“Did everybody clap?”
“Everybody looked for the person who signs their checks.”
“That sounds about right.”
“Afterward a cook came up to me. Woman called Raquel, the one Inez knows. She has the actual discarded cards from a training exercise last month, with seat numbers and fake names on them. They're written in four different people's handwriting. One reads ‘Hold for diamond.’ One says ‘Try pasta first.’ The full one from my mother, the one with the second line, is the only one with anything on it about the passenger making a decision.”
“Will she show them to a reporter?”
“You're reconsidering?”
“I've been speaking to my family. I have a few things I would like corrected, and I have a feeling the passenger advocate isn't going to do the job.”
There was a moment when the line went pebbly and she could just hear the background chink of catering trays at the conference. “Do you know what Mother used to write on cards in our apartment?” Daniel asked. “She'd tape them on cupboard doors. ‘If you take the last one, at least leave me the dignity of finding an empty box.’ I'd leave her the box. She could never make out whether I was an idiot or had a sense of humor.”
“That's quite often a mother's job.”
“I didn't ask her enough when she was alive. I'd give quite a lot to know what she'd want me to do about her name being tied to all this.”
“Did she like telling people what to do?”
“Loved it.”
“Then she'd have written you a card. Absence of card suggests you're free to use your own judgment.”
It was a sort of small delight to hear a man who had been professionally certain all his life say, “Thank you. I think I can do that.”
She met Libby's editor at the library that afternoon. Her name was Beatrice Long. She wore black jeans with a hole in one knee and had brought an ordinary old-fashioned tape recorder that looked as if it could survive a collision with a bus. June spent a moment admiring it for reasons Beatrice could not possibly have understood. Before they began she set the terms. There would be no family names except her own. Beatrice could print that June drove a bus, was traveling for a family event and had bought a first-class ticket. There would be no disguises or undercover operations. June would not reenact the incident on camera, with or without a tomato. If Beatrice spoke with other people she would let them say what they knew in their own names. The company was entitled to send its own account and the reporter was entitled to ask it questions.
“Would you like me to take a picture of the meal card?” Beatrice asked.
“You can when I'm done. May I ask why you brought a tape machine when you've got a perfectly good telephone?”
“People who wouldn't remember the phone was running see the wheels turning. They know where they stand with me.”
“That is the first reason I've heard in quite a while for a piece of technology that actually makes sense.”
June spread the paper bag on the table and read it to her, line by line. The reporter had the relatively rare talent of being able to hear something interesting without immediately trying to make it more interesting. When June got to the way she had turned the plate, Beatrice asked whether the card was underneath it or had been stuck to its edge. When June said she didn't know, the reporter wrote exactly that in her notebook. June told her about the soup and the unsigned receipt. She told her about the operator who had called an extra dish satisfactory. She told her Meredith apologized before they arrived in Portland and that she believed the apology. She told her she was prepared to say on the record that Inez came into the cabin well after the card first appeared. The shoulders that had been drawn up around her ears since breakfast began to settle.
“One last question,” Beatrice said, turning the machine off. “Do you want me to find out who shot the original video?”
“I don't know. Why? Does it matter?”
“It would matter to me if somebody had made a copy of my old family photograph and used it to sell something. The person who took the photograph might have the original. In your case the original might actually help you. But the person with the camera may not have been doing a wrong thing by holding it. People have had good reason to turn a camera on when they watch somebody get mistreated.”
“Very good reason. They can also have a good reason for putting it down when somebody asks.”
Beatrice put the machine in her bag. “I'll tell you something strange. Cabin Justice uploaded eighteen seconds, but one of the reflections in the window is of a person holding their phone vertically. The video they published was horizontal. Somebody else was filming from the far side of the cabin. Our picture editor thinks they used a copy of a copy.”
“Do you need me to ring everybody on the airplane?”
“No. I think all we have to do is publish an ordinary notice asking whoever took the original to get in touch. If it gets us nothing, so be it. You have plans this evening?”