No Accident Read online

  Hard to wait, Alex thought. He wouldn’t wait. He would call Liberty Industries and bluff them into telling him the name of their auto insurer. The call where Alex bluffed Liberty’s H.R. department had gone fine, so why not try the same thing with a different department? He didn’t know the name of the insurer, so he figured he would just say he was calling from “the insurance company.” For the bluff to work, he needed to call someone who wouldn’t ask too many questions, so he called Liberty and asked for the accounts receivable department, hoping to reach a gullible, low-level bookkeeper.

  The receptionist connected Alex to a woman with a hard-to-place foreign accent. She spoke loudly, but it didn’t make her accent any clearer.

  “Hi,” Alex said. “I’m calling from the insurance company to confirm the status of the insurance payment for the accident on December 23rd. You remember, the big one?”

  “Oh, I remember. Everybody remembers. You want to talk to the finance department?”

  No, Alex didn’t. Finance types were more inquisitive than accounting clerks, but he had no choice.

  “Yes. And tell them I’m from the insurance company.”

  Alex held his breath as he waited on hold. What was the worst that could happen if his ruse was discovered? Just that the person on the other end of the phone would note Alex’s phone number and track the call back to Rampart. Then Alex would be fired and very quickly go bankrupt. Which was distinctly worse than Alex’s current trajectory of slowly going bankrupt. Alex was wishing that he’d thought this plan through a little better when a male voice greeted him on the other end of the line.

  “Finance. Daugherty.”

  “Yes, I’m calling about the December 23rd accident?”

  “You with Peninsula Life?”

  Alex paused. That wasn’t a name he was expecting. Peninsula was a life insurer, not an automobile insurer. Finally, he said, “Uh . . . that’s right.”

  “You work with Susan, uh, Susan what’s-her-name?”

  “Yes I do, and she asked me to apologize for the delay in getting back to you.” Alex apologized for the delay in order to ingratiate himself with this guy Daugherty. Alex figured he was taking only a small risk—even if Daugherty had spoken with Susan ten minutes ago, any delay was too long in the client’s eyes.

  “Yeah, fine,” Daugherty said. “So I hope you’re calling to tell me we’re all set for payment.”

  Alex paused, then said, “I wish I were.” He gritted his teeth. There was no telling where the conversation would go next.

  “Not what I wanted to hear—what did you say your name was?”

  “Um, Alex.”

  “No offense, Alex, but let’s get Susan on the line.”

  “Actually, she’s in a meeting right now, and—”

  “Oh, the hell she is. Look, Alex, I just want to know when you folks are going to pay us. Susan said you were all set with the paperwork, and now you call . . .”

  So the paperwork was done. That gave Alex an idea.

  “Well, we were done with the paperwork, Mr. Daugherty.”

  “Were? What kind of run-around is this? You tell Susan that—”

  “Have you ever dealt with OSHA, Mr. Daugherty?”

  “The workplace safety agency? Sure, but what has that got to do—”

  “Well, we’re dealing with them right now on our end. Seems some government bean counter spotted rat feces in our document warehouse and got all excited about it, and they’ve decided that now is a great time to close off the entire warehouse and test it for the hanta virus.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “I wish I were. Anyway, unfortunately the paperwork for your case, along with a thousand others, is quarantined for the rest of the week.”

  “So you’re not paying us till next week? All five policies? Ah, crap. We’ve already booked the proceeds to revenue. My CFO is not going to be happy about this, Alex.”

  “Well, hold on, I was calling with a solution. If you could just fax the paperwork again, we can pay you on the basis of a fax signature. I know it’s an imposition, but—”

  Daugherty sighed. “What’s the number?”

  Alex gave Daugherty Rampart’s fax number and told him to make out the cover sheet to Alex F.

  “You tell Susan she owes me lunch,” Daugherty said.

  After hanging up, Alex paced the halls. His heart was pounding and he felt as if he had been surfing among sharks. He couldn’t believe his luck.

  The Cummings case had just gone from intriguing to disturbing. Daugherty only mentioned policies from Peninsula, which wrote life insurance, not auto insurance. It looked like Liberty didn’t have insurance for its van at all. Daugherty also talked about five policies—Alex guessed that meant one policy for each of the dead employees in the van. He raced to the fax room. He couldn’t wait to find out if his guess was right.

  * * *

  The faxes from Daugherty confirmed Alex’s suspicion: Liberty had taken out insurance policies on the lives of the five employees who died in the van. As a result of their deaths, Liberty was entitled to two million dollars in insurance proceeds from Peninsula Life.

  Now that he knew that Jorge and Beto worked at Liberty together and that Liberty had insured the lives of its dead employees, Alex thought he had enough information to convince Chip Odom that the case deserved Alex’s full attention. Chip had a mercurial temper, just like his father, who happened to be the founder and president of Rampart Insurance. People in the office said Chip was in a disagreeable mood today. Alex resolved to speak with Chip tomorrow.

  The next morning, when Alex got to his cubicle, he found that all his files had been removed. When he turned to go find out where they were, he ran right into Chip Odom, who wore a malevolent grin.

  “Alex Fogarty,” Chip said loudly, in a needlessly musical tone. He took a slow look at Alex’s loose interpretation of business casual wear, and said, “Looks like you left your tuxedo at the cleaners.”

  Chip’s distinctive cackle followed, a high-pitched staccato alarm that let everyone nearby know he had made a joke. Laughing at his own bad jokes was Chip’s prerogative as the founder’s son. Chip always wore a suit but, within that constraint, still found ways to surprise. Today he paired a blue pinstripe suit with a light orange shirt and a paisley necktie of the same shade. Add to that his curly hair, and he looked like a well-tailored clown.

  “Good morning, Chip. I’ve actually been meaning to speak with you.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “Um, do you know where my files are?”

  “They’re in my office now.” Chip grabbed Alex by the arm. “Walk with me,” Chip said, and they walked.

  Chip was chubby and had the droopy features of an aging babyface. Some of the more irreverent secretaries would tell stories of Chip as a mama’s boy on his childhood visits to the office—expansive and demanding when accompanying his mother, sullen and withdrawn with his father.

  “Where are we going?” Alex said. Chip didn’t answer.

  They marched around the perimeter of the floor like Chip was trying to catch up to someone. As Chip walked, his loose curls bounced over his ears and forehead. A warren of cubicles lay on one side of the hall and an outer ring of private offices and conference rooms on the other. Chip pulled Alex into one of the conference rooms, where someone from H.R. sat waiting. She was a dour older woman in a dark suit who didn’t rise when they entered. Chip sat. Alex looked at them both. “What the hell’s going on?” he said.

  “I assume you’ve seen this,” Chip said. He picked up a folded newspaper and tossed it onto the table so that it faced Alex.

  It was the Metro section of that morning’s Chronicle. One of the lead articles was entitled “Maverick Investigator Bucks Trend Toward Compromise,” by none other than Alex’s old acquaintance Zeke Andrews.

  “No, I hadn’t seen this,” Alex said. He picked it up. Starting with the headline, it didn’t look good.

  “It’s . . . engendered some discussi
ons around here,” Chip said. “There are some real gems in here—let’s see,” he said, and he picked up another copy. “‘Fogarty opines that tranquility rather than curiosity is what succeeds in the new corporate environment.’ Oh, and, ‘Fogarty admits that it is often cheaper for an insurance company to settle a fraudulent claim than to litigate and prove that it is unjustified.’ Why don’t you just write the crooks an instruction manual, huh?”

  Alex vaguely remembered saying something like that, but how could Zeke put that stuff in the paper? And why did Zeke let Alex get blindsided by the story? Alex grew hot with anger at the betrayal.

  The H.R. woman spoke for the first time. “The article also contains a troubling account of an accident that you and the reporter were involved in, where you assaulted one of the accident victims and then fled the scene.”

  “Shit, Chip,” Alex said. “I didn’t assault anyone. I didn’t flee from anything.”

  Chip didn’t answer. He was reading the article again. “Oh, and here’s the worst one.” Chip poked a finger into the flimsy newsprint. ‘“A lot of these insurance scammers are undocumented,’ says Fogarty. ‘The ringleaders like them because they work cheap and won’t go to the police.’”

  “But it’s true,” Alex said.

  “Jesus . . .” Chip sighed.

  Alex looked at them both. The H.R. woman was looking at her hands, which lay folded on the table in front of her. “Will you excuse us for a minute?” Alex said to her. She looked at Chip. Chip nodded, and she left.

  “You can’t fire me, Chip. I’m your best investigator. Zeke twisted my words around so he could write what he wanted to write.”

  Chip studied Alex’s face, looking for a tell. Finally he shrugged. “You’re probably right, Alex, but it’s too late for that.”

  “Chip, I’m begging you. Besides, you need me. Remember the Cummings case? Well, the police report doesn’t make sense. There are discrepancies that favor us, and you’ll never guess who one of the victims is. Remember Jorge Ramirez?”

  “Mmm, no.”

  “Remember his skinny little buddy Rigoberto Capablanca?”

  Chip chuckled. “I’ll never forget that guy.”

  “Well, Capablanca also works at Liberty Industries, and Liberty took out life insurance on the employees who died. There’s something funny here, I just know it.”

  Chip raised his palm to end the discussion. “Alex, stop. The Cummings case has been closed.”

  “Closed? Since when?”

  “Since my dad read this story,” Chip said, gesturing toward the newspaper. “The story says the dead Cummings guy had been kicked out by his wife. Dad read that and insisted we check the address of record in the policy. Turns out Howard Cummings didn’t update his address when he added on insurance for the sports car, and the big guy demanded we deny coverage for false representation.”

  “That’s bullshit! It’s a harmless mistake. He left a wife and son, y’know.”

  “Look, Dad gets angry and he lashes out. The dead Mr. Cummings was an easy target for him.”

  Alex remembered how bereft Roberta Cummings looked when Alex visited her. “And the person it hurts is Mrs. Cummings. You know that, right?”

  “I’m not saying it’s fair, Alex.”

  React without thinking—classic Rampart Insurance, Alex thought. “Mrs. Cummings was an easy target for your father, and I was an easy target for you,” he said.

  “No, Alex. Firing you was Dad’s choice, too.”

  “You’re a big boy, now, Chip. Quit hiding behind Daddy’s skirt.”

  Chip frowned. “All right, Alex, I tried to make this easy for you, but you asked for it. You want to know why you were never going to succeed here?”

  “I’m not getting paid to listen to you anymore. Goodbye.” Alex turned to leave.

  Chip grasped Alex by the arm. “No, you’ll listen.” His voice became raspy. “It’s because you never saw the big picture.” He stabbed a chunky finger into Alex’s chest. “You never accepted that fraud is a cost of doing business. You thought your job was all about solving cases, and being clever and unique and oh-so-special Alex.”

  This was rich, coming from a man with the work ethic of a hung-over college kid. “Silly me,” Alex said, “I thought my job was to be thorough and save the company money.”

  “Yeah, silly you. For every random fraud case you uncovered, your thoroughness delayed payment to a hundred honest policyholders. Those hundred policyholders cancel their insurance with us and then they tell their family and friends. And then they complain to the insurance commission. You cost the company money.”

  “There’s your cost of doing business, champ,” Alex said, but Chip kept going.

  “That’s why an investigator is all you were ever going to be. This company’s growing, Alex. I’m going to grow it even more than my dad did. And in the big picture, customer relations matters more than a few two-bit scam artists.”

  Alex noticed that a spot of foam had appeared at each corner of Chip’s mouth. Chip was full of crap, but it felt good to push his buttons.

  “You know, you’re smarter than people give you credit for,” Alex said.

  The corners of Chip’s mouth twisted upward into a tentative smile, and his features softened. A baby seal looking up at a falling club.

  “But no matter how smart you are,” Alex said, gently straightening Chip’s tie and giving the knot one neat pat, “people will always know you as ‘junior.’”

  * * *

  Alex walked past the main reception desk as casually as he could while toting a box with a bobblehead toy and the other personal leftovers from his years at Rampart. He was staring straight ahead, ruing his outburst at Chip, when a woman he hadn’t seen coming slapped him across the face.

  “You came to my house with flowers. I confided in you. And now you send me this!”

  The woman pushed a crumpled page into Alex’s chest. Alex cracked it open to find a printout of an email from Rampart denying insurance coverage. Alex looked at the addressee line in the email and then looked up at the woman’s face. Roberta Cummings had been crying.

  “I wasn’t responsible,” Alex said.

  “And now with the lawsuit from the accident and no liability coverage . . . we’ll probably lose the house.” Her shoulders buckled and she gave in to sobbing. Alex touched his fingertips gently to her shoulder—he didn’t know what else to do; he didn’t need a sexual harassment suit on top of everything else—but she jerked upright and slapped his arm away.

  “Don’t touch me, you creep,” she shrieked. She turned and fled to the elevator. There she stood, awkwardly waiting for the elevator doors to open. Under the rapt watch of those in the reception area, Alex carefully approached her from behind. The brushed steel of the elevator doors reflected a distorted image of her clenched jaw and downcast eyes.

  “Mrs. Cummings,” he said, but she didn’t look up or respond. He wanted to tell her everything, pour out the details of his theory of the case and all the work he’d done on it right there in front of everyone. He couldn’t possibly look more foolish than he already did. But he knew she wouldn’t hear it. She had been wronged and was in pain. His response had to be as simple as that. “Listen,” he said, “I . . . wasn’t . . . responsible. Rampart did this to you.”

  She faced him and spoke so softly that Alex had to lean in to hear her.

  “But Rampart used you to help them, right?” Alex didn’t deny it. The elevator doors opened and she stepped inside. “That’s just as bad as doing it yourself.”

  The elevator doors closed, leaving Alex to face his own distorted reflection. Feeling angry and embarrassed and foolish, Alex squared his shoulders and marched back to Chip’s office. He wasn’t leaving without a fight, and he fantasized about Chip squealing for someone to call security.

  Chip was away from his office, which made Alex even angrier, but then Alex got another idea. He looked out into the hall to make sure Chip wasn’t on his way back, then he opened
a drawer—and removed the Cummings file.

  10

  The conference room at Liberty Industries’ headquarters could hold up to twenty around its long, polished wood table. Today only two were seated there, together at one end of the grand chamber. Two lawyers: an older one and a younger one, waiting.

  The older one, Alan Mathews, was about sixty. He had a deeply lined face, but he was tall and gave an impression of physical vigor. His starched white shirt matched his full head of wavy white hair, which was combed back and fixed with mousse so that it looked like it had been carved from marble. The other lawyer, a young associate, had loose brown hair that fell almost to his eyes and was combed to look like a tuft of wind-blown grass.

  They heard the door open and Alan immediately stood to greet his client. Instead, a man he didn’t know entered and said that Luke Hubbard would be with them shortly. The man was taller than Alan, powerfully built, and wore a suit that was almost as impressive as Alan’s. His close-cropped hair was strikingly pale—silver—even though the man was not old.

  The door opened again and Luke Hubbard entered. Alan instantly forgot the other man existed and approached Luke with genial greetings.

  “You’ve met Crash Bailey, I see,” Luke said.

  Alan distractedly looked back. “Um, yes, we were just introducing ourselves.”

  “Crash here is going to be my emissary to Ray McLean, aren’t you, Crash?”

  Alan smiled at Crash with genuine warmth. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were a lawyer.”

  Crash was impassive, but Luke had a good laugh. “Crash isn’t a lawyer,” he said. “But you don’t need a law degree to be persuasive.”

  Alan’s face lit up. “Well, Ray McLean’s hedge fund is well known for hostile takeovers, which are just a corporate law minefield. We’d be more than happy to help you on the legal side with all of that.”

  “As always, Alan, if there’s a way you can help,” Luke said wryly, “I’ll find a role for you. Now, let’s get down to business.”