#and Ms. Rudd is basically the main assistant to the company president Chick Stirling

[avictimofthejazz]

@honorhearted​

Continued from Here

As soon as the man explained his situation, Elaine nodded. “Oh—you must be Mr. Tallmadge. Ms. Rudd told us that you would be coming here today. Dennis had to run an errand, but he’ll be back in a few minutes. He left me the files though, so you can start looking at them.”

Elaine decided to tactfully leave out the fact that when Dennis went out to run errands, they sometimes took several hours, and he came back with a black eye. There was no point in worrying Mr. Tallmadge about that. He had enough to worry about with the Arnold case. The Arnold case was already front-page news…but then when a decorated war-hero tuned into a potential traitor (though never proven) wound up murdered not long after his significantly younger wife took out an extensive life insurance policy on the man through Teshima….well….that kind of case did make headlines. Especially when there were rumors of an attractive lover in the background. Teshima’s interests centered less around the salacious details, however, and more on the fact that they would have to pay Mrs. Arnold a cool six million dollars if she had nothing to do with her husband’s death. Needless to say, Chick Stirling—the head manager of this office—was more then keen to find a connection between Mrs. Arnold and the murder. Since the murder became public knowledge, it had been the primary case on Booker’s, and therefore her, desk. Finding the files, she knew Mr. Tallmadge would want, she handed them over. “The life insurance paperwork is right on top—Mrs. Arnold took out the policy about eight weeks ago.” She paused before adding, “Between you and me, normally we don’t like handling policies this big, but the Shippen family has connections, you know. And Mrs. Arnold said she needed that much to cover debts from her husband’s failed business schemes if he should die all of a sudden.” Or be found dead in his car on a deserted track by the reservoir with the back of his head blown out by a gunshot wound. Mrs. Arnold eagerly supplied the police with a rather long list of enemies her husband had made but interest still kept circling back to her. She certainly had the most to gain and disgruntled business partners rarely shot each other—a dead body could not pay off debts easily.

“You can take a seat in here, Mr. Tallmadge,” She went to push open the door that separated her desk from Dennis’s office. “Do you want coffee or anything?”