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EMMA’S HUSBAND WANTED to stay downstairs and socialize after dinner, so Emma invited me back up to her room to keep her company. It was only after we reached her room and she closed the door that I realized my ears were ringing from the raucous conversation.
“So were you okay sitting next to Sherry?” she asked.
“M-hm. It was fine. And now I’m having second thoughts about her being Donnie’s ex-wife. I mean, I can’t picture Sherry and Donnie together at all, much less married.”
“Did you ask her about him?”
“There was no way to do it tactfully. And after Glenn came back, I gave up trying to make conversation.”
“So what did you do then? Sat there and didn’t say anything?
“More or less.”
“Really?”
“There were enough talkers around the table. If anything, I’d say there weren’t enough listeners. So I was able to fill that important role.”
“Yeah, sounds like our crew,” Emma said. “They probably liked having an audience. But wait, about Sherry and Donnie. You were so sure on the drive over she was his ex-wife. You almost had me convinced. Like you said, how many Sherrines can there be? So what made you change your mind?”
“I don’t know. I guess it’s because it’s so hard for me to imagine those two together. I mean, Donnie thinks it’s inappropriate when people hold hands in public. Did you see what Sherry and Glenn were doing?”
“That’s what I was trying to tell you. Now can you help me with this? I have to post today’s results on our club website and put some kind of memorial for Kathy Banks. I shoulda done it already. My crew was bugging me about it today.”
Emma went over to the desk and started up her laptop. I took my place in the chair beside her.
“What are you going to write about her?” I sure didn’t have any ideas.
“I don’t know. I guess I’ll put, in memory of Kathy Banks. I have to put the dates. Birth and death.”
“Sounds great,” I said.
“But I don’t know her birth year.”
“Wouldn’t she have put it on her club application?”
“Yeah. Too bad I don’t have the applications with me.”
“Where are they?”
“Probably in a file drawer somewhere in my lab.”
“Can you wait until we get back to Mahina to finish the web page?”
“No, they’re all expecting me to get it done tonight.”
“So then forget about the dates. Why not just In memory of Kathy Banks?”
“Shouldn’t there be more than five words? Doesn’t hardly seem like enough.”
“How about, In Memory of Kathy Banks. She sure could tell the difference between canary and goldenrod.”
“I know,” Emma exclaimed. “I’ll put something inspired by today’s race.”
“No, don’t put anything corny like ‘May you frolic with dolphins forever.’ You’ll just regret it later.”
“I need a picture of her too.”
“What about one of your team photos? Crop it down so you only have her in the picture.”
Emma browsed the club website for a few moments, her frown becoming more pronounced.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“Kathy’s not in any of our team photos. I never noticed before.”
I leaned in to look over her shoulder.
“I’m friends with Kathy,” I said. “Online, I mean. Maybe she has—I mean, had something in her photo albums. You’re friends with her too, right?”
“Oh, good idea.” Emma pulled up the social networking website and went to Kathy’s pictures.
“It feels creepy to poke around in a dead woman’s photos,” Emma said.
“It’s just ones and zeros,” I reassured her, not feeling particularly good about it myself. Emma paged through the scenic photos. We saw Kuewa’s shabby, brightly painted boardwalk; a few shots of snowy mountaintops; the Bayfront on a day so clear you could see past the breakwall, clear up the coast. There were no people anywhere in the pictures.
“How about Sherry’s account?” I suggested.
Emma clicked a few times.
“Jackpot!” she yelled, so loud it made me jump.
“Oh, looks nice,” I said. “Kind of an action shot. What are you guys doing there?”
“We’re rigging the canoe. Kathy’s hair’s kind of falling into her face, but you can tell it’s her. I dunno. What do you think?”
Emma downloaded Sherry’s photo and opened it in her editing software. She selected a square around Kathy’s face and enlarged it.
“I could crop it here,” she said.
“Looks fine. The resolution’s kind of grainy when you enlarge it, but you can tell it’s her.”
“Yeah, it’s not the best.” Emma sighed, disappointed.
“Hey, you know what you should try? The facial recognition software. Maybe Kathy had another online photo album somewhere. You might be able to find a better picture.”
“Facial recognition software? The thing your crazy student was ranting about? Is it hard to use?”
“I doubt it. Anyway, we have a picture of Kathy right here. Why don’t we try it out?”
We found the site with little difficulty. Emma uploaded the photo, indicated the location of facial features with a few clicks, and chose the option to search for visual matches. It wasn’t quite as easy as Davison had made it sound when he was talking about it at dinner, but it worked. A page popped up right away.
“Boo,” I said. “False positive.”
“No, it looks like her,” Emma said.
“It’s not her,” I insisted. “This lady? The brunette? Click through.”
Kathy Banks’ dark-haired doppelganger, someone named Karolyn Beckenbauer, was the subject of a story on the website of a Midwestern news station.
Emma peered at the screen. “Why does the name of that college sound familiar?”
“That’s the for-profit that’s getting sued. Sherry was telling me she attended for a while. Remember Bob Wilson sent out the letter to the editor about how we’re barely better than a for-profit? This is the institution he used as the example.”
“Bob Wilson is the one who wrote that letter? That explains how come I just got an invitation to his going-away party.”
“Sherry told me she enrolled at that for-profit after she saw their ads on TV. I’m amazed she fell for that. Who would go to a university that advertises on TV?”
“Our school has a TV ad now,” Emma said.
“That’s right. I forgot about that.”
“Look, Molly, you were right. This isn’t Kathy Banks.”
“I know. This story is about someone who’s brave and selfless.”
“I meant because...c’mon, Molly, let it go.”
“Sorry.”
“Besides, Kathy was supposedly a natural blonde, remember?”
“Oh, I’m not letting things go? Look, you can click there to search for more matches.”
We found several more photos of Karolyn Beckenbauer, including a cached portrait on the website of the embattled for-profit university. She had worked in their admissions office.
“No pictures at all of Kathy Banks,” Emma exclaimed, frustrated. “What was she, some kind of spy?”
“Why would anyone put a spy in the Student Retention Office?”
“She doesn’t have any online presence. How weird is that?”
“It’s not that weird,” I said. “The only reason you and I have any online presence is because of our jobs. If you search for me, all of my results are related to the university, or they’re papers I’ve written, or, of course, the online ratings. If I weren’t an academic, you wouldn’t find anything for me either.”
“How do you know? Molly, do you search for yourself?”
“Don’t you?”
“Maybe. So what now? I still don’t have a good picture of Kathy.”
“Use the one you downloaded from Sherry’s page. It’s not bad.”
“So you don’t think that other woman is her?” Emma asked.
“No. I think it’s someone who happens to have the same distance between her pupils or something.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. I mean, look at you and Sherry. You two actually do look the same. And you aren’t related, right?”
“Probably not, since she’s Italian and I’m Albanian.”
“Hey, Molly, let’s do a facial recognition search for you, and see what comes up.”
“No, let’s not. It’s getting late, and I’m tired. Do you honestly think Sherry and I look that much alike?”
Emma shrugged. “You Italians all look alike to me.”