“Of course. And I really didn’t have to do much, the people at the temple took care of most everything. Well, now that you’re here and Mrs. Hirsh is in good hands I’d better be getting back to the lab.”
“Oh, do you have to go now, Dr. Sykes?” She held out her hand. “I haven’t really thanked you for all you’ve done. You’ve been just wonderful.”
“Glad I could help. Your husband was a friend, a real friend. He’ll be deeply missed. Oh, by the way,” he said to Dodge, “who was the short little man standing beside you?”
The minister shook his head. “Don’t know. Why?”
“We thought perhaps he was a friend of yours. Well, he must have been someone from the temple.”
“You think so? He didn’t look Jewish.”
“How can you tell these days?”
Both men laughed. Dodge watched through the open door until Sykes had climbed into his car, then shut the door and turned to Pat. He took her hands in his, and holding them wide apart looked at her, his eyes shining with admiration. “You were magnificent, Pat,” he said. “A couple of times, I thought you were going to break down, but you rallied splendidly. I can’t tell you how proud I was of you.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Goraltronics plant, set back from Route 128 by half an acre of carefully tended lawn, was a one-story building covering two and a half acres with a parking space in the rear for four hundred cars. Seated in his modern office with discreet gray carpeting, the president of the corporation, Mr. Benjamin Goralsky, glanced at the calling card and snapped the corner of it with his thumb. “ ‘Investigator,’ ” he read aloud. “That’s a detective. I saw you at the funeral. You don’t look much like a detective, Mr. Beam.”
The figure in the visitor’s chair on the other side of the curved slab of teak that comprised Goralsky’s desk was short and fat with a round red face like an Edam cheese. His dark eyes all but disappeared when he laughed. He laughed easily.
“I don’t suppose any detective that looked like one would be worth much,” he said and smiled. “But I’m not a detective-at least, not the kind you read about. I don’t carry a gun and go around rescuing beautiful blondes. I just ask questions.”
“And you want to ask me some questions about Isaac Hirsh. Why me?”
“Well, for one thing, Mr. Goralsky, you were at the funeral. Everybody else I could account for: they were friends of the widow, or associates of the deceased, or officials of the temple. But I couldn’t understand why a big, important businessman like you would be there. And in the middle of a working day too.”
“It’s what we call a mitzvah, a blessing or a good deed, to go to a funeral. The rabbi announced it at the minyan-that’s our regular service-this morning. He asked as many as could to go. Strictly speaking, it’s a service so you’re supposed to have ten men there. The others couldn’t get away-they’ve got jobs. I’m my own boss, so I went. Besides, my mother is buried there and it gave me a chance to visit her grave.”
“I see.”
“But what’s all this about? Does your company always make this kind of investigation before settling a claim?”
“Only where there’s a question, Mr. Goralsky.”
“What sort of question?”
“Well, when a man drives into his garage, turns off the headlights, closes the garage door behind him, and then is found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning there’s always a question.”
“Suicide?”
“Isaac Hirsh took out an insurance policy of twenty-five thousand dollars less than a year ago. There’s a two-year suicide clause on all our policies and double indemnity for accidental death. If his death was an accident, the company forks out fifty thousand dollars. If it was suicide, we don’t pay a red cent. The company feels that fifty thousand dollars is worth a little investigation.”
“Yeah, I guess it is. And now that you’ve done a little investigating, what do you think?”
Beam smiled, and his eyes seemed to vanish. “I’m not the front office, but I’m guessing that when they get my report they won’t pay without the beneficiary going to court and making us. Look, this is a little narrow garage he’s got. There’s a trash barrel on the right. To get the car in far enough to close the door, Hirsh has to drive all the way to the back wall and in between the barrel on one side and the garage wall on the other. It’s a tight squeeze-I measured it myself. As it was, he left himself just over a foot on the driver’s side and about the same on the other. Get the picture?
“Now that’s pretty good driving for a drunk. Then he douses the lights but leaves the motor running. He slides out from under the wheel on the passenger side. It’s too tight a squeeze on the driver’s side because he’s kind of a fat little guy like me-and he pulls down the garage door. Then he comes back and gets in the front seat again, on the passenger side, where he was found.
“Now when you consider that most people shut off the motor almost automatically when they get into the garage, and that he didn’t forget to turn off the car lights or shut the garage door, that’s kind of hard to see as an accident. If he was so boozed up that he didn’t remember to shut off the motor, how come he was able to drive so straight and true, and how come he was able to remember to turn off the car lights and pull down the garage door behind him?”
“So why did the police call it accidental death?”
“The police! The guy is a citizen. He’s got an important job with the Goddard Lab, which is kind of a big outfit around here. What are they going to do? Make trouble? I figure before they’d call it suicide they’d practically expect him to make out a written statement stating his intentions and then have it witnessed by a notary.”
“I see. So what do you want from me?”
“Anything at all, Mr. Goralsky. Anything you can tell me.”
The interoffice communicator buzzed. Goralsky pressed a button. “Yeah?”
“Mr. Stevenson of Halvordsen Enterprises is here to see you,” came from the box on the desk.
“I’ll be right out.” He turned to Beam, visibly agitated. “Sorry, Mr. Beam, this is important. There’s nothing I can tell you, nothing at all.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Is something wrong?” Mrs. Hirsh asked Dr. Sykes. He had phoned from the lab to say he had important news she ought to know about at once. She led him into the living room, still unstraightened from the afternoon visitors.
“I wouldn’t call it wrong, exactly, Mrs. Hirsh, but I thought you ought to know. That fat little red-faced man who was at the funeral-you remember you said he was eying you all through the ceremony.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Well, his name is Beam, Charles Beam. He was at the lab when I got back. He’s an investigator for the insurance company that sold your husband his policy.”
“What was he doing at the funeral?”
“Good question. I guess he was investigating.”
“What are you trying to tell me, Dr. Sykes? What is there to investigate?”
“That policy your husband took out, like all policies written these days, had a suicide clause. It also had an accidental death clause.”
“I knew that.”
“Very well. If it was suicide they pay nothing; if it was an accident they pay fifty thousand dollars. That’s a lot of money, and naturally they want to make sure it wasn’t suicide.”
“Well, sure, I don’t blame them, but it wasn’t. The police did some investigating, too, and they decided officially it was accidental. I should think that would settle it.”
“I’m afraid it isn’t as easy as that. The police don’t have to pay out any hard cash. They just have to come up with a cause of death for their records. Naturally, unless they have positive proof, they’ll put down accidental death. It’s kinder to the family.”