Death Benefits (6 page)

“What's the answer?”

Nancy smiled. “Your shit is our bread and butter.”

“Cute…I guess.”

“From Albert Weidemeir? My God, I almost fell over in hysterics. It's the funniest thing that man ever said to me.”

“Tell me more about him.”

“Albert's real straight, real serious. But nice. Every once in a while he'll ask about my boys when he calls.”

“You mean the two redheads in the picture by your PC?” I asked.

“Right.” She gave me a look of surprise. “You're observant.”

“Part of the job,” I said with a shrug.

I had noticed a photograph of two adolescent boys, both with red hair, pinned to the wall of Nancy's secretarial station. I had also noticed that she wasn't wearing a wedding ring. I knew the type. Over the years I've represented one or two Nancy Winslows in divorce proceedings, and several others in court battles with their ex-husbands over missed alimony and child-support payments. Somehow these women manage to raise their children on their own, feed them and clothe them and nourish them on meager salaries, with no help—financial, emotional, or otherwise—from the creeps who had long since abandoned them. The Nancy Winslows of this world have their own wing in the Rachel Gold hall of fame.

“So I can reach this Albert Weidemeir at the Sewer District?” I asked, jotting it down.

“Right. The main office. I'll get you his phone number.”

“Thanks. Who's the third client?”

“Remy Panzer. He owns the Panzer Gallery.”

“What's that?”

“A weird art gallery in the Central West End.”

“Weird?”

“I've never actually been there, but it has to be. Anything Remy Panzer owns has to be weird.”

“What's the story with Remy?”

“Well, for starters he's what you might call a little light in the loafers.”

“Huh?”

“You know, sugar in his gas tank.”

“Gay?”

“Definitely. Although I really don't mind that part. Panzer's just plain weird. Dresses weird, talks weird, walks weird. He gives me the willies.”

I added Remy Panzer to my list. “This sounds like a fun group: the Missing Link, a boring civil servant, and a cast member from the Addams Family.”

I asked her about Stoddard Anderson's mail, especially whether he received anything unusual toward the end. She didn't recall anything out of the ordinary.

I checked my watch. It was later than I thought. I was supposed to meet with Dottie Anderson, his widow, in fifteen minutes out in Clayton. I asked Nancy if she could drop off the box of correspondence in my office before she went home, along with his appointment calendar. “Also,” I added, “could you have Reed St. Germain add to his list of documents the latest summary of the financial condition of Stoddard Anderson's estate.”

“Sure thing,” she said as we both stood up. “You know, for what's it's worth, Rachel, Mr. Anderson really did seem out of it those last couple days. He'd always kept a pretty tight grip on himself, but I could tell he was struggling with something. Whatever it was, it was really driving him crazy.”

Chapter Six

The Anderson home is on a quiet street in the City of Clayton, which is an affluent older suburb of St. Louis. As I got out of my car, I felt as if I had been whisked back to a Golden Books neighborhood from the 1950s. The massive trees along the street formed a green canopy of shade overhead. Sunlight filtered through gaps in the leaves—dozens of slanted yellow columns. A child's bicycle was on its side on the sidewalk across the street. I could hear the distant growl of a lawn mower and the closer ring of an ice cream truck, perhaps a block over. A dog barked. A little girl pedaled down a driveway on her tricycle and then turned and pedaled back out of sight. Four houses down, on the lawn near the sidewalk, was a child's table with a handmade LEMONADE FOR SALE sign taped to the front. The proprietor was nowhere in sight. Perhaps he was taking a nap.

There was a dreamlike feel to the scene. I half expected to see the Pevely milk truck from my childhood come around the corner, trailing a pack of chasing kids—the boys wearing cowboy hats, me with my wild curls and torn Keds—shouting at the milkman for chunks of ice. Closing my eyes, I conjured up one of those big chunks of ice—sharp edges, cold to the tongue, harder than a diamond.

The Anderson house fit right in. It was a red brick house, circa 1900, with black shutters, a gray slate roof, three chimneys, and two dormers. There were several window air-conditioning units, and all were humming away. A huge oak tree stood in the center of the lawn, casting shade over the entire house.

The doorbell set off chimes inside. A few moments later my newest client opened the door.

“You must be Rachel,” she said with a friendly smile. “Please come in, dear.”

Like her neighborhood and her house, Dottie Anderson looked as if she had been beamed down from the Golden Books childhood. Specifically, she looked like the neighborhood grandmother—the one who gave out homemade brownies on Halloween and was always setting out a plate of warm sugar cookies for the kids on the block who came to visit her. She was even wearing an apron.

“These cookies are delicious,” I said as she poured me a cup of tea.

“Thank you, dear. Would you care for a lemon slice with your tea?”

“No, thanks.”

We talked generally for a while. I explained my assignment and the scope of my investigation. She listened quietly, nodding occasionally.

Dottie Anderson did not seem the woman most likely to celebrate a thirty-second wedding anniversary with Stoddard Anderson. At best, she was the one discarded after twenty-five years for the “trophy wife.” She was overweight, plain, and shy. Her faded shirtwaist dress with a pleated bodice made her look older than she was. The smudge of flour on her nose seemed the final touch.

“We were high school sweethearts,” she said in answer to my question. “We were married after Stoddard graduated from college. I taught kindergarten at the Flynn Park School while Stoddard went to law school at St. Louis University. I haven't worked since my son was born.” She looked down at her hands in her lap. “I've been an active volunteer, though. In fact, I have a Red Cross committee meeting tonight, and tomorrow is my day at the gift shop at Barnes Hospital. I do that every week.”

She gave me a tour of the house. The upstairs seemed like a series of museum period rooms. The bedrooms of her dead son and institutionalized daughter looked the way they must have looked on the day each had departed.

“This was Stoddard's bedroom,” she said as she opened the door.

My head involuntarily turned toward her bedroom, which was at the other end of the upstairs hallway. She caught the look, and I saw a brief glimmer of pain, or shame, in her face.

“Would you mind if I looked around Mr. Anderson's room?” I asked. “It shouldn't take long.”

“Take your time, dear. I'll be downstairs in the kitchen.”

I spent fifteen minutes searching his bedroom. If it contained a clue to his mental state, I missed it. The room was bereft of personality, and seemed more like a room in a residence hotel. The only reading materials were several
Fortune
and
Forbes
magazines on his nightstand and a pile of old
Wall Street Journals
on the corner of his desk. The only personal papers were neat stacks of old bills and magazine subscription notices in the center of his desk. The faded English hunting prints that were framed on the wall seemed as anonymous as the rest of the room.

“What were his work habits the last week or so?” I asked Dottie. We were seated at the small table in the kitchen.

“He worked late most of those nights. But that was hardly unusual.” She shook her head sadly. “Stoddard worked late most nights.”

“Did he have any drinking or drug problems?”

“No. He liked a glass of wine with his meal. And he often made himself a highball before dinner. When he came home before dinner, that is. I'm afraid that an attorney's wife gets used to cooking for one. As for a drug problem, I would be shocked if he did. He wrote articles about the need for longer jail terms for drug offenders. He was chairman of the ‘Say No To Drugs' campaign in St. Louis under President Reagan. I met Mrs. Reagan, you know. We had tea together at Old Warson Country Club.”

“Did you see him the night before he disappeared?”

“We had dinner here. I made my pot roast.” She tilted her head to the side, remembering. “He seemed moody. And distracted. I remember I was in the middle of telling him about something that happened at the hospital gift shop when he just…got up and…and just walked out of the room. He wasn't angry, or any such thing as that. He just wasn't even aware I was talking.”

“Did you see him again?”

She closed her eyes and shook her head. “By the time I cleaned the dishes he was in his bedroom and the door was closed. He left for work the next morning while I was in my bath. I never saw him again.”

“Did he contact you before he died?”

She looked down. “No.”

“Were you afraid he'd been kidnapped?”

After a moment of silence, she looked up, her eyes moist. “I was frightened, but not that Stoddard had been kidnapped. I'm…I'm so ashamed of myself, Rachel. I was afraid that he…that he had left me for another woman. Every time that telephone rang after he disappeared, I was afraid it would be Stoddard, calling from one of those horrible places like Reno or Tijuana—calling to tell me he wanted a divorce.” Her lips quivered.

I said nothing.

“I'm so ashamed of myself for thinking those thoughts,” she continued, her hands tightening around the teacup. “There I was, worrying only about myself. All that time I had no idea he was in such pain.”

I reached across the table and placed my hand over hers. We sat there quietly. The only sound was the humming of the air conditioner in the dining room.

“What made you think he might want a divorce?” I asked gently.

“Oh, nothing in particular.”

“How about in general?”

“I don't know. A woman just…” She stopped, head down.

I waited.

“We…we hadn't made…had relations in years,” Dottie said, eyes downcast. “Although it had never been an important part of our marriage, it stopped completely about ten years ago.”

“What happened?” I asked softly.

“Stoddard had problems with…with his functions.”

“He became impotent?”

She nodded. “I thought it was my fault. I know I'm not a beautiful woman, Rachel. I tried to overcome that. I went on a diet. I bought some…some daring undergarments.” A tear rolled slowly down her cheek. “It didn't help. I encouraged Stoddard to seek medical help. I cut out an article on male problems from
Readers' Digest
. I left it on his nightstand. That just made him angrier. He told me it was just a phase and that it would pass.” She sighed, her shoulders sagging. “It never passed. He moved out of our bedroom into his own room down the hall.”

She looked at me. “My husband and I never slept together again after that, Rachel. I don't mean just not having relations together. I mean not even sleeping together. Back when we were young, when we were newlyweds, we used to cuddle together, sometimes for hours.” Her eyes had a faraway look. “We were poor as church mice back then, but we had each other. The happiest memories of my life were those winter nights back when Stoddard was in law school. After I finished my lesson plan for the next day and Stoddard finished his homework, we'd just cuddle on the couch together while the wind howled outside.” Her smile seemed to hover there for a moment and then it faded. She glanced at me and then looked down. “Those are old memories. Stoddard and I stopped cuddling many years ago.”

I gently probed for other observations of her husband, but it became clear they had been strangers for years, leading separate lives under the same roof. She didn't know about the added life insurance he had purchased four months before his death. She didn't know what he had been working on during the last weeks of his life. She knew where he went when he traveled, because his secretary would send her his trip itinerary, but she didn't know why he went where he went. She assumed they were all business trips.

Although she paid the bills, she knew nothing else about their financial affairs. Whenever the balance in her checking account got low, she would call her husband's secretary, Nancy, and tell her she needed more money in the checking account. Nancy would ask her how much she needed, and then handle the transfer of the money. Dottie literally had no idea where the money came from. All she knew was that she paid the bills and Stoddard handled all the investment decisions, because “he was a man and knew about those things.”

“Did he leave a note?” I asked.

“He did,” Dottie said. She stood up. “I'll get it for you.”

She left the room and came back a few moments later with a thick manila envelope, out of which she extracted a folded sheet of paper. “This is a photocopy,” she said as she handed the note to me. “The police have the original.”

“What else is in the envelope?”

“These are the papers that the police found in the motel room. Most of them were in his briefcase, they said. You're welcome to take them with you, Rachel. Perhaps they can help your investigation.”

I unfolded the suicide note and read it:

The Quest has come to an end. The Executor is safe underground. I have become my own Executor. Dottie, this is a dying man's last request:

Forgive me.

Stoddard Anderson

“What does it mean?” I finally asked.

“I don't know.”

I stared at the note, reading it again. “It doesn't make any sense.” I started to copy the words down on my legal pad.

Dottie reached across the table and grasped my arm. “Please find out what it means,” she said fiercely. “Find out what my husband was trying to tell me.”

I put my hand over hers and looked into her eyes. Surely she had once chased her own milk truck. She had once been a young bride. And now? She had buried her only son and placed her only daughter in an institution. She had waited alone as an empty marriage ended with a suicide note she didn't understand from a stranger she had once loved.

“Take the note with you,” she told me. “I don't want it until I know what it means. Find out what it means, Rachel. Please help me understand his death.”

“I'll try,” I promised her. “I'll try to find out what your husband meant.”

As I walked to my car I peered into the manila envelope. There was a fresh yellow legal pad, the front section of the
Wall Street Journal
from the day he disappeared, a pocket calendar, a calculator, a monthly statement of his account from the St. Louis Club (which was in an envelope postmarked two days before he disappeared), and a marked-up photocopy of an article from
Business Lawyer
on sale-leaseback transactions in the aviation industry.

As I unlocked my car door, I heard a truck in the distance shift gears. It made me think again of that milk truck. I turned toward the Anderson home. Had the milkman ever handed little Dottie one of those big chunks of ice? At first, as you cradled it in your hands, the ice would seem as clear as glass. But then you would notice that your hands were distorted by the ice. Studying the ice as you tilted it this way and that, you could sometimes spot outlines of ice chunks within ice chunks within ice chunks, each invisible unless sunlight hit a surface just right.