The box was full of the kind of detritus that students collect. Report cards, programs, school newspapers. All from the Sisters of the Little Flower, Infante noted-and featuring the name of Ruth Leibig. No album for Ruth, whoever she was, although her grades were certainly better than Tony’s. No photographs either, and nothing dated before the fall of 1975. There was a diploma, though, from 1979. Strangest of all, there was an old-fashioned tape recorder, a bright red box shaped like a purse. He pushed a button, but nothing happened, of course. The tape inside was Jethro Tull’s Aqualung . On the bottom of the player was an equally old-fashioned label, the kind made with one of those guns. “Ruth Leibig,” it said.
Infante dug deeper in the box and found something stranger stilclass="underline" a marriage certificate, also dated 1979. Between Ruth Leibig and Tony Dunham, as witnessed by his parents, Irene and Stan Dunham.
Tony’s dead ? That, according to Nancy and Lenhardt, was the piece of information that had surprised the woman during their interview. Not saddened, however. Shocked and upset, even angered. But she hadn’t been the least bit sad. At the same time, she had never mentioned Tony, not by name.
“What happened?” Infante asked Stan Dunham, who seemed startled by the tone of his voice, the loudness of it. “Who was Ruth Leibig? Did you kidnap a young girl, kill her sister, then screw the little one until she hit her teenage years, when you made a present of her to your son? What happened on that farm, you sick old fuck?”
The nurse was appalled. She wouldn’t be kindly inclined toward him if he called her in a week or so. Remember me? I’m the detective who cursed at the old man you think is such a sweetheart. Wanna go out sometime?
“Sir, you must not speak that way-” Dunham didn’t seem to notice that anything was happening.
Infante opened the photo album, pointed to the last picture of Tony. “He’s dead, you know. Burned up in a fire. Maybe murdered. Did he know what you did? Did his girlfriend know?”
The old man shook his head, sighed, and looked out the window, as if Infante were the demented one, a raving lunatic to be ignored. Did he understand anything? Did he know anything? Were the facts locked in his brain or gone forever? Wherever they were, they were inaccessible to Infante. Stan Dunham returned to looking at his nurse, as if seeking her assurance that this disruption to his routine would end soon. When’s it going to be just you and me again? he seemed to be asking her. She spoke to him in a soft, reassuring voice, stroking his hand.
“That’s not actually allowed,” she said with a worried glance at Infante. “Touching patients like that. But he’s the nicest man, my favorite of all the ones in my care. You have no idea.”
“No,” Kevin said. “I don’t.” God knows what he’d have done to you if he’d met you when you were a teenager.
Chet Willoughby had continued to sift through the box of papers, returning to the diploma and the marriage certificate, which he studied through tortoiseshell reading glasses.
“Something’s not right, Kevin. It’s hard to be definitive, but it’s highly unlikely, based on these, that Ruth Leibig is Heather Bethany.”
CHAPTER 39
Kay’s dining room had a set of French doors that separated it from the living room, and she had noticed over the years that her children seemed to feel invisible when the doors were closed. She often took advantage of this, situating her favorite reading chair so she could glance up and catch a glimpse of Grace or Seth at their least self-conscious, a state of being that was increasingly rare with each passing year. Adolescence was like a big scab, or scar tissue, a gradual covering of a soul too soft and open to be exposed to the elements. She liked the way Grace chewed on her hair while doing her math homework, a habit that Kay remembered from her own girlhood. Seth, at eleven, still spoke to himself, narrating his life in a quiet, unrushed monologue that reminded Kay of the commentary for golf tournaments. “Here’s my snack,” he would say, lining or stacking his cookies into precise patterns and structures. “Oreos, real Oreos, because you can’t fake Oreos. And here is the milk, low-fat, Giant brand, because milk is milk. Yesssssss!” The part about the milk was Kay’s voice boomeranging back to her, from the early days after the divorce when she worried about money constantly and abandoned all brand names in favor of store labels, and even made the children submit to blind taste tests to show them that they could not possibly discern the difference among various brands of chips and cookies. Thing was, they could, so she had ended up compromising on that issue. Name brands for cookies, chips, and sodas, the store brand for milk, pasta, bread, and canned goods.
Sometimes her children caught her looking at them through the glass, but they didn’t seem to mind too much. Perhaps they even enjoyed it, because Kay never laughed or teased them at such moments. Instead she shrugged guiltily and went back to her book as if she had been caught unawares.
Today it was Heather in the dining room, however, and she scowled when she saw Kay on the other side of the glass, even though Heather had been doing nothing more than reading the Sunday paper and Kay’s only thought was how pretty Heather looked in the grayish light. Peering at the paper, which she held at arm’s length as if slightly farsighted, she had no lines in her forehead and her jawline was still smooth and taut. Only a deep dent between her eyes betrayed her fierce concentration.
“When did the Sunday comics stop running Prince Valiant?” she asked when Kay carried her coffee mug into the room, trying to act as if it were her destination all along. Then, before Kay could answer-not that she had an answer-Heather decided for herself, “No, it wasn’t the Beacon that ran Prince Valiant. It was the Star. We got the Beacon on weekday mornings, but on Sunday we got both papers. My dad was a news junkie.”
“I haven’t heard anyone speak of the Beacon for years. It merged with the Light back in the eighties, around the time the Star folded. But Baltimore being Baltimore, some people still talk about the Beacon as if it still existed. You sounded like a real old-time Baltimorean just then.”
“I am a real old-time Baltimorean,” Heather said. “Or was, at any rate. I guess I belong to another place now.”
“Were you born here?”
“What, that didn’t come up in any of your Google searches? Are you asking for yourself or for them?”
Kay blushed. “That’s not fair, Heather. I haven’t taken sides in this. I’m a neutral party.”
“My father always said there was no neutrality, that even the act of being neutral involved taking a side.” She was challenging Kay now, accusing her of something, but what?
“I didn’t tell anyone that we stopped at the mall yesterday.”
“Why would you?”
“Well, I wouldn’t, but…you can see-it might have been of interest. I mean, if they knew…” Kay was grateful for the ringing telephone that interrupted her stammering, although she wasn’t sure why she was the one who was flustered and embarrassed. From somewhere upstairs Grace’s voice sounded with the usual frenzied excitement that the telephone provoked in her. “I’ll get it!” Then, in a forlorn, flat tone that told the story of a million dashed expectations: “It’s someone named Nancy Porter. She wants to talk to Heather.”
Heather went into the kitchen and made a point of pulling the swinging door shut behind her. Even so, Kay could hear her short, brittle answers. What? What’s the rush? Can’t it wait until tomorrow?