The Case of the Unhealthy Health Club

by David Staats

  He punched a button on his telephone so that the dial tone came out over the speaker. Then he dialed a number. A secretary answered and he asked for Cyrus Wakefield. Mr. Wakefield came on the line.

  “Hi Cy,” said Mr. Dure. “I’ve got you on the speaker phone and my summer associate, Christine Bonneville, is with me.”

  “What can I do for you, Walt?”

  “I’ll be entering an appearance in your suit against the University Health Club.”

  “That’s interesting.”

  “Yes. Isn’t it? The reason I’m entering an appearance and not one of the insurance defense firms is that there is no insurance.”

  There was an interval of silence. “I’m surprised at that,” said Mr. Wakefield.

  “I thought you might be.”

  “If I may ask, how did that come about?”

  “It’s complicated. The simplified answer is that coverage for incidents arising out of the use of the sauna requires a special rider, and my client doesn’t have that rider. The carrier declined coverage. I’ll send you the declination letter.”

  “Maybe there’s other coverage,” said Mr. Wakefield. “An umbrella policy?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. You might want to think about cutting your losses and simply dismissing your suit. From what I can see, the case is going to be one big battle of medical experts, expensive, and the outcome a toss-up.”

  “Yeah, we’re not going to just go away like that. Ms. MacCreedy has personal assets, no doubt.”

  “True.”

  “She owns the health club,” said Mr. Wakefield.

  “True. Is that what your client is after?”

  “My client wants justice for the loss of her husband.”

  “Save it for the jury, Cy. What I’m trying to suggest to you is that there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and even winning the case will be an iffy thing where you’re going to have to put out a lot of money for medical experts. On top of that, we have a dynamite defense. People who live in glass houses should not throw stones. Your client may regret having ever started this case.”

  “Walt, you can huff and you can puff, but facts will carry the day.”

  “Indeed.”

  Mr. Wakefield said, “Have you looked into an action against the insurance broker for failure to bind coverage?”

  When Mr. Wakefield said this, Mr. Dure raised his eyebrows at me and made a pointing motion at the telephone with his forefinger. “Preliminary,” he said. “It doesn’t look promising. But, we’d be willing to assign our claim, for what it’s worth, to your client in exchange for a dismissal.”

  “It doesn’t sound like my client would be getting much.”

  “In candor, I don’t think the claim is worth much. But, you may be a better lawyer than I. Maybe you can make it pay.”

  “Walt, I appreciate your call,” said Mr. Wakefield. His voice sounded like he didn’t appreciate the call at all. “Of course, in light of this, we’ll be wanting full discovery on your client’s personal assets. I’ll be talking to my client.”

  “Take care, Cy. Bye.” Mr. Dure hung up on the call.

  “Cyrus is a good lawyer,” Mr. Dure said. “He honed right in on the weak spot in my pitch, the fact that our client has a non-trivial amount of personal net worth. On the other hand, the fact that he was interested in a possible action against the insurance broker indicates that he is worried. It shows weakness on his part.

  “I’ve got to make one more phone call,” said Mr. Dure. “We’ve got to keep our client informed.” He took up the phone and punched in a number. He didn’t put this call on the speaker phone, so I could only hear his half of the conversation.

  “Ms. MacCreedy, I have a couple of things to report. One, the police don’t believe that your husband was murdered and won’t open an investigation.” He then was listening to whatever she said.

  “I know,” he said. Then he said again, “I know.”

  “The other thing is that I told Vanessa Hargrave’s lawyer that there’s no insurance in this case and that he might want to think about dropping his case. Now, of course he wouldn’t do that, but I wanted to plant that seed in his mind.” He listened some more.

  “Last thing,” he said. “I want you to put together a personal balance sheet. We are going to have to disclose to her lawyer how much property you have since there’s no insurance coverage.”

  Ms. MacCreedy apparently got upset at this because I could hear her voice even over the telephone. Mr. Dure had to hold it away from his ear. “It’s not fair! If I lose this case I’ll lose everything! And I’m too old to start over. I’ll just be an impoverished old woman and my life will be ruined.”

  “Ms. MacCreedy,” said Mr. Dure, “we have a good defense. It is clear to me that your husband was murdered. If we can prove that, you will win the case.”

  “I don’t put it past Vanessa,” she said, “but if the police won’t investigate, what can we do?”

  Mr. Dure explained. After some more listening, he said, “No, I cannot guarantee that you will win. Litigation is inherently uncertain. For one thing, there is no knowing what additional facts may come out.”

  “I’m a ruined woman,” I could hear her say.

  “Ms. MacCreedy,” he said. “There’s no benefit in catastrophizing… . Do you get along with your children? … Alright, they will do well financially from both an inheritance standpoint and … probably from life insurance proceeds, also. So you’re in no danger of ending up on the welfare rolls.”

  “It’ll be a miserable old age if I have to be dependent on my children!” She was almost screaming.

  Mr. Dure somewhat pacified her and hung up. To me he said, “A client like Ms. MacCreedy, who has never been in litigation before, may not have the stomach for it. We may have to settle on terms less favorable than we could otherwise get. I wanted to ask her how much her ex-husband’s estate might amount to, so that we can start to get a start on preparing proof of Vanessa’s motive. But she was too upset.

  “Now you’re going to find out how to prepare for a deposition,” he said. “The deposition of Mrs. Vanessa Hargrave will be critical – it will probably win or lose the case for us – so we will have to be fully prepared.”

  Chapter 10. The kids

  John Hargrave and Stephanie Hargrave had driven separately to the columbarium. John sat waiting in his Outback until Stephanie arrived, parking her Highlander right behind his car. The columbarium was an oddly-shaped, specialized building, of narrow depth and, viewed from the top elevation, shaped like a chevron, with two wings flaring out from the narrow entrance in the center. The back wall of the interior was of dark gray marble and the front of the building was all of glass, so that from the outside, daylight reflected off the glass to make it an immense, dark-shadowed mirror. John, regarding the reflection of himself and his sister approaching the entrance, found it odd that they had become two grown adults. How had that happened? And he had grown taller than his sister, and their father was dead, and time passed by stealthily and silently, like a snake slithering in the grass.

  They had each brought some memento of their father to add to the niche where the urn was displayed. Stephie, who always took care of such details, punched in the access code while John grasped the door handle. As soon as the click sounded, he opened the heavy glass door and held it for his sister. She stepped forward tentatively, as if she weren’t sure that the floor inside this strange building would bear her weight. Considering that she had had to interrupt her honeymoon to fly home for the funeral of her father, it was no wonder she was shaken and uncertain.

  They were the only ones there. The closing of the door, and their footsteps on the marble floor, echoed faintly. They went to their father’s niche, Stephie opened it with a key, and she put in a cardboard bookmark she had made for him as a child and which she had found among his papers. It said “Daddy” on it. He put in a small, misshapen ceramic pot which he had made for his father in the first grade. It all
seemed anticlimactic. After Stephie closed the door to the niche, they stood talking.

  “I feel alone, like I’ve been abandoned,” said John.

  Stephie nodded.

  They turned away from their see-through reflections in the glass fronts of the niches and drifted over to the front windows, They were standing side by side, looking out over the grounds of the cemetery. Stephie rested her hand on a mullion, as if she were a despondent prisoner behind bars. “You know what’s been happening to me that’s weird?” she said.

  “Hmmh?” said John.

  “I keep seeing Daddy. I know it’s not him, but three times now, I saw a man that looked just like him.”

  John nodded.

  “Yesterday, I saw a man on the sidewalk, from behind. I was so sure it was him that I ran up to him and touched him on the shoulder. When he turned around, I was so embarrassed.”

  “I can see it,” said John. He changed the subject. “You know that life insurance investigator? The guy gives me the creeps and he makes me mad,” said John, “going around, trying to get people to say things.”

  “He’s got to save money for the insurance company,” she said. “He’ll do anything to save three million dollars for his company.”

  “It’s not just the money,” he said. “Brooke told me she wasn’t sure she wanted to marry a guy whose father had committed suicide. She said there’s something hereditary about it.”

  “She said that?”

  He nodded slowly, not looking at her, but gazing vacantly out the windows.

  “That’s serious. She really said that?”

  He pressed his lips together and nodded again, this time, barely perceptibly, and continued to stare outdoors.

  “If she said that, maybe you should rethink the engagement.”

  “He didn’t commit suicide. I know he didn’t.” He turned to face her. “Are we going to have to prove that? Anyway, Brooke didn’t mean it. She was just nervous, anxious, you know, stressed, I guess … on account of being engaged and the sudden death … you know.”

  “If you’re satisfied,” she said.

  He nodded yet again.

  “I, for sure, am not going to let this guy cheat us out of a million dollars each,” she said with the air of settled determination which struck him just then as reminiscent of their father.

  “I wonder,” mused John, “if Mr. Wright has life insurance.”

  She picked up on his strange tone of voice. “John!”

  “Nothing,” he said.

  Chapter 11. Preparing to nail the guilty party

  Just as I was about to rap gently on Mr. Dure’s open door to announce my entry, I overheard Ms. MacCreedy say to him, “Does she always have to be present?”

  “If it really makes you uncomfortable,” he said, “I’ll tell her we don’t need her.” I saw his hazel eyes flick towards the door and knew that he had seen me. I drew back a step into the hallway. “But I’d rather have her. She’s helpful to me – and having her do certain work keeps your bill down.”

  “I guess it’s alright. As you say, if it keeps down the expense.”

  “She is also under the same obligation to keep matters confidential as I am,” he said.

  “Okay, it’s okay,” she said.

  I waited another couple of seconds, standing at the threshold, then I rapped on the door and entered the office. I forced a smile as I nodded to Ms. MacCreedy.

  “I’ve got another problem,” she was saying. Her right elbow was resting on the chair’s armrest. She raised her right hand to prop her chin in it; she looked like an old mope. Her twenty-three gold-plated bracelets jangled as they slid down her forearm to rest in a bunch.

  Mr. Dure asked her what he could do.

  “The life insurance company won’t pay off on Rich’s policy. They claim they’re doing an investigation to see if he might have committed suicide.” She sat up straight again. “I can’t believe it!” she said. I noticed that Ms. MacCreedy was always so concerned about money.

  “What is the name of the insurance company?”

  “The Fidelicity Life Insurance Company,” said Ms. MacCreedy. “Rich bought a policy about three weeks before he died. It’s supposed to pay $1 million each to John and Stephanie – and also $1 million to her.”

  “‘Her’ being Vanessa?”

  “Right.”

  “So it is a $3 million policy, with $1 million payable to each of John, Stephanie, and Vanessa?”

  “Right.”

  “And apparently it has a suicide clause,” said Mr. Dure.

  “That’s what I’m told.”

  “And the insurance company did not deny payment, they just said they’re investigating?”

  “Well, they won’t pay,” she said.

  “But have they said they had already made a determination of suicide and were denying payment; or have they said basically, ‘we won’t pay until we determine that he did not commit suicide’”?

  “I think that’s what it is. Mort Golden, handling the estate, told Stephanie, and she told me.”

  Mr. Dure seemed to reflect for a moment. “Could there be anything to it? What do you think?”

  “Rich? Commit suicide? I don’t think so. If you want to know what I think, that […] Vanessa put the insurance company onto the idea so that John and Stephie wouldn’t get the insurance money, and, if she murdered Rich, that would take the suspicion off her, too.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Mr. Dure said. “One thing is, if Rich committed suicide, that would kill Vanessa’s suit against the health club.”

  “Oh?”

  “If he intentionally took his life, that means the health club did not cause it by negligence,” said Dure.

  “Oh,” she said.

  “Not only that,” said Mr. Dure, “but she would also lose her $1 million payout from the insurance as well.”

  “You mean,” said Ms. MacCreedy, “even though John and Stephie would lose the two million dollars, Vanessa would also be out a million, and she would lose her lawsuit?” She tilted her head, as if she were considering a business proposition. Her dangling earring – probably enough money right there to pay for my next year of law school – swayed back and forth.

  “That’s right.”

  “I’ll have to think about it,” she said.

  “I don’t know that there’s a lot for you to think about in that regard,” said Mr. Dure. “I’ve told you what my conclusion is about your ex-husband’s death. In that connection, and while I have you here, I’d like for you to go over for me again what happened in the health club on that afternoon, July 3, and in particular, everything you can remember about Vanessa’s actions.”

  She sighed, as if this were an imposition, but then began. “You mean after Rich came in?”

  “Even before,” said Mr. Dure. “I’d like to reconstruct her every action on that day.”

  “I believe she came in at noon that Friday,” said Ms. MacCreedy, “noon to six was her shift, I think.” Mr. Dure made her go through lots of details, and since I wasn’t really certain about what was important and what wasn’t, I had to scribble really fast to get it all down.

  Ms. MacCreedy was telling about everything that Vanessa had done that afternoon, and she seemed to place emphasis on the way that Vanessa “wiggled her fanny” at the men in the club, and she had a lot of not-so-nice things to say about her, but somehow, despite all that, I got the impression that deep down she was not convinced that Vanessa had actually murdered Mr. Hargrave, although she seemed very willing to go along with that conclusion.

  Among other things, she said that after the little champagne celebration had broken up, Vanessa had “forced” two more large glasses of champagne on him. “Poor Richard. He was so naive where women were concerned. He would let her wrap him around her little finger. Vanessa can be so obnoxiously sweet and manipulative it’s disgusting. ‘Darling,’ she wheedled, ‘you need to drink this before you go into the sauna.’” Ms. MacCreedy made a funny face and use
d a high-pitched, syrupy voice to imitate Vanessa’s manner. I almost laughed. “And she presented the glass to him as if she were his geisha or something. When he finished she said, ‘One more, Darling,’ as if she were coaxing a ten-year old to take his medicine.”

  “And he drank both glasses?” said Mr. Dure.

  “Oh yes. Gulped them right down, like an obedient little boy. I was so disgusted I had to turn away and go somewhere else.”

  Mr. Dure asked, “What time did Richard come into the club that day?”

  “It was about a quarter of five.”

  “And who else was in the club at that time?”

  “Well, I was. Vanessa, Blake, a number of clients.”

  “We can get their names from the sign-in sheet, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you happen to remember any of them now?”

  She shook her head.

  “No matter. Now, there are you, Vanessa, Blake, some clients and Mr. Hargrave. Maybe a dozen people at about 4:45 in the afternoon,” suggested Mr. Dure.

  “That’s right, or maybe more.”

  “What happened?”

  “Rich came in. He and I spent a few minutes discussing the kids and he told me he had purchased a life insurance policy that would pay them each a million dollars if he died.”

  “Alright,” he said.

  “And Rich and I and Vanessa were standing away from the sign-in desk, talking, and Mort Golden comes in maybe a little after five. I noticed that Rich gave him a, what you might call, cool reception, but Mort did not seem to notice or pay attention to that. He was quite cheerful, and insisted that we should celebrate Rich and Vanessa’s trip to Europe. I wasn’t real keen on it, but it was Friday afternoon, day before the Fourth. So Mort sends Blake over to the sports bar for a couple of bottles of champagne.