Killing Cassidy (25 page)

I sat back to enjoy the show.

“And what does that have to do with me?” The bluster had diminished considerably.

Alan ignored the question. “I'm very interested in the money that you say Kevin Cassidy gave you shortly before his death. I believe it amounted to several thousand dollars?”

“I—no! I didn't say that! And it was a loan, not a gift.”

“I see. You paid it back.”

“No, of course not. He died before my congregation—”

“Ah, it would have been your
congregation
who took the responsibility for repaying the loan.”

“Well, of course! The money was to be used for the benefit of the church.”

“‘Was to be'? How has it in fact been used?” Alan allowed his eyes to linger on the huge, expensive car, the huge, expensive house.

“I don't know who you think you are, but if you're accusing me—”

“I have accused you of nothing. I am simply asking questions. I presume that the account books of the church are available for inspection?”

“Oh, of course they are, Alan,” I put in sweetly. “They have to be, after all. The church must be able to show its nonprofit status in order to keep its tax exemption.”

“I have nothing to hide! From the proper authorities, that is. I'm doing God's work. If he has chosen to reward me according to my efforts on his behalf, I don't see how that's any business of yours. And where'd you say you're from, anyway?”

Alan chose to answer that obliquely. “I come, sir, from a place where we take seriously the matter of defrauding the elderly. Were you aware that Dr. Cassidy had nearly exhausted his resources? How do you suppose he would have lived once you had bilked him of his life savings?”

“That's an insult, and what's more, I don't believe a word of it! He was rolling in money. He gave me that five thou—that donation of his own free will. It's not my problem if he didn't have it to give. He never told me that! And there's always Medicaid. What do we pay taxes for, anyhow?” His voice had risen to a scream. Little drops of spittle appeared at the corners of his mouth.

Alan looked at him with disgust written all over his face. The preacher clutched at the rags of his dignity and tried to take a higher tone. “God will always provide for his children, even those who have turned away from him, if they repent and mend their evil ways. I had every reason to believe that Mr. Cassidy's loan was intended to get him right with God.” His control broke. “Now, get out of my driveway before I call the cops!”

“I think you will find that my wife and I are on very good terms with your police chief,” said Alan, ice in his voice. “However, it seems almost a blasphemy to waste this lovely morning talking to you. Good day, sir.”

He stepped back into the car and we drove off, leaving an angry and shaken parson standing in his gleaming new driveway, staring after us.

T
HAT
is,” I said with precision, when we were well away, “the sorriest excuse for a human being it has ever been my misfortune to encounter.”

“Quite,” said Alan. Then he broke into a broad smile. “I've not enjoyed anything so much in years!”

“You were magnificent! You had him shaking in his boots. I wonder how much of his congregation's funds he has misappropriated over the years?”

“One also wonders whether he will continue his peculations, or whether I have, as it were, put the fear of God into him.”

“I'm willing to bet he'll keep right on doing it until he gets caught. I think I may put in a call to the IRS when we get back to town.”

“Now that,” said Alan, patting my knee, “is retribution with a vengeance. What an excellent idea.”

“Actually, though,” I said after thinking about it for another mile or two, “I ought to give him a vote of thanks.”

“Whatever for?”

“Because he did say something back there that I'm beginning to think might be important.”

“I heard nothing but bluster and excuses.”

“That's because you're not American. I may have had some difficulties pursuing an investigation on this side of the Atlantic, but I also have a few advantages. One is that I know about Medicaid.”

“Ah, yes, I recall the word. What, precisely, is Medicaid?”

I thought for a minute. “It's hard to explain to an Englishman, because our system of health care is so entirely different. Well, really, you
have
a system, while ours is all patchwork.” I settled down to a lengthy explanation.

“You see, until Americans reach the age of sixty-five, they either have health insurance through their employers, who pay most of the cost with the employees contributing a little, or they pay for the insurance themselves at absolutely exorbitant rates, or they have no health insurance at all.”

“I have wondered a good deal about that. What happens if one has no insurance and becomes ill?”

“Unless it's an emergency, one stays sick. A visit to a doctor costs somewhere around seventy dollars around here, maybe twice that for a specialist. A simple prescription can easily set you back a hundred or more. Physical therapy is at least a hundred and fifty an hour, and a single day in the hospital runs around a thousand dollars, give or take, considering tests and medications and physicians' bills. Unless, of course, you require surgery, and then the sky's the limit. Nobody can afford that for anything trivial. People suffer all kinds of ailments, Alan, here in the richest country in the world, for lack of health care. Thousands die every year. They don't go to the hospital even for life-threatening problems, because they're afraid they won't be able to pay.”

Alan tried not to look shocked, but he shook his head.

“Right. It's a sin and a national shame, and something has to be done about it. But until the day comes that the politicians work it out, and I'm not holding my breath, the states have set up plans to help the truly indigent. In Indiana it's called Medicaid. It's not good, but it's better than nothing, I guess. I don't know all the rules, but I do know that you have to have virtually no assets at all to be eligible. They let you keep your house and your car—not much else.”

“You mentioned the age of sixty-five. What does that have to do with it?”

“When you're sixty-five you become eligible for Medi
care
. That's the national program, and it's not too bad for something run by the government. You don't have to be indigent to be eligible; it's for everyone. But it doesn't pay for everything. Specifically, it doesn't pay for medication, which is a real problem for many of the elderly. And it doesn't pay for long-term care, such as home health care or a nursing home, both of which are wildly expensive.”

I waited for the penny to drop. It didn't take long.

“So.” Alan tented his fingers. “Kevin was running out of money. He was also rapidly approaching a time when he'd be unable to care for himself. His doctor and his priest urged him to hire someone to care for him. He would not, for very long, have been able to sustain the cost of such care.”

“Exactly. And that's where Medicaid comes in. One of the things it
does
pay for is long-term care, and you can be on Medicare and Medicaid at the same time. But as with everything run by a bureaucracy, there are catches. One of them is the indigence requirement. Well, Kevin would soon have qualified there.
But
. The other catch is that, if you've been deliberately divesting yourself of your assets during some period of time prior to your application for the aid—I don't know how long—the state takes a very dim view. I don't know for sure whether they just deny the application or what. I know I was told, once, that they—that anonymous ‘they'—state officials, I guess—go after one's debtors to try to collect the debts. I don't know if that's true or not, but it sounds like the sort of thing the state would do.”

“So that—let's see if I can work this out. Kevin had been giving away his money. He was doing so, presumably, out of sheer generosity, not in order to live on the bounty of the state. But they would have viewed it in that light, if he had applied for Medicaid.”

“I think so. Or rather, I think they wouldn't care why he did it, only
that
he did it.”

“And you think it's possible the state might have asked his debtors to repay the debts.”

“Possible, yes. I don't know for sure. Oh, mercy!”

“What, love?”

I had been talking and thinking, paying no attention to my driving. Without my conscious volition the car had turned in accustomed directions, headed down accustomed streets, nearly turned into a driveway. I pulled up to the curb and took a long, shaky breath.

“I forgot where I was going. That—that was our house.”

It didn't look quite as I remembered it, which was probably a blessing. It had been painted a sort of Wedgwood blue; we'd always kept it white. Some of the shrubs had been replaced. There was a new flower bed along one side, filled at this season with chrysanthemums. Lace curtains, instead of damask draperies, covered front windows.

“All right, darling?”

Alan reached for my hand.

I smiled at him. “All right. Really. I thought it would be hard, but coming up on it unexpectedly that way, I didn't have a chance to get myself all worked up. And it's different,” I explained about the paint and the landscaping. “I have nothing but happy memories of that house, Alan, but they're in the past. Nothing about the present can change those memories, and there's nothing here to make me sad, or even particularly nostalgic. My house is the one in my mind, not this odd-looking blue one sitting here. This one—it's funny, but it doesn't even seem very real to me.” I put the car in gear and drove away.

After some lunch to take the taste of Parson Bob out of our mouths, I settled down at the telephone. The first call was to the Medicaid office in Indianapolis.

It took a while. “I hope I'm not an old fogey,” I muttered to Alan while I pushed buttons, “but I admit some modern inventions drive me crazy, and the electronic switchboard is the worst of all. Whatever became of the idea of phones being answered by real live human—oh, hello! Sorry, I thought you were going to be another recording.”

I asked my questions. When they were answered, I hung up and gazed into space for a little while.

“Find out anything?”

“I'm not sure. It seems that the whole Medicaid question is a good deal more complicated than I thought.” I sighed. “I'm not sure I understood everything they said, but apparently the state doesn't go after someone's debtors after all, or not in every case. If there's a genuine loan and it's being repaid regularly, they count it as a person's assets. If the loan looks uncollectible they forget about it, but if it or a gift has been made recently they instill a waiting period before the applicant can receive assistance.”

Alan frowned. “A waiting period? Of how long?”

“That's where it gets really complicated. They use some formula based on the size of the loan or gift and when it was paid out. I got lost there. I think I'd have to study the guidelines to figure it out, or maybe talk to an attorney who specializes in that sort of thing.”

I sighed again.

“But darling, Kevin never reached that point. So he never had to deal with the intricacies of your system—or nonsystem, as you call it.”

“No, I know, but I was reaching for a motive, you see.”

“Yes, of course I see.” He tented his fingers. “If Kevin's debtors, or those to whom he'd made gifts, thought that the state of Indiana was about to come after them and force them to repay, one or more of them might find it a good idea to help a very old man to his reward a trifle earlier than Providence had in mind.”

“Exactly. But since the state doesn't do that—”

“But you didn't know that. You thought it entirely possible.”

“Yes, but—oh. If I didn't know, Kevin's debtors might not know, either.”

“Exactly.”

We looked at each other. “You've said all along that those loans were important.”

“I said they might be. You were the one who worked out why.”

I opened the notebook that lay on the table. “Four suspects. Each of them had money from Kevin in one way or another. I'm not sure our blinding insight has helped much. The motive might hold, but it applies to them all.”

Alan looked over my shoulder.

“We're not sure Ms. Carmichael received any money from Kevin,” he reminded me.

“That's true. I think she did, but I don't know. Oh, and anyway, Alan, she probably knows about Medicaid. What the state does, and what it doesn't do. Not all the details, maybe—that'd take a specialist—but I'll bet she knows the general outline. So if that's the motive, I think we can eliminate her. I'm glad, too. She's certainly reserved, but I rather like her. The other three, though …”

We studied the list. Mary Alice Harrison, Hannah Schneider, Bob Bussey.

“I'm still betting on him,” I said finally. “And that reminds me.” I looked up another number in the phone book and, after another bout with an automated phone system, had a satisfactory little talk with a representative of the Internal Revenue Service. He was most interested in my description of Parson Bob's lifestyle in contrast to that of his congregation.

“Not only tax trouble,” I told Alan gleefully when I hung up the phone. “If he's really done what we think he has with the church's money, maybe state and/or federal prosecutions for theft, as well.”

Alan shook his head, but he was smiling. “You're a terror, my dear. I'm extremely glad you're on my side.”

I grinned. “So even if we can't prove he murdered Kevin and Jerry, we've got him on tax evasion. Sort of reminds me of A1 Capone.”