getting out of this alive. But for this minute, revenge feels very sweet."

  "Revenge against whom? My father's dead—you saw to that. Against my mother? Alex? This makes no sense."

  "It makes sense to me. You know the job you did at the company wasn't half bad. Your father would have been proud of you, if he was capable of feelings like that."

  Allison recoiled from that as if she'd been slapped.

  "I knew about the clause in the contract in the event of Daniel's death, and I was hoping you would stay on as CEO. I knew I could handle you; you're a girl, after all. But Alex, well, he's as smart and savvy as they come. Once I read that email about the upcoming announcement, I knew I had no choice but to get you up here."

  "But I never announced who was getting the job."

  "We all knew you were sleeping with Alex, it was the natural conclusion. Good-bye Allison, make sure to say hi to your Dad for me."

  Allison closed her eyes against the waves of panic that threatened to overwhelm her. When she opened them, she saw that a sliver of moonlight was beginning to seep into the windowed room. She strained to see what Paul was doing, but couldn't make him out. She frantically looked around the room for anything to cut off her bindings, but came up empty, and she was starting to fade out again.

  She remembered sitting with her grandfather on the porch one morning, him telling her,

  "Allison, my sweetie-pie, there will always be somebody who tries to push you down, but you don't let them. You fight. You always fight!"

  She nodded solemnly as her grandmother came bursting through the door, "Simon, what are you saying to her? She's a child!"

  "She has to know the way of the world. She must be prepared!"

  "Mamaleh, come with me, the blueberry pie is ready and I need you to tell me if it's sweet enough."

  Allison shook herself awake. Her grandfather's words were playing in a loop in her head. She fought to stay awake. Paul was gone. She inched over to where she had noticed a small patch of sunlight coming through the back wall earlier in the day. She laid her nose down to it as close as she could get and breathed deeply. The flames flickered, casting eerie shadows on the walls. Breathing was getting more difficult, but she heard the promising sounds of sirens in the distance. Before she could hope again, the smoke overtook her.

  Chapter 42

  Allison felt something weighing down her arm. Panic overwhelmed her; she was aware of a beeping machine that seemed to grow more insistent. She tried to open her eyes and fought against the waves of nausea that threatened to overwhelm her. With a great effort, she finally opened her eyes a fraction. Her mother's worried face peered into hers.

  "Allison, sweetheart, you're safe," she whispered as she patted her arm.

  She closed her eyes in relief and sank back into oblivion. A short time later, she woke up again and reached for her throat with her free hand. She was dismayed to feel the oxygen tube feeding into her nose. It was terribly uncomfortable, and she wanted to pull it out but her need for water for her parched throat was more urgent. Her mother recognized her gesture and hurriedly offered her a cup of cool refreshing water.

  "You have to sip slowly, you don't want to choke."

  Allison took one last pull on the straw and sank gratefully back onto the pillow. "What day is it? What happened? Where am I?" she whispered.

  "One thing at a time," her mother responded. "You're in a hospital in Maine, it's Friday morning, and you're safe. That's all you need to know for now."

  She started to shake her head but quickly realized that was a bad idea.

  "I'm going to tell her." A voice floated toward her from somewhere in back of the room—it sounded like Alex. She turned toward him and tears sprang to her eyes. Her r
eaction startled her. She had thought she would never see him again when she had blacked out.

  "I'll tell you briefly what happened. Detective Fitzsimmons called the office Thursday afternoon looking for you. Natalya told him you were set to arrive later that day. He said he would try you on your cell," Alex said. "She thought nothing further of it until later in the day when she realized you had never shown up. I stopped by her desk, and she asked me if I had any idea where you were because the police had been trying to reach you. I called Emily and she said you had left the gallery hours before to come into the office. I got a real bad feeling about it and called your mother to see if she had heard from you."

  ""When Alex called me, I absolutely panicked. Neither Jeremy nor Kaitlin had heard from you. We had seemingly hit a brick wall," her mother added.

  "So, then I called Kenyon to run back to your apartment to see if you were there. You seemed to have vanished," Alex continued.

  "Please, one narrator, I'm getting a headache turning my head like this," she winced as she spoke and tried to straighten up in the hospital bed

  Her mother looked at Alex and reached in to kiss Allison gently on her head. "I'm going to get us some coffee."

  Alex continued, "I came up with the idea to call Scott and see if you had any flight plans. As soon as I heard, I called your mother and she told me you were probably flying out to the cottage. Something didn't ring true about it. So, I called Det. Fitzsimmons and he said he had left you several messages and the matter was urgent. He was reluctant to tell me, but I finally pried it out of him." He took a breath, "Paul had done a stint in the Green Berets in his twenties. After his last mission, he was let go due to some mentally erratic behavior. His records were sealed and no one ever knew of his past. In addition, he felt entitled to a percentage of the business because he claimed he'd given your father the necessary business connections at the start." He paused, "Maybe you should rest for now."