They approach and Claire asks, “Michael Deane?”
“About the old actress, yeah?” The investigator barely looks at Michael’s strange face—as if he’s been warned not to stare. He introduces himself as Alan, retired cop and private investigator. He opens the doors for them and loads their bags. Claire slides in back between Michael and Pasquale and Shane jumps in front next to the investigator.
Inside the SUV, Alan hands them a file. “I was told this was top-priority stuff. It’s pretty solid work for twenty-four hours, if I do say so myself.”
The file goes to the back and Claire takes charge of it, quickly flipping past a birth certificate and newspaper birth notice from Cle Elum, Washington. “You said she was about twenty in 1962,” the investigator says to Michael, whom he eyes in the rearview, “but her actual DOB is late ’39. No surprise there. Two kinds of people always lie about their ages: actresses and Latin American pitchers.”
Claire flips to the second page of the file—Michael looking over one shoulder, Pasquale the other—a photocopy of a 1956 yearbook page from Cle Elum High School. She’s easy to spot: the striking blonde with the oversized features of a born actress. Beside her, the two pages of senior class photos are a festival of black-rims and cowlicks, of beady eyes, jug ears, crew cuts, acne, and beehives. Even in black-and-white, Debra Moore fairly jumps, her eyes simply too big and too deep for this little school and little town. Beneath her photo: “DEBRA ‘DEE’ MOORE: Warrior Cheer Squad—3 years, Kittitas County Fair Princess, Musical Theater—3 years, Senior Showcase, Honors—2 years.” Each student has also chosen a famous quote （Lincoln, Whitman, Nightingale, Jesus）， but Debra Moore’s quote is from émile Zola: I am here to live out loud.
“She’s in Sandpoint now,” the investigator is saying. “Hour and a half away. Pretty drive. She runs a little theater up there. There’s a play tonight. I got you four tickets at will-call and four hotel rooms. I’ll drive you back tomorrow afternoon.” The SUV merges onto a freeway, descends a steep hill into Spokane: a downtown of low brick, stone, and glass buildings, pocked with billboards and surface parking lots, all of it loosely bisected by this freeway overpass.
They read as they ride, much of the file consisting of playbills and cast lists: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, put on by the University of Washington drama department in 1959, listing “Dee Anne Moore” as Helena. She pops in every photograph, as if everyone else is frozen flat in the 1950s and here, suddenly, is a modern, animated woman.
“She’s beautiful,” Claire says.
“Yes,” says Michael Deane over her right shoulder.
“Sì,” says Pasquale over her left.
Theater reviews clipped from the Seattle Times and the Post-Intelligencer praise “Debra Moore” briefly in various stage roles in 1960 and 1961, the investigator’s yellow-highlighter pen framing “talented newcomer” and “the show-stopping Dee Moore.” Next come two photocopied Seattle Times articles from 1967, the first about a single-fatality car accident, the second an obituary for the driver, Alvis James Bender.
Before Claire can figure out the connection to Dee Moray, Pasquale takes the page, leans forward, and presses it into the hands of Shane Wheeler in the front seat. “This one? What is it?”
Shane reads the small obituary. Bender was a World War II army veteran and owner of a Chevrolet car dealership in North Seattle. He moved to Seattle in 1963, just four years before his death. He was survived by his parents in Madison, Wisconsin, a brother and sister, several nieces and nephews, his wife, Debra Bender, and their son, Pat Bender of Seattle.
“They were married,” Shane tells Pasquale. “Sposati. This was Dee Moray’s husband—il marito. Morto, incidente di macchina.”
Claire looks over. Pasquale has gone white. He asks when. “Quando?”
“Nel sessantasette.”
“Tutto questo è pazzesco,” Pasquale mutters. This is all crazy. He says nothing more, just slumps back in his seat, hand rising slowly to his mouth. He seems to have no more interest in the file and he stares out the window at the strip-mall sprawl, much the way he stared out the window on the plane earlier.
Claire looks from Shane to Pasquale and back. “Did he expect her never to get married? Fifty years . . . that’s asking a lot.” Pasquale says nothing.
“Have you ever thought about a TV show where you fix people up with their old high school flames?” Shane asks Michael Deane, who ignores the question.