In Death's Shadow (14 page)

I crumpled the tissue and lobbed it into the trash. "Here," I sniffed. I handed her the platter of hamburger patties. "Can you take these out to the chef?"

"Who's cooking?"

"Paul volunteered."

"Just don't give them to Dennis," she warned. "The last time I put him in charge of the grill, he earned the nickname the Great Incinerator."

I laughed, feeling better already. "And can you bring in the corn? The water's ready."

The burgers were juicy, the corn sweet, the pie was like manna from heaven. I'd enlisted Ruth's help—she and Neelie were on cleanup crew in the kitchen—while Hutch blew smoke rings all by himself in the back garden.

All evidence of our recent feast had been cleared from the patio table except for the Box o' Wine, a carafe of decaf coffee, and a plastic tray of cream and sugar. As a courtesy to the kitchen crew, we'd graduated to plastic cups and spoons.

"More coffee, Dennis?" I asked.

He held out his cup. "Thanks."

Daddy looked at me.

I tugged on my right ear. It was our prearranged signal. Time to begin.

With his chair legs screeching against the concrete, Daddy scooted closer to the table. "Hannah and I would like to talk to you about something."

Dennis glanced from my father to me, the cup halfway to his lips. "I think I hear my mother calling."

Connie punched her husband in the arm. "Be serious, Dennis."

"I am serious! When have you not known me to be serious?"

Connie smiled helplessly. "You can dress him up, but you can't take him out."

"Dennis," I said, "we need your advice."

"Is this going to get me into trouble?"

I glanced sideways at Daddy. "I don't think so."

"That's a relief." Dennis looked straight at me.

"But it might take a little time to explain," Daddy amended.

Dennis sipped his coffee. "That's okay. As long as my beeper doesn't go off, I have all the time in the world."

"Have you ever heard of viaticals?" I asked.

"No. What's a viatical?"

And so I began. I told Dennis how I'd learned about viaticals from Valerie, what I found out about the business when I visited Jablonsky, how I took that information to Brad and ended up working for Victory Mutual, and how, eventually, Daddy and I ended up playing dress-up in Steele's fancy office in Laurel, Maryland.

In the flickering light from the citronella candles, Dennis looked puzzled. "So, let me understand this. People are making money selling secondhand life insurance policies."

I nodded.

"How can that be legal?"

I don't know how long Hutch had been standing behind us, listening. He pulled up a chair. "Oh, it's perfectly legal," Ruth's boyfriend confirmed. "First people like this guy Steele were trying to make money from people on their deathbeds. Now they're trying to make money from the people who want to make money from people on their deathbeds."

"And sometimes," Daddy added, "they get greedy."

"Remember my friend, Valerie? She was terminally ill. She was supposed to die within a year. So she sold
her life insurance policy to Steele through Jablonsky. Some total stranger became her beneficiary. And then . . ." I paused and looked around the table. ". . . she went into remission."

Dennis started to say something, but I held up a finger. "Hold that thought," I said. "Let me fast forward."

I filled Dennis in on what I'd learned from Mrs. Bromley about senior settlements and the missionary work Jablonsky seemed to be doing at Ginger Cove.

"Jeesh," Dennis said.

"Sick," said Connie.

"It gets worse," Daddy added.

On cue, I pulled Mrs. Bromley's list from my pocket and spread it out on the table. "Here's a list of nine people, all of them residents of Ginger Cove." Reading down the list, I ticked them off on my fingers. "Clark Gammel, dead. Tim Burns, dead. Wyetha Hodge, dead. James Mc-Gowan, dead—" I paused. "Of the nine people on this list, six of them are dead. And the one thing they all had in common is that they sold their life insurance policies to ViatiPro through Gilbert Jablonsky."

Connie laid a hand on her husband's arm. "And Hannah's friend, Valerie? Don't forget she died unexpectedly, too."

I drank some more of my wine. “Tell Dennis about Pottorff, Daddy. Enforcer?"

"Enforcer?" Hutch's eyebrows went up.

Daddy frowned. "N-4-S-I-R. That's his vanity plate. Cute, huh? The guy must be a mental giant." Once again he turned to Dennis. "Anyway, Hannah saw this guy in a brown suit, Nick Pottorff, coming and going from both Steele's and Jablonsky's offices, and we don't think he's simply carrying company papers."

I nodded vigorously.

"So, where's this going?" Dennis asked.

"I think Steele persuaded a lot of people to invest in viaticated life insurance policies. I think he used Jablonsky to meet that demand. Then, I think Steele got greedy. People who were supposed to be terminally ill, like AIDS patients on protease inhibitors and people like my friend Valerie, weren't dying fast enough, so Steele hired Pottorff to speed things along."

"We think Pottorff's job was to make sure the policies 'matured' in a timely fashion," Daddy explained.

In the candlelight, Dennis's eyes flashed. "You think Pottorff's a contract killer?"

I nodded. "I think he murdered Valerie, and I think he murdered the people on this list."

"But there'd be evidence—" Dennis began.

I shook my head. "Only if you're looking for it. Who's going to think twice when an eighty-five-year-old man is found dead in his bed? Who's going to ask questions when a terminally ill cancer patient simply doesn't wake up?"

Perhaps it was the wine lubricating my brain cells, but suddenly I knew how it was done. "They were smothered," I said with confidence. "Someone put a pillow over their faces. There'd be signs then, wouldn't there? I saw it on
CSI
." I leaned forward and laid my hand gently on top of Mrs. Bromley's list. "I want you to dig them up, Dennis. I want you to dig them all up. I want you to look for signs of petechiael hemorrhaging."

Paul, who had been silent until then, finally weighed in. "Hannah—"

But I wasn't going to be silenced. "And I want you to exhume Valerie Stone's body, too."

They probably didn't think I noticed, but I did. A look passed between Dennis and Paul. I'm sure Connie caught it, too. Dennis unfolded his long legs and stood up, walked around the table, and stopped behind my chair. "Come with me for a minute, Hannah. I want to talk to you in private."

With one hand resting on the table for support, I rose unsteadily to my feet. Dennis took my elbow and led me into the back garden where—was it my imagination?—the stale smell of Hutch's last cigarette still clung to the leaves of the rhododendron.

"Hannah," Dennis began when he got me alone. "Even if I wanted to, I couldn't exhume even one of those bodies. You seem to forget, I'm a Chesapeake County police officer. Anne Arundel County is not in my jurisdiction." He took a deep breath. "And even if it were my jurisdiction, I couldn't even justify a search warrant with the information you've just given me. I'm quite sure my colleagues in Anne Arundel County couldn't, either."

"But—" I felt ill.

"Octogenarians and desperately ill women die every day," Dennis continued reasonably. "This business about life insurance policies, it's all circumstantial."

"But Pottorff—" I began, tears welling up in my eyes. "The license plate."

Dennis rested his hands on my shoulders. "Sure, there could be a connection, but it's probably perfectly legitimate. The men were in business together, Hannah. Think about it!" His voice softened. "I know how close you were to Valerie Stone, but the police simply can't go forward with this. There's no probable cause."

"But—"

"You're bucking the Supreme Court, Hannah. Rumor, mere suspicion, and even strong reason to suspect are not equivalent to probable cause. We'd need a lot more to go on than a license plate and a hunch."

It was crystal clear to me. Daddy was on board. How could someone as bright as Dennis Rutherford fail to see it, too?

"But how about ViatiPro? And Victory Mutual?"

"That's about the only thing you're doing right," he said gently. "Informing the insurance company the way you did. Let them sort it out with the Maryland Insurance Administration. That's their job."

Although I'm sure he didn't mean to, Dennis's words stung:
The only thing you’re doing right
. I began to sob.

"Hannah!" he said, and drew me to his chest. He was warm, slightly sweaty, and his shirt smelled of barbeque smoke and Tide.

My head spun, my stomach roiled. I wanted the ground to open under my feet and swallow me. After all I'd done, how could this be happening? Why wasn't Dennis listening to me? How could he let Valerie down? How could he let Mrs. Bromley continue to live in fear?

The breeze freshened, cooling the tears on my cheeks. I pushed my brother-in-law away. "Just go away, Dennis! Go away and leave me alone!"

Reeling, I swept past him, past my guests still seated around the patio table, past Neelie and Ruth as they polished up my kitchen. Somehow I managed to get up the stairs and into my bedroom, where I threw myself facedown on the bed and began to bawl.

Like I said. It should have been a wonderful party. Leave it to me to foul things up.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Saturday morning I slept late. I awoke awash in a
sea of regret with a hangover the size of a satellite map of Hurricane Floyd. Paul had already gone to his office at the Academy, thank goodness, so he wasn't there to waggle a finger and say "I told you so."

I took three aspirin to deaden the pain caused by whatever was knocking my prefrontal lobes against my temporal lobes and lay down on the sofa until the jackhammering stopped.

Somewhere in all the confusion, two lost thoughts came together with a drum roll and a crash of cymbals. If Nick Pottorff worked for Jablonsky, then maybe Gail Parrish could tell me something about him. Besides, Gail owed me. The last time we'd talked, she promised to call me back, and I still hadn't heard from her.

I waited until ten, then telephoned Jablonsky's office.

The phone rang six times before somebody picked up. "Mutually Beneficial, how may I help you?" The voice was an octave deeper, decades older, and three times more sophisticated than Gail's.

"This is Hannah Ives," I said. "I'm returning Gail Parrish's call."

"I'm sorry, madam, but Gail Parrish is no longer with the firm." The woman spoke with an Oxbridge accent so obviously fake that I wanted to crawl down the telephone line and slap it out of her.

I sat back in the hard kitchen chair, stunned. "But I just talked with Gail last week!"

"Would you like to speak with Mr. Jablonsky, madam? Perhaps he can help." I hated the woman. Instantly. She sounded like Margaret Thatcher, with a cold.

"I don't want to talk to Mr. Jablonsky," I insisted. "I want to talk to Gail."

"I'm sorry I can't be of more help, madam, but they didn't tell me anything at the temporary agency, just that the receptionist had moved to Las Vegas."

"I beg your pardon?" I clenched my fist, trying to keep my voice under control.

"Miss Parrish has moved to Las Vegas," she repeated, slowly and distinctly, as if I had the IQ of a garden gnome.

Las Vegas? Hah!
That was a pile of manure. More than likely Gail figured out she was working for a crook. Maybe she quit before the cops could show up with squad cars
whoop-whoop-whooping
to measure her boss for a bright orange one-piece. But there wasn't any point in arguing. Unless the new receptionist was Jablonsky's wife or sainted mother, there was no reason for her to know any more about the missing receptionist than I did.

I advised myself to stay calm. "Did Gail leave a forwarding address?" I inquired.

"None that I'm aware of," she said. "Shall I put you through to Mr. Jablonsky, then?"

That was the last thing I needed, for Jablonsky to think that Gail and I had become friends. It wouldn't help Gail any, either, wherever she was. "No, no. Don't bother. I'll just call Gail at home."

"Very well," the woman said, barely concealing her exasperation with an "if you knew her home phone number all along why are you getting testy with me" kind of long-suffering sigh. "Is there anything else?"

"No, thank you."

"Thank you for calling Mutually Beneficial," the woman droned, and hung up.

"Suck eggs," I said into the dead air.

I didn't waste any time pulling the Annapolis phone book down from the shelf. I turned to the P's. There were plenty of Parrishes, George, and several Parrishes, Gerald, but no listing for Parrish, Gail, or Parrish, G.

Of course not, dummy. Gail is house-sitting.
Unless I could remember the name of the homeowners, I was fresh out of luck.

But Gail had never mentioned the name of the people she was house-sitting for, only that they lived in Eastport and were blue water sailors.

Gail had an ex-boyfriend, I recalled. Even if he knew her present whereabouts, though, it would do me not one damn bit of good, because Gail had never told me his name, either.

One thing I was one hundred percent sure of: Gail had not moved to Las Vegas. She loved Annapolis. She was saving money for a sailboat. I'd never been to Las Vegas, but I'd seen the ads on TV. I didn't think you could do much sailing in the Nevada desert unless you wanted to launch your boat in the Grand Canal at the Venetian Casino and Resort or tack your way around the dancing fountains at the Bellagio.

My hopes were raised when I remembered that Gail had telephoned me the week before and that her number might still be in the memory chip of my telephone. But, alas, when I went to the phone and scrolled through the menu, the number that popped up was Jablonsky's, and I was reminded that she'd called me from Jablonsky's office, not from home.

Other than asking Jablonsky, then, I was running out of options.

I worried about Gail as I ran my Saturday errands. Had she discovered something about her boss that caused her to quit, using a move to Las Vegas as an excuse? Or, more chilling, had she discovered something about her boss that put her in danger? Had the lie about Las Vegas originated with Jablonsky?

The dry cleaners was a short, two-block walk down Prince George Street, but once I'd lugged the cleaning home and hung it up in the closet, I needed a car to take care of the other chores on my To Do list.

West Marine had telephoned to say that Paul's handheld GPS had been repaired and was ready for pickup, so my next destination was the shopping plaza near Hillsmere to retrieve the device. I continued to worry about Gail as I drove, wondering as I wound my way through Eastport if I was unknowingly passing by her house. Was she reading the Saturday paper in that yellow bungalow at the corner of State Street and Bay Ridge Avenue? Doing her laundry, as I needed to do, in the basement of that three-story brick town house at Chesapeake and Americana? I hoped so.

I waited patiently while the clerk at West Marine wrapped the GPS in bubble wrap, then I tucked it carefully into the bottom of my handbag. I drove west on Forest Drive, cutting over on Spa Road to West Street so I could return my overdue library books.

My civic duty done, my good name restored, I cut through the library parking lot and drove out the back along the old railroad right-of-way to Taylor and across Rowe Boulevard to Graul's, the market where I do the bulk of my shopping.

Graul's carries a marvelous assortment of gourmet items I can't seem to live without, and as usual I walked through my front door with shopping bags bulging after spending at least fifty dollars more than I planned. Saturday's "must have" was a round loaf of crusty olive bread, $3.75. I rest my case.

I put the groceries away, listened to my phone messages—only some Congressman's lackey wanting Paul's opinion on a prescription drug benefit for seniors (For!)—then gathered up the laundry, including the dirty linens from last night's picnic, and trudged downstairs to the laundry room.

As I sorted the whites from the darks, I noticed that one of the place mats had a plum-colored ring on it, probably from the base of a wineglass. I pre-treated the place mat with laundry spray, recalling, with embarrassment, how rude I'd been to Dennis the previous evening. Yet, even in the cold, sober light of day, his words still stung:
the only thing you 're doing right
.

I knew that everyone has a Constitutional right to protection from unreasonable searches and seizures, and I also knew that Dennis, as a cop, had to adhere to higher standards than I would. Yet the evidence I had collected against Steele and Jablonsky seemed, at least to me, much more than circumstantial. It seemed compelling. Still, there was no excuse for my taking Dennis's head off, even if it had been the wine talking. Dennis was my brother-in-law, and my guest. I'd have to call him to apologize.

I added detergent to the washer, punched a few buttons and started the machine, then took a quick detour to my office across the hall.

Ruth had sent me an e-card from the "Get Well Police." Har-de-har-har. Maybe I'd been drunker last night than I thought. I sent her a thank-you, and since I was already at BlueMountain.com, I picked out an e-card for Dennis: a Chesapeake Bay blue crab saying "Sony I've been so crabby." I personalized the e-card and sent it off, feeling slightly better about myself.

Emily had e-mailed that Jake was cutting a new tooth; Chico's wanted to offer me twenty-five percent off; Paul had forwarded several jokes from his usna.edu account, one of which, about a cat that survived a close encounter with a garbage disposal, made me laugh so hard I nearly fell off my chair.

I quickly deleted the obvious spam—Viagra (Deep discount!), eager teenage Russian brides, offers of creative ways to enlarge certain portions of my anatomy, none of which I possessed—until I got to an e-mail address I didn't recognize:
[email protected]
. The subject line was "Hello, Hannah!"

I suspected it came from a gal I met at Womanship, a popular sailing school for women. (Their motto? Nobody yells!) Tina races a Cal25 and keeps urging me to sign up for the Annapolis Frostbite Series. Sailing in the summertime is a delight, but in November? If you have to wear long underwear, fleece pants, three sweaters, two pairs of mittens, foul weather gear, and plastic Baggies over your toes in order to stay warm, I draw the line.

But when I opened the e-mail, fingers poised to type "Brrrrrr, no way!" I was astonished to find the message was from Gail Parrish.

"Hey, Hannahmail! Snitched your address from Gil's Rolodex. Need to talk to you. Seriously. Call me at home. Gail."

Gail's signature line included a telephone number, thank goodness. I dialed it at once, but the line was busy. I was surprised that no voice mail kicked in, especially in this day and age, but then, it wasn't exactly Gail's telephone. It belonged to a couple of diehard sailors, and sailors, in my experience, don't always live on the cutting edge of technology.

Maybe it was busy because Gail was working on-line and had *70'd the call to keep voice mail from knocking her off-line. We both used AOL, so I added Sailingphool to Hannahmail's buddy list, then checked to see if Gail was logged on. She wasn't

Just to be sure, I sent her an instant message. I waited a few moments. Sent another one. Waited. There was no reply.

I went back to Gail's message and clicked on Reply.

"Dear Gail," I e-mailed back. “Tried to call. Line busy. Where the hell are you? Hannah."

At one o'clock I tried telephoning again, with equal lack of success. Gail could still be on-line, of course. I imagined her cruising the Internet, searching Yachtworld.com for the previously owned sailboat of her dreams, or for one in her price range, at least.

Although I was desperate to talk to Gail and wanted to hit my "redial" button every four or five minutes until she picked up, I had a problem. I had told Harrison Garvin on Friday that I was close to finishing my report. "Just a bit of tweaking here and there," I'd boasted. "It'll be on your desk first thing Monday morning."

Garvin had beamed. He was meeting with his management team on Wednesday, he said, and would move my report to the top of the agenda.

Now I had to make good on my promise.

I toasted a bagel for lunch, washed it down with the last of the coffee, located my security card and drove out to Victory Mutual.

Once I got settled in the cubicle I'd borrowed from Mindy, I tried Gail again. Busy. Damn the woman! She wanted to talk to me. I wanted to talk to her. The least she could do was stay off the phone.

Then again, maybe it wasn't Gail's fault. I decided if I hadn't been able to get through by three o'clock, I'd call the operator and ask her to check to see if the phone was out of order or off the hook. There was probably a perfectly reasonable explanation. No use stewing about it

I logged onto Mindy's computer, and after several trial runs my SQL scripts finally ran flawlessly. I'd been massaging the data for so long that the results didn't surprise me, but I felt quite certain they would knock the socks off Harrison Garvin.

One data table proved that forty-five percent of the policies that had changed from personal to corporate ownership over the past five years had been reassigned to ViatiPro, and that sixty-two percent of that number had been paid, meaning the viator had died.

Another table showed that fully seventy-six percent of the total number of policies that had changed hands had been for amounts under $100,000. Clearly, ViatiPro wasn't the only investment company scrambling aboard the gravy train, but thanks to me, that train was about to come to a screeching halt.

I revised the script and reran it, this time limiting my results to policies for $100,000 or less that had been written during the past two years. Like most insurance companies, Victory Mutual had a two-year contestability period. If the company's investigators could prove any of the policies had been falsely obtained before the two years was up, the policies could be cancelled and crooks like Steele and his unwary investors would be left holding worthless pieces of paper. As far as I was concerned, Steele could take his lumps. It was the unwary investors—like my friend Mrs. Bromley—whom I felt sorry for.

In my opinion, the reports said it all, and in terms so clear that even my three-year-old granddaughter could understand. Nevertheless, I had to spend another hour converting the data I had collected into graphs and pie charts that Garvin could plug into the PowerPoint presentation he planned to show his team. I fiddled with the slide layouts and backgrounds for a while, then ran the slide show, sitting back and impressing myself with the results.
Damn, Hannah, you haven't lost your touch.