A Photographic Death (6 page)

Chapter Eleven

T
O
D
R.
L
UNDY
’
S
credit, even after my outburst he brought Jane out of her trance gradually, promising her that she would feel relaxed and well-rested. As she had asked, he pointed out that when she wanted to buy an expensive new purse, she would remember all the beautiful handbags she had in her closet, and put her credit card away.

Jane opened her eyes and smiled at me. She was a young adult again who looked as if she had just finished dozing over a book. “What did I
say
? Is it—okay?”

“You don’t remember?”

“Something about a bunny?”

“You’ll hear. It’s wonderful.”

“I’ll give you the recording so you can listen to it.” Dr. Lundy turned from where he was extracting a CD from a system built into the wall, but he looked shaken, his pale eyes startled behind his rimless glasses.

As I zipped up my jacket, I asked him, “What do I owe you?”

“Suppose we handle it this way: If you come back and let me know how it all works out, we’ll treat it as a teaching experience.”

I could see how curious he was to hear the whole story. “Well—that’s very generous.”

He helped Jane out of the chair as if she were a frail old lady, then watched as she buttoned her coat.

As soon as we had closed the outside door, I grabbed her shoulders. I could barely keep from shrieking. “You didn’t see her drown! Someone told you to tell me that.”

“Really? Really? I was afraid when you yelled, ‘That’s enough.’ it was because you didn’t want me to go through it again.”

“You heard that? No, I guess I didn’t want us to live through all that agony again, if it wasn’t really true.” Yet now I felt sorry that I hadn’t let it unspool. We might have learned other things, like what had happened to the woman with the stroller. “But you’re okay?”

“I’m fine. Just excited.”

“Me too.” Part of me wanted to dance and whirl and scream my happiness to the stars. What stopped me was that there had still been an eyewitness to the drowning,

I unlocked the van and we climbed in. But rather than stay in the small industrial parking lot, I drove to my favorite pond just a few blocks away. There were no other cars this time of night. In summer I would come here to watch the red-winged blackbirds swoop in and out of the trees, chasing each other. But they were gone now, the trees as bare as ancestral bones.

As soon as I pulled into a parking space, I slid the disk into the player. Jane was pressed into the seat, her knuckles against her mouth. I kept the engine running, the lights on.

“Don’t let it hypnotize you again,” I warned.

She laughed.

As soon as we heard Dr. Lundy’s soothing tones and I looked out over the pond, I realized what I had done. I had brought us to a place of more dark water.

As the CD ended, Jane said, “Is that how I sounded when I was little? Play that part again.”

How could she focus on her voice when what she was saying might have changed our lives completely? Obediently I ejected the CD, then pushed it in again.

This time she stopped the recording before Dr. Lundy could bring her out of her trance, and turned to me. “That woman should rot in hell! How could she steal Cate? How could she walk out of the park with her? She must have put Cate in that stroller as soon as I wasn’t looking.”

“You think she had Caitlin in the stroller?” Belatedly I started to fit it together.

“Of course she did. That’s why she wouldn’t let me reach in and get the rabbit, why she sent me running to you with a message so she could get away.”

“But she said she saw Caitlin fall in.”

Jane put her hand on my arm. “Mom, think. If that woman had been legitimate she wouldn’t have stood there calmly and watched a little girl drown. She would have rushed over to pull Cate out herself, or at least raised the alarm. Besides, there wasn’t enough time. We were far from the water and it only took me a minute to pick the flower and run back. I wanted that bunny, remember? There was only enough time for the woman to pop her in the carriage and—I don’t know—chloroform her?”

I couldn’t speak. The thought of my high-spirited little girl being roughly grabbed, shoved down and knocked out, shocked me as nothing else had. What had been done to her after that? I saw her being wheeled out of the park, past the historical buildings of Stratford, and then—

But Jane was still trying to prove her point. “I said she was dressed like a nurse, but she could have been a nanny. Dressed like one. Why else would she bring an empty stroller to the park with toys in it if she hadn’t been planning something like this?”

“Had you seen her before?”

“When I saw her tonight, I recognized her. So yes, I guess so.”

“But where was I? I couldn’t have been
that
oblivious.” I had been a worse mother than I thought.

“She didn’t let you see her. She’d planned it all out, I’m sure she had. I think she wanted people to get used to seeing her in the park so they would not remember her as something unusual from that day.”

I nodded. “No one would have noticed a nanny with a carriage in the park. Even if they heard Caitlin crying, they wouldn’t have thought anything of it. Babies cry.”

The moonlight shone on Jane’s face through the windshield. “I didn’t really believe it before. But this means she’s alive somewhere. My sister’s alive!”

She sounded so sure.

I wanted to believe it. I almost believed it. And then I thought of the note: YOUR
DAUGHTER
DID
NOT
DROWN
.

Could it have been sent from the nanny herself, a deathbed confession to try and make things right?

An explosion of reds, yellows, and blues seemed to light up the sky around us. The fireworks felt so real I could see them reflected in the water. But the lifting of great guilt can cause that. An unfamiliar lightness, a feeling as tangible as throwing off a heavy coat and welcoming the sun.

“Daddy and Hannah will have to believe us now,” Jane said.

“I hope so.”

“We should post Hannah’s picture on Facebook. You know, ‘Have you seen this woman?’ ” Jane said. “If they’re identical twins, someone has to recognize her.”

“But not without Hannah’s permission. And I thought you could only post pictures to people who were your ‘friends.’ ”

“That’s true. But we can ask them to send it to their friends. You know how things go viral on the Internet.”

A car came along the main road, its headlights playing over the pond.

Jane kept thinking. “The nanny said to tell ‘mum,’ so she was probably English. She had a British accent, I know that.”

I thought of something else. “If she came to the park on more than one day, I may have photographed her as part of a group scene. I took a lot of photos trying to get a few good ones.”

We stared at each other.

“Really? You think so? That would be amazing. Where are those pictures?”

“Packed away as rolls. Not developed.” I prayed that I had brought all the film back with me, that I hadn’t tossed it out in a fit of remorse. I told myself I wouldn’t have done that since those rolls would have also held my last pictures of Caitlin.

“You don’t have a darkroom anymore.”

“No. But I think there’s still one at the university.”

“Great! Drop me at the train,” Jane ordered, “and go find that film.”

Chapter Twelve

I
T
T
O
O
K
M
E
until midnight to find the film from our last week in Stratford. The basement was cold, and with the overhead bulb burned out, I had to use a flashlight. I finally located the three undeveloped rolls wrapped in a yellow plastic supermarket bag, hidden under a stack of tax returns. I held the tiny yellow canisters against my chest and closed my eyes.
Dear God, make them still good. Make them have the pictures we need.

It wasn’t a prayer, not exactly, but more than a passing thought.

I was up again at dawn, sipping espresso and wondering how to safely develop the film. It was so
old
. If I still had my own darkroom and chemicals—but as soon as we returned from England I had turned the room into Jason’s nursery and flushed the chemicals away. It hadn’t seemed safe to keep them around.

Asking Colin for access to the university darkroom was out of the question. The only person who could help me, I decided groggily, was Bruce Adair. Bruce, a long-tenured literature professor with a specialty in the Victorians, was the smartest man I knew. He was a giant in the poetry world, a kingmaker who could, with one favorable review, set a needy young poet on the path to a Guggenheim. He had been congratulatory when Colin’s second volume of poems,
Voices We Don’t Want to Hear
, was shortlisted for the Pulitzer, but I wasn’t fooled. The two men circled each other like rival chieftains.

Asking Bruce for help brought certain complications, but I decided I could live with them.

I wondered if 7:45 a.m. was too early to call him, then decided to take the chance. Sometimes I suspected Bruce lived in his office, keeping his cottage on the sound only for seduction. He was a quintessential bachelor and ladies’ man, despite severe scoliosis that had curved his back and kept his height at under five feet.

He answered his office phone on the first ring. “Delhi!”

“How did—you must have caller ID.”

“I prefer to call it Scottish second sight.”

“Whatever. Listen, I need a favor.”

“What a surprise.” But he chuckled to soften the blow. “Do you want to stop by? My first class is at 9:10, but I’m here afterward. We could have lunch.”

“No, I need to see you before then.”

“What are you mixed up in now?” Bruce had been immeasurably helpful when my friend Margaret, the original owner of Port Lewis Books, had been attacked, helping me interpret clues I didn’t understand.

“It’s nothing like that. I just need a favor.”

“Oh, is that all.” He laughed again. “See you in ten.”

I
T
T
O
O
K
M
E
closer to twenty minutes to reach the campus, park in the visitors’ garage, and get to the literature department. When I entered Bruce’s beautiful office, I saw that he had set out two cups, a teapot, scones, and jam.

“Bruce! You didn’t need to—”

“This is my usual pre-seminar snack.” He came around his polished desk and kissed me lightly on the mouth. Then he indicated the shellacked wooden chair across the desk from his own. “Sit.”

I sat down and watched him pour me a cup of tea and nudge the sugar and cream close. He made sure the butter was also nearby. His caretaking brought me close to tears. When you’ve spent your life making sure everyone else has what they need, being cosseted this way will do that to you. That, not having gotten much sleep, and feeling emotional about what you’re going to ask.

I looked around his office and found a lead-in to our conversation. Two hand-tinted photographs from the south of England that I had taken on an earlier trip hung above the waist-high bookcases that ringed the room. I had been given a show in one of the small gallery rooms in the library and Bruce had insisted on buying them.

He reached over and set a box of tissues next to my scone.

I looked at him. We already had napkins.

“I keep them for girls who claim I’ve ruined their lives by giving them a D. You have that look. Is it Colin?”

“Oh. No. No more than usual.” I put down my teacup and told him the story of Caitlin, from her imagined drowning, Jane’s hypnosis, and my certainty that she was alive. Because he was expecting me to, I managed not to break down.

Bruce listened gravely, nodding once or twice.

“So I need to use the darkroom.”

“You need to do a whole lot more than that, Delhi.”

I nodded meekly.

“I always wondered why you stopped taking photographs, but I didn’t know you well enough to ask. I just assumed you’d moved on to better things, and the next time we talked it was rare books. What I don’t understand is why you let this situation drag on so long.”

His clear blue eyes were stern. I was that student deserving of a D.

“Because we believed what the police told us. Colin wanted us to just get on with our lives and I went along. The story of my life: I just went along.”

“I don’t believe that.” He glanced at his understated but expensive watch. “I’ll walk over and show you where the lab is. It’s in Staller.”

“Wait!” My voice cracked with panic. I already knew where the darkrooms were. “You said there were other things I needed to do.”

“There are.” To my relief, he settled back into his chair. “You need to go to Stratford-upon-Avon, back to where it happened. You have to talk to the police and find out everything you can about their investigation. Read all the newspapers. It won’t be pleasant. Ask a lot of questions. See if you can locate this so-called nanny. Most of all you have to find out who sent you that note, and why.”

“I’d thought about going to Stratford when it came.” I’d also wondered how I was going to pay for a plane ticket at premium prices, and accommodations. My finances were nearly on empty and would only sink further as revenue from my book business decreased while I was away. Maxing out my credit cards wouldn’t be that hard.

The boardwalk Gypsy’s prophecy came back to me then. I
was
surrounded by people with money and didn’t have any myself. Ben and Patience, Marty Campagna, my friend Bianca Erikson. Even Colin had some reserves. Why not me? Had the Gypsy’s words become a self-fulfilling prophecy? Why couldn’t I have found my passion in the stock market?

“Have you made plans yet?”

I sighed and told him the truth. “Being a bookseller is like being a poet. Long in satisfaction, but lacking in cash. I’ll find a way to pay for it though.”

His blue eyes in his rosy, white-bearded face were sympathetic. “Well,
I’ll
give you fifteen thousand dollars. No strings.”

“You can’t, Bruce, you’re Scottish.” I meant it as a joke, which I assumed his offer was.

He laughed. “I’m serious. I live modestly and I have more money than I know what to do with. Who do I have to leave it to? Besides needy poets. I might as well do something interesting with the money while I’m alive.”

“I can’t take it.”

“I said, no strings. You don’t even have to invite me over for a down-home meal.” There had been a brief time last summer when Bruce had become amorous, thinking we would make an engaging pair. I had been briefly tempted at dinner one night, imagining us as an artistic couple floating in a gondola down the Grand Canal. Me in white organza, Bruce in his straw boater. We were both relieved when it didn’t happen.

I knew I should refuse the money. But I couldn’t.