Read A Photographic Death Online
Authors: Judi Culbertson
I
DIDN’T CARE
how long I had to wait. Even if the ferries stopped running from Bridgeport for the night, I could continue to drive down Route 95 and cross over to Long Island.
Except for texting briefly, I hadn’t taken my eyes off the street. A dry-cleaning van delivered clothes on hangers to a building across the way. A young mother passed pushing a double stroller, the kind a friend had lent me for the twins. A stooped grandmother tugged her shopping cart over the uneven sidewalk as if it were a balky puppy, her gray hair frizzing out of a red babushka. Two young women in identical yellow parkas entered the residence.
I was still watching when I saw a car slide in and park right in front of the building in a space that had just become free. Not just any car, but a dark blue Mercedes-Benz. An odd car for this neighborhood, I thought, then realized whose it must be. I straightened up in my seat and craned to look, but no one got out. Finally the driver’s door opened and a dark-haired woman in a three-quarter length loden coat emerged. After looking up and down the street, she pressed something in her hand, probably a remote lock, then headed for the entrance to the building.
My stomach churned and I was sure I would throw up. I was shaken by nausea, a sickness more violent than any flu I had ever suffered. A splash of tuna fish rose, burning, into my throat. I gasped and made myself sit still, careful not to close my eyes and make it worse. This was no motion sickness left over from the ferry. I took a deep breath that ended in a spasm of coughing.
Sheila Crosley disappeared into the building.
I opened my window and begged the frigid air to save me.
You’re not going to be sick. You’re going to get through this.
Sheila. How she must have prayed this day would never come.
She came back out a minute later, pressed something in her hand, and got back in the Mercedes. She did not drive away.
Seeing her the second time, I felt less nauseated though still dizzy. Did she know how close I was? I hadn’t thought to look for the man in the black car, but he could have warned her. He might even be lurking close by as well. Voices only I could hear started shouting orders as if we were evacuating the
Titanic.
Go and confront her, tell her how she’s ruined your life.
Kill
her. Don’t do anything now. Drive away and let the police handle it. No, wait and see why she’s here.
I paid attention to the last voice. Perhaps Sheila’s being here was only coincidence. Maybe she drove into the city to see her daughter—
my
daughter—every Thursday.
And maybe Sheila would wave at me and invite me to go with them.
The next sequence felt as unreal as watching a movie being filmed. The Mercedes’ door was flung open again, and Sheila Crosley moved around to the sidewalk. Caitlin was coming toward her in a hurry. They reached out to each other, hugged intensely for what seemed much too long, then turned and went into the residence.
The way they held each other . . . Not just like family members happy to see each other, again, but as if they were meeting after learning of a crisis. Was
I
the crisis? But that was hard to believe. Why would Sheila ever want Caitlin to find out about me? She had tried twice to make sure it didn’t happen. Yet why was Sheila going inside with her? She could be warning Caitlin about me in another way completely.
This crazy lady who thinks she’s your mother is trying to get in touch with you. We don’t know what she’ll try.
Nothing moved on the street now, no shoppers, no mothers pushing strollers. As the minutes dragged, I wondered what they could be doing in there. I fantasized them slipping out of a back exit, leaving the car to be picked up later. But finally the heavy glass door opened and Sheila and Caitlin came out carrying things. An overnight bag and an armload of books. A black laptop case and printer. My worst nightmare was unfolding before my eyes. Sheila was stealing my daughter from me again.
This time Sheila stayed in the car, but Caitlin went back inside the building. As soon as she had disappeared, I grabbed my woven bag and pushed out of the van. I had no idea what I planned to do now, only that I knew I could not lose Caitlin again. I pulled up my parka hood to cover my hair. If Sheila was not expecting me to be there, I doubted she’d recognize me after all this time. And if she was, I was ready for her.
When I reached the glass double doors I could see into a lobby area with couches.
The inner door was locked.
I was moving my hand toward the row of buttons on the wall when one of the two girls in yellow parkas appeared again, backpack in hand. She smiled politely and held the door open for me.
The area was meant to be a living room with couches and coffee tables, and porcelain lamps with tarnished brass bases. The room looked as if it had hosted generations of girls. I moved over to a faded flowered couch and sat down facing the elevator beyond, not letting the top of my head show. If Sheila came in, I would have the advantage. If Sheila came in . . . Even then I considered returning to my van and following the Mercedes when they left. But what if I lost them in traffic? I didn’t know my way around Boston the way they must. And once they disappeared, everything was lost.
This might be the only chance I would ever be given. I extracted one of my Secondhand Prose business cards from my wallet, and slipped it into the manila folder with the photos.
Waiting gave rise to a new emotion, a deep, deep hate, a feeling so unfamiliar I couldn’t identify it at first. I couldn’t remember if I had ever felt this burn that started in my chest and then reached everywhere. In childhood, when emotions ran hot, I had yelled, “I hate you!” many times and felt its fury. Yet within hours the emotion had dissolved back into friendship or at least indifference. What I knew now was that if Sheila climbed out of her car and was hit by a speeding van, I would never turn the driver in.
Then the elevator door opened and Caitlin was stepping out, a navy backpack dangling from one arm. She looked serious, as if listening to some inner dialogue she had never heard before.
When she had almost reached me, I said, “Elisa, can I talk to you?”
“Oh!” She looked down at the couch, startled. “Well, I’m kind of in a hurry. My father had another heart attack and I’m going home for the weekend.”
“This will only take a minute.”
“Okay.” She came and sat down next to me, our knees nearly touching, then looked at me more closely. “Weren’t you taking pictures on campus today?” And then, “You look so familiar. Are you . . . my birth mother?”
Of everything I had ever imagined her saying to me, this was a complete shock. “Well, yes. But—”
Then I stopped. Her face was taking on the look of Hannah when she was told that something she always believed in wasn’t true. It was a furrowing of the brow, a quiver to her full upper lip. “My parents told me you died in a car accident.”
“Dead? They said I was dead? They must have wished I was dead after they stole you from us. Your father is alive too.”
“I guess adoption must seem like theft, but—”
“Adoption? Cait— Elisa, listen to me. There wasn’t any
adoption
. You have a twin sister, Hannah, and a wonderful family. We were in England the summer you disappeared.” I knew I sounded frantic, incoherent, but I had to make her understand. “You were kidnapped from a park. All these years, we thought you had drowned. We just found out recently that you hadn’t.” I put out my hand to grasp her arm, to hold her there, just to touch her. The urge to reach out and put my arms around her was overwhelming. Yet I held back. I was a stranger to her.
She moved away from me to stand up. “I’m sorry, but I think you have the wrong girl.”
As she straightened, I saw that the insignia on her jacket was for snowboarding.
“Wait.” Desperately I fished in my bag and brought out Sheepie. Shaking the tissue away, I said, “This was your favorite toy. You wouldn’t go to sleep without him.”
She stared at the tattered lamb. Something moved across her face then, a touch of memory, insubstantial as the brush of silk on skin. She put out her hand halfway, but didn’t touch him.
“You called him Sheepie.”
There was a rattling at the door and we both looked around, startled. Sheila was gesturing to get in.
“Take this!” I pulled out the manila envelope and handed it to her, then pressed Sheepie against her arm. “It’s a picture of you and Hannah, and one of our family.
Your
family. And how to reach me. We never stopped missing you.
Never.
”
The pounding on the glass was louder.
“I forgot to lock my room.” Caitlin jumped to her feet and fled toward the elevator, taking Sheepie and the envelope.
I turned to face Sheila Crosley.
W
E STARED AT
each other through the black iron bars and slightly wavy glass, combatants in an arena I could never have imagined. Then she stepped back and I slipped into the tiny lobby, pulling the door rapidly closed before she could push in to Caitlin.
“How could you?” I gasped. “How could you steal my baby?”
She eyed me coolly, as if I were the old lady with the shopping cart and babushka. “What are you talking about? Who
are
you?”
“Come on, Sheila. You know exactly who I am. You just didn’t think this day would come. How could you do it? Colin was supposed to be your friend!”
Her face turned to porcelain. She was still slender, still beautiful, her face only slightly lined. “Whoever you are, if you’re talking about my daughter, we have adoption papers. Yes, I know who you are. It was too much of a struggle for you. All those children at once and your cocaine habit.”
“My
what
?”
“I hope you’ve gotten clean.” She eyed me. “I understand you have. But that doesn’t undo what you were in the past.”
The words clogged my throat—what to say first? “Any—any ‘papers’ you have are forgeries. All they need to do is check my handwriting. The British police know all about you anyway. They know you paid Priscilla Waters to steal Caitlin and tell Jane that she drowned. And they know you killed her when she demanded more money. I don’t know what the extradition laws are, Sheila, but you’re in big trouble.”
Her expression gave nothing away, but the lid over one deep blue eye started to twitch. It was like seeing a statue move.
A voice cautioned me not to tell her everything, but it felt too good to stop.
“The police have the car rental records and how it was returned damaged.”
“It
wasn’t
returned damaged. We . . .”
“Had it repaired. I know. There are records for that too.”
She didn’t seem to notice that what I was saying no longer made sense.
“If you don’t leave my daughter alone
I’m
calling the police. You were always so complacent, you and your little tribe, thinking you were superior to everyone else. You never appreciated what an amazing child she was. You could never have given her the life we have.”
“You could have adopted any child.” I was still trying to understand what had happened.
“You mean the child of some drug addict or crazy person? You don’t get it, do you? Why would we adopt some stray when we could afford the best?” She was backing away from me as she talked, feeling around for the outer door handle. “Elisa was the child we would have had if we could have—I knew it the moment I saw her. You had so many children, grubby little brats, you didn’t notice how special she was.”
“Oh, you’re so wrong. Just wait till I tell Colin what his ‘best friends’ did to us.”
She turned away and opened the door, then looked back at me with an expression close to a smirk. “You think he doesn’t know?”
And then she escaped to the shelter of her expensive car.
Y
OU THINK HE
doesn’t know?
I made it back to the van, switched on the ignition, and watched as Caitlin, carrying a red backpack, came out and got in the passenger seat. For a moment the light caught the gold of her hair, a flash of sun on a cloudy day. Then it was extinguished and the Mercedes pulled away from the curb.
I had to go after them. I could not let Sheila steal her again. I was backing up, preparing to move out of the parking space, when a black Ford sedan pulled up alongside me. I thought the driver wanted my space and motioned him to back up so I could get out. He did not move. Ahead of me, I saw the Mercedes signal and turn left. Furiously I beeped my horn and motioned him back again.
It was another minute before the car pulled quickly forward and I caught a flash of a New York license plate. I would never find Sheila now. And I had other things, terrible things, to think about. How could Colin have known? Had he signed some kind of papers back in Stratford, after all? Was that why he had been so opposed to looking for Caitlin?
No, that was ridiculous. Caitlin had been his favorite, at least of the twins, the child he took sheer pleasure in. He’d loved her pert responses. When he heard the news, he had first been disbelieving, then crazy with grief. When Jane changed her story, he had gone immediately to the police, demanding that they try to find this “bad lady.” When he had to return home to teach, he had supported my staying on in Stratford to work with the private detective.
And he had never acted the same toward me again.
Could Sheila have meant that he had found out later and decided that Caitlin was better off where she was, in the privileged life they were providing? Was it possible that he had even met her from time to time, not as her father but as one of Ethan’s colleagues?
As soon as I had texted that I was at St. Brennan’s College, had he called Sheila to warn her? She would have had to be in Boston already to get here so fast. She would have had to call Caitlin immediately, make up a story about Ethan’s “heart attack,” and arrange to pick her up. I hoped my showing up would give Ethan one now.
I sat in the driver’s seat with the heat turned high, unable to get warm. I wanted to call Colin immediately and scream at him, demand answers. Yet I knew it was better to talk face-to-face.
It might not even be true. What if Sheila were being spiteful, trying to plant doubt? Making sure, despite Colin’s protestations, that I never completely believed him?
Go home.
But I just sat there with my head back, eyes closed, replaying my conversation with Caitlin, straining to tell if she’d believed me at all.
My phone rang then, jarring me, making me fumble frantically in my bag. As it rang for the fourth time, I looked to see who was calling. Jane.
No.
I couldn’t talk to her now, I couldn’t talk to anyone before I had seen Colin. I listened to her cheerful, excited voice mail wanting more details. If Colin had betrayed us, how could I ever let her know?
While I had my phone in my hand I pressed his number. I didn’t know what I was going to say, how I was going to say it. The number rang and went to voice mail.
“Colin, it’s Delhi. I have to see you. Don’t meet me at the house, come to the Whaler’s Arms at seven. If you can’t meet me, let me know. Otherwise I’ll see you then.”
I laid the phone on the seat beside me, then picked it up again. “Siri? I need the best way back to Route 95.”
When I had the directions, I left. There was nothing more for me here.
I
MANAGED TO
make the five-thirty ferry from Bridgeport with fifteen minutes to spare, and though I was tempted to sit in the bar with a glass of white wine, I stayed in the main cabin and read a memoir by a woman who was fighting breast cancer. I needed a clear head more than Dutch courage to confront Colin. Memoirs were my refuge. They have little resale value, so I buy them at book sales for myself. This one reminded me that there were worse things than what I was going through.
The Whaler’s Arms was next to Port Lewis Books. It was also the restaurant where my friend who owned the Old Frigate, Margaret Weller, and I used to go for cappuccino and conversation, and where I get my coffee now if I’m opening up the shop. Otherwise it is a dive with a nautical theme; pirate’s treasure map placemats on dark heavy tables and portholes for windows. It has the greasy smell of fish and chips fried in oil that should have been tossed the day before.
I chose it because I doubted we’d run into anyone we knew. With the noise level around the bar, no one would be able to hear what we were talking about.
Colin was already sitting in the back at a table for two, a Corona Extra in front of him.
I slid into the chair across from him. “I barely made the ferry. I need a drink.”
“Delhi, what the hell do you think you’re doing, running off to Boston like that? I told you I would handle it.”
I wondered if he noticed I hadn’t leaned over to kiss him. “But I found
Caitlin
—isn’t that the thing that matters?”
He opened his mouth and closed it again, then said, “What do you want to drink?”
“I’ll have a Corona too.”
As soon as I ordered it, I was sorry. Drinking beer with Colin reminded me too much of the early happy days on digs when we would sit and watch the sunset streak the sand orange and crimson, discussing what had happened that day while the children played around us. This was the brand we’d always drunk in the Southwest.
“But how did you know she was there?” He leaned across the table. “And is it really her?”
“You saw the photo. And there are—other things.” I told him about getting the ski club e-mail, my fears that the kidnappers would get the information, my rush to St. Brennan’s.
“But how did you find her? Did they give you her name?”
I gave him a steady look.
“What?”
And then, looking at this man I had lived with for twenty-five years, longer than my parents, my sister, or anyone else, looking into his blue eyes wrinkled around the edges by life, his wide, still-handsome face, I knew he could not have been involved. His integrity was something I should never have doubted. I was glad he didn’t know that I had. “You won’t like it,” I warned.
“Delhi, just tell me.”
“It was Sheila and Ethan Crosley. They took her.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Back in Stratford. They arranged everything.”
“That can’t be. Ethan? How do you
know
?”
“She grew up as Elisa Crosley. I saw Sheila today.”
“You saw Sheila? Did you talk to her?” I saw how hard he was fighting not to believe it. Could not believe it.
My Corona sat untouched in front of me. “Where is Ethan teaching now?”
“As far as I know, he’s still at Brown.”
“In Rhode Island?” No more than an hour’s drive from Boston.
Colin took a frantic gulp of beer, leaving a streak of foam on his upper lip. I had never seen him unable to speak before.
“Are you in touch with Ethan at all?” I asked.
He gave his head a sleepwalker’s shake. “I e-mailed him last year about a dig I thought he’d be interested in. The bastard never even wrote me back.”
“I wonder why.”
“But how did they do it?”
I finally reached for my beer. I’d never known what to do with the chunk of lime stuck in the neck of the bottle. Now I just pulled it out and took a long swallow. Then I told him everything I knew, even about my call to Sampson and the rental car. “Sheila admitted it. She said I had signed adoption papers because of my ‘cocaine habit’! She intimated you knew all about it.”
“About what? Their kidnapping Caitlin?”
He looked so disbelieving that I said quickly, “I knew you didn’t know. It was like my taking drugs.”
He thought of something he must have forgotten in his shock. “Did you talk to Caitlin?”
Even one swig of beer was too potent on an empty stomach. Dizzily I signaled our waitress. “Could you bring me a bag of potato chips or something?”
“And I’ll have another,” Colin added, tilting his empty bottle.
“I didn’t plan to. But then Sheila was at her dorm to take her away and I couldn’t let that happen, without Caitlin even—so yes, I did.”
“You actually talked to her.” I expected his reproaches but his voice was wondering. “Is she still so bright?”
“Colin, it was horrible. She thought Ethan and Sheila adopted her because I died in a car accident in Stratford. Then she thought I was her ‘birth mother’ wanting a reunion. I gave her Sheepie and my card to contact us, but I don’t know if she will.”
Colin put his face in his hands. I knew his mind was racing, reinterpreting everything that had happened since Stratford in light of this new knowledge.
Then he covered his face completely and groaned.
“Colin?” I felt a flash of terror. I had no idea what was coming.
The waitress set Colin’s beer and my chips down on the table, but I couldn’t move.
He finally took his hands away and stared at me. “Sheila’s right. I did know. But I didn’t know I knew.”
I put my hand over my mouth.
He leaned close to me, forearms on the table. “I visited them, I guess about 1999, when I was at a conference in Berkeley. I dropped by the house uninvited to try and reestablish the friendship. I missed it. They had a little girl and a boy, both adopted, he was from Nicaragua,. They said she was five and in kindergarten. The boy was just a toddler. Sheila whisked them out of the room before I could really get a look at them, but something about the girl reminded me of Hannah. Except that Hannah was six.”
“They lied about her age to you to throw you off. You showing up like that must have been terrifying. What if Caitlin had recognized you?”
We stared at each other.
“Damn! Why didn’t I recognize her? My own child.” He looked as anguished as I had ever seen him.
I reached across the table and held his arm. I couldn’t let myself think about the years we had lost.
“I knew Caitlin was dead so I didn’t consider it.”
I nodded. “What are we going to do now?”
“After I kill Ethan?”
“Right. I was hoping Sheila would be hit by a car today.”
“Don’t worry, they’re going to pay.” He placed his hands on the table as if getting ready to stand. “Let’s get something to eat.”
I turned to look for our waitress.
“Not here.”
“The clam chowder won’t kill you. I’m too wiped out to go anywhere else.”
He looked reluctant, but settled back down and we ordered two bowls.
“I
CHECKED SOME
things out this afternoon,” Colin said when we were eating our soup. The oyster crackers floating on top of mine looked like little life jackets. “After you sent the photo, I did some research. But it’s a complicated situation legally.”
“Why?”
“It happened in another country, not here. So the FBI can’t initiate an investigation. The statute of limitations on kidnapping runs out in most states once the child turns sixteen.”
“But they investigated the Lindbergh kidnapping for years!”
“Because the baby died. That made it a capital crime with no limitations.”
Everything that had happened in this endless day, the beer, Colin’s words, conspired to make me feel dizzy, as insubstantial as the paper placemat. I stared down at the maze printed in blue with a treasure chest in its center.
“The Brits have to extradite them to stand trial there.”
“We can’t do anything?”
“File a civil suit, maybe. But we aren’t going to do that.”
“Why not?”
“Delhi, think. Do you want to drag Caitlin through the notoriety of a trial and see her ‘parents,’ her whole life exposed? Do you think that will endear us to her? If anything, it will polarize the situation and force her to choose.”
“You don’t know that.”
“You said they had papers?”
“
Forgeries.
We don’t even know whose name was on the papers, mine or someone else’s entirely. If you have enough money, you can get phony passports, birth certificates, everything. We have to get those papers!”
Colin gave me a fond, indulgent look as if I were a child proposing to fly to the moon for a picnic. “And you plan to burgle their safety deposit box?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they keep them in the house.” But I was crashing, moving beyond rational thought. “If the authorities get involved, Ethan will
have
to produce the papers.”
“You’re fading.” Colin looked around, as if for the waitress. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
“Just one more thing. The records say they rented the car until September 27. But didn’t Ethan have to be back to teach before then?”
Colin shook his head. “He took a leave of absence that fall. He told them he had discovered something in England he had to research further. I remember because I was pissed that he hasn’t told me about it. We’d been to the same sites, after all, and whatever he’d found would have stayed his discovery. But he didn’t come home until January, and never published anything about what he thought he’d found.”
So he’d had plenty of time to run down Priscilla Waters. Time enough to work out the paperwork to bring Caitlin home.