by Pamela Crane
Although no arrests were made in connection with the case, the district attorney believes they are close to solving it.
Women Detective at Work
Shortly before 1 p.m. yesterday afternoon, the entire county detective force was stationed in separate groups at the Fields Estate. A woman detective in the employ of the County Detective Bureau, who posed as Mrs. Fields’ distant second cousin, was granted entrance into the home by Robert Fields’ maid, whereupon the detective set about examining the residence for evidence.
Upon searching Mr. Fields’ office, she discovered several letters neatly hidden in a hole in the hollow leg of a desk. The letters suggest Mr. Fields is behind Mrs. Fields’ disappearance. One such letter was an exchange between a doctor at the sanitarium insisting he could no longer in good conscience keep Alvera hostage against her will, for she is otherwise healthy and sane. The details of the other letters are still being investigated as detectives continue to search the estate.
The house, which is a large three-story building, is on the edge of a steep hill, its rear overlooking the Ohio River and the Bellevue Station of the Pennsylvania lines west. On one side of the house is a deep ravine, while on the other side steps lead to the station. In front of the large yard before the house the street becomes a muddy road and turns to the right.
At the turn in the road the machine containing the detectives stopped. The driver alighted and pretended to be tinkering with the engine, when the taxicab containing Robert Fields came down the street also. As the car containing the detectives had a large limousine body, Fields entertained no suspicions. He jumped from the taxi, aided his fellow passengers to alight, and pointed to the house. The next minute he found himself handcuffed.
Mr. Fields is being contained at the county jail on a charge of murder. He persists in claiming his innocence while his attorneys assure the public he is not in any way guilty.
Chapter 42
Felicity
As ambivalent as I felt about Cody, I couldn’t leave him in that condition. Neither of us said a word as I helped him to the sofa and doctored and bandaged his wounds. He was so liquored up I doubted he felt much of anything. The pain would hit him tomorrow. Good.
Ever the compulsive neatnik, I started tidying up the place and stopped myself. I wasn’t Cody’s maid. When I left, he had fallen over on his side and was lightly snoring.
Oliver and I had arrived home to a hundred distressed questions from Debra about Oliver’s injuries, but she never got the answers she was looking for as he ushered her out the door without barely a thanks for watching the kids. She wasn’t the only one stuck with unanswered questions. I sorted through them while Oliver nursed his hands. Had Marin targeted our family to get to Vera? If Vera was truly safe with Bennett, was the threatening voicemail about Vera being dead just a twisted newsmonger trying to scare me? Who ran me off the road? And the biggest one of all: how many of us had been keeping secrets, and how deep did they go?
Vaults full of mysteries stretched deep in Oliver’s family line, all starting with Alvera Fields, the loose end that seemed to tie everything together. She was the reason Vera dug into the past. She was the reason Vera discovered the truth. She was the catalyst for Vera running away. Even a dead woman, long gone as ashes in the wind, could scorch the earth. Something deep inside me knew she was the key to finding Vera. But I didn’t know how. I couldn’t see the connection clear enough.
There was only one path on which to move forward. The treacherous one I had dreaded and avoided all this time, but it was the inevitable one.
Oliver was stretched across the sofa with his feet in my lap. Pressing frozen peas to his bloody knuckles, he showed not an ounce of remorse for what he had done to his brother. I hardly recognized any of my family anymore. Six months had chipped away who we were and replaced us with monsters.
“I’m going to tell the police everything and turn myself in.” I looked at Oliver’s socked feet as I said it, unable to meet his gaze.
“No, there has to be another way.”
“What other way? We have no idea if Bennett is still alive, or where he took Vera. She could be stranded somewhere with his dead corpse. I can’t wait for answers anymore. I’m all out of hope. Look at us!” I threw my arms wide in exasperation. “You beat the crap out of your own brother, not that he didn’t deserve it. Cody’s becoming a drunk. Meanwhile I’m so zoned out I’m forgetting my kids at karate class. Only the police can help us now. We know who she’s with. Maybe they’ll be able to find them now that we have a name that they can trace.”
Marin had never spoken much of her mother or father—or her stepfather, for that matter—out of shame or something else, I never knew why. They were ghosts in the shadows, nonexistent for all we knew. Her father was a military hero, she had once told me. I never questioned that no family on her side showed up to Marin and Cody’s wedding; I never even saw a photo of Bennett. If I had, would I have connected him to that stranger with the limp on the fateful night of the fender-bender when Vera had come into our lives?
“How will they trace him, Felicity?” Oliver persisted. “Bennett has no listed phone number, isn’t at his last known address. The PI already investigated him for us and came up with bupkes. We can figure it out without the cops. Eventually Vera will contact us.”
“We’ve waited six months! I’m done waiting, Ollie. My freedom isn’t worth losing my daughter. My time is up.”
“You think the cops will be able to find Bennett when Marin couldn’t?” Oliver’s voice dropped to a soft beg. “Please don’t do this. Twenty years, Felicity. That’s how long you’d be in jail. You’d miss everything.”
“I’m already missing everything. I have no other choice.”
I lifted his legs off of my lap, stood, and grabbed my keys. I couldn’t sleep on this or I’d change my mind. I needed to do it while I still had the courage. I headed outside, walked to the car, tears rolling down my face. Oliver scrambled to step into his loafers while chasing me to the driveway, knowing he was broken and beaten. Vera and I shared the same stubborn streak.
I paused at the car door, kissed Oliver long and deep and lovingly, as if it was the last kiss we’d share for the next two decades. Our lips were full of a lifetime’s worth of love and memories and baby births and house hunting and family vacations and job changes and business startups and preschool graduations. Our whole life together was in that single kiss.
“I can’t see the kids like this. I’ll never be able to follow through if I have to say goodbye to them. Just tell them I love them, and Mommy will see them soon.”
He grabbed my hand, pulled me away from the vehicle. “Felicity, you don’t have to do this. I promised you I’d protect you. Let me do this for you.”
I shook my head. “No, this is on me. It started with me, it ends with me.”
“That’s not how marriage works, Felicity. We both have been in this together since the beginning. I’m not asking. I’m telling you—I’m taking this from you. I’ll lie to the police and say whatever I have to in order to protect you.”
“Oliver, no—” But he wouldn’t let me speak as he slid past me, sank into the driver’s seat, and closed the car door. He pressed his palm to the window, and I pressed mine against his on the other side. We were one, separated by glass. Ironically symbolic of what was to come.
As his car faded from view down the road, I imagined Oliver walking into the police station, straight to Detective Montgomery’s cubicle. Her looking up from her computer, expectation on her face. I could hear the chatter and phones ringing and someone yelling in the background, all draining away as Oliver fixed his attention on the woman who would seal his fate. I envisioned my sweet husband exhaling all that fear bubbling up inside him, uncertain how to push the words out. My brain rumbled a million possible outcomes, all ending with visions of Oliver being hauled away in handcuffs.
A maternal yearning drew me upstairs. I needed to be close to my ch
ildren; I had been a confession away from losing them. As I passed Vera’s open door, I recalled the day six months ago when Marin had found the pot stashed in Vera’s desk. I had been so angry at her, unable to understand the relationship between her and Vera. I knew even back then she was hiding something…now I wished I could speak with her. Pick her brain to understand everything...but it was too late for that now.
I blinked and found myself crouched under her desk, looking for whatever secret enclosure Marin had found that day. Running my hands up and down every square inch of surface, it seemed like a typical antique writing desk. The drawer, the pull-out slides, the pigeon-hole shelves, the folding writing lid, the tambour door, everything appeared normal. Something special about this desk had drawn Vera to it. She had mentioned it to me when I first showed her the articles in the creepy library, pointed her finger at the words in the article. What were those words?
Something about a woman detective…and a hollow leg. I focused on each tapered leg, tracing each husk inlay with my fingers, until a piece of wood on the back leg wobbled against my pressure. I slid the wood out and reached inside. Further, deeper until my hand couldn’t fit anymore. My fingers curled around a slick, glossy tube. When I pulled the rolled-up photo out and straightened it, I realized why Vera had known instantly she was adopted. The faces, unfamiliar at first, congealed into recognizable forms. In the picture was a teenage version of Marin, newborn Vera, Bennett from how I remembered him that night, and a woman, haggard and hollow-cheeked—presumably Marin’s mother. Held beside baby Vera was the velveteen rabbit that Sydney had left on Vera’s bed next to a curled-up Meowzebub, for once not up to any mischief.
So this was how Vera figured it out. I had never given her enough credit for her cleverness. The girl was far smarter than I ever was. I was following Vera’s trail of crumbs, but it wasn’t enough. I was missing a big piece. The piece that would show me where she had holed up. I sat at her desk, hands flat against the desk’s top, imagining myself as a brilliant, curious, budding genealogist. Wherever Vera went, it was somewhere familiar to her. Somewhere special.
Ding! If a realization had a sound, that would be it.
I knew exactly where Vera was. I jumped up, eager to tell Oliver… Crap, he was on his way to the police station to turn himself in! Where had I put my phone? I had to stop him before it was too late.
Running downstairs, I found my cell beside the sofa and my fingertips danced across the screen as I typed his cell phone number. Riiing—and then straight to voicemail. I couldn’t leave a message in case the cops listened to it later. I pulled up a new text and frantically typed as ALLCAPS words dashed across the bubble:
URGENT! SAY NOTHING!
I waited for the three dots to pass across the screen, showing that he’d read the message. Nothing. Deducting how long it would take me to get the kids out of bed to drive down to the station, I wondered if I’d have enough time. No, there was no way I’d make it there soon enough. I punched more letters in:
I KNOW WHERE VERA IS!
There was nothing to do but pray my message reached him in time. Somewhere along the way my faith had returned, and I hoped God was listening.
Chapter 43
Felicity
One arm held Sydney in her Strawberry Shortcake nightgown firmly against my hip, and the other pulled Eliot in his Marvel footie pajamas close to my side as we entered the police station. Sydney rested her head on my shoulder, her little finger sucks squeaking in my ear. Eliot yawned and shuffled sleepily behind me as I tried to keep him close. At this late hour the station was fairly empty, with only a few officers sitting at desks and a couple people loitering in the waiting area. I stretched up onto my toes to see if I could spot Oliver somewhere within.
“Can I help you, ma’am?” the receptionist asked, drilling me with her eyes.
My brain was stuck on pause. I wanted nothing more than to get my husband and my kids out of here.
“I’m here to speak with Detective Montgomery. My husband, Oliver, came in a little earlier and I’m trying to find him.”
The receptionist glanced down at her clipboard. “Was that”—her finger ran down a list of sign-in names—“Oliver Portman?”
“Yes! That’s him. Is he still here?”
“One second.” She picked up the phone and punched in a number, asked if Oliver Portman was still there, then hung up. “I’m sorry, ma’am, he left.”
“He left?” I could have sworn I saw his car still parked outside. Unless…oh God, had he been formally arrested? How did I even ask such a thing with the kids listening?
“Yes, right before you came in, actually.”
I had been too late. I shouldn’t have brought the kids, I shouldn’t have come. I felt sick. I turned to leave, rushing for the exit doors, for the fresh air to wash over me. Oliver was going to jail and I was going to be a single mother and technically I was the one who committed the crime and what if the police figured that out and put me in jail too and Sydney didn’t get her kidney transplant and…
“Felicity!”
I stopped mid-step, spun around looking for the man who matched the voice. Coming out of the bathroom was Oliver, jogging to meet me in the middle of the tile floor.
“You’re not in jail,” I whispered excitedly.
“I couldn’t do it, honey. And then I saw your text.”
“So you didn’t—”
“I didn’t say anything.” As he hugged me, Sydney reached for him and slid into his arms. “What’s going on? What did you find out?”
I grabbed his hand and led him outside into the parking lot.
“We’re dropping the kids off at your mom’s, then picking up Cody and heading to the Fields Estate.”
“The Fields Estate? What makes you think Vera’s there?”
“In her Vera-esque way, she practically told me.”
**
Cody had sobered up when we arrived at his house, but his face was badly bruised and swollen. He and Oliver regarded each other silently for a few tense moments before Cody forced a grin and joked, “You should see the other guy.”
“I am the other guy,” Oliver reminded him, and pointed at his own face. “Not a mark. Still pretty.”
Cody snorted. “Right. Well, you hit like a girl.”
Oliver tried not to smile, then laughter burbled up in his throat and came out in a cleansing rush.
Cody laughed too and grabbed him in a bro hug.
“You know,” said Oliver, “you kinda deserved that ass whupping.”
“Yeah, I guess I did.”
Vera was nothing if not methodical. Had I been listening, I would have heard her calling me to her. Her murmurs were in the ancient newspaper articles she framed that mentioned the hollow-legged desk, in the drawings she rendered of the Fields Estate, in the thoughts she chronicled about her ancestor’s life there. All of it led back to that house. The realization came as a whisper, but it hit me like a hurricane.
The house we pulled up to had become overgrown with knee-high weeds since the last time we were here, like something out of The Haunting of Hill House where I imagined the ghosts of families past wandering the hallways chained to their sins. Darkness shrouded the massive Edwardian dwelling perched atop a hill that dropped into a ravine, leaving only a spooky skull-like glare as two windows glowed against the night. The gate in the security fence around the historic structure, erected to deter vandals and trespassers, had either been jimmied, or someone with a key—namely Vera—had entered the grounds freely.
The huge front door was likewise unlocked so we entered quietly, first Oliver, then me, then Cody, hoping not to alert anyone inside as to our arrival. Exploring the first floor, the rooms were empty and black. Desolate and dusty. I couldn’t imagine my daughter living in this nightmare, alone with a man she didn’t know, for six long months. Assuming she was indeed here and still alive.
I slunk into the kitchen, my weary gaze transfixed
by the black-and-white checkered tile floor. Filling a shelf in the butler’s pantry were stacked cans of soup, crackers, a short supply of easy-to-prepare meals. Crusty pots and pans filled the ceramic standalone sink. Indeed, someone had been living here. And for quite some time, it seemed.
My hope soared.
I headed toward the center staircase, each step creaking my arrival. When I reached the top, light poured out from an open door at the end of the hallway. I followed the century-old Persian Malayer runner, where a fine trellis of faded red and mint flowers sprawled across the woven fabric, chewed by mice and frayed by time.
At the entry to the door I stood, listened, then peeked inside. In a four-poster bed lay a man. In a cushioned chair next to him sat Vera, head down. As the floorboard creaked under another step, she glanced up. My daughter, healthy and alive!
“Vera!” I called out and ran to her.
Her chin tilted upward, her eyes widened with shock. “Mom!”
I was still Mom! I was already smothering her in hugs and kisses before she had a chance to rise from her seat. My arms circled her protectively, as if they’d never again let her go. I knelt down on the floor at her knees, holding her hands, searching for an explanation.
“Why? Why didn’t you come home? Or at least tell me where you were.”
Vera released my hands, gently nudged me away, and I felt a strange detachment. “You really don’t know?”
“No, honey, please help me understand.” I just wanted to close the gap between us.
“I was angry at you for so long, Mom. You and Dad lied to me. All my life, you kept this whole other family from me. It’s why I left, and why I didn’t tell you.”
“You wanted to punish us? We had the entire Allegheny County Police Department searching for you. All your friends and family. Austin. Blythe.” I lifted an eyebrow—I know all your secrets.