CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Stuart and Tabby sat on one sofa, Mel and JK sat on the opposite sofa, and the rest of the legal team, two men and one woman, sat around them in chairs. But Mel and JK noticed that Stuart seemed more concerned about the young lady than about the evidence she claimed to have.
“Have you eaten?” Stuart asked her as soon as they sat down.
“Not yet, no.”
Stuart didn’t like her response. “What do you mean not yet? It’s nightfall, Tabitha. The day is spent.”
Tabby looked at him. “I was on the road all day. And weren’t you in custody all day? Have you eaten?”
Stuart smiled. “You’re too sharp for me,” he said, which made her smile. Then he leaned behind her and pressed a button on the side table.
“Good evening, Francois.”
“Good evening, sir. What can I do for you?”
Stuart looked at Tabby. “What’s your favorite meal?”
“That’s easy. It’s always spaghetti. But with meat sauce, not meatballs.”
“You heard that?”
“I did, sir.”
“Add salad and garlic bread,” Stuart said, the chef acknowledged the order, and then the call ended.
Tabby had to ask. “A chef lives in your apartment?”
“He has an apartment downstairs, but he’s on-call twenty-four-seven.”
“For the whole building?”
“Oh no,” said Mel. “There was two chefs for the whole building. Francois only services the penthouse and a few other similarly-situated residents. Which means,” Mel added, “that Francois services only the billionaires who own apartments in this building. All the other wealthy families, the millionaires, are forced to share the other chef.”
JK laughed. “Must be nice,” he said as his team chuckled too.
Although Tabby laughed too, Stuart could tell that the very thought of that “b” word was a shock to her system. He had every intention of discussing his lifestyle with her at breakfast earlier that morning, but the Feds ruined that plan.
But JK wasn’t there for the fun of it. He had a job to do. He leaned forward. “Now please, by all means young lady, tell us about this proof you said you have.”
Tabby took a moment to compose herself. Especially with everybody’s eyes on her now.
But she was confident in what she had. “After the FBI told me that a ticket-taker in a parking garage here in New York saw Stuart come in and then leave in a hurry after shots were fired, and that it all happened around ten last night, I knew that couldn’t be right. ”
“It can’t be right because I was in Larkin last night,” Stuart said.
“But the problem is that the crime took place around ten,” said JK.
“Because according to that motel’s check-in log, and we have guys on the ground who checked this out thoroughly, Stuart checked in around seven-thirty last night.
That meant he would have had two-and-a-half hours to fly to New York, commit the crime, and then fly back to Larkin.
Which is technically possible since it only takes an hour by plane from Larkin to New York. ”
“But there’s no record of me flying out of Larkin last night,” said Stuart. “Did the investigators confirm that too?”
JK shook his head. “They couldn’t confirm it, no.”
Stuart frowned. “Why the hell not, JK?”
“It’s not as if that tiny airfield in Larkin is like LaGuardia or JFK. Most of the people flying out of that place are flying crop dusters or some little helicopter, and they don’t bother to keep records of takeoffs and landings. They don’t have the personnel to do it. It’s a very rural airfield.”
“Then if that’s the case,” Mel said to Tabby, “what kind of evidence could you have that our investigators couldn’t find?”
Tabby pulled a flash drive out of her pocket. “Alvin was gonna upload it to my phone,” she said, “but my phone fell in a big puddle of water and stopped working.”
“No wonder I couldn’t reach you by phone,” Stuart said. “And when I ordered my guys on the ground to go to that motel and then to your home and bring you here, they couldn’t find you at either location.”
“As soon as I got this evidence,” Tabby said, “I drove straight to New York.”
“But what evidence is what I’m asking?” Mel was getting impatient. “You keep saying you have evidence, but you won’t tell us what. What’s on that flash drive?”
“I have video that shows the time we checked in, the time we walked into our motel room, and how we stayed in that room all night until the next morning when the FBI showed up. I was so out of it the night those punks broke into my house that I thought we checked into that motel around nine rather than seven-thirty. I thought all I would need was a video showing the time we checked in. But when I saw the tape and realized we checked in at seven-thirty rather than at nine, I asked Alvin to show me more video of our motel room door to prove we stayed put all night until the next morning. And he got it for me.”
“Wait a minute,” JK said. “Something’s not right.
How could you have a video showing all of that, young lady, when the security guard, who’s in charge of the video, told our guys that the cameras weren’t working that night?
He claimed there was no video to see. And sure enough, when our security team went to that motel and pulled it up, all video of that night was missing.
All of it. It could have been wiped, sure, but the fact remains it wasn’t there. ”
“He must have scrubbed it after I got a copy,” said Tabby.
“But why?”
“Somebody could have paid him to wipe it clean before our guys got there,” said Mel.
Then Stuart looked at Tabby. “But why would the security guard give you a copy? You didn’t have any money to throw his way.”
“But you did,” Tabby said.
JK frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean? Stuart wasn’t there.”
Tabby pulled out Stuart’s wallet and looked at him. “You left this behind, remember?”
Stuart smiled. “Ah,” he said as he received it from her.
“Two years ago you said you never carried cash. But you had a big wad of cash in that wallet last night. Thank God.”
“So you took Stuart’s money and paid the guard?”
Tabby nodded. “I had to. And I used his money to put gas in his car too.”
“How much did you pay him?” Mel asked.
“A thousand dollars,” Tabby said. “And even then he still didn’t wanna do it. But because he knew me, he went on and did it anyway.”
“I’m sure that grand helped more than his knowledge of you,” Mel said.
“Alvin’s not like that. He doesn’t like to do the wrong thing. But I told him they were trying to blame me for a crime I didn’t commit. That’s the main reason he did it.”
JK and Mel glanced at each other. They both wondered if Tabby took that grand for herself.
But Stuart took her hand and squeezed it. “You did the right thing, babe,” he said to her, which caused his employees to glance at each other yet again. They’d never seen Stuart treat a woman so kindly, and with such kid gloves. “But who’s this Alvin?” he asked Tabby.
“You remember. He was the tall black guy sitting in the office and was talking to me while you checked in. I went to school with his sister. Once I realized you needed proof of a timeline, I thought of Alvin and hurried to the office and asked for his help. I told him they were trying to claim I committed a crime so he could think he was helping me. Somebody might have paid him to wipe the tape clean after I got that tape, I don’t know what happened after that.
But I have the proof right here,” she said, waving that flash drive around.
JK stood up and hurried over to her. “May I?” he asked.
Tabby looked at Stuart. Stuart nodded for her to hand it over to him, and she did.
While JK and one of his assistants went to upload the flash drive into Stuart’s TV, Stuart looked at her. “Is this Alvin supposed to have feelings for you?”
“Alvin? No way! He’s way older than me.”
Mel and JK looked at Stuart. It didn’t seem to bother her about Stuart being old enough to be her father, but the age of some security guard in Larkin was a problem?
If that wasn’t a red flag that he just might have a gold digger on his hands, they didn’t know what was.
But then again, Mel thought as he continued to look at his longtime friend, it didn’t seem to bother Stuart either.
But it did bother Stuart. He wasn’t showing it, but their age gap was a definite concern.
But it was mainly because he still wondered if she had the emotional maturity to navigate his world without crashing and burning from its harshness.
Despite her independence and confidence, he still viewed her as very innocent to the ways of the world. And very vulnerable.
But when JK began playing the video, they all were relieved that it showed exactly what it needed to show: That Stuart and Tabby checked into the Larkin Inn at seven-thirty-three last night.
Then the camera at the end of the breezeway showed them entering their motel room a minute later.
JK did a fast-forward through the video as it showed that same motel room door closed all night long.
It opened again at eight nineteen that next morning, with Stuart and Tabby walking out, Tabby rushing back in to get his wallet and keys, and then the FBI showing up. It was clear, irrefutable evidence.
But JK had been a criminal defense attorney for decades. He needed airtight evidence. “Are there any back doors or back windows of any kind inside that motel room?” he asked.
“None,” said Stuart.
“Praise God!” said JK. But then he looked at one of his assistants.
“Get our guys to that motel right away, and specifically to room 14B. Have them film the entire room, close and far-angle, so that it can be clear to the DA that there were are no way in or out except by that one door. Then have them upload it directly to me as soon as they film it.”
“Will do,” the assistant said and began making the phone call.
“Save five copies,” JK said to another assistant, “and then rack it up. Send it to your phone first, and then send it to mine.” He pulled out his phone. “I’m calling the DA right now.”
“But it’s night time,” Tabby said.