A Bookmarked Death by Judi Culbertson Page B

gasoline against the foundations and tossing in a match, knowing the Crosleys might die?
    I couldn’t. And that was after Ethan had sent the letter accusing him. I tried an alternative. Maybe Colin had first driven out to see him Saturday morning, demanding—what? An apology? Some show of remorse? Same outcome and Colin had left. But perhaps it had eaten at him all day until he returned that night to take his revenge. Ethan meanwhile had been concerned enough to write to Elisa warning her about Colin.
    Imagining it that way, Colin would have had time to pick up the boots. But why would he have gone out of his way to do so, wear them in Southampton to commit arson, then go out of his way one more time to put them somewhere they could easily be found? I thought of a book I had sold last year, Cruelly Murdered , the story of Constance Kent, accused of murdering her four-year-old half brother because one of her nightgowns could not be located. It was decided that it must have been bloody and she had burned it.
    Surely no one would have examined the boots and decided that Colin’s were missing—would they?
    And now it was too late to call Colin. Pressing deeper into the chair, ignoring my great-grandmother’s reproachful gaze from under glass, I tortured myself with images of Olson and Carew arriving at Colin’s condo and asking tricky, intimidating questions. What if he admitted it and tried to justify what he had done to Ethan? I saw him being dragged off to jail in handcuffs, his archeological career, his life—all our lives—ruined.
    But he can still write poetry , a little voice chirped, making me laugh at my own idiocy. Poetry was not his life. His position was as an eminent academic authority in archeology. I reminded myself that judges, doctors, politicians, financiers had all been tried, convicted, and sent to jail. Then I thought about the children and their futures.
    Stop! Nothing has happened yet!
    In my experience, thinking of the worst possible outcome nearly guaranteed that it wouldn’t happen. It was like imagining that your plane would crash or obsessing that you had a brain tumor. Since you were not able to predict the future, it would not happen. Life liked to sneak up on you. An example: I had never worried about one of my children being kidnapped.
    Elisa. I had promised I would call her, but I didn’t feel strong enough to do it right now. What made her show Ethan’s letter to the Boston police? Did she think Colin had set the fire? It had come to a choice between the Crosleys and us, and she had not chosen us.
    Didn’t it mean anything to her that Colin was her real father, that she had spent a weekend starting to get to know him? But a weekend was hardly enough set against a lifetime of adventure with Ethan. I closed my eyes again.
    Then, like finding a check you’d forgotten to cash, I thought of someone else who might want the Crosleys dead.
    Nearly twenty years ago, Ethan and Sheila had hired an actress, Priscilla Waters, to impersonate a nanny, distract Jane, and smuggle Caitlin into an empty stroller. Priscilla had been told it was a “prank” to teach me a lesson. When she realized she had taken part in a kidnapping scheme, instead of going to the police to report it, she had demanded more money from Ethan and Sheila. She had been lured to a country road by their promise that they would give it to her, and ended up as a hit-and-run victim. Priscilla had left behind two teenage sons, Nick and Micah Clancy. It was Micah, now with a small daughter of his own, whose conscience had bothered him enough to send me the anonymous note that set everything into motion.
    Nick was the one who had vowed revenge on his mother’s killers, but I had called Micah, exultant, as soon as I found Elisa. No doubt he had told Nick as well. Had one of them come over from England and murdered the Crosleys?
    I stared out at the fading daylight. I didn’t want it to be Micah, but I knew I had to call DCI Sampson