Plane in the Lake Page 16

  “Little pissant companies,” Franklin replies. “That’s who does weekend billing from their home office.”

  “Well, okay,” Walton allows after a beat. “You got me on that one, dude. That’s not really the point, anyway.”

  “Then what is?”

  Walton sits straighter and slaps a hand on the table. His patience with Franklin’s Nervous Nellie routine is wearing thin. “The point is that R & B is twisting in the wind.”

  “It all sounds maybe a little too clever by half, Johnny boy,” Caitlyn says.

  “It sounds fucking perfect,” Walton shoots back.

  “Lorraine didn’t seem too thrilled that Avgas is in the clear,” Caitlyn says after a beat, referring to the senior lawyer of the group they’d just met with.

  “No biggie,” Walton scoffs. “Remember that Avgas is our partner in this.”

  “They’re fucking mobsters,” Caitlyn shoots back. “Ours is a marriage of convenience. What’s their motivation to stay close to us now?”

  Walton slumps back in his seat. “Really, Caits? We know where the bodies are buried. They don’t dare cross us.”

  “They bury bodies,” Franklin says anxiously. “Don’t antagonize them.”

  Oliver has a point there, Walton realizes. “So, we don’t antagonize them. They don’t antagonize us. R & B takes the fall, and we’re all good.”

  Franklin stares back. “Do you honestly believe we’re not going to take some sort of hit on this?”

  “Windy City might have to kick in some cash, but we won’t. That’s the beauty of how the company is set up. Nobody can come after us personally. Our insurance company pays up on whatever we get tagged with.”

  “Our insurance rates would skyrocket,” Franklin says.

  “We just wind the whole thing up for a tax loss and move on if the rates get prohibitive, pal. It’s not like flying tours are a big deal for us.”

  Franklin’s expression argues otherwise. The Windy City revenue does matter to him. Walton often forgets what a fucking pauper the guy is.

  “Don’t worry,” he reassures Franklin. “We’ll hook you up with another cash cow.”

  “It still bothers me that Lorraine is concerned about whether or not we will be able to pin all the blame on R & B,” Caitlyn mutters.

  Franklin sighs. “To be honest, it kind of bugs me that we’re screwing those guys over.”

  “Fuck, dude!” Walton explodes.

  “They do good work for us.”

  “Well, yeah, but that’s beside the point,” Walton argues. “We’re talking big bucks here.”

  “No room for sentiment,” Caitlyn agrees.

  Walton appreciates her support and smiles at her. “As for Lorraine, Caits, remember that she gets paid to worry about shit whether it’s a realistic threat or not. She’d worry about liability risks posed by the quality of the toilet paper in our public washroom if she thought she could turn it into billable hours.”

  Caitlyn chuckles.

  Walton looks from one partner to the other and decides that it’s well past time to sum things up and be done with the worrywart routine. “The key is that the accident wasn’t foreseeable by us and that whatever went wrong was out of our control. Bad gas? Nothing we could have foreseen, and we sure as hell didn’t pump the gas. It’s all good.”

  “But we chose the vendor,” Franklin counters.

  Walton feels an almost overpowering urge to rip Franklin’s nervous head off his skinny fucking neck. “No, we didn’t. We didn’t choose anyone. Our aviation consultant did. We’ve got more layers of insulation between us and liability than a walrus has between itself and the Arctic Ocean. Relax, dude. Nothing was foreseeable from our vantage point.”

  Caitlyn uncrosses her legs and eases forward. “So, the big three potential causes. Bad fuel. Structural failure due to shoddy maintenance.” She’s ticking off each of her points by popping up a finger as she goes. She pauses for a beat, then thrusts out a third finger. “Pilot error.”

  Walton, who had been nodding along, hops off her blame train right there. “That’s my niece you’re talking about, Caits. She’s off-limits.”

  “She was flying the fucking plane,” Caitlyn retorts.

  Walton rises halfway out of his seat and leans across the table toward her. “We will not throw Megs under the bus!”

  “Someone else might,” Franklin replies calmly. “Then what?”

  “Not our concern,” Walton replies as he settles back into his seat. “We won’t hang Megs out to dry. If the NTSB does… well, nothing I can do to prevent that, but my sister will crush my balls in a vise if she ever thinks we’re smearing her daughter.”

  Franklin nods. “Fair enough. We’re still sheltered if that happens?”

  Walton smiles and nods. “Correct. Not foreseeable. Not under our control. See how simple things are?”

  Caitlyn sits back in her seat, recrosses her legs, and taps her fingernails on the arms of her chair. “You keep repeating that mantra, Johnny Boy. Not under our control, not foreseeable.”

  “It’s what makes us golden,” Walton replies curtly. He hates it when she spouts the Johnny Boy shit. It never leads anywhere pleasant. It doesn’t this time, either.

  Caitlyn eases forward. “So, hypothetically, if there was anything untoward in Megan’s hiring—maybe a sketchy Cessna 210 rating—where do we stand?”

  Oh fuck, Walton thinks. “Where’s that coming from, Caits?”

  “I told you earlier, Johnny Boy. The Justice Department.”

  “That’s just people tossing a hypothetical out, Caits. Relax.”

  Her eyes narrow as she sits farther forward and rests her elbows on the table. “And if there is something to the idea that your niece shouldn’t have been at the controls?”

  Walton doesn’t reply. That could be a problem but probably won’t be. He’s been assured by their lawyers that their corporate structure is airtight. It fucking well should be for the small fortune the bastards sucked out of us for that work.

  “Isn’t that why our insurance company denied our claim for the plane?” Franklin asks.

  “Sure,” Walton replies. “But you knew they were going to look for a way to deny the claim. Besides, it was for what, 100K and change? Petty cash, dude. Anyway, I sorted that—out of my own pocket, by the way. The records are sealed.”

  “Sealed from the cops?” Caitlyn asks acerbically. “Give me a fucking break! A court order in a criminal trial will open that can of worms in a heartbeat.”

  “Look, guys,” Walton says in a tone intended to placate his partners and dial things down. “We hired that particular instructor for a reason. His ass is also in a crack if this goes sour. It’s all good.”

  “You’re a damned fool, Johnny Boy,” Caitlyn hisses. “You paid off that instructor to make sure Megan passed so you could hire her, didn’t you?”

  Walton sits rock-still until the urge to smack the bitch passes. Then he shakes his head and reminds her in a strained voice, “I got his name from the consultant, too.”

  “How?” Caitlyn shoots back, like a dog with a fucking bone. “Did you ask him to recommend someone precious Megan could blow for her rating?”

  Walton manages, barely, to keep his cool. After all, there was no provable quid pro quo in the hiring or bribing of the instructor—it was a cash deal. “My mantra again, Caits,” he mutters. “Not foreseeable. Not within our control.”

  “Fuck your goddamned mantra!” Franklin snaps. “You hired that instructor. You took Megan on as a pilot. If someone can show that you had any inkling this instructor is sketchy and/or that you even suspected Megan wasn’t one hundred percent qualified to fly with paying customers, we’re fucked, so let’s quit talking like we couldn’t foresee or control that.”

  Caitlyn fixes a poisonous scowl on Walton. “Oliver and I couldn’t foresee or control that, but you sure as hell could, you asshole.”

  “Any half-assed lawyer could drive a bus through that defense,” Franklin adds.


  Walton starts to shake his head and open his mouth to argue the point. Caitlyn doesn’t give him the chance.

  “Show me some daylight between the company and that scenario, you moron!” she shouts.

  “I can’t believe you did that, Jonathan,” Franklin says with disgust. “You assured us Megan was fully up to speed in the Cessna. Hell, you even told us she was qualified by that university flight school.”

  “I implied no such thing,” Walton replies lamely.

  “I had no idea you’d hired someone to shoehorn her into our pilot’s seat,” Franklin mutters. “What the hell were you thinking?”

  “He wasn’t thinking,” Caitlyn sneers. “He was pussy-whipped by his fucking sister, to use that disgusting term he’s so fond of.”

  Walton jumps to his feet and slams a fist on the table. “Fuck you!” he snarls before he marches out of his own office. Sometimes he hates his overbearing shrew of a sister. Caitlyn, too. He backtracks to the office door and glares at his partners. “It’s a good thing for you two that I’m always at least one step ahead of the wolves you see nipping at our heels all the fucking time!” Then he slams the door and stalks away to the conference room, bangs that door shut behind him, and starts scheming anew.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I’m standing at the window of my sixth-floor room in the Radisson Hotel Old Town Alexandria on Friday morning watching the Potomac River slog southward. The sludge-colored water, relentlessly dredging the bedrock of the river channel by a handful of millimeters each year, is doing so at breakneck speed compared with the progress of the hands crawling around the face of my Rolex. It’s been six hours since I awoke at four thirty-seven this morning. We’re meeting Michelle and her parents for lunch in a little more than an hour. Alexandria was deemed a neutral location for today’s upcoming duel. Brittany and I flew in last night to avoid flight delays from a weather system tracking up the Eastern Seaboard.

  I’ve only seen Michelle once in passing since she walked out of our Atlanta home over a year ago with a suitcase in each hand. Her goal today is to rip our daughter out of my life. She’ll have a fight on her hands to do so, but I’d be a fool to underestimate her determination to win. My goal for today’s meeting is to get a sense of the lay of the land on which she and her father intend to fight this battle. I’m anxious to get on with it. I’m also scared to death of doing so.

  Brittany is on the phone with Pat, checking in on the recuperating Deano. Why people insist on talking to dogs on the phone is beyond me; I’ve seen the bewilderment or simple disinterest of dogs when people do it. I suppose it makes us feel better. I pass the time revisiting an article about the restoration of Old Town Alexandria in a guidebook thoughtfully placed in my hotel room by the Alexandria Convention and Visitors Association.

  “What did Deano have to say?” I ask when Brittany ends the call.

  She replies by sticking out her tongue.

  I’m going stir-crazy and we have time to do a little exploring before lunch. “Do you mind walking?” I ask.

  Brittany is looking forward to seeing her mother and grandparents but isn’t thrilled with their determination to revisit the child custody arrangements. I let her know that they want to do so, without revealing the specific details of her mother’s lawsuit. I doubt they care what she thinks. If they did, they would have discussed it with her. They would have invited her along today, too. I do care what she thinks about this and spent hours debating the merits of bringing her along. I know that the Rice family will be unhappy that I have, so I’ve tried to figure out how I can position this to satisfy them. Talk about an exercise in futility; I’ve seldom if ever done anything to Prescott Rice’s satisfaction. I finally fell back on a pithy idea I’d stumbled across in a fortune cookie or something: “If you repeatedly hit yourself over the head with a baseball bat, you will feel better when you stop.” Dealing with Michelle and her father is no different, so I stopped agonizing over what they’d think about my bringing Brittany and—voila!—I felt better instantly.

  Once outside, we turn left on North Fairfax Street and find ourselves marching straight into the teeth of a raw wind whipping off the water. Hunched against the howling tempest, we start toward the center of Old Town Alexandria. Cobblestone streets cut between rows of restored colonial architecture. Too much of this suffers from an effort to achieve a certain patriotic colonial charm calculated to reel in tourists by the thousands. The presence of pizza parlors and coffee shops flanked by modern retail outlets and kitschy antique shops sounds a false note. Yet there’s no disputing the rarity of the architectural masterpieces dotting the landscape—solid-brick buildings decorated with chunky ornamental accents and trim uniformly painted white. The buildings press close, set back a foot or two at most from the narrow brick sidewalk. Steps jut out from front doors to further impinge on the walkway.

  When Brittany slips her arm through mine, I glance at her and wince at the sight of her rosy cheeks and runny nose. She dabs at her nose with a gloved hand and grins. “Great idea to get out and enjoy the outdoors, Dad!”

  I grin back and shrug in a “What can I say?” gesture, then cut west in search of succor from the wind along tree-lined residential streets. The charm the business denizens of Alexandria have striven so hard to fabricate elsewhere is evident on these blocks. There’s a timeless elegance here, something solid that isn’t found in suburbs such as the Wildercliff development we had inhabited in Atlanta and others like it scattered from sea to shining sea.

  I enjoy the ambience of the buildings for several blocks, then square my shoulders and head for King Street. The guidebook trumpets this strip as the “heart” of Old Town. When we turn the corner onto North Royal Street, my eyes settle immediately on Gadsby’s Tavern and Museum, a pair of conjoined classic red-brick Georgian colonial structures. Gadsby’s isn’t exactly neutral ground; it’s a Rice family favorite. We occasionally had dinner in the restaurant here in happier times, surrounded by period furnishings and colonial-garbed servers recalling the days when the storied building’s tables were graced by the likes of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Ben Franklin.

  We linger along the final block to kill the last few minutes before the Rices are due to arrive, pausing to gaze in the windows of a glass gallery before meandering back to wait on the sidewalk outside the restaurant. Our eyes impatiently roam between the ends of the block and the streets beyond—we’re both anxious to get out of the cold. At least I thought both of us were. Brittany ducks into the shelter of a doorway and unzips her coat. Is she nuts? No, just a teenager, a species seemingly impervious to the cold to judge by their willingness to challenge winter in running shoes and T-shirts. I glance up to see that we’re standing outside a Banana Republic store and smile at the irony of this store taking root directly across the river from Washington, DC, beside the watering hole of the Founding Fathers. Look at what’s become of us, guys!

  A block-long Mercedes sedan with Connecticut plates finally eases to a stop in front of Gadsby’s. The rear door swings open and a perfectly turned ankle appears, cradled within a burgundy leather shoe. A full head of immaculately coifed raven hair rising above the door announces that Michelle has arrived, doing so in all her impeccably arranged splendor. She glances up, spots me, and tosses a quick smile my way before ducking her head back into the car, presumably to speak with her father, Prescott M.F. Rice III. She re-emerges onto the sidewalk a second later, this time with a chic tan coat draped over the sleeve of a form-fitting, cream knee-length dress. Michelle possesses what I’ve always considered a uniquely extraordinary beauty. To this day, I don’t quite know how to describe it—it’s some ineffable combination of sultry sexiness overlaid with sophistication and elegance.

  It won’t do to fall under Michelle’s sway, so I force my thoughts back to the matter at hand. We’re here for one of two reasons. The Rices are convinced that their legal position with regard to custody is unassailable, in which case they plan to impress the hopelessn
ess of my position upon me to prompt a bloodless surrender (thereby avoiding any public unpleasantness). The alternative is that they’re not at all confident of prevailing over me in court, in which case they’ll go on the offensive, blustering and threatening in an effort to intimidate me into a premature surrender (thereby also avoiding any public unpleasantness). In short, lunch today is a Rice power play. The story that we’re all here to facilitate an equitable resolution between friends is a smoke screen that doesn’t fool me for a second. Prescott Rice and his daughter play to win and won’t quit until they do. I have no intention of yielding.

  Brittany emerges from the recessed doorway and hurries toward her mother. Michelle’s ironclad control falters for a microsecond when she sees her, but the moment passes quickly, probably without Brittany noticing a thing. They share a chaste embrace. Brittany has combed the spikes out of her hair, so the new color and short cut attract no more than a raised brow when her mother eyes the new hairdo. Then Michelle holds Brittany out at arm’s length to conduct a fashion inspection. Our daughter is dressed for the occasion of a Rice family gathering, looking positively cultured this morning in a pair of platinum slacks and a pumpkin cardigan over a pale-tangerine silk blouse. She even sports a pair of burnished gold hoop earrings. A faint sheen of coral adds a touch of color to her lips. She’s very much her mother’s daughter today, not an encouraging omen given the reason we’re gathering here—especially not on Friday the thirteenth.

  Michelle meets my eyes after the inspection and smiles. Her shoulders rise in the vaguest suggestion of approval, the gesture performed with exquisite grace. “Mother and Father will be joining us after they park the car. They thought we might wish to have a few minutes together.”

  So you can use your charms to soften me up? I shrug.

  Michelle pastes a distant smile on her face and glides toward Gadsby’s door, leaving us to follow in her wake.

  I vigorously rub my hands together to restore circulation while we wait to be seated. “How are your parents?” I ask Michelle.