Eight more months later

Brian Peterson looked at the return on his desk. It was cut and dried, the lady died in a car accident in 2010. He looked at the death certificate and saw Laura Holden’s signature at the bottom, he smiled and looked in the desk drawer at the diamond ring he had bought her when he proposed which was on Friday night. He noticed at that point the third contributing cause of death, suicide. He picked up the telephone and called her. “Hi, honey this is Brian, how’s the smartest most attractive coroner doing?” “Flattery will get you everywhere,” Laura cooed. “This is kind of a business call”, Brian said hesitantly. “What’s up?” Laura replied. “I’m looking at a death certificate for Bea Gooding and your signature is on it, could you pull your file on that case?” Brian asked. “Sure”, Laura answered. She pulled the file and came back to the phone, “Brian, yea, it was a single car accident, no witnesses, drove right into a concrete barrier, died of trauma shortly after the accident, never regain consciousness. I put suicide as a possible contributing cause, because single car accidents are almost always suicides. Why are you interested in my autopsy?” Brian cleared his throat. “Its possible, that her suicide could be grounds to assert tax fraud, we’ve never tried it, but it means about $150 Million of difference taxwise”. “Wow”, Laura replied. “The problem is that its only a hunch on my part”, Laura said. “For all I know she could have dozed off, it was late at night, or she could have been blinded by a car light, or dropped something on the floor and reached down to pick it up. How right do you want me to be on this?” Brian thought for a moment and asked, “Did anyone find a suicide note?” “No, not that I am aware of”, Laura replied. “You need to ask the family that question”.

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