A Bookmarked Death by Judi Culbertson Read Free Book Online

course we do, Ms.—” But she couldn’t remember the name I had given her and gave up.
    There was a disturbance in the doorway from the kitchen and Raj and Miss T strode in to look us over.
    “Oh, cats ,” Detective Carew said as if they were just one more annoyance in a trying day.
    “Are you allergic?”
    “No. It’s just—” She didn’t finish.
    “They won’t bother you.” I stared back at their sweet faces, upset on their behalf. This was their house, not hers. “Would you like coffee or anything?”
    “No. Thanks.”
    I leaned forward in the wing chair that was too big for me. “Nineteen years ago we spent the summer in England, in Stratford-upon-Avon. Shakespeare’s birthplace? Colin was in an archeological program that visited different sites, and Ethan Crosley was in the program too.” Should I tell her they had been best friends since graduate school? I decided not to. “We were staying at a residence with the other visiting families, everyone except the Crosleys. They had more money than the rest of us so they stayed at an inn.
    “I had three daughters, a four-year-old and two-year-old twins. I took them to the same park every day by the Avon River. This one day I was taking photographs, and the girls were playing. I—should have been watching them more closely. Suddenly Jane, my oldest, came running up and said that Caitlin had fallen in the river. I jumped into the water, everyone did, but we couldn’t find her. They never found her body.” I couldn’t believe it; my eyes were starting to water, my voice sounded choked. Hadn’t the story had a happy ending?
    I put it down to too little sleep and the fact that they were here at all. I brushed a hand across one eye.
    The policewoman was looking at me thoughtfully. I felt forced to go on.
    “All these years we thought she was dead. Then last November I got a handprinted note from England that said, ‘Your daughter did not drown.’ I had no idea what it meant! But my daughter Jane and I went over to England to try and track it down. Long story short: The note was from the son of a woman who had been paid by the Crosleys to kidnap Caitlin from the park when Jane wasn’t looking, then tell me she had fallen in the water. Nice, right? The Crosleys called her Elisa and raised her as their own daughter. It was a miracle we ever found her again.”
    Agent Olson was staring at me now, not the photos. He looked skeptical.
    Sorry it’s not a better story. “You think I’d make something like this up? She and my other daughter Hannah are twins and look identical. You can do a DNA test if you don’t believe me. Or call DCI Sampson in Stratford. He knows all about it.”
    Belatedly I looked at Detective Carew. There was something in her green eyes close to sympathy. “And you never suspected they took her?”
    “We never suspected anything. Everyone assumed Elisa had drowned, especially the British police. We never saw Ethan and Sheila again. Ethan kept in touch occasionally with Colin by e-mail, but they always taught at different universities. We didn’t start looking for Elisa until we got that note.”
    I wasn’t going to tell her that over the years I’d fantasized other scenarios. Sometimes I’d imagined that Elisa—Caitlin then—had floated downstream—she was a resourceful little girl—and been picked up by someone in a boat. Why they had kept her instead of returning her to her family was something I didn’t spend much time thinking about. The story and her photo had been in the area papers.
    Over the years there had been a few sightings here at home, people on vacation who claimed they had seen Hannah on the ski slope or on a neighboring sailboat and were shocked when I told them we hadn’t been anywhere near there. I had always tried to learn more, but never could.
    “When did you suspect the Crosleys?”
    Never. “Not until the trail led to an Elisa Crosley. Even then, at first I thought the last name was just a