by Nick Pirog
Victoria Page’s chin moved down slightly.
“But after a year, you got greedy. You decided to approach David Ramsey on your own. You got him to double everyone’s payout from ten thousand dollars a month to twenty thousand. You decided there was no reason to tell the others and that there was no way they would ever find out while you controlled all the money. So pretty soon you were getting twenty thousand a month, plus an extra forty thousand you were skimming off the other four. Sixty thousand dollars a month. For almost eighteen years. That’s nearly thirteen million dollars.”
I waited for Victoria to speak.
One minute.
Two.
Five.
Finally, she said, “After a year of getting an extra ten thousand dollars a month, I bought my first quarter horse. But it was so much more expensive than I thought it would be: the training, the travel, all the expenses. Soon, I was in over my head.” Her eyes started to water. “I went to David Ramsey, demanding that he double all our payouts. I couldn’t believe how easily he agreed to it. I had no intention of skimming from the others, but then I realized all the money came through me and that the others would never know.”
“Then you had nearly three-quarters of a million dollars coming in each year. So you bought yourself some property and a bunch of horses.”
She nodded.
“So there was no inheritance from your father?”
“No.”
I said, “But with Neil Felding threatening to blow the whistle on Lunhill, you stood to lose it all: the ranch, the horses, everything. Not to mention spending a few years in jail.”
“Neil wanted to meet,” she said. “I’m not sure how he knew I was involved. I got a text from Odell saying that I needed to meet at the Save-More at 8:30 p.m. that night.”
I doubt Neil Felding knew about Victoria’s involvement. I’m guessing he only knew about Tom Lanningham, Odell, and Greg Mallory. But Odell either decided that if he had to meet with Neil, then everyone had to, or he thought because Victoria controlled the payoffs, she would be able to reason with him.
I said, “You didn’t know exactly what Neil Felding knew. But you assumed that if he wanted you at the meeting, then he could very well know about the money and how you’d been ripping off your partners for almost twenty years.”
She shook her head, but I was on a roll.
“That’s where Lowry Barnes comes into play. You knew him from when he was a boy. You said it yourself. And you knew he was just recently fired from his job at the Save-More. So you offered him five hundred grand, half up front, half on completion, to kill Neil Felding. And while he’s at it, you tell him to clean house and get rid of Tom, Odell, and anybody else who shows up for the meeting. You masterminded the whole thing.”
“No,” she insisted.
“It would have looked suspicious if you didn’t get shot yourself, so you told Lowry to shoot you in two places where you knew you wouldn’t be mortally wounded.”
Tears were streaming down her face.
“Lowry did exactly what you told him to do, killed everyone else there, and put one in your shoulder and hip. Then Lowry leaves. What I don’t know is whether or not Lowry really did commit suicide or if you paid someone else to kill him.”
“I didn’t...I didn’t,” she muttered.
“After you’ve recovered from your injuries, all your problems have gone away. They all died that night. Except a couple years later, you hear from Eccleston that one of his officer’s, Mike Zernan, is still looking into the murders. Then you get word that I, a retired homicide detective, had been to see him.”
Here is where I was on shaky ground. “I’m guessing you used the same guy you used to kill Lowry. Who knows, you have millions of dollars, it wouldn’t have been hard to find someone. After all you’ve gone through, you couldn’t risk Mike divulging his suspicions, so you have him killed too.”
Victoria glanced up, her eyes red, swollen.
“You had my father killed!” Wheeler shouted. She picked up her martini glass and chucked it across the room at Victoria. It smashed into the window behind her, raining glass down into her scarlet hair.
“No, no…please,” Victoria cried. “Please, no…please no…”
Victoria fell to her side, curled into the fetal position, and began whimpering. A moment later, In the crotch of her jeans, a dark stain began to blossom.
I’d joked about having PTSD from falling out of the tree. And Eccleston had paid a psychologist to diagnose Mike Zernan with PTSD. But I was pretty sure what was happening to the woman in front of me was the real thing.
Had the crack of the martini glass reminded Victoria of gunshots and triggered something in her subconscious? Had it sent her back to that day? Or was she faking?
If so, she would be receiving an Oscar nomination come January.
I turned to Wheeler.
She was biting her lip, her eyes heavy and moist.
I grabbed her by the shoulder and said, “She didn’t do it.”
“What?” Wheeler asked. “What do you mean?”
“She wasn’t the mastermind,” I said, glancing at the broken woman on the couch. “She was the target.”
Chapter Thirty
The license plates were from all over. Texas. Florida. Colorado. Pennsylvania. Illinois. South Carolina. Evidently, people drove thousands of miles to come to Brookfield, Missouri the first weekend in August.
Brookfield was thirty minutes north of Tarrin, a small town of four thousand, which blossomed to around twenty thousand each summer for the Great Pershing Balloon Festival.
It was 2:00 in the afternoon on Sunday. According to the festival website, more than seventy-five hot air balloons would take flight in just under an hour.
Wheeler and I stepped from the car and headed toward the crowd gathered a quarter mile from the overflowing dirt parking lot. A storm threatened in the distance, white thunderheads overlapping above a graying sky, which I’m sure was causing some trepidation among the pilots and crowd.
“You said you came here a few times with your dad?” I asked.
Wheeler nodded. “Yeah, when I was little.” She hadn’t said much on the drive. She’d simply held my hand and glanced out the window. I think she had a bit of pre-game jitters. Or maybe she was more scared of heights than she let on. “One year, it got rained out, or the wind was too strong, I can’t remember. We ended up going to see a movie at the theater in town.”
“Do you remember what movie?”
She wrinkled her nose, something I noticed she did when she was thinking, and said, “The Adam’s Family.”
“Really? I can’t believe you remember that.”
“I only remember because I started the seventh grade a month later and I wore my hair in pigtails like Wednesday.”
We stopped walking and I pulled her hair to both sides, making mock pigtails. “Maybe we can try that again sometime.”
“That’s your fantasy, huh? Wednesday from The Adam’s Family?” She punched me in the shoulder. “You sicko.”
“You know my fantasy.”
“I know, Selene from Underworld.” She smiled. “I told you I’m working on it.”
I punched her in the shoulder. “Thatta girl.”
She’d yet to tell me her fantasy and I said, “I know you have one. Just tell me already.”
She sighed. Glanced at me. Nearly spoke. Blushed. Sighed again. “I don’t even know where it came from,” she said.
“Just tell me. I’ll take it to the grave with me.”
“Like when the balloon crashes with us in it.”
“The balloon isn’t going to crash. They are very safe.”
“How would you know?”
She was right. I’d never been in a hot air balloon. I’d never even been near one. “You ever hear about someone crashing in a hot air balloon?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“After I found out we were coming here, I searched videos on the i
nternet and watched about twenty videos of hot air balloons crashing.”
I laughed, pulled her to my side and gave her a kiss on the side of the head.
“What was that for?”
I shrugged, then said, “Now tell me your fantasy.”
She took a deep breath, then said, “You know the actor Val Kilmer?”
“Of course,” I said, grinning. “What is it? Ice Man? Please tell me it’s him as Ice Man! And why would you be ashamed of that!?”
“I know how happy that would make you, but no, not Ice Man.”
“Him as Batman?”
“Strike two.”
“Doc Holliday?”
“Nope”
“Him as Jim Morrison? That’s got to be it.”
She shook her head and said, “Think more recent.”
I didn’t recall Val Kilmer having any title roles in the last decade, let alone anything that would get a girl’s motor running.
I was a detective.
I should be able to figure this out.
Val Kilmer.
And she was ashamed of it.
I stared at her, my eyes doubling in size. “No!”
She dropped her head.
I screeched, “Fat Val Kilmer!?!”
Keeping her head down, she nodded.
I let loose a giant laugh. “You have a thing for Fat Val Kilmer!?”
And then I realized why she was ashamed. Why she didn’t want to tell me.
I looked myself up and down. I said, “Please tell me—”
She looked up. She was biting her bottom lip. “When I first saw you—”
I screamed, “I reminded you of Fat Val Kilmer!?”
She nodded.
I burst out laughing.
Pretty soon the both of us were laughing so hard that two groups stopped walking and turned around.
It felt good. It helped assuage some of my fury. And some of my guilt. About what I would have to do next.
We wended our way through the barrage of spectators to the sectioned-off portion where the pilots were readying their balloons. The employees working the event all had red T-shirts on with a yellow and blue hot air balloon on the front. On the back it read “33rd Annual Pershing Hot Air Balloon Derby.”
Two of these employees were sitting behind a small table, and I gave them my name. They checked a printout then handed over two plastic nametags and lanyards. It’d been awhile since I’d worn one, not since the last FBI task force I was a part of.
“When’s the last time you wore one of these?” I asked Wheeler.
She pulled the lanyard over her head and said, “I went to a conference last year in Ohio. Future of Veterinary Technology.”
“You’re a vet?” asked the woman who’d handed us the badges.
Wheeler nodded and the woman asked a quick question about which dog food she should be giving her two-year-old labradoodle.
Wheeler told her a couple of her favorite brands, which the woman scribbled on a piece of paper. Then Wheeler asked the woman, “Has anyone ever gotten hurt on one of these?”
“Not here. Only had one balloon crash in thirty-three years and no one got hurt. But I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a small risk.”
“What about that storm?” Wheeler pointed toward the approaching clouds.
“We’re keeping an eye on things. It’s still a hundred miles off according to our resident meteorologist. You should be back down well before then. And if it does come close, your pilot will be notified and he’ll get you down.”
Wheeler thanked her, then we made our way toward the many tents and balloons.
“What’s a labradoodle?” I asked.
“A Labrador and poodle mix.” She said it all nearly as one word. She was nervous.
I said, “You don’t have to go. We don’t have to do this now.” It had been a week and a half since the powwow at Simon Beach.
“Yes, we do. And yes, I do.”
And we left it at that.
The balloons were staged thirty yards from one another. About half were assembled, filled, their patterned designs and bright colors reaching sixty feet into the air. The other half were on their sides, being attached to baskets or tended to in some way.
We bypassed a balloon that was yellow and blue. Then a purple balloon with white stars. Then one with vertical stripes of several different colors. Another balloon was checkered in every color of the rainbow. Finally, near the center, we came to a balloon that had red, black, and white zigzagging stripes.
There was a loud roar as the man in the basket released a barrage of fire and the balloon pulled against its tethers.
“Jerry!” I shouted.
He turned around. Smiled. Turned down the flame. He said, “I was wondering if you guys were gonna show up.”
Wheeler and I approached the basket. It came up to right above my sternum. It was roughly eight feet square and according to Jerry, held four people comfortably or six people uncomfortably. But as Jerry’s wife and boys were at a big soccer tournament in St. Louis, it would only be the three’s company of Jerry, Wheeler, and myself.
“You guys ready for this?” he asked.
I gave him a thumbs-up.
Wheeler smiled nervously.
Jerry spent the next ten minutes telling us what everything was and how everything worked. He was interrupted by a bullhorn, whereby Jerry told us to climb into the basket, or gondola. There was an extra propane tank in one corner. Then in all four corners, there were two large sandbags fastened to the side. Jerry explained the extra weight helped balance the basket when in the air. The balloon itself, he referred to as the parachute.
A minute later, a team of red shirts unleashed the first balloon—yellow and green striped—and it slowly rose into the sky. On the opposite end, another balloon was released. Thirty seconds later, two more began their ascent.
We were closer to the middle, so we had to wait a good seven or eight minutes before two red shirts began untethering our ropes from the tie-downs.
“Have fun!” they screamed as Jerry pulled down on the burner throttle and we lifted off the ground.
The basket rocked, and Wheeler reached out and grabbed my arm. She held tight for the next few minutes as we smoothly rose and the spectators below shrunk to figurines.
“How high will we go?” I asked loudly.
He turned down the burner, the thundering roar dissipating some, and you could feel our ascent slow. He nodded toward an altimeter near the burner and said, “A few thousand feet.”
I gave Wheeler a reassuring smile, then said, “And how do you steer this thing?”
“Winds change directions at different altitudes. Just need to find the right altitude then stay there for a few minutes. But I’d be lying if I said it’s an exact science.”
“Roger that.”
He grinned, then blasted the burner, and we were yanked toward the heavens.
Wheeler let out a small involuntary whine.
I laughed.
She hooked her arm through mine, her other hand gripping the basket’s edge. We inhaled the view. Arguably, it was one of the most beautiful landscapes I’d ever seen. The rolling green hills, the neatly sectioned-off farm plots, a small lake in the distance, the seventy other balloons scattered in every direction, even the thunderheads miles and miles away.
Under different circumstances, I might have enjoyed the moment.
I turned around and shouted, “You killed Mike Zernan!”
Over the roar of the burner, it’s possible he didn’t hear me. He pulled his hand off the throttle, the rumbling quieting.
I repeated, “You killed Mike Zernan.”
I watched his eyes. I’d been wrong twice already. I couldn’t handle being wrong a third time.
If he were a deer, he would have been inside the windshield of the car that had just blinded him.
I said, “And you did it to cover up the fact you paid Lowry Barnes to kill Victoria Page.”
He blinked t
wice, then shook his head. “What are you talking about?”
“You were Victoria Page’s banker.”
The picture I’d seen at his house. Of Patrick on the horse. In the foreground, you could see the black fence post. It was the same one Bree had been straddling the day we’d gone to visit Page Ranch.
“It’s a small town,” he said. “Half the people bank at First Missouri.”
“I’m sure they do. But how many of them do you help embezzle money?”
He fought against his urge to swallow, but lost. His Adam’s apple disappeared twice, then he said, “Embezzle?”
“Victoria could have opened bank accounts and trusts anywhere—the Cayman’s, Switzerland, Canada—but she felt more comfortable using someone she trusted. She felt better with all that money near her. How big was your cut? Five percent? Ten?”
He didn’t answer.
“Did you even know where she was getting the money from? Did you even care?”
I doubt he ever knew how Victoria Page came into the money. And I highly doubted he knew about the Lunhill cover-up. Most likely, he figured she was just stealing the money from the city budget.
I continued, “Of course you didn’t care. You just needed the money. To fuel your habit.”
He glared at me.
“Your gambling habit,” I said. “You bet a lot with Will Dennel. Or should I say, you lost a lot.” I waited a half second then added, “Fuzz.”
He took a tiny step backward.
I continued, “It’s hard to keep a habit like that from your spouse. And I’m guessing that was the reason you and Joan separated for a year. It was your gambling. And you knew if she found out you were up to your old habits—that you were into Will Dennel for eighty large—that she would take the boys and leave. And this time for good. That’s the leverage Victoria had on you. And that’s why you couldn’t just take freely from Victoria’s accounts. She couldn’t tell the police what you were doing without you guys both ending up in jail. You were the US and Russia in the cold war in that regard. Mutually Assured Destruction. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t tell your wife about your gambling.”
