A Bookmarked Death (5 page)

Chapter Seven

N
OW
THAT
THEY
knew where to find Colin, I nearly pushed them out the door. I stood up, signaling that our conversation was over, and after a moment they got up from the couch. There was that awkwardness when a warm good-bye isn’t appropriate but something needs to be said. Suddenly they seemed too large for the room, Agent Olson bumping his knee against the antique trunk we used as a coffee table. As she moved toward the door, Carew turned and gave me a studiedly casual look. “We saw your collection of rubber boots out back. Could we take a look?”

Out back? Why had they been walking around outside the house? They probably didn’t need a search warrant for that, but it seemed like an invasion.

“Nobody uses those boots,” I said. “They’re left over from when the kids were small.”

I hadn’t said yes, but they were on the front porch at once, then down the steps and moving briskly around the house as if they were afraid that I would stop them.

But could I? And why were they focused on the boots anyway?

When we reached the overhang where the boots were stored, I saw the house through their eyes. I noticed how splintery the wood was, how in need the white farmhouse was of fresh paint. The forest green trim hadn’t been touched up since we moved in. As far as I knew, the university had done nothing but collect our rent and pay the property taxes. But
we
had done nothing either. I’d assumed that upkeep was the college’s responsibility, but perhaps because the rent was so reasonable we had not pressed them. What did it say about us that we hadn’t had enough pride to keep our home looking trim? Did it make it more likely that we would burn down someone else’s?

Not that Ruth Carew looked like she lived in anything from
House Beautiful
. She was not wearing a wedding ring, and I imagined her in an untidy apartment where she did little more than sleep. In her early thirties, I judged. But she did not seem to be noticing my house anyway. She and Agent Olson were staring at the boots that were lined up by size as if in a drawing from
The Three Bears
. I had never liked the rubbery cloth feeling of the inside and had rarely used mine. They looked nearly new.

Olson extended his hand and gave me a questioning look.

I shrugged.

The agent leaned over and picked up the pair that had been mine, then held them aloft as if he were examining a kitten by the scruff of its neck. The mustard-yellow tread of the soles still shone and the bottoms were clean and dry. A few bands of dirt were held in the ridges, but they looked ancient. One even had a stalk of grass sticking halfway out.

He turned to me. “Yours?”

I nodded, though it was possible they were Jane’s last pair. Hannah had her boots at Cornell, explaining that they came in handy for examining barnyard animals.

Agent Olson reached for the largest pair and held them up in the same way. These treads were different from mine. They were clogged with fresh mud.

I must have gasped.

“Mind if we take these?” he asked. I noticed that his round cheeks were slightly flushed, but that could have been from the cooler outside air.

What could I say? What I
should
have said was that they weren’t mine and I had no right to give permission, that they should either ask Colin or get a warrant. They might actually be Jason’s last pair from high school, though that hardly mattered. He was in New Mexico and hadn’t worn them lately.

Yet even if I had been smart enough to refuse, they had
seen
the boots, seen the new dirt for themselves. It would only be putting off the inevitable. I had a whirlwind image of myself refusing and when they were gone washing and cleaning the boots with a toothbrush, replacing the mud with dirt from around the property. But even as the thought flitted across my mind, I knew I wouldn’t do it. With all their high-tech equipment, they probably would be able to tell and I would fall under suspicion myself.

Detective Carew produced a plastic square from her tan leather bag. She shook it out until it became magically larger and larger and turned into a sack large enough to hold a pair of green rubber boots.

“But what about the firebug?” I asked. “The paper said there was another fire in the neighborhood last month.”

“There was,” Olson said quickly. He had let Carew handle most of the interview, but arson was his area. “We believe it was set for the insurance. The owner is swimming in debt.”

“Oh.” In my mind, the door to
my
fire escape route clanged shut. “But wouldn’t it have been easier just to sell the house?”

Olson shook his head. “The contents were insured for three million. Except that he removed them first.”

“We have a choice,” Detective Carew interrupted, back in charge again. Her voice was tense. “I can leave Agent Olson here while I try and find your husband, to make certain the interview isn’t tainted. Or we can leave you in peace if you tell us you won’t contact him yourself.”

“You don’t want me to warn him.”

“Actually, I have a better idea. Why don’t you call him and see where he is? Then we’ll go talk to him.”

Wasn’t that entrapment? Once more I had the choice of cooperating with the inevitable or doing something that would create suspicion. “My phone’s inside.”

The detective reached into her pocket. “Use mine.”

I started to say that Colin wouldn’t recognize the number and answer, but that was not true. When he was available, Colin always picked up. He was a man used to expecting good news, even with his poetic star in abeyance. I remembered the excitement when
Voices We Don’t Want to Hear
had been shortlisted for the Pulitzer—that had been how many years ago?

I took her BlackBerry and punched in the number I knew by heart.

“Colin Fitzhugh.” He sounded more formal than usual.

“Where are you?”

“Home. Delhi? Where are
you
? Why did this strange number come up?”

I was surprised at how relieved I was to hear his voice. Not dead in a car crash, not on the lam, just a little impatient for me to get to the point. He was still Colin, still my husband of twenty-five years, the man who wooed a nineteen-year-old away from her education and into his life. For all his faults—and I could enumerate them easily if anyone was interested—I knew he was not capable of setting a fatal fire.

“You’re at the condo?”

“I’ve been home all day. I have an important article due at the end of the week. You didn’t answer my question. Are you stuck somewhere?”

“No, the police are here. They have questions about Ethan and Sheila, how they died. They went to the university but you weren’t there.”

“Ethan and Sheila? Did you tell them what they did to us?”

“It’s what they think we did to
them.
They’re here at the house collecting evidence. Rubber boots and things.”

Carew’s head jerked up and she reached for the phone, as if to take it from a child who was making prank calls.

“I gave them your address so they can talk to you.”

“If they have to.”

I handed the phone back without saying good-bye.

The detective was looking at me as if a bobcat she had been assured was a house pet had suddenly bared its teeth at her.

I was beyond caring. “How can you think he’d be stupid enough to commit a crime wearing those boots, then put them back where they could be found?”

She cocked her head. “I’m sure he’ll have time to think of a reason.”

Chapter Eight

I
STOOD
BY
the window, arms wrapped around myself, and watched the dark blue car pull away from the curb. I was so terrified I could hear myself breathing. I had been in frightening situations before, fearful for my children, being attacked physically. But it didn’t compare with Colin or me been suspected of murder. Mistakes could be made; I could not stop my frightened mind from racing ahead to arrest, a biased trial, incarceration, or worse.

When there was nothing more to see I moved toward the wing chair dizzily, as if I were seeing the couch, the fireplace, the photographs through wavy glass. Was this what a heart attack felt like? I sank into the chair and made myself breathe slowly. But now I couldn’t stop playing what had happened over and over in my mind, excoriating myself for not handling it differently. I had thrown our legal rights to the wind.

If I called Colin right now, he would have time to leave the condo. I could meet him and we could go anywhere—anywhere away from here. I imagined us frantically removing money from roadside ATMs and driving straight through to Mexico. We could sort out everything—my books, his job—later on. The crucial thing was to get away before we were caught and chewed up in the dangerous gears of Justice.

I closed my eyes and let the scenario unspool. Thank God the children were grown. Or almost grown. We would make it right for them, of course we would, but right now we had to save ourselves. Yet I didn’t reach for my phone. Was it all my fault? What if the fire were Colin’s way of handling the situation to keep me from going to the media in desperation? Colin navigated through life with the ease of someone who presumed himself to be on the side of the angels, someone who met challenges with a raised hand and sweet reason. But perhaps he had a buried ruthlessness that, if aroused, was capable of anything.

What if he
had
gone to the house in Southampton Saturday night to confront Ethan? They had argued and Colin had gotten no satisfaction. I thought of Ethan’s superciliousness, remembered how his cold eyes had discounted me all the way back in Stratford. “Bimbo” was hardly the word you would use to describe your best friend’s heavily pregnant wife, but it was what I had read in Ethan’s face.

Remembering him, I could imagine him treating Colin scornfully in Southampton, perhaps even laughing at him. Suppose Colin had stormed out in frustration—then waited until Ethan and Sheila had gone to bed and torched the house? Could I imagine him spewing gasoline against the foundations and tossing in a match, knowing the Crosleys might die?

I couldn’t. And that was
after
Ethan had sent the letter accusing him. I tried an alternative. Maybe Colin had first driven out to see him Saturday morning, demanding—what? An apology? Some show of remorse? Same outcome and Colin had left. But perhaps it had eaten at him all day until he returned that night to take his revenge. Ethan meanwhile had been concerned enough to write to Elisa warning her about Colin.

Imagining it that way, Colin would have had time to pick up the boots. But why would he have gone out of his way to do so, wear them in Southampton to commit arson, then go out of his way one more time to put them somewhere they could easily be found? I thought of a book I had sold last year,
Cruelly Murdered
, the story of Constance Kent, accused of murdering her four-year-old half brother because one of her nightgowns could not be located. It was decided that it must have been bloody and she had burned it.

Surely no one would have examined the boots and decided that Colin’s were missing—would they?

And now it was too late to call Colin. Pressing deeper into the chair, ignoring my great-grandmother’s reproachful gaze from under glass, I tortured myself with images of Olson and Carew arriving at Colin’s condo and asking tricky, intimidating questions. What if he admitted it and tried to justify what he had done to Ethan? I saw him being dragged off to jail in handcuffs, his archeological career, his life—all our lives—ruined.

But he can still write poetry
, a little voice chirped, making me laugh at my own idiocy. Poetry was not his life. His position was as an eminent academic authority in archeology. I reminded myself that judges, doctors, politicians, financiers had all been tried, convicted, and sent to jail. Then I thought about the children and their futures.

Stop! Nothing has happened yet!

In my experience, thinking of the worst possible outcome nearly guaranteed that it wouldn’t happen. It was like imagining that your plane would crash or obsessing that you had a brain tumor. Since you were not able to predict the future, it would not happen. Life liked to sneak up on you. An example: I had never worried about one of my children being kidnapped.

Elisa.
I had promised I would call her, but I didn’t feel strong enough to do it right now. What made her show Ethan’s letter to the Boston police? Did she think Colin had set the fire? It had come to a choice between the Crosleys and us, and she had not chosen us.

Didn’t it mean anything to her that Colin was her real father, that she had spent a weekend starting to get to know him? But a weekend was hardly enough set against a lifetime of adventure with Ethan. I closed my eyes again.

Then, like finding a check you’d forgotten to cash, I thought of someone else who might want the Crosleys dead.

Nearly twenty years ago, Ethan and Sheila had hired an actress, Priscilla Waters, to impersonate a nanny, distract Jane, and smuggle Caitlin into an empty stroller. Priscilla had been told it was a “prank” to teach me a lesson. When she realized she had taken part in a kidnapping scheme, instead of going to the police to report it, she had demanded more money from Ethan and Sheila. She had been lured to a country road by their promise that they would give it to her, and ended up as a hit-and-run victim. Priscilla had left behind two teenage sons, Nick and Micah Clancy. It was Micah, now with a small daughter of his own, whose conscience had bothered him enough to send me the anonymous note that set everything into motion.

Nick was the one who had vowed revenge on his mother’s killers, but I had called Micah, exultant, as soon as I found Elisa. No doubt he had told Nick as well. Had one of them come over from England and murdered the Crosleys?

I stared out at the fading daylight. I didn’t want it to be Micah, but I knew I had to call DCI Sampson and find out if either brother had been out of the county last week.

I couldn’t call today, of course. It was already late evening in England. Instead, it was time to make the call I was dreading.

A
S
I
LISTENED
to her ringtone, I wondered what Elisa’s mood would be. Would Ethan’s letter have changed everything?

“Delhi?” She sounded shocked to hear from me.

“Yes. Hi.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment. “I have to tell you. My father sent me a letter this morning. I mean, he mailed it Saturday.”

“I know. The police were here.”

“Already? I shouldn’t even be talking to you!”

“Elisa, Colin didn’t hurt the Crosleys.”

“Oh, no?”

“No. He was home with me the whole time.” The lie slipped out before I had a chance to even think about it. All I knew was I couldn’t lose her now.

“Really?”

“Really.” What I should have said to Carew and Olson. Now it was too late.

“But why would my father warn me about him?”

“I don’t know. Except that he was very angry with us. He thought we’d disrupted his life.”

“Well, you did. If you hadn’t come looking for me, none of this would have happened! They’d still be here, living in Providence, and planning my graduation party. They were going to have a big party at the yacht club, on the dock, with lights and everything.”

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.

I
F
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.