Killing Cassidy

by Jeanne M. Dams

  I made a couple of brief entries and then turned back to the beginning of the notebook.

  “We can fill in a lot of this, now. Let’s go to work.”

  We worked solidly for an hour, condensing, summarizing, now and then adding a note. When we had finished, I looked at the results, yawned, and flexed my shoulders.

  “All right. We progress. Jerry is eliminated, poor dear—in every sense. Darryl and Dr. Boland are eliminated because they were out of town at material times. Darn it, I regretted drawing that line through Boland’s name! If ever a man deserved to be convicted of something, he does.”

  “At least it means we needn’t take in the opera tomorrow night.”

  “Oh, yes, we do! I want to give the man a piece of my mind. He may not be guilty of Kevin’s death, or Jerry’s, but he’s guilty of a lot of other unpunishable crimes.”

  Alan rolled his eyes to the ceiling and sighed.

  “So that leaves Michelle Carmichael, Hannah Schneider, Mary Alice Harrison, and that miserable excuse for a preacher, Bob Bussey.”

  We studied their entries carefully.

  “Michelle Carmichael. Briskly efficient, discreet, probably borrowed money from Kevin.”

  “We don’t know that, Dorothy.”

  “That’s why I said ‘probably.’ I still think she did, though. There was something about the way she carefully didn’t say anything. Okay, moving on. Hannah Schneider. Fanatic, extremely busy. Ordered stained glass from Kevin. He donated to her cause.”

  “And she didn’t want to talk about the stained glass!” said Alan triumphantly. “I knew there was something about the glass. That’s it. Hannah didn’t mention she’d been there recently, remember?”

  “Vaguely. But I honestly think she just forgot. Goodness knows she has enough irons in the fire to make anybody forget something minor like that.”

  I waited, but Alan made no reply, so I went ahead.

  “Mary Alice Harrison. A bitter woman, but no motive to kill Kevin. She doesn’t inherit.”

  “Ah, but wait a minute. When did she know she didn’t inherit? Did she go to the solicitor before or after Kevin died?”

  I thought about that. “After,” I said slowly. “Because she said something about not wanting to bother him for money, but once he had no further use for it … something like that.”

  “So she didn’t know that there was no money for her until after he was dead.”

  We considered that for a moment. I made a note. “But, Alan, that poor woman—two small children and another on the way …”

  “Mothers will do what is necessary to protect their young,” he said gently.

  I sighed. “All right, you’ve made your point, but my money is still right here.” I pointed to the chart, now a spidery mess of arrows and interlinings and obliterations.

  “Dear old Parson Bob? On what grounds?”

  “On the grounds, first, that I can’t stand him, and second, he’s the type who would kill his grandmother and make it sound like he ought to get a medal for it, and third, he didn’t like Kevin. He’s the only one we’ve talked to who didn’t, you realize. Besides, he looks like every movie villain you’ve ever seen on the late show, and I don’t care if my reasoning is way off in left field, I think we ought to go over there and ask him some very pointed questions. It’s probably too late today, but first thing tomorrow. A little harassment of a sanctimonious phony sounds like a lovely way to spend a morning, don’t you think?”

  “It has its attractions, I admit. Very well. First agenda item for tomorrow: the questionable cleric.”

  Parson Bob, it turned out, didn’t live next door to the church as one might expect. We drove out there on Thursday morning and found no one home at the tiny house next to the cemetery; the name on the mailbox was “Stoner.” The church itself was locked up tight with no one around. A phone booth at a nearby gas station actually had a phone book in it, by some miracle, but Bob Bussey wasn’t listed. “Hmph!” I snorted. “Unlisted number for a pastor. Fine minister to his flock he must be!”

  “Yes, well, we had already deduced that. Dare we ask our good friend the police chief?”

  “Let’s try the library first. They’ll have a city directory.”

  We found him there, with a five-digit address on a street called Hummingbird Way. “Never heard of it. It’ll be in one of those new subdivisions; I’ll need a map.”

  The house turned out to be a painfully new one, raw red brick with a broad, gleaming concrete driveway. It was ostentatious without being in any way beautiful, its impact being one of sheer size. Three-car garage, double front doors, huge bay window, wings and ells and porches and extensions. Its harsh newness was softened by no plantings; even the grass was not yet well established. As we approached, the larger of the two garage doors started to slide up, and we heard a car engine start.

  “Quick, Dorothy! Pull into the drive.”

  I obeyed, situating our car carefully so that whichever car was about to go out, the way would be blocked. And then I saw the big Lincoln start to move.

  I thought for one awful moment that the preacher wasn’t even going to look, and I had visions of extensive repairs to our uninsured rental car. However, the big black car traveled only a few inches before it stopped. The car door slammed, and a furious parson charged out of the garage.

  “You’ll have to move your car, whoever—oh. It’s you. Well, I’m just leaving, as you might have noticed if you’d been paying attention. I have an important call to make, so you’ll have to come back later if you want to talk to me.”

  “We do want to talk to you,” said Alan, getting out of the car with surprising speed. There was no trace of his usual amiability on his face or in his voice. “And I’m afraid it will have to be now.”

  “What do you mean? Who do you think you are, bossing me around? You’re trespassing, I’ll have you know!”

  His private manner was certainly different from the one he employed in front of his congregation.

  “You know that my name is Alan Nesbitt,” said my husband, still in that hard voice. “I don’t believe I told you that I was the principal law enforcement officer for the county of Belleshire.”

  Oh, bravo Alan! I didn’t think Parson Bob, whose pale complexion was now a nasty shade of green, would notice Alan’s careful use of the past tense. Nor was he apt to question where in the world Belleshire was.

  I sat back to enjoy the show.

  “And what does that have to do with me?” The bluster had diminished considerably.

  Alan ignored the question. “I’m very interested in the money that you say Kevin Cassidy gave you shortly before his death. I believe it amounted to several thousand dollars?”

  “I—no! I didn’t say that! And it was a loan, not a gift.”

  “I see. You paid it back.”

  “No, of course not. He died before my congregation—”

  “Ah, it would have been your congregation who took the responsibility for repaying the loan.”

  “Well, of course! The money was to be used for the benefit of the church.”

  “‘Was to be’? How has it in fact been used?” Alan allowed his eyes to linger on the huge, expensive car, the huge, expensive house.

  “I don’t know who you think you are, but if you’re accusing me—”

  “I have accused you of nothing. I am simply asking questions. I presume that the account books of the church are available for inspection?”

  “Oh, of course they are, Alan,” I put in sweetly. “They have to be, after all. The church must be able to show its nonprofit status in order to keep its tax exemption.”

  “I have nothing to hide! From the proper authorities, that is. I’m doing God’s work. If he has chosen to reward me according to my efforts on his behalf, I don’t see how that’s any business of yours. And where’d you say you’re from, anyway?”

  Alan chose to answer that obliquely. “I come, sir, from a place where we take seriously the matter of defraud
ing the elderly. Were you aware that Dr. Cassidy had nearly exhausted his resources? How do you suppose he would have lived once you had bilked him of his life savings?”

  “That’s an insult, and what’s more, I don’t believe a word of it! He was rolling in money. He gave me that five thou—that donation of his own free will. It’s not my problem if he didn’t have it to give. He never told me that! And there’s always Medicaid. What do we pay taxes for, anyhow?” His voice had risen to a scream. Little drops of spittle appeared at the corners of his mouth.

  Alan looked at him with disgust written all over his face. The preacher clutched at the rags of his dignity and tried to take a higher tone. “God will always provide for his children, even those who have turned away from him, if they repent and mend their evil ways. I had every reason to believe that Mr. Cassidy’s loan was intended to get him right with God.” His control broke. “Now, get out of my driveway before I call the cops!”

  “I think you will find that my wife and I are on very good terms with your police chief,” said Alan, ice in his voice. “However, it seems almost a blasphemy to waste this lovely morning talking to you. Good day, sir.”

  He stepped back into the car and we drove off, leaving an angry and shaken parson standing in his gleaming new driveway, staring after us.

  24

  THAT is,” I said with precision, when we were well away, “the sorriest excuse for a human being it has ever been my misfortune to encounter.”

  “Quite,” said Alan. Then he broke into a broad smile. “I’ve not enjoyed anything so much in years!”

  “You were magnificent! You had him shaking in his boots. I wonder how much of his congregation’s funds he has misappropriated over the years?”

  “One also wonders whether he will continue his peculations, or whether I have, as it were, put the fear of God into him.”

  “I’m willing to bet he’ll keep right on doing it until he gets caught. I think I may put in a call to the IRS when we get back to town.”

  “Now that,” said Alan, patting my knee, “is retribution with a vengeance. What an excellent idea.”

  “Actually, though,” I said after thinking about it for another mile or two, “I ought to give him a vote of thanks.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “Because he did say something back there that I’m beginning to think might be important.”

  “I heard nothing but bluster and excuses.”

  “That’s because you’re not American. I may have had some difficulties pursuing an investigation on this side of the Atlantic, but I also have a few advantages. One is that I know about Medicaid.”

  “Ah, yes, I recall the word. What, precisely, is Medicaid?”

  I thought for a minute. “It’s hard to explain to an Englishman, because our system of health care is so entirely different. Well, really, you have a system, while ours is all patchwork.” I settled down to a lengthy explanation.

  “You see, until Americans reach the age of sixty-five, they either have health insurance through their employers, who pay most of the cost with the employees contributing a little, or they pay for the insurance themselves at absolutely exorbitant rates, or they have no health insurance at all.”

  “I have wondered a good deal about that. What happens if one has no insurance and becomes ill?”

  “Unless it’s an emergency, one stays sick. A visit to a doctor costs somewhere around seventy dollars around here, maybe twice that for a specialist. A simple prescription can easily set you back a hundred or more. Physical therapy is at least a hundred and fifty an hour, and a single day in the hospital runs around a thousand dollars, give or take, considering tests and medications and physicians’ bills. Unless, of course, you require surgery, and then the sky’s the limit. Nobody can afford that for anything trivial. People suffer all kinds of ailments, Alan, here in the richest country in the world, for lack of health care. Thousands die every year. They don’t go to the hospital even for life-threatening problems, because they’re afraid they won’t be able to pay.”

  Alan tried not to look shocked, but he shook his head.

  “Right. It’s a sin and a national shame, and something has to be done about it. But until the day comes that the politicians work it out, and I’m not holding my breath, the states have set up plans to help the truly indigent. In Indiana it’s called Medicaid. It’s not good, but it’s better than nothing, I guess. I don’t know all the rules, but I do know that you have to have virtually no assets at all to be eligible. They let you keep your house and your car—not much else.”

  “You mentioned the age of sixty-five. What does that have to do with it?”

  “When you’re sixty-five you become eligible for Medicare. That’s the national program, and it’s not too bad for something run by the government. You don’t have to be indigent to be eligible; it’s for everyone. But it doesn’t pay for everything. Specifically, it doesn’t pay for medication, which is a real problem for many of the elderly. And it doesn’t pay for long-term care, such as home health care or a nursing home, both of which are wildly expensive.”

  I waited for the penny to drop. It didn’t take long.

  “So.” Alan tented his fingers. “Kevin was running out of money. He was also rapidly approaching a time when he’d be unable to care for himself. His doctor and his priest urged him to hire someone to care for him. He would not, for very long, have been able to sustain the cost of such care.”

  “Exactly. And that’s where Medicaid comes in. One of the things it does pay for is long-term care, and you can be on Medicare and Medicaid at the same time. But as with everything run by a bureaucracy, there are catches. One of them is the indigence requirement. Well, Kevin would soon have qualified there. But. The other catch is that, if you’ve been deliberately divesting yourself of your assets during some period of time prior to your application for the aid—I don’t know how long—the state takes a very dim view. I don’t know for sure whether they just deny the application or what. I know I was told, once, that they—that anonymous ‘they’—state officials, I guess—go after one’s debtors to try to collect the debts. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it sounds like the sort of thing the state would do.”

  “So that—let’s see if I can work this out. Kevin had been giving away his money. He was doing so, presumably, out of sheer generosity, not in order to live on the bounty of the state. But they would have viewed it in that light, if he had applied for Medicaid.”

  “I think so. Or rather, I think they wouldn’t care why he did it, only that he did it.”

  “And you think it’s possible the state might have asked his debtors to repay the debts.”

  “Possible, yes. I don’t know for sure. Oh, mercy!”

  “What, love?”

  I had been talking and thinking, paying no attention to my driving. Without my conscious volition the car had turned in accustomed directions, headed down accustomed streets, nearly turned into a driveway. I pulled up to the curb and took a long, shaky breath.

  “I forgot where I was going. That—that was our house.”

  It didn’t look quite as I remembered it, which was probably a blessing. It had been painted a sort of Wedgwood blue; we’d always kept it white. Some of the shrubs had been replaced. There was a new flower bed along one side, filled at this season with chrysanthemums. Lace curtains, instead of damask draperies, covered front windows.

  “All right, darling?”

  Alan reached for my hand.

  I smiled at him. “All right. Really. I thought it would be hard, but coming up on it unexpectedly that way, I didn’t have a chance to get myself all worked up. And it’s different,” I explained about the paint and the landscaping. “I have nothing but happy memories of that house, Alan, but they’re in the past. Nothing about the present can change those memories, and there’s nothing here to make me sad, or even particularly nostalgic. My house is the one in my mind, not this odd-looking blue one sitting here. This one—it�
�s funny, but it doesn’t even seem very real to me.” I put the car in gear and drove away.

  After some lunch to take the taste of Parson Bob out of our mouths, I settled down at the telephone. The first call was to the Medicaid office in Indianapolis.

  It took a while. “I hope I’m not an old fogey,” I muttered to Alan while I pushed buttons, “but I admit some modern inventions drive me crazy, and the electronic switchboard is the worst of all. Whatever became of the idea of phones being answered by real live human—oh, hello! Sorry, I thought you were going to be another recording.”

  I asked my questions. When they were answered, I hung up and gazed into space for a little while.

  “Find out anything?”

  “I’m not sure. It seems that the whole Medicaid question is a good deal more complicated than I thought.” I sighed. “I’m not sure I understood everything they said, but apparently the state doesn’t go after someone’s debtors after all, or not in every case. If there’s a genuine loan and it’s being repaid regularly, they count it as a person’s assets. If the loan looks uncollectible they forget about it, but if it or a gift has been made recently they instill a waiting period before the applicant can receive assistance.”

  Alan frowned. “A waiting period? Of how long?”

  “That’s where it gets really complicated. They use some formula based on the size of the loan or gift and when it was paid out. I got lost there. I think I’d have to study the guidelines to figure it out, or maybe talk to an attorney who specializes in that sort of thing.”

  I sighed again.

  “But darling, Kevin never reached that point. So he never had to deal with the intricacies of your system—or nonsystem, as you call it.”

  “No, I know, but I was reaching for a motive, you see.”

  “Yes, of course I see.” He tented his fingers. “If Kevin’s debtors, or those to whom he’d made gifts, thought that the state of Indiana was about to come after them and force them to repay, one or more of them might find it a good idea to help a very old man to his reward a trifle earlier than Providence had in mind.”