Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (43 page)

in."
 
And, indeed, there would come a time when Lily needed more than

flowers, fancy dinners, and lingerie.
 
Although she was a ,young woman,

her health was not good, and it deteriorated further shortly after she

and Brad became intimate.

Nineteen eighty-five was an almost schizophrenic year for Cheryl.

She loved her career, she adored her little boys, and she was finding

wonderfully loyal friends in the Portland office of Garvey, Schubert.

Along with her extended family, Cheryl's friends kept her going.
 
Her

marriage was little more than a sham.
 
All the Pollyanna philosophizing

in the world wasn't going to turn the home she and Brad had rented in

Gresham into anything more than an armed camp.
 
Cheryl sometimes

wondered why Brad stayed with her and the boys, but she must have

suspected it was because she had become his "cash cow."

Cheryl could count on nothing, she walked through her days awaiting the

next assault, teetering emotionally on the edge of some precipice from

which she might never escape.
 
Brad still pulled his "move furniture

out, move furniture in" games, but by the fall of 1985 he didn't take

just "his" furniture, he took Cheryl's too.
 
There was something

ultimately demoralizing about coming home to a house emptied of its

furniture, to see the dents in the carpet where couches and chairs and

televieions should have been, to watch dust bunnies drifting lazily

across bare floors when a door was opened.

By mutual agreement, Brad and Cheryl had enrolled Jess and Michael in

the Franciscan Montessori Earth School, administered by Mother Francene

Cardeux.
 
It was an excellent and much sought-after school in

Portland, with a philosophy that nurtured and encouraged creativity and

independence in children.
 
Exceptionally intelligent children like the

Cunningham boys thrived in the Montessori atmosphere.

Mother Francene was a serene presence, but in no way a cloistered nun,

in her many years of experience in running the Montessori school she

had seen all manner of problems with parents and children and dealt

with them competently and tactfully.
 
She had, however, seen nothing

like the bitterness between Brad and Cheryl.
 
Every encounter with them

was unpleasant.

Early in the 1985-86 school year, Mother Francene was informed of an

altercation in the hallway, the Cunninghams were arguing loudly outside

the secretary's office.
 
She was grateful their children didn't observe

that fight, but Mother Francene was appalled at one volatile argument

that did take place in front of Jess and Michael.
 
The boys had been

waiting for someone to pick them up after school, two lonely little

figures clinging together as they watched the other children leave the

school one by one until they were the last ones left.
 
"Day-care

children were to be picked up by six-fifteen P.M" Mother Francene

recalled, and the school set a dollar-a-minute penalty for late

pickups, more to protect the children than to add to the school's

budget.
 
One day "no one came for the Cunningham boys."

Eventually, both Brad and Cheryl showed up, and each blamed the other

for failing to pick up Jess and Michael on time.
 
"He was very angry.

She was quieter, saying to him, You were responsible," " Mother

Francene said with a shudder.
 
"I just remember I didn't want to be

there.
 
I was embarrassed.
 
The boys were embarrassedþand agitated.

They wanted their parents to leave."

More and more Jess, Michael, and to a lesser extent Phillip were pulled

in two directions like stretchy Silly Putty figures.
 
Their mother

wanted desperately to protect them and give them a secure world, their

father used them to harass their mother.
 
And the boys were the most

vulnerable part of Cheryl's life.
 
She could face anythingþanythingþ

but losing them.

The product liability cases that drew Cheryl back to Seattle on an

almost weekly basis had begun in the late spring of 1985.
 
Garvey,

Schubert represented a company that had manufactured an artificial

heart valve.
 
The attorney Cheryl faced in litigating sessions, who

represented patients whose heart valves had allegedly malfunctioned,

was Jim Griswold, onetime president of the Oregon Trial Lawyers

Association.

Griswold described such litigation as "a very difficult kind of

case."

Cheryl and her co-counsel, John Allison, practically had to take a

course in cardiovascular surgery in order to defend their clients.

Griswold had come up against hundreds of defense litigators: he had

been in practice for four decades.
 
When he was later asked to describe

Cheryl Keeton, he paused, searching for words.
 
"Excellent.

Outstanding wouldn't cover it.

She was intense, professional.
 
She always knew what she was doing.

She always knew where she was going.... She was never thrown off."
 
At

one time, Griswold was on a committee to compile a list of attorneys to

be recommended to the Oregon governor for judgeships.
 
Cheryl was on

that list, termed "highly qualified."

Cheryl opposed Griswold in the artificial heart valve litigation for a

year and a half, and as far as he could see, she was never less than an

extremely competent lawyer.
 
Whatever emotions might have been churning

inside, Cheryl kept them there.
 
Later, Griswold would be amazed to

learn what her private life had been like.
 
Cheryl always managed to

keep her personal and professional life separated.
 
Drawing on some

deep inner strength, she was holding herself together with brains,

guts, hope, and her love for her three sons.
 
But with every passing

day, her situation was becoming more and more unbearable.

In the fall of 1985

Cheryl's sister Susan was living in Seattle, working toward a degree in

sociology at the University of Washington.
 
Her apartment there was

always available to Cheryl when she had to be in Seattle on business

for Garvey, Schubert.
 
She had her own key, and she averaged one visit

a month.
 
Occasionally she could even prevail upon Brad to bring the

boys up so they could all be together.
 
She missed them so much.

Sometimes Susan was there, sometimes the apartment was empty.

Since Susan's fiance, Dave Keegan, was in Longview and she often went

to see him, Cheryl was occasionally alone in Susan's apartment.
 
But

more often they were there together.
 
They were both grown women now

and were friends as well as sisters.

That fall of 1985 was the first time Brad explicitly accused Cheryl of

having extramarital affairs, and once he had begun, he continually

railed at her about her alleged infidelity.
 
It is an all too common

ploy for a man who is cheating to defuse suspicion by accusing his wife

of what he himself is doing.
 
And it is quite possible that Cheryl did

have one or tWO fleeting relationships with other men late in 1985 and

early in 1986.
 
Who could have blamed her?
 
"The police asked me about

it later," Susan recalled, "and I told them I didn't know if Cheryl was

seeing other men or not, but I told them I hoped she was.
 
She needed

someone in her life who made her happy, someone who cared about herShe

knew that Brad was cheating on her, she'd known it for a long time, but

I think she tried to look away from that.
 
She tried not to think about

it."

Cheryl was a beautiful woman, only thirty-five, and she still drew

attention from men.
 
Her years with Brad had well nigh obliterated her

self-esteem.
 
When the men she worked with occasionally complimented

her, she almost looked around to see whom they were talking about.
 
The

experience of having a man actually treat her well, tell her positive

things, even hold her with tenderness, was something she had

forgotten.

Cheryl was a vulnerable woman and terribly sad.
 
All of her successes

in courtrooms and in boardrooms faded when she realized how alone she

was.

She was married, but her husband didn't love her.
 
Beyond her value as

a wage earner, she had become a mere convenience, an irritant.
 
If she

had an affair or two, they were brief and born of desperate loneliness

rather than passion.

If she had an affair, Susan didn't know about it.
 
She smiled as she

remembered a time in the late summer of 1985.
 
"Cheryl was in Seattle

and stayed with me.
 
We went to the Red Robin [a popular upscale

Seattle hamburger restaurant] and we both ordered margaritas.
 
We were

having fun.
 
I was in college by then.
 
Then we went to the Red Onion,

down by Madison Park.
 
These two guys came over to our table, and they

were coming on to us.
 
Cheryl just winked at me.
 
All of a sudden, one

of the guys looked close at Cheryl and he said, You're wearing married

lipstick."

"Cheryl laughed and said, Well, I guess that's it.
 
I'm not changing

shades anytime soon."

" Cheryl hadn't taken the men seriously, and Susan knew it.
 
"Cheryl

was responsible.
 
Brad was the first dangerous thing she ever did.
 
She

was embarrassed that she was pregnant when she married him.
 
She didn't

tell anyone in the family that she was pregnant until she was five

months."

Brad saw accusations of infidelity as a way to harass and humiliate his

wife.
 
Smugly, armed with the names of two men he believed Cheryl had

been intimate with, he embarked on a tell-all campaign that he felt

sure would ruin Cheryl's career.

He first called the wife of a senior partner at Garvey, Schubert and