Free Death Benefits by Michael A. Kahn

found in the motel room. Most of them were in his briefcase, they said. You’re welcome to take them with you, Rachel. Perhaps they can help your investigation.”
    I unfolded the suicide note and read it:
    The Quest has come to an end. The Executor is safe underground. I have become my own Executor. Dottie, this is a dying man’s last request:
    Forgive me.
    Stoddard Anderson
    â€œWhat does it mean?” I finally asked.
    â€œI don’t know.”
    I stared at the note, reading it again. “It doesn’t make any sense.” I started to copy the words down on my legal pad.
    Dottie reached across the table and grasped my arm. “Please find out what it means,” she said fiercely. “Find out what my husband was trying to tell me.”
    I put my hand over hers and looked into her eyes. Surely she had once chased her own milk truck. She had once been a young bride. And now? She had buried her only son and placed her only daughter in an institution. She had waited alone as an empty marriage ended with a suicide note she didn’t understand from a stranger she had once loved.
    â€œTake the note with you,” she told me. “I don’t want it until I know what it means. Find out what it means, Rachel. Please help me understand his death.”
    â€œI’ll try,” I promised her. “I’ll try to find out what your husband meant.”
    As I walked to my car I peered into the manila envelope. There was a fresh yellow legal pad, the front section of the Wall Street Journal from the day he disappeared, a pocket calendar, a calculator, a monthly statement of his account from the St. Louis Club (which was in an envelope postmarked two days before he disappeared), and a marked-up photocopy of an article from Business Lawyer on sale-leaseback transactions in the aviation industry.
    As I unlocked my car door, I heard a truck in the distance shift gears. It made me think again of that milk truck. I turned toward the Anderson home. Had the milkman ever handed little Dottie one of those big chunks of ice? At first, as you cradled it in your hands, the ice would seem as clear as glass. But then you would notice that your hands were distorted by the ice. Studying the ice as you tilted it this way and that, you could sometimes spot outlines of ice chunks within ice chunks within ice chunks, each invisible unless sunlight hit a surface just right.

Chapter Seven
    When I returned to Abbott & Windsor, there were several boxes of Stoddard Anderson documents in my office: his time sheets, his phone messages, his correspondence files, his travel logs, and the contents of his office. Reviewing all of the documents would take several hours.
    I checked my watch. It was almost five o’clock. I called my sister Ann to tell her I wouldn’t be home until late. With a sigh, I lifted the first box, lugged it over to the desk, and opened the lid.
    If my friends from law school and my friends in practice are any indication, a fairly high percentage of lawyers in America were encouraged as children to become lawyers because they were “great with people” or “had the gift of gab.” It is one of the many ironies of the practice. Contrary to popular belief, the legal profession is a lonely occupation. Even a trial lawyer’s typical day can often resemble that of a cloistered monk. You spend hours, even days, alone in a room reviewing documents or alone in a law library researching legal issues or alone at your desk drafting court papers. And when you do have that rare opportunity to engage in an extended conversation with a living, breathing human being, more often than not he is under oath, his lawyer is at his side, and a court reporter is taking it all down.
    I finished the last of the boxes of documents three hours later. I had learned several intriguing things about Stoddard Anderson, although whether any of them was important was not at all clear. Settling back in my