The Case of the Delivery Dilemma

The sun beat down on my forehead as I sat on a park bench beneath the shadiest oak I could find. It was so hot, I asked out every girl who walked by just so they’d give me the cold shoulder.

I was about to call it a day when I heard a woman screaming my name, and not in that bad, stop-peering-into-my-window kind of way I usually get.

I whipped around to find a tanned woman covered in more layers of makeup than the corpse of Estée Lauder. I stared at her as if staring at one of those 3-D paintings, waiting for the true image to pop out, but all my brain could muster was a dull radar blip, followed by “Do I know you?”

“Wait,” she said, pulling a wet-nap from her purse. She wiped off all her makeup—an endeavor that took a good 18 minutes—and looked at me again. She appeared a decade younger, while her tan went from Tampa Bay to Green Bay. She looked really familiar, a lot like that one girl I used to pick on back in grade school, the one I nick named…

“Scary Mary McCoy?”

“I just go by Mary now, if you don’t mind.”

She pushed away a strand of honey-blonde hair, which used to be a frizzy red rat trap back in school, to reveal heightened cheekbones, fuller lips and eyebrows that actually separated.

“Wow, Mary, you certainly have grown.”

“That’s what 20 years will do to a woman,” she said with at winkle in her eye. “What have you been up to, Ace?”

“I’m in insurance now,” I proclaimed, shoulders up and proud.

“Me too! Maybe you can help. My insured is a student who is working for a law firm. His duties involve handling the mail room; cleaning the kitchen and conference rooms; and delivering papers for the law firm when needed. He works about 25 hours a week and averages one to two deliveries a day, and he had an accident while on one of those deliveries.”

“I hope he’s okay.”

“He was, until he discovered the carrier denied the claim, claiming ‘We do not provide liability coverage for…any insured while maintaining or using any vehicle while that insured is employed or otherwise engaged in any business of delivery.’ Can you believe that?”

“Sounds like your insurance company is stricter than our first grade teacher, Sister Josephine.”

Why was Ace having nun of this interpretation?

For help solving this mystery and to check your solution against Ace’s, click here.

Jonathan Hermann (hermannism@gmail.com) is an IA contribution editor.