Insurance fraud was the obvious hypothesis. If the couple staged their deaths with family knowledge, there was federal mail fraud on top of state insurance charges—$280,000 in 1994 dollars, over $600,000 adjusted for today. Dellray wrote it at the top of his legal pad, though he didn’t entirely buy it.
Special Agent Dani Marsh, freshly transferred from the financial crimes unit, was assigned as his partner. She studied the photograph, turned it once toward the light, then set it down. She asked the questions running in his mind: “If the Calloways sent this, why anonymously? And if they didn’t—who did, and what do they want now?”