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“And you carry accident insurance on your husband’s life, yes?”
“Of course.”
“How much?”
“A thousand dollars,” she said.
“But what is that, just two and a half months’ salary? Was that enough?”
“Well, it was just a thousand. I forgot that we changed that.” She ultimately said there were in fact three policies, that the first was for one thousand dollars and that Albert had added another for five thousand and yet another for forty-five thousand dollars. All in November 1925.
“With which company?”
“Prudential.”
“I’m just curious. I haven’t bought much insurance myself. Were there any special provisions to the policies?”
“Like what?”
“I heard of this term ‘double indemnity.’ Have you heard of that? I hear it means an accidental death, even a homicide like this, pays double the amount on the face of the policy.”
“We had that.”
“All of the policies?”
“On just the last.”
“The forty-five-thousand-dollar policy?”
She agreed.
“Wow,” Arthur Carey said. “I’m doing the arithmetic in
my head. You’ve got the one policy for a thousand and the one for five, and you get double the forty-five, so that’s ninety-six thousand dollars?”
She shrugged. “I guess so.”
“Your husband would’ve had to work fifteen years for that kind of money!”
“But isn’t that the point of insurance? To give your family years of security if something horrible and awful and unexpected happens?”
“Couldn’t agree with you more,” the deputy inspector said. “Albert must have cared a lot for you and Lorraine.”
“Albert was the ideal husband and father,” she said.
Police Commissioner George McLaughlin strolled in and slouched against a wall, just watching Ruth, his hands in his suit pants pockets.
“We have your address book here,” Arthur Carey said, “and I’d like to read off some men’s names.”
“Why?”
“Humor me,” he said, and began with a florist named Abrams. He’d gotten through five more names, including Milton Fidgeon and then Harry Folsom, a hosiery salesman, when he hesitated a little and said, “Judd Gray.” Both Carey and McLaughlin saw Ruth flinch.
“And who’s he?” Carey asked.
“Sells corselettes,” she said. “Have you heard of the Bien Jolie brand?”
“I’m not up on those things,” Carey said.
