Chapter 3 - The Summons at the Terminal
The international arrivals terminal at John F. Kennedy Airport was an ocean of luggage carts, tired travelers, and damp coats.
At 2:30 PM on Monday, Fallon and Miles walked through the customs exit from the Saint-Tropez flight. Fallon wore an oversized beige fleece set from an expensive boutique brand, designer sunglasses large enough to cover half her cheekbones, and an unzipped shearling coat. Her phone was clamped to her right ear, while her left hand held a six-dollar bottled green juice. Miles trailed three paces behind her, pushing a heavy brass cart laden with four matching trunks of ivory Louis Vuitton luggage, looking like an exhausted bellhop who had realized sixty hours into his marriage that his wife was a commercial enterprise rather than a human being.
"I don't care about the comment moderation, Sutton!" Fallon was screaming into the phone, her voice echoing off the ceramic tile walls of the terminal. "Just delete anything that mentions 'burns' or 'acid'! Set the auto-filter to hide the word 'police'! We’re at two point eight million views! We’re forty thousand clicks away from the Velour payout!"
She paused, pulling the phone away from her ear, glaring at the screen.
"Sutton? Sutton, answer me!"
"She's not answering, Mrs. Ward," a flat, bureaucratic voice said from her right.
Two men stepped out from behind a concrete pillar.
The first was Process Server Arthur Pendelton, a seventy-year-old former state trooper with a face carved out of weathered sandstone, wearing a nondescript gray trench coat. The second was Detective Miller from the White Plains Special Victims Division, accompanied by two uniformed Port Authority police officers whose hands rested casually on their utility belts.
Fallon stopped. Her sunglasses slipped down her nose by half an inch. "Excuse me? Are you talking to me?"
Arthur Pendelton did not raise his voice. He reached into his leather briefcase, pulled out a stack of blue-backed legal documents that was three inches thick, and held it out.
"Fallon Ward, also known as Fallon Ward-Miller," Pendelton intoned, his voice carrying the rhythmic, unhurried cadence of a man who had served death warrants and corporate liquidations for forty years. "I am serving you with a Summons and Verified Complaint in the matter of Sloan Whitmore v. Fallon Ward, Sibil Ward, Ward Media LLC, and Lumière Aesthetics Group Inc., index number twenty-four-eighty-two, filed in the Supreme Court of New York."
Fallon didn't take the papers. Her hands dropped to her sides, her jaw slackening. "What... what is this? Is this a joke? Who sent you?"
"Your sister sent me, ma'am," Pendelton said. When she refused to lift her hands, he placed the heavy legal packet flat against her shearling coat, letting it slide down her front until it hit the terrazzo floor at her feet with a heavy, administrative thud.
Miles let go of the luggage cart. "Hey! You can't just throw papers at my wife! Do you know who my father is?"
Detective Miller stepped forward, flashing his gold gold shield in its black leather case.
"Miles, step back," Miller said. He looked at Fallon. "Miss Ward, you need to step over to the secondary screening office."
Fallon’s voice went from arrogant to shrill in zero point four seconds. "I am not going to any screening office! I just got off an eleven-hour flight from France! I have a press junket in Manhattan at five o'clock! I don't know what kind of pathetic lie Sloan is telling you, but she attacked my mother at my reception! It’s all on video! We have three million views!"
"We have the video, Miss Ward," Detective Miller said, his tone entirely devoid of warmth. "We have the raw footage Julian Cole surrendered under federal grand jury subpoena at eight o'clock yesterday morning. The eight-thousand-pixel uncompressed RAW files. The ones where you can see the trichloroacetic acid dissolving the epidermis off your sister's cheek while you tell her not to be a downer."
Every traveler within thirty feet stopped walking.
The terminal went quiet, save for the mechanical hum of the baggage carousels in the distance.
Fallon’s face didn't go pale; it went the color of damp parchment. Her hands began to shake violently, the green juice slipping from her fingers, the plastic bottle hitting the tile and exploding in a muddy, emerald puddle across the cuffs of her designer trousers.
"The... the raw footage?" she stammered, her gaze darting to Miles, who had backed away two full steps, his hands raised in a posture that screamed he had no intention of being arrested in an international arrivals corridor.
"Your mother was taken into custody forty minutes ago at her residence in White Plains," Miller continued, his voice calm, methodical, and relentless. "The court has issued an emergency order of attachment freezing all operational accounts for Ward Media LLC, including your Chase merchant accounts and the PayPal developer balances. You have forty-eight hours to surrender your passport to the county clerk."
"No," Fallon whispered, tears finally breaking through her heavy eyeliner, streaking down her cheeks in dark, greasy tracks. "No, that's impossible. Miles, call your father. Call your father’s corporate lawyer!"
Miles looked at the four matching Louis Vuitton trunks on the cart. He looked at the two uniformed Port Authority officers. And then he looked at his bride—the woman whose luxury lifestyle he had financed with his family's trust money.
"Miles?" she wailed, reaching for his arm.
Miles stepped back, out of her reach. He pulled his leather weekender bag from the top of the stack, slung the strap over his shoulder, and took his phone from his pocket.
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"My father’s lawyer is an estate attorney, Fallon," Miles said, his voice flat, exhausted, and completely empty. "He doesn't handle chemical assaults. Call your mother."
He turned on his heel, walked past the line of staring tourists, and hailed a yellow cab at the curb, leaving Fallon standing in the puddle of green juice, her designer luggage abandoned, the three-inch stack of legal summons resting against her white leather sneakers like an iron weight.
