“What do you think?” Jane asked as she hugged me. Perhaps because of the time we had spent together and what we’d been through, she seemed softer, closer to me.
“I don’t know what to think about anything,” I told Jane. “What do you think Hannah has to say?”
“Hard to tell with her.”
When Colin kissed me I held on to him for several moments. He was still tracking Ethan and Sheila and had learned from a colleague that Dr. Crosley was out on “emergency medical leave” and had gone to his home in Barbados to recover.
“He has to come back sometime,” Colin growled to me. “And I’ll be waiting. John Eliot promised to let me know when he comes sneaking back into the country.”
“I thought John was his good friend.”
“Not as much as he is mine.”
We waited in the living room with wine, olives, and several kinds of cheese. Jane pulled out her phone and began texting. Colin picked up the New York Times. I reached for TransAtlantic, Colum McCann’s latest book, but it sat untouched on my lap like one of the cats waiting to be petted. Why couldn’t I be happy with the children I had raised, the family I loved so much? Why was I yearning for a young woman who didn’t even want a connection with us?
Because she is one of us, no matter what. Because we have important gifts for her that she can get from no one else.
I had replayed the scene of her visit often, mostly with regret. If I had only been able to convince her, if I had only been able to find the right words. Still, Caitlin had listened intently to the story of her abduction and seemed intrigued that she had a twin. Even when I refused to promise amnesty for Sheila and Ethan, she hadn’t stormed out. But she had closed the door with a finality that made me sure I wouldn’t see her again.
Just before eight o’clock, there was the sound of tires on the gravel driveway, a flash of headlights into the room.
“She’s here!” I was surprised. Usually Hannah called en route, when she was about an hour away. I wasn’t sure what that meant. Just be happy she’s coming home at all.
The car continued around to the back and I thought I heard several doors slam. If her friends wanted to stay for dinner, that was fine.
The kitchen door opened. “Hello?”
“We’re in here.” I jumped up and went to meet her, but saw two girls through the entryway.
I looked again and put my hand to my mouth.
Colin and Jane rose as if jerked by puppet strings.
Caitlin spoke finally. “Well, I couldn’t have a twin without meeting her! I’d always wonder what she was like. After I came here and saw her photo again, I had to go to Cornell to find her.”
My brave girl.
Hannah, only a little fuller-faced than her sister, couldn’t stop smiling. “As soon as I saw her, I knew. It was only last week, but it’s so cool. I didn’t know it would be so cool. We wanted to surprise you. So did he.”
Jason stepped around her and winked at me. “I was curious too. When Hannah called me, I had to see.”
I stared at them and then was reaching to hold all three.
“Get your camera,” Jane murmured behind me. “It’s time.”
I nodded. We might never be so happy again. The path would be tortuous ahead. But just for this moment, for right now, we were safely under the dome.
Epilogue
CAITLIN STAYED TWO nights in Hannah’s room, then flew to Barbados to be with the Crosleys. The morning she left I sat at the old kitchen table, devastated, as Colin tried to console me.
“She let me know that her visit didn’t change anything,” I said bitterly. “All she wants is for them to be able to come back into the country without being arrested.”
“What did you tell her?”
I shrugged. “Not that all is forgiven.” I looked into his deep blue eyes, lined from too many hours in desert suns. “Colin, I couldn’t! Even apart from what they stole from us, they killed somebody. They’re murderers. When they set everything in motion, they may not have meant that to happen, but it did. I don’t think Caitlin will ever accept it as the truth though. If we could get someone to write the story, to publicize what they did, it would—”
“No. We said we wouldn’t do that.” He stood up and put a comforting hand on my shoulder. “I told you, I’ll take care of this. I will.”
Years ago I would have believed that he could rearrange the world. Now that I was as old as he had been, I knew it couldn’t be true.
There was nothing he could do about the barrier between Caitlin and me. We eyed each other over the wall of mixed purposes with challenge and longing, longing at least on my part. But there was no barrier between Caitlin and Hannah. Ironic that Hannah, the one who had been most opposed to finding Caitlin, was her gateway back into the family. They planned to spend alternate weekends at each other’s colleges. I was sure that would die down as the amazement of it wore off, but I hoped Hannah wouldn’t get hurt. Magic or tragic.
IT WAS SUNDAY morning, the first weekend in May, and Caitlin was visiting Hannah at Cornell when I clicked on the Newsday website to see what was happening on the Island. The main story was about a fire in a vacation home on Main Street in Southampton. The fire had burned hot and fast, evidently too rapacious for the couple who owned the house to be able to escape. Dr. and Mrs. Ethan Crosley had just returned two days earlier from Barbados for their daughter’s college graduation.
The white letters on the ocean-blue background leapt and bounced in front of me. For a moment I believed I was filling in the name I wanted to see. But the names did not change as I stared at them. What had Ethan and Sheila been doing on Long Island? He taught at Brown and their main home, I knew from Colin’s trip up there, was in Providence. They had fled from there to the estate in Barbados.
Vaguely I remembered that Ethan’s parents had owned a home in the Hamptons when he was growing up, that Colin may even have visited there when they were in grad school, years before I knew him. Could the house Ethan inherited be the one that had burnt down? All I knew about his parents was that the family had become wealthy from owning a farm machinery company in Pennsylvania.
I scrolled down. Arson was suspected. There had been another fire in the neighborhood earlier in the month, though that house had been vacant. Despite their grandeur, many of the homes were seasonal, lived in or rented out for the summer months. Police speculated that the arsonist may have believed that the owners were still away. The Crosleys had not been targets, just unlucky. The Arson Squad was focusing on finding individuals with a compulsion to set fires.
There was a photograph of the beautiful clapboard house, now a ruin. A long-established residence, the kind you see on South Main Street behind hedges. It was also secluded enough so that you might not notice the fire until too late. I shivered in the cool air of the barn. Had Ethan and Sheila known what was happening? In their last moments had they realized that everything they had plotted out was over, that there were some things that money couldn’t save you from?
Colin. I had to tell Colin. My hand moved toward my iPhone, then stopped. What would I say? I was suddenly dizzy, the room swimming as if I was seeing everything through wavy glass. Was this what a heart attack felt like? What if this had been Colin’s “way of taking care of this” as he’d promised? Did it mean the Arson Squad would soon be at our door? And yet, why would they? They would have no reason to connect us with the Crosleys of Southampton. Colin’s ban on publicity, his insistence that we tell no one, had ensured that.
Unless Caitlin . . .
For the next hour I couldn’t do anything but sit in my desk chair, stunned, imagining what Colin might have done, how the tragedy would affect Caitlin. How would it be any different from actually losing your parents, if that’s who you believed they were? What would it do to her relationship with us? Would it pull us closer or set her on a path of independence
away from the whole family, even Hannah?
Ironically, their deaths had resolved the sticking point between us. There would no point in pursuing criminal charges against Ethan and Sheila now. I would have to let DCI Sampson in his cozy office in Stratford know. He could go back to apprehending pickpockets and persecuting street performers dressed like Anne Hathaway and Romeo.
I was still staring at my computer screen which had gone dark from inattention, when the phone rang. Colin?
I grabbed it up. “Hello?”
“Mom? Something terrible’s happened. Elisa’s parents were in a fire!”
Hannah. “I know. I saw.”
“It was down on Long Island.” There was something accusatory in her voice, as if I had somehow lured them here.
“I know, the Hamptons. How did they find Cait—Elisa to tell her?”
Silence. “I think one of her dormmates told the police she was visiting me. Anyway, she wants to talk to you.”
I thought my heart would stop working. “Okay,” I said slowly.
After a moment I heard, “Hi, um—Delhi?”
“Yes. Elisa. I’m so sorry about—the Crosleys.” Even in death I could not call them her parents.
“I can’t believe it yet. I don’t believe it. They never should have come back if this was going to happen!”
“They came for your graduation?”
“They wouldn’t have missed that. They were staying at the beach house; they were afraid to go back home.” Another twin, a stronger accusation: If you hadn’t been hounding them, threatening them with arrest, this never would have happened. But then she said, “Anyway, I made a vow to them. I’m going to find out who did this and I won’t give up until I do!” Her voice was ragged, close to tears. “Whoever it was is going to pay! And—Hannah told me that you sometimes investigate murders, that you’re better than the police?”
Before I could agree or disagree, she added, “Would you help me?”
How could I say no to Caitlin, my long-lost child, when it was the first thing she had asked of me in nineteen years?
“Of course,” I said.
Not ready to stop sleuthing with Delhi Laine?
Read on for an excerpt from Judi Culbertson’s
An Illustrated Death
Now available from Witness Impulse
And stay tuned for Delhi’s next mystery, coming Fall 2014!
An Excerpt from
An Illustrated Death
When Delhi Laine gets the opportunity to appraise the library of Nate Erikson, a famous illustrator, she jumps at the chance, despite the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death. But when another Erikson is found murdered, dark family secrets come to light leaving Delhi determined to solve the crimes once and for all. But digging up truths can get you dirty . . . and Delhi is about to discover just how far some will go to keep them buried.
WHEN CHARLES TREMAINE stepped out of his Town Car and moved down the hill toward the silver gray building, other dealers were on him like butter on bread. Most carried empty cardboard boxes which they hoped to fill with treasure. I had my two vinyl boat bags tucked under one arm, my money hidden in my jeans front pocket to leave my hands free. We couldn’t have been more excited than if we were lining up for Shangri-La. I didn’t believe Charles’s dismal prediction that we were headed for Newark instead.
Judging from the Model-T weathervane on its roof, the building had probably been a stable, then a garage. It had not been well-maintained. The green paint was peeling from its oversized window frames, and one of the panes had a long vertical crack. Dealers took turns peering in, but the windows were too dusty to see anything but long tables of books.
Back on the gravel path we sorted ourselves into one-two-three order. Except for me, the other buyers today were men. I recognized Marty Campagna talking earnestly to Charles Tremaine. Of course. Marty was always one of the first three in line at good sales. Rumor had it that he paid someone to stand in his place overnight.
Today he wore a red T-shirt advertising “Joey’s Cadillac Repair.” His black-framed glasses were duct-taped at the bridge of his nose, his cheeks stubbly. Although Marty was tall and well-muscled, I knew his brawn came more from leaping over furniture to grab prize books than from workouts at Planet Fitness. But it didn’t matter how he looked, he had that elusive gift known as Finger-Spitzengefuhl, the tingling in his fingers that comes whenever a rare book is nearby. I didn’t know if Finger-Spitzengefuhl was real or not. I was still waiting for mine to kick in.
Marty had wasted his money if he had paid to reserve a spot here. Once we were inside and had a chance to examine what had been laid out on the tables, I saw that Charles Tremaine was right. Someone in the family was a Danielle Steel fan. Someone else was parting with a stack of mathematics textbooks. I raced up and down the long plank tables to make sure, but there were no art books, no Erikson-illustrated volumes at all.
Yet the sale wasn’t a total loss. From underneath a table I pulled out a grimy carton of older first editions still in dust jackets: The Bean Trees, The Circus of Dr. Lao, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. And—yes—two Ayn Rands! I didn’t even stop to see if the books were inscribed, just shoved them into my green-and-white vinyl bag. A dust jacket can increase a book’s value by up to ninety percent. Ayn Rand, like Mozart, never went out of style.
I was moving toward the cash table to pay when Marty stepped into my path. “Hey, Blondie. Find anything good?” He reached down and rummaged through my bag, dislodging books to see what was at the bottom. I held my breath. More than once he had examined my stash, seen something he wanted, and tried to force me to sell the book to him.
Today he jerked back his hand as if to avoid contamination. “Dreck.”
“No, it’s not.” I felt a moment of doubt, then remembered the Ayn Rands in dust jackets.
“Know what I bought? Three books. What a waste!”
Then why are you hanging around?
“I need to talk to you.” Evidently his Finger-Spitzengefuhl extended to reading minds. “Naw, too complicated. I’ll call you later.”
And he was off to another sale.
When I reached the gravel area, the dust from the ancient Cadillac Marty drove had long settled. Instead a young woman sat off to the side in a director’s chair, arms crossed. A lanky, bespectacled man stood protectively behind her. Nate Erikson’s children? They were definitely a matched set: gingery hair, pale freckled skin, high aristocratic noses. They had the look of money—her peach sweater was cashmere, her designer jeans fashionably white at the knees. His plaid flannel shirt and Levi’s had a deliberately worn-out air that hadn’t come from shooting deer.
They studied me, then exchanged a look.
If I had been anywhere but the Hamptons, I might have been worried.
“Hey there!” the woman called, as if I were her neighbor’s pet dog.
“Hi.”
She pushed up from the canvas seat and the pair edged closer.
“Are you a book dealer?” he demanded.
“Yes.” I had run into owners who were hostile to professionals, the last time a month ago. As I left a tag sale carrying a stack of profusely illustrated books on Wedgwood china, a woman in a denim skirt had stopped me.
“How much did you pay for those?” she’d asked.
I could tell from the pinched look of her eyes and mouth that my acquisitions had once been hers.
I should have made up something, but I’d told her the truth.
“That’s all you paid? I hope you feel good, profiting from someone else’s tragedy.”
I started to offer her more money, then realized that no amount would be enough to make things right for her. Still I could not shake my guilt, though I told myself that if I hadn’t bought those books, someone else would have. Sure. Like rationalizing it w
as okay to wear a fur coat because those particular animals were already dead.
I reminded myself that the Eriksons had sought out bookstore owners.
“Do you assess books too?” he wanted to know.
“Yes.”
“You can tell how valuable—”
“What did you think of these books?” she interrupted him, pointing to my bag.
What could I say that wouldn’t insult someone they were related to?
“Well, I bought some.”
Her pale blue eyes probed my face. “Were they what you wanted?”
Another trick question. “Not what I was hoping for, maybe, but I did find some good fiction. No art books though.”
“No. That’s what we want to talk to you about.” She looked at the man and he nodded. “We need someone to appraise my father’s books. His library is good, but we need to know how good.”
Be still, my heart. It was a dream I hadn’t known I had. “I could do that.” Yet a part of myself asked, Why me? Why not Charles Tremaine or someone who looked like an authority? I knew they had invited only professional booksellers, perhaps for that reason, but something about it made less than perfect sense.
“What’s your fee?” plaid-shirt demanded.
My fee? “Forty-five dollars an hour.” That sounded like a lot of money for something I would have done for nothing. Just to have the opportunity to look at Nate Erikson’s books . . .
“Forty-five dollars?” The woman sounded scandalized. “Mechanics get ninety-five an hour. Lawyers are over three hundred!”
“Plus gas and expenses,” I added hastily.
She laughed then, a clear note that carried out over the early September landscape. “Fifty-five dollars an hour, none of this nickel-and-dime stuff. When can you start?”
I made myself breathe. “Monday?”
“Fine. Come around nine. I’m Bianca Erikson, by the way, and this is my brother, Claude. The books—”
A Photographic Death Page 23