“Your sister, Constance, was married to a Mr. Blane Michaels and had three children. Is that correct?”
Leslie was mystified as to why he thought Constance was her sister rather than herself, but decided it was best just to go with it for now.
“Yes, Constance was married to Blane Michaels,” she replied.
“When is the last time you saw Constance?” he asked.
“I’d say about eleven, twelve years,” she replied. It was about as honest as she could get.
“I take it you weren’t close,” he said.
Leslie shrugged and waited for him to continue, still trying to piece this together in her head. Tucker, less patient, interrupted.
“What is this about, Mr. Brocard?”
“I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but your sister and her children are deceased.”
“What?” Leslie said incredulously, baffled by this entire conversation.
“I know it must be hard to hear, even being estranged or whatever the case was between the two of you.”
“How . . .,” she began to say, not sure how to phrase her next question, but he seemed to take it for a request for details.
“It seems that Mr. Michaels had filed a missing persons case for his wife - your sister - and their children after they went missing. It eventually triggered an investigation that led the police to believe he, himself, was responsible for their deaths. It seems that he had taken out very large insurance policies on all four of them not long before they disappeared.”
Leslie gasped, almost involuntarily. Had she unknowingly saved her own life by making a run for it?
“Before the police could find them or tie him to the disappearance, Mr. Michaels himself disappeared, no doubt feeling the heat as the suspicion of him rose. His remains were found a short time later. It looked as if he had tried to break into someone’s house, perhaps to find shelter? Who knows, but their dogs had attacked him and did quite a bit of damage. Not to be indelicate, but he was difficult to identify.”
Leslie looked at him, wide eyed, doing her best not to look toward Tucker. Had he been responsible for that? She thought they had incinerated the bodies, not set them up to look like accidental deaths.
“I see,” she said. “And Constance? The children?”
“No signs of them were ever found, but since it has been seven years, they’ve been declared dead by the state. There was really no question about it with Mr. Michaels confession and all.”
“Confession?”
“Yes. In the subsequent search of his office, we found a letter he had written, admitting that he had killed and left his family in the swamp.”
“He confessed to that? Are you sure it is his handwriting?”
“Yes. It matches his handwriting, and there is no reason to believe otherwise.”
“What led you here, to Leslie?” Tucker asked.
“Oh, well, she is listed as the next of kin for Constance on our insurance papers. In the event that Mr. Michaels is deceased, she inherits the entirety of the policies,” the man told Tucker.
Leslie felt completely confused. That was impossible. Leslie didn’t yet exist when he would have taken out those policies and there was no way he would have been able to add them to any policies.
“How much money are we talking about here?” Leslie asked.
“All total, four million dollars,” he said.
‘I don’t know what to say about all of this,” Leslie said, feeling actual shock.
“There is nothing for you to say. I’m authorized, today, to give you a cashier’s check for that amount due to you. I just need to see some identification.”
Leslie reached for her purse, sitting nearby on a table and pulled out her driver’s license, handing it to him. He pulled out a piece of paper and wrote down some data from it before handing the license and the paper to her.
“If you could just sign for receipt of the check,” he told her.
Leslie couldn’t help but feel there was something going on here. It was a trick. He was going to use her signature to match it against the missing Constance. They were on to her, after all this time, and they would somehow tie her to the death of her former husband. She tried to control her shaking as she accepted the documents and a pen from him.
“I’m so very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Rollins. I know twins are especially close and losing one is difficult. This must be quiet the shock for you,” he said, his eyes on her quivering hand. She attempted to steady it.
“Yes,” she said.
“Our underwriter who sold Mr. Michaels the policy said she had met your twin sister once at a dinner party. She said she was a very good woman who didn’t deserve what she had gotten from her husband. It was her that helped us locate you.”
A moment in a former life flashed across Leslie’s mind, a knowing smile and a card, extended for her to take. It had said Kate, but that wasn’t the woman’s name. She had never known her name, and she now found that she desperately wanted to know who she had been.