California Fire And Life

17

Olivia Hathaway.

She's a tiny woman, eighty-four years of age, with beautiful white hair, a handsomely chiseled face, and sparkling blue eyes.

Today she's wearing an elegant white dress.

"It's about my spoons," she says.

Jack already knows this. He's been dealing with Olivia Hathaway's spoons for over three years now.

Here's the story on Olivia Hathaway's spoons.

Three years ago Jack gets a theft file. An eighty-one-year-old widow by the name of Olivia Hathaway has had a burglary at her little house in Anaheim. Jack goes out there and she's waiting for him in the kitchen with tea and freshly baked sugar cookies.

She won't discuss the loss until Jack has had two cups of tea, three cookies, told her his entire genealogy, and received a report on what each of Olivia's nine grandchildren and three great-grandchildren is doing. Now, Jack has five other loss reports to do that day, but he figures she's a charming, lonely old lady so he's okay with spending the extra time.

When she finally gets down to it, it turns out that the only thing that has been stolen is her collection of spoons.

Which is weird, Jack thinks, but he's looking out the window at a gigantic model of the Matterhorn replete with fake snow, the Crystal Cathedral, and a gigantic pair of mouse ears on a billboard, so, like, what's weird?

Olivia's just had an appraisal done ("I'm not going to live forever, you know, Jack, and there's a matter of a will") and the spoons are worth about $6,000. At this point, Olivia gets a little weepy because four of the spoons are sterling silver, handed down from her great-grandmother in Dingwall, Scotland. She excuses herself to get a tissue and then comes back in and asks Jack if there's anything that he can do to help recover her spoons.

Jack explains that he isn't the police, but that he will contact them to get a report, and that all he can really do, sadly, is reimburse her for the loss.

Olivia understands.

Jack just feels like shit for her, goes back to the office and calls Anaheim PD for the loss report, and the desk sergeant just laughs like hell and hangs up.

So Jack punches Olivia Hathaway in on the PLR (Prior Loss Report, pronounced "pillar") system and finds that Olivia Hathaway's spoons have been "stolen" fourteen times while insured with thirteen different insurance companies. They have, in fact, been stolen once a year since Mr. Hathaway's death.

Olivia's spoons are what's known in the insurance business as 3S, Social Security Supplement.

The amazing thing is that thirteen out of thirteen prior insurance companies have paid the claim.

Jack gets on the phone and calls number eleven, Fidelity Mutual, and it turns out that an old buddy named Mel Bornstein handled the claim.

"Did you do a PLR?" Jack asks.

"Yup."

"And you saw the priors?"

"Yup."

"Why did you pay?"

Mel laughs like hell and hangs up.

Jack tracks down adjusters number nine, ten, and thirteen, and they're each pretty much in helpless hysterics when they hang up the phone.

Three long years later Jack understands why they paid an obviously phony claim.

But he doesn't back then. Back then he's in a quandary. He knows what he should do: by law, in fact, he's obligated to report the fraud to the NICB (National Insurance Crime Bureau), cancel her policy, and deny the claim. But he just can't bring himself to turn her in and leave her without insurance (What if there was a fire? What if someone slipped and fell on her sidewalk? What if there was a real burglary?), so he just decides to deny the claim and forget about it.

Right.

Two days after he sends her the denial letter she shows up at the office. They have the same conversation roughly twice a month for the next three years. She doesn't write letters, she doesn't go over his head, she doesn't complain to the Department of Insurance, she doesn't sue. She just keeps coming back, and back, and back, and they always have the same conversation.

"Jack, you've neglected to pay me for my spoons."

"I didn't neglect to pay you for your spoons, Mrs. Hathaway," Jack says. "Your spoons were not stolen."

"Of course they were, Jack."

"Right, they were stolen fourteen times."

She sighs, "The neighborhood is not what it used to be, Jack."

"You live outside of Disneyland."

Like, Be on the lookout for a large rodent carrying spoons. Suspect is approximately five feet tall with large circular ears and white gloves.

"I need you to pay me for my spoons," Olivia says.

"Your spoons have been paid for thirteen times."

She thinks she has him. "But they have been stolen fourteen times."

"Mrs. Hathaway," Jack says. "Are you asking me to accept that on thirteen prior occasions the spoon thieves have returned your spoons to you? And that they've been stolen again… and again and again and again… No, please don't haul out the cookies."

But she does.

She always does.

She always sits there looking lovely, smiling, speaking softly, never raising her voice, and she always brings a Ziploc bag of sugar cookies.

"I know how you like these, Jack."

"I can't take any cookies, Mrs. Hathaway."

"Now," she says, reaching into her handbag and coming out with a stack of photographs, "little Billy has gone to junior college to study computer programming…"

Jack lowers his head and thumps it repeatedly on the table as Olivia continues her recitation of the daily lives and personal development of each and every child, grandchild, great-grandchild, and their spouses.

"… Kimmy is living – in sin – with a motorcycle repairman from Downey…"

Thump… thump…

"Jack, are you listening?"

"No."

"Now, Jack, you've neglected to pay me for my spoons."

"I didn't neglect to pay you for your spoons; your spoons were not stolen."

"Of course they were, dear."

"Right, they were stolen fourteen – I thought Kimmy was living with an electrician."

"That was last month."

"Oh."

"Cookie?"

"No thank you."

"Now, about my spoons…"

It's forty-five more agonizing minutes of the Olivia Hathaway Water Torture (drip… about my spoons… drip… about my spoons… drip…) before he can get rid of her and head out to Vale's mother's house in Monarch Bay,