Blood Red

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  Downstairs in the butler’s pantry that connects the kitchen to the formal dining room, she takes a hand-­blown crystal goblet from a glass-­fronted cabinet. It’s part of an elegant set of four she and Kevin received for their wedding, courtesy of his long-­dead great-­aunt Martha. They’d registered at Tiffany’s to please his family and Macy’s to please hers. She wound up returning nearly all the gifts from her side in exchange for store credit, which she never did use.

  The irony is that she never used most of her Tiffany’s gifts, either, including these glasses. She was always afraid they would break. Tonight, who cares? Everything is fragile; everything is breaking.

  She picks up the bottle of Pontet-­Canet Bordeaux she pulled from the wine cellar when she got home and inserts a butterfly corkscrew imprinted Mundy’s Landing Wine & Liquor. She took the corkscrew from a drawer at her parents’ house after her father died. He didn’t just use the bottle opener on top to pop the caps off his beer bottles; he opened cream sodas for Noreen and her brothers and sister on special occasions.

  She made sure Rowan didn’t see her pocket the corkscrew that day as they were cleaning out the kitchen—­not because she thought her sister might want it, but because she didn’t want Rowan to know that she did.

  She twists the cheap corkscrew into the cork and pulls, gratified when it glides out with a slight, almost celebratory popping sound.

  She really should let the Bordeaux breathe, and she really shouldn’t be drinking alone, but to hell with rules tonight. She tucks the corkscrew back into a drawer beneath a stack of linen dish towels, pours some wine into her crystal goblet, and sips.

  She plunks the glass on the counter a little too hard, but it doesn’t crack. Nor does her face, when she allows a smile to touch her lips for the first time all day.

  There, see?

  Better already.

  Sometimes, you can discover more about a stranger just by watching her from afar for a little while than you’ll ever know about loved ones.

  After leaving the post office, Casey followed the redhead to a bookstore just off Union Square. She counted out pocket change to buy a small cup of coffee and proceeded to nurse it for several hours while she sat in a comfortable chair reading magazines off the rack. At a table nearby, Casey pretended to be engrossed in a thick textbook plucked from a shelf in the science section, while noting every detail about the redhead.

  She took only one magazine at a time, turning the pages carefully and making sure she didn’t spill a drop of coffee on the merchandise. She read each magazine cover-­to-­cover and when she finished, she returned it to the proper slot on the rack, rather than placing it haphazardly or leaving it where she was sitting, the way other so-­called customers were doing. Her choice in reading material was eclectic: the highbrow New Yorker and Paris Review were followed by Us Weekly and Sports Illustrated.

  So she’s brainy with a frivolous and athletic streak; she’s conscientious, and she’s either frugal or flat broke. She’s also most likely unattached, judging by her bare ring finger and the fact that she never once looks at her phone or sends or receives a text. These days, lovers in her age group constantly check in with each other electronically.

  Dusk has fallen beyond the plate-­glass windows when at last the redhead stands and stretches. She takes her time putting the last magazine back on the rack and doesn’t seem to notice Casey making a hasty exit to the street, leaving the textbook sitting open on the table.

  Never once looking over her shoulder, she walks north on Broadway through Chelsea, turns left at 28th Street, and walks west, following it as it curves past the Penn South residential complex toward the Hudson River. She crosses Eleventh Avenue and covers half the final block before unlocking the door to a small, narrow apartment building.

  Casey can’t follow her inside, but makes note of the address and the fact that there’s a large Con Edison facility directly opposite the building. Interesting. Maybe it’s some kind of sign that this is meant to be.

  Less than a minute after the redhead disappears inside, a light goes on in the fourth-­floor apartment. As if to confirm that it’s the right place, and provide yet another sign, she appears in the window briefly, a real-­life Rapunzel with coppery hair.

  Then she’s gone again, leaving Casey to gaze thoughtfully at the grillwork ladders and platforms that zigzag up the front of the building, right to her window. Watching her from the fire escape would almost feel like watching Rowan through the skylight, from the high branches of the elm tree in her yard.

  Adrenaline spikes through Casey’s veins, undiminished by the voice of reason: What if someone sees you up there and calls the police?

  Pedestrian and vehicle traffic on this block is relatively light. A nosy neighbor in the same building or even on the same side of the street would have to stick his or her head all the way out the window to even see the fire escape. That’s not likely on a gloomy December night. There are no residential buildings facing the apartment from across the street, only the windowless Con Ed facility. Still . . .

  You’re too smart to take stupid chances.

  Smarter than anyone. Smarter than everyone.

  Casey walks away, vowing to forget about her even though another bleak Sunday looms just ahead.

  From the Mundy’s Landing Tribune Archives

  Lifestyles

  June 10, 1966

  For Modern Mundys,

  History a Source of Pride, Not Shame

  Their ties to this village stretch back over three centuries and are well documented at the Mundy’s Landing Historical Society in the basement of the Elsworth Ransom Library. According to director Miss Ora Abrams, “The Mundy family tree includes a Revolutionary War general, a wealthy industrialist, and a hero who went down with the Titanic after saving the lives of several steerage children.”

  She added that the society’s former curator, her great-­aunt Etta Abrams, graduated from Mundy’s Landing High School in 1900 with Maxwell Mundy Ransom—­who until his hospitalization last winter resided at his ancestral home here on Battlefield Road. He served in the House of Representatives during the Great Depression and was instrumental in New Deal legislation.

  Miss Abrams said, “It’s a rich legacy of which any family would be proud.”

  Make no mistake: they are.

  “Am I honored to be descended from the original Mundys of Mundy’s Landing? Absolutely,” John Elsworth Ransom told the Tribune last week. “When I was young, my uncle Max would sit me on his knee and tell me about his boyhood adventures with his pal Frank—­who grew up to become President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I wanted to grow up to become just like him.”

  Fresh from his final semester at Harvard Law School, alma mater of both his uncle and FDR, with political aspirations and the New York State bar exam looming, he’s well on his way.

  Asked, however, about more distant family members—­namely, James and Elizabeth Mundy—Mr. Ransom was noticeably less effusive. His maternal bloodline descends from their daughter Priscilla Mundy, who was born in England in 1658 and crossed the Atlantic in the spring of 1665 with her parents and older siblings, Jeremiah and Charity. The family narrowly escaped the Great Plague, which killed 100,000 ­people, fifteen percent of London’s population.

  They arrived on what is now the island of Manhattan. Having been surrendered by the Dutch Republic a year earlier, its name had changed from the Province of New Netherland to the Province of New York, after James, Duke of York. The ship sailed a hundred miles north up the Hudson River, landing in an idyllic spot at the mouth of a creek on the eastern bank. Today, the location is designated by a stone marker at what is now Schaapskill Nature Preserve.

  During the ferocious winter of 1665–66, the frozen river stranded a long-­awaited ship loaded with sorely needed supplies. When it finally arrived in the spring, only five of the original thirty-­odd settlers had
survived: James and Elizabeth Mundy and their three children.

  There’s no arguing the fact that husband and wife resorted to cannibalism to keep their family alive as their fellow settlers were dying of starvation. They weren’t the first early American colonists to do so, and the longtime consensus among historians, local and beyond, is that they didn’t murder anyone. But in June of 1666, newly arrived colonists convicted them of murder and hanged them with their children watching.

  While most modern scholars theorize that the Mundys were guilty only of consuming the flesh of those who were already dead, a stumbling block emerged in 1947. An archaeology team from nearby Hadley College unearthed a partially shattered, severed skull found among discarded human bones behind the Mundy homesite. A medical examiner concluded that it belonged to a young woman and contained fractures consistent with a sharp blow to the head. That can be attributed to an accident, yet some historians consider it evidence that the Mundys themselves killed their victims before eating them.

  Today, the skull reportedly rests among the seventeenth-­century artifacts in Mundy’s Landing Historical Society’s private collection. John Ransom hasn’t viewed it, nor is he interested in doing so.

  His distant cousin Asa Jacob Mundy, a direct descendent of Jeremiah Mundy, the doomed ­couple’s only son, concurs. “All I care to know is that this village was named for Jeremiah’s great-­grandson, Enoch Mundy. He was a brave general in the Revolutionary War and a hero to many. My father taught me to be proud of my heritage, and I’ve taught my son and daughter the same thing.”

  Mr. Mundy’s namesake son, who goes by Jake, may be only seven years old, but the boy is well aware of the hefty legacy that goes along with being born and raised in a town that bears one’s own name. “My great-­great-­great-­great-­great-­great . . .” He paused and looked up at his father to ask, “How many greats, again?”

  The senior Mundy laughed and patted his son’s dark crew cut. “Too many to count.”

  The child declared that he would settle on ten, and counted off the generations before breathlessly punctuating them with the remainder of the sentence: “. . . Grandfather was named Jeremiah Mundy and he was very brave. He sailed all the way across the ocean when he was just a boy like me.”

  Questioned privately by this reporter, his father admitted that young Jake wasn’t aware of the tragic postscript to his ancestor’s arrival in the New World. “Sooner or later, I’m sure he’ll find out,” he said with a shrug. “We all do.”

  Chapter 6

  Sitting across the table from Jake, Rowan watches him study the menu as though he hasn’t eaten at Marrana’s dozens of times before. Hundreds of times, probably.

  She admires the familiar furrow between his dark brows and his full mouth and the masculine angle of his stubbly jaw, even though she’s always preferred him clean-­shaven.

  “What are you having?” he asks without looking up.

  “I’m not sure. I forgot my reading glasses at home and I can’t see the specials.”

  “So you’re my blind date then, is that it?”

  “Good one,” she says, deadpan: her usual response to his corny jokes.

  “You can borrow my readers in a second,” he tells her, focused on the menu again. “Maybe I should order something different this time.”

  He always says that, then—­after much deliberation—­orders his usual Cavatelli a la Mama. And salad with blue cheese dressing, hold the cucumbers, and a glass of Chianti, just one, because he’s driving. But he’ll urge her to have two and she will, and she’ll tease him that he’s hoping to take advantage of her when they get home, and he’ll tell her she’s absolutely right. He’ll have a cup of coffee and dessert—­spumoni in summer, cannoli in winter—­while she finishes her wine, and then they’ll drive home at around nine and he’ll walk the dog while she falls into bed. She’ll try to stay awake but most of the time she won’t, and he’ll give her a good-­natured good night peck on her cheek and go back downstairs to watch Sports Center.

  There was a time—­all right, there have been many, many times—­when the predictable rhythm of date night made Rowan long for the passion they shared back in the early days of their relationship. Tonight, however, maintaining her vow to focus on Jake, she finds herself cherishing every mundane marital moment.

  “Yeah,” he says abruptly. “I know.”

  She blinks. “What?”

  “I know I should have shaved. That’s what you’re thinking, right? I can tell by the way you’re looking at me.”

  Ordinarily, that would be exactly what she’s thinking.

  “It’s okay, Jake. I know you hate to shave on weekends.”

  “Yeah, but I really did mean to do it this morning. It’s getting gray.”

  “The beard?”

  “See?” He strokes his whiskery chin. “You’re married to an old man, Ro.”

  “You’re not old. You’re middle-­aged, and you’re married to a middle-­aged lady.”

  “Nah, you’re a hot blonde now. If I’m not careful someone’s going to steal you away.”

  She tries not to flinch, smile pasted firmly on her face. “I doubt that.”

  “Maybe I should dye my beard.”

  “Blond?”

  He grins. “That might look kind of cool.”

  “I like the gray. It’s distinguished.”

  “You think?”

  “Sure.” She can’t hold back an enormous yawn.

  “Past your bedtime?”

  “Pretty much. If you’re finished with your reading glasses there, Gramps, your blind date needs them before she falls asleep at the table.”

  Precious normalcy. It can all disappear in an instant.

  Before Rowan can look at the menu, Annabelle Bingham stops by their table on her way back from the ladies’ room. They’ve shared a friendship since their own school days at Mundy’s Landing Elementary. The bond, like most, was stronger during some eras than others. Unlike Rowan, Annabelle walked the straight and narrow in high school, as swim team captain and honors student.

  “Date night?” she guesses, greeting Rowan and Jake with hugs.

  “Yes, how about you?”

  “Nope, three’s a crowd, as usual.” She points across the room to where her husband, Trib, and their son, Oliver, are sitting.

  Trib’s real name is Charles, but his nickname was bestowed in elementary school because his family owns the Mundy’s Landing Tribune. His father passed away not long ago, making him editor-­in-­chief.

  “Did you and Trib really make an offer on 46 Bridge Street?” Rowan asks Annabelle, having heard through the local grapevine that the house-­hunting ­couple has set their sights on one of the most notorious homes in town.

  Located in The Heights, 46 Bridge is one of the three houses where the Sleeping Beauty corpses turned up, and the only one still owned by the same family that had been in residence back in 1916. In fact, until she died just shy of her 105th birthday, Augusta Purcell was the last known living witness to the crime.

  Her nephew and sole heir, Lester, is determined to keep the house from being exploited and reportedly refused an immediate offer from Ora Abrams on behalf of the historical society. Nor, according to the rumor mill, will Lester allow Realtors to show it to anyone he doesn’t pre-­approve, in an effort to weed out Mundypalooza groupies. He’s determined to sell only to a longtime local family as a private residence. That’s going to be tricky considering that local families aren’t just familiar with the home’s bloody past, they’re also fully aware that curiosity seekers think nothing of trespassing, peering in the windows, or even snatching souvenirs from the storied Murder Houses. A few summers ago during Mundypalooza, someone stole the mailbox from 19 Schuyler Place with the residents’ mail still inside.

  “News travels fast around here,” Annabelle says mildly, and changes the subject. �
��Where’s Mick tonight?”

  “Hockey game,” Rowan says.

  Jake adds, “It’s not like he’d want to be with us if he were free, though.”

  “Oliver never wants to be without us.” Annabelle’s smile is wistful.

  Rowan taught Annabelle’s son in her fourth-­grade class two years ago. Diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, he’s being treated with medication and therapy.

  She asks Annabelle how he’s coping with middle school this year.

  “Let’s just say it’s been a rough transition,” she says, and Rowan notices the worry lines around her eyes and dark circles beneath them.

  “I’m sure it’ll get better.”

  “I hope so.”

  Rowan curbs the impulse to mention that living in one of the notorious Murder Houses, as the locals call them, might not be the healthiest thing for an overly anxious kid. It’s none of her business, and she knows that the Binghams aren’t very well-­off and may have little choice. They fit Lester’s criteria, and the mansion at 46 Bridge Street is an absolute steal in this inflated real estate market.

  “Anything look good?” Jake asks as Annabelle heads back to her table and Rowan puts on the glasses to glance at the specials.

  “Everything looks good. I’m starved. I haven’t eaten since . . .”

  The conversation with Annabelle had distracted her. For a moment, she’d forgotten about her day, and the diner, and Rick. Now it comes rushing back and her appetite completely disappears. Again.

  “Didn’t you stop at the food court for lunch?”

  “It was too crowded. Long lines.” She pretends to study the menu, struggling to hold it steady in her hands. “I can’t decide between the lobster ravioli and the eggplant rollatini.”

  “Get both.”

  “Both? No way.”

  “How about if I get the ravioli and promise to share?”