The woman in 2C was crying quietly. The older man in 1C had taken off his reading glasses and was staring at the folder.
Victoria sat down on the edge of the forward galley counter like her legs wouldn’t hold her.
“I didn’t know,” she whispered. “I didn’t know any of this.”
“I know you didn’t,” I said. And strangely, I meant it.
Marcus turned another page.
“There’s one more piece,” he said. “Tonight. The call to the crew lounge.”
He took out his phone and pulled up an email that had arrived twelve minutes earlier from the Apex Air Operations Center in Dallas. Attached was a call log from the internal phone system: an outgoing call from extension 4410 at Apex Air headquarters in Los Angeles to the O’Hare crew lounge at 5:58 p.m. Central. Duration: four minutes, eleven seconds.
“Extension 4410,” Marcus said, “is Richard Haverford’s office line.”
I closed my eyes.
“He knew,” I said. “He knew who I was.”
“He found out last week,” Marcus said. “The audit report goes to the full board tomorrow morning at nine. Richard has a seat in the executive gallery. He pulled the draft agenda two days ago and saw a line item: ‘Inflight Services Historical Terminations Review, Case 2014-1188.'” Marcus paused. “Then he checked tonight’s First Class manifest and saw a Karen Mitchell in 1A, the same name as the flight attendant he framed twelve years ago. He put it together.”
Victoria looked up. Her face was white.
“He told me she was a known fraud,” she said slowly. “He said she’d been running a scam on Apex flights for years, booking cheap tickets and sneaking into First Class. He said she’d make a scene and claim she was somebody important, and that I shouldn’t believe a word. He said if I had her removed by police, on camera, he’d make sure I got the purser supervisor position in Los Angeles. A forty-thousand-dollar raise.”
The whole cabin was silent.
Sergeant Kowalski exhaled through his nose. “So he wanted it on camera.”
“He wanted it on camera,” Marcus said. “Apex Air’s board conduct policy says any director who’s arrested or charged with a crime involving disorderly conduct, fraud, or violence must take an immediate leave of absence pending review. If Karen had been arrested tonight on this airplane, Richard would’ve had the video leaked to the press by midnight. ‘Apex Air Chairwoman Arrested for Disrupting Flight.’ The board meeting tomorrow would have been postponed, the audit report delayed, and Karen pushed out.”
“And his secret would have stayed buried,” I said. “For another twelve years.”
“Maybe forever,” Marcus said.
I looked down at the pawn shop receipt.
Eleven thousand five hundred dollars was what Richard Haverford sold my career for, and then he spent twelve years climbing the ladder on top of it.
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