He looked at the 1952 Willys Jeep, 4wheel drive station wagon. It was a classic right from an African safari operator. First of all, he could have bought one cheaper in the United States if he had added the shipping cost into the equation. Yes, Artie thought, but it wouldn't have the provenance of the monster which sat outside his garage. It looked as though all those years working in his father's auto repair shop might just pay off after all.

The thought of those days usually made him sad, but not that day. On that particular day he smiled. How could he help but smile at the monster of a station wagon. It had been bought brand new from the factory in late 1951 or early 1952. The serial number records were gone, but he had the code. The code told him several things. The serial number told him that the original color was green. When the monster arrived at his home, via boat then carcarrier, it had been painted a zebra stripe design. It remained in the same condition, since Artie wasn't sure just what he would be doing with it. The first thing to do was to get the motor running again, he thought.

The jeep had been driven right up until the day that the engine blew, so most of the running gear was intact. Artie's job was to repair the motor with parts from God alone knew where, then to undo the forty years of neglect and poorly completely repairs. Artie had bought the Jeep on Ebay. The seller had sworn that the body was sound with no rust. The small amount of rust on the door panel was going to be easy to repair, since the metal was a lot thicker than that found on modern cars.

"Artie, I hate to drag you from your new toy, but you got a call." The voice belonged to his roommate.

"So who is it, and can't it wait?" Artie knew better, since the roommate had interrupted him it would be business. He had no friends important enough to interrupt him.

"That horrid Amy woman at Great Northern." The look of distaste on his roommate's face made a perfect punctuation to the sentence. Amy was indeed a shark where men were concerned. He was possibly the only investigator at Great Northern who had not slept with Amy. In spite of it or maybe because of it, he tended to get the worst assignments. Those statements probably weren't fair since Great Northern only had two real investigators.

Artie took the wireless phone from his roommate. "Yes Amy," he said gruffly. Might as well let her know that it was Saturday morning and he had things to do.

"I hate to bother you on a Saturday Artie, but I got a problem. By the way I see you have a new roomie."

"Yes I do Amy, and that is none of your business sweets." Artie, since the first day, had given Amy a ration of shit. It went with the independence of being a retired cop. He didn't really have to have her money. He would be hard pressed to replace it, but he could do so. On the downside of that, he might actually have to work.

"Of course it is Artie. It is my Christian duty to try to help you see the light." She giggled at her joke, if it really were a joke.

"So what is the problem?" Amy's banter was tedious even when he didn't have a massive project awaiting him.

"I need someone to run down to Roseboro for a death certificate." She said it as though it was all the explanation he needed. She surely knew that it wasn't.

"Come on Amy, you got a dozen agents who could do it easier, and a damn site cheaper."

"That is true, but they probably couldn't tell me if our insured is in the grave."

"Now you are talking." Artie became interested. Artie loved a whodunit, when nobody was depending on him to solve it. "So what leads you to think you client isn't in the hole?

"I am going to email you the case file now that I have your attention."

"Good enough, I will call when I've read it all." Instead of waiting for the email, Artie went to the shower. He scrubbed off the grease first with a pumas cleaner, then stepped into the only warm shower. The grease remains would have to be scrubbed from the porcelain tub and sink. If he didn't clean it, at least a little, the roommate would have a fit. He thought again that it might be time to ditch the roommate. He enjoyed the company at first but this one was getting possessive much too fast.

Dressed in the polished cotton dress pants, which he favored with the white shirt open at the neck, he sat at the computer to read. The file of several pages told him a lot. Michael Crane had been a small town lawyer in his youth. He hit thirty and began to worry about accumulating wealth. There just wasn't enough money in the rural town for an ambitious lawyer to steal.

Michael bought into a firm in the state capitol. He worked hard enough so that in ten years he had a chunk of change in the bank. It was pretty close to two million according to the records presented at the claims hearing. While flying high, Michael took out an insurance policy for two million naming his wife beneficiary. The wife had been a new acquisition it seemed. Only a couple of years after the wedding Michael died mysteriously.

The autopsy in the state medical center showed that Michael had a badly failing liver. Death though was from a one car traffic accident. The old blunt trauma to the head seemed to be the culprit. He went over a cliff while on vacation in the mountains of North Carolina. His beautiful younger wife was still sleeping when the deputies came to inform her. Younger being by over ten years. Michael was in his early forties while the wife was in her mid twenties.

After the autopsy Michael's remains were returned to the small town of Roseboro, where he was buried in the family plot. The casket was closed for the ceremony, since he was a mess from the accident. Presumably there was more than one piece of Michael still missing.

The car over the cliff accident might not in itself seem so significant. It was a sign of the times that really made the accident seem, just a hair east of dead straight. The file noted that Michael's stock portfolio went from over two million to just about twenty bucks. Michael had done so well in his practice that he got what stockbrokers call the superman syndrome. "I am so smart that I don't need professional advice." That is usually followed by poverty, Artie had been told. His friend Jeff, the stock broker, explained that doctors and lawyers suffer from it equally. Most lose one fortune, then get out of investing and back to what they can really do to make money.

Then to the young wife bought a boat. The boat stayed anchored on the Neuse river while she awaited the insurance money to be paid. She was living on the boat, presumably alone and grief stricken. The flag was simply that women don't usually move onto boats. That is more a guy thing.

The cops in the three jurisdictions did not question the death, because cops don't like crimes that are complicated. Artie should have known, thirty years as a cop qualified him as an expert on their thinking. The cops, where the accident happened had a body so they were happy. The ones where he lived had no reason to investigate, since the coroner gave them the word that it was on the up and up. The report did mention a slight drug presence in the body, but hell everybody with that much money took prescription drugs. Being rich meant to be doped most of the time, or so cops thought.

Since the body came to Roseboro just to be buried, the cops there did no more than direct the traffic, while the hearse and family cars paraded to the small church cemetery. Nobody had all the pieces except Great Northern. They also had the only motive to question the facts surrounding Michael's death. They wouldn't have bothered, if it were simply a matter of whom to pay. If Michael had been murdered, it made no difference to them except that they would not pay off to a murderer. If he faked his own death, they would not ever have to pay, so it was extremely important for them to know that Michael was indeed the Jack in the box, so to speak.

While the printer made a hard copy of the email attachment, Artie packed a bag. He told his roommate that he would be gone a few days. He also hinted strongly that it might be a good time for the roommate to rethink the living arrangements. The roommate was stunned, but seemed to be holding up just fine as Artie walked to his car.

As Artie drove the hundred and fifty seven miles to Roseboro in his red 1957 Chevy Belaire convertible, he thought about the roommate and wondered what he would find in Roseboro. He expected to find nothing and that the roommate would be gone when he called home. After all, the roommate had kept the apartment in town. Artie did not have roommates who were too stupid, or too poor to have a safety valve.

The 283 cubic inches of the V8 engine inside the Chevy made short work of the hundred and fifty seven miles. Artie was stopped at a Roseboro convenience store filling up the chevy less than three hours later. He probably hadn't needed to leave immediately, but he wanted to give the roomie time to get out.

The funeral director in Roseboro had not been the one to embalm the body so he could tell Artie little. The body was indeed not complete, was his only observation. He knew that only because he had received the remains in a body bag. He was the one who had placed them, with great dignity he assured Arty, into the casket. Artie didn't bother to explain that he had been a cop and therefore knew how bodies got handled. It almost never reached the level of humanity, let alone dignity.

Artie spent the remainder of the day checking with Michael's old friends. He spoke to them at home since everything was closed down tight in the small town. People knew Michael all right but no one speaks ill of the dead. At least not in the first ten minutes of conversation. The waitress in the sandwich shop knew Michael. She had even dated Michael. To her way of thinking, the law was a perfect choice for Michael. He had always been the bookish type. Everyone Artie spoke with agreed with that comment. From them Artie got the idea that the boat would be way out of character.

The evidence Artie needed to convince Great Northern to pay the claim, or to do the DNA test was just not there yet. Artie had a feeling that it was indeed the body of Michael in the grave, but the feeling was all he had. He visited the grave before leaving town.

The drive toward the scene of the accident took Artie near the state capitol so he pulled his list of contacts from the file. He used his state maps laid across the hood of the car to plot his coarse to the houses of Michael's law partners. Ordinarily lawyers won't tell you crap, but then again when it is personal they often will. Both the lawyers and wives dished dirt on Michael. He was to their thinking, arrogant even for a lawyer. His wife was a trailer trash blonde. She was beautiful but had no class at all, but then what could one expect from a small town lawyer come to the city.