A Photographic Death

by Judi Culbertson

  “She said he thought it was the best thing for me.” She looked past me to the books on the shelves.

  “I’d like to see those papers. I’ll bet any handwriting expert would say they were forged. And if we’d signed any papers—­which we never would have—­why did Priscilla Waters steal you from the park and say you drowned? You saw the newspapers.” I told myself to calm down, that getting angry would only push her away. In a softer voice I said, “You must have had a reason for coming.”

  I pressed my hands together in my lap to keep them from shaking. This was the part I didn’t want to know. This was the part I had to know. Would she tell me she never wanted to see me again?

  She nodded sadly, like a woman about to fire someone who couldn’t do the work. “I came to tell you to leave me alone, to just forget the whole thing.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “I don’t know!” She turned on me as if I were deliberately trying to confuse her. “I didn’t know anything about the drowning. Or having a twin! I don’t know anything about being stolen. But I trust my parents.”

  Perhaps I should have tried to woo her then. I could have told her that her “parents” lied because they loved her, that we loved her too and we could all work something out.

  Instead I heard myself say, “What they did was unconscionable. They paid someone to kidnap you, and killed her when they were afraid she’d go to the police. They bought forged court papers to pretend they’d adopted you. And that’s just for starters.”

  She pulled back from me. “That’s crazy. They’d never do something like that. They aren’t criminals. Even if this woman took me, they probably didn’t know that when they adopted me.” She reached out her arm to me as if their safety were the only thing important to her. “Please don’t get them into trouble.”

  The easiest thing in the world: Just promise her you won’t. If you do that, maybe they’ll let you see her again.

  But I couldn’t. I breathed in the drafty air of the barn and looked at her. “I know you don’t know me the way you do the Crosleys. How could you? But I remember you very well. My whole life was changed when I thought you’d drowned. I loved you then and I love you now.” I reached out and grasped her hand before she could pull her arm back. The top felt winter-­rough, but her fingers underneath were soft. “I’m not your ‘birth mother.’ I’m your only mother. I wanted you to know the true story. What happens now is up to you.”

  “But you promise not to—­report them or anything?”

  “You know I can’t promise that.”

  I let go of her hand then and stood up. She stood up too and fumbled with her jacket zipper.

  I couldn’t help myself. I reached over and grasped it firmly, zipping it almost to her neck. We were standing very close for a moment.

  Then she pulled away, turned, and walked toward the door. Grasping the knob, she went through and pulled the door shut hard.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  I WENT BACK to my desk chair and sat down, propping up my head that felt too weak to stay upright on its own. I replayed the clear bright notes, the snatches of melody, the whole unfinished symphony. Had I given her enough information? I’d thought I had until she wondered why the Crosleys hadn’t adopted her twin too. Didn’t she understand that she had been stolen from us, that because they already knew us, the Crosleys couldn’t be thought of as an innocent third party who’d arrived late on the scene? Would she ever realize that they were the ones who had nearly destroyed my family? Her family?

  I let my eyes close. When I started looking for Caitlin in December I had been as determined as a crusader pushing through the woods brandishing a torch, not caring what got burned along the way. I had been on a mission that could have destroyed the whole forest. Luckily I hadn’t. Even Caitlin, whose life Colin had been so worried about upsetting, seemed more intrigued, if confused, than devastated. Of course, knowing she was adopted all along had cushioned the shock, though they had lied to her about a few little things.

  Colin had stressed that her well-­being was paramount. And it was. If I never saw her again—­and I might not unless it was across a courtroom—­I had to accept that she was satisfied with the life she had. But that didn’t mean I had to give Ethan and Sheila a free ticket to ride.

  Then I thought of something else. Today was Friday. Bruce Adair was coming to dinner tonight and I had completely forgotten. That meant a trip to the supermarket. Now.

  First though, I called Colin and Jane to tell them about Caitlin’s visit. Colin answered his phone as he was heading into a classroom and had time only to absorb the basic facts. Jane was more expressive.

  “You saw her again? How come she only appears to you? Couldn’t you make her stay around so we could meet her?”

  “Re-­kidnap her? I don’t think so.”

  “But does she want to meet us?”

  “I don’t think she knows what she wants right now.”

  HAVING BRUCE FOR dinner meant cleaning the downstairs of the farmhouse and buying chicken to fry. Despite his protestations, I owed him big-­time. I made Spanish rice, cornbread, and green beans with almonds to round off the meal, and then, my creativity exhausted, bought a small cheesecake for dessert. I set the dining room table with my mother’s Limoges china and red candles.

  All the time I worked I was obsessed by the thought that Colin might drop by as he often did these days. How would I explain Bruce? I couldn’t. I thought about calling Colin and warning him off, telling him I was not feeling well. But I was done lying to protect myself. What happened happened from now on.

  Bruce had promised to bring wine and I knew it would be better than anything I could afford. He arrived at seven, suitably dapper in a tweed jacket and argyle vest, his cheeks rosy from the cold. He’d brought two bottles of wine, a white Viognier and a red Côtes du Rhône.

  I took the bottles from him and laughed. “You’re planning for a long night.”

  “I wasn’t sure which we’d want. Wine is the gift that keeps indefinitely.”

  While we ate I filled him in on everything that had happened.

  “Bruce, I don’t know what to do.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  I sighed and drank more red wine. “Colin doesn’t want a civil suit. Caitlin wants me to drop it completely. It won’t go well for me, whatever I do. She’ll either hate me for getting them in trouble, or she’ll listen to them and refuse to see me anyway. I can’t believe she believes them instead of me.”

  Bruce lowered his chin and gave me a considering look over his wineglass.

  “Oh, okay, I can believe it. She’s listened to them most of her life. But what about the facts?”

  “Well, she knows she didn’t drown. And you’ve told her that she was kidnapped from the park and that you never signed any papers. But do you have any physical evidence that they ran that actress down?”

  “No. But it makes sense.”

  Bruce looked thoughtful in the candlelight. “I don’t know British law, but in this country you wouldn’t have much of a case. There were no witnesses to the hit-­and-­run. No one even knew about it till the next day. A car was rented to the Crosleys, but there’s no proof either of them were driving it anywhere near there. I doubt the car itself exists any longer.

  “There are no witnesses to the abduction either. Jane, but she only implicates Priscilla, not the Crosleys. You have no evidence that they even knew each other.”

  “But Sheila admitted it to me!”

  “Did anyone else hear her?”

  I played with my glass. “No.”

  “I’m talking about what can be proved in law. What you have is conjecture. If you and your next-­door neighbor had a fight and you came out the next day and found your front tire flat, you might be sure he did it. But unless there were any eyewitnesses, the only ­people you could call
are AAA.”

  He leaned back in his chair and smiled. “A few years ago I came out of the bank and found a note under my windshield giving me the license plate number of a car that had backed into mine. I looked and sure enough there was a dent in my fender. So I called the police. But the person who left the note hadn’t given any contact information, and without an eyewitness—­the cop said whoever left the note could be trying to frame someone he didn’t like. So that went nowhere.”

  “I get it.” But I couldn’t accept it. I’d supposed that as soon as I told DCI Sampson where the Crosleys were they would be whisked off to England, put on trial, and jailed forever. Caitlin would renounce them, turn to us, and we would—­not live happily ever after, maybe, but we would work things out. She would be part of our family again.

  “Your best hope is for Caitlin to come to believe what actually happened and renounce them. Join your family and forget them.”

  Good luck with that.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  COLIN CALLED VERY early the next morning. “Guess where I was last night?”

  Not here, thank God. “Where?”

  “Providence.” He sounded pleased with himself.

  “Really? You saw Ethan? What did he say?”

  “I went to the college first. I figured they wouldn’t tell me anything over the phone, but they know who I am.”

  “Doesn’t everyone?”

  He ignored my teasing. “They told me Ethan had had to take an emergency leave of absence. They wouldn’t say why or when he’d be back. John Eliot—­you remember him?—­gave me his home address.”

  “Did you see him?”

  “So I drove to the house. It was locked up tighter than—­anyway, there was obviously no one there. I talked to a neighbor. He thought they’d left for somewhere yesterday morning. They have a home in the Caribbean somewhere.”

  “Oh, my God. Do you think they took Caitlin with them?”

  “Isn’t she supposed to be in college? Whatever you said to Sheila must have scared the hell out of her. When you wouldn’t agree to drop it yesterday, they apparently decided it was dangerous to stick around. They may never come back.”

  “We’ll never see Caitlin again!” It was close to a wail. “What was all this for then?”

  “Easy, Del. She’s not eight years old. She wouldn’t drop out of college now. That’s not something Ethan would want her to do anyway.”

  “If Ethan had been there, what would you have done?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  IT WAS TIME to focus on the books again. The next morning I was heading out to the barn, thinking about the ones I had bought at the temple sale in Queens, when I remembered something Paul Pevney had said to me. If I hadn’t been distracted, I might have thought about it earlier. As soon as I unlocked the Book Barn, I headed for the phone on the table.

  “Delhi?” Susie sounded groggy though it was after eight o’clock.

  “I need to see you.”

  “Now? I can meet you at the bookstore later.”

  “No, I’ll come there.”

  “Delhi, what’s happened?”

  “Are you still in the same house?”

  “Of course. It’s ours. Our humble home. But tell me what’s going on.”

  “I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

  THE PEVNEYS LIVED in a converted bungalow in a beach community that had flourished in the 1940s. Most of the modest cottages had been winterized and a few expanded, though not Paul and Susie’s dark green box.

  “Hi, Delhi. Sorry for the mess.” Susie indicated a Dumpster explosion of books and newspapers, and a computer set up in one corner of the small living room. “But I do have coffee.”

  “Great.” I followed her into the kitchen and sat down at a Formica-­topped table. The kitchen looked as if it had been purchased furnished from the original owner. Patterned oilcloth on the shelves, dented silver canisters, even a yellow metal bread box.

  “I just have skim milk,” she apologized.

  “That’s fine.”

  Then I looked at Susie again. Her wholesome face looked rounder than usual and her skin had a glow I hadn’t noticed before. “You’re pregnant!”

  She beamed. “Just. Even Paul doesn’t know yet. How could you tell?”

  “Women know.”

  It made me even more reluctant to tell her what I had to. “Did you tell Paul which books were missing from the shop?”

  She sat down opposite me. “No. He doesn’t like to hear about the store.”

  Interesting. “Do you have a basement?”

  “No. This is built on a slab.”

  “Okay. I need you to do something. Where would Paul hide stuff?”

  “Hide stuff? Paul? Why would he hide anything? He wouldn’t keep anything from me.”

  “Just think where a good hiding place would be.”

  “I don’t know, but—­Delhi, wait. Are you thinking Paul stole Marty’s books? Paul wouldn’t do something like that.”

  “Just look.”

  “No!” Her cheeks were burning. It was the first time she had ever refused to do something I asked. “Why would you even think that?”

  “When I saw Paul a few days ago at the sale in Queens, he made reference to not finding a Hemingway there. That’s one of the missing books.”

  “So? He’s not exactly an obscure writer. It’s like making jokes about the Gutenberg Bible.”

  I stood up. “Okay. It was just an idea.”

  She pushed up from the table as well and I had a vision of how pregnant she would look in a few months. “His dresser’s the only place. I never go in there.”

  She didn’t invite me to come with her, and was back several minutes later, her face glowing with relief. “I didn’t find anything anywhere!”

  Then I thought about where I left the books I wasn’t thrilled about. Sometimes they stayed in the back of my van for weeks.

  “Does he take his car to work?”

  “Well, we only have one. When I have to take it to the bookshop, he gets a ride. Unless he has somewhere special to go, then he drops me off.”

  I couldn’t imagine Susie not noticing rare books in her car, but I said, “The car’s outside?”

  She chewed at her bottom lip. “We never lock it.”

  At first look, the trunk of the old Plymouth seemed to hold only the usual detritus of ice scrapers, a red gas can, a carton of books worth very little. Feeling foolish, I pulled back the fuzzy gray covering that hid the spare tire. Only, where the tire should have been was a package wrapped in a black plastic garbage bag.

  I looked at Susie and she stared back helplessly at me.

  I reached for the package and pulled it out. Heavy. Exactly the way a collection of books should feel.

  “Let’s take it inside,” I said.

  “Why? Put it back and I’ll talk to Paul when he gets home.”

  “Susie.” I hadn’t planned the way it would sound, but it was the voice my father had used when he was trying to bring me back to reality. It was a voice that you didn’t argue with.

  “Yes, all right. Whatever.”

  She followed me unwillingly into the house.

  I OPENED THE bag on the kitchen table. Pulling out the books was as shocking as uncovering a cache of stolen jewelry.

  Susie sank onto a kitchen chair and burst into anguished tears. “I can’t believe it. How could he do this to me? Even if he hates my working at the shop. He was trying to get me fired!”

  “At least he didn’t sell the books.”

  “How could he? I’m the only one who knows how to do that.”

  I looked at her. It was the bitterest I had ever heard her sound.

  Finally she wiped at her eyes. “I thought when we changed the locks it would stop, and it did. But Pau
l must have made a new key without my knowing. He sometimes takes my keys when he can’t find his. Having a key made at Home Depot isn’t exactly hard. Delhi, what am I going to do?”

  I thought. “I’ll tell you what I would do. I’d take the books back to the shop and put them on the counter and say I found them there. And then kill Paul.”

  She laughed at that. “Done. But what was he thinking?”

  “I don’t know.” I didn’t want to tell her how crazy I thought her husband was. To do such a thing over and over again in the hopes your wife would be fired and be forced to work at home to build the business you were dreaming about? I remembered the destroyed Christmas windows. What kind of a creep would do that?

  “Oh, gee, I can’t kill him, we’re having a baby.” Susie gave me a damp smile. “But I’ll tell him if he ever touches another book, I’ll be on the next plane home to my folks.”

  Sitting in her tiny vintage kitchen, I realized that going home was what she secretly wanted. I wondered if that was what would happen.

  Chapter Fifty

  THE LAST WEEK in March was Hannah’s spring break and she decided to come home, getting a ride with friends and arriving about 8 p.m. I had kept her posted on what was happening with Caitlin, but she didn’t seem very interested. I tried to put myself in her place and imagine what she was feeling. She had gotten past the idea that we were trying to replace her, but was still concerned with the impact it would have on her life.

  In fact, she wanted us all to be there to talk about what she called “my sister problem.”

  Jane took the Long Island Rail Road to Stony Brook and Colin met her train. They got to the house just before seven. I had a pot of vegetarian chili on the stove and I’d made a quick version of cornbread and a green salad. This way we could eat whenever Hannah arrived.

  “You’re going to be so happy,” I told Raj when I fed the cats their dinner. When Hannah was home he was constantly curled up with her or butting his head against he chin to be petted.