Beyond Obsession by Richard; Hammer Read Free Book Online

both agreed was a necessity.
    About eleven-thirty Michael Zaccaro arrived. With him were two of his Athena partners, Roland Butler and Ann Marie Murray. They went into the house, and Shannon began to prepare lunch for them. While they waited, Karin and Ann Marie Murray went out for a walk. For about a half hour they roamed through the neighborhood, talking. “Karin,” Ann Marie Murray says, “was very concerned about her future and where she would live. She mentioned Mike Zaccaro, but Mike was single then, so that was out. We said we would do whatever we could to provide her with a home, and if necessary, she could come and live with me and my husband. Karin wasn’t terribly worried about money, though; she told me that there was about three hundred thousand dollars in insurance.”
    Back at the Coleman house, lunch was ready, and after they had eaten, Karin, Zaccaro, Butler and Murray left to drive into Hartford to meet with Jeff Sands at his office, to try to make some order of the chaos, to begin to deal with Karin’s future. Shannon stayed behind to field phone calls.
    For about three hours that afternoon the adults—Sands, Zaccaro, Butler and Ann Marie Murray—and the teenager, Karin, gathered in the conference room at Wiggin & Dana. “Karin was very confused,” Sands says, “and she had a lot of questions, and we were there to help answer those questions.” It was decided then that Zaccaro would serve as executor and Sands as lawyer for the estate.
    There were the unpleasant but necessary topics. There were the funeral arrangements. Karin told them she had already spoken to Archbishop Whealon who had agreed to officiate. A funeral home had to be contacted, and the body had to be brought down from Springfield; Sands took care of those things.
    Where, Karin asked, was she going to live, and how was she going to pay for everything that had to be paid for? The obvious answer was her father.
    Sands called Michael Aparo. “I asked him whether he wanted to be the executor of the estate instead of Mike Zaccaro. He said he didn’t. I asked him what kind of arrangements he was going to make for Karin in the interim. He said, ‘I want to do everything I can for Karin. Isn’t it awful what happened?’ He was very supportive in that first phone conversation. Both Mike and I thought she ought to go and stay with him, though Karin wasn’t terribly keen on that idea. But after all, he was her father, and he had responsibilities. Then I got a second call from Michael Aparo, and he said, ‘She can’t come. Because, well, my wife …’ It was unbelievable. Her dad’s new wife didn’t want any part of her. I was dumbfounded by it.” Karin would stay with the Duboises for a while, but a more permanent place would have to be found. Karin did not mention her own plan to live with Alex Markov or any other plan she might have had in mind.
    â€œShe knew that Joyce had life insurance and a will,” Sands says, “but she didn’t seem to know how much insurance, and she was under the impression that they were in debt, but she seemed to have no idea how deeply in debt.” Karin did not repeat the figure for the insurance she’d offered Ann Marie Murray, and Murray did not bring it up.
    What Karin did know was that her mother kept her papers in an expandable file that was either in her closet or in a file cabinet in the basement of the condo. But no one was yet permitted to enter the premises, so, Sands says, “we were at a loss at this point.” Any decisions would have to wait until the police allowed them to go in and look through the papers. Sands called the police and asked when they could get into the condo, explaining why it was necessary to do so as soon as possible. He was told that they could go in the next day, that Charlie Revoir would meet them there. Revoir wanted to talk to Karin, anyway, wanted her to look around