what I want you to do. The case file is on the SPUDS server. Get into the Walnut Creek office and read through it. Nobody there has enough brains to pour piss out of a boot with the instructions on the heel. Just read the file and call me back and tell me you’ll handle this one.”
Lindsey poured himself a cup of coffee, added some half-and-half, took a generous bite of English and washed it down with coffee. He didn’t say anything.
There was a lengthy silence.
Then Desmond Richelieu said, “Please.”
It was the first time Lindsey had ever heard him say that word. True, Lindsey could tell, even from the distance of a thousand miles, that Richelieu said it through clenched teeth and very nearly with tears in his eyes. Still, he said it. “Please.”
To Lindsey, that constituted an offer he couldn’t refuse.
* * * *
The Walnut Creek office of International Surety occupied a suite in a modern high rise building across North Main Street from City Hall. Lindsey left his Dodge Avenger in the parking garage beneath the office building. He liked everything about the car, especially its safety features, except for the name. Why name a car after a World War Two torpedo bomber?
He rode up in an elevator full of hard-strivers half his age.
The receptionist at International Surety looked up from her monitor screen and stared at him as if she feared that he would die on the spot of superannuation. He said, “I’m from SPUDS. Need to talk with the branch manager about the Simmons case.”
The woman hit a buzzer on her desk and Elmer Mueller emerged from somewhere. He’d added weight and lost hair since Lindsey had seen him last. And how long had that been? Lindsey wondered.
Elmer Mueller offered a reluctant handshake and ushered Lindsey into his private office. Behind Mueller’s desk and across North Main, City Hall gleamed in the March sunlight. Elmer Mueller gestured Lindsey to a chair.
The décor was modern. Elmer Mueller’s desktop was clear except for a keyboard and monitor. That seemed to be the standard of the day. But the portraits on Elmer Mueller’s wall were of President Richard Nixon and Governor Pat Brown. Lindsey wondered if Mueller’s intention was ironic.
“Richelieu emailed me about you, Lindsey.” Elmer Mueller leaned back in an overstuffed leather chair. He swiveled, nodded permission to City Hall to stay where it was, then swung back toward Lindsey. “We’ve had to cut back, I can’t spare people to hold your hand, and I don’t like SPUDS poking its nose into my business.”
“Your business?” Lindsey raised his eyebrows.
“Running this branch. If Ducky has any complaints about the way I run this office he can call in Corporate.” He dropped a fist onto the sheet of gray-tinted glass that topped his desk. “How long since you worked out of this office, Lindsey?”
Lindsey smiled. “Twenty two years, Elmer.”
“Didn’t I see your name in the retirement column of IntSurNews a few years ago?”
“Ducky asked me to come back on special assignment.”
Mueller pursed his lips like an exasperated school teacher and swung his head slowly from side to side. “I suppose I might as well set you up. There’s an empty office in the suite. Remember Mrs. Blomquist?”
Lindsey said that he did.
“Dropped dead. Had her retirement papers in, bought a condo down in La Jolla, had her furniture shipped ahead. Moved into a motel for her last few days in Walnut Creek. Came in to clean out her desk and say good-bye and dropped dead. You can use her computer.”
Lindsey thanked him. The receptionist who’d greeted him showed him to the vacant office and handed him a printout of file access codes. She closed the door behind her. Lindsey got to work.
The computer files on the Simmons case were sparse. Policy date and number, premium payment records, date of death, cause of death, coroner’s and police reports, claim forms and record of payment to beneficiary. Everything looked normal. Lindsey felt sorry for Simmons’s widow, Angela. He wondered if there were any children. If so, they weren’t listed on the policy. But it had been in effect for a long time. Maybe Simmons took it when the couple were newlyweds and never added bennies when the tykes came along. Bad work by the agent, if that was so.
He printed out what he needed, checked the bennie’s phone number and placed a call to Mrs. Simmons. A neutral voice answered, “Rockridge Savings and Loan. If you know your party’s extension enter it now. Otherwise, please speak the name of your party and stay on the line for assistance. This call may be monitored for quality control.”
“Mrs. Simmons, please.”
She had a pleasant enough voice. She didn’t sound particularly grief-stricken and obviously she’d returned to work. But then it had been a year since Gordon Simmons’s death. Lindsey explained that he was investigating Simmons’s death in connection with a lawsuit. Mrs. Simmons said that she got off work at four o’clock and Lindsey arranged to come to her home.
Before he took his leave of the branch office, he returned Richelieu’s earlier call.
“Okay, got it, Mr. Richelieu.” Oh, how he longed to call him Ducky to his face—or to his telephone. Maybe someday. Maybe not. “Okay, you know that our client is looking at a nasty copyright infringement suit. We already paid a death claim related to this case, and now we’re on the other side of the fence.”
“For heaven’s sake, Lindsey, don’t babble back what I told you. Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Who’s our lawyer? Shouldn’t that information be in the file?”
“Isn’t it there? You’ll be happy about that one, at least. You remember your old buddy Eric Coffman?”
“Of course I do.”
“Well he didn’t put in his retirement papers and go home to sit on his hindquarters and collect pay for no work. He’s still at work. And he’s our sheriff on this one if we can’t head the rustlers off at the pass.”
“He doesn’t work for I.S., does he?”
“He’s on retainer.”
“Okay, at least that’s good. I think I’ll round up a posse and get a feel for what’s going on before I call Eric. But if you feel like it, Mr. Richelieu, you send him a smoke signal to let him know I’m on the trail.”
And where the hell did all the cowboy talk come from?
* * * *
The Simmons home was a comfortable-looking craftsman bungalow on Eton Avenue, a short side street not far from Rockridge Savings and Loan. A ten-year-old gray Chevy stood in the driveway. A shoulder-high brick pillar set off concrete steps leading to a heavy wooden front door. The house looked like Depression-era construction, well kept, with a tidy front lawn and a small, carefully tended flower bed.
Lindsey had parked at the curb. He rang the doorbell and was greeted by a yipping dog.
Mrs. Simmons opened the door a crack and said, “Mr.
