A Bookmarked Death Read online

  What could I say to that? “But he sent you a graduation present?”

  “He did. A check for sixty thousand dollars.”

  I caught my breath.

  “You still don’t get it. I don’t want the money, I’d live on the street if it would bring them back.” Her voice ended in a wail.

  “I know. It’s a terrible thing.” But I fought to push back the bitterness that was rising in my throat, burning as fiercely as the residue from the fire when I had gone to the house. The Crosleys had ruined our lives by kidnapping our daughter. But in her eyes she had thought we were the criminals. “I wish I could make you feel better,” I added.

  “Well, you can’t.”

  I had a flash of Elisa as a toddler when we hadn’t had time to stop for the ice cream she was demanding. She had turned her head away from my explanations, refusing to be placated, and nursed her anger the whole way home. And that was when she was two.

  “And the police there are no help. They said they have to autopsy them to find out how they died and confirm their identities. Like they can’t tell? I can’t even plan a funeral!”

  “I know the police. I can try and find out more.” As I said it my mind was running through the five stages of grief. Disbelief first, but anger came soon after. It was hard to believe Elisa would ever reach acceptance.

  “I went out to the house. It’s—­bad.Was there a caretaker or anything, someone who stopped by to get things ready when your parents were going to be there?”

  “What—­why do you want to know about her? Do you think she was careless and left something flammable around?”

  “No. But anything she saw might help. Maybe she saw someone lurking around who shouldn’t have been there.”

  “Huh.”

  Just thinking about a caretaker made me realize again how different Elisa’s upbringing had been compared to the one she would have had with us. We had traveled to digs and guest lectureships at universities as well, but strictly on the no-­frills track. She had already seen our house.

  Rather grudgingly Elisa looked up the caretaker’s direct number and gave it to me.

  “Hannah told me about graduation,” I said. “We’d like to come.”

  Silence. “I definitely want Hannah there.”

  “I’d like to come too.”

  “Well, I can’t stop you.”

  No, you can’t. I’m your mother for God’s sake and I have every right to be there! It’s not my fault that our lives were interrupted.

  “But not him. I don’t want him there.”

  She broke the connection.

  IF YOU HADN’T come looking for me, none of this would have happened.

  I sat in the living room as the evening darkened around me, nursing a glass of Yellow Tail Chardonnay. That was true enough. If I had never gone looking for Elisa and found her, she would’ve been having a triumphant graduation Friday and a wonderful party afterward. I could see the lights shimmering across Narragansett Bay, hear the laughter and congratulations. The live musicians assembled on the dock. Rejoicing and many gifts.

  While we, her real parents, struggled on without her, doing our best, our lives forever marked by the tragedy of her death. But she would have been happy. Was that what Colin had been thinking when he’d advised me not to look for her?

  I took an angry sip of wine, glad of its burn. We were not birth parents who had given Elisa up and regretted it later, though things could not have turned out worse if we had. My daughter, far from being grateful for being found, hated me. My husband was being threatened by the police.

  I can’t stop you from coming.

  Would she really be upset if I came to her graduation? Despite how I felt, I would not force myself on her. How would she feel about Jane being there? They had gotten along well enough that weekend at the house. In some ways Jane and Elisa were more alike than Elisa and Hannah in their direct approach to the world. Jane had been the only one not surprised when she had scored perfectly on the math portion of the SAT and been accepted by NYU, then gotten an important finance job.

  No matter what happened, Jane would be okay. Even if Colin . . .

  Why hadn’t he called me yet? Surely Carew and Olson had finished interviewing him. Had they taken him in for questioning? Arrested him? Out of nowhere I was haunted by the memory of the peeling paint on our back stoop. Did we really have anything to give Elisa that she hadn’t gotten better from Ethan and Sheila? Surely not money or exotic adventures, parties on yachts. Just a twin sister. And the truth.

  Pulling my iPhone out of my bag, I pressed Colin’s number. It would be a short call, just to tell him I was on my way over.

  But he did not pick up. Where was he? All my fears came rushing back, my terror stronger than before. Had he been taken away as a “person of interest”? Perhaps he had broken down and confessed, asserting it had been his right to retaliate. He was just arrogant enough to do that, just out of touch enough not to know the consequences. Why wouldn’t he know that you should never ever confess to anything? What would that do to the rest of us, left to flutter helplessly like cloth rags on the tail of his kite?

  After my lie to Elisa, our relationship would be gone for good.

  My voice hoarse, I left a message that I was coming and found my keys.

  Chapter Nine

  COLIN WAS STAYING in a condo that belonged to a friend, another professor, who was teaching in Japan for two years. I did not know what financial arrangements they had made, but Colin had left the interior exactly as it had been when he moved in. The condo was part of an upscale complex, though not gated, three miles from the farmhouse.

  Driving over, it was dark enough for headlights—­but light enough at the complex to see that the two allotted parking spaces in front of number 47 were vacant. Colin’s dark green BMW convertible was nowhere to be seen. I prayed he had just gone out for food. I had the key and knew he wouldn’t mind if I waited inside.

  I knocked on the door anyway. To my surprise, Colin pulled it back, looking scruffy in jeans and a red Seawolves sweatshirt. The mythical animal seemed to snarl at me as I stepped inside. Why had the university picked such an ugly animal as its mascot?

  “I didn’t see your car,” I stammered.

  “They took it. And my laptop. And my phone.”

  “Really? Why?” No wonder he hadn’t called me or picked up when I called. Thank God I hadn’t said anything about fleeing the country!

  Colin closed the door behind me and sighed. “Just looking for evidence. Making sure I wasn’t doing Internet searches on how to burn my enemies alive. If the phone comes up clean—­and it will—­they promised to return it tomorrow. I’m lost without it.”

  I stared into the room at the Asian decor. A full-­sized kimono with a beautifully embroidered stork, wings unfurled, hung over a dark red couch. There were a lot of low ebony tables and brass pieces. A flat-­screen TV hung between some framed calligraphy.

  I felt too shaky to stand any longer and sank onto the brocaded couch. “What did they ask you?”

  Colin pulled up a black lacquered chair across from me. “They wanted to know where I was Saturday night.”

  I held my breath. “Where were you?”

  “At a dinner at the Three Village Inn. Cliff Mallow, the head of the anthropology department, is retiring. He was here when I began. We didn’t always see eye to eye, but we go way back.”

  I didn’t want him to start reminiscing. “What about after that?”

  “I went home. I read for a while, then went to bed.”

  “So you didn’t drive out to Southampton.” A terrible thing to say, but I had to know.

  “Delhi.” It was a look he would give a student who had made a rude comment in class.

  “I know you didn’t, I’m just trying to think like the police. They were taking Ethan’s note so seriously.�
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  “What note?”

  “The note he sent Elisa. They didn’t tell you?” I felt as if I were on the carnival ride where the floor drops away pinning you against the wall. Any moment gravity would fail and I would crumple to the floor.

  “What note?” he repeated.

  I realized my fists were clenched and made myself relax my fingers. “Ethan sent Elisa a letter that she got this morning. Express mail because there was a check inside. He said that if anything happened to him to blame you.”

  “What? That doesn’t make sense. Blame me for what? How could he know he was about to die?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He mentioned me by name?”

  “I don’t know why they didn’t tell you.” That was terrifying, though I wasn’t sure why. Were they holding the note back to spring on him in a courtroom setting? But no, that only happened in Perry Mason novels. Now there was some kind of disclosure law where both sides had to know the evidence before the trial.

  “Because they’re just looking for a fall guy.”

  Yes, that’s what they do. “Did they ask you about the mud on the boots?”

  “They showed me the boots, they practically shook them in my face! They’re going to check out the mud to see if it’s from the Southampton house when I wore them out there Saturday night. The problem is, I was never there.” He eyed me resentfully. “For that matter, it could just as easily have been you. The boots were at the house where you are.”

  I jerked up on the sofa. “What—­you’re ready to throw me under the bus? You think I’d try to frame you? Or be dumb enough to put them back outside if I’d worn them?”

  “You think I would?”

  We glared at each other for a moment, then I said, “Of course not. I told them that. How stupid do they think we are?”

  “You’re sure you didn’t put them on when it was muddy just to walk around the yard?”

  “Of course not. You know I hate those boots.”

  “Maybe when the kids were home for the weekend they used them.”

  “But that was back in March.”

  “True. If they damage my car . . .” Colin’s vintage BMW was his baby.

  “Your car’s the least of it. Thank God they didn’t arrest you!”

  “How could they do that? On what evidence? Besides, I’m—­”

  “Yes, I know, you’re a very important person. You’re Colin Fitzhugh.” A joke, but I needed to step back from the abyss. “Elisa thinks—­” I stopped then.

  “What? She’s rushing to judgment too?”

  “After that letter, she doesn’t know what to think.”

  “I’ll talk to her. You have her number?”

  I hesitated. I knew she wouldn’t want to talk to him. But he was her father. I pulled out my phone, found it, and gave it to him. “I told her you were at the house with me all Saturday night.”

  “You—­what?” He did not seem accusing, just as if he was trying to understand.

  “Because she was sure, after Ethan’s comment, that you had set the fire. I couldn’t let her think that!”

  He nodded.

  “When they were on the way to your condo I thought about calling you so we could run off and just leave. Hide out somewhere.”

  He actually smiled. “That doesn’t look guilty?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Just until they found out who really did it. We could still go, we still have the van. Or we could just fly somewhere.”

  “We wouldn’t get very far.”

  I blinked at this roadblock. “Why not?”

  “They have my passport.”

  “Oh, God.” The net had already dropped over us.

  Chapter Ten

  I SLEPT WORSE than ever that night, if I slept at all. When I’m upset it goes first to my stomach, then sends my mind racing like a gerbil banging against its wire cage. A caged creature who knows there is no escape but can’t stop trying. I twisted back and forth under the quilt and blanket that were much too hot and finally set my arm free into the chilly night.

  Why couldn’t I have Colin’s confidence that justice would prevail? He knew he hadn’t killed Ethan and Sheila would never take any life. He was appalled by the death penalty and lectured me about it when I wavered over some horrible serial killer, But though I knew he was innocent, the part of me that wanted to run and hide had no faith that it would all work out. If someone had planted the boots to make Colin look guilty, why would they stop there? What if they had tampered with the red plastic gas can he kept in his trunk, to make it seem as if it had been recently filled and emptied? I had no idea who “they” were except that they were the real murderers of the Crosleys.

  I suddenly remembered the noises I had heard early Monday morning, a car door clicking shut, the sound of footsteps on the gravel driveway. Could it have been someone returning the boots? The house had been dark and they would have assumed I was sleeping. It was only chance and anxiety that I had not been.

  If the police arrested Colin, what would it do to our already fragile family? Hannah would suffer the most. It would have been better for her if we’d never found her sister. She would drop out of veterinary school, start collecting abandoned animals, and live like a hermit in a shack somewhere in upstate New York. She wouldn’t find it such a bad life perhaps, but I would mourn what she had lost.

  The world tilted dangerously. My exposed arm was suddenly icy cold, its chill threatening to freeze the rest of my body with it. I jerked the arm back under the covers as if out of danger and rubbed it back to life.

  Things couldn’t get any worse.

  Don’t ever tell yourself that.

  AT 4 A.M. I was awake, as alert as if someone had pulled me out of bed and slammed me against the wall. The mud! One thing they were checking Colin’s car and the boots for was the Southampton dirt. If they found nothing in the BMW, my van was where they would look next. And what would they find? Mud from when I walked around the Crosley house Monday morning and climbed back into the driver’s seat. I could protest that that had been the only time I had been there, but why would they believe me?

  I had watched enough television procedurals to know that they did not need a large sample. CSI was so good that a few grains could be identified as coming from a specific locale. Put Jeffrey Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme on the case and you would barely need that. If they couldn’t prove Colin had driven his car out there, they would make a case for his using my van. Or my using the van.

  Panicked, I pushed out of bed and pulled on the jeans and sweatshirt that were draped over the rocking chair. It was still dark outside, which I found reassuring until I realized I would have to turn on some lights. My small portable vacuum that I used to remove dust from cartons and the edges of books was out in the barn.

  I crept down the stairs into the kitchen, crept as stealthily as if someone was watching, with a trail of cats behind me whining for food. I ignored them and felt around for the flashlight magnetized to the side of the refrigerator. Without turning it on, I stumbled down the back porch steps and moved toward the barn. Slowly my eyes adjusted to the early morning. The waning moon was full, though the blackness of the pond made me think of pits of damnation.

  I unlocked the barn and closed the door firmly before deciding I was being ridiculous and switched on the flashlight. I could be out in my Book Barn in the early hours for any reason. Still, the black corners beyond the small beam were menacing, filled with ghostly police detectives. If one of them had suddenly stepped forward to accuse me, I would have screamed, but not been totally surprised.

  The shop vac was on the edge of the worktable, a large silver egg laid by an electric hen. I switched it on experimentally to check the batteries, and the drone was much too loud. Hastily I flipped it off. What was I doing? Tampering with—­no, removing misleading evidence.

 
Carrying the vacuum handle in one hand, the flashlight in the other, I slipped out of the barn without locking it. Daylight was now edging the sky just enough to make the way to the house visible. I thought I was moving silently until the German shepherd next door gave a yapping bark, freezing me on the path. I imagined the neighborhood waking and coming to life like actors at the beginning of a play. The retired cop across the street, everybody’s friend, would hurry over to see if I needed help with my van.

  “Shh, Mamie,” I said as loud as I dared. “It’s okay. It’s just me.”

  Either that calmed her down or I stopped hearing her. I was as alert for other sounds as Miss T stalking a mouse. I stayed in the shadow of the house until I reached the van, then pressed the handle down gently. When I opened the door the light inside flashed a brief greeting before I reached in and switched it off.

  I trained the flashlight on the floor beside the gas pedal and brake. As I had imagined, there was a dried tan residue, sprinkled across other grit that had accumulated over time. Rather than work with the door open, I closed it softly, then went around to the passenger side and climbed in. Bending over, I switched on the vacuum and sucked up everything I could see. I had just finished when I realized it would look suspicious to have only that area vacuumed, and went on a cleaning rampage, scouring all the floors and the seats. To do so entailed moving jackets and umbrellas, even a carton of books, but I did not stop until the van was as clean as when I bought it six years ago. And it had been used then.

  I moved around to the back door, carrying the vacuum carefully. Then I went into the bathroom off the kitchen, opened the bottom, and shook it over the toilet. Fortunately the little cloth bag had already been half full, so I did not have to worry about Southampton residue left at the bottom. I flushed the toilet twice, then went upstairs, and flung myself on the double bed. I had read somewhere that resting was almost as good as sleeping. Surprisingly, I dozed off.

  Chapter Eleven

  TWO HOURS LATER, acting under a territorial imperative of my own, I drove out to Southampton. At 8:30 a.m. I called the Crosleys’ caretaker, Mairee Jontra. As I pressed in her number, I wondered what kind of name Mairee was. Made-­up, of course. On the other hand, what kind of a name was Delhi? I didn’t bother to explain it unless ­people asked, and most ­people didn’t. My parents’ dream had been to go to India as Chris­tian missionaries. My father had accepted the call to the church in Prince­ton with the caveat that as soon as the mission field details were worked out, the Methodists would have to find themselves a new pastor.