"More coffee, Dennis?" I asked.
He held out his cup. "Thanks."
Daddy looked at me.
I tugged on my right ear. It was our prearranged signal. Time to begin.
With his chair legs screeching against the concrete, Daddy scooted closer to the table. "Hannah and I would like to talk to you about something."
Dennis glanced from my father to me, the cup halfway to his lips. "I think I hear my mother calling."
Connie punched her husband in the arm. "Be serious, Dennis."
"I am serious! When have you not known me to be serious?"
Connie smiled helplessly. "You can dress him up, but you can't take him out."
"Dennis," I said, "we need your advice."
"Is this going to get me into trouble?"
I glanced sideways at Daddy. "I don't think so."
"That's a relief." Dennis looked straight at me.
"But it might take a little time to explain," Daddy amended.
Dennis sipped his coffee. "That's okay. As long as my beeper doesn't go off, I have all the time in the world."
"Have you ever heard of viaticals?" I asked.
"No. What's a viatical?"
And so I began. I told Dennis how I'd learned about viaticals from Valerie, what I found out about the business when I visited Jablonsky, how I took that information to Brad and ended up working for Victory Mutual, and how, eventually, Daddy and I ended up playing dress-up in Steele's fancy office in Laurel, Maryland.
In the flickering light from the citronella candles, Dennis looked puzzled. "So, let me understand this. People are making money selling secondhand life insurance policies."
I nodded.
"How can that be legal?"
I don't know how long Hutch had been standing behind us, listening. He pulled up a chair. "Oh, it's perfectly legal," Ruth's boyfriend confirmed. "First people like this guy Steele were trying to make money from people on their deathbeds. Now they're trying to make money from the people who want to make money from people on their deathbeds."
"And sometimes," Daddy added, "they get greedy."
"Remember my friend, Valerie? She was terminally ill. She was supposed to die within a year. So she soldher life insurance policy to Steele through Jablonsky. Some total stranger became her beneficiary. And then…" I paused and looked around the table. "… she went into remission."
Dennis started to say something, but I held up a finger. "Hold that thought," I said. "Let me fast forward."
I filled Dennis in on what I'd learned from Mrs. Bromley about senior settlements and the missionary work Jablonsky seemed to be doing at Ginger Cove.
"Jeesh," Dennis said.
"Sick," said Connie.
"It gets worse," Daddy added.
On cue, I pulled Mrs. Bromley's list from my pocket and spread it out on the table. "Here's a list of nine people, all of them residents of Ginger Cove." Reading down the list, I ticked them off on my fingers. "Clark Gammel, dead. Tim Burns, dead. Wyetha Hodge, dead. James Mc-Gowan, dead-" I paused. "Of the nine people on this list, six of them are dead. And the one thing they all had in common is that they sold their life insurance policies to ViatiPro through Gilbert Jablonsky."
Connie laid a hand on her husband's arm. "And Hannah's friend, Valerie? Don't forget she died unexpectedly, too."
I drank some more of my wine. “Tell Dennis about Pottorff, Daddy. Enforcer?"
"Enforcer?" Hutch's eyebrows went up.
Daddy frowned. "N-4-S-I-R. That's his vanity plate. Cute, huh? The guy must be a mental giant." Once again he turned to Dennis. "Anyway, Hannah saw this guy in a brown suit, Nick Pottorff, coming and going from both Steele's and Jablonsky's offices, and we don't think he's simply carrying company papers."
I nodded vigorously.
"So, where's this going?" Dennis asked.
"I think Steele persuaded a lot of people to invest in viaticated life insurance policies. I think he used Jablonsky to meet that demand. Then, I think Steele got greedy. People who were supposed to be terminally ill, like AIDS patients on protease inhibitors and people like my friend Valerie, weren't dying fast enough, so Steele hired Pottorff to speed things along."
"We think Pottorff's job was to make sure the policies 'matured' in a timely fashion," Daddy explained.
In the candlelight, Dennis's eyes flashed. "You think Pottorff's a contract killer?"
I nodded. "I think he murdered Valerie, and I think he murdered the people on this list."
"But there'd be evidence-" Dennis began.
I shook my head. "Only if you're looking for it. Who's going to think twice when an eighty-five-year-old man is found dead in his bed? Who's going to ask questions when a terminally ill cancer patient simply doesn't wake up?"
Perhaps it was the wine lubricating my brain cells, but suddenly I knew how it was done. "They were smothered," I said with confidence. "Someone put a pillow over their faces. There'd be signs then, wouldn't there? I saw it on CSI." I leaned forward and laid my hand gently on top of Mrs. Bromley's list. "I want you to dig them up, Dennis. I want you to dig them all up. I want you to look for signs of petechiael hemorrhaging."
Paul, who had been silent until then, finally weighed in. "Hannah-"
But I wasn't going to be silenced. "And I want you to exhume Valerie Stone's body, too."
They probably didn't think I noticed, but I did. A look passed between Dennis and Paul. I'm sure Connie caught it, too. Dennis unfolded his long legs and stood up, walked around the table, and stopped behind my chair. "Come with me for a minute, Hannah. I want to talk to you in private."
With one hand resting on the table for support, I rose unsteadily to my feet. Dennis took my elbow and led me into the back garden where-was it my imagination?-the stale smell of Hutch's last cigarette still clung to the leaves of the rhododendron.
"Hannah," Dennis began when he got me alone. "Even if I wanted to, I couldn't exhume even one of those bodies. You seem to forget, I'm a Chesapeake County police officer. Anne Arundel County is not in my jurisdiction." He took a deep breath. "And even if it were my jurisdiction, I couldn't even justify a search warrant with the information you've just given me. I'm quite sure my colleagues in Anne Arundel County couldn't, either."
"But-" I felt ill.
"Octogenarians and desperately ill women die every day," Dennis continued reasonably. "This business about life insurance policies, it's all circumstantial."
"But Pottorff-" I began, tears welling up in my eyes. "The license plate."
Dennis rested his hands on my shoulders. "Sure, there could be a connection, but it's probably perfectly legitimate. The men were in business together, Hannah. Think about it!" His voice softened. "I know how close you were to Valerie Stone, but the police simply can't go forward with this. There's no probable cause."
"But-"
"You're bucking the Supreme Court, Hannah. Rumor, mere suspicion, and even strong reason to suspect are not equivalent to probable cause. We'd need a lot more to go on than a license plate and a hunch."
It was crystal clear to me. Daddy was on board. How could someone as bright as Dennis Rutherford fail to see it, too?
"But how about ViatiPro? And Victory Mutual?"
"That's about the only thing you're doing right," he said gently. "Informing the insurance company the way you did. Let them sort it out with the Maryland Insurance Administration. That's their job."
Although I'm sure he didn't mean to, Dennis's words stung: The only thing you’re doing right. I began to sob.
"Hannah!" he said, and drew me to his chest. He was warm, slightly sweaty, and his shirt smelled of barbeque smoke and Tide.
My head spun, my stomach roiled. I wanted the ground to open under my feet and swallow me. After all I'd done, how could this be happening? Why wasn't Dennis listening to me? How could he let Valerie down? How could he let Mrs. Bromley continue to live in fear?
The breeze freshened, cooling the tears on my cheeks. I pushed my brother-in-law away. "Just go away, Dennis! Go away and leave me alone!"