The Turnout(82)

There was a brief silence, the booth so small, the smudgy black console, fingerprints glowing in the light. Making Dara think of prints, evidence. A feeling in her chest like a valve tightening. What was behind these questions? And all this attention to Marie . . .

“Okay. Now if we can have a word with her,” Walters said. “Your sister.”

Mendoza was looking at Dara, a long, uninterrupted gaze.

“She left,” Dara said. “Look, what’s this about? I read the paper. The autopsy’s done. The man fell. Accidents at construction sites—that has to happen, right?”

“Sure,” Walters said, nodding. “All the time.”

“So—”

“That’s why contractors tend to load up on insurance policies,” he added, looking at Mendoza with something like a wink. “Especially if they have a family.”

“Well,” Dara said, watching them, “it’s a dangerous business.”

“For some,” Walters said. “Look, we’re doing our due diligence. Don’t like to get shown up by a claims man. Or woman.”

Dara got it suddenly. “This is about that Randi woman.”

“Bulldogs gonna sniff,” Mendoza said, smiling at Walters.

“She’s just doing her job,” Walters said. “Insurance companies, they’re crap shooters. They make a bet with you and, most of the time, they win. But once in a while, the dice come up snake eyes for them. Suddenly, all they wanna do is slow the roll.”

Mendoza nodded. “That poor guy probably paid those premiums for, like, decades. Now he takes a header on the job and they hold out on his grieving widow—”

Dara looked up. “Widow?”

“Sure,” Walters said, closing his notebook. “And widows like to get paid.”



* * *



*

The widow. Derek’s widow. Derek’s wife.





DEATHLESS


Part of her must have known.

He’d never talked about a family, a home to go to. He’d stayed over so many nights on the third floor.

He’d never worn a wedding band, but not all married men did. Their father didn’t, not after one of his electrician colleagues was working on a hot panel with his ring on and a jolt tore right through him. Professional hazard, he always told them, showing them the band once, tucked beneath a pile of handkerchiefs in the top drawer of his dresser. So he claims, their mother always added, under her breath.

Still, someone who lies so freely, who hustles so ceaselessly . . .

Part of her must have known, but had Marie?



* * *



*

Dara didn’t remember saying her goodbyes to the detectives. Didn’t remember them shuffling ahead of her back down the stairs from the light booth. The stairs like the spiral stairs at the studio, shuddering under their weight, the thick-soled shoes of the policemen.

She was thinking of this wife, this mysterious wife. What kind of woman would be married to Derek? But then she started to create a picture in her head, a passive hausfrau, a doormat. Or, she thought, maybe a former stripper, a pole dancer on the decline.

But what mattered, she reminded herself, was the threat this posed. Someone new to reckon with. Someone who wanted things, wanted money. Another intruder in their lives, another hostile invader. First Derek and now Derek’s wife. Another stranger who could ruin everything for all of them.



* * *



*

Charlie,” Dara said into his voicemail, wondering if he was already on the way to his PT. “I have to talk to you. Call me.”

She tried Marie next, and her sister answered amid a blast of noise—wind rushing, radio panting, Bailey’s chirping voice.

“What is it?” Marie kept saying, but she couldn’t hear Dara at all and instead started explaining that Bailey had never been to the Chocolate Shoppe and had never had a hot fudge cream puff, could you believe it.

“Call me after,” Dara finally said, thundering into the phone. “Call me.”



* * *



*

It doesn’t matter, she thought. The fact of the wife. It didn’t change things. All it proved was what she already knew. The contractor was bad. A liar. A dangerous person.

But there was something behind it. Something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

After their parents’ deaths, the life insurance money came through quickly, but their father’s accidental death benefit payout took months and months. The attorney they’d hired told them the insurance company had to make sure it wasn’t suicide, or murder-suicide. Because, he told them, some people will in fact run their cars into buildings, off cliffs, into other vehicles. And then there was the role of alcohol in the crash.

But, in the end, the money came.

In the end, no one could prove their parents had wanted to die. Didn’t everything prove that? Marie had asked. Didn’t their whole lives prove that?

The money came because their father hadn’t been driving drunk. Their mother had. That was something Dara was told, but she couldn’t make it fit. So she chose not to remember it at all.

The money came, but only once the insurance company was satisfied that the death was an accident.