January 15, 2012.
“Hello, Barry, this is Brian Peterson with the IRS. Thanks for sending over the file.” “You’re welcome”, responded the NTSB agent. “Did you ever determine the cause of the crash?”asked Peterson. Barry smiled, because there was no official determination of the crash.
“No, we made no final findings. You see this plane is very air-worthy, one of the safest in the air and they rarely go down. It might have been pilot error or hypoxia due to depressurization of the cabin. Lots of theories in our shop, but nothing definitive.”
“Barry, could Mr. Jones have faked his own death”, Brian asked hopefully. “How do you explain the dead body in the plane which matches the decedent’s description, dental records, and DNA, if it was a fake. And that was a very real plane crash. Now if you were to ask me if he crashed the plane on purpose to kill himself…” Barry’s voice faded off. “Nah, I’m sorry, that’s a real stretch, since the pilot parachuted out. Of course the Pilot might have wanted him dead or killed him, but that’s a stretch, too since he and the Pilot were close according to all witnesses.”
Even if it was murder, Brian thought, that doesn’t get us around the Estate tax since a murderer is not entitled to inherit from the estate, therefore, you can’t even make out a tax fraud case. Better to leave it up to the forensic experts like hot Laura, he thought.
Brian called the dentist, Sam McGonagle. “I understand that you faxed over the dental records for the late Sheldon Jones, is that correct?” asked Brian. “Absolutely, I have a digital image which I got from my offsite digital storage facility, since my hard files were burned in a fire”. “How are you certain that someone didn’t tamper with the records?” queried Brian hopefully. “As far as I know these folks have the state of the art security on their records. Doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen, but they didn’t report anything out of the ordinary to me,” responded McGonagle somewhat perturbed by the insinuation of some IRS sort. “Thanks for your help, who is your offsite storage company?”, responded Brian. “You’ll have to ask my secretary, I don’t know off the top of my head, they’re in New Jersey somewhere”.