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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 Pe
“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.
CHAPTER 22
“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 di
“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 Gwy
“Why?” asked Seth. She liked him, him and Grace, too, almost in spite of herself. She despised most children, resented them in fact. But there was a sweetness about Kay’s kids, a kindness inherited or learned from their mother. They were solicitous of Kay, too, perhaps a byproduct of the divorce.
“We didn’t know better. And thirty years from now you’ll probably be saying the same thing to someone else young, who can’t believe the things you said and did and wore and thought.”
She could tell from Seth’s expression that he wasn’t persuaded, but he was too polite to contradict her. His generation was going to get it right, be perfect in every way, unlock every mystery. After all, they had iPods. It seemed to make them think that anything was possible, that they would be able to control life the way they controlled and managed their music, flipping around on a little track wheel. Right, sweetie. It was just one big playlist waiting to be designed, the brave new world of Tivo. What you wanted, when you wanted, all the time.
“We shouldn’t be more than an hour,” Kay said.
“Don’t worry about me.” Or, as Uncle used to say, “Don’t go away mad, just go.”
Left alone in the house, she turned on the television in the den and forced herself to sit through some amazingly stupid program for ten minutes. Kids always forgot something, she figured, but after you’d been in the car for ten minutes, the item would have to be critical for a parent to turn back. When the program went into its second commercial break, she turned on the family computer. No passwords, no passwords, no passwords, she prayed, and of course there weren’t. The poky little Dell was wide open. She would leave tracks, that was unavoidable, but who would think to hunt for them here? Working quickly, she sca
H-e-Two letters in, Google offered her own search back to her. Why, that nosy little Kay. She had been doing quite a bit of extracurricular homework over the past few days. It made her feel better somehow, knowing that Kay wasn’t quite so noble and helpful, that she was capable of base curiosity. She sca
How she wished that Kay, as a social worker, had access to some secret government files, where confidential details were stored. But of course no such place existed, and if it had, she would have found it on her own and hacked her way into it. She had exhausted the available computer resources ages ago.
Reluctantly, she disco