Send Down the Rain(33)

After nearly thirty-six hours of sleep, Allie woke and appeared behind me. She put a hand on my shoulder. “Can I ask you a favor?”

I turned. Even her face looked rested.

She laid an official-looking piece of paper on the desk. The watermark showed in the light. “When we married, we took this policy out on Jake. Bought it through his company.” She laid the check stubs on the table. “Been paying on it ever since.”

I read the face page. It was a twenty-year term life insurance policy insuring Jake for $500,000. The weight of this squelched her voice to a whisper. She pointed. “There’s a rider. Thirty dollars a month.” She flipped to the last page and showed me the addendum to the policy. “It doubles the face amount if the cause of death is an accident.” She spread the sheriff’s certificate of death on the table and pointed at the word accident. She rubbed her face. “I called and got an appointment.”

She was ready to be done with this.

“Let me clean up.”

We drove to the national office of First General Life in Tallahassee where, to my surprise, we were taken to see the president, Dawson Baker. Evidently Jake’s death and the nature of it had captured wider attention than we’d realized.

Dawson welcomed us into his office. “May I get you anything? Coffee? Water?”

He wore a white shirt. The carpet matched his red power tie. The royal blue drapes matched the thin stripe in his suit. Everything was wood, and the office was probably two thousand square feet or more. Pictures of his family covered much of the space on the desk behind him. Somebody had signed a wooden baseball bat that hung inside a display case on the wall. Behind his desk, in a small framed plaque, hung a shoulder patch for Army Special Forces. The accompanying beret sat on the shelf next to it. Followed by a framed Bronze Star, a Purple Heart, and a Distinguished Service Cross.

We sat, and Dawson held up a small stack of papers. “Jake’s policy was paid and current. Most everyone in Florida knows what happened, so after you called, we fast-tracked cutting the check.” He passed a piece of paper across the desk to Allie, who stared at it, her head turning sideways. Her bottom lip quivered just slightly. “But . . .” She spread her policy across his desk.

Dawson nodded and presented a stack of papers. Something in the expression of his face told me the rest of this was not going to go well.

“Jake canceled this policy three months after you purchased it. He transferred payment to this . . .” Another piece of paper. “The P&C on a Peterbilt.”

Allie looked like she’d been shot. She spoke slowly. “P&C?”

He nodded. “Property and casualty insurance. That check you hold there is the accidental death and dismemberment rider to that policy.”

I was getting confused. As was Allie. She scratched her head. “So—” She held up her policy. “What about this one?”

“Jake diverted payment to this.” He held up the Peterbilt policy.

“So this is no good to me?”

He nodded. “Correct.”

Allie was starting to get agitated. “Even though I’ve been paying on it for almost ten years?”

Dawson wasn’t enjoying this any more than Allie. “To your credit, you have been paying, but not on that life insurance policy. You’ve been paying on this truck insurance policy.”

“But—”

He looked at her check stubs. “See here, you even wrote the policy number for Jake’s truck insurance on the check stub.”

She compared the policy numbers. The number on her check stubs, and the one she’d written on the check, corresponded to the truck insurance. Not the life insurance. “But—” Allie rubbed her flushed face. The pieces of the puzzle were falling into place, and she couldn’t make sense of the picture. She held up the life insurance policy. “Are you telling me this policy doesn’t exist?”

Dawson took his time. “I’m telling you that you and Jake did initially purchase a life insurance policy, which he cancelled three months after purchase.” He brought another sheet of paper from his file. “On this sheet of paper we have both your signature and his, with witnesses, showing the cancellation of that policy and the transfer of the payment to the policy that insured his truck. Your check stubs, the number you wrote on the checks, and Jake’s truck insurance policy all agree with this.”

She eyed the paper. “I don’t remember signing that.”

He held up the paper. “Is that your signature?”

“It looks like it, but I don’t remember.”

He then produced three certified mail receipts. “We sent three notices to your house, via certified mail, giving you both the option, over a ninety-day period, to reinstate the policy.” He shook his head and spoke softly. “That never happened.”

Allie had broken out in a sweat, and her left leg was bouncing. Her face was ghostlike. “So my husband had no life insurance policy with you?”

“Mrs. Gibson, I’m sorry. I realize this is a surprise, but you and Jake owned a policy with us that insured his vehicle.” He was careful in how he answered. “Not his life.”

Allie sat staring blankly at the wall. Finally she turned to him. “Well, if I’ve been paying the insurance on that truck, and that truck is now totaled, which I imagine is something you and I can agree on, shouldn’t I get a check for the value of the truck?”