A Bookmarked Death

by Judi Culbertson

  “You found me,” she whispered.

  I couldn’t help the tears streaking down my face. “I promised—­I promised you’d be okay.”

  “I need to sit up.” She pressed her hands into the dirt, and I helped her the rest of the way.

  Carew gave a cry. “You can’t move yet,” she commanded. “We don’t know about your injuries yet.”

  “No, I’m okay, I just landed wrong. My father taught me how, but I’d never jumped out of a helicopter before and I think I banged my head. I was afraid of hitting wires. What—­happened to the helicopter?”

  “It crashed in the next town,” Marselli said briskly. He was still kneeling at her right side, his khaki chinos ruined.

  “It crashed?” She jerked with surprise. I steadied her, my arm around her.

  “Can you tell me what happened?”

  “Can’t it wait?” I asked. “She’s still in shock.”

  “Just a few things. We need to know a few things now.” He looked up at Carew. “Why don’t you wait out on the road so you can show them in?”

  She looked at him as if he had suggested she lie down and roll around in the mud. “This is my case.”

  “When I saw the copter on the beach, I thought it was the police,” Elisa started. “Even when I got closer and saw that the letters that said police were just stuck on and were peeling, I got in anyway. Then I saw Youssef and knew it was a trick. I tried to get out, but he wouldn’t let me.” I felt her body sag against me and held her tighter. “As soon as we took off I tried to get to the parachutes.”

  “How did you know about the parachutes?” Carew interrupted, skeptical.

  “I knew there had to be some. I’d skydived out of my father’s Cessna before, when Youssef was flying it. But when I started to strap the chute on, my mother pulled a gun out of her bag and pointed it at me. She doesn’t even know how to shoot! But she was close enough to kill me.”

  “You’re sure it was your mother?” Carew interrupted again. She was the only one standing, looking down on us.

  “Well, not my mother.” A flick of her eyes at me. “I mean the witch who passed herself off as my mother all those years. Anyway, I grabbed the gun from her and it went off. She fell back and I thought it had hit her, but Youssef cried out so I guess it hit him. I kept the gun pointed at her, but she was all over him anyway. So I strapped in, and opened the door.”

  “Where was Dr. Crosley?” Marselli asked.

  “Dr. Crosley, my father?” Elisa was bewildered. “But I thought you knew—­he died in that fire. They burned him to death.” Her eyes filled with tears that ran down her muddy face. “He was the only good one,” she sobbed. “Will said he had done some bad things, but I don’t believe it!”

  “Wait a minute. Sheila Crosley killed her husband?” Carew was incredulous. I was just as stunned.

  “I didn’t even know it. When she and Youssef came up to Boston to get me, I was so excited that they were still alive. When I asked where Daddy was, she said in Barbados taking care of some stuff. I believed her, he was there a lot. She told me that a ­couple renting the house had died in the fire. I believed that too.” She gave her head a shake, possibly at her own naïveté. They took me to The Beautiful Past to wait for a phony passport so we could join Daddy. But then—­”

  She lowered her head to her arm, which was across her knees. More tears. I held her tightly.

  “You were on the yacht,” Frank prodded.

  She looked up, her blue eyes large. I reminded myself how young she was. “The next morning I started to open the door to my parents’ cabin. I wanted to tell her that I was still upset that they’d put me through all that. I’d mentioned it before and she’d just laughed. Like thinking they were dead was nothing! Anyway, she and Youssef were in bed, so wrapped up in each other they didn’t even hear me.

  “I went up on deck and talked to Craig, he does the computer stuff, he’s worked for my father for years. He didn’t want to tell me, but I kept pushing him and he’s always—­liked me. Finally he said that they had started about three years ago. He couldn’t believe I hadn’t suspected anything. But my father had finally guessed and was threatening to turn Youssef over to the Egyptian authorities.

  “Then—­Sheila came up with the idea about the fire and convinced my father that she would disappear with him, without Youssef. Craig said the FBI was about to arrest him! If they thought he’d died in a fire, they’d leave him alone. But my father never thought he would.” I thought she would start crying again, but she said, “Anyway, when Craig told me what had happened to my father, that’s when I ran away. So then they had to find me and get rid of me before I told anyone what they had done.”

  “So why didn’t they just go into hiding in another country?” More skepticism from Carew.

  Elisa gave me a who-­is-­this-­woman? glance. “Because Youssef didn’t want to hide. He wanted to continue the business and live it up on my father’s money. They figured when he introduced Sheila as his wife, no one would connect her with someone who died in a fire in America. They’ve probably moved the money somewhere safe by now.”

  “No, we’ve monitored the bank accounts and credit cards for activity.” Carew straightened smugly. “There hasn’t been any.”

  Elisa’s look at her was scornful. “Do you think those accounts were the only ones they had? ­People like that? Those everyday accounts are nothing.”

  But I could tell she was tiring. “Anyway,” Elisa said more faintly, “my father—­Ethan—­thought the plan was to use this other ­couple to die in the fire. But Youssef came up behind him and strangled him. They put him on the bed with the woman and doused them in kerosene. They still had my father’s stand-­in there, unconscious, so Craig said they beat him up to make it look a drunken fight, then dumped him in the woods somewhere.”

  “The vic in Mecox Woods,” Frank said grimly to Ruth.

  “My God!”

  “But how did you get away from them?” I asked Elisa.

  “That was the easy part. They didn’t know I knew anything. We went on shore that night for dinner near the marina. I went to the restroom and then ran. I called Will, I knew he’d help me. Will!” Her eyes flared open. “I have to let him know I’m okay!”

  The sun had gone in and darkness was creeping across the green field. It was getting colder as well. I didn’t want to think about Will.

  Frank pushed up from the ground. “Just one more thing. Was Craig on the helicopter?”

  “No. He must be in Southampton with the boat.”

  “What is it called again?”

  Elisa sighed. “The Beautiful Past.”

  Chapter Thirty-­Eight

  I STAYED SILENT on the ride back to Patchogue to retrieve my van, terrified of what we would find in the parking lot. In my rush of feeling at finding Elisa alive, I had forgotten Will. I’d watched enough police procedurals to know if they had found his body in the adjoining woods there would be flashing lights, a white canopy erected, everyone milling around. Elisa would see Will’s abandoned car and know. Would his death, on top of Ethan’s, push her beyond the point of recovery?

  As we passed Bellport and were moving into East Patchogue, I tried to think of a way to have Frank take me to pick up the van alone. But my mind was a jittery adolescent, too overwhelmed by everything that had happened to focus on any one thing. I had been right about Sheila, but wrong about Ethan. As soon as I’d heard about Kathleen I’d felt she was the victim, but had never been able to explain why the man’s body matched Ethan’s so perfectly, down to the two stents. Poor Kathleen! Her American odyssey had ended in being sacrificed. For nothing. What was not surprising was that Sheila, given Ethan’s lack of sexual ability, had fallen into an affair with a man as handsome as Youssef. I doubted that he was her first.

  If Ethan traveled a lot, just indulging themselves might have been en
ough. But Youssef no doubt had had ambitions beyond taking orders. When the opportunity to have it all came up, he and Sheila had seized it.

  I held my breath as Frank turned down West Street and then into the parking lot. There was a spotlight on the long narrow photograph of Fire Island on the front of the rustic building, but the area lay otherwise in darkness, No activity of any kind.

  Will’s car was gone. Had it been towed away as evidence? I waited for Elisa to wonder where he was, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  And then we were finally home and I was in the kitchen making the pasta I fell back on when we needed comfort: linguini with onions, capers, anchovies, garlic, red pepper flakes. Colin and the twins were in the living room, wine easing their sometimes incoherent conversation. When we’d come into the house, after the twins had grabbed each other tightly and finally let go, Elisa and Colin had looked at each other. There was so much they needed to say. Then Colin opened his arms the way he had with Hannah on the dock, and Elisa moved into them. I saw she was crying again.

  There was a conversation Elisa and I needed to have before the police interviewed her again. I’d wanted to give her a chance to decompress, to be with Hannah and let the wine relax her, but suddenly it seemed urgent. What if Frank or Carew decided to stop by now?

  I went to the living room doorway. “Elisa, could you help me with something?”

  Surprised, she pushed up from the striped couch. There was a momentarily silence, then the murmur of Colin and Hannah talking again.

  In the kitchen I pointed to a chair at the oak table and Elisa sat down opposite me.

  “I know you’ve been through hell. But I have to know what really happened before you talk to the police again.”

  “But I told you.”

  “No, you didn’t. Not about what happened on the helicopter.”

  I could see her teetering on the edge of trusting me. On the drive back to Port Lewis from Patchogue, she had told me a few things. She’d known she was going to die when Sheila boarded the helicopter and started screaming at her. “She told me I would fall out trying to escape. She said—­she told me, ‘Now I’ll be free of all of you, my pathetic attempt at a ‘normal’ life. I should have given it up years ago!’ Then we took off and it was too noisy to talk.”

  “It was Will’s gun, wasn’t it?” I said now, keeping my voice low. “Not one that your mother pulled out of her bag. You had it with you the whole time. That’s what Will didn’t want you to forget.”

  She nodded. “He wanted me to be able to protect myself. He was right not to trust them. But I wasn’t going to shoot her, I just wanted to get away. She tried to grab me, she clawed at my arm with her nails, then Youssef turned around with a knife in his hand. He wasn’t close enough, but he tried to make my mother take it and she started to reach for it. So I shot him.”

  “And you left the gun on the helicopter?”

  “Why not? Will had it when he worked for my father, he just kept it when he left. It’s registered in my father’s name. That’s what they’ll find out. That’s what I want them to find out.”

  What they would never find out was how extraordinary my daughter was.

  THERE WOULD BE rocky days ahead. The case against Colin was withdrawn in court, but Elisa deeply mourned Ethan and there was no way we could console her. After the police returned the Patek Philippe watch to her, she had it cleaned, sized to fit her, then wore it constantly. It had survived the fire only by chance. According to Craig, Youssef had removed the watch from Ethan’s wrist, intending to sell it, but Sheila pointed out that it was engraved on the back from his father and could raise red flags. There had been an argument, but after the bodies were burned the watch was replaced. It suffered only minor damage in the second fire.

  Once, when I asked Elisa if she was going to return the stolen archeological artifacts to their countries, she flared like a gasoline fire. “My father never stole anything. He didn’t need to. He paid for everything he owned!”

  Yet Fire Island and its aftermath brought us together in the way no amount of polite visits could. It had allowed me to tell her how much I loved her and had missed her, and let her know that this time I would put my life on the line to keep her safe. Perhaps it had also let her know what a mother loving her felt like.

  According to Frank, Craig had been captured while he waited on The Beautiful Past for the others to return the leased helicopter and take a taxi back to Southampton. Although he had been the one who had handled the negotiations with me, he insisted that he never would have hurt Hannah. He had actually been in the parking lot and had watched Elisa and me board the ferry. He had been instructed by Sheila to kill Will Crosley if he brought Elisa there. But he couldn’t.

  “I mean, I knew Will,” he’d told them earnestly. “We’d worked together for Ethan, I couldn’t just shoot him. I’m a computer geek, not a killer! He said he wouldn’t tell the police what Youssef and Sheila had done. I gave him the money I had with me to seal the deal. It was plenty because we were leaving the country that night. We left his car open to make it look like someone had ambushed him and shot him. I even took his wallet as proof to show Sheila.”

  Craig also detailed the antiquities theft empire that Ethan had commanded. “The countries never missed the stuff because they didn’t even know about most of it. The stuff left the sites immediately. Collectors paid a lot because there was no record of it being stolen. And he had Will forge some of the easier stuff. Ethan was a weird guy, that’s for sure. It was like he was trying to get revenge on the whole world.”

  Elisa tried calling Will and leaving messages. He finally called her back several days later. But he was lying low, afraid he could still be charged in the antiquities scam. Their evening of cervezas and fried chicken would have to wait for a while.

  I even had a call from Micah Clancy after the whole story was reported in the Times and Newsday—­by Louis Benat. Micah’s TV series, Jamaica Blues, was set to air in September, and he said he was loving New York.

  “I’ve already brought the wife and kid over; maybe we’ll stay. We should get together, I’d like to meet your daughter now.”

  I said I’d call him.

  Meanwhile, we were feeling our way. Hannah’s graduation was a watershed, a way to be together as a family that seemed a manual for the future. Everything has been a watershed. I had dinner with Frank after we got back, an evening that ended in an intense kiss but nothing more. We made plans for the next weekend.

  I also admitted to myself the ways I had fictionalized Colin, first by my hero worship, then by playing him for laughs, making him sound more outrageous than he was. Now I can see him as gifted in many ways, but still a man. I didn’t explain that part of it to him, but I let him know that I was not the girl he married. I thought he would be relieved that I had finally realized what he had been trying to tell me, but he is not quietly fading away Perhaps, now that we are complete again, he is ready to be a family man.

  I’m not sure about that. We’ll always have the children, of course, and the sunsets we shared over the places I dreamed about as a girl. New Mexico, Machu Picchu, Morocco.

  The Beautiful Past.

  Acknowledgments

  IT’S TIME, AS they say, to round up the usual suspects:

  Chelsey Emmelhainz, my amazing editor, who can coax cardboard into living, breathing characters.

  Agnes Birnbaum, my tireless agent who, if life were a boxing match, would be always in my corner offering support, wise counsel, and Band-­Aids.

  Andrea Hackett, my publicist, who works tirelessly finding ways to tell the world about my books.

  Eleanor Mikucki, my copy editor, whose eagle eye saved me from much embarrassment.

  My trusted first readers who work hard to make my books what they should be: Tom Randall, accomplished husband; Robin Culbertson, insightful daughter-­in-­law; and Adele Glimm, dear frien
d and writer herself.

  Some new faces: Ellen Stein and Tom McVetty, retired Nassau County detectives, who kept the police activities on track; Toby Speed, expert pilot, friend, and author of Death Over Easy, who vetted the helicopter information; Andy Rich, financial planner and mystery aficionado and fount of great ideas. Linda Levering, Pam Crum, and Eleanor Hyde for their ceaseless support, and Liz Randall and her Retired Teachers’ Book Club. Also the Setauket Meadows Book Club, who served Yellow Tail Chardonnay at their reception because it was what Delhi liked to drink. And my New York City Writers Group, always.

  Finally, the stellar family of writers and agents I am fortunate enough to spring from: Tom Randall and Andy Culbertson; John Chaffee and Heide Lange; Jessie Chaffee, Brendan Kiely, and Joshua Chaffee; David Chaffee and Deborah Hess.

  Andrew, Emily, Charlotte, and Regan, you have a tradition to step into.

  Not ready to stop sleuthing with Delhi Laine?

  Read on for an excerpt from Judi Culbertson’s

  A Photographic Death

  Now available from Witness Impulse

  An Excerpt from

  A Photographic Death

  Nineteen years ago, Delhi Laine’s two-­year old daughter disappeared. After a frantic but inconclusive search, authorities determined that she must have drowned, her body washed away from the picturesque English park in which she was playing.

  Delhi’s heart has never healed, yet her family has since soldiered on. But when a mysterious letter arrives containing the ominous words, YOUR DAUGHTER DID NOT DROWN, their lives are once again thrown into turmoil. With her family torn between fighting for the past and protecting the future, Delhi is caught in the middle. For a mother, the choice to find her daughter seems easy. But for a family left fractured by the mistakes of the past, the consequence, and the truth, may be infinitely more costly.