He had planned the two murders like a military campaign. Coldly and ruthlessly, he chose the day when slaves everywhere, not just his own, would be out. No doubt he’d expected his neighbour to be out, too, as she usually was on the Festival of Diana, but it wouldn’t matter unduly.
He would climb into Claudia’s garden using the ladder, then kick it away after him. He would hide in the cellar, biding his time until he heard screams, and then whoever might have been in the house would certainly rush outside. He would give it a count of twenty before leaving the cellar, but then comes the daring part. He actually walks across the garden while everyone is clustered round the thief’s body! If challenged, of course, he can bluff it out by claiming he’d heard a scream as he was returning home and came to help. Then he would just nip over the garden wall to “check on his wife,” only to report back that she was dead.
As it happened, no one saw him. Up and over, throttle the missus, up and back again in no time — before calmly letting himself out of Claudia’s house and sauntering up to his own, whistling without a care in the world as the porter had testified.
And now they were gone. All of them. Volso. Callista. The otter.
“Do you think we’ll ever know his name?” she asked Marcus.
In reply, he pursed his lips and shrugged. “I doubt it,” he said. Urchins like him disappeared by the dozen every day. It was the unseen tragedy of the big city and so-called civilisation.
Across the garden, a chink of gold reflected from beneath the mint. A small child’s goblet with a double handle. And so the tragedy goes on, she thought...
She looked up into his eyes. Resisted the urge to brush that stupid fringe from where it had fallen down over his face and trace her finger down the worry lines round his eyes.
“I was here,” she said, “when I saw the reflection of the arrow in the pool.”
There was a pause. “Here?” he echoed, frowning.
“Right here.” She pointed to the spot with a determined finger. Sweet Jupiter in heaven, she would never forget it. “White as snow, I actually watched it arc through the air.”
Orbilio scratched his ear. “Not from here, you didn’t,” he replied. “If Labeo was standing on the ladder and the boy was near the gate, and if he kept on running like you said after he’d been hit, then the arrow travelled like so.”
He indicated the trajectory of the missile with his hand.
“As you can see, the path doesn’t curve as you describe it. Also, the arrow wasn’t white, it’s almost black. What’s more, if it was travelling at the speed, angle, and direction that you say, it would be you who was lying dead, not your little otter. Oh, and by the way, did I ever tell you that you’re stunning when you’re angry and you’re stunning when you’re not, and that you’re even more stunning when you’re breaking generals’ balls? I think a spring wedding would be rather fun, don’t you?”
“I’d marry an arena-full of Volsos before I married you,” she said, “but what I don’t understand is this. If it wasn’t Labeo’s arrow that I saw reflected in the pool, what was it?”
Orbilio thought of the suffocating heat that played strange tricks by bending light. He thought of the emotion of the moment, the reflection of a white dove overhead; in fact, he could think of any number of rational explanations. But then... But then... There was also the matter of a certain mischievous little cherub by the name of Cupid. So he said nothing.
He just pulled Claudia Seferius into his arms and kissed her.
Slayer Statute
by Janet Dawson
Janet Dawson is the author of nine novels featuring Oakland P.I. Jeri Howard, including Kindred Crimes, which won the St. Martin’s Press/P.I. Writers of America contest for best first P.I. novel in 1991. Jeri has also appeared in several short stories, published in various anthologies. A collection of these tales, entitled Scam and Eggs (Five Star), was released in December, 2002. Ms. Dawson’s work has never before appeared in EQMM.
“Why would one shoot the other?” I asked. I like to know why things happen.
Wilcoxin shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t care. They’re both dead. All I care about is who gets the money.” He frowned, as though considering how callous that sounded. “That’s for damn sure all the beneficiaries care about.”
“How much money?”
The insurance adjuster gazed morosely at the folder sitting like a toad in the middle of his desk. He named an amount certain to gladden the heart of any beneficiary, then appended a caveat.
“Payment to the beneficiaries is my top priority, but I want to be sure the insurance company hasn’t been defrauded. That’s where you come in, Ms. Howard. You were recommended to me as someone who can untangle messes. This case has been a monumental headache.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to jump into this briar patch. “Tell me more. Then I’ll tell you if I’ll take it.”
Judging from the look on his face, the thought that I might not be willing to take on his head-ache evidently hadn’t occurred to Wilcoxin. He reached for the file, which concerned a husband and wife, both of them very dead. In fact, one of them had apparently committed homicide before committing suicide. Why? That was just one of the questions I had about the late Claude and Martha Terrell.
Late fifties, both of them. Late residents of Alameda, the island city in San Francisco Bay. They’d both been in real estate. Claude developed commercial, Martha sold residential. Having made piles of money, they both retired. Claude played golf, Martha played bridge — when she wasn’t collecting old silver.
The Terrells had married eight years earlier, a second marriage for both, after their first matrimonial forays ended in divorce. Each had two adult children. Claude’s son Eric was thirty-one and married. Daughter Erin was twenty-nine and single. Martha’s daughter Pamela was thirty, married, with one child. Son Colin was twenty-seven and unmarried.
Not long after their wedding, the Terrells had purchased life-insurance policies with Wilcoxin’s company. The policies had included the standard suicide clause, designed to discourage people from promptly killing themselves to benefit their families. The clause stated that if the insured committed suicide within two years after the policy issue date, the insurance company’s liability was limited to a return of the premiums paid. The suicide clause on the Terrell policy was no longer in effect. The insurer was now obligated to pay the beneficiaries, whom the Terrells had designated in what should have been a straightforward, logical fashion.
Should have been, that is, until words like homicide entered the equation.
“You’re familiar with the Slayer Statute?” Wilcoxin asked.
“California Probate Code Section 250? Indeed I am.”
“The medical examiner can’t say who died first. The police can’t figure out which one killed the other. You see my problem?”
“Indeed I do.” And it was a doozy.
The California Slayer Statute says that a person who “feloniously and intentionally kills the decedent” is not entitled to any of the decedent’s property, interest, or benefit, which then goes to the heirs “as if the killer had predeceased the decedent.”
So what did the Slayer Statute have to do with the Terrells’ life insurance policies? Everything.
Under normal circumstances, if Claude died first, the money from his insurance policy went to his primary beneficiary, Martha. If Martha was no longer living at the time Claude died, the payout went to his secondary beneficiaries, Claude’s two children, Eric and Erin. If Martha died first, the money from her insurance policy went to her primary beneficiary, Claude. If he was no longer living when Martha died, the payout went to Martha’s secondary beneficiaries, her children, Pamela and Colin, then to her tertiary beneficiary, Pamela’s young daughter.