Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (42 page)

agreed that a move to Portland might he a good idea.
 
While he still

didn't have a regular job, he was confident he could find something

that suited him just as well in Oregon as he could in Washington.
 
And

so, in January 1985, they moved into a rental house in Gresham.
 
It was

not a lavish home, but pleasant and roomy.
 
The rent was something over

nine hundred dollars a month, and Cheryl paid it, just as she paid all

the household bills.

Garvev, Schubert's Portland offices were state of the art, very plush,

with thick carpets, lovely paintings, and expensive furnishings.

Even the lighting was computerized so that each office's lights went on

when someone walked through the door.
 
Cheryl would have her own

paralegal assistant and her own secretary, and she herself would

continue to mentor young attorneys fresh from law school.
 
She was

finally at a place in her legal career that she had always dreamed

of.

Maybe, somehow, things would be all right after all.

Since Brad would be job-hunting, he and Cheryl hired a baby-sitter,

nineteen-year-old Marnie O"Connor.X She was a very pretty girl and the

little Cunningham boys liked her right away.
 
Cheryl was glad to see

that, and she was reassured by how dependable Marnie seemed to be.

That was important, because she expected to be shuttling between

Portland and Seattle over the next year or more.
 
She would be working

on a huge ongoing medical malpractice litigation until it was settled,

and when she was in the Portland offices of Garvey, Schubert, she knew

she might sometimes have to work seven days a week.
 
Brad was the

furthest thing from a househusband anyone could imagine.
 
Even when he

was unemployed, Cheryl couldn't count on him to stay with the boys.

She had to have Marnie there or she would never have a moment's peace

while she was away from her children.

Brad found a job in Oregon in the spring of 1985, and it was a position

with no little prestige.
 
He was hired to head the income property loan

department of the Citizens' Savings and Loan Bank in Salem.
 
He would

have a private office, and three employees would report to him.

Oregon's capital city is forty-seven miles south of Portland, a fairly

easy commute along the I-5 freeway.
 
Besides that, Brad would he going

in the opposite direction from most commuters, so he could expect less

than an hour's drive each way as he cruised along in one or the other

Mercedes.

Citizens' Savings and Loan had hired a most impressive department

manager.
 
Brad dressed like a GQ model, his smile was wide and

confident, and his resume showed more than fifteen years of experience

in one aspect of real estate or another.
 
The Houston credits alone

were imposing.
 
He clearly knew income property, and he presented

himself extremely well in his interviews.
 
(Whether Brad mentioned his

ongoing litigation in Texas or his bankruptcy filing is not known.) The

employees at Citizens' who reported directly to Brad were female.

Even though he made no secret of the fact that he was a married man, it

was obvious that he thoroughly enjoyed the company of women, and he was

a pleasure to work for.
 
He was compelling and dynamic, he drove

fantastic cars, and he had an air of wealth about himþalmost as if he

didn't need to work at all but could have chosen to remain in the

ieisure class he had been born into.
 
No one would ever have guessed

the truth about the modest home where Sanford and Rosemary had raised

Brad and his two sisters.
 
No one would ever have suspected his Indian

heritage.

Through plastic surgery, education, a certain natural savvy, and the

liberal use of Cheryl's income, Brad had completely re-created himself

None of his coworkers at Citizens' knew, of course, that his cars,

clothes, and money came not from his own labors but from his wife's.

Cheryl worked harder and harder, but however much money she made, Brad

always managed to spend more.
 
"If he brought home a pizza now and

then," Cheryl's sister recalled, "he thought he was doing his part."

Cheryl hoped that Brad's new job would help rebuild their financial

base.
 
After so many years when his only "job" had been his dogged

attention to the suit he had filed against the Texas construction

company, they were both making good salaries.
 
Understandably, Cheryl

earned a great deal more than Brad, but had they pulled together, they

would have rapidly been in good financial shape.

In truth, Brad's salary made no dent at all in their debts.
 
He

continued to overspend, buying whatever he wanted.
 
Cheryl had paid all

the household bills since 1983þthe rent, the utilities, the boys'

baby-sitters and schools, the groceriesþalthough she deferred to Brad's

insistence that the accounts be listed in his name, he was, after all,

the man of the family.
 
He didn't want people to know that he was

living off Cheryl.

Sometimes it seemed as if Brad spent money just to spend money, and

Cheryl despaired of ever catching up, telling her sister Susan, "Look

at all this stuff," gesturing toward the piles of "toys" that Brad had

bought and then left to gather dust.
 
"And I can't pay all the bills

.

.

."

"She resigned herself to debt," Susan remembered.
 
"The garage in the

Gresham house had four-wheelers, three-wheelers, water skis, jet skis,

Brad's clothes, Brad's shoes.
 
One timeþand this makes me so sad now to

remember itþCheryl really needed some new underwear.
 
Just some simple,

plain underwear, and she didn't have enough money to buy it."

It was ludicrous that she should be so laden down with debt.
 
Due to

transfers of other partners, when she moved to the Garvey, Schubert

office in Portland, Cheryl became not only the most senior partner in

that city but also an "owner" of the firm, eligible for salary, profit

sharing, and benefits.
 
In 1986 her base salary was fifty thousand

dollars.
 
She was also awarded a merit bonus of forty-five hundred

dollars, and on top of that she received benefits worth another 15

percent of her salary.
 
She had been picked for the Portland office

because of her leadership ability and because litigators traditionally

bring more money into a firm, and Cheryl brought in more than her

share.

"Cheryl was a business developer," another partner commented.
 
"She

represented Weverhauser, for instance."

In 1984 senior partner Gary Strauss attended a product liability trial

involving formaldehyde ingestion.
 
Cheryl gave her closing arguments

after the others had all spoken.
 
Strauss found her "brilliant,

poignant, awesome in a roomful of attorneys.
 
The jury told her that

afterward .
 
.

. that was the way a closing argument should be."
 
This pleased

Strauss, he knew how embarrassed Cheryl had been about Brad's filing

for bankruptcy and his constant litigation.
 
"She wasn't very happy

about all the lawyers battling each other in Brad's suits," he

remembered.

"She had been hesitant even about accepting a partnership because of

that."

Even though Cheryl made Brad's standard of living possible, he

complained when she had to stay in Seattle overnightþinsinuating, as

always, that she was sleeping with other men.
 
Brad himself was seldom

without female company.
 
From puberty he had had his choice of women,

and they always played by his rules.
 
Now, living in Gresham, working

in Salem, with Cheryl often gone overnight, Brad essentially lived the

life of a single man.

It would be impossible to pinpoint whether he began his affair with the

Cunningham baby-sitter, nineteen-year-old Marnie O"Connor, or his

liaison with Lily Saarnen first.
 
It would be a moot point anyway,

Brad had always been adept at balancing a marriage and twoþor moreþ

affairs.

There was no reason that Marnie and Lily should ever meet.

Cheryl had no hint that Brad was sleeping with either of them.

Lily Saarnen had worked at Citizens' Savings for four years when Brad

took over as her supervisor.
 
She found him tremendously attractive and

very understanding.
 
Lily knew he was married, but that didn't bother

her.
 
Apparently his wife was so caught up in her career that she had

little time for Brad.
 
Although Lily dressed like the complete career

woman, Brad hadn't missed the long slow looks she gave him, or the way

she "accidentally" brushed against him as they were going over loan

applications.
 
He saw that Lily was spectacularly attractive behind

her horn-rimmed glasses and her loose clothes.
 
She had perfectly

aligned delicate features and long silky ash blond hair.

Careful not to be too obvious in the bank's offices, Brad and Lily

began a physical affair in the late summer of 1985.
 
They would have an

oddly connected relationship that lasted for a long time.
 
While Lily

knew about his wife, she did not know he was also sleeping with his

baby-sitter.
 
Whether she had any long-term plans for Brad is

questionable.
 
Lily was intelligent and pragmatic, and of all Brad's

women, she may have seen beyond his complex and contrived facade early

enough to steel her own emotional response.
 
It is even possible that

Lily used Brad almost as much as he used most of the women in his

life.

Lily believed that Brad was very wealthy.
 
She had every reason to.

He seemed not only quite rich but munificent with his money.
 
"He was

not overly generous," she would say one day, with her usual

understatement, "but he was very supportive of the sad situation I was