by Julie Hyzy
The room was quiet, with only the hum of the refrigerator and the occasional car horn outside to keep us company.
When we got to the end of the missive, I turned the final sheet around, hoping for more, then waited for Gav to finish reading. When he did, he met my gaze. “There’s no doubt Fitch is a lunatic,” he said, “but if any of what he’s alleging here is true, the repercussions could be explosive.”
“I started this to find out the truth about my dad, not to bring down a corporation. All I want is to know that my dad wasn’t the villain in this story.”
Gav’s mouth was set, grim and tight. “Then you’d better hope everything Fitch claims is true.”
I laid the three sheets side to side on the table between us. What we’d read was nothing short of a manifesto. Fitch’s tiny, cramped handwriting, interspersed with underscores and exclamation points scratched in so violently they occasionally ripped the page, was a real eye-opener.
Like Gav said: If any of it was true.
“Look at this,” I said, my eyes roving, finding the passages I most wanted to discuss. I pointed to one of Fitch’s first assertions. “Here. Remember when we visited Craig Benson? The Cabrigan flag he had in the corner? That fits. Sylonica is the sworn enemy of Cabriga. It’s been that way for as long as I can remember.”
Fitch told a story that was high on emotion and short on detail, but what he claimed to know, while damaging to Pluto Incorporated, would be personally ruinous to Craig Benson. Back when my dad worked for the company, Fitch wrote, Craig Benson had arranged to have “special shipments” of supplements sent to Sylonica under the guise of humanitarian aid. The supplements, however, were anything but. Benson directed that Ingredient X, a deadly toxin, be included in all products sent to Sylonica. While levels of Ingredient X wouldn’t immediately kill those who ingested it, it would most certainly hasten their demise.
“If this is true,” I continued, “Craig Benson was attempting to kill people halfway across the world, in the name of loyalty to his family’s country.”
Gav pursed his lips, letting air escape in a thoughtful whistle. “The problem I see is that this is all very self-serving,” he said. “Fitch is making some outrageous assertions here without offering a shred of proof.”
“My dad found out,” I said, “according to Fitch. That’s why they killed him.”
“That’s quite a claim.” Gav tapped the pages in front of us. “Notice how nothing he states here can be confirmed unless we find this so-called proof.” Gav shook his head as he read aloud. “‘Craig Benson is a creature of habit. He always kept everything under lock and key in his antique desk. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out all the proof is still there.’”
“I wonder what kind of evidence he’s talking about.”
Gav chewed on his lower lip. “There’s nothing in this that’s actionable. We can’t get any kind of warrant or move forward. Not without more.”
“Do you think this is what Yablonski was talking about when he told me that Pluto was being investigated?”
Gav considered this. “According to Fitch, all this happened twenty-five years ago. Why would Pluto be under investigation now? Fitch can’t be suggesting that this has been going on all these years without anyone noticing.”
“I think that’s exactly what he’s suggesting.”
“Why not take this to the authorities then? Why all the drama sending his wife with a secure package, claiming she might have been followed,” Gav pressed, “unless Fitch is working hard to manufacture mystique?” He sat back and stared at the ceiling. “I’m not saying this can’t be true. I’m saying that we need to proceed with caution.”
I’d been thinking along similar lines. “I hate to say it, but because my face has been in the paper enough times, Fitch may be counting on me to run with this. But to what end? Unless he holds a deep grudge against my dad that we’re unaware of—and he wants to take me down because of it—I can’t imagine why he’d make all this up.”
Gav steepled his fingers in front of his face. “I can’t either. We’re missing a piece of this puzzle.”
“I want to go back.”
“Where? Pluto?”
“Yes,” I said, gritting my teeth as I stood to pace. “I want to watch Craig Benson’s face as he reads the letter. Then I’ll know.”
“That won’t be good enough for you. Admit it.” He waited for me to look at him. “And if any of this is true, can you imagine the kind of danger you’d be walking into?”
“Let’s think about this.” He listened while I strode back and forth in the small room, explaining how I could bring Benson to justice. And once my father’s name was cleared of wrongdoing—the way I always knew it would be—I would take on the government and prove that any charges the military had brought against him were just as false.
“I could arrange to meet him,” I said, in a moment of brilliance. “Hang on.” I tore out of the room and returned a moment later with the disguise from Thora. Waving it in front of me, I said, “I can wear this and meet him at a public place. I could confront him with what Fitch wrote and see where it leads.”
Even as I spoke aloud and tried to make reason fit my wishes, even as I heard the words pour out of my mouth, I recognized the impossibility of what I was proposing. Gav remained silent, his attention on me, the look in his eyes changing from skepticism to sorrow.
At last I couldn’t take it anymore. I sat, spent, dropping the blonde wig and pink dress into my lap. “It won’t work, will it?”
He shook his head. “All you would do would be to let him know you’re on to him. That will probably only make things more difficult. For everyone.”
He was talking about the alleged investigation into Pluto that Yablonski warned about.
“I know. I don’t want to mess things up if Yablonski is already on to them.” I raised my eyes to the ceiling and covered them with my hands. “My dad is innocent,” I said.
“I know.”
“It’s not good enough. Not until I can prove it.”
“I know that, too.”
“Maybe,” I said, doubting the words even as they tumbled out of me, “your friend Yablonski will have an idea about what we can do next with this letter.”
Gav hesitated and in that instant I could read that he didn’t want to disappoint me by throwing obstacles in my path or by pointing out the obvious. “Maybe,” he agreed, but I knew he wasn’t confident his friend would let us in on an active investigation. “It’s worth a try.”
“Tomorrow, then?” I asked. “I could probably ask Quinn to make contact for me, but I bet this would be better coming from you.”
Gav folded the pages and tucked them into his wallet. “First thing tomorrow, I’ll give him a call.”
I placed a hand over one of Gav’s. “Thank you,” I said, “for listening.”
“I wish I could do more.”
THE NEXT MORNING, I THREW MYSELF INTO preparations for our next big event, ticking items off my list and arranging for a tasting with Mrs. Hyden. With Virgil upstairs and Cyan lending a hand in the Navy Mess, it was just me and Bucky in the kitchen. I cruised on autopilot, waiting to hear from Gav, or even from Quinn, that perhaps Yablonski wanted to speak with me again.
Nothing.
Hours went by without a word. I checked my phone every three minutes, until Bucky called me out on it. “What is up with you today?” he asked. “You haven’t been this jittery in weeks. What kind of trouble are you in this time?”
“None,” I said. “I’m waiting for a call.”
“Anyone special?”
I forced out a laugh as though that was the silliest of questions. “Yeah, I’m waiting for word from my boyfriend. We plan to elope tonight.”
He gave me a critical glare. “I wouldn’t doubt that.”
“Yep,” I said, pulling my phone up out of my pocket. “As soon as he calls—”
At that, the phone came alive, bringing with it my boring, yet serviceable ringtone.
Bucky smirked. “Should I summon the limo?”
I glanced at the display. Gav.
Starting for the door to give myself privacy, I answered.
“Turn on the TV,” he said without preamble.
I stopped in my tracks. “What?”
“Turn on the television,” he said in a voice that didn’t invite argument. “Now.”
I pivoted and returned to the kitchen, clicking the mouse to take the computer out of standby mode. “What channel?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
This couldn’t be good. As I loaded the page we usually used to track news, I said, “Is it about the White House?”
Bucky came over to watch.
“No,” Gav said. “I’ll call you back in a minute.”
He hung up.
“What is this?” Bucky asked.
My jaw dropped as the story unfolded before me. A dark-haired woman with a handheld microphone narrated the scene behind her. “Repeating our breaking news: We are here in Fairfax, Virginia, in front of Pluto, Incorporated, waiting on word from authorities.”
I wanted to shake the computer to make her words come faster. “What happened?” I asked aloud.
“What’s going on?” Bucky asked. “Why is this important to you?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said, trying to block him out. The woman was speaking again.
“Police are not releasing details,” she said, “but those employees we’ve been able to talk with claimed they heard gunfire.” The reporter stood back, gesturing toward a young woman who was talking to another reporter. Even though I could only see her profile, I recognized her as Erica, the receptionist. “This woman told us that a man stormed in earlier, brandishing a gun. Before she could call for help, he’d raced into owner Craig Benson’s office. The woman heard shots fired. At this point, we do not know what state Mr. Benson is in, or what injuries, if any, he may have sustained. Stay tuned.”
“Mickey Fitch,” I said under my breath.
In my peripheral vision, I watched Bucky’s attention bounce back and forth between the screen and my face. “What now, Ollie? Talk to me. What’s going on? Why do you know about this?”
I held up a finger, waiting to see if they had any more specifics to share, but the reporter began rehashing everything she’d already said. I turned to him. “It’s a long story,” I said.
My phone rang. Gav. “I saw it,” I said when I answered.
“It had to be Fitch.”
“What do we do now?” I asked.
Bucky didn’t even try to conceal his eavesdropping. He watched me as I gripped the phone tightly, and I realized I didn’t care if he listened in. I’d known Bucky for years now, and he’d never broken a confidence.
“I’d gotten in touch with my friend earlier,” Gav said.
“You know…” Frustration and the feeling of being useless made me interrupt. “I’m getting tired of being so careful with ‘our friend’ and ‘your friend.’” I tried to lower my voice, but anger had mounted itself in my chest and needed to vent before it exploded all over everyone. “What good is all this subterfuge when we can’t prevent situations like this?”
Gav didn’t answer. I knew he was waiting for me to calm myself. I knew he felt as helpless as I did. He was just handling it better.
“I got in touch with him,” Gav said again, this time avoiding the “my friend” euphemism. “He wants to meet this afternoon. At his office.”
My sarcasm reared its head one more time, though there was significantly less bite to my words when I asked, “Not some clandestine, out-of-the-way secret meeting place?”
“Apparently not.”
“What’s changed?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll find out. I’ll pick you up in twenty minutes.”
“I’m at work.”
“Quinn will handle your absence. See you in twenty.”
When we hung up, Bucky gave me a sad, knowing look. “I thought you might stay out of trouble for a while this time,” he said. “It’s starting again, isn’t it?”
I heaved an uneasy sigh. “To be honest, Bucky, this one started a very long time ago.”
CHAPTER 23
GAV PICKED ME UP IN A GOVERNMENT-ISSUE vehicle, and insisted on silence until we parked and made our way into a nondescript office building. He allowed me to pass first through the revolving doors. Together, he and I crossed the two-story glass-walled lobby to the elevator banks.
“I’d called Joe first thing this morning, as promised. I told him about the letter,” Gav said while we waited for an elevator to arrive. “As soon as the news broke about Fitch, he called me back and insisted we come in immediately.”
“We don’t actually know it was Fitch who invaded Pluto,” I reminded him. “The news hasn’t released—”
“It was Fitch.”
He was making an effort to avoid eye contact. “What else do we know?” I asked.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but Joe told me to let you know that Fitch was killed.”
“How?”
“The details are sketchy but apparently security took him down.”
Gav held his arm against the elevator’s door to allow us to board. We remained silent again on the ride up until we arrived at our floor, where we found ourselves in a narrow hallway.
I was processing all he’d told me when a woman in combat fatigues stepped out from one of the doors that lined the corridor. Clear skin, brown hair pulled back into a low bun, she instructed us to follow her.
At the far end of the corridor, she opened a white door and allowed us in. “I will be outside if you need anything,” she said and shut the door behind us.
Yablonski stood as we entered. “And what have we gotten ourselves into now?” he asked rhetorically.
Positioned behind a massive metal desk with his back to a wall of windows overlooking the city, he gave off an air of smoldering fury. The office itself was no more than a large storage room, with two eight-foot tables along the walls, both of them piled high with bankers’ boxes. A discreet knock at the door and the uniformed young woman entered, carrying three metal folding chairs, which she set up in front of the desk before ducking out of the room once more. I wanted to ask who the third one was for, but the scowl on Yablonski’s face kept me mum.
“Sit,” he said, as he resumed his own seat. “A man burst into Pluto today, threatening to shoot people. A man you”—here he lasered his gaze on me—“recently interviewed. A man whose wife dropped a bombshell of information in your lap last night, which I only learned about this morning. Have I left anything out?”
“Not that I can tell,” I said, keeping my chin up even as we sat down.
“When I agreed to help my friend Leonard find out about your father, I wasn’t aware of the current investigations into Pluto. Nor”—here he took a deep breath—“was I aware that my inquiries on your behalf would pull me into these investigations. And now with this Fitch business…”
“I had no idea he was planning to go to Pluto,” I said.
He glared at me.
“What happened there today?” I asked.
Clearly exasperated, Yablonski looked to Gav, who maintained a stoic expression.
“Mr. Benson is being very tight-lipped at the moment,” Yablonski said, “but we’ve talked with several witnesses. They report Fitch being agitated. He was shouting.”
“About what?”
Yablonski sent me a withering glare. “What do you think?”
I needed to hear it.
“Fitch demanded that Benson ‘come clean’ about murder and about mass killings.” He stretched his lips, then continued. “The witnesses had no idea what he meant by that, of course. But we do, don’t we? He was talking about your father’s murder and about the shipments to Sylonica, as described in the letter Leonard told me about today. To us, these are disturbing allegations. To the rest of the world, Fitch is a garden-variety lunatic who cracked under s
tress, determined to kill the hand that fed him.”
“What does that do for the investigation?”
“Your investigation is over. The only man who may have been able to assist you, Mickey Fitch, is no longer able to help.”
“Harold Linka may have known what was going on, too.”
“The man won’t talk.”
“How do you know that?” I asked. “Have you even tried?”
When he smiled, it was ugly and frightening. “We are not so inept as you would like to believe,” he said.
I rubbed my temples. There was too much to take in at once. Too many fronts to manage. “So why bring me here today?” I pointed to Gav. “Why summon us both here? Why not just reprimand me long-distance?”
“Because,” he said with a sidelong glance at Gav, “I may have more success corralling your efforts if I share what information I can.”
I was stunned. “There’s more?”
He shouted at the door. “Come, Ms. Byrne.”
When she walked in, I nearly jumped out of my chair. The shock of pink hair on one side rendered her instantly recognizable. This was the woman I’d met at the Food Expo, the one who’d asked my name and with whom I’d discussed job openings. I remembered immediately. “Sally Burns,” I said.
She was dressed much more flamboyantly this time in cerulean-blue pants, a stylish long yellow jacket, and flowery blouse. “It’s Sarah Byrne, actually,” she said in a light Australian accent. “I’ve adopted the name Sally Burns while undercover.”
“Undercover?” I turned to Yablonski. “She’s one of yours?”
He nodded as Sarah took the empty chair. “Sarah’s been enormously effective in her role. With her…” he coughed, “…unconventional appearance…”
“And the fact that I’m a jazz singer in my spare time…”
Yablonski interrupted, “Yes, that. I can’t deny that the combination has been effective. No one ever suspects Sarah as being one of ours.”
