“Or I'm going to the state attorney general and ask him to investigate what's going on here,” Clancy replied. He a stared at the man. “This is a hell of a big insurance policy for a couple of middle-class university professors. I touched base with some other agents before I called you,” he continued. “They told me these figures were wildly out of line.” He paused again. “One of them told me there must have been some kind of a kickback involved here.”
“A kickback?” Holbrook's voice rose an octave. “Are you crazy?”
“Look,” Clancy said, his voice dropping in intensity. “I'm sure you're an honest man. But my mother was killed under mysterious circumstances, and over a year later we find this policy. We want you … we need you to explain this to us. Because I can tell you right now, sir, we're going to find out about this, one way or the other.”
Holbrook's Adam's apple bobbed up and down. “I could get into trouble, talking about this to you,” he said.
“Not if nobody knows you did.”
The agent's head swiveled to Tom. Those had been the first words out of Tom's mouth since he'd walked in the door.
“There's nothing illegal about these policies,” Holbrook said nervously. “Or even improper.”
“No one's saying there is,” Clancy said. “But you have to admit that our mom getting killed in the jungle down in Central America, and this insurance policy, is pretty damned coincidental. Don't you think?”
The man sighed. “It is coincidental, I agree. We checked into it, thoroughly. But there was nothing out of line, that we could find.” He looked from Clancy to Tom. “Were we wrong?” he asked, his eyes widening fearfully.
Clancy shook his head no. “Her killing was an accident, there were twenty witnesses to that. But we still need to know about this policy. For our own peace of mind.”
“Come on, man,” Tom kicked in, “you can tell us. Nobody's going to know we talked to you. That's a promise.”
Holbrook took a deep breath. “All right. But on one condition. Your father is not to know about this.”
Clancy and Tom looked at each other. “Don't worry,” Clancy assured the nervous agent. “He's lived in hell the past year. The last thing we want to do is cause him any more grief by bringing up old wounds.”
Holbrook spread the documents out on his desk. Clancy and Tom came around to the agent's side and looked over his shoulders.
“Your mother came to see me a few years ago,” the agent began. “Shortly after your father had started on a now and important project.”
“La Chimenea,” Tom informed him. “It was a newly discovered Maya site that our father was in charge of excavating,” he explained. “One of the biggest and most important that's been found in the past half-century,” he added. There was filial pride in the way he'd said that, he realized. He hadn't felt pride in his father for years now. It was a confusing emotion.
“That's what she said,” Holbrook replied. “It was going to be the capstone of your father's career.”
Clancy and Tom exchanged a look over the man's head. “It was,” Clancy said without further elaboration.
“She told me they traveled all over Central and South America, several times a year,” Holbrook continued.
“Countries like Guatemala, Colombia, Peru, where there is rampant civil unrest. She felt that they needed to augment their existing life insurance policies. Given those circumstances, I agreed with her.”
Clancy looked thoughtful. “Did she or my father explain why they didn't use their regular insurance agent, in Madison?”
“No,” Holbrook answered, “and I didn't ask her.” He hesitated a moment. “My supposition was that she was afraid he would try to talk her out of it. That's common, with smaller agencies. Insurance is a cautious profession, but sometimes we can be overly cautious, to the detriment of our clients’ protection.”
“But you didn't. Try to talk her out of it,” Clancy asked.
“No,” Holbrook answered. “I thought it made good sense, given the dangers they might be encountering. The risks were small, I'll grant you that, but they were legitimate
concerns. Why do people buy insurance policies at the airport when they're about to fly on a plane, which statistically is the safest way in the world to travel? Same thing here.” He tapped a finger on the documents in front of them.
“But the amounts!” Tom blurted out, still blown away after having known about this for over a day now.
“Two million dollars is not so much these days,” Holbrook replied blandly, as if he wrote such policies every day. “It's not that expensive, when you pencil it out. I'm sure your father was happy they took out these policies in the amounts they—” He stopped. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean it to sound the way it did.”
“That's okay,” Clancy told him. “You were doing what they asked you to do.”
“That's right,” the agent agreed vigorously. “I was giving my clients what they wanted.”
“And he got all the money?” Tom asked.
Holbrook nodded. “Each named the other as sole beneficiary. That's common practice. I'm sure your father has amended his policy now and named you as beneficiaries.”
Clancy thought of Emma Rawlings, the new love of, his father's life. He thought about saying “I'm not sure about that,” but he didn't.
Tom put his finger on a line in his mother's policy. “Explain this to us, would you? This is what threw me the most.”
Holbrook sat back. “Yes, I can understand that,” he said, his voice measured. “Accidental death and dismemberment. What's known as an ADandD kicker in the industry.” He looked up at them. “In a nutshell, if the policyholder has this rider, which has to be purchased separately, the policy doubles in value, under certain circumstances.”
“Such as the circumstances our mother died under,” Tom said.
The agent nodded. “Yes. If either she or your father were accidentally killed, the other would receive four million dollars in benefits.” He paused. “Which your father did.”
That explains where he got the money for the house, Clancy thought gloomily. But it raises a lot of other questions, none of them good. He and Tom exchanged another glance. Tom shook his head, as if he couldn't believe what they had just been told.
“That's a lot of money to pay out,” Clancy remarked. “How did your company feel about that?”
Holbrook grimaced. “Not good. It was a considerable amount of money, but those are the risks we take. We hope never to have to pay on those policies, and we usually don't—only one half of one percent of these policies pay a claim.” He cleared his throat. “I'm sure your father didn't care about that, he wanted his wife to be alive. Although he took the money, of course.”
“You did investigate it, though,” Clancy said.
“Absolutely,” Holbrook answered vigorously. “We sent a representative down, interviewed dozens of people, including several of the people who were there when it happened.”
Clancy hesitated before he asked his next question. “Did you interview our father?”
Holbrook looked away for a moment. “Yes, we did. It was an extremely upsetting position for us to be in, as I'm sure you can understand.”
“So there was never any thought on the part of your agency or the insurance company to challenge the claim,” Tom interjected.
Holbrook shook his head. “We couldn't.”
Tom looked perplexed. “Why not? I'd think that given what happened and where it happened someone would think about it, at least.”
“I'm sure someone did,” Holbrook said. “But our hands were tied. Not that we did think anything was shady,” he added quickly.
Outside, a sudden bolt of lightning, followed almost immediately by a loud crash of thunder, diverted everyone's attention. The sky, already dark with rain, was now also losing the feeble ambient sunlight that had tried to break through.
Tom turned away from the window and addressed Holbrook. “You said your hands were tied. How?”
Holbrook picked the policy up and flipped through a few pages. He put his finger on a paragraph. “There's a two-year incontestability clause after a policy like this is issued, during which time the insurance company can challenge a claim. After that, the payment is automatic, unless there has been a criminal act by anyone who could benefit by it, in this case, your father. Since there was none, we paid him. It's cut-and-dried.”
“So the policy was bought more than two years before she was killed,” Clancy asked in confirmation.
Holbrook's head slowly bobbed up and down. “Two years and two months.” He handed the policy to Clancy, along with the second one, the one that had insured Walt under the same conditions. “The dates are in here.”
Slipped in right under the wire, Clancy thought. This inquiry had turned out to be the worst possible scenario they could have imagined. He put the policies back in his pocket.
“One last question,” Tom said.
“Yes?” Holbrook asked.
“When did our father actually get the money? How long after she died?”
Holbrook thought for a moment. “My recollection is about six months after. I could look it up, if you want the exact date.”
Tom shook his head. “That won't be necessary.” He looked over to Clancy. “Right when he quit the university and left Madison.”
Clancy nodded. “What an amazing coincidence,” he said with bitter sarcasm. He turned back to Holbrook.
“Thanks for talking to us.” He offered his hand. “I can understand why you didn't want to.”
“I'am glad I did, now,” the agent replied, shaking Clancy's hand. He shook Tom's as well. “It's good that you know.” He hesitated a moment. “Your parents never discussed this with you? Before … or after?”
“No,” Clancy said. “They lived in their own world.”
More than we knew, he thought sadly. So much more.
Holbrook walked them to the elevator. “Be careful driving out there,” he cautioned. He forced a smile. “You have insurance, don't you?”
Clancy smiled back. “We have insurance.”
“Well, if you ever want to talk more about life I Insurance—for yourselves—give me a call. I'll do good by you.”
“Thanks,” Clancy said. “I'll talk to my wife about it.”
Holbrook edged close to them, looking over his shoulder to make sure no one was in earshot. “What we talked about in my office stayed there, right?” he whispered.
“Most definitely,” Clancy answered. “He's never going to know.”
T
he drive back was a misery. To avoid the construction on the Interstate they took U.S. 41 back, a longer and more winding route. The rain, which if anything was coming down harder than it had been earlier, pounded them all the way, and the wind coming off the lake as they got closer to home was blowing almost gale force.
The climate was worse inside the car. Everything they knew about their father until now had been dispiriting, even scary; but this went beyond anything they had learned. He had been paid four million dollars because their mother was killed, and he had never said a word to them about it.
Will was waiting for them when they got back to Clancy's apartment. Callie had roasted a chicken and made a Caesar salad, but no one was hungry. They drank, though. Not to excess, they needed to have their wits about them, but a couple of healthy belts of Scotch all around went down fast.
Clancy and Tom told the other two about the insurance policies, and the accidental death clause that had made their father a wealthy man. That explained where he'd gotten the money to buy his fancy new house in Los Angeles, they agreed, and why he had been willing, even eager, to leave Madison as soon as there was any whiff of controversy.
“If that student's parents hadn't filed against him, he would have come up with some other excuse,” Tom commented. “He was lucky the kid gave him such a convenient exit.”
That was low thinking, but none of the others contradicted Tom. They all felt the same way, not only that Walt had deceived them, but that he had acted ugly and under-handedly. And maybe worse.
“The view from where I stand isn't good, either,” Will announced, as he began recounting his telephone conversation of earlier in the day. He read from a sheaf of papers on which he'd scribbled his notes. “They started investing in 1994, about the time the tech boom was gathering steam and the economy was coming out of recession.”
“That was the first time they refinanced their house,” Clancy recalled.
Will nodded. “Yep. It's obvious now that they refinanced to come up with the seed money. And they did very well, for a number of years. They refinanced the house again in ‘97, as you know, and then again in ‘99.”
“Mortgaging their future,” Tom commented. “That house was the biggest investment they owned.”
“
Was
is the operative word,” Will agreed. “Because they made serious money up until the middle of 2000.”
“How serious?” Tom asked.
“Over a million. In net gains, profit. They were making out like bandits. You didn't have to be a genius then, it was like throwing darts at a board blindfolded.
Whatever you hit was a winner, especially in the big tech issues. They were into Intel, Cisco, all those glamour stocks. Even dicier ones that were going up in multiples of thousands. Real high-wire stuff. I know people who parlayed ten thousand dollars into ten million.”
“Except most of them didn't keep their ten million,” Tom commented. He could see where this was going. They all could. He felt like he was standing at the side of a road watching a train wreck about to happen in slow motion and was powerless to do anything to stop it.
“Most didn't,” Will agreed. “Including mom and dad.”
“How much did they lose?” Clancy asked. He got up from the couch where he was sitting with Callie, went into the kitchen, and came back with the bottle of Laphroaig. He poured himself a few fingers. “Anyone else?”
Both his brothers held up their glasses. He tipped a bit into each. Callie wasn't drinking. She sat next to him, not saying anything, taking it all in.
“They lost everything,” Will told them. “Almost everything.”
“They had the house, still,” Tom said.
“Yes, but it was burdened by a big new mortgage. They were getting older, they would have owned it free and clear. Now they were looking at a mortgage that would outlive them.”