Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (62 page)

carry-forward," Brad said, and would pay considerably lower taxes than

if she hadn't married him.
 
There would even come a time when Brad

would claim that Sara married him only because she wanted his tax

write-offs.

Nineteen eighty-seven was the first year they filed their income tax

jointly.
 
However, Brad told Sara that he learned on the very last day

of the year that his tax loss could only be used against his income.

He told Sara that a C.P.A. suggested that she pay Brad a salary of

fifty-five thousand dollars on December 31, 1987.
 
The sum was supposed

to be returned into her account.
 
Sara did what she was told to do.

"I signed a lot of signatures I shouldn't have signed," she would say

years later.

"That was certainly one of them...."

Shortly after their marriage, Brad suggested to Sara that she adopt his

youngest sons.
 
He said that she was their mother now, and there was no

reason why she shouldn't cement her emotional bond with them legally.

She agreed readily.
 
Sara loved Jess, Michael, and Phillip as much as

she could love any child she gave birth to.
 
In March 1988 she legally

adopted the three little boys.

New birth certificates were issued.
 
Now Sara's name appeared on the

line for "Mother."
 
There was no longer any mention at all of Cheryl

Keeton, the mother who had given birth to the boy.s and loved them so

deeply.
 
It wasn't Brad's idea, and it certainly wasn't Sara's.
 
She

never wanted to replace Cheryl as the boys' mother, it was simply the

way Oregon adoption law is written.
 
But it was a little sad to see

Cheryl's name erased from her sons' lives, Sara thought, as if she had

never existed at all.

If Cheryl herself had set out to find a mother who would love her

little boys, she could not have found a better one than Sara.
 
But if

she was sometimes disappointed that her relationship with Brad was not

as idyllic as she had hoped it would be, Sara was never disappointed

with Jess, Michael, and Phillip.
 
She loved them devotedly.
 
Without

realizing it, she had given hostages to fortune.

Brad remained the consummate entrepreneur.
 
He was constantly thinking

of ways to get back into the world of business.
 
While he was attending

classes at Portland State, he saw that there was a real need for a

coffee shop close to the college, not everyone wanted to eat at the

college-run cafeteria.
 
He visualized a bakery with fresh muffins,

rolls, and bread, sandwiches and coffee.
 
He could even add a

call-in/take-out lunch run.
 
If it was managed correctly, he figured

that students and anyone with business near the campus would flock to

patronize his small restaurantþgood smells and a warm place to get out

of the rain.

Brad checked out buildings around the college and found one that seemed

perfect.
 
They could gut it, remodel the interior, and use the lower

level for the bakery/coffee shop.
 
Later, when they got a liquor

license, he envisioned a gourmet "bistro" upstairs.
 
It was hard for

Sara to imagine that the deserted building could ever be turned into a

desirable restaurant.
 
"The kids said it best, I guess," she

remembered.
 
"The first time they saw it, they said, This is a piece of

junk."

" Brad assured them all that the building was not junk, it was a

tremendous opportunity.
 
He had not lost one whit of his sales

ability.

When he believed in something, it was difficult not to catch his

fervor, and Sara was soon involved in his plans.
 
"I agreed to finance

the bakery," she later said.
 
Brad would call it the Broadway Bakery.

And the money drain began when Brad wrote a check on their joint

account on April 11, 1988, to the City of Portland for a building

permit: $115.63.
 
Sara would pour some $200,000 into the remodeling of

the old building, transforming it into a bright, inviting restaurant.

Brad was totally in charge of selecting the bakery equipment, and

hiring contractors and employees.
 
Sara paid the bills.
 
The bakery

opened in 1988, and the Bistroþthe upstairs restaurantþin July of

1989.

The bakery barely kept its head above water, even though there was an

enthusiastic response from customers.
 
The Bistro was a financial

flop.

Sara had hoped that the Broadway Bakery and the Bistro would provide

some center and purpose for Brad.
 
He had been through so many bad

years.

He no ionger had a profession, or at least he could not find work in

real estate or banking in Portland.
 
He was only thirty-nine and she

couldn't picture him sitting around the Dunthorpe estate as some kind

of glorified baby-sitter.

Brad reassured Sara that Symptovir, his formula for the alleviation of

herpes symptoms, was still viable.
 
She had never been enthusiastic

about that product, however, whose base ingredient was olive oil.
 
But

Symptovir was no longer Brad's main interest.
 
It wasn't going

anywhere, although Sara had paid those bills too, buying cases of olive

oil and chemicals, getting business cards printed.

Brad chose Spectrum, the name of the division of U.S. Bank for which he

had recently been an executive, for his corporate name.
 
Actually, he

had several small corporations.
 
Every time he opened up another

section of the bakery building, he became another corporation.
 
Sara

could not understand why he did that, but she had never claimed to have

a head for business.

A number of puzzling things happened to Sara in the summer of 1989.

She didn't understand all the ramifications, but an old friend of

Cheryl's þan attorney named John Burkeþwas apparently trying to sue

Brad over Cheryl's death.
 
Brad didn't take it seriously, although he

was incensed at almost anything Burke did.
 
Burke and Bob McNannay

administered the boys' trust fund and Sara knew that Brad felt that

they were deliberately keeping him from getting money that the boys

needed.

Sara was surprised when she learned the name of John Burke's attorney,

Mike Shinn.
 
She had gone to college with Mike and, worried about Brad

and her sons, she wrote and chided him for causing new grief in her

family's lives.
 
They had all been through so much already.
 
Shinn

delayed a reply until he was more familiar with the case.

In the autumn of 1989, Sara and Brad were having dinner at Jake's, a

popular downtown Portland restaurant.
 
She recognized Mike Shinn

sitting at another table and pointed him out to Brad.
 
Later, Brad left

their table briefly and she saw him bend down to say something to

Shinn.

Brad brushed her questions aside when he came back.

At about the same time, Brad hired a young woman named Lynn Minero t to

work as assistant manager of the bakery.
 
He was telling Sara about his

new employee when he suddenly volunteered, "You don't have to worry

about her, Saraþshe's happily married and has two daughters."

Sara laughed at first.
 
"You're happily married and you have two

daughters and four sons."

Sara had never been concerned that Brad might be unfaithful to her.

They had had their differences, but this was simply not a problem that

had ever crossed her mind.
 
Now she looked up at him sharply.
 
Why

would Brad tell her not to worry about a new bakery employee just

because she was a woman?
 
He had been extolling Lynn's virtues and

telling Sara how attractive she was, but that hadn't worried Sara.

For the first time, she wondered.
 
Was Brad protesting too much?

They spent most of their days apart now, both Sara and Brad had to

leave the
 
Dunthorpe house so early in the morningþshe to go to

surgery, he to head for the bakeryþsometimes as early as 4

A.M. Their baby-sitter Shannon Farrell lived in the guest house on the

property, and they knew the boys were well taken care of If Sara had a

flaw, it was that she could be too trusting, too accepting, too

generous.
 
But she was an extremely smart woman and, once the first

atonal ding of doubt sounded, she didn't have to be told twice.
 
In

retrospect, she realized that Brad had been much too complimentary of

his new manager's appearance and much too enthusiastic about her as an

employee.
 
But he made his fatal error when he tried to allay

suspicions his wife hadn't yet felt.

Now she was suspicious.

They spent Thanksgiving of 1989 on Sara's brother's huge ranch in

eastern Oregon.
 
Brad was not the same.
 
Sara's feminine instincts told

her that something was going on.
 
And hell hath no better private

detective than a suspicious wife.
 
Sara began to keep a journal, just

as Cheryl had written notes before her.
 
She began writing down her

thoughts on Saturday, January 17, 1990.
 
Her marriage was slightly more

than two years old, she had adopted Brad's three youngest sons, she had

invested almost a million dollars in his enterprises and in their

Dunthorpe home, and now she had the sickening apprehension that he was

cheating on her at the very workplace she had funded to give him one

more chance for financial success.

"Jan 27: Brad went in to bakery at 4 a.m. At 8:30,1 called and he

wasn't at bakery .
 
. . He called at 9. Said he had put his new tire on

and had gone to a cycle shop to fix something he had broken.

"Feb 1: Brad met me at Fulton's Pub.... He said he had given Lynn a

ride, .
 
. . said she couldn't get hold of Gary* [Lauren's husband] so

she called him and asked him to give her a ride home.... Brad left