by Shane Lusher
She shook her head. “He didn’t want to hear anything about that.”
“I know,” I said. “I don’t understand that part. Do you?”
“Well, I’ve been coroner for two years now,” she said. “Thankfully, I haven’t had all that much work to do, but I’ve also learned a lot about the law and the way it’s enforced. There haven’t been any federal crimes committed. The only thing the FBI might be interested in would have been Sweeney’s meth lab. And they were the first who were informed. There’s a task force.”
“Is anybody coming out?” I asked.
She leaned on the counter and shook her head. “You just type it all into the database. They contact you if they need anything else. So: no, nobody is coming out.”
She finished with the onion and put it into a bowl, then got out a tomato and began dicing that as well. I’d watched Kelly cook before. It was precise, and she always placed everything in individual bowls before beginning cooking. She told me she didn’t want to get caught with the butter scorched and her pants down.
“So they’re not interested,” I said.
“That’s my whole point,” she said. “It’s not their concern. I guess what I want to know is why-”
She placed the knife down on the cutting board and walked over to look into the living room, making sure the girls were not listening. “What’s in it for you? Are you just in this to figure out what happened to Tad?”
“There’s more to Tad’s murder than just some junkie gunning him down in the street.”
She shook her head. “That’s not what I’m saying. I’m asking whether you have enough invested in this place to care about what is happening.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Dubois certainly isn’t going to say there’s a serial killer on the loose, but now we’ve got two people dead, and-”
Just then the girls came bounding up the stairs and into the kitchen.
“What’s for lunch?” Erin asked. I put my arm around her shoulders and she shrugged it off, rolling her eyes.
“Stir-fry,” Kelly said. “Casey, can you make the rice?”
“Can’t Dana make it?” she asked.
Kelly looked at me. “Do you know how to make rice?” she asked.
“I do,” I said. “I even know how to toast bread.”
Casey got a rice cooker out of the cabinet and put it on the countertop. “Great,” she said. “Here you go.”
The girls went out of the kitchen and into the living room. A few seconds later, the sound of the television came blaring back.
Kelly handed me a box of rice and I opened a cabinet and got out a glass.
“I care,” I said.
Kelly’s eyes were watering from the onions, and she opened a window and blew her nose. “Yeah, well,” she said. “You’re going to have to start doing a bit more. Erin needs a parent.”
“Can you just cut me some slack?” I asked. I put down the box of rice.
“Don’t you think you have enough slack already?” she snapped, picking up her knife again.
I didn’t respond. That had been my main tactic with my wife, when I knew that she was right but damned if I was going to admit it. I concentrated on trying to open the package of rice instead.
“I’m sorry,” Kelly said after a moment. “It’s just that I think it might be better if you didn’t keep flipping her back and forth between Tad’s house and the farm. She needs a home. It’s bad enough that she has to switch between my place and yours.”
“So what, I’m supposed to get rid of the farm, now?” I asked. I’d managed to measure out two cups of rice and pour them into the rice cooker. Now I was rinsing the grains in the sink.
“Dana,” Kelly said. She put her hand on my arm. “I know it’s not easy.”
“It would be a lot easier if you weren’t riding me all the time,” I said. It came out sounding like a whine, and I kicked myself internally. “I can take care of myself, and I can take care of Erin. You just need to loosen up.”
She sighed. After a moment’s silence, she said,“I’m sorry. I just want what’s best for her.”
“You think I don’t? I didn’t ask for this, you know,” I said.
I knew that I was being anything but fair. Kelly hadn’t asked to be the single parent of a nine-year-old girl, either, and she’d had to go through all of the hard years of doing it while studying and working two jobs.
Kelly had stopped talking. She had her head down, her lips pressed together.
“Hey,” I said. I poked her in the side, and she jumped. I waited until she looked at me. She stared at my outstretched hand like she was seeing it for the first time.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Dana.”
She hesitated, but then her face changed into the cockeyed grin I remembered from high school.
“Kelly,” she said as she took my hand.
“Great,” I said. I shook it and let it go. “Let’s start over. Is that good for you?”
She hesitated again, and then went to the refrigerator to remove a package of chicken.
“Okay,” she said. “Fine.”
Twenty
When I parked on Jefferson in Morton, the clock on the First National Bank across the street read one-thirty sharp.
I stepped out of the car into the bright sunlight. There was not a cloud in the sky, and though the temperature on the bank said ninety-one degrees, I shivered as I stood on the sidewalk.
Jefferson to the west was lined with single-family pre-World War II bungalows, the siding freshly painted or replaced with vinyl, the landscaping perfect, everything lined in brick and mulched. Not a thing out of place. The grass was green, and looked to have been clipped with cosmetic scissors, lush like a new carpet.
Vic Daniels' office was on the corner. I noticed the abbreviation ‘J.D.’ after his name on the Mackinaw Valley Insurance sign. Vic was an attorney. Non-practicing, apparently.
The Wilson was just two doors down. Its architect had been going for Elizabethan, with dark wooden beams and white stucco on the outside, and the caption beneath the sign said that it was an Irish bar, though any other indication that alcohol was served on the premises—Guinness sign or otherwise—was conspicuously absent. Zoning laws in small towns were a bitch.
There were a good twenty patrons seated at tables around the room. Judging by the ties and business skirts, the majority of them were employees of the bank across the way.
Daniels was the only one sitting at the bar, a glass of lemonade in front of him.
“Dana,” he called out and waved as I made my way between the tables and the bar stools. I shook his hand and sat, and when the bartender came up, I ordered lemonade as well.
“You guys drink on your lunch hour in Chicago?” Daniels asked.
“Depends on the employer,” I said, trying to remember when the last time was that I didn’t have a beer when I went out to lunch.
“Yeah, well you’re from around here, so you know,” he said. “Nobody drinks at lunch.”
The bartender brought the lemonade and I took a sip, feeling the icy chill of the air circulating in the room underneath my suit coat.
“That sounds a bit out of character from the other night,” I said. “I don’t think you had more than one beer, did you?”
Vic laughed. “Insurance. When you’ve been in this business long enough, you know what can happen if you get in a car accident and you’ve been drinking.”
He was silent for a moment.
“I didn’t know you went to law school,” I said.
Vic made a face. “Fish and chips,” he said to the bartender, who’d reappeared.
“I just ate,” I said and waved him off.
“Yeah, I went to law school. UCLA. Summa cum laude. Came back here to be a public defender.”
“And?”
Vic looked at me. “More money in insurance,” he said.
“So I’ve heard.”
I waited again. He had something to say to me
, but now that I was here, he seemed hesitant.
He sighed. “You smoke?” he asked.
“I used to.”
“Shit,” he said. “Me, too. Started bumming again, though.”
“Not good. One cigarette away from a pack a day,” I said.
I waited again. The bartender came and refilled our glasses from the pump. We thanked him, and when he went away Vic finally spoke.
“You’re investigating Colby Trueblood’s murder, right?” he asked.
I nodded. “As much as I can.”
“What kind of confidentiality can I expect from you?”
“That all depends. You’re the lawyer-”
“I was a lawyer. I was disbarred.” Vic sipped from his lemonade and held up a hand. “I don’t want to talk about that. You can ask anybody and they’ll tell you. What I want to know is if I tell you a few things will you keep quiet about it?”
“Well, if it’s relevant to an investigation-”
“I won’t testify about anything,” Daniels said. “Not unless they subpoenaed me, and then I would lie.”
“Okay,” I said.
He sighed. “I just don’t want any of this to have come from me.”
I shrugged. “Okay,” I said again. “Let’s just say if you have something relevant to the investigation I won’t let on that you told me. But if I have to, I might come back and try to persuade you to see differently.”
He looked away for a moment, and then nodded.
“All right,” he said. “That’s fine.” He looked at me. “Here’s the deal. I do Wayne Trueblood’s insurance.”
“Wait,” I said. “Why would the owner of Marquette County Insurance come to you?”
Vic held up a hand again. “I don’t do all of his insurance. I only do his life insurance. He says he doesn’t want anybody to know how much he’s insured for, and he couldn’t keep that a secret at work.”
“Fair enough,” I said.
“Yeah. No,” Vic said. “Thing is, he has a lot—a shitload—of insurance out on his family. Not on himself. He’s only got like thirty thousand on himself. He’s got a million and a half on his wife. He’s got five hundred thousand on his son. He’s even got the same amount on his ex-wife.”
He ran the back of his hand along the stubble on his cheek and looked at me.
“Wait,” I said. “His ex-wife? He must be paying alimony. Why would he insure her? Can you even do that?”
Vic looked at me and smiled, but his voice betrayed anything other than humor. “Dana, you can put out a life insurance policy on anybody,” he said quietly. “Companies do it all the time. They insure their employees. It’s not illegal, although it’s still frowned upon in some circles. Hell, I could probably put out an insurance policy on you if I wanted to.”
“Huh,” I said. “What’s the disclosure policy on that?”
“You have to tell them. The insured has to consent to it, and you have to have an insurable interest, but companies get around that. Usually they hand out a bonus, you sign the forms, and then you forget about it. The philosophy goes something like they’re protecting themselves in case something happens to an employee and the family sues.
“But that’s the lighter side of it. Most companies just see it as a pretty good investment, especially with the markets the way they have been the past few years.”
“So, Trueblood’s got lots of insurance on his family,” I said.
“Not just lots of insurance, Dana,” Vic said, and screwed up his mouth, thinking.
“My father had life insurance for my brother, and for me, too,” I said. “I still have it. It’s not much, just about ten thousand dollars, but it’ll cover burial costs.”
I took a drink of the lemonade, which tasted sour, as if the lines in the bar hadn’t been cleaned recently.
“I’m not talking about ten thousand dollars,” Daniels said and looked at me. “He had five hundred thousand on Colby. He raised it to a million the month before she was killed.”
I studied him in the mirror.
“Okay,” I said. “Now that’s different. Did he give you a reason?”
“He said she was getting older,” Vic said. “Just got her a new car. Shit.” He pushed his glass of lemonade away. “Pete,” he called out to the bartender. “I’d like a Murphy’s.”
Daniels looked at me expectantly.
“Make it two,” I said.
When the beers arrived, Vic gulped down a third of his and then licked his lips.
“So what, you think Trueblood had something to do with her death?” I asked.
He hadn’t let go of his glass. He nodded.
“I don’t know,” he said. “You’re the investigator.”
“But you know Trueblood better than I do,” I said. I shook my head. “Still. I don’t see it.”
“I don’t know him all that well,” Vic said. “I just know he’s got his fingers in everything. He’s got the insurance agency, he’s got the adoption agency, and you’ve seen how much influence he’s got with the sheriff.”
“He told me he had a falling out with Dubois years ago,” I interrupted.
Vic cleared his throat. “You’d better believe it,” he said.
“What happened?”
“Can’t go into it,” he said. “Attorney-client privilege.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“I was still practicing then,” he explained.
“Well, can you tell me what you’ve got against him?” I asked. “He seems like a pretty down-to-earth guy. And it sounds to me like you’re doing very good business dealing with him.”
“I don’t have anything against him,” Vic snapped. “Not”—he stopped talking as he searched for the correct word—“professionally.”
“And personally?” I asked.
“I can’t stand the bastard,” he said.
I gave him a skeptical look. His fish and chips arrived, and after the bartender left he pushed it away and took another long drink of his pint.
“Why is that?”
“I don’t want to go into it,” Vic said.
I sighed and drank half of my beer. I picked up my suit coat and stood up.
“Thank you for your time, Vic,” I said. “I appreciate it.”
“Wait,” he hissed and put his hand on my arm. “Sit down. I’m not finished yet.”
I sat and waited. Vic finished his beer. He watched one of the men at a table get up and walk outside, a pack of cigarettes in his hand.
“He had an insurance policy on Darren Roe as well.”
“What?” I was confused. “Did Roe work for him?” I asked.
“No,” Daniels said.
“How much was he insured for?” I asked.
“Twenty thousand,” he said.
“He collect?”
“He sure did. Plus, there was an indemnity clause for accidental death, so he got double. Murder is considered accidental death,” he explained. He glanced over at me. “If you can believe that.”
“Why would he have an insurance policy out on Roe?”
“That’s what’s worrying me,” Vic said. “See, he has life insurance policies on all of the kids that go through the adoption agency.”
“Roe was adopted?”
“Came through the system about twenty-five years ago,” Vic said. “Before my time, but when I bought the insurance agency from Jim Gleassen when he retired, I got all the customers, too. And their records.”
“Okay,” I said. “So, you’re saying that Trueblood was involved in Roe’s death?”
“That’s not what I said,” Daniels said.
“Well, what are you saying? That Trueblood puts out life insurance on everybody who goes through his adoption agency because he’s banking on their dying before he does?”
“I don’t know,” Daniels shrugged. “Maybe he’s just using it as an investment. Maybe he was planning on his daughter inheriting the policies.”
He signaled to the bartender again and ordered anot
her beer for himself.
“Which blows the whole theory that he upped her insurance so that he could kill her.”
“That wasn’t my theory,” Daniels said.
“Well, then what is your theory, exactly?” I asked.
Vic ignored my question. “You know that meth house that went up the other night?” he asked. “That guy that died in the explosion?”
“Sweeney,” I said.
“Yeah. He went through the Quiverfull. Trueblood had him insured for thirty thousand.”
I had a lot of questions after that, for one thing, how Vic had gotten all of his information. It turned out adoptions were public records, even if the actual birth parents were kept anonymous. You could still see everything else.
“Can you show me the policies?” I asked after a while.
Vic looked at me. He was halfway through his third beer. I was still nursing my first. I wondered how he was going to go back to work with three pints under his belt.
“I can’t do that,” he said. “That’s what I meant earlier about confidentiality.”
“Okay,” I said. “You realize that a lot of this sounds like a story, then.”
“What do you mean?”
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?” I asked. “You just admitted to me that you can’t stand Wayne Trueblood.”
“Who in the hell would make up something like this?” Vic asked. He was slurring. “Hey, you don’t have to believe me.”
I nodded. He had a point. “Wouldn’t the company refuse to pay based on Sweeney’s lifestyle? Because he was engaged in illegal activity when he died?” I asked after a few moments.
“They might do that,” Vic admitted. “And I doubt Trueblood would be able to collect. He didn’t even mention it yesterday.”
“Maybe he didn’t know,” I said.
“Yeah,” Vic laughed. “The guy who knows everything in Tazewell County didn’t know about that.”
Vic gradually began to pick at his meal. By then nearly an hour had passed, and I still needed to get back to Pekin to speak to Tuan Nguyen. That, and I’d forgotten I also wanted to call Darcy Stamm.
He laughed again and took another swallow. The bartender was down at the other end, watching a Japanese game show on the television with the sound turned down.