Fortunes of the Dead

by Lynn Hightower

  The bell rang again—that made three. I wiped my hands on the back of my Victoria’s Secret Five Button Fly Boyfriend Jeans and went to open my arched front door.

  My client was not what I expected, and it was clear from the way her mouth hung open that the reaction was mutual. She was young. If I were a bartender I would card her as a formality only before I escorted her out the door. I looked over her shoulder but did not see her father. Miranda had come alone.

  She stepped forward to look at me more closely, and I could see that she was still struggling with those tricky issues of complexion. The small spray of whiteheads on her forehead were barely visible, buried beneath a generous application of cream-based foundation. She had likely selected the color during the summer when her skin was brown from the sun. The shade was too dark now, and gave her face an orange cast, though with her coloring—medium dark hair and green eyes—the orange wasn’t all that bad. She was about my height, which, in terms of Internet shopping, is a sort of medium—a five-foot-three or -four, average to short.

  “Excuse me, I’m looking for Lena Padget.” Her voice landed in the upper registers, which meant she didn’t smoke.

  “I’m Lena Padget.”

  She stared and made no comment. If she hadn’t been quite so young I might have found her on the wrong side of annoying.

  “Maybe you could tell me who you are?” I only asked this question to get her on track. I knew very well who she was. I looked over her shoulder one more time. Still no sign of the father.

  “I’m Miranda.” Her tone of voice let me know that I should have been expecting her.

  “Paul Brady’s daughter?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Your father isn’t with you?”

  Her voice went flat, eyes downcast. “He’s still home in Pittsburgh. He can’t get away right now.”

  I shook her hand. “Nice to meet you, Miranda. Please come in.”

  The invitation was unnecessary, as she was already two steps through the door. I wondered if she realized that hiring a detective was not quite the same thing as interviewing a servant.

  She walked through the foyer, glanced at the staircase as if deciding whether or not to take the time to go up for a look, then moved into the living room, where she spun in a slow circle to take it all in.

  “I love your house.”

  “Thank you. Let me get a couple of chairs.” I fetched two folding chairs in from the kitchen and set them facing each other in the middle of the room. “I spoke with your father yesterday.”

  “I know.” Miranda tore herself from the view outside my living-room window. “He told me you didn’t want to take this on. He told me to convince you to do it anyway.” Miranda’s chin came up. “You don’t have to worry about dealing just with me. I know I’m only twenty, but my father trusts me to handle things. He relies on me, he always has. And I talk to him every day. He really wants you to do this.”

  “Sit down,” I told her. The first thing we were going to have to establish was what Paul and Miranda Brady defined as “this.” And dealing solely with Miranda was going to complicate matters. She was young to be taking things on alone.

  “Can I get you a cup of coffee, or a bottle of water?”

  Miranda shook her head and sat on the edge of the chair. Her confidence was fading. She adjusted her skirt, which was filmy and cut on the bias. She wore clogs and her legs were bare in spite of the cold. The sleeves of her blouse flared over her pudgy hands. Her hair was either naturally curly or permed, and had been generously gelled or was in need of a wash. Her fingernails were bitten to the quick, and she wore shiny metallic lip gloss over a full bottom lip. She had a backpack instead of a purse.

  College student, college student, college student.

  “I’m very sorry about what happened with your sister. I know how hard this can be.”

  “Do you think she’s dead?” Miranda looked me directly in the eyes. “I like to get things out in the open.”

  I did think Cheryl was dead, and I wondered about this Paul Brady, and why he hadn’t made the time to come. I wondered why he would put this responsibility on the shoulders of Cheryl’s younger sister, and not take care of things himself.

  “Do you think she’s dead, Miranda?”

  Miranda bit her bottom lip, and did not answer. But silence made her uncomfortable, and she ran a finger along the material of her skirt, avoiding eye contact.

  “Just so you know, Daddy got your name from Chick Ryder. He works in Legal Aid.”

  “I know.”

  “He recommended you very highly. He said you guys were friends.”

  “Ah ha. We are, but Chick knows lots of detectives. He give any reason why he settled on me?”

  Miranda twirled a curl of hair between her short, thick fingers. She was a heavy girl, by current standards, but not unattractively so.

  “Mr. Ryder says you’ve got a good reputation.”

  I hid my cynicism behind a smile. No doubt Chick also made Paul Brady aware that I was sleeping with the cop who headed up the Cheryl Dunkirk investigation. If I were in Brady’s shoes, I’d hire me, too.

  Brady’s instincts were sound, because I did have a wealth of inside information and I wouldn’t be going into the situation cold. The disappearance of Cheryl Dunkirk had shaped into one of Joel’s most frustrating cases, one that had riveted the entire state of Kentucky and even splashed periodically through the national news when they were having a slow day. We’d been on Nightline and CNN.

  Cheryl Dunkirk, a college student at Eastern Kentucky University, was enrolled in the Criminal Justice Department with a major in Police Studies. She disappeared eight weeks ago and was last seen leaving her job as an intern at the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms outpost here in Lexington, Kentucky. Cheryl Dunkirk never made it home.

  She was a top-notch scholar with a 3.7 GPA, consistently high test scores, and the respect of almost all of her teachers. If she had a fault, it was that criminal justice major or not, she followed a personal code that sometimes coincided with by-the-book rules, and sometimes did not. The one black mark on her academic record was an incident the first semester of her sophomore year when she admitted to cheating on a take-home test. Cheryl had given exam answers to a borderline student who did not have the patience or the IQ to pull the cheat off, and who took Cheryl’s answers verbatim, using and misspelling vocabulary that was out of her normal realm of word usage, when compared to her previous tests.

  Cheryl had been unrepentant. The dean had been careful; Cheryl had too much potential to waste, and he was the kind of dean who took an interest in every one of the students. He had delved into the details, finally deciding the situation to be one of Cheryl helping a fellow student who was having a hard time balancing work and studies in a class where the professor did not play fair. This teacher was a member in a club of one who did not like Cheryl Dunkirk; there had been complaints about him before.

  Securing the ATF internship for Cheryl had been a coup—the cheating incident had almost squelched it; ATF had high standards. But the dean backed Cheryl’s application, and that, combined with her grade point average and the glowing recommendations of her other instructors, landed her an internship that was highly prized among the students at EKU.

  Miranda pushed hair out of her eyes. “Daddy told me to give you this check. I just need you to tell me what to fill in for the amount.”

  “I think before we start getting into fees we’d better establish exactly what it is that you and your father want me to do.”

  Miranda wrinkled her nose. “That’s kind of a no-brainer, isn’t it? We want you to find my sister.”

  “The police are all over this, you know that.”

  “Yeah, and still no Cheryl. That’s why Daddy wants to hire you.”

  I leaned back in my chair. This was exactly what I was afraid of, and I saw my fee slipping away. “I have a high opinion of the cops on your sister’s case, Miranda. They’re doing a good job.”r />
  “Yeah, okay, but they have intern tunnel vision. They think Cheryl is some kind of Monica Lewinsky or Chandra Levy. And look what happened there. They got so sidetracked on the intern sex drama they didn’t find out what happened to Chandra Levy until too late.”

  “It was always too late for Chandra Levy.”

  “Look, I see what you’re saying.” Miranda leaned forward, arms wrapped around her waist, as if her stomach hurt. “Daddy already talked to me about all of this. He feels guilty, okay? Like he owes her. Let me explain something. You’ve noticed that Cheryl and I have different last names, right? She’s a Dunkirk and I’m a Brady, like my dad.

  “Cheryl and I are stepsisters. I mean, we were always close and all that, just like real sisters. It’s just that she wasn’t as close to Daddy as I am, and I think he feels guilty about that. He shouldn’t; I mean it’s perfectly natural. My mother died when I was just a baby, and all Daddy had was me. So we’ve got this bond, you know?”

  I nodded, but I still wasn’t liking Daddy.

  “And he meets Cheryl’s mom, who’s a nurse, and she’s in Pittsburgh for some kind of workshop conference training thing and … it’s funny the way they met. My dad had just bought the hotel where she was staying. It wasn’t the greatest building in the world, but it was worth what he paid for the location. Of course, to Violetta—that’s Cheryl’s mom—this hotel looks pretty good, considering where she comes from and all of that. Only the service was bad and there was no hot water, and she’s down talking to the desk clerk about it, and getting nowhere. So she asks who owns this place, and the guy points at my dad, who is walking through the lobby.

  “Violetta goes right up to my father, telling him, in a nice way, all the stuff that’s gone wrong on her stay. Daddy always laughs about the things she told him. He always says how she was even charming about her insults. Then she tells him how she had to save for the workshop, and it’s a big deal as far as she’s concerned, and one thing leads to another, and Daddy winds up taking Violetta to lunch. His excuse is that she can give him suggestions on what he needs to do to renovate the hotel.” Miranda laughed, and crossed her feet. “As if Daddy needs help in business. But she’s from this small town in Kentucky, and really thinks he wants her opinion. It’s romantic, isn’t it? Like one of those old movies with Audrey Hepburn or Cary Grant.”

  I admitted to being a Cary Grant fan.

  Miranda tilted her head to one side, staring down at the floor. “Just think how everything would have been so different, if my dad hadn’t been walking through that hotel lobby at that exact moment. They probably never would have met. I would have finished growing up in Pittsburgh, instead of Danville.”

  “I didn’t realize your dad ever lived around here.”

  “Violetta was a Kentucky girl, and she wouldn’t live in Pittsburgh. So dad bought a place in Danville, and just commuted back and forth. He can do a lot of his business from an office at the house. He moved back to Pittsburgh after Violetta died.”

  “How long has Cheryl’s mother been dead?”

  “Four years. I was sixteen, and Cheryl was eighteen. I lost two mothers before I was twenty, which is pretty sad when you think about it. And both of them died of breast cancer, isn’t that weird?”

  “And your father moved the two of you back to Pittsburgh?”

  “Daddy waited about six months, so Cheryl could finish her senior year at Danville High School. And he didn’t want me to have to move in the middle of the year. He was worried about how I’d adjust. He just kept the status quo for a while for both of us, because of Violetta and all. Then when Cheryl graduated, and wanted to go to EKU, Daddy decided to go back to Pittsburgh. Cheryl could have come with us, but she wanted EKU because of the law enforcement thing.”

  “But you came back to Kentucky?”

  “Yeah, it’s weird, isn’t it? Because I had been dying to get back to Pittsburgh. But a place is never the same after you go away and come back. And Daddy was busy working and getting engaged again, and I was missing my sister, so I came back here to go to college.”

  “You go to UK?”

  “No. I started at Centre in Danville.”

  “Good school.”

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t a good match for me. My grades were a little … disappointing. Probably a freshman adjustment thing, Daddy says. My passion—my absolute passion—is art history. I already know how I’m going to make my mark. I want to open a gallery in Pittsburgh, not in L.A. or New York, and I’m going to find artists that nobody has any interest in, but that are really good, and I’m only going to sell their stuff. Every piece of art in the gallery will be from one of my personal discoveries. Once that gets started, then new artists will come to me, and the buyers will come to me because I’ll be cutting-edge, because they’ll know that I have the sensibility to appreciate what is true, you know? Art from the heart, I call it. I think that’s what I’m going to name my gallery.” The far-off look in Miranda’s eyes faded. “But anyway, to answer your question, I’m taking the semester off and then next fall I’m going to enroll at Transy.”

  “Another good school,” I said. Centre College and Transylvania University were private liberal arts schools, both with hefty price tags.

  “And Daddy’s paying all of Cheryl’s tuition, too. He didn’t adopt her or anything, but he treats her just like a real daughter. And he was glad, too, that I had someone who could kind of look out for me, going away to school for the first time and all.”

  “It looks like somebody should have been looking out for Cheryl.”

  Miranda slumped in the chair. “My dad isn’t going to stop until he finds out every detail of what happened to my sister. Daddy was proud of her, he bragged on her all the time. And he isn’t going to put up with her disappearance being written off as some dumb coed shacking up with a married loser and getting killed.”

  “You do realize that it looks like that’s exactly what did happen?”

  “That’s only because no one gets Cheryl. And anyway, I’m her sister. She wasn’t having an affair with Cory Edgers. She would have told me for sure.”

  “You were close?”

  “Oh, extremely. I used to introduce her to my friends, and include her in things, because sometimes Cheryl could get a little housebound. She was like, one day confident, and the next day a mess. We were good for each other; we were real sisters.”

  “Did she ever talk about Edgers?”

  “Sure she did. All the time. They were both kind of outsiders, there, in the ATF office. She’s a college student, doing an internship. He’s a sheriff from London, Kentucky, on loan to some kind of task force. My sister was smart and opinionated and always had a million questions, and Cory Edgers was encouraging her; he showed her the ropes. Believe me, if there was more to it than that I would have known. I told the police all this, but I don’t think they believed me.”

  I could confirm that observation. It was frustrating being relegated to the sidelines, listening to Joel’s theories about the case. I had a few ideas of my own, hunches I would have followed up, and it was tedious just to hang on the fringe, while Joel nodded and ignored everything I said. As a matter of fact, I was kind of ticked at the way he had dismissed my opinions, as if I didn’t deal with this sort of thing every working day. I took a moment to indulge the thought of getting to the bottom of Cheryl Dunkirk’s disappearance, and passing the killer on to Joel.

  But that was no excuse for misleading a client.

  “My point is, Miranda, I need to make sure you and your father understand that I’m unlikely to come up with anything the police haven’t already. They’re giving this everything they’ve got.”

  “That may be so, but they’re not sharing any of it with my dad.”

  And this, of course, was the clincher; this convinced me I could contribute without misleading Miranda and Paul Ellis Brady. By necessity the police had to shut the family out, but I’d been the family, and it’s a frustration I remembered very well. I caugh
t the shrewd look in Miranda’s eyes, and I knew that she realized I was hooked.

  “Okay then, Miranda. You know what I can’t do for you; here’s what I can do. If nothing else, I bring a fresh viewpoint, and I’ll look at some things differently than the police will. I won’t withhold any information. Whatever I find out, I’ll tell you, provided that’s what you want.”

  “Why wouldn’t I want it?”

  “It means I won’t censor anything to protect your feelings; it means I’ll give it to you straight. But you better think about the possibility that there may be details you don’t want to hear.”

  “I want to hear everything. I want to know. The things I imagine … look, you know how I feel. Chick Ryder told me what happened to your sister. So you know what it’s like, right?”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “You’re the closest thing to a peer I’ve got, did you ever think of that?”

  I had thought of that. It was one reason I wanted the job.

  “So no holding back no matter what. Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” I said.

  Miranda leaned across the floor to shake my hand. I might waste her father’s money, but I’d give him some sort of control and satisfy his conscience, if I accomplished nothing else.

  “Now what?” Miranda said.

  “The first thing I’m going to tell you is that I’m almost positive Cheryl is dead.”

  Miranda chewed the nail of her little finger. “But you can’t really know that.”

  “You know the police found her car, right?”

  “It was still in the parking lot at her apartment. That’s what they told me.”

  “The police think Cheryl was killed in the car.”

  Miranda’s face lost color, and I stood up.

  “I’m okay,” she said, but she wasn’t.