I called the insurance company and asked them to pull the beneficiary record on the policy. The woman who answered read me a name I hadn’t heard in years. I asked her to repeat it, because I wanted to be certain. It was the woman I’d given my spare key to in 2022 when I broke my wrist. I hadn’t spoken to her since she returned it, and I had never told my husband that she’d kept a copy. The insurance agent said the beneficiary had been changed three weeks after that key was given out. The change had been made online, but the confirmation email went to an address that wasn’t mine.
I went through the house when I got home and found the spare key still hanging on the hook by the back door. Except it wasn’t the same key. Mine had a tiny scratch across the top from when I dropped it years ago, and this one didn’t. I called the woman and asked whether she had ever made a copy. She denied it at first, then asked why I was bringing up the key. I told her about the insurance policy. There was a long silence. Then she said my husband had given her instructions before he died and told her never to discuss them with me unless something happened to the car. I asked what he meant by “something happening.”
She finally told me she’d been contacted twice that month by a man asking whether I still drove the same car. She said the man used my husband’s name and knew details about our house that nobody outside the family should know. I asked whether she had given him the spare key. She said no, but she’d left it under the flowerpot once when he told her he needed to check something inside. I drove back to the mechanic and asked whether he’d seen anyone near my car before I brought it in. He pulled up the shop camera. There was a man standing beside my driver’s door the night before, using a key. He zoomed in on the footage and I recognized the jacket immediately. It belonged to the person who had been listed as the beneficiary on my husband’s policy — and he was carrying the spare key I thought I’d replaced in 2022.
