A Bookmarked Death Read online

  “How else could he have known after all these years except by magic, even the address where to find them? The Internet perhaps, but there is no evidence from the State that a search for that information was found on Dr. Fitzhugh’s computers. Tell me, Ms. Turnelli, what did the police find from the forensic examination of Dr. Fitzhugh’s automobile and place of residence? I assume such a search was conducted.”

  I could see only the prosecutor’s profile, but I was happy that her cheeks seemed to redden. Tell him the truth, you idiot! “Nothing substantial, Your Honor. But—­”

  He peered at her. “No trace evidence at all?”

  “No sir. But the boots—­”

  I winced, but the judge interrupted her.

  “Ah, the boots. A pair of common rubber boots left outside a home where Dr. Fitzhugh no longer lives. That suggests to me that someone not knowing that fact could have planted them there. Has that not occurred to anyone else?”

  Me, me! It occurred to me, I wanted to shout.

  Ms. Turnelli looked down sullenly but did not answer.

  He leaned back in his leather swivel chair and sighed. “If this weren’t such a serious case, I’d be tempted to dismiss this complaint. I doubt that a grand jury would return a true bill based on what’s here.” He slapped the paper with the back of his hand, startling the room.

  “Your Honor, we are pursuing other avenues, such as Colin Fitzhugh’s trip to Rhode Island in April to confront Dr. Crosley. I believe that by the time the case gets to a grand jury, the evidence will be considerable. We are asking for no bail as befits a capital offense.”

  I pressed my hands together, shocked. How did they know about Colin’s attempt to confront Ethan? Would the ­people he spoke to in Rhode Island have to come down and testify? What if they were Ethan’s friends, and wanted to avenge his death? What if they lied?

  The judge sighed. “Ms. Turnelli, my duty is to make an assessment based on the evidence in your complaint, not some pie-­in-­the-­sky you hope to feed us at a later date.”

  Someone in the front snickered.

  Stanton Miles finally stepped forward. “Judge, we move that you dismiss the bill of criminal complaint based on insufficient evidence.”

  “Motion denied, Counsel.”

  I slumped back against the bench. From the way the judge had been attacking the prosecution’s case, I’d thought he was on our side. Maybe he had been playing a game with her that had nothing to do with us, a game that he let her win at the end. So much for my hope of Colin walking out of here free.

  “Your Honor, Dr. Fitzhugh is a tenured member of the Stony Brook University faculty and has never been charged with a felony or misdemeanor, not even a speeding summons. He is a noted archeologist whose behavior has always been exemplary. He owns property and he has four children. The police are holding his passport, so he could not leave the country even if he wanted to.”

  “Hitler had a pet kitten,” the judge mused.

  Stanton was undeterred. “Dr. Fitzhugh is no flight risk. Furthermore, there is simply no physical evidence to place him at the scene of the fire, nothing incriminating on his computer or in his home or car as Your Honor has pointed out. He did not drive to Southampton the night of the crime. Based on this fairy tale, I’m requesting that Dr. Fitzhugh be released on his own recognizance.”

  “Granted.” Judge Cooperman lifted his gavel but Ms. Turnelli was lifting an arm too.

  “Objection! We are in the process of gathering more information that will lead to a stronger indictment.”

  “Overruled. Next case.”

  I COULDN’T BELIEVE that we were walking up the aisle and out of the courtroom, that Colin was walking next to me and on his way home. My legs seemed weightless as we pushed through the swinging doors. A man and a woman close to my age jumped up and followed us.

  “Dr. Fitzhugh, Dr. Fitzhugh,” the man cried.

  Colin turned, startled. A former student?

  “Is it true that you hadn’t seen the deceased in years? Or was there more recent contact? How did you know he was out in Southampton?”

  There was a sudden flash, a tiny supernova, and I saw that the woman was pointing a camera at Colin.

  Stanton grabbed Colin’s arm. “Damn newspaper ghouls. Even when there’s no case, they’ll try to make one.” He hurried us down the hall toward the lobby, turning back only once. “We have no comment. If you listened to the judge, you’d know they have no case.”

  “Why are they doing this?” I gasped as we entered the nearly empty waiting room.

  “Because nothing exciting ever happens on Long Island and this is the kind of gruesome news they love. Don’t be surprised at what they concoct for Newsday tomorrow morning.”

  “Newsday!” Colin and I were both dismayed.

  “They’re going to put his picture in the paper based on nothing?” That bothered me almost as much as Ms. Turnelli’s threat to find better evidence.

  The reporter and photographer had circled around and were waiting for us by the outside doors. They had been joined by a freckled, sandy-­haired man. He was the one who asked the next question. “Dr. Fitzhugh, what did the judge mean about the Crosleys kidnapping your daughter nineteen years ago? Did you ever get her back?”

  “Don’t say anything,” Stanton hissed, and we didn’t. The woman with the camera ran around in front and photographed all three of us. There was something aggressive about her action, a slap at us for being uncooperative.

  “How did they know we were going to be here?” I asked Stanton.

  He blinked at me. “They didn’t. They’re in the Arraignments Part every day. Today they just got more than they were expecting. Be thankful News 12 has bigger fish to fry.”

  As we crossed the parking lot, I held tight to Judge Cooperman’s assessment of the weakness of the case, as weak, I hoped, as the elderly man tottering across the parking lot supported by two attendants.

  “Let’s get some coffee and we can talk about what’s next,” Stanton said.

  Next? Could there be something worse? A black cloud shower-­capped the sky. I knew the prosecutor had threatened to strengthen the case, but what more was there to find?

  “There’s a diner, the Starlight, nearly in the village,” Stanton told us. “Just turn left when you pull out and keep going till you see it.”

  “But what else could happen?” I demanded.

  “We’ll talk.”

  Back in the van, I collapsed against the driver’s seat. Safe. We were safe. We could still leave Long Island, drive and drive until no one could ever find us. “Thank God they let you go,” I gasped.

  “For now.”

  “But what else can they find? Except . . .”

  “Except?” His head whipped around.

  “You know.” I cranked the ignition too fast; it made a squawking protest. “Nobody knows that you’ve been to that house before. On vacation with Ethan.”

  “What are you talking about? That was almost thirty years ago! I told you, I couldn’t even find it again. What the judge said was true. I had no idea that they were out there last week.”

  I sighed, holding the steering wheel. There was nobody left to tell them about those long-­ago vacations. Whoever might have known—­Ethan, Sheila, the elder Crosleys—­were dead now. “But how did they know you went to Rhode Island in April?”

  “That’s easy enough. Someone from Brown probably told them. Or his neighbor from across the street who I talked to afterward.”

  “But the neighbor was the one who told you Ethan and Sheila had already left for Barbados. So that’s good—­isn’t it?”

  “Go on. Stanton’s waiting.”

  I backed the van slowly out of the space. “I was hoping the judge would dismiss the case due to lack of evidence.” Praying, even. “If only he had!”

  “Yeah, bu
t there’s always the boots.”

  Those damn boots.

  Chapter Twenty-­Three

  AS SOON AS I dropped Colin off at the university and got back to the house, I called Hannah and Jane to let them know that things were still fine, that we would be heading up for Hannah’s graduation on Saturday as planned. Neither girl answered her phone so I left voice mails.

  Stanton hadn’t had anything earth-­shattering to say. He was more interested in recapping what had happened, in accepting our praise for how well he had done for Colin—­even though I felt privately that the credit belonged to the judge. On the other hand, it hadn’t hurt to have someone of Stanton’s stature representing us. He explained that the case would now go to a grand jury, which could take several weeks.

  Jane called back that night. Talking to her heartened me enough to call Jason in Santa Fe and tell him the whole story. I didn’t expect much sympathy from him, given his estrangement from Colin. But Jason was outraged. “They can’t do that to Dad,” he protested. “The whole thing’s nuts!”

  “I know.”

  “What planet are they operating from? How can they think anyone like him could kill ­people?”

  “I don’t know, but I wish you were here.” I hadn’t meant to say that. I wanted the children to be free to pursue whatever they wanted in life without making them feel guilty. “I miss you.”

  A pause. “But I like it out here, Ma. I have friends. There’s even a gallery that thinks my art is interesting.”

  “You’re so far away.”

  “I’ll come back if anything happens. I was just home in March. Two months ago!”

  “I know.”

  Jason had not been an easy child to raise, dyslexic and uninterested in academics. He had fixated on computer games and horror movies, creating artwork showing aliens attacking each other in clashing colors that made Colin wince. But my life felt emptier without Jason close by. My instinct was to huddle the wagons together for safety. What if something happened to him so far away? I needed everyone in one place so I could protect them.

  Why hadn’t Hannah called me back?

  I still hadn’t heard from her next morning. I knew I had to look at Newsday, but I made coffee and ate a bowl of granola with blueberries first. Then I moved into the living room and turned on my laptop. I didn’t even have to scroll down the page before I encountered myself, looking older with my hair pulled back. Stanton, Colin, and I all looked serious, as if in the middle of a mission. At least the paper hadn’t unearthed an earlier unrelated photo of us grinning like idiots.

  The story was slanted to create as much drama as possible, and did not even mention Judge Cooperman‘s scathing assessment of the evidence. Most of the account focused on what had happened to Ethan and Sheila and showed a small picture of them at a gala New England event. They were smiling, and their smiles only added to the poignancy of their deaths.

  Then the reporter told me something that the police hadn’t. Earlier on the evening that they died, Ethan and Sheila had eaten at the John Dory Inn in Southampton. That dinner was the last charge they made on their American Express card.

  I stared at the screen. How had Newsday had gotten a copy of their credit card activity? From what I knew of Carew, she would never have released that information. I reminded myself that in our electronic age, newspapers had their own ways of getting information, their own “experts.” Newsday no doubt knew other things I needed to know. What time the Crosleys had left the restaurant, for instance, and whether they had met anyone there. How they had spent their final hours. Did the paper have a way of hacking into police files?

  I made a note of the reporter’s name—­was he the one with the tortoiseshell glasses, or the sandy-­haired man with freckles?—­and pushed the “Contact Us” link, writing down the phone number as well.

  I stopped myself right there. It was too crazy, the wife of a murder suspect talking to a reporter. But I only had to ask him one question, though he was in a position to know other things as well. I was sure the answer was something he already knew from researching the story.

  Contacting a Newsday reporter was not as difficult as calling the mayor. Louis Benat was on the phone right away.

  “Lou Benat.” He sounded rested, ready to spend the day upsetting other ­people’s lives.

  “Hi, this is Delhi Laine. Colin Fitzhugh’s wife? I think I saw you in court yesterday.” Was this the stupidest thing I had ever done?

  “Yes, right! What can I do for you?” He sounded as if a sack of winning lottery tickets had just been dumped on his desk.

  “I read your story this morning about the Crosleys’ dinner at the John Dory Inn. I was wondering how much the bill came to.”

  “You mean how much they paid for dinner?” He did not sound as if that was the question he was expecting. “I could find out. For a consideration.”

  Here we go. “What kind of consideration?”

  “Well, we could start with an interview. How it feels to have your husband kill someone. The details about the Crosleys kidnapping your daughter. I could find zilch on that. Where did it happen?” He talked fast, as if he feared being hung up on before he could finish what he had to say.

  For good reason. My rush of outrage was disproportionate to the mild spring day outside. I muttered, “Sorry I bothered you,” and pressed end call.

  The phone rang immediately and I picked it up, ready to tell him he was offensive beyond belief. “Do you always—­”

  “Yeah, I know. I come on too strong. But I really want to talk to you.” He turned it into a pickup line.

  “I’m not interested. I only wanted some simple information that I can get from the restaurant anyway.” I couldn’t imagine how.

  “Why would you want to know that? I think you had a deeper reason for calling me. You want the world to know the truth.”

  Did I? What if I told him my theory that someone other than the Crosleys had died in the fire and he was able to help me find out what had really happened? How could I have thought he would give me any information without quid pro quo? No one did anything without payback. But if it meant Colin would not have to go to trial or be convicted . . .

  “What’s important about what they ate for dinner?” he wheedled.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You think it will help your husband’s defense? Did he eat dinner with them before he set the fire?”

  Reporters, like booksellers, were not all insufferable, but this one was close to the top. “My husband was never in Southampton. If you’d listened to the judge you’d know they have no case.”

  “So why are you pursuing it?”

  Fair question. “Because I want to know what really happened.” It occurred to me then that I knew something important he didn’t. It had not been reported anywhere that the bodies had been burned to disfigurement before the house fire was even set. The police had not released that information to the media and none of them had thought to ask about it.

  The judge had referred to the time lapse between the Crosleys’ death and the fire, but it had not been in the newspaper story.

  “I bet I know lots of things you don’t,” Louis Benat teased.

  “I’ll bet you do.”

  “I’ll trade.”

  “This isn’t a junior high sleepover.” I let Shaun Daniels feel me up under my sweater. “I’ll tell you what: If I find out anything earth-­shattering, you’ll be the first to know. That’s all I have to trade.” I was ready to end the call when he said, “It came to $523 with tip. Are you surprised?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your husband didn’t tell you?”

  “For the record. My husband was at a retirement dinner in Stony Brook with over two hundred witnesses. Confirmed by the police.”

  “Okay, but what does that kind of money tell you?”

  “Th
at they were eating with other ­people and picked up the check.”

  “Yeah.” He sounded thoughtful. “Why didn’t I think of that? I just figured they were drinking expensive wine or something.”

  You need to get out more. Even wealthy ­people don’t run up that kind of bill for a casual night out.

  “If they were eating with other ­people, why didn’t those ­people come forward after the fire?” he asked. “Why didn’t they go to the police?”

  “You don’t know that they didn’t. But maybe they didn’t think the dinner had anything to do with what happened later.” Maybe they’re dead.

  “Rich ­people think they’re above the law,” he pronounced.

  Oversimplify much? How could I have ever been tempted to sign him on?

  “So you’re going to keep me posted.” He sounded as if he didn’t believe me.

  “I said I would.”

  “Okay, but tell me this: How come the police aren’t blaming you?”

  I broke the connection.

  Chapter Twenty-­Four

  IT WAS TOO early to go to the John Dory Inn. I called Hannah and left a message reminding her that we would get to the house where she was living on Saturday around lunchtime, then made myself go over and open the carton of sale books I had bought last week. The train into summer was pulling out of the station, and I had not yet jumped on board. Estate and book sales were increasing just as Internet sales slowed down for the summer. I should already be researching the ads and checking with Marty about the best upcoming sales. I promised myself that after the weekend at Cornell I would settle down.

  As if . . .

  But I had no choice. The small salary I received from Marty for managing Port Lewis Books would hardly be enough if the worst happened: if Colin’s court costs wiped out our savings and he lost his position at the university.

  We wouldn’t even have a place to live. Once Colin was no longer on the faculty, we would not be eligible to rent this university-­owned farmhouse. It would be the end of having the barn to store my books and work out of. Thank God that Jane and Hannah were finished with college. I could even be grateful that Jason was insisting he would never go back.