“No, thanks,” I said. “I think I need to be clearheaded for this.”
She walked over to a sofa with two chairs. “Let’s at least sit down and not be so formal.”
She sat on one end of the sofa. I made my way over to one of the chairs and took a seat.
“Where do I start?” Greta said, mostly to herself.
“How about we go back to my first question. Are you CIA?”
“What I’m about to tell you is highly classified information. Not even my husband knows all of this, and I’d like to keep it that way. I was CIA. For about twenty years. Operated mostly covertly in the field all over the world under dozens of different names.”
Even though I’d wondered, I still felt stunned by that answer. “Is that why I can’t find anything about Greta Varner online?”
She nodded. “How did you know my name was Varner?”
I told her about finding the old love letter she’d written to Joe—or to Daniel. And then discovering that she was in college with him at SMU.
“Joe was the reason I went into the CIA,” she explained. “He knew it was something I’d wanted to do, but my parents were resistant. He was the one who really encouraged me to follow my heart, no matter what.”
“Joe took the photo of you standing on the CIA emblem?”
“Yes. He visited while I was doing my internship with the CIA.”
“Only he was Daniel Gibson at the time.”
“Correct. Why don’t you tell me what you know, and I’ll fill in the gaps?”
So I did. I spent the next few minutes telling her everything I’d uncovered, starting with my uncertainty around Joe’s financial investment in my company to discovering Ethan Tucker had wired the $5 million to my father-in-law—all the way up to my deadly encounter outside with Antonio Perez. I figured if the guy in the lobby downstairs had been willing to kill a man in my defense, I could trust Greta Malone. But I did not tell her about the text message I’d received earlier from someone claiming to be Joe. I wasn’t sure what to do with that just yet. Did Greta already know?
“What happened with that plane crash, Greta?”
“The day that changed everything,” she mused, sighing and taking a sip of the bourbon. “I remember it like it was yesterday. I went from overwhelming grief to total relief, and then into complete shock.”
Greta said that Joe had told her in the days leading up to his trip to El Paso with his father that they had some serious concerns about their client. His dad had grown to believe the businessman was using his company to launder tens of millions of dollars for two different drug cartels inside Mexico.
“They flew down to El Paso that day to end their lawyer-client relationship,” Greta said. “Later that afternoon, I got a devastating call from someone at their office telling me that the plane had crashed with both of them inside. I was beside myself with grief but also confused.”
“Why confused?”
“Joe had told me that morning he wasn’t flying home with his dad. He said he was buying a car from someone there—a 1977 Corvette he’d been searching around for—so he hoped to be driving home in the car. He was really excited about it. Later that night, I heard the door to our apartment open, and Joe was suddenly standing there. I couldn’t believe it. He had a cap real low on his forehead and was wearing sunglasses. He quickly shut the door, as if someone might be watching from the outside, and he didn’t want to be spotted.”
I moved closer to the edge of my seat. I’d been desperate to hear this story ever since I’d read the news article at the SMU library. Greta said Joe told her that the meeting with the client did not go well. The businessman made some threats and basically said it was too late for them to get out—at least alive. Joe’s dad reiterated that they would no longer represent them on any legal matters, and they left. Before flying back to Dallas, they stopped off at a diner for lunch, where they met a desperate young drifter who told them he had family back in Dallas that he missed. Joe’s dad offered to fly him home.
“So he was the other person on the plane?”
She nodded. “No one ever knew because, like I said, the guy was a drifter. There was no family searching for him after it happened. Everyone just presumed it was Joe. His dad had dropped him off beforehand to buy the car. Joe told me he was certain the plane crash was no accident. He believed someone from one of the drug cartels sabotaged it.”
“I spoke with an airport technician who was there that day. He thought the explosion looked more like a bomb had gone off.”