It sounded like it had come from a script. Something that had probably been included in a packet at the annual national sales convention for his insurance company. Something from some seminar with a ridiculous title like, “The Right Words at the Wrong Time.”
From behind his back he produced a small basket of flowers. “Just a little something from Covenant Insurance Agency to comfort you in your time of mourning. Please let me know if I can be of any service to you.”
She took the basket and held it away from her body, instinctively trying to avoid getting any dirt or water or flower petals on her grubby housecleaning blouse. “Thank you.”
“I assume that at some point you will be making a claim against Tom’s policy.”
She fumbled for a response, finally pushing out an unconvincing, “I hadn’t thought about it.”
“Well, don’t you worry about it. It’s not greedy to want what you feel you have coming to you. And since your premiums were up to date, you have every right to receive the blessings due to you under the policy. Assuming of course that none of the terms of that policy had been violated.”
Terms. The word Tom had put in quotations in his suicide note. “Which terms?”
He waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, I don’t know. This and that.” He looked past her into the house like a ghoulish sightseer. “Do you mind if I return once I’ve reviewed the police report?”
She hesitated, stumbling over her thoughts, then managed to say, “No, of course not. Come back anytime.”
He smiled and gave a polite bow as he left. He seemed sincere, Doreen thought, but she still didn’t trust the son of a bitch.
It took him two days to return, once again peering in through the side window like some sort of Peeping Tom as he waited after ringing the doorbell. When she turned into the hallway and recognized him, she felt a chill shuttle through her bones. She wiped her hands on her slacks before opening the door.
He pasted on a mirthless smile, leaned toward her, and said, “May I come in?”
She wanted to say no, but her body moved back on its own and opened the door wider. He stepped inside.
She shut the door and stared at him, waiting for him to say something. Do something. She’d been preparing herself for ways to handle various scenarios, but this one — the one with the nosy insurance agent — was too difficult to manage. It could go so many different ways.
Finally, he said, “May we sit down and talk about your husband’s policy?”
Panic. Had that bastard, Tom, changed beneficiaries behind her back? “What about his policy?”
“Can we sit down?” That pious face again.
She led him into the kitchen. He seemed to be studying the room, as if looking for something as he sat down. She stayed on her feet. “Would you like some coffee?”
“Sure,” he said, with more enthusiasm than coffee ever requires.
She poured a cup for each of them and sat across from him at the table. Having to perform such a simple task in front of him seemed to calm her some. She began to feel more confident, more in control. “What about Tom’s policy? I’m still the beneficiary.” It was a statement but it carried with it a hint of a question.
Yates smiled. “Of course you are.”
Doreen smiled too, mostly out of relief.
“But I do have one question.” Yates wrinkled his nose. “I hate to pry, but did Tom smoke?”
Doreen’s confidence evaporated. She started to speak but stopped. Tried to buy time. Tried to think straight. “What do you mean?”
His head tilted. “I mean, was Tom a smoker?”
She started laughing. An unconvincing laugh even to her. She quickly reined it in. “Tom? Goodness, no. He used to but he quit years ago.”
“I only ask because the police report mentions that the ashtray on the table held several extinguished cigarettes in it, within reach of Tom’s chair.”
“Oh, I see. No, those were my cigarettes. I’m a smoker.”
“Do you smoke Marlboros?”
“I smoke Mores,” she said too quickly.
“Then whose Marlboros were in the ashtray?”
She didn’t answer. Nothing would come to her, other than, “I’ve no idea.”
“Because as you know, Mrs. Martin, Tom had purchased the non-smoker policy, and if he had taken up smoking again, he was obligated under the terms of the policy to inform us within thirty days of that change in conditions. I trust you’re right that Tom didn’t smoke, but the underwriter will need to see the autopsy report to verify that he hadn’t resumed smoking again.”
That’s when it hit her. That’s when Doreen realized that suicide wasn’t the only provision of the policy Tom had intended to violate to deny her of the benefits.
Anxiety flooded her chest, made breathing more difficult. She took an unsteady sip of her coffee. Saw her hand tremble. Used the other one to try to hide her agitation. Had to make a conscious effort to swallow the hot liquid. Felt its heat and caffeine heighten the anxiety.
Smoking was the second roadblock. If Tom meant something by writing that he was “triply sure,” did that mean there was a third barrier to her collecting the money?
She looked at the insurance agent. Yates was smiling vaguely at her, as if what he had just said had been a pleasantry. She wanted to smother that smile, and for a split second pictured the young man as she’d found Tom: his head tilted to the side, mouth open, a gaping hole in the back of his head where his brains had exploded out of his body. Pictured the gun in her hand, languid smoke drifting out of the barrel. The thought startled her. Not just in its vividness, but in how it seemed to calm her nerves. Left her with the vague feeling that there might be other options here.
“I’m not sure whose they were,” Doreen said, her voice seeming disembodied to her, “Tom had completely given up on smoking.” Then a thought, one that gave her a quick boost. “Maybe they were the murderer’s.”
Yates’s smile turned grim. “That’s what I thought too. Because if you tell me Tom didn’t smoke, I believe you. So I don’t anticipate any problems with the autopsy report. I’m sure everything will work out just fine.”
She tried to take on a lighthearted tone. “But if there was a problem, I mean theoretically, in other cases, where someone had bought the non-smoker policy and then started smoking again, what happens then?”
“Worst-case scenario?”
“Yes.”
“Denial of benefits.”
“You mean I’d — they’d — get nothing?”
“That’s right. They’d get their premiums back, but that’s it.”
Yates started to push himself back from the table as a prelude to getting up.
“How about another hypothetical case? What if the police, for whatever reason, say that the person killed himself. What happens then?”
“Same thing. That would violate the terms of the policy and would be grounds for denial of benefits.” His eyes narrowed. “Is that a possibility here?”
Doreen barked out a false laugh. “Goodness, no. Tom was dying, of course, but he would never take his own life. Never.”
Yates relit his smile and turned up his hands in halfhearted celebration. “Then we have nothing to worry about. These are all routine matters, Mrs. Martin. I anticipate sending you that check. And quite a large one, I might add.”
You’re damn right, Doreen thought. And no one’s going to take it away from me.
Bill Yates’s smile never faded as they said their goodbyes and he drove off down the street. It was then that Doreen realized how fast her heart was beating.
It didn’t settle back into its normal rhythm until twenty minutes later when she was sitting on a stool inside the casino. Until she was using one hand to hold her cigarette and a scotch, and the other to steadily plunk in gold-colored tokens and jerk the handle of a cold, one-armed bandit.