Blood Red

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  Rough around the edges. That’s me.

  Except with Rowan. With her, he was the man he could never be for Vanessa, even from the start. Why?

  Was it because Rowan, who was down to earth, unlike his wife, didn’t intimidate him? Or simply that he loved her, and he’d never loved Vanessa?

  Sometimes Rick wonders how he and Vanessa wound up together in the first place—­and how they’d managed to last as long as they did. When they met, they were both lonely. She was looking for a father for her children, and he was looking for . . .

  Not passion, because he’d met plenty of women who were far less reserved and if not more attractive than Vanessa, who was truly striking, then at least more appealing to him. And he wasn’t looking for a meal ticket, though she’d accused him of that during the final days of their marriage. Not companionship, either, because Vanessa was on the verge of being too busy for him even when they met. After they met, forget it. She had no time for him.

  Maybe if she’d been more attentive to his needs, he wouldn’t have strayed.

  He regrets having said that to her during their last fight, the one during which he’d confessed—­all those years later—­that he’d stopped loving her years ago and fallen in love with Rowan.

  Yeah. Communication isn’t his forte. Either he says too much, or too little, or the wrong thing.

  “I’ll help you work on those communication skills,” Bob offers. “And I want you to think about taking my advice. Like I told you yesterday, if you would just reach out to the ­people who care about you, you might—­”

  “I did that.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “We’ll talk.”

  “See? That’s good. It’s a good start.”

  Realizing Bob misunderstood, Rick doesn’t bother to correct him. He meant he would talk to Bob about the kids, not that the kids had agreed to talk to him when he’d reached out to them.

  He’d followed Bob’s advice and made four phone calls—­to his stepsons, and to his son and daughter. All four went straight into voice mail. None has been returned so far.

  He spends the rest of the afternoon alternately trying to figure out how to get out of having dinner with Bob and looking forward to it.

  It’s been ages since he ate in a place with cloth napkins and a wine list that extends beyond house white and house red. Besides, brunch yesterday was a good distraction from thinking about Rowan. Maybe dinner tonight will be an even better one.

  “And who can tell me the year the first settlers arrived in Mundy’s Landing?” Rowan asks her class as their afternoon history review winds down. “Raise your hands, please. No shouted answers. Let’s see . . . Shane?”

  “Sixteen sixty-­five?”

  “Good. And do you know where they came from?”

  “Holland?”

  “No, the Dutch had lost control of New Netherland the year before to which country?”

  “England!” Billy blurts, resulting, predictably, in a reprimand from Amanda Hicks, whose hand has been waving in the air since the history review began.

  “You were supposed to raise your hand! Ms. Mundy, he was supposed to—­”

  Mercifully, Amanda’s final tattle of the day is curtailed by the final bell.

  ­“People,” Rowan calls above the explosion of chatter and scraping chairs, “please hand me your review sheets on the way out. And I’m still missing a few permission slips for our field trip. They were due on Friday. You need to get them in or you’re not going!”

  Predictably, she’s inundated by questions about the review sheets, the homework, the permission slips, including “What permission slips?” and “What field trip?”

  At last, she’s alone, holding a sheaf of papers, including a permission slip that appears to be from last September’s field trip, and a single boot someone just found on the floor under a desk and no one recognizes.

  She closes the classroom door and then locks it, something she never does—­not from the inside, anyway. But she has only a few minutes before she heads down to the tutoring room, and the gift bag she stashed in her desk earlier has been on her mind all afternoon. It’s time to find out whether it’s an offering from her Secret Santa, or her Secret Stalker.

  First things first. She tosses the boot into the lost and found crate with all the other single boots and shoes—­and there are many. Then she puts the papers on her desk, tosses the old permission slip into the blue recycling bin, and plucks out the things that don’t belong there: an apple core, a cellophane wrapper, a mitten. The garbage goes into the garbage can, the mitten into the lost and found.

  You’re procrastinating. Just look inside the bag.

  She opens the drawer, takes it out, and takes a deep breath.

  Go ahead. Hurry up.

  She gingerly pushes aside the white glitter-­dusted tissue paper tufting from the top.

  What if there’s a layer of yellowed newspaper beneath it?

  Then that’s it. I call the police, she decides.

  There’s no newspaper, only a small balsam-­scented jar candle. She recognizes the label from the gift department at Vernon’s Apothecary on Market Street. She was just talking about these candles in the teachers’ lounge last week.

  Okay. Okay, this is good.

  And even if it didn’t turn out to be just a harmless little gift . . .

  How could she have considered calling the police?

  Even if she asked them not to make the case public or involve her husband, this is a tiny village. Everyone gossips. Everyone. It would get back to Jake, and she’d have to tell him.

  Besides, what happened last week wasn’t a crime. It’s not as though the cops will put the anonymous package sender on their most wanted list and alert the FBI.

  Your life isn’t hanging in the balance here. Your marriage, maybe, and definitely your personal integrity and peace of mind—­but not your life. Not unless . . .

  Again, she thinks of Vanessa.

  Again, she wonders . . . and keeps right on wondering as she endures the next ninety minutes going through the motions with her students in the tutoring room.

  When at last the school day drags to a close, she’s come to a decision.

  Alone in her car, she takes her cell phone from her pocket and begins dialing.

  More than twenty-­four hours after discovering the body, Sully continues browsing through photos of young women who have recently gone missing in the tri-­state area. There are always so many—­far too many. But she’s no closer to identifying the victim than she is to finding her killer.

  “Sully.”

  Something in Stockton’s tone causes her to glance up sharply from her computer screen. Seated at his adjacent desk and focused on his own computer, he’s shaking his head. “Come and look at this.”

  She jumps up and hurries over. “Did you find her?”

  “No, but I found this in the unsolved case files.”

  Leaning over his shoulder to see the screen, Sully finds herself looking at a female corpse.

  Nude . . .

  Covered in bloody slashes . . .

  Bald.

  She curses softly. “Who is she?”

  Stockton wordlessly clicks over to a new screen, revealing another photograph. This one shows a smiling young woman with long red hair.

  “That’s the victim?”

  “Right. It’s a selfie she posted on Instagram a few hours before she went missing last March in Erie, Pennsylvania.”

  “So she still had her hair when she disappeared.”

  “But not when her body turned up a few days later, dumped by the side of a road.”

  “Son of a bitch shaves their heads.”

  “Looks that way.”

  Forensics already confirmed that the strands of hair that turned up near their victim h
ad been cut or shaved off, as opposed to ripped out in a struggle.

  “Are there others?” she asks, pulling up a chair.

  “Aren’t there always?” Stockton asks grimly, and clicks over to another case file.

  Mick has been looking for the right opportunity to anonymously present Brianna’s first Secret Santa gift from the moment he arrived at school this morning. Having memorized her schedule back in September, he did his best to stay one step ahead of her as she went from class to class. That plan resulted in three tardy slips on his own schedule, and the small gift bag containing the bead charm was still in his backpack when the final bell rang.

  That leaves him with two options: he can either deliver the gift to her house, or slip it into her bag or coat when she leaves them in the employee closet at the restaurant tonight.

  If he waits until then, though, the mystery will be over on the first day. She’ll guess that it’s from either him or Zach. The only other guys who work on Mondays are Mr. Marrana and the dishwasher, both of whom are married.

  After the last bell, he detours several times past Brianna’s locker and her friends’ lockers. No sign of her, or of them. Now running late for practice, he stops by his locker to grab his jacket and gym bag, brooding. Maybe this was a stupid idea all along. Maybe he should just forget the stupid gift, and Brianna, too.

  He slams the locker door, turns around, and nearly crashes into Zach Willet.

  “Sorry,” Mick mutters, and starts to move on.

  “Hey, Lou, you okay?”

  “Um, not really.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  Mick turns to face him. “Are you sure about that college guy?”

  “What college guy?”

  “The college guy!” he repeats, wondering how Zach can possibly be so ignorant. “The one Brianna’s seeing!”

  “Am I sure what?”

  “That she’s seeing him!”

  “Stop shouting at me, Mick.” Zach never calls him by his real first name, and he looks irritated.

  Well, that makes two of us.

  “You know what? Forget it.” Mick turns and walks away.

  “You know what? I will,” Zach calls after him.

  In the gym, the coach gives him extra laps for being late. Before he starts running, Mick says, “I just want to let you know that I have to leave early today for a doctor’s appointment.”

  The coach nods but he looks a bit suspicious, probably assuming it’s a ploy to get out of running the extra laps. To prove that it isn’t, Mick runs them hard and fast, and succeeds in purging some of the frustration that’s been percolating all day.

  Ninety minutes later, as he covers the few blocks from the school on Battlefield Road to Brianna’s house on Prospect Street, he belatedly realizes that this wasn’t a great plan after all. Now he can’t catch the late bus with the rest of the team, which means he’ll have to walk all the way home. Plus, if Mom shows up at the bus stop again like she did last Monday, she’ll freak out when he doesn’t get off.

  He pulls his phone out of his pocket, deciding to send her a preemptive text. He can say that he’s getting a ride home with one of the seniors on the team, or—­

  No, he can’t. His phone battery is dead.

  He’ll just have to deal with the consequences. Tomorrow, he’ll make sure it’s charged—­and come up with a better plan for delivering Brianna’s gift.

  Prospect Street runs along the south side of the Village Common, parallel to Church Street and perpendicular to Market Street and Fulton Avenue. East of the Common, it climbs into a hilly residential enclave known as The Heights. Mick’s parents both grew up in that neighborhood, Mom on State Street right around the corner from the Armbrusters’ two-­story yellow house with black shutters.

  Dusk is falling. The lights are on in some of the houses he passes, and there are even a few Christmas trees glowing in front windows.

  Not at Brianna’s house, though. The first floor is dark, and there are no cars parked in the short driveway beside the front walk. Both her parents work up in Albany, Mick knows. They probably aren’t home yet.

  He looks to make sure no one is around before he stops to stare up at the light spilling from a second-­floor window. Is that Brianna’s room? Is she there right now, getting ready for work beyond the drawn blinds? Is she . . . dressed?

  He promptly pushes that tantalizing notion from his head, telling himself that it’s probably her kid brother’s bedroom anyway.

  Still, she’s probably home. And when she leaves to walk to the restaurant, she’ll come out the side door that faces the driveway. He recalls from his paperboy days that the Armbruster family rarely bothered to shovel the walk that leads to the porch because they don’t use the front door.

  After another furtive glance to make sure the street is deserted, he strides up the driveway, unzipping his backpack as he goes. He reaches the side door, finds the gift bag, and hangs it on the knob. Halfway down the driveway again, he thinks better of it and backtracks. This time, he opens the door and hangs the bag on the inside knob, where it will keep the door ajar. That way, she can’t possibly miss it when she leaves.

  Again, he turns away; again, he turns back with hesitation.

  What if someone sees it before she does and steals it?

  Glancing toward the street, he sees that one of the neighbors has materialized with her dog, standing by the curb.

  Terrific.

  Unfortunately, the leashed terrier isn’t as clueless as Doofus, and immediately starts barking. The old woman turns, spots Mick, and gives him a long, suspicious look before recognition dawns.

  “How are you, Mick?” she calls with a cheerful wave as her dog continues to bark. “How’s your mom?”

  “I’m great, Mrs. Gershin,” he responds in a low voice, hurrying away from Brianna’s house. “Mom’s great.”

  “What’s that?” she pretty much shrieks above the barking, and he looks at the upstairs window to make sure Brianna hasn’t been summoned by all the commotion.

  “Great, we’re all great,” he tells Mrs. Gershin. “Everyone’s great.”

  Maybe he should ask her not to tell anyone she saw him here. He can explain about the Secret Santa.

  No—­that’s a bad idea. She’s elderly and hard of hearing even without the yappy dog. He’d have to shout to get the point across.

  It’s better just to get away while he can. With any luck, Mrs. Gershin isn’t just deaf, she’s also senile and will forget she ever saw him here.

  Seeing Rowan’s number pop up on her cell phone, Noreen immediately excuses herself from the client meeting.

  If it had been going well, she might have stuck it out and made a mental note to return the call later.

  But it isn’t going well. The man sitting across from her and her partner Jennifer at the conference room table—­the wealthy businessman who’s trying to hide a five-­year-­old love child and major assets from his wife of forty years—­reminds her of Kevin.

  Welcoming the opportunity to step into the short hallway outside the conference room, she answers the call. “Rowan?”

  “Oh my God. There you are. What’s going on?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been trying to reach you for days. Didn’t you get my messages?”

  “I got one.” Maybe two. Or possibly three, she realizes, though she’s not about to surrender to any guilt trip her sister intends to lay on her. “You said it wasn’t important.”

  “Only the first time, and I lied. You always call me back. Why didn’t you?”

  “I’ve been busy.”

  “You’re always busy, but—­”

  “I’m sorry. Is everything okay?”

  There’s a pause. “No.”

  Ah, there it is anyway: guilt, trying its best to ooze in despite Noreen’s
intentions, and bringing with it a ripple of concern.

  “What’s wrong?” she asks, pacing the short length of the hall, past her office, Jennifer’s office, the restroom, and the tiny waiting area. “Are the boys okay?”

  The boys—­it’s what their parents always called their older brothers. Mitch and Danny were the boys; Noreen and Rowan were the girls. The boys were always a solid unit, while the girls were frequently at odds with each other. Then again, Rowan was pretty much at odds with everyone in the family at any given time.

  I spent so many years trying to smooth over her messes. Is it any wonder that I’m wary when she calls, even now?

  “The boys are fine. It’s me. I’m not fine.”

  “What happened?”

  “Are you alone?”

  “Yes.” More alone than you’d ever imagine.

  “I need to talk to you about something. I wouldn’t bother you if I had anyone else to turn to, but . . . I don’t.”

  “Did you try the supermarket cashier and the guy who does your gutters?”

  “Noreen, come on, this isn’t a joke. I need you.”

  Hearing the vulnerability in her sister’s voice, she softens. Just a little. She perches on one of the two waiting room chairs and begins straightening the pile of magazines between them. “Tell me. I’m listening.”

  “Do you remember what I told you years ago? About . . . something I almost did?”

  “The affair with your neighbor?”

  “Shh!”

  “I told you, I’m alone—­and even if I weren’t, no one here would have any idea who I’m talking to or what I’m talking about.”

  “I know, but still . . . for once can’t you just be . . .”

  “Warm and fuzzy? Is that what you want?”

  That gets a laugh out of her sister—­not a long or remotely merry one, but at least it defuses the tension.

  “Forget it. Warm and fuzzy isn’t you. And . . . I need you. Do you remember what I told you that day when you asked me why Jake and I moved back to Mundy’s Landing?”

  Noreen does, very clearly.

  “I know you thought I was taking a step backward and that I might get myself into trouble again,” Rowan said that day, “but . . . I was actually trying to keep myself out of trouble.”