“Stan Dunham came to me about the time he sold the property.”
“When was that?”
“Five years ago, I think.”
The new owner must have flipped the property fast, probably gotten even more money for it.
“It was a windfall for him, but he had the foresight to realize that he needed to be prepared for the long term. His wife had died-I was under the impression that he wouldn’t have sold the land while she was alive-and he told me that he had no children, no heirs. He purchased several insurance products that I recommended-long-term care, a couple of annuities. Those were handled through someone else here in town, Donald Leonard, friend of mine through Rotary.”
“Did Dunham ask for any advice on criminal matters?”
Hertzbach found this amusing. “If he did, you know I couldn’t comment on it. Confidentiality.”
“But it’s my understanding that he’s now not competent-”
“Yes, he’s deteriorated badly.”
“And if he dies, there’s no one to notify? No next of kin, no friends?”
“Not to my knowledge. But a woman did call me recently, curious about his finances.”
Infante’s brain almost sang like a teakettle at that detail-a woman, interested in money. “Did she give you a name?”
“I’m sure she did, but I’d have to get my secretary to go over the log, pinpoint the date and the name. She was…rather coarse. She wanted to know who was named in his will, if anyone, and how much money he had. Of course, I couldn’t have told her that. I asked her what her relationship was to Mr. Dunham, and she hung up on me. I wondered if it was someone from the nursing home itself, who might have tried to inveigle her way into his good graces, back when he was still alert. Given the timing.”
“The timing?”
“Mr. Dunham was moved to hospice care in February, which means the facility doesn’t expect him to live more than six months.”
“He’s dying from the dementia? Is that possible?”
“Lung cancer, and he quit smoking when he was forty. I have to say, he’s one of the more spectacularly unlucky men I’ve ever met. Sells his land for a tidy sum, then his health fails him. There’s a lesson in that.”
“What would that be, exactly?”
Kevin wasn’t trying to be a smart-ass, but Hertzbach appeared to be struck dumb by the question. “Why, to…I don’t know, take advantage of every day,” he said at last. “Live life to the fullest.”
He left the office, bumping and bouncing back to the Maryland line, wondering at the coincidence of that telephone call from a woman who, according to the secretary’s logs, had identified herself as the ohso-creative Jane Jones. That call had come in on March 1, not even three weeks earlier. A strange woman, asking questions about an old cop’s money. Did she know he was dying? How? Had she been thinking of bringing a civil action against the man? She had to know there was no statute of limitations for her sister’s murder.
Again he was struck by how convenient it all was-the old farm, gone, and who knows what had happened to the alleged gravesite? The old man, as good as gone.
As he crossed into Maryland, he fumbled for his cell phone and dialed Willoughby, to ask him if he had ever heard of Dunham, although Lenhardt had been out in the country less than a decade. No answer. He decided to hit Nancy again, see what she had learned.
“Infante,” she said. He was still getting used to the fact that phone calls no longer involved any mystery, that his name popped up on Nancy ’s screen, identifying him instantly.
“The lawyer had some interesting nuggets, but Dunham’s pretty much a dead end at this point. Are you now the leading expert on all things Bethany?”
“Getting there. Managed to find the mom-her old real-estate firm, in Austin, knew how to get in touch with her. No answer and no machine, but Lenhardt’s going to keep trying her. Here’s the big find, though-”
“We should keep her away, until we know for sure.”
“Yeah, but, Infante-”
“I mean, she’s going to
“Infante-”
“At the very least, she has to understand that this is not guaranteed, that-”
“Infante, shut up and listen for a second. I took a flier, plugged Penelope Jackson’s name into the Nexis newspaper database on a hunch. You didn’t do that, right?”
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
“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
“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 Pennsylvania.”
“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.
“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,
“Great,” the boy began, even as Kay said, “No, no, I wouldn’t dream of imposing on you like that.”
