He holds the document up in front of me, as if I might not otherwise know what he’s talking about, then taps on the text in the open casebook between us.
“…and not in any of the policies discussed in the cases. The sentences never end and no one seems to notice. People must either fall asleep halfway through, or they die of asphyxiation.”
The Kydd stares accusingly across the table at me, as if I single-handedly drafted every life insurance policy in the Commonwealth.
I can’t help laughing. “Don’t worry about the policy language,” I tell him. “We can’t do anything about that anyhow. We’re stuck with whatever it says. Just worry about the law. Find as many reasons as you can for the company to deny coverage. At least find the authority that says there’s no recovery if the insured’s death is caused by suicide.”
The door opens behind me and Harry appears, looking well rested and comfortable in jeans and a light gray hooded sweatshirt. His thick hair is still damp from his morning shower. He’s carrying three tall coffees in a cardboard tray and a box that’s undoubtedly filled with morning treats from Sticky Buns, Chatham’s best-kept little secret of a neighborhood bakery. The Kydd looks up at him for a moment and eyes the goodies, then turns his attention back at me. “No can do,” he says.
Harry nudges a couple of casebooks aside, deposits his treasures in the middle of the pine table, and then drops into the old wooden chair next to mine. “Tonto,” he pleads, looking stricken, “say it isn’t so. Kimosabe believes you can do anything.”
The Kydd grins at him and takes a coffee from the cardboard tray, along with three plastic thimbles of cream. “Not this time, Kimosabe,” he says. “Turns out suicide negates life insurance coverage only if the death occurs within three years of the date the policy issues.”
Harry leans toward me over the arm of his chair, tearing open a half dozen packets of sugar all at once. “Uh-oh,” he says, dumping a white avalanche into his coffee. “Maybe you missed a class or two after all.”
I frown at him. It’s true, though; I didn’t remember that part. And Herb Rawlings was well into his sixties; his policy almost certainly issued more than three years ago. Folks in his tax bracket start their estate planning early. I look across the table at the Kydd, silently asking the question I think I’ve already answered.
“You guessed it,” he says, tapping his pen against the issue date stamped on the policy’s first page. “Three years and a month.”
It’s worse than I thought. A groan escapes me.
“Damn,” Harry says, sipping his coffee. “I hate it when that happens.”
“To the day,” the Kydd adds. “And that’s not all.” He pauses, reaches into the cardboard box and pulls out a square knot, Sticky Buns’s nautical version of the universal cinnamon roll. “It gets worse.”
“Kydd,” I say, taking the last coffee from the tray, “I had precisely one strategy for this case. You just told me not only that it’s a failure, but that it actually hurts us, cuts the other way. How much worse can it get?”
I regret the question even before I absorb the expression on his face.
“Worse,” he repeats, flipping through Herb’s policy to yet another highlighted section. “In addition to the other benefits provided herein…”
The Kydd interrupts his recitation, looks up at Harry and me to make sure we’re listening. We are.
“…the Company agrees to pay twice the face amount of this policy if the insured has suffered loss of life as the direct result of bodily injury caused solely by accidental means.”
A double-indemnity clause. I’m speechless.
Harry lets out a low whistle.
The Kydd sets the policy down, takes his glasses off again and tosses them on the desk. He leans back and examines his square knot before taking a huge bite. “The motive…” he says, pointing what’s left of his pastry at us.
I consider telling him not to talk with his mouth full, but I bite my tongue instead.
“…just doubled.”
The Kydd and I turn onto Easy Street on schedule, at high noon. This morning’s fog has burned off and the mid-October sun is bright, but not quite warm. It glitters on the small waves lapping at the Rawlingses’ dock and turns the crushed oyster shells in their driveway an impossible, almost blinding white. Even the seagulls, busily dropping quahogs from the sky to the rocks below to crack their shells, look cleaner than usual. Sun-bleached feathered fishermen.
It’s obvious Louisa Rawlings is expecting us. Her inside front door is open, the screens in the outer door admitting the autumn chill to her otherwise buttoned-up house. Three ears of Indian corn—one yellow, two rust-colored—hang from the shingles beside the front door. A large pumpkin—uncarved as yet—sits on the top step. These are new additions since yesterday. The grieving widow has done a bit of seasonal decorating.
I cut the Thunderbird’s engine and grab my beat-up briefcase from the backseat, but the Kydd doesn’t reach for his. He doesn’t move at all. He seems frozen in the passenger seat, eyes wide as he takes in the Rawlings estate. “Hot damn,” he says, “what a spread.”
“We’re in the high-rent district now,” I tell him. “So behave yourself.”
He grins.
“If you don’t, you’ll be exiled to the slums of South Chatham for life.”
He laughs out loud.
South Chatham is a quaint seaside village of antique shingled cottages, small professional offices, and family-run shops. It doesn’t feature the lavish landscape of its wealthy sister to the north, and it certainly doesn’t host an exclusive country club, but it’s not a slum by anyone’s standards. The Kydd lives there, in a rented cottage. And Harry does too, in a small apartment on the second floor of our office building. They both tell anyone who’ll listen that they’re slumming it down south.
Louisa emerges from the house as the Kydd and I extricate ourselves and our briefcases from my old, tired Thunderbird. She strides toward us on the brick walkway, perfect crimson lips smiling, every bit as impeccably turned out as she was yesterday. Today’s color scheme is different—slacks and heels dark brown, blouse an opalescent cream. And her hair is restyled, pulled back in a French braid. But the overall effect is exactly the same as yesterday’s. Long. Lithe. Lovely.
“Marty,” she says, checking her watch as she nears us, “you’re right on time.”
Had I not spent so much of my life with the Kydd during the past few years, I might have thought Louisa said I was “rat on tam.” But I know better; my Southern-speak is well honed now. Besides, I’m so happy to be addressed by my given name—as opposed to darlin’ or honey chil’—I don’t much care what she said afterward.
I return her smile, then pivot so I can direct her attention to the Kydd. No need, though. She’s way ahead of me, waiting for the introduction.
“Louisa, I’d like you to meet Kevin Kydd, our associate. He’s going to be working with us.”
She takes another step toward him and extends a manicured hand. “Mr. Kydd,” she says, “I am delighted to make your acquaintance. And I am truly grateful for your assistance. I cannot thank you enough.”
Mr. Kydd looks like he’s in the midst of a beatific vision. His expression is one the shepherds might have worn upon discovering the swaddled babe in the manger.
“Oh, ma’am,” he responds, receiving Louisa’s hand as if it might shatter at the touch of a mere mortal, “the pleasure is all mine. And please do not thank me yet. I only hope my assistance will prove useful.”
Maybe I’m imagining it, but both drawls seem to thicken when Louisa and the Kydd speak to each other. The two of them have developed an acute aversion to contractions too. And the Kydd seems to think Louisa’s hand is his to keep.
“Please come in,” she says, turning in her high heels to retrace her steps to the front door. “I made tea.” She glances back at us over her shoulder and flashes her wide smile again. “Iced tea, y’all say in these parts. Sweet tea, we call it at home. Or unsweet tea, for some.”