S2W47: “Anxiety”

© 2022 Phylicia Joannis

I couldn’t help the anxiety I felt as I walked past the gates leading into Donna Ellison’s estate. Ryan took me past the main gate to a side entrance, where he keyed in the entry code.

“We’ll go through here, and I’ll speak with Greg. From there, I’ll take you to your mother, okay?”

I nodded, pressing my hands together to keep from trembling. We walked through the gate and up a long driveway until we reached a pair of garages detached from the rest of the house. A thick, burly man stood in one of them, arranging tools. He looked up as we approached.

“Ryan.” The man eyed me with suspicion as he spoke. “Shouldn’t you be out catching a rat?”

Ryan shrugged. “Well Greg, I thought this was more urgent.”

“Now there you go again, making decisions on your own.”

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as I listened to their exchange. That voice. I’d heard it before. My eyes flashed wide, and I tugged Ryan to the side. He gave me a curious look, and I shook my head.

“What is it?” he whispered.

“He’s the one I heard on the radio,” I whispered back. “Talking to Scarface.”

Ryan frowned and cleared his throat. “Take the side entrance past the kitchen. Four doors down is the parlor. If Donna’s not there, she’ll be in her office, which is up the stairs.”

I eyed Greg, who was approaching us with a scowl on his face. “What about him?”

“Leave him to me. Go!”

I made for the door, yelping when I heard Greg’s violent shout, but I didn’t stop.

Time to find my mother.

***

Sydney knew she had a story here. She’d never imagined it was something this big, but once she finished going through Dr. Jengal’s files on the flash drive, she knew it was time to pull in her team. They were working on a timeline, but there were still a few missing pieces.

“Sydney, we’re ready.” Her assistant called her into the conference room, where they had a white board filled with pictures and events.

“Talk to me, guys.” Sydney looked at the board, arms crossed across her chest as she examined their notes.

“Let’s start here. The crash that took down Mayor Blume.” One of her team members pointed. “A few days after the crash, the insurance company for the private plane reaches out to both pilots’ surviving family members with settlements. Mayor Blume has no next of kin, but he does have a beneficiary listed under his insurance named Richard Alberich. The insurance company sends his payout to him, but the beneficiary rejects it under the guise that since he’s on the board for that same insurance company, he can’t accept the funds.”

“What’s next?”

“Next on the timeline is the autopsy, which is performed by Dr. Crawford, who works for the insurance company. Dr. Jengal receives the report on this date, which happens to be the same day as the press conference.”

“Dr. Crawford signed off on that autopsy report the day before the press conference,” Sydney mused. “Which wouldn’t have given Dr. Jengal enough time to properly examine the remains, if he examined them at all.”

“Right. According to their correspondence, Dr. Crawford promised to send the remains to Dr. Jengal, but later claimed there was a miscommunication. The day of the press conference, Dr. Jengal is expecting to receive the remains so he can examine them, but instead only receives Dr. Crawford’s report. Here we have Dr. Jengal’s contact logs and some of the emails sent back and forth between him and Dr. Crawford. The day Dr. Jengal came to see you, he’d sent one final email.”

“Do you have that email readily available?”

“We do.” Another team member handed it to her, and Sydney perused through it. “Dr. Jengal was threatening to bring a complaint to the state medical board if Dr. Crawford wasn’t cooperative. Which would have put both of their jobs in jeopardy. Add to that his visit to you . . .”

“And his threats look real.” Sydney shook her head. The notes for today filled half the board. So much had happened in the course of a few hours. Dr. Crawford’s death, followed by Dr. Jengal’s. They weren’t coincidences. Both doctors knew something wasn’t right about the death of Mayor Blume and those pilots. Sydney looked back at the beginning of the timeline. “What’s that at the very beginning.”

“Ah! I was getting to that. The life insurance premium that’s supposed to be paid out to Richard Alberich was purchased two years ago. But get this. This insurance policy is designed to especially benefit victims of accidental deaths, with an additional payout for victims of aerial crashes. Richard Alberich is slated to receive nearly 50 million dollars.”

Sydney whistled. That was a lot of money. “And this note next to the autopsy report?”

“The lab results for the remains came back from BioTech one day before the autopsy report.”

“What do we have on BioTech?”

“It’s an MBI subsidiary, but this one is different from the other subsidiaries.”

“How so?” Sydney asked.

“Most of the MBI subsidiaries are financed through revenue, but BioTech is almost entirely backed by venture capital from PilTech.”

“And who owns PilTech?”

“Richard Ellison.”

Sydney tapped her finger against her chin. “What connection does Richard Ellison have to Mayor Blume?”

“None that we could find, apart from–”

Another assistant called for Sydney’s attention as she held a phone against her chest. “Sydney, I think you might wanna take this. There’s a Simon Lowe on the phone who says he has information about a terrorist attack.”

Sydney rolled her eyes. “It’s probably a prank call.”

“I don’t think it’s a prank, Sydney. He says he’s been calling around to all the stations to tell them that Donna Ellison has a bomb under Hanover St.”

Sydney froze. “Donna Ellison?”

One of her assistants paled. “That’s Richard Ellison’s wife.”

Sydney waved at her. “Put him on speaker. I want us all to hear what he has to say.”