Chapter 8 - The policy
A ten-million-dollar life insurance policy cannot normally appear from nowhere.
Signatures.
Medical declarations.
Underwriting.
Identity verification.
Somebody had built a paper version of me.
A healthy woman with no pending oncology concern.
Then, shortly afterward, the real me donated a kidney.
Helen contacted the insurer.
They opened a fraud review.
The application had been submitted through an independent insurance broker.
Name:
Nathan Voss.
I had never met him.
Victor had.
Golf club records showed they played together twice.
The policy premiums came from a joint investment account I rarely reviewed.
My own money financed the policy on my life.
I sat in the hotel room staring at the ceiling.
“This sounds like someone planned to kill me.”
Helen didn't indulge the fear.
“We don’t know that.”
I appreciated her more each day.
“What we know is someone fraudulently obtained insurance.”
“What we know is Victor believed I was sick.”
“Yes.”
“And he benefited if I died.”
“Yes.”
“And my remaining kidney may have a tumor.”
“Yes.”
Silence.
Then Helen said:
“Those facts are frightening enough without inventing the missing ones.”
Correct.
Meanwhile, biopsy day arrived.
Rita unexpectedly came.
“Why are you here?”
“Because you shouldn’t sit alone.”
I almost told her she had no right.
Then realized Victor had designed exactly that reaction.
Keep us separated.
Keep each woman angry enough not to compare stories.
So I let her sit.
The biopsy results would take several days.
While we waited, she told me about Victor.
He met her through a real-estate charity event.
He said our marriage had been emotionally dead for years.
He said I refused divorce because I depended on him financially.
I laughed.
“I taught elementary school for thirty-two years, inherited the house, and have my own pension.”
“He told me the house was his.”
“Of course.”
Then Rita confessed something.
“Lucas knew about you.”
I looked at her.
“He found your name online. He asked why Victor was still married.”
“What did Victor say?”
“That you were ill and separation would be cruel.”
The elegance of the lie almost impressed me.
Victor used my supposed fragility as moral cover for betraying me.
Then Helen called.
Martin Kline had been found.
Not hiding.
Hospitalized.
Smoke inhalation.
He had been inside my house when the fire started.
According to his first statement, he went there because Victor ordered him to destroy the blue folder.
Rita went there because Victor ordered her to retrieve it.
Two people sent to the same house with opposite instructions.
Why?
Kline claimed he realized too late that Victor had been playing them against each other.
Then he said the fire wasn't supposed to happen.
“Who started it?”
Kline refused to say without counsel.
But before his lawyer arrived, he said one sentence:
“Ask Sarah what was inside the manila envelope.”
My oncology records.
May you like
Except Kline should not have known that envelope existed.
Unless somebody had been searching for it.
