In Death's Shadow

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Over the next few days I didn't have time to worry much about strategies for softening up Donna Hudgins. Paul came home early on Friday evening with lust in his heart and his head full of sea stories. First, we took care of the lust.

On Saturday evening Daddy invited us over after dinner to see the slide show he'd rigged up on his computer, so between Paul and my father, I was ODing on pictures of mountains, cacti, sand, sea, and sky. If you've seen one cactus, you've seen them all. Ditto seagulls.

On Monday, I reported to Victory Mutual bright and early-stepping off on the right foot, I hoped-and was through security and waiting for Donna next to the potted palm outside her office when she arrived promptly at eight.

"You're early," she said, fumbling for her keys.

"I didn't want to waste your time, Ms. Hudgins."

"I appreciate that," she said, pocketing her keys. "And please, call me Donna."

Donna opened a drawer on her filing cabinet, tucked her purse inside, then slid the drawer shut. "Mr. Garvin means well, Hannah, but I don't think he truly appreciates how much work there is. Coffee?"

I nodded, pleased at the apparent thaw in our relationship.

Donna showed me where to find the mugs, waited until I'd filled mine with coffee from a large urn, then filled a mug for herself. She opened the fridge and took out a pint carton of half and half. "Cream?"

"Thank goodness! I thought I'd have to use this stuff," I said, picking up a cardboard container of nondairy creamer and rotating it until I could read the ingredients. "Soybean oil, mono and diglycerides, dipotassium phosphate… yum yum."

Donna smiled. "This is my private stash." She poured cream into my mug until I held up my hand, then returned the carton to the fridge. "Next time," she said, "just help yourself."

"Thanks, I will." I added sugar to my mug and stirred. Perhaps a future biographer would write that our friendship had been cemented over a carton of half and half.

Soon my coffee and I were installed in a cubicle that belonged, if the decorations on the walls were any indication, to someone named Mindy who enjoyed trading recipes, had a thing for Brad Pitt, and occasionally rode motorcycles.

"Mindy's on maternity leave," Donna explained. She sat in Mindy's chair, powered up the computer, assigned me a logon and a password, then left the cubicle for a moment. When she returned, she carried an oversized, fat printout spring-bound in black plastic, which she plopped onto the desk to the right of the monitor. "Data fields," she said. "More than you ever wanted to know."

"Thanks," I said.

"Call me if you need anything. My extension is 1412."

"I'll do that."

I spent the first several hours perusing the printout, familiarizing myself with Victory Mutual's databases and trying to determine what information I would be able to extract from them.

Around ten I took a break and went for more coffee. Since my last visit to the staff lounge, some angel had set a plate of chocolate chip cookies on the table with a sign reading "Help Yourself." As I wound my way back to the cubicle balancing a homemade cookie on top of the steaming mug, I thought I could get used to this (again!). I was enjoying being back in an office environment: the clack of computer keyboards, the intermittent warble of office telephones, the low hum of business conversations punctuated by laughter drifting out over the sound of a radio, turned low, playing soft rock several cubicles away. I even savored the smell of Magic Marker and the way the Xerox toner stung my nose. It was like being back at Whitworth and Sullivan in the halcyon days pre-cancer, pre-RIF, but without the commute.

Reenergized, I returned to my desk and dove back into the printouts. I decided to limit my search to the last five years and to look for changes in the field having to do with reassignment of ownership. Among those, I'd look for ownership changes that went to a business or organizational name. Once I sorted those results, it would be easy to see if one particular organization name stood out.

I was jotting down my search strategy on a pad of paper and was about to try it out when Mrs. Bromley surprised me by ringing through on my cell phone.

"Hannah, could you meet me for lunch?"

I checked my watch. Eleven o'clock. I'd forgotten to ask Donna how much time Victory Mutual allowed their employees for lunch. Forty-five minutes? An hour? As a consultant, I wasn't exactly punching a time clock, but still, I didn't want to create a bad impression, especially on my first day.

I was about to beg off, but some urgency in Mrs. Bromley's voice made me hesitate. Could you meet me, is how she phrased it, not would you like to meet me. "I've just started a new project," I explained, "but I suppose they'll let me take a break." I suggested we meet at Macaroni's, a local branch of the popular Italian restaurant chain. It was just across the road, on the fringes of Annapolis Mall. "I can be there at noon."

"Wonderful!" She sounded so relieved I felt guilty about my initial lack of enthusiasm. "What's your new project, Hannah?"

"It's related to that insurance thing," I told her. "I'll fill you in over the linguini."

Perhaps it was just my cell phone, but her laughter rang hollow. "See you soon, then. And, thanks, Hannah."

At 11:55, I took my life into my hands and dashed, on foot, across six lanes of traffic on Jennifer Road, weaving my way through a long line of vehicles waiting to turn left into Sears. From there it was just a short walk across the parking lot to Macaroni's Grill.

Mrs. Bromley was waiting for me inside, near one of the deli cases that flanked the door, where fresh meat and vegetables were displayed in orderly rows. She was gazing into the case intently, as if she expected the sausages to leap up and start dancing, like the Radio City Rockettes. When I touched her shoulder, she flinched. "Hannah!"

"The very same," I said, kissing her cheek. "You look nice," I said, and she did, wearing black slacks and a peach-colored short sleeve blouse, open at the neck. "I hope you haven't been waiting long."

"No, no. I just got here."

We presented ourselves to the hostess, who grabbed a couple of menus and escorted us past the wine and dessert islands to a table for four, covered with white paper, near a louvered window at the back of the restaurant. We had just settled into our seats and were reading the plastic tent card detailing the specials when our waiter appeared.

"Hello, my name is Davon and I'll be your server today." Using two crayons held closely together-a red and a blue-he printed his name upside down on the tablecloth.

"Very good," I said.

"Thank you." He grinned. "Wine?"

"No thanks, I'm actually working. Mrs. Bromley?" I asked, just to be polite. Mrs. Bromley rarely drank before four in the afternoon, especially outside the home.

To my surprise, she nodded. "I do believe I will. A chardonnay, I think."

Davon brought a gallon jug of wine to the table and plunked it down. Using the blue crayon, he made a hatch mark on the paper tablecloth. "We're on the honor system here," he explained. "That's one glass. Just keep track and let me know."

Mrs. Bromley eyed the gigantic bottle, then looked at me. "Sure you can't help me with that?"

"Well," I said, signaling to Davon. "Maybe half a glass."

Davon returned with a glass for me and a round loaf of herb bread. "Hot from the oven," he said. I watched, stomach rumbling, as he drizzled olive oil onto an empty plate and grated fresh pepper and parmesan cheese into it.

When Davon left with our order-linguini with clam sauce and a Caesar salad to share-I tore off a portion of bread and dipped it into the olive oil mixture. "So, how's your art show progressing?" I inquired.

"Fine," she said.

"Need any help?" I asked around a savory mouthful of bread.

"No, my students are doing most of that."

Two tables over somebody named Tom was being serenaded by a dark-haired waitresses in a clear, high soprano. Happy Birthday, she sang, to the tune of "Ridi, Pagliaccio." A single candle stood in a piece of cheesecake on the table in front of the honoree. The flame wavered as the soprano really got into it, belting out the last il cor with such enthusiasm that I thought she'd beat the birthday boy to the punch and blow the darn thing out.

"She's so skinny," I commented, sotto voce, to Mrs. Bromley, "that if she turned sideways she'd disappear."

Mrs. Bromley looked up from her wine. "What was that, dear?"

"I said… never mind. It wasn't important." I reached out and touched her hand. "You seem distracted today, Mrs. B. Is everything okay?"

"Everything's fine," she said. She set her glass down on the table and pinched off a morsel of bread. "So, tell me about your new project, Hannah."

Unless I'd completely misread her, everything was not "fine." I'd never seen Mrs. Bromley acting so squirrelly.

Davon brought our linguini, and while we dug into it, I explained about my undercover assignment at Victory Mutual and my relationship with Donna Hudgins. "What I'm hoping to find, in the final sort, is a high number of policies that have changed from private ownership to corporate ownership, to companies like ViatiPro."

"What then?" she asked.

"Then I turn the information over to Donna Hudgins and her claims review people. They'll dig up the actual policies, look at the death certificates, and compare the time that elapsed between the signing of the policy and the death of the insured person."

Mrs. Bromley laid her fork and spoon across her dish and pushed her linguini, half eaten, to the center of the table. "I'm embarrassed to tell you that I wasn't entirely truthful with you the other day." Tears shimmered in her eyes. "I've been agonizing over whether to tell you or not."

“Tell me what?"

She picked up a green crayon and doodled little circles on the tablecloth. "I'm just a foolish old woman."

"That's the silliest thing you've ever said to me, Mrs. Bromley."

"It's true, I'm afraid. Why else would I have fallen for the sales pitch of that dreadful man?"

I had been leaning forward over my linguini, but I fell back into my chair. "Jablonsky?"

My friend laid down her crayon and nodded.

I couldn't believe it. If someone as level-headed as Mrs. Bromley had snapped up the bait, what hope was there for the average senior citizen when the likes of Jablonsky oozed under the door?

"I had two policies," she said, "so I sold one of them." She looked away from me, out the narrow slats in the window and into the parking lot. "I'm not going to tell you what I invested the proceeds in."

Now it was my turn to feel embarrassed. Here I'd spent days rattling on and on about the evils of buying and selling viaticals. It was as if I'd spent hours complaining about what a lemon my new car was, only to find out that Mrs. Bromley'd gone out and bought exactly the same model.

Mrs. Bromley looked so stricken that I moved quickly to soften the blow. "I'm sure it made sense at the time, Mrs. B. It's not like you're disinheriting your children or anything."

She turned to face me again, and I noticed for the first time a slight puffiness in her eyelids. She had been crying. "Now I'm either paranoid or losing my mind," she whispered. "A few months ago, I was playing croquet on the green at Ginger Cove."

"Yes?" Ginger Cove residents played an annual match with the students from St. John's College. St. John's usually got trounced.

"While I was lining up a shot," Mrs. Bromley continued, "I noticed this cable TV installer coming out of Clark Gammel's building." She lowered her voice to a whisper. "That was the same day they found Clark's body. I didn't make a connection between the two events at the time. But then, just last week, I could have sworn I saw the same man delivering an armchair to Building 8100." She paused and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “Tim Burns lived in 8100, Hannah, and he died, too. He died the same day I saw that chair being delivered. And yesterday," she continued, her words tumbling rapidly over one another, "I saw a gardener working on the tulip beds just outside my building, and he looked a lot like that cable guy, too."

I'd never seen Mrs. Bromley so rattled, and it worried me. When my mother died, she'd been there for me. When my father disappeared into a bizarre alcohol rehabilitation program without telling anybody, she'd been my rock. I found myself a bit bewildered by the role reversal.

I watched a tear roll down her pale cheek. Nobody really notices the faces of people in uniform, I thought. Nobody, that is, except my friend, Mrs. Bromley, who in nearly half a century as a mystery novelist tended to notice everything. It would be a mistake to minimize her concerns.

Mrs. Bromley extracted her hand-I'd been holding it tightly-and bent to retrieve her handbag from the floor. She set the bag on her lap and slipped two photographs out of an envelope in the outside pouch. She laid the photos on the table in front of me. "I took these with my digital camera when I thought he wasn't looking."

The color was slightly off and the photos were grainy; they'd obviously been printed out on Mrs. Bromley's home computer. Although taken from a distance, they showed a lanky, broad-shouldered man wearing khaki pants and a dark green polo shirt, exactly what one might expect on a lawn care professional. In the first picture, the gardener was bent over, one foot on a shovel, frozen forever in the act of pushing the shovel into the ground. A ball cap obscured his face. In the second picture, the man had turned sideways but the photo was too fuzzy to make any sort of positive identification. He could have been any white male of that general height and build-Paul, or my father, even.

"Looks like a gardener to me, Mrs. B."

"But what if he isn't just a gardener? Residents have died at Ginger Cove recently, many more than one might expect. We were talking about it at dinner the other day."

"It could be a coincidence," I said without much conviction.

"Coincidence my foot! Clark sold his life insurance policy to Jablonsky. Tim Burns told me he was going to do the same. I know I sold the wretched man my policy." Her eyes flashed. The Mrs. Bromley I knew and loved was back. "What if," she murmured, so softly I had to strain to hear her over the hoots of Birthday Boy and Co. still celebrating at the next table. "What if Jablonsky is hurrying things along a bit?"

I tapped one of the photos. "This is not a picture of Gilbert Jablonsky."

"One of his henchmen, then."

Mrs. Bromley had an excellent point. What did Valerie Stone, Clark Gammel, and Tim Burns have in common? They'd viaticated their life insurance policies through Gilbert Jablonsky, that's what. And now all three were dead. No wonder Mrs. Bromley was freaked. If her suspicions were correct, she could be next on the list.

I began thinking out loud. "I wonder if there's a way to find out how many residents of Ginger Cove-besides you, Clark, and Tim-have viaticated their policies through MBFSG?" And then I remembered something. "That party you told me about, where Jablonsky came and talked to you? Do you remember who attended?"

She shook her head. "I've already thought of that. It was an open house, so people were coming and going the whole evening, picking up brochures, filling out forms to request more information. Like that. If they actually sold their policies, it would have been when Jablonsky contacted them later, one-on-one." She paused to sip at her wine. "Like he did me."

"I'll figure out something," I said, although other than breaking into Jablonsky's office after hours and rummaging through his files, I didn't have a clue how I might go about it.

"Perhaps this will help." Mrs. Bromley hauled another piece of paper out of her purse and laid it on top of the photographs. It was a handwritten list of ten names, headed by Clark Gammel and Tim Bums. "These are the folks at Ginger Cove who have died during the past year," she told me. "See if you can find out how many of these people are Jablonsky's customers."

She reached out and squeezed my arm. "I'm frightened, Hannah. I honestly think that gardener is stalking me."