Death Benefits

by Jennifer Becton

  I could still picture her that night as she drove off in her Z28, her blond ponytail hanging over the seat back as she headed to some post-football game party. Lots of jocks and cheerleaders: not my style.

  When she’d come home later that night, battered and bruised, our family changed forever, and I began my quest to save everyone. So far, I hadn’t been successful in saving anybody, including myself.

  Seventeen years later, my sister was an alcoholic, my mother was stuck in the past and totally in denial, my father was mostly absent, and I had organized my entire life around the event that caused it all.

  But now, I might be on the verge of freeing my entire family.

  And Tripp was still there to help me.

  I stared blankly ahead for a moment, bringing myself out of the past, and went to meet Vincent in front of Hugo’s. I found him leaning against the trunk of one of the cherry trees. Together, we turned toward the DOI office, which was located three blocks over.

  “Are we set with the adjuster?” I asked.

  “She’s in the field this week, so we’re meeting her at her current location, which is staking out a gas station off I-16.”

  “We’re meeting at her stakeout?” I asked, not sure I liked the idea. Not only was I loath to sit in a surveillance vehicle—I was all too familiar with the stench a car acquired when one sat in it for days on end hoping to catch a suspect in the midst of a con—but I also didn’t want to jeopardize the adjuster’s anonymity.

  “Apparently, she’s got a good location that won’t arouse any suspicion,” Vincent said. “Plus, she sounded bored.”

  Four

  Vincent and I were headed straight to no-man’s-land, which is basically anywhere on I-16, the most desolate, boring stretch of highway in the state of Georgia. Only when the road reached the coast with its white sandy beaches, live oaks, and Spanish moss did drivers realize why I-16 had been created in the first place. The Georgia coast was magical.

  Unfortunately, Vincent and I weren’t going to make it anywhere near the beaches. We’d be stopping somewhere in the middle of a vast section of flat nothingness.

  Super.

  And to make the trip even more exciting, Vincent had managed to talk me into driving, and I was currently fighting to keep my mind focused on the uninterrupted blacktop before me and not slip into a driving coma.

  I searched the horizon for anything—other than the billboards that dotted the roadside—that resembled civilization. Even a truck stop would be comforting.

  Vincent and I had studiously avoided any sort of personal conversation so far while he kept his head buried in the files, occasionally reading portions aloud to me. I’d just perused the same information that morning, but I appreciated his recap anyway. It told me what facets of the case had stood out to him.

  “Cranford Police responded to a report of a car fire at approximately 3 AM on Saturday,” he said. “The call came in from Luis Pedroza, a passing motorist with a cell phone who was returning home from his shift at the diaper plant. He lives on Highway 403, which is fortunate for us because that road is apparently not highly traveled at that time of night.”

  “Convenient place to set a fire,” I said. “If it were set deliberately, that is.”

  Vincent continued his summary without commentary. “First responders were a couple of guys from the Cranford Volunteer Fire Department, who found the 1986 Ford LTD fully engaged, seemingly as a result of a collision with a tree. Flames were visible in the passenger compartment, and upon approach, the firemen discovered a body in the vehicle.”

  “Did they try to extricate him?” I asked, jumping ahead.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Vincent shake his head. “Says the body was already dead and badly burned. Standard protocol dictates that the firemen keep the flames back but try to leave the body in situ to preserve any remaining evidence. Once the fire was extinguished, the local LEOs—the sheriff and a couple of deputies from the Cranford sheriff’s office—put in a call to the Georgia Department of Fire Investigation. Everything was photographed before the body was taken to the morgue at Cranford General and ultimately to the medical examiners at the state crime lab.”

  “And Kathy Vanderbilt did not go to the morgue to identify her husband’s body?” I asked, finding that a bit odd from my initial reading. Unless Kathy had somehow identified the body, we wouldn’t know for certain that it was Theodore Vanderbilt in the vehicle until after the autopsy. He could have loaned the car to someone else without Kathy’s knowledge, or he could have been carjacked.

  We couldn’t assume anything.

  “You saw the photos. There was no point in having her look at the body,” Vincent said as he flipped a few pages. “The victim was burned beyond recognition—no clothing survived either—but Kathy was able to identify her husband’s wedding band and watch, which he’d been wearing when he left the house, and to confirm that he had been driving the Ford LTD that night.”

  “Ah, and when did Mrs. Vanderbilt call Americus Mutual about her claim?”

  “Thanks to 24/7 claims departments, she made the call fifteen minutes after she’d been notified of the accident.”

  “That was quick.” At least she’d waited those fifteen minutes for the sake of appearance. Can’t seem too eager.

  Another strike against Kathy.

  “The company dispatched”—Vincent paused as he searched the file—“Janice Winder. Given the suspicious circumstances surrounding the discovery of the body and the Cranford sheriff’s lack of access to sufficient labs in the area, it didn’t take long for the company’s fraud department to flag the file, and here we are.”

  “Yeah, here we are.” I glanced sidelong at him.

  “You okay with this?” Vincent asked.

  After my conversations with Ted and Tripp, I was prepared to defend myself, tell Vincent I was ready to face anything, even the goriest crime scene, but then he gestured between the two of us. He was not asking about my preparedness for the task at hand. “About you and me?” I asked, looking back at the road. “As partners, you mean?”

  “Yeah,” he affirmed. “Ted sprung it on you pretty quick this morning.”

  I shook my head. “It was a surprise, yeah, but not necessarily an unpleasant one.”

  He settled deeper into the seat and closed the file. “Well, I’m glad you didn’t turn him down because right now Ted would be sitting there instead of you, and managers and I don’t seem to get along.”

  Shocker. Vincent wasn’t the kind of man who could be managed.

  I laughed. “I’m sure Ted is glad too. He doesn’t seem to be interested in getting his hands dirty.”

  “Yeah, he’s a good guy, but he’s more suited to an administrative position than to field work. Besides, I don’t trust managers to watch my back,” he said.

  I nodded, all the while hoping he could trust me to keep him covered. Wasn’t I supposed to freeze up now that I’d been traumatized?

  God, I sure hoped not.

  We lapsed into silence until I turned off at the appropriate exit.

  At the intersection, I looked in both directions. To the left were stores and restaurants, and to the right was the more industrial section, with auto body shops and sprawling warehouses.

  “Which way?” I asked.

  “North,” Vincent said with a gesture toward the left.

  “Really?” I asked. I had fully expected him to guide us to the industrial section of town, which was usually where the larger fraud cases occurred.

  “Ms. Winder is in a grocery store parking lot.”

  “Dandy,” I said, knowing we’d probably all be crammed together in the investigator’s car. I hoped she was in a big car at least.

  Using his phone’s GPS, Vincent directed me through a tangle of streets, and we ended up in front of a large chain grocery store with a gas station in the parking lot.

  “She’s in a silver Toyota Corolla.”

  Great. A compact.

  We drove arou
nd the busy lot for almost five minutes before we found Janice and her Corolla.

  I took a spot nearby, and we walked toward the car. Janice hailed us.

  Apparently, this wasn’t a stealth mission, and we had “law enforcement officer” written all over us.

  Or maybe it was just Vincent.

  “Hey, y’all,” Janice said as she laid aside her camera and smiled up at us from the car. She was a large, dark-skinned woman with the long-lashed eyes that gave her a 1950s movie star aura.

  I showed her my badge and leaned in to shake hands. “Special Agent Julia Jackson.” I nodded my head to the right. “Special Agent Mark Vincent.”

  “I’m so glad you picked today to come out here. I was dying of boredom. These stakeouts can take forever.” Janice hit the automatic door locks and said, “Hop in so we can talk while I watch.”

  I went around the car and took the passenger seat while Vincent wedged himself in back. For a surveillance car, it was pretty clean, with only a few snack food wrappers and Coke bottles to be seen and, fortunately, no odor at all.

  I turned sideways in my seat so I could see both Janice and Vincent.

  “Who are you surveilling?” he asked.

  “Chad Jevons. Employee at the Olde Time Soda Company, a bottling plant east on I-16. He’s on worker’s comp, but we’ve gotten reports that he’s employed unofficially and being paid under the table at that gas station.” She pointed across the lot at a small no-name brand gas dispensary. “I’ve already gotten a photo of him working the counter, but I’d also need a shot of him doing some kind of physical labor that proves he’s faking his injuries.”

  “You’re not worried about being in such an exposed position?” Vincent paused and looked around as if he suspected snipers were lurking behind a nearby minivan.

  I looked at the mothers and children shopping at this time of day and laughed. Clearly, they were all armed enemy combatants.

  I rolled my eyes at Vincent. Apparently, he had spent a little too much time on protection details in war zones.

  Janice echoed my thoughts. “You kidding me? No one has given me a second look. Hell, I bought a bottle of Coke from Chad himself to get the first photo. I’m not dealing with a genius here.” She picked up the camera that had been sitting in her lap and angled herself back toward the gas station. “Now, you’re here to talk about that car fire in Cranford County, right?”

  “Right,” Vincent said from the back seat where he was situated in such a cramped position that his knees were nearly folded up to his chest. “We read the preliminary report and requested copies of all the Americus files, but we haven’t heard back.”

  There was Vincent being polite and not repeating his earlier assertion that the company was full of jackasses.

  “And,” I said with an arched brow at Vincent, “we wanted to come out and get the full story in person.”

  “Yeah, those boys at the home office are having computer problems,” Janice explained. “Frankly, it’s been a relief. No email for days.” Then she turned to me and added, “The full story ain’t much to tell. The claim smelled funny from the get-go.”

  “Why was that?” I asked.

  “First red flag? Timing. Survivors don’t usually call until the death certificate is in hand. And they don’t threaten the customer service rep when they make their claim.”

  “She threatened someone? How?” Vincent asked.

  “I believe the gist of it was that she wanted her money, and she wanted it yesterday. Didn’t want to wait on any death certificate, and she’d come get the cash herself if necessary.”

  Lovely, I thought. Kathy Vanderbilt sounded like quite a classy lady.

  “The second red flag?” I prompted.

  “Once I read the police report and contacted the arson investigator and the volunteers who were first on the scene, I suspected this claim was going to turn into more than I could handle. When I met the coroner at the morgue to see the body, I was sure.”

  “Why was that?” I asked, now watching the gas station along with Janice, hoping to catch sight of this guy Chad.

  I guess surveillance had become a habit.

  “The Cranford coroner said he couldn’t use fingerprints to ID the body, and he couldn’t find a cause of death without a full autopsy. And add to that the whole accident scene.” Janice looked between us and explained, “If you take the body out of the scenario, it was a textbook car arson. Seen ’em a thousand times. Flames in the passenger area, nine times out of ten, some joker is trying to dispose of his vehicle. Maybe he’s behind on his payments and wants them to go away or he needs to make a quick buck off the vehicle by stripping and burning it. That’s Claims Adjusting 101.”

  “But there’s no crappier car than a 1986 Ford LTD,” Vincent said. “This probably wasn’t done for the auto insurance payout.”

  “You’re not kidding,” I said, looking away from the gas station and refocusing on Janice. “They probably wouldn’t even bother having comprehensive or collision coverage.”

  “So there’s only one chance in ten that the fire was a result of the accident,” she continued. “I can handle a staged accident, but I have a very big problem if this was some psycho torching up his buddy. And homicide is someone else’s turf.”

  “Homicide?” Vincent asked abruptly—and maybe a touch too forcefully—from behind me. “What makes you say it was homicide?”

  Janice and I both turned to look at Vincent. “Don’t get your panties in a wad, Special Agent Vincent,” she said. “I’m just speculating.”

  I lowered my eyebrows at him in the hopes that he would ease up on the tone a bit—Southern ladies do not like to be barked at military style—and he raised one shoulder in an almost sheepish shrug.

  Not that he could ever really pull off sheepish. Not with that wolfish look always in his eyes.

  “What makes you speculate that it was a homicide?” I asked more gently as Janice and I turned to face the gas station again. “Anything specific? Or just a hunch?”

  “A hunch, I suppose you’d call it.” She seemed to consider her words and shook her head. “No, it’s not even really a hunch. Probably I’ve just watched too many crime shows on TV is all. Nothing that dramatic happens in real life. But with a life insurance policy that size, well, I wouldn’t write off murder as a possibility, even if it is pretty remote.”

  “Tell us more about the policy on Theodore Vanderbilt,” Vincent said. He was still issuing commands, but at least this time his tone held an air of restraint.

  Without taking her eyes from the station, Janice reached toward the pocket on the driver’s door, pulled out a file folder, and waved it in my general direction. “I made copies of everything we’ve got. In there, you’ll find the original policy, and it’s a doozy. Five hundred grand with a double indemnity rider.”

  Vincent whistled at the figure.

  “Yeah,” I agreed, flipping the pages of the policy. A double indemnity rider clause had been added to Theodore Vanderbilt’s standard life insurance policy that would pay twice the benefit if his death were caused by an accident. This included murder by someone other than, and not in collusion with, the beneficiary of the policy, but it excluded suicide, death caused by the insured’s negligence, and death by natural causes.

  On its own, the $500,000 life insurance payout was incentive enough to fake a death, but with the double indemnity rider, which would pay a cool million on an accidental death, a whole other world of possibilities opened up.

  The beneficiary of the policy—Kathy Vanderbilt, according to the papers in my hand—would collect that sizable sum if her husband’s death were ruled accidental or murder and it was proven that she had not been involved.

  So it behooved Kathy Vanderbilt for her husband to have perished in a car accident or even through foul play. It behooved her so greatly, in fact, that she had a motive to make her husband’s death appear accidental even if he’d died of natural causes or taken his own life.

  And a
s Janice said, it also provided her plenty of motive for murder.

  “We’re going to need to find out exactly how Mr. Vanderbilt died,” I said, voicing my thoughts aloud.

  “And that’s exactly why I’m glad I’m not a part of that claim anymore,” Janice said. “I’m a company fraud inspector, not a detective. The most involved I ever got in the forensics world was the time I sent some washed checks to the questioned documents expert at the state lab. I don’t do dead bodies and autopsies.” She gestured across the parking lot. “I take pictures of people faking injuries and look at bashed up vehicles now and then. That’s all. If something looks like a big case, I send it up the ladder. Company policy.”

  Conversation lulled, and we all seemed to be looking at the gas station again, hoping Chad the faker would make an appearance to liven up the trip.

  A few moments later, I shut the folder and passed it back to Vincent. “Looks like we’ve got all we need,” I said to Janice. “We’ll get out of your way.”

  “No problem, and let me know how the claim turns out. I’ll probably still be here waiting for this dude to make a mistake.” She sighed. “God, these cases take forever.”

  I couldn’t help but pity Janice as we left. She’d be cooped up in that car for hours, maybe days, waiting for Chad to show that he was perfectly capable of working, despite his claims of injury.

  As Vincent and I reached the Explorer, I unlocked the doors but hesitated before getting inside. I looked at Vincent. “Make yourself scarce for a few minutes, would you?” I said. “I’m going to give Janice a hand if I can.”

  Vincent eyed me curiously but nodded and shut the passenger door without climbing in.

  “I’ll pick you up here when I’m done.”

  I hopped in the SUV, cranked it, and drove to the gas station, parking off to the side of the building so that Janice could get a good photograph.

  A thrill shot through me at the prospect of this minor deception. I don’t know why. I’d done much more dangerous things in my seven years as a cop. This should hardly register on my thrill meter, but it did in a nostalgic kind of way. It was fun, like going back to my childhood and playing kickball. Sure, I’d played more challenging games as an adult, but there was something about going back to the basics.