Send Down the Rain(36)
She looked confused. “What? What is this?”
I leaned back against the chair. “I think it means that Jake Gibson faked his own death.”
“What?” Her head was spinning. “Why?”
“I don’t have the answer to that.” I pulled out the envelope. “There’s more.” I spread the four sheets of paper across my lap. “This is a change-of-address form used by First General. It was filed by Jake a month after you two purchased the policy ten years ago. The new address is to a town in North Carolina. Oddly, it’s about an hour from my cabin. It’s near the interstate, so access for a semi like Jake’s wouldn’t be too difficult.”
Allie was having trouble putting all this together.
“I think Jake purchased the life insurance policy with you and then transferred ownership to someone in North Carolina where, I would guess, he also reassigned the beneficiary—while still allowing you to pay on a policy you no longer owned. If you hire an attorney, I think you’ll find this to be true. I also think you’ll find he’s lived at that address in North Carolina for quite some time.”
She shuffled the sheets of paper. “Well, who lives in North Carolina?”
I didn’t want to say what I was about to say. “I’m guessing Jake’s first wife.”
“What!” Her bottom lip was shaking and she was crying now, but it wasn’t sadness. It was growing anger. “But why . . . ? What would . . . ?”
“I don’t have answers for all of that. I could be wrong, but I’m guessing that Jake was married before he met you, and all the time you thought he was on the road, he was probably back home in North Carolina.”
Her voice changed. “With his other wife?”
“Yes.”
“But . . . that doesn’t answer why. Why pretend all those years?”
“I can give you one million reasons.”
She stared at the papers. “So here I am. The mourning widow. All torn up ’cause I think he’s burnt to a crisp and my last words to him were so terrible. So hate-filled. And he’s actually living with some floozie in another state.”
I nodded. “With a million dollars.”
“But . . . that would mean he planned this whole thing. That sadistic bast—”
I nodded. “A little more than ten years ago. And here’s something else. How many times did Jake eat at the Blue Tornado before you two started dating?”
She shrugged. “Dozen. Maybe more.”
“Did he stay at the motel?”
“Yes.”
“Why would a guy that drives a semi for a living detour so far off the interstate when it’s costing him time and money to do so?”
She shook her head. “Unless he was trying to find a woman who was tied to her eighty-hour-a-week job and hadn’t left the island in years and never went anywhere on vacation. So she would never discover he was a lying sack of—”
“I think Jake was looking for someone like you when he found you.”
“What, you mean, gullible?”
“Maybe unsuspecting and trusting are better words.”
She sat back, shaking her head. “How do we find out?”
I held up the certified mail receipts.
21
We drove up through Tallahassee, and because I loved driving back roads, we stayed on 319 up through Moultrie, then turned north on 33 up through Sylvester, finally dumping out onto I-75 at Cordele. Maybe Allie was trying to take her mind off what awaited. I’m not sure, but about the time our tires rolled off of Cape San Blas, she said, “It was good to see Bobby.”
I nodded. “It was good to see him sober.”
“You two ever talk?”
“You mean other than at Jake’s fake funeral?”
She twirled her hair with one finger. “Yes.”
“No. Not since we buried Mom.”
“Long time.”
“Yep.”
She continued. “He looked older. Looked good in his suit and with those two handsome bodyguards.”
“Maybe he’s finally found his place on this earth.”
She turned toward me. “I called him.”
“He told me.”
“He tell you I was actually looking for you?”
“Yes.”
“He said he didn’t know how to find you. Guess he found a way.”
“Actually, he did not.”
She looked surprised. “Then how’d you end up on the island?”
I told her. Starting with the snowstorm at my cabin. About Gabriella, Diego, and Catalina. About her brother, the trailer park, and how I saw the smoke.
“Bobby didn’t call you?”
“No.”
“And you turned toward home because you saw a spiral of smoke?”
I nodded.
“I guess Jake never counted on that.”
“Tell me about him. Start at the beginning.”
She backed up and described the last decade. How he was never really present. Married on paper only. They’d never had a vacation. He’d stay gone for literally months at a time. Calling every few days. Over the years, it dropped to once a week.
She said, “In ten years of marriage he was home maybe a total of a year. Maybe less. That truck only made money when it was rolling, so he was always on the road. And even when he was home, he wasn’t home. I don’t think we’ve slept in the same bed in three or four years. Maybe more. We ‘played’ married. That’s about it.”