The microwave dings and the pizza stops spinning.
Tomorrow night, out with her husband, wearing a new dress . . . it’s suddenly sounding pretty good. It will be so nice to escape real life for a while and connect with Trib again. So nice to talk about something other than the shared burdens that encompass every conversation.
She makes room for the pizza on the table, still heaped with unpacked items—nary a fancy dress among them—and reaches for her phone.
“Oliver!” she calls, opening Kim’s last text message. “The pizza’s ready! Hurry up and eat it, because we’re going to the mall!
It will be a shame if there’s no sunset tonight in Mundy’s Landing, Holmes thinks, listening to the rain drip on the roof. It doesn’t look as though the gray gloom is going to lift any time soon, though the forecast calls for clearing. He’s been checking it constantly the last couple of days, hoping that the weather tonight will mimic the weather exactly a century ago: cool and clear.
Contentment settles over him as he works, unwrapping the tarp as the bathtub fills with steaming water.
He’d originally been planning to transport Juanita Contreras from the icehouse to the boat in one of those oversized contractor garbage bags. But the tarp was pure genius. It allowed him to wrap her body like a neat little package right where she lay after the kill, thus removing the bloody mess from the icehouse. Now there will be no DNA-rich stains on the wooden floor. Now forest animals won’t smell fresh blood wafting in the air and start sniffing around, which in turn might draw curious humans.
He didn’t encounter anyone along the journey from the icehouse to the boat. If he had, though, he’d been prepared to offer a cover story. And if they didn’t buy it, well . . .
He still had the razor blade in his pocket.
Not anymore, though. It’s clean and stashed away until he needs it again on July 7.
“Now it’s your turn to be cleaned and stashed away,” he tells Juanita, lifting her from the tarp and carrying her to the tub.
He bathes her carefully, washing the blood from her corpse until the deep slashes in her neck are all that mar her appearance. Well, those, and her gaping eyes that watch him in mute horror. But he isn’t ready to close them just yet. Not until she’s dressed and ready to be tucked into bed, a Sleeping Beauty at last.
He dries her gently with a towel and dresses her in a simple cotton nightgown similar to the ones S.B.K.’s victims had worn.
The nightgown’s high ruffled collar nicely hides the gashes in Juanita’s neck.
Now it’s time to braid her long dark hair. He practiced with three lengths of rope until he’d mastered it, but when the moment finally arrived, he couldn’t get it just right. It’s different when you’re wrestling with a thick mass of individual strands, damp and tangled and attached to someone’s head.
He looks at his fifth or sixth lopsided attempt, and then at his watch. He can’t stay here indefinitely. This will have to do.
He hurriedly washes the tarp, and places her on it once again. Reaching down to close her eyes for the last time, he finds that he’s made a terrible mistake. They’re fixed in their wide-open position. Rigor mortis is setting in. He attempts to push the lids down, but can’t do so without disfiguring her face.
Luckily, her arms are still pliable. He’s able to fold them, hands clasped over her bosom.
There. She’s ready.
As he starts to fold the tarp around her again, his phone rings. He checks his watch, and then the caller ID, and knows he’d better answer it.
He does, with his name, same as always—his real name, of course.
“Where are you?”
Keeping his voice calm and casual, he says, “Stuck in traffic. This town is crazy. I can’t get anywhere.” He gives the tarp another tug. It makes a telltale crinkly sound and he freezes.
But the caller doesn’t seem to have heard, updating him on a few routine matters and then saying, “All right, well, I guess I’ll see you soon.”
“I hope so. I’m getting really fed up with all this traffic and commotion.”
“Yeah? You’re not the only one. You know the Yamazaki family?”
Holmes’s breath catches in his throat. “Yeah?”
“They packed up and left town this afternoon. They’ve had it.”
After attempting to wait out the rain in the police station vestibule this afternoon, Sully had decided it wasn’t a good idea. When Nick Colonomos ventured out of his office on the way to go wherever he’d told the person on the phone he was going, she wouldn’t want him to think she was . . .
Well, she’s hardly stalking him, so of course he wouldn’t think that. It’s not even within the realm of possibility. Nor is she pursuing him, exactly.
Yes, he’s handsome. And no, she wouldn’t mind getting to know him better—say, over dinner one night. But mostly, she stopped in to see him because he’s one of the few people she knows in Mundy’s Landing. He doesn’t seem to mind. He just hasn’t taken the initiative to show additional interest in her. Romantic interest.
Probably because he’s not interested. So why are you? And didn’t you swear off cops after you divorced one?
But who else is she going to meet? In the city, the dating pool for women her age is notoriously limited. In her experience, single men in their forties or fifties are either unattached for a very good reason, or newly single and interested in dating women who don’t need bifocals, hair dye, shape-wear, beauty sleep—or have the emotional baggage strewn in the wake of any failed marriage. Not to mention a bullet scar and the nightmares to go with it.
On the job, she meets cops, cops, and more cops. Oh yes, and perps. Plenty of eligible bachelors in that pool.
Here in Mundy’s Landing, she hasn’t met anyone at all.
A solo vacation might be just what the doctor ordered, but she has to admit, if only to herself, that it is a little lonely. A person can only read so many novels—she’s finished three thrillers since Saturday—before she starts to crave human companionship.
Yesterday, she stopped by to see Rowan Mundy, a local woman and the December serial killer’s intended victim. Rowan invited Sully to join her and her husband tomorrow night at the local gala.
“It’s the least I can do for you while you’re here, considering you saved my life,” she said and—laughably—told Sully to feel free to invite a date, as well. “We have two extra tickets. My daughter and her boyfriend were supposed to join us, but they broke up and she doesn’t have a date, so she’s babysitting. You know how it goes when you’re that age.”
Or when you’re me, Sully thought, and thanked Rowan for the invitation, but said she doesn’t have anything formal to wear, much less a date.
“You don’t need a date, and you and I are about the same size. You can borrow something from me. Please think about it.”
Sully promised that she would.
She also promised she’d try to visit the historical society while she’s here. Rowan is volunteering there.
“I’ll be around all day tomorrow. You should stop by and tour the special exhibit.”
After leaving police headquarters in the rain, Sully decided to do just that. She almost changed her mind when she rounded the corner onto Prospect Street and spotted the line waiting to get in. But they were under an awning, and what else did she have to do?
Rowan was glad to see her, and she spent the last couple of hours immersed in local lore more riveting than the page turners on her nightstand. It turned out to be the perfect diversion for a stormy summer afternoon.
Now, as she steps back outside, a fine drizzle still falls from a sky that’s gone from charcoal to chalky gray. It feels good, though, after the stuffy museum crowded with too many people—though technically not, according to the elderly curator. Sully overheard her assuring a local police officer—not Nick, nor Sergeant Greenlea—that she was keeping a careful count of visitors.
On the way in, Sully had helped herself to various handouts
, including a walking tour of The Heights. Now she consults the map and then looks at the row of large homes across the street. She can’t read the house numbers from here, but it’s easy to tell where the first dead girl turned up exactly a hundred years ago tomorrow morning.
Sixty-five Prospect Street is the house where the crowd is gathered along the curb. It’s been there for days, but growing steadily. At this point, she wouldn’t be surprised if some opportunist started hawking hotdogs and souvenirs to go with the map.
The Mundy’s Landing Historical Society has it down to a science: “it” being what amounts to the commercialization of murder.
Yes, it all happened a hundred years ago. It’s not as if the victims’ families are forced to be privy to the exploitation. Even then, the victims’ families were spared that ordeal, since all three of the Sleeping Beauties were Jane Does.
Certainly that factor contributes to the crimes’ mystique. Dead bodies—even grotesquely posed bodies of unidentified young women—aren’t exactly unheard of in Sully’s line of work. Maybe it doesn’t happen all the time, but it happens frequently enough that she’s encountered two—no, three—this month alone.
Missing persons investigations have come a long way since 1916, thanks to forensics, media, and Internet databases. If the Sleeping Beauty case were to unfold today, every one of those victims would have been ID’d sooner or later.
Mulling the possibilities, Sully steps over a gutter river to cross the street and eyes the mansion where the first body was found. In 1916, Dr. Silas Browne and his wife, Viola, lived there along with their teenage sons, Benjamin and Lewis. Their daughter, Maude, was summering abroad, and the corpse was found tucked into her vacant bed.
Sleep safe till tomorrow, read the note left under the pillow in that house and in the other two.
How, Sully wonders, did any of those families ever truly sleep soundly in their own beds after the trauma had passed? Were they, like Sully herself, plagued by insomnia and nightmares?
“The gate is opening!” someone shouts, as if announcing that a herd of elephants is making its way down Prospect Street. The crowd stirs with anticipation as, sure enough, the electronic iron gate across the driveway begins to move.
A moment later, a small Honda pulls into the driveway and parks behind the SUV and a sedan whose New York State vanity plate reads Vani-T in an apparent nod to vanity plates themselves. They seem to be more popular up here than in the city, as are bumper stickers. Sully notes that there are two on the Honda: a paw print and one that reads Dog Lover on Board.
The crowd is stirring with excitement over the new arrival.
“Who is it?”
“Hey, lady, do you live there?”
“Can we come inside with you?”
Ignoring the strangers staring at her from beneath dripping umbrellas, a young blonde wearing pink scrubs gets out of the car. She pops open the trunk, takes out a large sack, and carries it toward the house.
“What is that?”
“It looks like Puppy Chow.”
“Is that the daughter?”
“Come on, does she look like her name is Evelyn Yamazaki?”
Sully rolls her eyes and walks on. She does turn back, just once, in time to see the young woman press the electronic keypad beside the front door, carefully positioning herself to block the spectators’ view of her fingers on the numbers.
You don’t have to be a detective to figure out that she’s there to feed the family pet. Sully wonders where the Yamazakis are. There are two cars in the driveway, but there was another SUV, too, the first couple of days she was here. The oversized gas guzzlers are also much more prevalent here than back home in the city. Probably because people travel farther on a daily basis, and winters can be treacherous on rural roads.
Apparently, the Yamazaki family has left town like John, who owns her cottage, and every other Heights resident unwilling to deal with this circus.
Ron Calhoun, the local police chief, is an exception. Sully hasn’t seen him since December, but Monday night she spotted him dragging a garbage can out to the curb at the house across the street. She went out to say hello.
Ron is about fifty, with more hair in his bushy gray mustache than there is on his head. “Well if it isn’t Detective Sullivan Leary. I heard you were my new neighbor. How do you like the ’hood?”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it the ’hood.”
“The Heights, the ’hood . . .” He shrugged. “Same difference.”
“I like it here,” she told him.
“Even right now, with the invasion of crazies?”
“I live in the city, sir. This is nothing.”
“Call me Ron. And you’d better be careful, Detective.”
“Call me Sully. And why should I be careful?”
“Because this place grows on you. Ask your friend Colonomos. He came to visit from Boston and never left.”
“Unfortunately,” Sully told him, “I have to leave.”
Calhoun just smiled, and told her to holler if she needs anything. She hasn’t seen him since. He must be working overtime, like every other law enforcement officer in town.
As she steps off the curb to cross onto the next block, a car barrels around the corner. She jumps back to keep from being hit, landing squarely in a puddle. Terrific.
“Slow down!” she shouts after the car, wishing her friend Colonomos would materialize with sirens wailing.
Her sneakers make a squishing sound as she walks on up the hill toward Church Street. Her hair is plastered to her forehead, starting to drip into her eyes. Forgetting she’s wearing mascara, she wipes them, and her hand comes away with black smudges.
Okay, she definitely does not want Nick to materialize after all.
She turns onto Church, covering the last steep block to the cottage. There are cars parked along the curb the entire way, and people are walking in the rain. More tourists. Holy Angels Church, right next door, is also on the map. The three so-called schoolgirls are buried in the graveyard behind it.
I’ll have to go take a look when the sun comes out again, Sully decides.
Right now, she just wants to climb into a bubble bath with a book and a glass of the wine Nick brought her. She’s given up the idea of sharing it with him.
As she cuts across the long stretch of grass toward the cottage, fishing her keys from her pocket, Sully suddenly feels as though she’s being watched. Turning, she almost expects to see a crowd like the one at 65 Prospect Street. No, the sidewalk in front of the house is empty, and there’s no one following her.
With the well-honed instincts of a longtime detective, she scans the street and the windows and porches of neighboring houses. There are people around, but no one is paying any attention to her.
She frowns, turning back toward the house. So much for well-honed instincts. A few days away from the job, and she’s all out of whack.
But as she moves closer to the house, she sees someone sitting on the swing, watching her.
“It’s about time you got back, Gingersnap,” a familiar voice says.
At last the final visitors have departed the historical society, trailed by Rowan Mundy, who’d all but kicked them out, bless her heart.
“It’s past closing,” she told them, shooing them to the door an hour past closing, “and Ms. Abrams needs to rest up for tomorrow.”
Ah, tomorrow. Tomorrow, the museum is open until eight o’clock, when the gala begins. As the unofficial hostess, Ora will have to stay until it ends at midnight, of course.
After locking the door, she lets Briar Rose out of the storage room. The cat rubs against her legs, purring loudly.
“I know, Rosie. It’s been a long day for both of us. But it isn’t over yet. Let’s go upstairs. I have to show you something.”
Up they go, one painstaking step at a time. Rosie used to bound up the stairs after a long day of being cooped up in the closet. Ora wonders whether she’s taking her time out of loyalty, or if she, too, is ge
tting too old to bound.
When they finally reach the third floor, Ora locks the door to her quarters. Some nights, she doesn’t bother to do that, but tonight . . .
“This is exciting, Rosie,” she tells the cat, who perches on the bed watching as Ora walks over to the built-in bookshelves that fill a gabled nook. Beneath them, a strip of baseboard molding that matches the rest of the room is actually the facing of a concealed drawer. You have to move a book on the bottom shelf to release the catch so that the drawer will spring open.
The title, of course, is Sleeping Beauty. It isn’t the leather-bound first edition Ora bought years ago from an antiquarian book dealer. She keeps that copy locked in a case down in the parlor, where any thief who might recognize its value can break the glass and help himself without stumbling across something far more valuable.
This volume of Sleeping Beauty is a discarded 1980s-era children’s library book she bought for a dime. There’s nothing remarkable about it, other than the fact that its spine is sufficiently thick.
Ora plucks it from the shelf and presses the concealed mechanism, and a wide, fairly shallow drawer pops open.
It’s filled with archival boxes of all shapes and sizes, each carefully labeled. Some are much older than the others, with yellowed labels that bear Great-Aunt Etta’s spidery handwriting.
What a shame that the treasures won’t be passed to another generation who might cherish it as Ora and her family have. An only child, she’d never married, never had children of her own. She hasn’t lacked for companionship—not with her work and the networking that goes along with it. But it’s a shame that she doesn’t have even a niece or nephew to take over where she leaves off.
For a long time, she hoped that someone might come along to fill that role as a surrogate—perhaps a local child, or one of the students at nearby Hadley College conducting research at the museum. Someone who would share her reverence for this place.
There was one promising prospect, years ago. But he had an air of superiority that rubbed her the wrong way.
Now, she fears it might be too late to find a young protégé.
Blue Moon: Mundy's Landing Book Two Page 18
