Murder at Veronica's Diner

by J. D. Griffo

  He described how the instruments on the panel were similar to the tools she used while driving a car, so very few of them should be foreign to her. He was right. There was the airspeed indicator; the altimeter, which displayed the altitude the plane was flying at; the vertical speed indicator, which indicated the airplane’s rate of climb and descent; and the artificial horizon, which was primarily used when visual flying was compromised. There was the control wheel, which was the plane’s steering wheel, and the thrust, or the plane’s gas pedal and brake pad combined in one device. Most important was the turn coordinator, which would be crucial to allow them to make a U-turn and change direction, which was what they wanted to do.

  “Before you do any flying, you must call air traffic control and let them know that you need to change your flight plan,” Owen instructed.

  “How do I do that?” Alberta asked.

  “There’s a yellow switch at five o’clock in front of you, “Owen said. “That’s your lower right-hand corner. Do you see it?”

  Alberta looked down and saw the switch. She focused her eyes on the instrument in front of her and not out the window, because she thought she might pass out if she looked out at the clouds. “Yes.”

  “Flip it up and you’ll be connected to the air traffic controller,” Owen said. “I can do the talking.”

  Instantly, a voice boomed through the speaker, joined by a great deal of static. “This is air traffic control, go ahead.”

  “Air traffic control, this is Owen O’Hara, owner of Cessna Denali X72439. Our pilot has suffered an injury from turbulence and is unconscious,” Owen conveyed.

  If the controller was surprised by this information, he didn’t show it. He responded like a veteran 9-1-1 caller, calm and professional.

  “Is there anyone on board who can fly a plane?” he asked.

  “Yes, me,” Owen replied. “Regrettably, I am suffering from a temporary loss of my vision.”

  There was a pause before the man replied. “Seems like you have a bit of a problem.”

  “It is an obstacle. However, I’m instructing untrained personnel on how to turn this plane around so we can return to land at Morristown Airport,” Owen advised. “There’s a storm in front of us with quite a lot of turbulence, and she won’t be able to control the plane with that much interference.”

  “Roger that, the wind’s picking up here as well,” the man said. “You have permission to land. Stick to the reverse flight plan and you’ll be fine. We’re advising all aircraft in the area of the situation to steer clear of your craft.”

  “Thank you,” Owen said.

  “We’ll keep this frequency open and check back with you,” the man said.

  “That’s most kind,” Owen said. He tilted his head so his next comment was directed at Joyce and Veronica. “The two of you should go back to your seats and buckle up. This might not be the smoothest of maneuvers.”

  Not surprisingly, both women refused to leave the cockpit. They sat on the floor and held on to the base of the chairs in front of them, which they hoped would prevent them from getting knocked around and winding up like Eugene. They did hold on tighter when Owen told Alberta to turn off the autopilot and advised her that she was now flying the plane all on her own.

  “Berta, I can’t believe what you’re doing!” Joyce squealed. “I should really take a photo of this.”

  Alberta couldn’t believe it either. Instead of shaking and hyperventilating, she felt like she was outside of her body, watching a stranger fly the plane. The thought of what she was doing, that the lives of everyone on the plane were in her hands, was so overwhelming that it was as if her mind and her body separated. She had a job to do, and if she gave in to fear and anxiety, she would fail. And failure, in this instance, was definitely not an option.

  “Let Owen help me get us turned around and back on track so I can put the autopilot back on,” Alberta said. “We can have a photo shoot later.”

  Owen expertly coached Alberta on how to bank the wings without losing altitude, how to maintain climbing and acceleration speeds, and how to keep the turn coordinator at the appropriate levels. When the plane was back on the original flight plan, except in the other direction, Owen asked Alberta to read all the numbers back to him from the various instruments on the panel. He instructed her so she could make some minor adjustments, and when he was satisfied he told her to switch on the autopilot button.

  “Finally!” Veronica exclaimed. “Now explain this cockamamie story about Owen being Umberto.”

  Alberta took a deep breath and looked out the window. They were flying above the clouds, closer maybe to heaven than earth, and it was all her doing. She acknowledged her accomplishment, thanked God silently, and then swiveled around in her chair to face everyone. She had a story to tell.

  Even though Owen kept his sunglasses on and stared straight ahead so she couldn’t see his eyes, Alberta directed most of her story to him. He was, after all, the leading man.

  “It took me a while to connect all the dots, but when Jinx and I went to see Umberto at Riker’s Island, we realized that there was no way he could have escaped that prison,” Alberta said. “There are too many checkpoints and guards, and the only way off the island is that one bridge, and each vehicle that enters and exits is examined.

  “Even if he did somehow convince a guard to help him escape, Umberto would still have had to walk freely around both Tranquility and Brooklyn to murder three people without anyone noticing him,” Alberta explained. “The only answer was that there had to be someone impersonating him, and that someone was you, Owen.”

  “Alberta, I understand that it’s an incredible longshot that the real Umberto got out of jail,” Veronica said. “But Owen looks nothing like him.”

  “That’s true, Owen and Umberto look nothing alike,” Alberta conceded. “Umberto is wider across the shoulders, but they are the same height and with the right toupee, makeup, and costuming, they could easily be mistaken for each other.”

  “Wait a second, Berta, we saw them together in the Tranqclockery when we only knew Umberto as Scarface,” Joyce said.

  “We saw them together because that’s what Owen wanted us to see,” Alberta said. “In order for his scheme to work, he knew there had to be witnesses who saw Umberto and Owen together to make it look like they were two different people. Owen must have known we were in the alleyway, so he turned his back to us, dressed as Umberto, and acted like he was shaking hands with someone else, who we would assume was Owen.”

  “Damn, that’s clever,” Joyce said.

  “If you remember that night, Joyce, I went into the back room of the Tranqclockery to see if I could find Scarface hiding out,” Alberta said.

  “I do remember, but you came up empty,” Joyce replied.

  “Not really,” Alberta said. “I didn’t find Scarface, but I found a piece of foam, which I realized later was like the foam from the shoulder pads that we used to wear in the ’80s. Put them underneath an oversized coat and a man looks a lot larger than he really is.”

  “That’s the oldest fashion trick in the book,” Joyce said.

  “That night I also found a prayer card for St. Gemma that had a St. Ann’s Church stamp on the back,” Alberta explained. “I thought it might belong to Umberto, until I did some research and found out that St. Gemma is the patron saint of migraine sufferers, so the card belonged to Owen. He must have picked it up when he visited St. Ann’s Church in Brooklyn, as Umberto.”

  “Now you’re the clever one!” Joyce squealed.

  “No, she isn’t,” Veronica corrected. “She’s forgetting an important detail about the very first murder.”

  “What’s that?” Alberta said.

  “Owen was in the diner the morning Teri Jo was murdered,” Veronica said. “He was sitting at the front counter having breakfast with Father Sal.”

  “You have many faults, Veronica, but at least you have a very good memory,” Owen said. “Father Sal had the French toast and I had
an egg white omelet with broccoli and mushrooms.”

  “You seem to have a pretty good memory too, Owen,” Veronica replied. “When it suits you.”

  “You’re both only remembering half of what happened that morning,” Alberta said. “Owen was there, but not the entire time. He joined Father Sal, ordered breakfast, and then left, leaving his tweed jacket on the stool, the same one he’s wearing right now in fact. He went around to the alleyway, crawled through the window of the men’s bathroom, and killed Teri Jo. Then he rejoined Father Sal to finish his meal.”

  “I must also be able to impersonate an invisible man if no one saw me do that,” Owen said.

  “People saw you, it just never registered that it was an odd thing to see a man leave to tend to his business next door,” Alberta explained. “I didn’t even know the Tranqclockery existed before all this began and Joyce explained it was because I didn’t need to know about it. Since I never had any use for the shop, it was invisible to me. Our mind plays tricks on our eyesight. You should know all about that, Owen, with the ocular migraines you suffer from.”

  Owen smiled slowly at the reference to his persistent ailment. “Why didn’t Father Sal ever question my absence from our meal?”

  “He mentioned more than once that he has come to accept your eccentricities,” Alberta said. “He was fully aware that you left, but he considered it normal activity from you. Father Sal also thinks you’re a good person and could never imagine you’re a cold-blooded killer.”

  “Berta, are you saying that after Owen realized he killed Teri Jo by mistake, he walked right back into the diner from the men’s room?” Joyce asked.

  “Exactly,” Alberta said. “He didn’t change into his Umberto disguise, because he wouldn’t have had time to change back and it would’ve been too risky to leave his clothes in a bathroom stall or a garbage can.”

  “This is all fascinating, but how did he kill Teri Jo by mistake?” Veronica asked. “He knew she was working that day.”

  “Because he was expecting to meet with Dominic,” Alberta replied.

  “Really?” Joyce asked. “How do you know that?”

  “When we talked to Dominic in Texas he said ‘If only I had gotten there sooner, it would’ve been me,’” Alberta said.

  “I don’t remember that at all,” Joyce said.

  “We were all talking so quickly and the plane was about to take off; there was a lot going on,” Alberta explained. “I didn’t remember it until much later, but it means that Dominic was meant to be at the diner that morning—more than likely to meet with Owen. He had no idea that Owen’s real reason for the meeting was to kill him. When Owen saw Teri Jo from the back, he thought it was Dominic and killed her instead.”

  “You killed Teri Jo by mistake?” Veronica asked. “How could you be so vile?”

  “My guess is that once you knew that you were going to have to murder again in order to kill off Dominic, who was your intended target in the first place, you got the idea to make it look like someone else was terrorizing the town,” Alberta said. “You knew Umberto had a sinister past, so you picked him. He would’ve been your perfect alibi except you didn’t know he was currently serving time.”

  “You realize this is all circumstantial evidence, don’t you?” Owen asked.

  “Circumstantial evidence adds up,” Alberta said. “Like the fact that Gabi Rosales said Umberto’s scar was on the right side and not the left, and that he ran away from her. She didn’t mention a thing about Umberto having a limp.”

  “Then there was the e-mail we received from Umberto,” Alberta said. “It struck me odd that a lowlife criminal would be so polite and sign an e-mail ‘Cheers,’ until you said the same thing when you left Father Sal in the chapel yesterday.”

  “You were there?” Owen said, turning to face Alberta for the first time.

  “She was hiding out in the confessional and heard every word of your conversation,” Joyce said.

  Owen stared at Alberta for quite a long time. It was unnerving because she could only stare back at black sunglasses, but she refused to turn away. If he was trying to intimidate her, he was going to lose.

  “Even if you convince the police of your . . . theory, what’s my motive?” Owen asked, turning his head back to face the cockpit window. “Why would a quiet clock-shop owner suddenly go on a killing spree?”

  “Because you’re more than a shop owner, Owen, you’re involved in selling illegal documents,” Alberta said. “The Tranqclockery is nothing more than a cover for your far more lucrative side business.”

  “That’s ludicrous,” Owen said. “I’ve never been involved in anything illegal in my life.”

  “What about that scandal with the fake birth certificates at Christ Hospital, where you used to work flying their helicopter?” Joyce asked. “Is that where you got the idea?”

  “Or did you get it from Bettina?” Alberta asked.

  This time when Owen turned to face Alberta, Veronica did the same thing.

  “The next time you have illegal paperwork that you don’t want anyone to see, Veronica, you should keep it in a safe and not in a drawer at work,” Alberta said. “Anyone could accidentally stumble upon it.”

  Veronica’s lips started to form a protest, but suddenly stopped. She dropped her head to her chest and took several breaths. When she looked up, she seemed relieved.

  “I had no idea when I asked Umberto all those years ago to help me get fake documentation so I could start my life over, it would lead to the deaths of my niece and nephew, you’ve got to believe me,” Veronica said.

  “I do,” Alberta said. “Sadly, it means that you set this whole thing into motion. If you hadn’t reached out to Umberto for the documents and then years later to get revenge on the man who jilted you when you were a young woman, the man whose family paid you to leave town, Owen and Umberto would never have met.”

  “Owen is Veronica’s ex?” Joyce asked.

  “Yes, he’s her weak-willed Irishman,” Alberta said. “Their story is just like Viola and Marcello’s.”

  “Who?” Joyce asked.

  “From our family history, Marcello abandoned Viola the same way Owen abandoned Veronica. The only difference is that Viola was able to find some happiness in her life,” Alberta explained. “I dreamt about the two of them just before Teri Jo was killed. The painting in my bedroom is an heirloom from Viola and it always reminds me that love comes in many forms.”

  “Anthony told me about that story when we were dating,” Joyce reminisced. “He said nothing like that would ever happen to us. You can’t always trust men, can you, Veronica?”

  “No, you can’t,” she replied. “You can’t always trust your family either. All I wanted was to marry Owen, but his family wouldn’t hear of it and my family was more interested in preserving their business relationship, so they refused to interfere.”

  “Is that why you relocated to Tranquility, Veronica, to rekindle your romance with Owen?” Alberta asked.

  “I thought after all this time we could have the happiness we should’ve had years ago, but Owen didn’t even recognize me when I came to town,” Veronica said. “He abandoned me when I was young and he rejected me decades later. So yes, I wanted revenge. I got in touch with Umberto and told him to do whatever he wanted to frame Owen for something that would put him in jail.”

  “You didn’t count on Umberto and Owen working together to funnel illegal documents through the Tranqclockery,” Alberta said. “Or for him to recruit Teri Jo to do his dirty work for him.”

  “I should’ve put a stop to it,” Veronica said, “but I thought she would do one job and Owen would finally get caught.”

  “That’s because you’ve always underestimated me,” Owen said. “My parents gave you money and you took it and ran away. You just assumed I was in on the scheme. You never gave me a chance to persuade them to let us marry.”

  “You wanted to marry me?” Veronica asked. “Even though I couldn’t have children?” />
  “Did I ever get married? Did I ever have any children? No!” Owen cried. “I didn’t care about that, all I cared about was you, and you took the easy way out. The truth, Veronica, is that you abandoned me, not the other way around!”

  The words slapped against Veronica’s flesh harder than any physical attack ever could.

  “When Umberto came to me, he told me that you sent him and that you wanted revenge to get back at me for deserting you all those years ago,” Owen explained. “I told him that he had been duped and that you were the one who deserted me. Together, we devised a strategy to make a little money off of your idea.”

  “So you and Umberto were partners,” Joyce declared.

  “At first,” Owen confirmed. “But then he got bored and I took over the operation. We went our separate ways, you could say.”

  “Which is why you didn’t know he was back in jail,” Alberta said.

  “No I didn’t, which was a fatal error,” Owen admitted. “I had begun to believe I really was invisible, untouchable. Everything was going so smoothly until Teri Jo told Dominic about our arrangement and he demanded she stop. I was doing the girl a favor! I was helping her make some extra money because she was always strapped but Dominic was a scared little boy and he threatened to tell my Uncle Shamus and the rest of the Rizzolis, so he left me no choice.”

  “But to kill him?” Alberta asked.

  “Yes!” Owen cried. “You were right, Alberta, he was supposed to meet me at the diner that morning to discuss business, and Teri Jo . . . got in the way! I didn’t know it wasn’t Dominic until she turned to try and look at me and I saw her profile.”

  “What did you feel when you realized you killed an innocent woman?” Veronica asked.

  “Numb,” Owen replied. “I couldn’t move, but then suddenly I remembered exactly who I was, the Invisible Man. I knew I could follow Teri Jo out into the crowded diner and take my seat next to Father Sal before the poor woman fell to her death.”