“Where is she now?”
“I don’t know. House is condemned, so she’s not living there. Could be in town, could have left. She can do what she pleases. She’s free, white, and twenty-one.”
If Infante had ever heard that phrase in his life, it would have been in a movie or a television show, and not a recent one. Said in today’s workplace, this was the kind of careless sentiment that resulted in meetings with human-resources facilitators. Yet Tolliver didn’t seem to realize that the comment was off in any way. And, to be fair, Infante’s own father and uncles had let loose with far worse, much more consciously.
Leaving the Waffle House, he wondered what had brought Tony Dunham south, why he’d ended up making his home here. The weather could be reason enough. And as a long-haul trucker, it wasn’t like the guy was burning with ambition. Born in the early 1950s, Dunham would have been just old enough that college was still optional. Even a high school dropout could make a living back in the sixties, if he got in with a good union. Nancy ’s record check indicated that Tony Dunham wasn’t a veteran, but it wasn’t clear if he’d been living at home during the years that the alleged Heather Bethany claimed to live there. She hadn’t mentioned anyone else in the house. Then again, she hadn’t provided much beyond the address and Stan Dunham’s name. Had she wanted them to find the link to Tony or not? And where did Penelope Jackson fit into this?
Photos didn’t lie: The woman in Baltimore wasn’t Penelope, not the Penelope in the driver’s-license photo. But who was she? What if Penelope was Heather Bethany and this woman had stolen her life story along with her car? Then where was Penelope? He could only hope that folks on Reynolds Street might recognize his mystery woman, be able to explain her relationship to these people.
SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY WAS notably lacking when Infante returned to Reynolds Street and began asking questions about Penelope Jackson and Tony Dunham. Granted, the first man he encountered may have wanted to be helpful, but he spoke more Spanish than English, and the mere sight of Infante’s official ID shut him down. Still, he nodded at the photocopy of Penelope Jackson’s North Carolina driver’s license, saying, “Sí, sí, is Miss Penelope,” then shrugged at the photo of the other woman, showing no sign of recognition. The neighbor to the east, a heavyset black woman who seemed to have five or six children, sighed as if to suggest that she had seen so much that she didn’t have time to see anything else. “I minded my business and they minded theirs,” she said when asked if she knew where Penelope Jackson might be.
On the other side of the charred blue house, an older man was pulling a bamboo rake over the yellow-green lawn, loosening winter debris. Cold and curt at first, he became friendlier when he realized he was dealing with someone official.
“I hate to say it, but I’d rather have the place a burnt-out shell than have those two back,” said the man, Aaron Parrish. “Unkind of me-and I wouldn’t have wished such a tragedy on them. But they were awful people. Oh, the fights and the yelling. Plus-” He lowered his voice as if about to speak of something truly shameful. “Plus, he parked his pickup on the front lawn. I complained to the landlord, but he said they kept up on their rent, unlike the Mexicans. But I find the Mexicans to be better neighbors, once you explain a few things about America to them.”
“Fights, yelling-between the two of them?”
“Frequently.”
“Did you call the cops?”
A nervous look around, as if someone might be listening. “Anonymously. A few times. My wife even tried to talk to Penelope about it, but she said it was none of our business, only she didn’t say it quite so nicely .”
“This her?”
Parrish peered at the driver’s-license photo, enlarged and printed out by Nancy. “Appears so. Although she was prettier in person. Petite, but with a lovely figure, like a little doll.”
“This woman look familiar?” He had a photo of quote-Heather Bethany-unquote, taken with a digital camera during their second interview.
“No, never seen her. My, they look a little bit alike, don’t they?”
Did they? Infante looked at the two photos, but he saw only the most superficial resemblance-hair, eyes, maybe build. Much as he disliked and disbelieved Heather Bethany, he saw a frailty there that Penelope Jackson didn’t have. Jackson looked like one tough customer.
“Did she tell you anything about herself? Penelope Jackson, I mean. Where she was from? Where Tony was from? How they met?”
“She wasn’t one who was inclined to chat. I know she worked over on St. Simons, at a place called Mullet Bay. Tony did work on the island, too, sometimes, when he couldn’t find long-haul work. He picked up jobs with a landscaping service. But of course they couldn’t live there.”
“Why not?”
Aaron Parrish laughed at Infante’s naïveté. “Prices, son. Almost none of the folks who work on the island can afford to live there. This house”-he waved at the charred remains of the three-bedroom rancher with blue siding-“that would be a quarter of a million, as is, if you could just pick it up and airlift it five miles east. St. Simons is for millionaires, Sea Island dearer still.”
Infante thanked Mr. Parrish and let himself into the unlocked house, which still held the smell of the fire. He didn’t see why the structure had to be condemned; the damage had been largely contained to the bedroom. The landlord probably stood to make more money on the insurance claim that way.
The door to the bedroom was swollen and stuck, but he managed to open it by throwing his full weight behind his shoulder. Tolliver had said that Tony Dunham had been dead before he burned, killed by smoke inhalation, but it was hard to forget that his flesh had sizzled and popped like barbecue for a time. That smell remained, too. Infante stood in the doorway, trying to imagine it. You would have to have some big balls to try killing someone this way-tossing the ashtray on the rug, waiting for the fire to engage. As Tolliver said, you couldn’t throw a second cigarette down if it didn’t get going. And if the guy woke up, you’d better be able to persuade him that it was an accident and you just walked in, a nervy chance to take if he was already smacking you regular. You also needed the discipline not to reach for a single cherished possession, to let it all go. You had to stand there until you were almost choking from the smoke, then close the door, wash your face to clear it of the watery tears caused by the fire, then go back and wait until you were sure that no one could save the man on the other side.
The woman up in Baltimore, whatever her name was-she could do that, he was sure of it. But he also was convinced that she wasn’t Penelope Jackson. It was the only real fact he had. I don’t know Penelope Jackson, she had said. But wouldn’t a true stranger have modified the name? I don’t know a Penelope Jackson, I don’t know any Penelope Jackson. Then how the fuck did you come to have her car? She had managed to avoid answering that question by offering them the solution to an infamous crime, then setting up a police officer as the perp. She had thrown a lot of things at them-to what end? What didn’t she want them to see?
He left the house, left Reynolds Street. It was a sad house, even before the fire. A house where two unhappy people had coexisted with frustration and disappointment. A house of quarrels and insults. He could tell because he had lived in such a house, twice. Well-once, his second marriage. His first marriage had been okay, until it wasn’t. Tabby had been a sweet girl. If he met her now…But he could never meet her again, not the Tabby he had first glimpsed in the Wharf Rat twelve years ago. She was lost to him, replaced by a woman who knew Kevin Infante as a cheat and a runaround. He ran into Tabby sometimes- Baltimore was small that way-and she was always polite, civil, as was he. Friendly, even, laughing about their marriage as if it were nothing more than an accident-plagued road trip, a merry misadventure. A decade out, they could be generous to their younger selves.