Charlie followed Mary Bliss into the kitchen, his gait halting. While she busied herself putting away the tea glasses and the cookies, he lifted the foil covering on one of the trays of chicken and helped himself to a handful of poached chicken breast.
“Stop that,” she said, popping his knuckles with the back of a wooden spoon. “That’s my mortgage payment you’re eating.”
“No, it’s my legal fee,” Charlie said. “What is that smell?” he asked, sniffing and glancing around the kitchen.
“Burnt chicken grease?” she said. “You told me to stall the insurance investigator. So I staged a little kitchen fire.”
“What else did you stage?”
Mary Bliss stood with her back to the sink, her arms crossed over her chest.
“What’s that supposed to mean? The fire was strictly a diversionary tactic. It was your idea, Charlie Weidman.”
He took a saucer from her dish drainer and began spooning poached chicken onto it. Then he opened the refrigerator and got out one of the jars of Duke’s, adding a huge dollop. He liberally salted and peppered the chicken, sat down at the kitchen table, and calmly tucked into it like one of the starving Armenians Mary Bliss’s mother had always taunted her with.
“You shouldn’t eat that,” Mary Bliss scolded. “You’ve just had a heart attack. You’ve got about a cup of mayonnaise there. And all that salt! Are you trying to kill yourself?”
He continued eating. “Katharine won’t feed me anything but red Jell-O and plain white rice,” he said. “I’d rather die of a heart attack from eating mayonnaise and red meat than live on that crap.”
He looked up at her again. “Stop playing dumb, Mary Bliss. I know you two are up to something. But I can’t help you unless you tell me the truth.”
“I’m telling the truth,” she said stiffly. “I can’t believe that woman went down to Mexico and found out about Parker’s drinking. It’s so embarrassing. And the drugs. I swear, I didn’t know he was doing drugs too.”
“All right,” Charlie said wearily. “You just stick to your story, then. But I warn you, Mary Bliss. It sounds fishy even to me—and I’m your lawyer and your best friend’s husband.”
“I can’t help it,” Mary Bliss said. “It’s the truth. But listen, Charlie. What that woman said about Parker contributing to his own death. If they prove he was drunk when he was driving that boat, can they refuse to pay my claim?”
Charlie took a forkful of chicken and dabbed it into the mayonnaise. “That depends,” he said, chewing slowly.
“On what?”
“On how good your lawyer is,” he said, scraping the last of the chicken from the plate. “You got any white bread laying around here? Sunbeam, somethin’ like that? If I have to litigate this thing, I’m thinking I’m gonna have to up my fee to include a chicken sandwich. And a dill pickle would be nice too.”
The back door opened and Katharine walked in. Charlie slipped his saucer under the pile of bills on the kitchen table.
“Hey, honey bun,” he said, smiling warmly. “You didn’t have to rush back here for me so soon. Mary Bliss and I were just discussing this man-eatin’ insurance investigator of hers.”
“Don’t honey-bun me,” Katharine said. She shoved the bills aside and retrieved the mayonnaise-smeared plate. “Is this what you do when I’m not around? Deliberately clog your arteries with enough cholesterol to choke a goat?”
“Now, baby doll,” Charlie said. “Calm down. That’s low-fat mayonnaise. See? Ask Mary Bliss. It’s got the good cholesterol.”
“There is no good cholesterol where you’re concerned,” Katharine said. “And let me tell you another thing, Charles Weidman. Don’t come crying to me next time you have another heart attack. You want to kill yourself, go on ahead. Try calling that Bitch-Whore of yours, see if she’ll stay at your bedside in the hospital night and day like I did.”
“Katharine!” Charlie said. “This is neither the time nor the place to discuss our private lives. Mary Bliss doesn’t want to hear all that.”
“Pooh,” Katharine said. “Mary Bliss knows all about your little girlfriend. For that matter, half the town knows.”
“For the record, she is not my girlfriend,” Charlie said. “She is my associate.”
“Okay, you two,” Mary Bliss said, stepping between them. “I’m calling a truce. This is an officially demilitarized zone. Like Switzerland. If the two of you want to spend the day bickering, take it on back to your own house.”
“My house,” Katharine corrected her, glowering at Charlie.
“Which I pay for,” Charlie added.
“Enough!” Mary Bliss stacked two of the foil trays of chicken on top of each other. “Here,” she said. “Katharine, help me load this stuff in the car to take over to your place. It’s got to chill for at least eight hours before I can mix in the dressing and the other ingredients.”
“What’s this stuff for?” Charlie asked, picking up one of the trays.
Mary Bliss popped him on the arm with her wooden spoon again. “Put that down,” she ordered. “It’s your mother-in-law’s chicken salad. I’m helping cater a wedding.”
He held the kitchen door open. “I think I just heard my fee go up again.”
At Katharine’s house, Charlie held the doors while they ferried all the trays inside and stashed them in Katharine’s big Sub-Zero refrigerator.
“I’m whipped,” Mary Bliss said, sinking down into a chair.
Charlie sat down beside her, dabbing his glistening forehead with a handkerchief. “Me too,” he admitted. “I guess I’m not quite ready to run a marathon yet.”
“You need to be in the bed,” Katharine told him.
He snaked his arm around her waist, then slipped his hand down to rest on her butt. “Whatever you say, honey bun. I’ll get the sheets warmed up, then as soon as Mary Bliss is gone, you can slip in there beside me.”
“You’re incorrigible,” Katharine told him. But she didn’t move away, and Charlie’s hand stayed where it was.
“Guess I’ll hit the road and let you two be alone, then,” Mary Bliss said.
“I don’t want to be alone with this old goat,” Katharine said. “Anyway, I want to hear about the insurance investigator. What kind of things did she ask you?”
“Later,” Mary Bliss said, trying to give Katharine a silent warning that she didn’t want to discuss it in front of Charlie.
“Ms. Quiana Reese seemed reluctant to believe Mary Bliss’s account of Parker’s accident,” Charlie said.
Katharine frowned. “Why? It seems pretty cut and dried to me. They went out on the boat, it hit a wave, the boat capsized. Parker wasn’t wearing a life jacket, so he probably drowned. End of story.”
“The insurance company doesn’t find it cut and dried at all,” Charlie said. “That investigator took a trip to Cozumel. She talked to some people at the hotel. Seems like Parker was cutting up pretty good down there. Drinking a case of beer at a time. Swilling tequila like it was water. Why, that old rascal even bought himself some Mexican mary-ja-wana,” Charlie said, deliberately deepening his already deliberate drawl.
“Really?” Katharine seemed perplexed.
“Yeah, really,” Charlie said. “Ms. Reese thinks it’s pretty likely Parker was impaired when he and Mary Bliss rented that boat. That means drunk in insurance talk. And she seems to think Parker’s negligence contributed to his own death.”
“So what?” Katharine said. “Even if it was his own fault, they can’t get out of paying Mary Bliss’s death benefit, can they?”
“That’s what I was just starting to explain to Mary Bliss earlier today,” Charlie said. “Something she didn’t know about. Hell, I didn’t know it until I started doing some research. This ain’t exactly my kind of specialty, you know.”
“You’re a lawyer,” Katharine said. “The smartest one I know. You can run circles around that pissant little life insurance company.”
“I’ll take that as a rare compliment, darlin’,” Charlie said. “But the fact remains that no matter how damn smart I am—and you’re right, I am pretty damn smart most of the time—I can’t run circles around the law.”
“What are you talking about?” Mary Bliss asked. She didn’t like the direction this was going in. Not at all.
“Just this. Even if Parker was negligent, even if he committed suicide, the insurance company would still have to pay his death benefit.”
“Good,” Katharine said, beaming.
“Not so fast,” Charlie said. “Georgia statute provides that in the case of a questionable death—such as we have here—what with the body never being found and all, the insurance company can delay paying death benefits for up to as much as four years after the time of that death,” Charlie said.
“You never told me that before,” Mary Bliss cried.
“I didn’t know for sure,” Charlie said. “Had to get my law clerk to look it up.”
“Four years,” Mary Bliss said softly. “I’ll be living on the streets by then.”
“You might be living in the jailhouse,” Charlie said, glancing from Mary Bliss to his wife. “Unless the two of you come clean and tell me exactly what kind of stunt you’re trying to pull.”
“That heart attack must have stopped the blood flow to your brain,” Katharine said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about the two of you being in cahoots to stage Parker’s death,” Charlie said calmly. “And don’t bother denying it, Katharine. Your bank records are still mailed to me, remember? I saw all the cash withdrawals you made at the automatic teller in Cozumel. And I checked the airline records too. You were there, all right, and you were in it up to your eyeballs.”
“I might have taken a trip to Cozumel,” Katharine said. “But that doesn’t prove anything.”
“I’ve got some of it figured out,” Charlie said. “But the one thing that scares me to death is that boat accident. I can’t figure out how you pulled it off. I can’t figure out how you got an authentic death certificate when Parker McGowan was nowhere near Cozumel that weekend.”