No Accident (10 page)

Del was already making merry at Uncle Hugh and Aunt Melinda’s house when Alex arrived, playing rock n’ roll songs on the piano. Their mother was there, too.
As if things couldn’t get more awkward,
Alex thought. He quickly accepted Hugh’s offer of a glass of wine.

On her way to the dinner table, Alex’s mother stopped him and whispered, “I think Del may be in trouble again.” Del only played the piano when he wanted to ingratiate himself with his mother; Alex of course already knew that Del was broke. Before moving on to the table, his mother shook her head with pity and whispered, “Things are always so hard for him.”

Alex responded with a sympathetic smile, but thought,
yeah, like things are easy for me
. Del’s downward spiral over the years had drained their mother’s spirit, and Alex’s relative success was a boon for her. He could tell that his mother, worried again about Del, was even now barely keeping her composure. If she found out how precarious Alex’s own financial situation was, it would be another disappointment. He couldn’t let that happen.

Melinda served dinner at a long, sturdy oak table that she had set with her good china. Their house was big enough to have a formal dining room that only got used on occasions like this. The house was spacious and tastefully, if conservatively, furnished, thanks to Hugh’s successful accounting practice and Melinda’s attention to homemaking.

The family had a reassuringly familiar conversation during the salad course. Melinda was overbearing and bossy, Mom was scatterbrained and ditzy from half a glass of Chardonnay, Del, still in entertainer mode, related a rambling story full of mildly off-color anecdotes, and Hugh occasionally tossed in little hand grenades of sarcasm. It was the usual, comfortable pattern. Alex’s immediate family had felt smaller after his father died, even though his father had earlier moved out, and even though Hugh had sort of taken his sister and her two teenaged sons under his wing. Ever since then, they had get-togethers like this every few months. But as Alex saw it, the family members were all so different in personality that mutual aggravation was slowly wearing down the bonds of love and tradition.
Like grains of sand in a gearbox
, Alex thought.

As usual, Alex tried his best to keep anyone from getting too annoyed with anyone else. He was now annoyed with them all, but that was a cost he could bear to keep the peace.

Then Aunt Melinda said, “Alex, I called your office this morning to ask what time you would be coming, and the woman who answered the phone said you don’t work there anymore. I’m sure she just made some sort of mistake?”

Nosy Aunt Melinda
.
Thanks a lot
. Alex noticed the look of surprise on Del’s face, and replied quietly, “It’s not a mistake.” Then, into his wine glass, he added, “It was a . . . politics . . . thing.”

His mother said, “I’m sorry to hear that,” and her expression of concern and surprise confirmed it. Just what Alex didn’t want. “Especially in this economy,” she added.

“There’s always demand for accountants,” Aunt Melinda said.

His mother nodded. “I know accounting isn’t the most exciting profession, but it pays well,” she said gently. Alex rolled his eyes a little. Every time they were all together, his mom prodded him into join Hugh’s accounting firm. She had liked his being a reporter, because it seemed like an upstanding profession, and didn’t like his becoming an insurance investigator, mostly because the job was unfamiliar to her and, Alex surmised, struck her
—incorrectly—as routinely dangerous. She didn’t understand anything about accounting either, but knew from her brother’s experience that it was safe, respectable and stable—as aspirations went, stability was a greased turkey that the Fogarty family had been fumbling for years now.

“Accounting pays well enough,” Melinda said. “By the way, Hugh, Alex wants to speak with you after dinner.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” his mother said.
Great
, Alex thought,
she thinks I’m finally going to hit Hugh up for a job
. But her mistake seemed to ease her anxiety, and Alex didn’t speak up to correct her misunderstanding.

Alex caught Del giving him a dirty look, and Alex immediately deduced why. Del must have come here to ask Hugh for money himself and so he assumed that Alex had done the same. Alex was angry that Del would dare think that.
We’re not
that
alike
, Alex thought.

“Mom, you don’t know the half of it,” Del chortled. “Alex has bill collectors crawling around his house like cockroaches. I was there
—he keeps the lights turned off to fool them into thinking he’s not home.”

Del smirked triumphantly at Alex. So this stink bomb was Del’s revenge
—proving to the whole family that Alex had spoiled his own life just as much as Del had. Alex smiled back at Del and lifted his glass ironically, which was a more sober response than reaching across the table and dousing his brother’s head with the contents of the wine glass.

Their mother turned very sad. The muscles in her face went slack, and she suddenly looked older. “Oh, Alex, I didn’t think it would be like this for you,” she said.

“What about me?” Del said. “I’ve got bill collectors, too.”

He’s even jealous of the attention I get when he rats me out
, Alex noted. Del was on his third glass of wine, and Alex assumed Del had warmed up with a couple more drinks before coming.

Mom patted Del’s hand. “If only your father had set a better example,” she said.

“Mom, please don’t make this about Dad,” Alex said in annoyance. Whenever her sons needed a gut-check, they always heard it was Dad’s fault—for leaving, for getting caught up in the insider-trading scandal that sent him to prison, for dying there, for getting cancer. Alex was tired of the Ghost of Christmas Past haunting every important family conversation. Del was ever ready to accept Mom’s little fairy tale, but Alex found it insulting to his intelligence.

“All I mean is, you’re almost thirty,” his mother said.

“What about me?” Del said again. “I’m twenty-six.”

Their mother sighed and spoke solely to Alex. “I just hoped you would be more settled by now.”

“Me too, Mom,” said Alex.

“By the way,” Del said, still pleading for attention, “my car got repossessed weeks ago, not that anyone cares
—you’re never this disappointed when I screw up.”

“Don’t be silly,” their mother said with exasperation. “I’m disappointed in you both.” Then she realized what she had said, and excused herself from the table before anyone could see her tears.

* * *

Dessert wasn’t so much served as it was foraged, with Del and the two women taking their bread pudding to the living room where they started a game of rummy in front of the television. Alex and Hugh retreated to Hugh’s study, where they sat in two oversized leather chairs, accompanied by the soft rhythm of an antique wall clock counting off the seconds.

“So you didn’t really come here to ask me for a job, right?” Hugh said.

Alex shook his head.

“Or ask me for money?” The tone of his voice told Alex that Hugh was ninety percent sure Alex hadn’t come to ask for money. That was reassuring.

“Of course not,” Alex said. “I wanted to ask you about this.” He handed Hugh the faxed life insurance policies from Liberty Industries and explained that they related to a case he was working on.

“Looks like janitor’s insurance,” Hugh said after scanning the first few pages of the fax.

“These guys weren’t janitors, they were mechanics,” Alex said.

“That’s just a little accounting humor,” Hugh said with a playful smile. He was in his fifties, balding, soft. He hadn’t let himself go so much as he had never been in shape in the first place. Aunt Melinda was quite good looking in her day, and Alex had always wondered how exactly their odd pairing originated.

“The formal term is corporate-owned life insurance,” Hugh said. “It started off with companies buying insurance on their top executives
—if the CEO dies from a heart attack, the company gets a payout to help it with the transition. When the policies are on low-level employees, like these are, people sometimes call it janitor’s insurance. You’re probably more used to seeing a company buy life insurance
for
its employees, for the employees’ benefit. This is a company buying life insurance
on
its employees, for its own benefit.”

That confirmed what Alex had guessed. “So the employee dies, and the company gets paid.”

“Exactly. Guaranteed payment when the employee dies.”

“What does the employee’s family get?”

“Nothing. Not under these policies, at least. But if the widows and kids are beneficiaries under another policy, they’d get paid under that.”

Hugh handed the faxed sheets back to Alex. Alex took them hesitantly. “It all sounds a little creepy,” Alex said. “I wouldn’t want my boss to have an incentive to off me.”

Hugh chuckled. “Used to be illegal for just that reason. To get insurance on somebody, you need to have what they call an ‘insurable interest’ in the person—you have to suffer some sort of economic loss if the person dies. That way people won’t buy insurance on random strangers and, as you say, ‘off’ them.”

Alex leaned back into the leather cushions and pondered his uncle’s explanation. “I can see the economic loss if your spouse dies. I can even see it with a company and its CEO. But if your motor pool guy dies, you just go hire another mechanic. It doesn’t make sense to call that a loss for the company.”

“That’s logical, but it’s not the law. Not anymore, at least.”

“So what purpose does it serve?”

“Companies basically buy janitor’s insurance to get a tax benefit.”

Alex’s eyes flashed with excitement. “Uncle Hugh, I knew you’d be all over this.”

“When the employee dies, the money the company gets from the insurance company is tax free, just like most insurance proceeds are. That’s better than the alternative. The alternative is for the company not to buy the janitor’s insurance, and to take the premiums it would have paid the insurance company and go invest them in something else. Under that alternative scenario, the company has to pay tax on the gains from its investment.”

Alex’s excitement faded just as quickly as it had arisen. “So it’s just a tax game.”

“The point is definitely
not
for the employees to die, which is where I think you were going with this.”

Alex shook his head in protest. “Hold on. Killing the employees might not be the
motivation
for these policies, but even so, the company still makes out better when the employees die young, doesn’t it?”

“That’s true
 . . .” Hugh said. “The company gets its money sooner, and in the meantime it’s paid less in premiums to the insurance company.” Hugh shook his head vigorously as if trying to cast Alex’s suspicions from his mind. “No, you’re chasing shadows. These policies may be a little weird, but they’re just an innocent tax-planning technique.”

Alex eyed his uncle skeptically. “Innocent tax planning
—so you’re telling me that my employer could go behind my back, insure my life for a million bucks, and that would be innocent tax planning.”

His uncle considered the suggestion. “A million seems high. No offense, Alex.”

Alex abruptly straightened up in his chair as a new thought occurred to him. “Holy cow. Maybe Rampart has a policy out on me right now.”

“It’s not like putting a hit out on you, Alex. They changed the law, and now a company has to tell an employee when it buys a policy on him.”

“That doesn’t really ease my mind. When I started working at Rampart, I signed a bunch of papers I didn’t really look at.”

“You and everybody else.”

Alex idly skimmed the fax again. “What smells funny to me about this is that it’s a lot of money. Look at these, Hugh.” He pulled out the front page to each of the five policies and handed them back to his uncle. “Five mechanics. Probably each make fifty thousand a year, tops. But Liberty insures each of them for four hundred grand. Two million, total. I’ll bet these guys never saw that much money in their lives.”

Hugh nodded in agreement. “The numbers are on the high side. But it doesn’t strike me as suspicious.”

“Really? Two million dollars is a lot of money,” Alex said.

Hugh responded more brusquely than before. “Two million is a rounding error to a company like Liberty Industries. Their revenue is in the billions.” Hugh passed the papers back to his nephew. “Sorry, Alex, I’m sure you’re a good sleuth, but I don’t think you’ve uncovered a diabolical corporate plot.”

Alex’s face showed his disappointment.

“Is it because Liberty Industries is an oil company?” Hugh asked, as if he already knew the answer.

“No,” Alex said indignantly. “No,” he said again, more evenly. Alex didn’t love oil companies; prior family dinner conversations had made that clear. As far as Alex was concerned, the oil industry was more culpable than any other industry for fouling the air he breathed and soiling the ocean that he surfed and swam in. And he thought it entirely possible that the industry’s callousness could extend to murder.