Part 11 (1/2)
” 'Hara.s.s' is okay. Sometimes I like hara.s.sing Helene.” She smiled. ”I had talked to Amanda. She's a good kid. Hard, you know? Way older than her years, but good.”
I thought of the four-year-old I'd returned to that house. Now she was ”hard.” Now she was ”way older than her years.”
”Amanda asked me to check the mail at the old place, just some stuff that the PO forgot to forward. They do that all the time. So I went by there and it was mostly junk mail.” She reached into her purse. ”Except for this.”
She handed me a piece of ivory paper: a Commonwealth of Ma.s.sachusetts Birth Certificate, Suffolk County, for Christina Andrea English, DOB 08/04/93.
I handed it to Angie.
”Similar age,” she said.
I nodded. ”Christina English would be a year older.”
We were thinking the same thing. Angie laid the birth certificate beside her laptop and her fingers danced across the keyboard.
”How did Amanda react when you told her you'd found this?” I asked Bea.
”She stopped calling. Then she disappeared.”
”So you started calling Helene.”
”And demanding answers. You're f.u.c.king right I did.”
”Good for you,” Angie said. ”I wish I'd been with you.”
I said, ”So you called Helene?”
She nodded. ”A bunch. And left several angry messages.”
”Which Helene saved,” Angie said, ”and brought before a judge.”
Beatrice nodded. ”Exactly.”
”And you're sure Amanda is not at the Foxboro house.”
”Positive.”
”Why?”
”Because I staked it out for three days.”
”Staked it out.” I grinned. ”With a restraining order on you. d.a.m.n. You're hardcore, Bea.”
She shrugged. ”Whoever the police talked to, it wasn't Amanda.”
Angie looked up from the computer for a second, her fingers still hitting the keys. ”No local grammar school records on Christina English. No social. No hospital records.”
”What's this mean?” Bea asked.
”It means Christina English could have moved out of state. Or-”
”I got it,” Angie said. ”DOD 9/16/93.”
”-she's dead,” I finished.
”Car crash,” Angie said. ”Wallingford, Connecticut. Both parents deceased same date.”
Bea looked at us, confused.
Angie said, ”Amanda was trying to a.s.sume Christina En-glish's ident.i.ty, Bea. You interrupted. There's no Ma.s.sachusetts death certificate on file. There might be a Connecticut death certificate-I'd have to dig deeper-but there's a solid chance someone could pretend to be Christina English and the state would never be the wiser. You could get a social security card, forge an employment history, and someday, if you felt like it, fake an injury at your nonexistent job and collect state disability.”
”Or,” I said, ”she could wrack up six figures on multiple credit cards in a thirty-day period and never pay them off because, well, she doesn't exist.”
”So either Amanda's working for Helene and Kenny in a fraud operation ...” Angie said.
”Or she's trying to become someone else.”
”But then she'd never get the two million the city owes her next year.”
”Good point,” I said.
”Though,” Angie said, ”just because she a.s.sumes a new ident.i.ty doesn't mean she forfeits her authentic one.”
”But I intercepted the birth certificate,” Bea said, ”so she can't be anyone but herself anymore. Right?”
”Well, the Christina English ident.i.ty is probably done for,” I said.
”But?”
”But,” Angie said, ”it's like avatars in computer games. She could have several if she's really smart. Is Amanda really smart?”
”Off the charts,” Bea said.
We sat in silence for a minute. I caught Bea staring at the photo of Gabriella. We'd taken it last autumn. Gabby sat in a pile of leaves, arms stretched wide as if posing for the top of a trophy, her megawatt smile as big as the leaf pile. A million pictures just like it adorned mantels and credenzas and buffet tables and the tops of TVs across the globe. Bea kept staring at it, falling into it.
”Such a great age,” she said. ”Four, five. Everything's wonder and change.”
I couldn't meet my wife's eyes.
”I'll take a look,” I said.
Angie gave me a smile bigger than Suffolk County.
Bea reached her hands across the table. I took them. They were warm from the coffee cup.
”You'll find her again.”