Laura Lippman - What The Dead Know

“Did Dunham ask for any advice on criminal matters?”

Hertzbach found this amusing. “If he did, you know I couldn’t comment on it. Confidentiality.”

“But it’s my understanding that he’s now not competent-”

“Yes, he’s deteriorated badly.”

“And if he dies, there’s no one to notify? No next of kin, no friends?”

“Not to my knowledge. But a woman did call me recently, curious about his finances.”

Infante’s brain almost sang like a teakettle at that detail-a woman, interested in money. “Did she give you a name?”

“I’m sure she did, but I’d have to get my secretary to go over the log, pinpoint the date and the name. She was…rather coarse. She wanted to know who was named in his will, if anyone, and how much money he had. Of course, I couldn’t have told her that. I asked her what her relationship was to Mr. Dunham, and she hung up on me. I wondered if it was someone from the nursing home itself, who might have tried to inveigle her way into his good graces, back when he was still alert. Given the timing.”

“The timing?”

“Mr. Dunham was moved to hospice care in February, which means the facility doesn’t expect him to live more than six months.”

“He’s dying from the dementia? Is that possible?”

“Lung cancer, and he quit smoking when he was forty. I have to say, he’s one of the more spectacularly unlucky men I’ve ever met. Sells his land for a tidy sum, then his health fails him. There’s a lesson in that.”

“What would that be, exactly?”

Kevin wasn’t trying to be a smart-ass, but Hertzbach appeared to be struck dumb by the question. “Why, to…I don’t know, take advantage of every day,” he said at last. “Live life to the fullest.”

Thanks for the insight, pal.

He left the office, bumping and bouncing back to the Maryland line, wondering at the coincidence of that telephone call from a woman who, according to the secretary’s logs, had identified herself as the ohso-creative Jane Jones. That call had come in on March 1, not even three weeks earlier. A strange woman, asking questions about an old cop’s money. Did she know he was dying? How? Had she been thinking of bringing a civil action against the man? She had to know there was no statute of limitations for her sister’s murder.

But also no money in a criminal case.

Again he was struck by how convenient it all was-the old farm, gone, and who knows what had happened to the alleged gravesite? The old man, as good as gone.

As he crossed into Maryland, he fumbled for his cell phone and dialed Willoughby, to ask him if he had ever heard of Dunham, although Lenhardt had been out in the country less than a decade. No answer. He decided to hit Nancy again, see what she had learned.

“Infante,” she said. He was still getting used to the fact that phone calls no longer involved any mystery, that his name popped up on Nancy ’s screen, identifying him instantly.

“The lawyer had some interesting nuggets, but Dunham’s pretty much a dead end at this point. Are you now the leading expert on all things Bethany?”

“Getting there. Managed to find the mom-her old real-estate firm, in Austin, knew how to get in touch with her. No answer and no machine, but Lenhardt’s going to keep trying her. Here’s the big find, though-”

“We should keep her away, until we know for sure.”

“Yeah, but, Infante-”

“I mean, she’s going to want to believe, so we have to control for that. And we don’t want to waste her time if we can discredit her.”

“Infante-”

“At the very least, she has to understand that this is not guaranteed, that-”

“Infante, shut up and listen for a second. I took a flier, plugged Penelope Jackson’s name into the Nexis newspaper database on a hunch. You didn’t do that, right?”

Shit. He hated it when Nancy one-upped him this way. “I did the criminal searches, things like that. And Google, but there were hundreds of hits. The name’s too common. Besides, why would I care if she made news some other way?”

“She popped up in an article in some Georgia newspaper”-a pause as Nancy clicked away, looking for what she had stored-“the Brunswick Times . Christmas of last year. A man was killed in a fire Christmas Eve, ruled an accident by investigators. His girlfriend, home at the time, was named Penelope Jackson.”

“Could be a coincidence.”

“Could be,” Nancy agreed, her smugness apparent even over the unstable cell phone line. “But the man who was killed? His name was Tony Dunham.”

“Guy’s lawyer said he had no heirs, even five years ago.”

“And cops down there were told-by the girlfriend-that there was no next of kin to notify, that Tony’s parents were dead. Yet the age works-he was fifty-three when he died, and his Social Security number begins with twenty-one, which indicates it was issued in Maryland. The Dunhams probably lived in Maryland before they moved to Pennsylvania.”

“But thirty years ago, he was twenty-three. He might not even have been living at home then.” And now dead, dead in an accident. Why did everything dead-end with this case, this woman? That family she sideswiped was lucky to be in as good shape as they were, given her track record. “Hell, he could have been drafted for all we know. You check military records?”

“Not yet,” she admitted, and that gave him a small buzz of satisfaction, petty as it was. I thought of a record you didn’t .

“Where’s Brunswick anyway? How do you get there?”

“Sergeant has you booked on a Southwest flight into Jacksonville, leaving at seven. Brunswick is about an hour north. Penelope Jackson worked at a restaurant, Mullet Bay, in some nearby resort called St. Simons Island, but she quit about a month ago. She might still be in the area, though, but no longer at the same address.”

Or she might be in Baltimore, playing some creepy con on them all.

“You sure you’ll be fine?”

“Sure,” she said, thinking, Go, go, please go . “I could even take care of Seth, if he doesn’t want to go.”

“Great,” the boy began, even as Kay said, “No, no, I wouldn’t dream of imposing on you like that.”

Wouldn’t risk it, you mean. But that’s okay, Kay. I wouldn’t leave a child with me, either. I only offered so you wouldn’t find me suspect.

“It is okay if I stay in your house, though, watch television?”

She could tell that Kay didn’t want to offer her that much hospitality. Kay didn’t trust her, and she was right not to trust her, although she couldn’t know that. There was a brief inward struggle, but Kay’s sense of fairness ultimately won out. Oh, she loved Kay, who could always be trusted to do the kind thing, the right thing. It would be nice, to be like Kay, but kindness and fairness were luxuries she couldn’t afford.

“Of course. And help yourself to anything-”

“After that wonderful dinner?” She patted her stomach. “I couldn’t possibly eat another bite.”

“Only someone who had been in the hospital for two days could consider Wung Fu’s wonderful.”

“My family went there for Chinese food. Oh, I know it’s not the same place or family. But I remembered it when we drove over there.”

A skeptical look from Kay. Was she laying it on too thick, trying too hard? But it was true, this part was true. Perhaps she had gotten to the point where her lies were more believable than her truths. Was that the consequence of living a lie for so long?

“Duck sauce,” she said, conscious not to speak too brightly, too rapidly. “I thought it came from a duck the way that milk comes from a cow. I used to think that if we got to the park over in Woodlawn, the one near the Gwynns Falls, early enough in the morning, I would see Chinese people milking the ducks. I imagined them in those straw hats-oh, Lord, we called them coolie hats, I’m afraid. God, we were racists then.”