seymoure

A Definite Non-Phoenix

“I wouldn't mind dying in a plane crash. It'd be a good way to go. I don't want to die in my sleep, or of old age, or OD...I want to feel what it's like. I want to taste it, hear it, smell it. Death is only going to happen to you once; I don't want to miss it.”

-Jim Morrison

Chester and I spent a lost evening sifting through those case histories that had been delivered from the insurance company to my room.

“Wait, wait, here’s something,” Chester hopped up and rushed to me. “This is another one, but a bit different.”

On the page was another appointment, this one a full two weeks before any of the others, for W. Simonson. But before the name were the letters “RV” in a different color ink.

“RV?” I mused, “What does that mean?”

“Reserved?” my friend ventured, half-heartedly, “Or really virtuous?”

“Maybe he was going to sell Barton a recreational vehicle,” my statement was even less convinced of its right to escape my mouth than his had been.

Then came a phone call.

We were in for the plane crash investigation, but we really needed to be early. We were to check in with one Simon Churchill at 6:45 a.m.

So with only a slight regret, we put the papers aside and Chester retired to his suite, leaving me to fight the eternal fight to get to sleep.

There has, for me, always been something magical about leaving a wake-up call. To set an automated clock to wake you is mechanical, but to have a human call you at the appointed time was like being rich enough, even when I wasn’t, to have a valet to awaken you. The other difference between an alarm clock and a wake-up call is that there is no “snooze button.”

Rachel was an Olympic quality snooze button player. She could hit snooze for a full hour before rising, and seem none the worse for wear. I am up when the alarm goes off and drag myself off to the day.

This morning I was up when a computer voice came over the phone telling me the time. It was very disappointing. It was not the last disappointment this day would bring me.

We had breakfast (though they officially termed it brunch) at the hotel restaurant. It was nice enough but far too frou-frou for me. I could have done with some nice ham and eggs, but they were doing an Omelet Bar with crepes on the side. There was not a cinnamon roll in sight. The food was good, though uninspired. I thought back to my college days and a cheap breakfast place called “The Pink Tunnel.” It was just a long former store painted pink with simple fare, including the best sausage gravy and home-made biscuits you ever tasted. Once again, proof I’ll never have the mind of a rich person.

Next we went to the site of the plane crash. There wasn’t much for me to do other than keep people distracted while Chester investigated.

The highpoint for me was when I talked to one of the park rangers who had been at the clean-up. His name was Fred Kelly. As I planned to do with everyone, I showed him the picture of Terry Mahoney and he recognized him. The kicker was that he knew him by another name. Seems Mahoney identified himself as an insurance investigator named Mallary. Kelly didn’t remember the first name he gave, but did remember seeing business cards to that effect. I smiled inwardly. Business cards are one of the greatest keys to a scam. Show someone a business card and they accept you are who you say you are, better than a driver’s license, even with a picture. Now that I knew he was giving a false identity, Terry Mahoney had just become much more interesting.

Chester came back from talking with Simon Churchill, the contact for the NTSB investigation, with the same information that we had already. But there was an addendum. The coroner said that it was “funny,” but there were traces of toxins in Sarah Browning’s body that would have killed her if she hadn’t been in the crash.

I got on the phone with the lab our detective agency used, and they told me that the toxin, ricin, would not have occurred in her life accidentally. Also, they said that she would not have been able to reach the plane, much less fly it, before she was stone-cold dead.

Chester said that Churchill had been dismissive of the coroner’s finding. He told me that the man acted suspiciously, and he didn’t trust him.

I wanted to follow up with the NTSB man myself, but he was gone already. This guy, in my opinion, had been bought off. It was a shame I couldn’t talk to him directly. He might have been a direct line to the truth.

We’d have the guys back home find out about him, but so far a promising lead had become another disappointment.

Back to the Beginning

Continue on to Chapter 14