Brash Endeavor, A Stan Turner Mystery Vol 3

by William Manchee

  Chapter 31

  THE MOTIVE

  Friday

  By week's end I was exhausted. All week I had been digging into Blackbird Logan's life. I'd talked to dozens of his friends and co-workers, college buddies, past employers, neighbors and anyone else who might know something about him. I'd done the same thing for Sheila. I felt I knew both of them intimately but I still couldn't find the motive for Bird to have killed her. Then it hit me. Tex had referred me to Inca Oil and he wouldn't have been working there unless someone was buying insurance. I put a call into Tex immediately.

  "Hey, Stan the man, what's going on. Oh, shit! I'm sorry, I almost forgot about the murder trial. How's Rebekah?"

  "Not too well, she's convinced she's going to get convicted."

  "What about your attorney who’s never lost a case?"

  "He's never lost a DWI case, I don't think he's tried too many murder trials."

  "You think she's going to get convicted?"

  "No, I won't let that happen. That's the reason I called. I need to ask you a question."

  "Sure."

  "You wrote some insurance at Inca, didn't you?"

  "Yes, I did, some pretty healthy premium, if you know what I mean."

  "What did you write?"

  "Five million on Brice Tomlinson and Bird Logan. Do you know what the annual premium was on a policy that size?"

  "No, but I can imagine it must have been a bunch. What about the wives."

  "No, nothing on the wives."

  "Damn! . . . Hmm. . .. You must have done an insurance portfolio analysis, right?"

  "Of course."

  "How much insurance did Bird have on Sheila?"

  "None. Isn't it funny how no one ever buys insurance on a wife. Do you know how much it would cost to replace the average wife?"

  "No, not really?"

  "Well, considering the typical wife is a housekeeper, laundry maid, babysitter, cook and sex partner, studies show it would cost about $56,000 a year to replace her."

  "I can believe that."

  "So every man ought to have about a quarter million of coverage on his wife just to replace the economic loss he'd suffer should she die."

  "Huh . . . Very interesting."

  "So that's why I almost always attach the family rider to every policy I write."

  "The family rider?"

  "Uh huh. It's a nifty little attachment to the man's policy that provides coverage for the wife and kids."

  "How much coverage?"

  "The wife gets twenty percent of the face amount of the husband's policy and the children get five percent."

  "You mean Sheila was insured for one-fifth of Bird's five-million-dollar policy?"

  "Exactly, one million dollars if my math is correct."

  "Thank you, Tex! You may have saved Rebekah's life."

  "Really? How's that?"

  "I'll explain later. I've got to run, talk to you later."

  "Bye."

  It all made sense now. Bird had married Sheila for the money he expected her to inherit. He never really loved her. When it became apparent she wasn't going to inherit anything anytime soon he had to come up with an alternate plan. It was pretty cleaver buying a big policy on himself and sneaking in a rider on Sheila. It almost looked like he didn't plan it. Then all he had to do was set someone else up to take the fall for Sheila's death and he's one million dollars richer.