Blood Red

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  Mick is sure there’s a lot more to that box of burnt cookies than a stupid joke. Too bad he can’t mention it to his father.

  Then again, he didn’t swear on his life.

  Casey’s headlights illuminate a green sign announcing the next exit. From there, it’ll be just a fifteen-­minute drive up the local road until the picturesque cluster of gabled rooftops and steeples comes into view.

  It’s been a long day on the road already, but Casey had no problem making the two-­hour detour in rush hour traffic. Too many days have passed without seeing Rowan. A glimpse of her might be too much to hope for, but sometimes it’s enough just to drive by the big old house and imagine her inside, utterly unaware that her perfect little world is about to come crashing down around her.

  From the exit, it takes fourteen minutes to reach the chamber of commerce billboard that reads Welcome to Mundy’s Landing.

  Alongside it is a traffic sign indicating that the speed limit has dropped from fifty-­five to thirty and is “strictly enforced.”

  When Casey first visited, there was a third sign here as well: a temporary one directing visitors toward the center of town and the historical society on Prospect Street, the hub for the annual convention colloquially known as Mundypalooza.

  Casey took full advantage of the hordes of tourists that descended upon the little village to commemorate its claim to fame as the murder capital of the world—­unofficially, of course. It’s not as though the local government has embraced that slogan and printed it on bumper stickers.

  Yet.

  The local election campaigns this fall pitted the old guard against fresh blood. Casey followed them with interest. John Ransom, Mundy’s Landing’s longtime mayor—­whose bloodline reportedly links him to the notorious first settlers, as with many other longtime locals, including Rowan’s husband—­doesn’t like to acknowledge, much less draw attention to, the infamous murder sprees that unfolded here in the mid–1600s and then again almost a century ago.

  Ninety-­nine years, five months, and seven days ago, to be precise.

  Casey enjoys being precise.

  Mayor Ransom was soundly defeated by a relative newcomer who’d won the vocal support of local business owners. They might not admit to capitalizing on the village’s bloody past, but they certainly benefit from the annual invitation that draws increasingly large flocks of crime buffs, historians, and media from all over the world every summer.

  Can you solve the Sleeping Beauty murders?

  The question was printed on posters taped to every store window and lamppost in town and echoed in countless newspapers and all over the Internet.

  How amusing.

  What does it matter now whether the killer is identified? It’s not as though the culprit still roams these brick-­paved streets by night, preying on innocent schoolchildren. Solving the ancient murders would accomplish nothing—­other than to erase the very reason for Mundypalooza’s existence.

  Clearly, the powers-­that-­be haven’t thought of that.

  Fools.

  With next summer marking not just ML350—­the town’s three-­hundred-­fiftieth birthday—­but also the centennial anniversary of the unsolved Sleeping Beauty murders, the upcoming Mundypalooza promises to be more popular than ever. By then, Casey’s work here will be done. Too bad, because it would be even easier to get lost in increasingly larger crowds, moving in and out of circles that orbit and intersect those of Rowan and her family.

  It’s tricky, at this time of year, to slip in and out of their world unnoticed. But not impossible.

  “Sunday, bloody Sunday . . .” Singing, Casey drives slowly past the Mundy home, turns around in a driveway down the road, and drives past it again. It would be nice to spot Rowan’s silhouette in the window, which has happened many times. But it doesn’t happen tonight.

  It would be even nicer to park the car a short distance away, slip back through neighboring yards, and climb the massive elm behind the Mundy house. Perched high in its branches at night, camouflaged by dense foliage, Casey watched the family inside their home throughout the summer and into early fall.

  That became too risky after the leaves fell.

  But eventually, frustrated by the lack of proximity, emboldened by the knowledge that November thirtieth was looming, Casey tried a new tactic.

  The Mundy family is careless about locking doors: their cars in the driveway and even the back door of the house are often left unlocked. Not that it matters. They keep a key hidden under a planter on the back step.

  Casey began to prowl the house when they weren’t home—­and once, in the dead of night, when they were. Those stealthy maneuvers were dangerous, but they allowed a heady, perhaps even addictive, sense of power, as well as some mementos that have come in handy.

  The family dog—­an ignorant creature—­barely stirs when Casey comes around now, other than to happily chew the chunks of steak fed to him with gloved fingers.

  But those days are over. Now isn’t the time to throw caution to the wind. You don’t painstakingly scale a towering tree only to remove your safety harness just short of the apex.

  But this is a special night; one that calls for a celebration.

  And I know just the place . . .

  The Village Common is aglow with white twinkle lights. The surrounding streets are quiet, though hardly deserted. The red brick Village Hall, stately Dapplebrook Inn, and cobblestone library building are aglow. The Olde Opera House marquee advertises a current showing of a popular art house film. Restaurants are busy, and a ­couple of shops have extended holiday shopping hours. There are only a few available parking spaces in the municipal lot. Casey pulls into one of them and waits for the song to come to an end before stepping out into the chilly night air and striding toward Marrana’s.

  Back when Rowan and Jake got engaged, long before they decided to move back to their hometown, they built their dream home—­a shared imaginary one. They pictured themselves in a house with fireplaces and wooden floors and staircases; with tall paned windows and a gingerbread porch.

  They pictured themselves here.

  Neither of them had ever been inside it, or even noticed it during all the years they’d spent growing up in Mundy’s Landing. Yet the moment the Realtor drove them up to the house the real estate ad described as a Victorian charmer, they both knew it was meant to be theirs.

  It was so ideal that Rowan sometimes wonders if it had been lurking somewhere in the back of her mind all along, an indelible fragment of some childhood memory that had long since evaporated.

  The house had every feature they’d fantasized about and then some, but layer upon layer of “modern updates” had masked the original charm. Previous owners had painted the nineteenth-­century woodwork, paneled over the wainscoting, layered the inlaid oak floors with shag carpet, and obscured vintage tin ceilings and crown moldings above popcorn drop ceilings.

  That was fine with Rowan and Jake. The house was a bargain fixer-­upper, well within their budget. Restoring it had encompassed the better part of a decade and a good chunk of money, but it was worthwhile.

  Their dream home has become a reality, something Rowan doesn’t tend to take for granted. Most evenings, when the day is fading and the rooms glow with lamplight, hushed aside from the electric hum of the dishwasher or television, she soaks up the cozy ambiance.

  Tonight, as usual, she’s settled into the quiet nook off the foyer that serves as her home office. A few hours stretch between now and bedtime, to be filled with lesson planning or reading or poking around on the Internet, something she doesn’t get to do at her day job, unlike many of her friends.

  Officially, this room—­which has solid cherry pocket doors, a marble fireplace, built-­in bookshelves, and vintage wall sconces that were originally gas—­was intended for the entire family to use. Unofficially, it’s hers alone, cluttered with her
books and files and decorated with tag sale finds: a fainting couch upholstered in rose velvet, a doily-­topped pie crust table, an antique baby buggy with a yellowed christening gown draped over the handle.

  Hearing the familiar opening music for NFL’s Monday Night Football coming from the TV in the living room across the foyer, she quickly sets aside the stack of social studies tests she’d been grading.

  Rather, trying to grade. And pretending to grade, when Jake slid open one of the doors and poked his head in here earlier to ask what had happened to the pistachio nuts he’d bought over the weekend.

  “They’re in the top left cupboard,” she told him, red pen poised as though he’d just interrupted her from doing something other than fretting about the mysterious package she’d received this afternoon.

  “No, they aren’t. I just looked.”

  “They’re there.”

  “They’re not,” he volleyed back, and they embarked upon yet another discussion of the sort they’ve had countless times over two decades of marriage.

  “Mick must have eaten them,” Jake decided.

  “Mick doesn’t like them.”

  “No, he just doesn’t want to be bothered with the shells. But if he was hungry enough—­and when isn’t he?—­then he probably . . .”

  Shut up!

  That was what Rowan wanted to scream at her unwitting husband in that moment. Didn’t he realize how insignificant his stupid pistachio nuts were? Didn’t he know she had other things to worry about?

  No. He didn’t.

  Still doesn’t. Thank God. She’s not about to bring it up, and Mick was already at his busboy job when Jake walked in the door after work. He won’t be home for at least another hour. By then, with luck, he’ll have forgotten all about the package that came in the mail, which is currently stashed in a dark corner of the attic. She wanted to throw it away, but with the garbage can latch broken, raccoons might get into it overnight and leave it strewn across the steps for the whole world—­Jake—­to see.

  Right now, he’s safely occupied with Monday Night Football and the pistachios, which of course he found in the top left cupboard after all, right where she said they’d be.

  It’s not that she runs a highly organized household. Far from it. But after two decades of marriage and one of medication, there is a certain order to the chaos. Jake somehow has yet to fully grasp it.

  She pushes the stack of social studies papers aside, drops the pen, and opens her laptop. Before she allows herself to start typing, she looks over her shoulder again to make sure Jake hasn’t resurfaced in the doorway.

  Satisfied that she’s alone, Rowan opens a search engine, resigned to searching for the man who’s been on her mind ever since she realized what was in that box.

  Cookies.

  Burnt cookies.

  Thirteen of them.

  “Why thirteen?” he asked on that snowy afternoon, watching her carry the baking sheet over to the oven. “That’s unlucky, isn’t it?”

  “Not for me,” she said. “When I was a kid, my sister taught me how to bake, but she always wanted me to put exactly a dozen balls of dough onto the sheet for every batch. She was a real stickler for recipes and rules.”

  “And you weren’t big on rules?”

  She allowed herself to grin naughtily at him. “Never.”

  She knew she was flirting. Somehow, she didn’t care.

  The kids were safely in the next room, parked in front of the television watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Not the old cartoon Rowan remembered from her childhood, but the recent movie with Jim Carrey. She’d bought the DVD the week before and intended to save it for Christmas, but pulled it out to occupy the kids while the adults were in the kitchen . . . baking cookies.

  She finished telling him about her sister: “Whenever she wasn’t looking, I’d put an extra ball of dough on the baking sheet—­and then I’d snag the extra cookies for myself when they were done, and still have an even dozen.”

  She remembers feeling his eyes on her as she put that last cookie sheet into the oven. Remembers the silence that fell between them and that she could hear Faith Hill singing “Where Are You, Christmas?” on TV in the next room. Remembers setting the timer for eight minutes.

  Remembers . . .

  Remembers how they wound up in the laundry room off the kitchen. They didn’t even notice the stove buzzer when it went off. But they certainly heard the blast of the smoke alarm ten, maybe twelve minutes later.

  Thank God for that.

  Saved by the bell.

  The cookies were burned.

  She dumped the batch into the kitchen garbage after he was safely out of the house. She remembers putting the closed white kitchen bag inside a black trash bag, closing that tightly, and putting it inside another bag before carrying it out to the trash can. She was uneasy about it being there for the next few days until garbage pickup, as if it would somehow incriminate her should Jake stumble across it.

  Her heart stopped that night when he stood in the kitchen stomping the snow from his boots, sniffing the air, and asking her if she’d burned dinner.

  “No,” she told him, “just toast, earlier.”

  The lie rolled off her tongue as impulsively as it would have fifteen years earlier if her parents had caught her breaking curfew or if the vice principal had found her cutting class in the gazebo. Old habits—­shameful ones you’d worked hard to obliterate—­die hard.

  That was the first lie—­and one of the few—­of their marriage, and such a silly, unnecessary one. She could have said cookies instead of toast. That simple truth wouldn’t have alerted him that while he was working his ass off to earn a living for them, she was in their next door neighbor’s arms.

  Richard Walker.

  She types the name into the search engine, heart pounding, and hits Enter.

  The joy went out of Mick’s evening when Brianna Armbruster cashed out her tips and went home almost an hour ago, soon followed by Zach and just about everyone else. He’s more than ready to call it a night, but a ­couple of solo diners are lingering and he can’t leave until they do.

  They’re both alone at tables for two, and finished their meals long ago with dropped checks waiting to be paid. If they didn’t have their backs to each other, Mick might think they were interested in each other, each hoping the other might make a move. But they appear to be in their own little worlds: the guy is sipping bourbon and reading a book; the woman drinking tea and endlessly typing on an iPad.

  Standing in the corner of the dining room with Patty, the waitress who’s stuck here with him, Mick is quickly running out of things to talk about. She’s a lot older than he is, and she’s not a sports fan, which eliminates most topics that come to mind.

  “So . . . did you start your Christmas shopping yet?” he asks.

  “Started and finished it on Black Friday, except a ­couple of gift cards I need to pick up.”

  “Gift cards—­thanks for reminding me!” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the money his mother gave him. “I need to get a gift certificate to Marrana’s for my mom.”

  “No offense, but maybe you should get her something a little more personal. Does she like jewelry? Because they have those new Trinkettes over at Vernon’s Apothecary.”

  “New what?”

  “Trinkettes—­you know, the bead charm bracelets with the little stick figures. All the high school girls are wearing them.”

  Brianna isn’t, and anyway, that has nothing to do with this.

  “My mom has been out of high school for a few years now,” Mick reminds Patty, “and anyway, I’m not giving her the gift certificate. She’s giving it to someone at work for a Secret Santa. That’s this thing where they leave each other little gifts every day next week, and then on Friday they—­”

  “I know what a Secret Santa is,
” Patty cuts in.

  “You do? Am I the only person who’s never heard of it before?”

  “Pretty much,” she says, walking over to the cash register. “Okay, I’ll ring up your gift certificate.” In a lower voice, glancing at the two customers who show no signs of leaving any time soon, she adds, “Too bad I can’t ring up their checks, too, so we can get the hell out of here.”

  “Maybe we can flicker the lights or something.”

  “Not allowed. The first rule Mrs. Marrana ever taught me was never to rush customers out the door.”

  Mick doesn’t bother to point out that Mrs. Marrana herself rushed out the door earlier and will never know. Patty has worked here much longer than he has, and she’s probably even more eager to get home to her boyfriend than Mick is to go finish an overdue chemistry lab. If he doesn’t hand it in tomorrow, it’ll cost him a letter grade. That wouldn’t be that big a deal if he wasn’t barely hanging in there with a C-­minus.

  Patty hands him the gift certificate, then quietly tells him she’s going to the ladies’ room to put on some lipstick. “If they leave, lock the door and flip the sign right away.”

  “Don’t worry, I will.”

  As she walks away, Mick weighs the wisdom of flickering the lights while she’s gone.

  “Don’t even think about it,” she murmurs without turning her head, and Mick can’t help but grin.

  It fades when he glances again at the two customers who stand—­or rather, sit—­between him and freedom.

  How can ­people be so dense?

  Both appear to be in their thirties or maybe forties. He can never tell how old older ­people are. Both are wearing businesslike clothing; neither wears a wedding ring. The guy has a beard and glasses; the woman is slightly overweight with strawberry blond hair and a pretty face. Mick watches her absently lift the little teapot to add more hot water to her cup, only to realize it’s empty. As she glances around to summon a refill, he quickly busies himself sorting clean silverware that’s already been sorted. Twice.

  “Excuse me?” she calls pleasantly. “Can I please get some more water for my tea?”