It was only when Penelope Jackson showed up on her doorstep a week ago to the day that Sunny learned that Tony Dunham had an annuity, too. And that, when drunk, he had spoken of his crimes and his early marriage, telling Penelope that she would never get away from him because he had once killed a girl and covered it up, with the help of his father and the girl’s very own sister.
“Here’s where he grabbed out a square inch of my hair,” Penelope said, showing a bald patch behind her ear. Then, tapping on a large, grayish front tooth, “This is a bond, and not a good one at that. Fucker pushed me down the front steps after I sassed him. When I found out that his father had paid for an annuity for some other woman, I thought I should come visit her, see what she went through that was worth getting money from the Dunhams. Because the only thing Tony’s ever given me is a promise that he’ll hunt me down and kill me if I ever leave him. He’s after me now. You have to help me, or I’ll go to the authorities, tell them what I know about you. You covered up a murder, and that’s as good as being a murderer.”
It had taken the better part of three days, but she used the methods that Stan Dunham had taught her long ago and found Penelope a new name, then obtained the documents she needed to create a new life. She also had taken five thousand dollars from her savings account and given it to Penelope, who then booked a flight to Seattle out of Baltimore-Washington International. She had begged Penelope to pick another airline, one that flew out of Dulles or National, but Penelope was adamant about using Southwest. “You build up credits for free tickets with them really fast. Rapid Rewards, they call it.”
So for the first time in almost twenty-five years, Sunny had crossed the Potomac and headed into Maryland, then up the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. “Keep the car if you want it,” Penelope said, but Sunny couldn’t imagine doing that. How could she explain some old junker with North Carolina tags? Her plan was to park it at the airport and take a train back into D.C., the Metro the rest of the way home. But, having come so close to home, she couldn’t see the harm in going a few miles north, then doubling back. As she got closer to Route 70, she began to think about visiting Stan, something she had never dared, no matter how ill he became, because a visit would mean signing in, leaving tracks. But Penelope had said he was bad, demented and nearly dead. If they didn’t ask for ID, she could give them a fake name. Or perhaps she could go drive past Algonquin Lane, see if it really was the cherished home of her dreams or merely a ramshackle farmhouse in a not-great corner of Baltimore.
And then the car had slipped away from her, her life had slipped away from her, and in her panic and confusion she’d begun to tell the truth, only to regret it instantly. “I’m one of the Bethany girls.” If she told them everything else, they would bring back Tony and make her admit to the world that her sister’s death was her fault. Besides, who knew what lies Tony would tell, what violence he might do to her? So she blamed everything on Stan, knowing he was safe in his own way, and said she was Heather Bethany. Heather, who had never done anything worse than snoop and spy on an older sister. Their resemblance had always been profound, and there was nothing about Heather’s life that Sunny didn’t know. It should have been easy, being Heather.
The moment she heard that Miriam was alive, she knew she would be exposed. Still, she tried to brazen it out, tried to give them plausible answers so she could slip away before Miriam arrived. Irene was dead and Stan was beyond the reach of any form of justice. If she had known all along that Tony was dead, she might not have hesitated to tell the whole story. But Penelope Jackson had said that Tony was alive, that she needed money because he was determined to hunt her down and make her miserable for leaving him. Penelope had all but said it was Sunny’s fault that Tony remained in the world, still hurting women, and wasn’t that true? If she had called the police that night, in the motel. If she had just started screaming, bringing the other guests, the manager. But she had been scared and silent, wanting to believe there was a way to avoid telling her parents that Heather was dead—and it was her fault. “Look after your sister,” her father had said. “One day your mother and I will be gone, and you’ll be all you have.” It hadn’t worked out that way.
“BUT—” MIRIAM BEGAN, then stopped, her voice faltering as if the task before her was impossible, as if there were so many questions still to be asked that she could never choose just one. Sunny thought of all the things that mothers ask, day in, day out. Where have you been? What did you do? What happened in school today? She remembered how she had begun to chafe at her mother’s curiosity when ninth grade started and she met Tony, how she had learned to hide all her emotions and secrets behind the laconic wall of adolescence. Nowhere. Nothing. Nothing. Now she would gladly answer anything her mother asked, if only her mother could figure out what it was she wanted to know. Sunny decided to offer the simplest and most private information she had, the very thing that she had been so reluctant to give up, believing it to be the last thing, the only thing, that belonged to her.
“I’m an IT person for an insurance company in Reston, Virginia. I use the name Cameron Heinz, but everyone at work calls me Ketch.”
“Catch?”
“Ketch, short for Ketchup. Heinz, get it? She was killed in Florida, back in the mid-sixties, in a fire. Fires are always good. I just want to be that person again. But I want to be Sunny, too, and spend time with you, now that I know you’re alive. Is there any way I can do both? I’ve been the wrong person for so long, can’t I be the right person again, without anyone knowing?”
Lenhardt said, “I think there is if you’re capable of a little deceit.”
“I think I’ve proved,” Sunny said, “that I’m capable of far more than just a little deceit.”
TWO WEEKS LATER the Baltimore County Police Department released a statement that the bones of Heather Bethany had been discovered by cadaver dogs in Glen Rock, Pennsylvania. This was an out-and-out lie, and it amused Lenhardt no end how easily the reporters and the public swallowed it—cadaver dogs discovering thirty-year-old bones, which were identified quickly and automatically, as if there were no DNA backlogs, as if the theoretical possibilities of science could trump the day-to-day realities of overburdened bureaucracies and slashed state budgets. They said they had been able to identify the grave site with information developed from a confidential informant. This was technically true, if one considered Cameron Heinz a confidential informant, a person different and apart from Sunny Bethany. Police had determined that her killer was Tony Dunham and that his parents had entered into an active conspiracy to suppress his crime and hold hostage the surviving sister, Sunny. She had escaped from the family at an undisclosed time and was still alive, living under a different name. Through her lawyer, Gloria Bustamante, Sunny asked that reporters respect her privacy, grant her the anonymity that would be given to any sexual-assault victim. She had no desire to speak of what had happened. At any rate, said Gloria, who adored talking to reporters, her client was living in a foreign country, as was her only surviving relative, her mother.
“True enough,” Lenhardt later said to Infante. “Reston, Virginia, is a fucking foreign country as far as I’m concerned. Ever seen that place, with all those office parks and high-rises? Anyone could disappear down there.”
“Anyone could disappear anywhere,” Infante said.
After all, Sunny Bethany had done just that, for more than thirty years—as a student in a parish school, as a Swiss Colony salesgirl, as a classified-ad clerk at a small newspaper, as an IT person in a large computer firm. Like a bird who moved into abandoned nests, she had inhabited the lives of long-dead girls, counting on no one to see her, and the world had been almost too eager to grant her that privilege. She was, by design, one of the anonymous women who streamed through streets and malls and office buildings every day—attractive enough, worth a second look, yet deflecting all attention. Would Infante, champion cataloger of women, have noticed her, in any of her guises? Probably not. Yet now that he bothered to look, re
ally look, he realized that Sunny’s face was remarkably close to the computer projection of how Sunny Bethany would have aged, although the forecast had erred a little on the wrinkly side, creating pronounced crow’s-feet and deep grooves on either side of her mouth. She could have passed for five, ten years younger if she pushed it. But she had settled for a mere three.
Go figure, Infante thought, closing the computer window that contained the likenesses of the two sisters, Sunny Bethany has no laugh lines.
PART X SWADHAYAYA
The fifth and final step of the Fivefold Path,
swadhayaya, is liberation through self-knowledge:
Who am I? Why am I here?
—Adapted from various
teachings on the Agnihotra
CHAPTER 42
The moment that Kevin Infante crossed the threshold at Nancy Porter’s holiday party, he knew there was a potential fix-up in the offing. He could spot the unlucky lady a mile away—a brunette in a bright red dress, not quite watching the door. She was pretty enough. Actually, she was exceptionally pretty, although in the style that other women found attractive—slim figure, bright eyes, abundant hair. That was the tip-off. She was Nancy’s choice, and he had to admit that Nancy had pretty good taste. Still, he hated even passive throw-them-together-and-see-what-happens matchmaking, which seemed to imply that he couldn’t find women on his own, or that he was choosing poorly.
And so what if the latter was undeniably true? He was a big boy. Nancy should leave him to his own devices.
He scouted the room, looking for a conversation he could lose himself in, making him harder to approach. No sense trying to chat up the hostess at one of these things. Nancy was bustling back and forth between the kitchen and dining room, replenishing plates, piling more food on the buffet table. Lenhardt hadn’t posted yet, and Nancy’s husband had never been that keen on Infante, but then, Andy Porter would have been inclined to dislike any man who spent hours alone with his wife, even in the most innocuous circumstances. Scanning, scanning, scanning, feeling the brunette getting closer, Infante’s eyes fell on a familiar face, although he needed a second to place the woman—round-faced, pleasant. Kay what’s-her-name, the social worker.
“Hello,” she said, offering her hand. “Kay Sullivan. From St. Agnes?”
“Sure, the one who—”
“Right.”
They stood awkwardly for a second. Kevin realized he would have to do better than this if he wanted even a temporary reprieve from Nancy’s machinations.
“I didn’t realize you and Nancy were pals.”
“We became reacquainted, from the House of Ruth. She did a presentation for us on one of the county’s oldest unsolved murders, the Powers case.”
He remembered. He never forgot one of his own. A young woman, separated from her husband, a contentious custody battle. She had left work one afternoon. Neither she nor her car was ever seen again. “Oh, yeah, that one. How long has it been?”
“Almost ten years. Their daughter is in her teens now. Can you imagine? She has to know that her father was the number one suspect, even if nothing was ever proven. I didn’t remember that he was a former cop, though, before he went into private security.”
“Huh.”
Another awkward pause, as Infante wondered why Kay Sullivan had brought up that one piece of information. Was she trying to say that Baltimore cops were, by nature, felonious? All Stan Dunham had done was cover up a murder.
“Do you ever…?” Kay began.
“No.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to ask.”
“I just assumed it was about Sunny Bethany.” Kay’s face flamed, as if embarrassed. “We’re not in touch. I think old Willoughby checks in with her mother from time to time. Speaking of which—”
He swiveled his head, realizing that Willoughby should be among the party guests, too, and saw him in an argyle sweater, of all things—chatting up the brunette in the bright red dress. Willoughby had an eye for women, as Infante had learned since they started playing golf together. To his surprise—and, although he didn’t want to admit it to himself, his gratification—Willoughby seemed to prefer his company to the stuffed-shirt crowd at Elkridge. He was more police than prep, after all. He also was one of those genteel letches, the kind who liked to bask in the glow that good-looking women threw off. He doted on Nancy, had lunch with her at least once a month. He was probably trying to work the brunette toward the mistletoe, angle for a little cheek kiss. “I should go say hi.”
“Sure,” Kay said. “I understand. But if you do hear from Sunny…”
“Yes?”
“Tell her that it was nice of her, to remember to send Grace’s pants back dry-cleaned and mended. I appreciated that.”
She sounded forlorn but resigned, as if used to being abandoned in social situations. Infante speared a pierogi from the platter and dragged it through some sour cream—bless Nancy’s Polack forebears, the girl knew how to put on a holiday spread. The events of last spring had been a job to him, but they must have been exciting to Kay Sullivan, a reprieve from a life spent…well, doing whatever hospital social workers do. Wrestling with Medicaid forms, he supposed.
“Grace?” he asked Kay. “Is that your daughter? How old is she? Is she your only kid?”
Kay brightened and began to tell him in great detail about both her daughter and son, while Infante listened and nodded, helping himself to more pierogies. What was the big deal? The brunette would keep.
“¿CÓMO SE LLAMA?” asked the man outside the gallery, and Sunny had to make a conscious effort not to stare at the hole above his mouth. Her mother had warned her about Javier, said he was a little unsettling to look at when you first met him, and Sunny had automatically assumed his deformity would rob him of speech as well. Back in Virginia, immersed in planning for this trip, she had imagined him as a mute, a Quasimodo figure who communicated in grunts and sighs.
He persisted, unperturbed by how her eyes slid away from his face, probably used to that visual evasiveness, maybe even grateful for it. She would be. “Es la hija de Señora Toe-lez, ¿verdad?”
How do you call yourself? You are the daughter of Señora Toles, true? Although Sunny had been listening to Spanish-language tapes for weeks and was comfortable with the language in written form, she was finding that she needed to translate everything she heard, word by word, frame her answer in English, and then translate it back into Spanish, a less-than-efficient process. Her mother said it wouldn’t always be that way, if she decided to stay.
“Soy,” she began, then corrected herself. Not “I am,” but Me llamo. “I call myself.” “Me llamo Sunny.” What did Javier care about the other names and identities, what it said on her driver’s license and whether that matched her passport or her high school diploma? “Cameron Heinz” was on her driver’s license and her passport, and therefore on her itinerary as she made her way from airport to airport to taxi and, finally, to this street in San Miguel de Allende, in many ways re-creating her mother’s journey sixteen years ago, although Sunny did not know that yet. She would learn that later, on their trip to Cuernavaca. Meanwhile, back in the States, Gloria Bustamante was waiting for CamKetchBarb-SylRuthSunny to decide who she wanted to be. It was a complicated choice, made more so since Stan Dunham had died this summer, leaving behind a small estate that Gloria thought Sunny should contest, as Dunham’s indirect victim and, briefly, daughter-in-law. Could she claim that inheritance? Should she? And if she reclaimed her real name along with the residue of Stan Dunham’s savings, how long could she go without being discovered? As Sunny knew better than anyone, every computer keystroke left a trail.
Here, however, she could call herself whatever she wanted. For the next two weeks.
“Me llamo Sunny.”
Javier laughed and pointed to the sky. “¿Como el sol? Qué bonita.”
She shrugged, at a loss. Small talk was hard enough in English. She pushed into the store, engaging a gentle wind chime. Th
e Man with the Blue Guitar had a wind chime, too, she remembered, although its sound had been deeper, chunkier.
Her mother—her mother!—was with a customer, a short, squat woman with a grating voice, who pushed and poked at the earrings on the counter as if they had displeased her in some way. “This is my daughter, Sunny,” Miriam said, but she was hemmed in by the counter and the customer’s bulk, so she could not come forward and hug Sunny as she clearly wanted to do. She does want to hug me, right? The woman inspected Sunny briefly, then returned to torturing the jewelry. The pieces seemed to tarnish at her touch, to darken and bend in her stubby fingers. Sunny wondered if she would ever stop seeing strangers this way, if she would continue to focus on others’ defects and try to figure out, as quickly as possible, whether they were inclined to help or hurt her. This one was clearly of no use.
“She must take after her father,” the woman said, and Sunny recalled the joy of pouring a Diet Pepsi over Mrs. Hennessey’s head in the Journal’s snack room. Regrets, she had a few, to put it mildly, but that wasn’t one of them. In fact, it was one of her shining moments. She should tell her mother that story, on their trip. It was one of the few anecdotes she could share, come to think of it, one that wouldn’t make either of them sad or anxious.
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