Brian stopped me. "I see what you're getting at, but let me assure you, ViatiPro erects pretty secure firewalls between policy holders and their investors."
"Okay. I can buy that. But I'm still puzzled. If they keep the names of the viators secret, then how do the investors know they're buying legitimate policies?" I remembered some of the articles I'd read, like "Scam Watch: Grim Reapers Target Deathbed Investors." "How do investors know that ViatiPro isn't just taking their money and buying imaginary policies with it? You know, ripping them off?"
Brian grinned. "Well, it was a little weird," he said, "but a ViatiPro rep used to call us up once a month to see how Valerie was doing, so they could report back to their investors."
"Ugh!" It just slipped out. I couldn't help myself. "What kind of report?" I asked.
"Every viator has a number. ViatiPro has a website where you can type in that number and track your investments…" He drew double quotes in the air with his fingers. "… on-line."
The cake I had just been nibbling turned to sawdust in my mouth. I washed it down with the last of Valerie's special coffee.
My husband watched the stock market go up and down on CNN or the Business Channel. What could possibly be going through the mind of an individual who logged onto the Internet each morning checking (hopefully!) to see if anybody in his investment portfolio had died!
"High tech," is what I said.
I was thinking, though, that financial speculation in the death of others didn't strike me as evidence that our species is advancing.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The whole viatical thing was giving me the creeps.
After my matter-of-fact conversation with Brian about Valerie, I went home and took a bath-a long, hot bath-hoping to soak the revulsion out of me beginning at some deep molecular level. It didn't work. Every time I leaned back in the tub and closed my eyes, vultures began to gather and circle beneath my eyelids, peering down with flame-red eyes at Valerie, sunning herself poolside, oblivious to the danger hovering overhead.
After I dried off and changed into pajamas, I tried to telephone Paul, but got switched to his voice message. Northern Lights must be out of cell phone range. I checked the itinerary tacked up on the bulletin board in the kitchen: they would be somewhere off the coast of New Jersey that night. If they were making good time, Montauk Light-110½ feet tall, with a beam that was visible for miles-would be flashing every five seconds on the horizon. If they weren't, well, let's be optimistic. Maybe somebody on the beach at Fire Island would be flashing.
I left a message for Paul to call me, then cobbled together a dinner: leftover tuna noodle casserole and what remained of a can of stewed tomatoes.
Then I did what anyone else would have done under the circumstances. I ate a half pint of Hagen-Dazs rum-raisin ice cream all by myself, crawled into bed, and fell asleep watching a rerun of The X-Files.
Our lives are defined by milestones. Graduations, weddings, the birth of our children. For me, life is either BC or AC-before cancer or after. Every day AC is a precious gift. I'm sure Valerie thought so, too.
Monday, June 15. My friend had been dead for a week. When I got out of bed that morning, I stared at my polished toes and thought that when I got that pedicure, Valerie Stone was still alive.
I didn't feel much like breakfast, but figured I'd better eat something, so I toasted a bagel.
As I sat at my kitchen table, munching thoughtfully, it bothered me that I still didn't know very much about Valerie's passing. Peacefully in her sleep, of heart failure. More than that, the newspaper hadn't said. And who had discovered Valerie's body? Brian would know, of course, but it would have been crass and insensitive of me to ask.
I wondered, too, if there had been an autopsy. I knew that the bodies of people who died under suspicious circumstances were sent to the Office of the Medical Examiner in Baltimore; that was the law. Yet, nobody seemed to think there was anything the least bit suspicious about Valerie's death. Nobody, that is, except me.
Paul would tell me I was overreacting. Maybe so. But rock a few boats, shake a few trees, and sometimes the truth falls out.
After a few minutes I trudged outside in my slippers to pick up the newspaper, tossed it, still in its blue plastic sleeve, on the kitchen table, and tucked my mug and dirty plate into the dishwasher. As I filled the little trapdoor with dishwashing detergent and snapped it shut, I remembered with a pang that ghastly day when my mother had a heart attack, collapsing right where I stood, on my kitchen floor. The paramedics had been amazing, and everyone, it seemed, worked in concert to save my mother's life, even the neighbors who poured out of their houses and stood on the sidewalk, praying she'd be okay. Police and emergency vehicles blocked the street, lights flashing, for nearly an hour. Valerie couldn't have passed on, I reasoned, without somebody in her neighborhood noticing something. The people living in the faux Tudor disaster across the street, for example, or the house I had taken for a tool shed just next door.
You never know until you ask.
Television's intrepid Jessica Fletcher might have gone trundling off to Hillsmere on her bicycle, but I went looking for a cover. That sent me back to the deep freeze for another of my rainy day casseroles. I set it carefully on the floorboard of my car and drove it to Hillsmere, hoping that the Stones weren't surrounded by commuting couples who couldn't tell you whether their siding was white or yellow because they so rarely saw it during daylight hours.
With my tires spitting gravel, I brought my LeBaron to what I hoped was a conspicuous, screeching halt in the Stone's driveway, then, carrying my casserole, I strolled casually up the walk and rang the bell. Nobody answered. Shading my eyes with one hand, I peered through the tall, narrow windows that flanked the door. The suitcases that had been there the day before were gone. A good sign.
I left my car parked in the Stones' driveway and carried my casserole out onto East Bay Drive. According to the mailbox, the house next door belonged to an R. Carpenter. It was much larger than a tool shed, of course. I could see that clearly as I rounded the hedge and strolled leisurely up a walk of round concrete slabs, each one decorated with a different fossilized plant. R. Carpenter and his missus-if there was a missus-shared a modest, sixties-style split foyer. The aluminum siding-in creamy vanilla-was complemented by dark green shutters. All of it looked brand new. A copy of the Washington Post lay on the lawn. A good omen. Someone must be home.
I tucked the newspaper under my free arm, rang the bell.
Just on the other side of the door, a dog barked. After a few seconds the door swung wide and I found myself gazing into a pair of pale blue eyes set in a plump, pleasantly round face, fresh-scrubbed and pretty, without a speck of makeup.
Even without her strand of fat pearls, I recognized her immediately: the woman in pink I'd seen talking to Brian at Valerie's funeral. Now she was dressed in a soft apricot warm-up suit the same color as her hair, and she'd clumped downstairs to greet me wearing a pair of white crepe sole creepers so clunky that I was amazed she could even pick up her feet. On the steps behind her a miniature poodle was yapping.
"Hi," I said, raising the casserole dish slightly for illustrative purposes. "I'm Hannah Ives, a friend of the Stones? I brought this casserole over for Brian, but I can't get anyone to answer the door."
The longer I talked, the faster the dog yapped. The little mutt must have been on speed.
Mrs. Carpenter covered her ears with both hands, turned her head and shouted, "Shut up, Yacky!"
"Yacky!" I had to laugh. "What an appropriate name for your dog."
Still holding the door open with one hand, she beamed out at me. "It is, isn't it? Didn't start out that way, of course. Yacky's short for Cognac. Sorry, you were saying?"