Free The Death of Lorenzo Jones by Brad Latham

approached him.
    “Who are you? You look like a cop. I talked to the FAA already. They don’t believe me ‘cause I’m a kid.”
    Lockwood never liked teenagers who sneered. The kid wiped his running nose on his coverall sleeve and continued talking.
    “Lorenzo couldn’t have crashed, he had to have been bumped off.”
    “What makes you think that?”
    “ ’Cause I checked out that biplane myself. I’m studying aviation. And I’m an expert, see? And he checked it, too, and he
     wasn’t drunk or nothing—that’s why.”
    Lockwood pulled out his badge. “You know what this is?”
    The kid studied it, sneered again. “Yeah, a phony cop’s badge. So what?”
    Damn, thought Hook, struck out again.
    “I’m an insurance investigator. I have suspicions just like yours. If you want to have whoever killed Lorenzo Jones fried
     in the electric chair, you’ve got to help me, okay?”
    The kid smiled for the first time. “You
believe
me?”
    “Sure I do.” Lockwood put his arm over the kid’s shoulder, and they walked together. “Listen, what do you like to be called?
     Is Stinky okay?”
    “Stinky’s fine. What’s your name?”
    “They call me Hook Lockwood, but Bill’s my first name.”
    “Hook?”
    “On account of my left hook, kid. I used to box.”
    “Gee. Let’s see your fists.” The kid was impressed.
    “Is there some place we can talk, in private, Stinky?”
    “My place,” the kid suggested.
    “My place” turned out to be a makeshift Boy’s Club tarpaper-and-sticks shack in back of the main hangar. Still, there was
     a chair and enough light through the cracks in the walls to light a Camel. The kid took one, too, and spoke between coughs.
    “I just know he couldn’t fly that bad, Hook.”
    “Yeah, but I have to have something specific. Was anyone after Lorenzo? Did someone he know have something against him?”
    The kid laughed, shook his head. “Not that I know.”
    Lockwood now saw why the cops didn’t believe him. The kid felt guilty about not seeing anything wrong with the plane and besides
     he was a
kid
. And he had nothing specific, just a feeling.
    “Did you see the plane go down?”
    “Yeah.” The kid turned his sneakers into the gravel floor, looked sad. “It nosed over and went straight down.”
    “Stinky,” Hook confided, “you might, as I said, be right. I heard Lorenzo was a great pilot. Listen, if someone did that to
     Lorenzo, I mean to catch them. I need some information. My next question might sound silly.”
    The kid looked surly again, but didn’t say anything.
    “My question is: Did Lorenzo take a thermos with him in the plane that day?”
    “Why?”
    “It’s important.”
    “Yes, he did. Mrs. Jones filled it with coffee. Lorenzo was to go up to Albany for a package. He was late getting off. All
     these people were here to see him off. His boss, Cyrus Wade—that ugly-faced guy—and Mrs. Jones. I don’t like her. Wade was
     telling him to be careful because he needed him to pitch.”
    “Mrs. Jones gave Lorenzo a thermos?” Lockwood pressed.
    “It was Lorenzo’s thermos, Hook. She filled it for him from the old percolator over in the hangar.”
    “Did you watch her fill it?”
    “Of course not. Why?”
    “Just hoping.”
    “Lorenzo was late getting off because a plane was landing. He likes coffee. So he unscrewed his thermos and had a cup before
     he took off.”
    “What?”
    “Well, why not? What’s so important about drinking a cup of coffee?”
    Hook’s mind went wild. This would explain what had been bothering him. He thought it unlikely that Lorenzo would have drunk
     the coffee just as he was getting the plane off the runway. That Lorenzo drank from the thermos
before he took off
would explain the immediate dive of the plane—the poison hit his intestines. The killer, if he or she were watching, must
     have seen the fire crew rush off to the crash and realized that the thermos might not be consumed by the fire. And realized
     he or