Blue Moon: Mundy's Landing Book Two

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “You didn’t tell Oliver, did you?”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Just making sure. Good night, sweetie.”

  “Good night.” She gives a little wave and heads upstairs, yawning.

  For a long time, Holmes was stationed in a clump of bushes beneath the brightly lit dining room windows at 46 Bridge Street.

  Like many of their neighbors, the Binghams had company tonight. The windows were open, and he clearly heard every word spoken at the table.

  The conversation rotated around agonizingly dull subjects: food, sports, and television shows, for the most part. He expected talk to turn to the hot topic in town, Mundypalooza, but that was too much to hope for.

  One interesting detail did emerge as he listened to the voices mingling amid clinking silverware and china: the visitors have a teenage daughter whose name is Catherine.

  Just like his young friend hidden beneath the floor in the icehouse.

  Coincidences, Holmes has learned, are never really coincidences. But most people aren’t smart enough to realize that. Most people accept circumstances for what they are, never bothering to dig beyond the surface for true meaning.

  Holmes is different. Smarter.

  He watches the girl leave with her family. Now that he sees the parents more clearly under the street lamps’ glare, he vaguely recognizes them. He doesn’t know their names, just that they’re locals, and they live in The Heights. But he isn’t interested in them, nor in their son.

  Like his Kathryn, this one is tiny and fair. But she’s healthier, prettier, with pert features, perfect white teeth, and a long-waisted, slender build. As she trails her parents and brother, she’s focused on the illuminated screen of the cell phone in her hand.

  Holmes slips over to the shrub border along the front of the property and leans over the black iron fence. The mother, Kim, is swaying a little, hanging on to the father’s sleeve. The boy has picked up a stick and is swatting it along fence posts that border the sidewalk. His sister scolds him. His parents ignore him. The woman’s giggle reaches Holmes’s ears. She wobbles and nearly falls off her high-heeled sandals.

  The girl says something to her. Holmes can’t hear the words, but he appreciates the sharpness in her tone. Clearly, she agrees with him: her mother is ridiculous.

  Halfway down the block, they turn to head into a small Queen Ann Victorian.

  Catherine is the last one to disappear into the house. Standing in the glow of the porch light, she turns back to look out into the night. Holmes knows she can’t see him here, but he pretends that she can. For a long, delicious moment, he imagines that she’s looking into his eyes, and that she knows.

  Then the door closes between them, and he’s left alone in the dark to ponder this new development.

  Catherine.

  Sullivan Leary has never sat on a porch swing in her life.

  But she’s quickly gotten the hang of this one, bracing her bare feet on the painted floorboards to gently push it back and forth. It makes a pleasant rhythmic squeaking, like something you’d find in a movie set in the perfect small town.

  Back in December, when she first saw Mundy’s Landing curtained by fluffy snowflakes, she decided it could stand in for Frank Capra’s Bedford Falls. As she and Barnes trailed their serial killer to a bloody last stand, the scene grew decidedly Hitchcockian. But now it’s reverted back to Bedford Falls, minus the snow—and minus the snide remarks from Barnes.

  At the moment, he’s boarding the first leg of a seventeen-hour flight to an island resort in the South Pacific. In its own way, her little refuge is as remote as Barnes’s island getaway. More so, considering that unlike his beach hut, this place lacks wi-fi, daily maid service, and a resident masseuse.

  But she wouldn’t trade an ocean view for gliding on this quiet porch and watching fireflies dart above the disproportionately broad front lawn of this tiny house.

  Perched on the Church Street rise in the historic Heights neighborhood, it was built in the late 1800s behind a mansion that burned down years ago and was never rebuilt. The cottage remains, set quite a distance back from the street, dwarfed between a turreted stone mansion and the steeple of Holy Angels Church. Its abbreviated second floor is tucked beneath a low gabled roof with dormers and an ivy-covered chimney. The clapboards and trim are painted in shades of lavender, cream, and gray, with magenta pansies trailing from scalloped window boxes.

  Ordinarily, Sully isn’t a frou-frou kind of gal, but in this case, the frills are nicely balanced by the no-frills. A laminated handwritten sign in the kitchen warns against running the microwave and vacuum cleaner simultaneously. The porch is missing a few spindles, one of which is being used to prop open a window. And that particular window has a cracked pane.

  None of that matters.

  Having swapped a shoebox for a storybook cottage, neon for a porch light, and wailing chaos for crickets, Sully isn’t exactly homesick. Her head is feeling better already despite minimal rest and relaxation.

  What should have been a two-hour drive up from the city turned into nearly five in Friday night traffic. She spent another hour jostling a cart through the crowds in Price Chopper, stocking up on groceries and several summer thrillers from the mass-market rack near the magazines. Famished and too exhausted to cook, she bought dinner from a fast-food drive-through on Colonial Highway and gobbled it on the five-minute drive over here.

  It was the best cheeseburger she’s tasted in a long time. And the cold Bud in her hand is going down more smoothly than the finest whiskey, quenching her thirst and easing the kinks out of her muscles. She’ll probably sleep better tonight in the queen bed tucked beneath the gabled roof upstairs than she has in her own bed lately.

  This isn’t home. But it could be, if it were for sale.

  Which it isn’t.

  And you’re not considering leaving New York, she reminds herself. Barnes needs you back, remember?

  She drains the last of her beer, sets the empty bottle on the floor, and leans her head back against the cushions, trying to muster the energy to retire for the night. Compared to Manhattan, this is a ghost town, but the streets of The Heights aren’t quite deserted. From her front porch perch, she’s watched people stroll by: retirees, young families, even a teenage couple furtively sneaking off into the shadowy graveyard behind the church.

  “Okay,” Sully can hear the girl saying, “but only ten minutes, or my mother will kill me.”

  The boy’s voice is a low rumble, met with a giggle. “You’re right. But I’m kind of freaked out. Everyone says it’s haunted, and I mean, it’s not like it’s romantic with all those dead bodies hanging around . . .”

  Sully rolls her eyes. Kids.

  Those two don’t know how lucky they are, living around here, where there’s no risk of being gunned down in a random shooting . . .

  Talk about haunted. There it is again, the awful memory, slipping into her thoughts just when her headache was starting to ease up.

  Manik Bhandari . . .

  Brianna Armbruster, too.

  Bad things can happen anywhere, Sully reminds herself.

  Standing and stretching, she decides to call it a night. Maybe she’ll actually get some sleep for a change.

  As she walks toward the door, she hears footsteps behind her on the concrete and hears a voice.

  Turning, she sees a solitary figure walking by. From this distance, he’s little more than a shadow. He’s alone, head bent, baseball cap pulled low, and hands shoved in his pockets. She could have sworn she heard him say something. Poised in the doorway as he passes, she hears it again—a male voice, muttering.

  So he did say something. Maybe he’s on the phone, talking into an earpiece. Probably. Because this is Mundy’s Landing, not the city.

  Back home, she often comes across wandering vagrants who talk to themselves. Most of them are harmless, though once in a while . . .

  But bad things can happen anywhere, Sully thinks as she steps inside and bolts the
door. Even here.

  PART II

  Into this wild Abyss the wary Fiend

  Stood on the brink of Hell and looked a while Pondering his voyage; for no narrow frith

  He had to cross.

  —John Milton,

  Paradise Lost

  From the Sleeping Beauty Killer’s Diary

  March 31, 1904

  At precisely 7:43 this morning, the moon entered its full phase for the second time within the calendar month.

  This astronomical phenomenon is certainly nowhere near as rare as Halley’s comet, yet it is one that has not been witnessed on earth in nearly three years.

  At that moment, I heard tortured screams escape the windowless room. They filled the house, despite obstetrical efforts to ease the violent labor.

  At 8:30, scarcely an hour after the lunar phase commenced, the child was born.

  The exquisite timing was hardly a coincidence, yet I must marvel at its near-precision. Certainly, I was aware that the herbal remedy she’d unwittingly swallowed would certainly induce uterine contractions, but how soon? My research was inconclusive. Thus I feared the child would make its appearance before it was time.

  Good fortune smiled upon us.

  She was caught off guard by her labor pains when they struck just a few hours after she’d sipped her evening tea.

  I smiled when I overheard her conversation last night with the maid. “It tastes peculiar,” she said. “Did you do something differently?”

  “No, ma’am,” Mary said in that insufferable brogue of hers, and blamed the strange flavor on the mistress’s delicate condition. “ ’Twas the same brew as always.”

  Ah, but it was not. Unbeknownst to either woman, I had replaced it with dried blue and black cohosh. The plants grow wild in the picnic grove beside the trolley turnaround west of town, and were used centuries ago by Native Americans to induce labor. I’d gathered the leaves in the autumn wood, swallowing the bittersweet memory of the unexpected seduction on a night when a harvest moon shone through the pane. Soon after that night—much too soon, of course—she said that she was expecting a child. In June, she claimed, not meeting my eye, though the evidence was already visible beneath her dress. I suspected that the child would be born in April, or perhaps early May.

  That was not all I suspected.

  Yet verbal accusations are unnecessary. This morning, I scribbled a few lines from George Meredith’s sonnet, “Modern Love.” At precisely 7:43 a.m., I slipped in to tuck the page beneath her pillow as she filled the suffocating little room with anguished shrieks.

  Her eyes were guilty gates, that let him in

  By shutting all too zealous for their sin:

  Each sucked a secret, and each wore a mask.

  But, oh, the bitter taste her beauty had!

  I do not know whether she has read those words yet, but she will, soon enough.

  Meanwhile, I cannot fathom how I shall go on now that the child is here.

  I must do something.

  I must.

  Chapter 8

  Wednesday, June 29

  Kneeling on the kitchen floor in front of yet another large cardboard box, Annabelle reaches for her utility knife. She’s been carrying it around in her back pocket for the past few days. It’s come in handy in all sorts of situations: opening endless moving cartons, prying jutting nail heads from the parlor walls before preparing to paint, and even slicing around the sash of a painted-closed window in the half bath.

  “You’re a regular little handyman,” Trib said approvingly when she waylaid him on his way out the door this morning to show him that the window now slides easily up and down in its frame. “Maybe you can do the same thing up on the third floor. It’s still an oven up there.”

  She promised she would, but so far, she hasn’t had a chance. She’s been busy unpacking, finding forgotten belongings she can’t imagine ever needing again, like complicated kitchen gadgets, baby clothes, and craft supplies. There are way too many books: stacks of novels that weren’t even compelling the first time around, plus cookbooks, atlases, and outdated almanacs rendered obsolete thanks to the Internet.

  But here, finally, is something she can actually use.

  No, not a gown suitable for tomorrow night’s gala—though that would have been nice. Not the still-missing window fans, either.

  According to Trib’s Sharpie-scrawled label on the top of the box, it contains swim gear. She has her own goggles, swimsuit, and cap, but hasn’t been able to find Oliver’s and Trib’s, or the pool towels and beach bag.

  She flips open the blade, slices the taped flaps, and opens them to find . . .

  Huh? Winter boots, umbrellas, flashlights, gloves . . .

  Storm gear, she realizes. Trib has lousy handwriting.

  She sits back on her heels, frustrated. So where is the swim gear? And where the heck is she going to store all this storm gear?

  “Mom? I’m bored.”

  Oliver is standing in the doorway. Again.

  And this is only day five of his summer vacation.

  At least Trib was home for the first two. He did his best to engage Oliver in father-son household chores, but they all seemed to trigger anxiety.

  Oliver didn’t want to go outdoors to hose off the walkways or water the grass because there were bees. Afraid of spiders and mice, he wasn’t interested in anything that had to do with the basement, crawlspaces, or rooms beyond their immediate living area. He couldn’t hand Trib tools while Trib fixed things because he didn’t like the sound of hammering. And he was reluctant to be alone in any room, including his own, because Steve Reed was there working on the pool. Strangers make Oliver nervous.

  In the end, Annabelle and Trib tag-teamed hanging out with Oliver on Saturday and Sunday. On Monday, Trib went back to work, and their son has been all hers ever since.

  “Did you sort your T-shirts?” she asks. “Figure out which ones you don’t want to keep?”

  He nods and hands her one shirt.

  “That’s it?”

  “We already went through my clothes before the move,” he says with a shrug.

  He’s right. The chore was pure busywork. Anything to keep him out from under, and away from video games and television. She allowed him to indulge in extra screen time on Monday and Tuesday while she was trying to catch up around the house. Last night, she promised Trib—and herself—that she won’t rely on electronics to entertain Oliver all summer, but it won’t be easy.

  “If I get home at a decent hour, maybe I can take him to the park to practice hitting and catching. We haven’t done that in a while.”

  No, they haven’t. Oliver loved playing baseball before he got too old for Little League, and he was surprisingly decent at it. But he was too afraid to try out for the travel league with his friends because it would mean overnight trips. So he gave it up.

  “Why don’t you want this?” she asks, unfolding the shirt and seeing that it’s a new one she bought him at Kohl’s in May. The tags are still on it.

  “It looks like it’s for a little kid.”

  “You said you liked it when I asked you.”

  “I didn’t want to make you feel bad.”

  “I don’t,” she assures him, and it’s mostly not true. She tosses the shirt onto the table with the rest of the castoffs.

  “What are we going to do now, Mom?”

  “We’re going to pack all that stuff into bags to donate to charity. And then we’re going look for the box that has all the swim stuff. If we find it, we can head over to the pool this afternoon and go swimming.”

  “Which pool?”

  There are two: the indoor one at the private gym where she swims year-round, and the outdoor public pool over near Schaapskill Nature Preserve, which belongs to the town. One is strictly for laps, the other for sunning, splashing, and socializing.

  “The town pool.”

  His face brightens. “Do you think anyone will be there?”

  “We’ll be there.”
>
  Not what he meant. But of course every kid his age is either away at camp or enrolled in a fabulous summer program. Oliver is stuck with a mom who couldn’t get her act together.

  “It’s just going to be a bunch of moms and little kids. I’d rather go swimming in our own pool.”

  “So would I, but it’s not going to be finished for a few more weeks.”

  “Why is that guy taking so long?”

  “You mean Mr. Reed? Because there’s a lot of work to be done.” Steve has been here working since before six this morning, but he should be wrapping it up soon. He has to leave early today, he said, on personal business. She wonders if he’s already left.

  “Come on, let’s go look at the pool,” she tells Oliver.

  “I don’t want to—”

  “No, come on, you have to see.” She puts a hand on his shoulder and leads the way before he changes his mind. The natatorium, like the other unfinished rooms in the house, gives him the creeps.

  At the doorway, he shrinks back. “It’s dark.”

  “Not that dark. It’s just the tarp. Look up. See?”

  She points to the glass roof. Steve covered most of it with a large blue tarp so that he can work on replacing the broken panes. What little gray light there is falls through the ceiling to illuminate the large, empty pool in the middle.

  “What’s that?”

  “What’s what?”

  “That music.”

  “Oh—Steve hooks up his iPod to speakers when he’s working.”

  She recognizes the song—old Bon Jovi, a throwback to their high school years. Either some things never change, or he’s feeling nostalgic.

  “Steve?” she calls. “Steve?”

  She spots him through the window. He’s out in the side yard, hosing off some equipment in the grass. His shirt is off, hanging on a nearby rhododendron bough.

  That’s because he didn’t want to get it wet, and not, she reminds herself, because he stripped down for her benefit. She’s married, he’s married.