As I crossed the parking lot to my car, I itched to blow the whistle on the weasel. Yet, if what Valerie had told me was true, Jablonsky's business with her had been completely legitimate. And if I'd sold him my existing life insurance policy, that would have been completely legitimate, too.
As for the clean-sheeting, what was there for me to report? I hadn't signed any forms and no money had exchanged hands, so as far as I knew, no laws had been broken. Hell, even if I'd had a secret microphone tucked into my bra, I couldn't remember a single thing Jablonsky had said to me during our meeting that might actually have landed the man in a court of law.
After the darkness of the lobby, it took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the afternoon sunshine. I stood in the parking lot, blinking, trying to remember where I'd parked my car. Fortunately, I had one of those remote keyless gizmos. I pushed the unlock button and an orchid LeBaron parked near Manny's Auto Body flashed its lights at me and beeped. Ah, yes. I'd parked in the low rent district. I trudged off in that direction.
Judging from the cars surrounding mine, Manny's clients had a weakness for vanity plates. I had a vanity plate once: SIR5ER. Recently, though, I'd switched from the "Survivor" plate to one featuring a heron, to help Save the Bay.
I stopped and looked around. I12HUGU on a Taurus with a crushed fender. PB4UGO. I had to laugh. Even if the Subaru wearing that plate didn't have stuffed animals strewn about the backseat, you had to know the owner had kids.
Parked between the Subaru and me was a gold BMW, its license plate-N4SIR-enclosed in a decorative frame. I had to say it out loud-"Enforcer"-before I got it. Manny, it seemed, did body work for a dangerous crowd. I opened my door carefully. Wouldn't want to ding the paint of that dude.
I slid into the seat and slotted my key into the ignition. When I started the car, both the air conditioner and the radio came on, full-blast. I leaned my head against the headrest, closed my eyes and let Mozart and the cool air wash over me.
Jablonsky was defrauding insurance companies. That much I knew for sure. I also knew the names of three of them. That would be as good a place as any to start.
Maybe Jablonsky hadn't been directly responsible for Valerie's death. But I knew as surely as I knew that I was sitting in a car parked in Glen Burnie, Maryland, US of A that it had all started here. And if I picked up the string and began to follow it, I might eventually learn the truth about how Valerie had died.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
We'd had a wet spring in Annapolis and the mosquitoes were plump and vicious. When I stepped onto the patio early Thursday morning, they swarmed around me with tiny buzzing cries of "fresh meat!"
I plunked down the coffee cup and telephone book I was carrying on the patio table and returned to the utility room, where I kept an emergency bottle of Skin-So-Soft bath oil slash mosquito repellent. I slathered it on, paying particular attention to my ears. Then I went back out to the patio to enjoy the sunshine and try to ignore the humming.
Molly the cat was lying on my picnic table in a patch of sun. She didn't seem to mind that I smelled like I'd swum through a perfume spill the size of the Exxon Valdez. I stroked her fur and she stretched leisurely, turning slowly to expose her belly for additional scratching. She purred like a motorboat. "Little slut," I purred back.
Daddy's news at dinner had been surprising, and not at all what I’d expected. Daddy and Neelie had become an item. She'd been a widow for six years, he a widower for four. So, when he joined me for dinner the previous evening, I was certain he'd bring news of an engagement. But no.
After a full career in the Navy followed by a decade of work for the aerospace industry, Daddy was being lured out of retirement. A contractor doing work for the Naval Air Warfare Center at Wallops Island on Virginia's Eastern Shore wanted to tap Daddy's considerable expertise and plug him in as project manager on a contract at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility-one of the oldest launch sites in the world. Daddy was considering the offer seriously. But it would mean a move to southern Virginia, he said, or Maryland's Eastern Shore, to a town like Snow Hill or Athol.
I'd nearly choked on my steak. I'd sat, stone-faced, chewing without tasting. "When they ask if you like living in Athol," I'd muttered at last, "the only legitimate response is 'Yeth.'"
Daddy had three weeks to make up his mind, so that gave me plenty of time to stew about it. I'd lost my mother, and even though Snow Hill, Maryland, was a beautiful colonial village only two and a half hours drive from Annapolis, I felt like I'd be losing my father, too. Of what importance was an insurance scam when you were about to become an orphan?
On the other hand, fretting about Jablonsky would be a distraction. Money had gone into furnishing his office, that was for sure, and considering the newness of the building, the rent had to be high, in spite of the neighborhood.
I wondered where the guy lived.
I eased Molly's tail off the cover of the phone book and turned to the J's. Gilbert and Irene Jablonsky shared an address on Cherry Tree Cove, a street that I recognized as being in Fishing Creek Farm, an upscale Annapolis waterfront community where the homes cost more than the gross national product of some third-world countries. Must be nice. I was more convinced than ever that Jablonsky had to be supporting his expensive office and residence habits by defrauding insurance companies.
Didn't Maryland have some sort of state insurance commission I could report him to? I made a note to check the Internet about that.
Should I contact the insurance companies I knew about for sure and warn them about Jablonsky? If he'd been operating his scam long enough to afford a home in Fishing Creek Farm, I reasoned, a lot of bogus policies must have passed through his hands.
I turned to the Insurance section in the yellow pages and learned that Victory Mutual had an office on Riva Road, not far from the mall in nearby Parole. Sun Securities seemed to be handled by an independent insurance agent with an office in Bowie, Maryland, but there was no listing for New Century. The company must be out of state. I'd have to look it up on the Internet, too.
I sat back and thought about Jablonsky for a long time, while idly stroking Molly's fur.
Supposing I did contact Victory Mutual, Sun Securities, and New Century? Exactly what was I going to tell them? Let's assume I had completed that insurance application, checking no when it asked me about the cancer. Supposing further that Jablonsky had sent it in. Even if the insurance company had wised up and called him on it, Jablonsky could always feign shock and surprise, throw up his hands and say, "How was I to know? It was that wretched Ives woman who falsified the application, not me!"
A beautiful scam, especially if you're a crook.
I sighed, closed my eyes and turned my face toward the sun, hoping for inspiration. I was still sitting there five minutes later, either courting melanoma or enriching myself with vitamin D, depending upon your point of view, when a fat, green garbage bag sailed over the fence, landing with a rustle and a splat in my garden, flattening a bed of impatiens that had never harmed a living soul.
Molly started, leaped from the table, trampolined off my lap and streaked away under a bush.
Hoo-boy! Old Mrs. Perry was at it again. Second time that week.
I sighed, gathered up the bag and, leaving the phone book pages to turn themselves quietly in the morning breeze, dragged it next door and onto the Perry porch, cans rattling.
I rang the bell.
To my surprise, it wasn't Mrs. Perry's caregiver who answered the door but Bradford himself, his tie dangling loose from his collar and a portable phone clamped to his ear.