I had two hours until my meeting with Bregman, time enough to grab some lunch and make some calls. I got back on 124 and continued north, over the state line. Pound Ridge is more serious money than New Canaan, and a lot of it is spent on privacy. The big houses and their parklike grounds are tucked far from the eyes of curious motorists, and all you see from the narrow, twisting roads are dense woods, empty fields, fences in studied disrepair, and, only occasionally, a nameless mailbox standing by an inconspicuous drive.
Pound Ridge doesn’t have the same sort of Norman Rockwell Main Street as New Canaan. The closest it comes is Scott’s Corners, a wide place on 124 with a firehouse, a high-end supermarket, and a surprising number of eateries. I parked my Taurus and went into a pizzeria. I got two slices and carried them outside and sat on a bench in the fading sunlight.
I spent the next half hour, and much of my cell phone battery, finding out that the senior claims investigator for Connecticut Mutual Insurance was one Stanislaus Kulpinski, that he had personally handled the investigation of the Welch claim, and that his office was in Stamford. Finally, I found Stan himself. He was hoarse and wheezy and old-sounding, and he chewed a lot of gum. I introduced myself and told him what I was interested in, but he wanted references before he would talk.
“Who do you know that I know? Anybody on the job in Connecticut?” he asked.
“No,” I answered. “You know anybody in New York?”
“I know a lot of people,” he said, and reeled off a bunch of names. None of them rang a bell, but I gave him the names of some guys I knew in the NYPD who didn’t think I was something sticky on the sidewalk. “Give me your number, I’ll call you in a half hour,” he said. And he did, by which time I was back in my car, with my phone hooked up to the lighter.
“You want to know why I thought there was something funny with Welch? Okay. You know anything about boats?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“You’ll need some background, but I’ll go light on the technical stuff,” he said. He didn’t go light enough. Twenty minutes later I knew more than I wanted to about the dangers of fire and explosion on boats with inboard, gasoline-powered engines, about how these boats were designed and equipped to ensure proper venting of volatile fumes, and about the safety practices employed by even the greenest power boater to prevent incineration. He told me about automatic sniffers, and exhaust blowers, and duct positioning, and rates of airflow through the engine compartment at various speeds. It was apparently a topic of great fascination to certain segments of the insurance industry.
“From which I gather that a boater blowing himself up in a power-boat is not a rare event,” I said, when Stan had finished his discourse.
“No, not rare,” he said, with a wet laugh.
“Which takes me back to my question. What got you interested in Welch?”
“Besides there being four months to go on his policy’s suicide exclusion?”
“Besides that.”
“Not much, at first,” he began. “What happened with him wasn’t so different from shit that happens every weekend. Guy took his boat out on a Saturday morning to fish. Went out real early, way before dawn. Topped off his tanks before he left. Stayed out a few hours. Then, just after sunrise, he starts up the engines to head back in andka-boom. Huge explosion. It’s bad, but it happens. But you look a little closer, and you start to wonder.” Stan paused to clear his throat. It sounded like a lung coming up.
“First, there were the stats. In insurance we keep statistics on all kinds of stuff, and the frequency of that kind of accident, on boats the same make, model, and age as Welch’s, is low. Real low. I mean, besides Welch, it’s never happened. The boat was designed so it wouldn’t happen. By itself, it means nothing, but it’s an attention- getter.
“Then, there was the service history. Welch took good care of that boat, and kept meticulous service records. A year before the accident, he’d had the engines overhauled, the fuel tanks checked, and the fuel lines replaced. He’d used the boat for the next year with no reported problems. Then, out of the blue, on his way back in… boom. That gets me wondering a little more.
“Next, there was Welch’s experience with boats. This guy was no weekend skipper-he knew his way around, but good. This was the fifth boat he’d owned, and he’d worked in marinas from when he was twelve years old, all the way through college. Why is that important? Well, for his boat to go up like that, the buildup of fumes must’ve been intense. It’s hard to believe he didn’t smell anything topside, and impossible that he’d miss it when he checked below. Unless he didn’t check below. Unless Mr. Experienced forgot the most basic safety precaution in a gas- powered boat and didn’t check for fumes before he started up. Now I’m really getting curious.
“Finally, there was the fishing. Turns out that Saturday-morning fishing was a regular thing with him-spring, summer, and fall. He’d been out ten weeks in a row prior to the blast. Eight of those ten weeks, his fishing buddy- guy lives over in Wilton-went with him. In fact, best I could tell, this guy had gone with Welch twenty-one of his last twenty-five Saturday-morning trips. But the Wednesday before this last one, Welch calls his pal to cancel. Said something had come up. Still don’t know what that ‘something’ was.” Stan paused again. I heard gum wrappers crinkling, and his chewing got more vigorous. “Now I’m thinking so much, it makes my head hurt.”
“Nobody else-the local cops, the Coast Guard-get a headache over this?” I asked. Stan chuckled a little. It turned into a wheeze.
“Just me. ’Course, the local cops got, what, fifteen guys on the force, oldest one has maybe a dozen years’ experience. And I think one of ’em had actually been on a boat once. As for the Coasties… well, they know their shit, no question. But they’re kind of jaded. They see so many people doing such incredibly stupid shit on the water, there’s nothing they won’t believe about how dumb a person can be. And to tell the truth, I didn’t have much else to go on. To all appearances, the guy was happily married, in good health, had more money than God. No evidence of depression or mental instability. No sign that he or his wife was a cheater. And the wife-she had no interest in the claim. Didn’t give a damn if she got paid or not.”
“Any sign that somebody else was involved?” I asked.
“Not a one.”
“You talk to the fishing buddy?”
“Till I was blue in the face. He said the same as everybody elseWelch was a happy guy with everything to live for.”
“So, you finally convinced yourself it was accidental?” Stan laughed, more loudly this time.
“Hell no. After thirty years of this, I know the guy did himself in. I just got tired of trying to prove it.” His laughter dissolved into a fit of coughing. It sounded like the other lung was coming up.
Steven Bregman lived a few miles from Scott’s Corners, on a bumpy lane that ran off of Old Stone Hill Road. A pair of brick columns and a scuffed red mailbox marked the entrance to his property. It was almost five and dark out, and I passed by three times before I found it. The gravel drive was smooth and bordered by a line of tall firs. I followed it for half a mile, and then I saw a clearing, and light from spots mounted high in the trees.
The drive ended in a large, brick-paved circle. In the center was a stone fountain surrounded by curved stone benches and well-groomed shrubs. The main house was at twelve o’clock. It was a handsome, Italianate pile in brick and stone, two generous stories tall, with a slate roof and decorative brackets on the overhanging eaves. There were lots of windows, all tall and arched and framed in dressed stone. There was more stone along the foundation, and around the entrance portico too. A tower with four windows and a dangerous-looking finial rose above the roofline at one end of the house. At the other, there was a deep, arcaded porch that wrapped around to the back. The windows were dark.
At nine o’clock, set well back from the circle, was a carriage house. It was long and low and built in the same style as the residence, but with six pairs of wide, wooden doors dominating its facade. One pair was opened, and I saw a Bentley resting comfortably inside. There were lights on at the end of the building closest to the main house. I pulled the Taurus up to the opened bay. Someone called to me as I climbed out.
“You March?” I recognized Bregman’s nasal voice and heavy New York accent from the telephone. He was standing in a narrow doorway at the lit-up end of the carriage house. “I’m in the office,” he said. He made a “come on” gesture and went inside. I walked across the bricks and through the opened door.
The end of the carriage house had been partitioned off from the car bays to make Bregman’s big office. The walls were brick, three of them broken up by tall windows. The long wall on my left was mostly high, built-in shelving, packed with glass bric-a-brac and with a wet bar at the far end. Bright lights hung amid the old beams and
