by Susan Calder
A pickup drove by Walter’s parked truck and stopped in front of her house. A man hopped out, his cowboy hat a silhouette. Was he visiting her other neighbour? There was something familiar about the way he loped around the rear of his truck. She froze. Johnny Becker. He continued up her sidewalk and halted at the bottom of the stairs.
“What do you want?” She touched a chair. It shook.
He stared upward. “Feel like going to a bar? There’s a fun-looking one a few blocks away. Called something like Hounds.”
“How did you find out where I live?” The business card she’d left him only showed her office address; her phone listing excluded her house number and street. From this distance she couldn’t smell liquor on Johnny. The street lamp illuminated his hat, but its brim shaded his eyes.
“We could go to a different bar,” he said. “I’m not particular.”
“Is this another of your jokes?”
“Do you want me to get down on one knee like Romeo?”
She folded her arms. “I want you to leave right now.”
“We could have a drink in your place.”
Her mother was asleep inside. If she opened the door to go in, would he bolt up the stairs to the porch and try to push his way past? Safer to wait here until he left. Why hadn’t she brought her cellphone out? “If you don’t go, I’ll call the police.”
“About what? A friendly invitation?”
“Friendly?”
“Are you sure you won’t—”
“Get in your truck.”
“Come along for the ride.”
“Go.”
“All right.” Johnny raised his palms toward her. “You force me to go out to who-the-fuck-where and pick up a stranger for meaningless sex.”
“Like what you had in mind here would be different.”
“It might if you give it a chance.”
She glared. He back-stepped down her sidewalk and stumbled against his truck. She gasped and realized this was another pratfall. Stupid. How many times would he fool her with that? Dark as it was, she knew he was grinning at her.
“Are you sure?” he shouted.
“Leave.”
He got into the truck. Her body stayed tense as his pickup belched smoke down the street. When the truck disappeared, she double-checked her front and side door locks and made certain every window was tightly closed. In the den her mother lay curled under the covers. In less than four hours Leah would be parking outside. How would Paula rest until then? Even if Johnny’s motive was casual sex, his indifference to her rejection could have been faked. She’d seen him turn angry fast when crossed.
Or was his motive for seeking her out about more than easy sex with an older woman, something to do with his uncle’s death and possible murder?
Chapter Twelve
The click of the front door latch roused Paula from fitful sleep. Years of waiting for daughters to come home at night had alerted her to that signal. She threw on her robe and met Leah in the kitchen, getting a drink of water from the fridge.
“Mom, I told you not to wait up.”
“I didn’t. I’ve been out like a brick.” A porous one.
Leah rubbed her hair so hard it bunched on her head. “I’m wiped. What a night at the bar.”
“What happened?”
“The usual Stampede hilarity.”
Paula had wondered if Johnny had gone from her house to Leah’s bar. Leah would probably say if he’d done that and identified himself to her. If Brendan had turned up, she might not mention it.
“Your bed is all ready,” Paula said.
“I hate putting you out.”
“What are mothers for?” Paula’s smile met Leah’s scowl. “Gran and I will tiptoe around in the morning to not disturb you.”
Leah clunked her glass on the counter.
“I’m kidding,” Paula said. Leah looked too exhausted to be wakened by footsteps overhead.
“Thanks, Mom, I appreciate this.”
Some daughters would hug a mother, at this point, and cry and spill their hearts about the lousy boyfriend. Leah’s ‘thank you’ was a stretch for her that made Paula’s throat tight.
* * *
“Poor Leah,” Paula’s mother said at breakfast. “I should stay home from the fair to be here for her when she gets up.”
Paula had promised to go in to work. Would those mothers who get hugged stay home to attend to a daughter’s crisis? “Leah’s twenty-five; she’s a grown-up.”
“Walter and I will go later in the day. We don’t have to get the free—”
“Leah wants space, I think, and won’t care for us meddling.” Paula’s meddling, that is. A grandmother’s concern might not threaten Leah’s independence. “Mum, go and live your own life, and don’t feel guilty. You’ll disappoint Walter if you change the plan. I’ll zip over during my lunch hour and talk to Leah. She won’t be up before then.”
Paula ferried the two seniors to the Stampede grounds in time for the free coffee and doughnuts. Then she phoned Sam’s office. His receptionist told her he wasn’t in yet. Paula tried his cell.
“Henry’s running around getting repair estimates,” Sam said. “I’m working from the studio to keep an eye on his house in case of rain. We were up until two last night getting it dried up and secured.”
She heard him yawn. Sam was morning person and generally in bed by ten o’clock.
“Do you want to cancel our dinner tonight?” she asked.
“I can still make it.” He yawned again. “Don’t get alarmed if I fall asleep in my soup.”
At work, Paula found Nils, Isabelle and Alice, the office administrator, waiting by the phones for the hail claim calls. Nils was still convinced the insurance companies would be forced to assign many to them and the other independent adjusters. Paula suggested she use the waiting time to bring Nils up to scratch on the Becker claim.
“Have you told me anything about it yet?” he asked.
Alice and Isabelle returned to their packing for the office move. In Nils’ office, Paula summarized the claim details and her interviews with the Becker clan, conscious that in a few days she would be sitting in this visitors’ chair for the last time. Right now, she hated the prospect of never again seeing these plain walls and the smudged window with its cock-eyed Venetian blinds. In a week they would be a mile from here, in refurbished digs.
She and Nils discussed the possibility that Caspar had set the fire, making it look like an accidental case of someone smoking in bed so he could collect the insurance.
“Or his heirs could collect,” Paula said. “His hoarding could indicate chronic depression, with his financial difficulties, albeit minor ones, contributing to the strain.”
“People often try to cover up suicide attempts,” Nils agreed.
His phone rang. While he talked to the lawyer about a workplace injury claim on the verge of settlement, Paula checked her cell. An e-mail from Mike confirmed that Caspar’s will left everything to Cynthia, Johnny and Brendan. Had the fire been Caspar’s way of suicide: go down in flames with his beloved things? Would a true hoarder sacrifice his belongings for insurance money, even to benefit loved ones? Nils should understand about hoarding. When they left these premises, he was taking home his desk, chairs, countless supplies and the frosted glass on the office outer door with Nils van der Vliet Insurance Adjusters Inc. stencilled in faded lettering. In Paula’s view, the only item worth keeping was his single wall picture, a sketch of the Lloyd’s of London coffee house circa 1688, where modern insurance began.
Nils’ phone call dragged on. An e-mail message chimed in from the appraiser confirming their three o’clock meeting at the Beckers’. Paula forwarded messages about other claims to Isabelle for handling. Isabelle worked well under supervision, and the move had made her technical skills gold. She and Nils were spending this slow business period transferring the old files in the storage room to digital so they could destroy the hard copies rather than clutter up their new premises w
ith them. An influx of hail claims would delay that task. Was Isabelle’s mismanagement of her personal finances temporary or a chronic habit? Paula had noticed Isabelle today dressed in more new purchases: a silky cowgirl top, a jean skirt and dangly horseshoe earrings.
When Nils’ finished his call, Paula recommended they have Isabelle do an Internet search on the Becker siblings and Florence. “I can get Cynthia’s two husbands’ names from Mike.”
“Aren’t the police researching them?”
“In the past, Isabelle’s come up with better results than their computer experts. I’d also like her to canvass Caspar’s neighbours to see what she can learn about him and his relationship with his family and get their versions of the fire. I know the police have done this, but Isabelle can be intuitive and able to draw people out.”
“As long as all this doesn’t interfere with her work on the hail claims.”
“If they come in.”
“When,” Nils said. “Let’s be careful not to lose focus. From our point of view, all that matters is whether the named insured committed arson. If he didn’t, his estate is entitled to payment.”
“We’d have the right to subrogate against an heir who set the fire.”
“If it’s proven, and if that person can afford to repay the claim.”
“If they inherit, he or she will have the money and be in jail, where they can’t spend it.”
Nils pointed his pen at her. “I’m certain your time spent interviewing the Beckers this weekend was necessary, but remember, much as we’d like to help the police, we can’t bill insurers for tangents that have no relevance to them.”
“Nils, we agreed that gaining a reputation for solving suspicious claims would be our ticket to carving a niche that will drum up business.”
His phone rang again. Paula escaped to the reception area, where Isabelle stopped her to discuss the jewellery claim she was assisting Paula with. Paula told her to set up a meeting with the claimants to arrange settlement.
“You can go with me to learn the ropes.” Paula motioned Isabelle into her office. “Can I talk to you for a minute?” She closed the door behind them.
“What’s up?” Isabelle rested her hand on the back of the visitor’s chair.
“Erin tells me you’ve stopped paying your rent.”
Isabelle’s gaze shot to the side. “I’m going to, next month, when I get the money.”
“How are you planning to do that when you keep buying new clothes?”
“What do you mean?” Isabelle hitched her thumbs into the pockets of her mini jean skirt. “I bought these last month.”
“I hear you’re out every night.”
“Who says?”
“That costs money.”
“Erin’s jealous I’m having fun. It’s not my fault she’s not into Stampede.” Isabelle pivoted toward the door. “Nils is calling me.” She darted out.
Paula doubted jealousy was Erin’s real issue. She hoped it wasn’t. The phone rang in the reception area. A hail claim? Another ring was followed by a male voice that wasn’t Nils’.
Alice poked her head in the doorway. “You have a visitor. He said you asked him to come in, as a friend of your claimant, Caspar Becker.”
Garner? Alice ushered in the stout, grey-haired man with wire-rimmed glasses, dressed all in navy: windbreaker, checked shirt and pants.
Garner’s gaze lingered on her desk. “Is this one of the pieces of furniture you’re getting rid of?” He took several folded sheets of paper out of his pocket. “You wanted me to write up what I remembered of Caspar’s furnishings. I’m on my way to an antique dealer in Inglewood and figured I’d drop this off. Saves me a stamp.” He grinned at his joke, if it was one.
Paula put on her reading glasses and skimmed the handwritten list full of insertions and crossings out that indicated Garner’s changes of mind. Dining room tables—oak, pine and maple. Garner had crossed out numerous digits before settling on five. Matching dining room chairs: approximately twenty. Singleton chairs in assorted woods and wicker: Garner’s string of crossed-out numbers ended at thirty.
“Kitchen tables,” she read. “Five sofas. Maybe ten.”
“That one’s a pure guess. They were underneath the other stuff. I wish I’d paid more attention.”
“This is great. ‘Five to ten paper.’ What do you mean by that?”
“Boxes. Aside from the computer, the one that worked, and the printer, they were the few things in there he bought new. They’d be worth something.”
“You mean reams of paper that you buy at an office supply store?”
“He’d stock up when he noticed a sale, same as he did for cereal. I didn’t include the empty cereal boxes, only the full ones, and didn’t count his newspapers. They’re only good for recycling.”
“What did Caspar want with all those sheets of paper?”
“Research. He’d print it out from the computer.”
“Print what?”
“History for the book he was writing about his family. Planning to write, I should say. He never got past the research. It was my idea he use the Internet, since he’s technically minded and I thought this would save on paper, but he insisted on printing it all out. People our age can’t get used to reading on computer screens. There must have been thousands upon thousands of papers strewn all over. He meant to sort and file them in the empty cereal boxes. The organization would have been a start.”
“Was this genealogy research?”
“Well….” Garner scratched his bulbous nose tip. “The theme of Caspar’s book, from what I could understand, was the life of his parents set against the history of their time and place.” Garner paused. “Their lives, basically, spanned most of the twentieth century. Do you know how much history happened during that time?”
“A lot.”
“Caspar printed out everything remotely related to Germany or Canada in the last century, well maybe not everything, but …”
Paula had noticed a printout about Germany in Florence’s hallway.
“His goal was to thread it into his parents’ personal stories,” Garner said. “He collected books on the subject from garage sales. Now that I think of it, there were probably more than the number I wrote on the list.”
Paula found ‘books’ on his list and added a plus sign after one hundred.
“I’d double the amount.”
She added three more pluses. Books, paper, wood furniture, cardboard boxes, newspapers. If the fire had spread to the living room—
“The book was a hopeless undertaking,” Garner said, “especially for someone inclined to get distracted, but it kept Caspar busy through winter, the non garage sale season, and mentally acute. That’s important at our age.”
“He kept a bunch of those research papers upstairs, at Florence’s.”
“That might be overflow,” Garner said. “I also didn’t include his piles of mail. I bet Casper hadn’t thrown out a flyer or charity request in twenty years. They were in the bathtub.”
“Where did Caspar bathe?”
“He used a washcloth at the sink. I don’t think it happened too often.” Garner sniffed to make a point.
Paula thanked him for the effort and care he’d taken with the list. “It will be a big help with the insurance contents claim.”
“I enjoyed doing it, as a way to reflect on Caspar. Do you know if the family’s planned a service yet?”
“If I hear, I’ll make sure they get in touch with you.”
“Florence muttered something about burying him in the yard. Is that legal?”
“I’m sure she wasn’t serious.” Not totally sure.
“About your desk.” Garner rapped the metal. “Rosalie, my wife, could use another table in the basement for sorting clothes. What are you asking for it?”
“Isabelle’s in charge of that. You can talk to her on your way out.”
“Is she the older woman or the sweet, young blonde?”
“The blonde. Don’
t think you can put one over on her,” Paula teased. “She’s a shrewd negotiator.”
Chapter Thirteen
After Garner left, the phones continued to ring with hail claims. Paula scanned the list to see if, by chance, Cynthia’s claim was there. No such luck. It would have been an opportunity to interview her from another angle. Nils agreed that Isabelle could take on more than her usual share to free Paula for more time with her mother.
“You’ll report developments to me, of course,” Nils told Isabelle.
Paula couldn’t image the old control freak letting go to someone so young and inexperienced “If she’s really in charge, she should report no more than I do.”
For herself Paula selected two claims that might become tricky. In one, the storm had knocked down a tree next to a strip mall, destroying a portion of the roof and sending several customers to hospital. The other involved a private home. Hailstones shattered a picture window. Shards struck the family cat, which lost an eye. Nils would show no sympathy for the injured creature; Isabelle, too much.
Nils called their meeting to a close. “Let’s get out there and show ’em we can do a better job than those staff adjusters who are swamped out of their halfwit heads.”
Neither of Paula’s claimants answered her calls, which gave her time to slip home for lunch. During Stampede, the few hours between noon and Leah’s departure for work were their window to talk.
The sound of running water greeted Paula as she entered the house. While waiting for Leah to finish her shower, Paula checked her e-mail. One from Mike: Brendan Becker came into headquarters yesterday. Nothing new in his interview, attached. Enjoyed our day with you and Theda at the Stampede. Eli still talking about taking shelter from the hail, which seems to be his highlight. Doesn’t Sam live in primary hail zone?