Blue Moon: Mundy's Landing Book Two

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  After all these years Ora knows the contents of each box, but it still takes her a bit of searching to find the one she needs. It’s on the small side, and labeled Jewelry.

  She removes the contents, each a small packet wrapped in acid-free tissue. Carefully, she unfolds each one, searching.

  Her parents’ wedding bands are nestled together in the first.

  Aunt Etta’s ivory brooch, left to Ora in her will along with the vast majority of her worldly goods, is in the next.

  There’s Papa’s gold pocket watch, followed by a jeweled hair comb that had belonged to his mother, whom Ora never met.

  The oldest and thus most valuable artifact is a gimmal ring dating back to Elizabethan England. It’s also known as a joint ring because it was made in interlocking pieces that could be worn separately by betrothed lovers, later joined on the bride’s finger.

  This one had belonged to James and Elizabeth Mundy.

  They were among the small group of men, women, and children who sailed across the ocean from England in the spring of 1665. After reaching the New York harbor, they continued on up the Hudson River, landing at a spot now encompassed by Schaapskill Nature Preserve.

  Over the summer, the colonists built a cluster of sturdy homes. The subsequent winter came early and the river froze over, stranding their desperately awaited supply ship until the spring thaw. When at last the reinforcements arrived, all but five of the settlers had died of starvation.

  Only James and Elizabeth Mundy and their three children had survived—by feeding on the corpses of their dead neighbors.

  Justice was carried out swiftly when their cannibalism was discovered by the newcomers. Accused of murder, the couple maintained that they had eaten only those who had already died. They said the ground was too hard to bury the corpses and eventually, desperate to save their children, they resorted to carving frozen flesh from human bones.

  James and Elizabeth were nonetheless convicted of murder and sentenced to death by hanging in front of the entire colony, including their horrified children.

  Traumatized, stranded in a foreign land populated by vengeful strangers and surrounded by dense wilderness, the Mundy orphans proved remarkably resilient. They overcame the stigma of their parents’ supposed crimes and went on to become productive citizens who were ultimately embraced by the community. Two of the siblings, Jeremiah Mundy and Priscilla Mundy Ransom, lived to marry and have children of their own. Charity, the frail middle child, died not long after her parents.

  Ora has always relished the fact that the village was named in honor of James and Elizabeth Mundy’s great-great grandson Enoch Mundy, a Revolutionary War hero. It was, as she likes to tell museum guests, “the ultimate way to clear the family name and ensure that it would never be forgotten.”

  The cast-iron pot the doomed couple had supposedly used to make a human stew is on permanent display amid the museum’s seventeenth-century artifacts. So are the handwritten parchment records from the trial and execution.

  Ora’s private collection contains more provocative relics related to the cannibalism incident, along with this gimmal ring. It had been taken from Elizabeth’s finger after she was hanged, though it isn’t clear who took it, or how it made its way back to the Mundy family.

  Nor is it clear how Great-Aunt Etta happened to possess it when she died. Ora found it among her late aunt’s belongings, its illustrious past carefully documented.

  Aunt Etta was, like Ora herself, so passionate about preserving the past that she may have helped herself to an artifact here and there—not for personal gain, but to ensure that history wouldn’t be forgotten, or recklessly tossed aside: the proverbial priceless treasure on a dollar table at a tag sale.

  But Ora isn’t looking for the gimmal ring today.

  The object she seeks is, naturally, the very last one she opens, because that’s how it always seems to go when one is impatient to locate something.

  The gold locket is distinctly shaped: more or less an oval, but with scalloped corners. The metal is burnished. The back is scratched with wear; the front, etched with vines and roses and decorated with seed pearls. It’s on a long chain, as was customary around the turn of the century, so that women could double or triple it to achieve a convenient or fashionable length.

  Florence Purcell wore this very locket in every photograph Ora has seen of her after 1916.

  Before 1916, she wore it only occasionally—most notably, Ora has always thought, in a 1915 family portrait after her youngest child was born.

  In addition to that photo, prominently featured in the museum, the official collection contains prints of several Purcell family photographs. There’s a sepia-toned wedding portrait of Florence and George, one of her with little Augusta, and several of the children, individually or together.

  Ora’s personal collection contains many pictures that were taken by Florence herself. Aunt Etta said she’d become an amateur photographer after her husband presented her with a Brownie box camera as a wedding gift. Some of her shots captured innocuous household moments rendered fascinating in retrospect: a table set for a festive meal, a decorated Christmas tree with gifts beneath, a nursery that appeared to have been lovingly prepared for a future occupant. Others revealed Mundy’s Landing in all its early twentieth-century splendor: street scenes, store interiors, a schoolhouse, churches, homes, piers, and docks.

  Many of her earlier photos included people—her husband, her father-in-law, even the servants Annabelle had mentioned this afternoon. A few showed Florence herself, self-portraits in a full-length mirror.

  After a couple of years—by 1904, to be precise—the people faded away. She still took photographs, though.

  Inside the locket, trimmed to fit perfectly beneath the rim, is a photo of a young girl in a sailor blouse. She has a round face and long hair worn in braids. Her eyes are gaping, but not in astonishment. They’re just utterly vacant.

  If anyone other than Ora—and before her, Aunt Etta—had ever seen the photo, or even the girl herself, she probably wouldn’t have been recognized. Not at a glance.

  No, because when you look at her face, it’s impossible to see past those empty eyes. The rest of it, even the braids—those telltale braids—becomes all but invisible.

  But in the other photo—the famous photo, the one exhibited down on the second floor, the one that was printed in newspapers far and wide—her eyes are closed in death.

  She lies in an unmarked grave behind Holy Angels Church, the second of the Sleeping Beauties to be found in Mundy’s Landing in 1916.

  Her name was Zelda.

  Zelda D. Purcell.

  From the Sleeping Beauty Killer’s Diary

  June 16, 1916

  I must do something.

  I must.

  Soon.

  I have been thinking of Miss Lizzie Borden. When I read The Fall River Tragedy many years ago on the train home from Chicago, I was convinced of her innocence, finding it unimaginable that a fine, upstanding citizen might murder her own flesh and blood. Now, despite her acquittal, I am convinced of her guilt.

  Had she not acted in a rage, she might never have been accused and charged. I resolve not to make the same mistake, and shall ensure that suspicion will never be cast upon me. But how?

  The answer came upon me this evening as I wandered the Pleasure Park, remembering my splendid interlude at the World’s Fair nearly a quarter of a century ago. A lifetime ago. And yet I suddenly remember like it was yesterday the heady sensation of controlling of my destiny for the first time and perhaps for the last. Why, though, must it be that way?

  There on the midway tonight, I couldn’t help but remember a wonderful poem called “Chicago,” published by a talent named Carl Sandburg a year or two ago in Poetry Magazine. Here I share a bit:

  City of the Big Shoulders:

  They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.

  Fittingly, th
ose very lines were running through my head when I spotted her in the crowd that encircled the Ferris wheel. Nearly everyone was watching the riders whirl into the air aboard a midway mainstay that had been a newfangled contraption in my youth. The young woman, however, was watching me.

  Her dubious morality would have become evident in the course of our mercifully short conversation even if she had not been wearing rouge, with her skirt hemmed far higher on her calves than is the new fashion.

  She mentioned that she’d taken the steamboat up from New York City. She introduced herself as Calliope, with music of the same tinkling in the background.

  “Surely,” I said, “that cannot be your real name.”

  “Of course not. I have done my best to forget that over the years. And you are . . . ?”

  I glanced around for inspiration, and found it right there on the midway. “Ferris.”

  She threw her head back and laughed. “I hope to see you again, Ferris. I’ll be here every evening.”

  When I questioned that, reminding her that train fare alone is fifty cents and admission a dime, she informed me that she could earn that in no time. “Or,” she added with a wink, “I can take all the time you need.”

  I will confess that I hastened to escape her shockingly inappropriate advances. But I haven’t forgotten her.

  In parting, she said gaily, “Perhaps I’ll see you again.”

  “I doubt that,” I replied rather stiffly. “I am a respectable citizen.”

  “ ’Tis what they all say,” she told me, amused.

  I shall return to look for her again, very soon. Or for someone quite like her.

  I must do something.

  I must.

  Chapter 12

  “You have to admit, that was fun.”

  Seated in the passenger seat of Kim’s SUV as they head east over the bridge across the Hudson, Annabelle smiles wearily. “That was fun.”

  For the first hour, anyway.

  Never a fan of trying on clothes just for kicks, she’d quickly had her fill of the Macy’s dressing room. In fact, she’d have bought the simple sleeveless black chiffon cocktail dress right off the rack if Kim hadn’t insisted that she go put it on, along with an armload of others. Then she insisted that Annabelle step out and show her each one, as Oliver and Catherine sat in a pair of chairs—he playing a video game, she texting her friends.

  She wound up buying the black dress, and Kim bought it in bright pink, promising she wouldn’t wear it whenever Annabelle wore hers.

  “As long as you don’t wear it tomorrow night, you’re safe,” Annabelle said dryly.

  At which point Kim tactfully tried to talk her into dressing up more often, and Catherine said, “Maybe you should try to dress down more often, Mom.”

  After that, they headed for the food court and video game store, with Catherine and Kim bickering incessantly, yet visiting every dressing room along the way and back again.

  Now, at last, they’re on their way back to Mundy’s Landing. The pavement is still shiny, but the rain has stopped.

  Annabelle’s lone shopping bag is in the back of the SUV, accompanied by Kim’s, and several that belong to Catherine. Oliver is dozing in the backseat, and Catherine is texting, texting, texting her friends. Annabelle wonders what they possibly have to say to each other.

  She pulls her own phone out of her pocket to see whether she might have missed a text from Trib. No.

  “Is he home yet?” Kim asks, glancing over.

  “Nope. He said late, and I know he means late.”

  “Ross is working late, too. Which is nothing new.”

  “You must get sick of that,” Annabelle says, putting her phone away. Ross works at a law firm an hour away, in Albany.

  “No big deal. You can get used to anything. Listen, why don’t you come over and have a glass of wine?”

  “Wine sounds great. But you come to my house. I promised Oliver he can play his new video game when we get home.”

  “He can use Connor’s Xbox.”

  “No, come to my house.”

  Annabelle doesn’t elaborate. She’s learned that once you start offering excuses, people respond with alternatives you don’t want to consider.

  Oliver would be uneasy about being in Connor’s room without him. Period.

  “Okay,” Kim says with a shrug, “but Catherine will have to come, too.”

  “What will I have to do?” Suddenly, her daughter is all ears in the backseat.

  “We’re going over to Annabelle’s house for a little while. You can play Xbox with Oliver.”

  “What?”

  Ignoring her, Kim tells Annabelle, “It’ll be nice for her to spend time with Oliver since Connor’s gone.”

  “It’s not like I even miss him! I’m psyched that he’s gone, and—”

  “This is the least you can do,” Kim cuts her off, “after I bought you all that stuff.”

  “You never said I had to sell you my soul in exchange for it.”

  “Catherine! I just can’t even—”

  “Well, I just can’t even, either.”

  “Hanging around playing a game with a sweet kid for an hour isn’t selling your soul.”

  “You know what? Forget the wine. I’m tired,” Annabelle says, hoping Oliver is still asleep, “and it’s been a long day, and—”

  “You just said you want a glass of wine. So we’re having one,” Kim tells her.

  “Why can’t I just go home?” Catherine asks.

  “You know why.”

  “No, Mom, I really don’t. This is ridiculous. You’re treating me like I’m a little kid.”

  “I’m not going to spell it out for you again.”

  “If it’s because of what happened to—”

  It’s Annabelle’s turn to interrupt, not wanting Catherine to bring up the Brianna Armbruster tragedy.

  “It’s all right, Catherine. You don’t have to—”

  “Yes, she does,” Kim says firmly.

  “I have to babysit Oliver? Because a few days ago when I asked you if I could babysit for the Millers, you said no.”

  “Because they were going away overnight, Catherine, and you’re thirteen. That’s out of the question.”

  Her daughter talks over her as if she hadn’t spoken. “And you’re making me stay over at Jessica’s tomorrow night while you and Dad go out, which is—”

  “Catherine, stop right now. Just stop.”

  “If Dad’s home can I go home?”

  “He’s not home. I’m going to the Binghams’, and you’re coming with me. End of story.”

  Catherine mutters something.

  “I heard that,” Kim says.

  Annabelle, who did not, marvels at her friend’s bionic hearing, and at the way mother and daughter have gone from inseparable to arch enemies. Oliver’s illness is no picnic, but maybe it is better than blatant animosity.

  “You heard what?” Catherine shoots back at Kim. “I didn’t even say anything.”

  “Yes, you did. Don’t you dare threaten me.”

  “I didn’t threaten you. I knew you didn’t hear anything.”

  “Yes, you did. You threatened that you’re going to run away. And you’d better not try it, because believe me, you won’t get far, and you’ll be grounded for the rest of the summer. For the rest of the year. For the rest of your life. Got it?”

  Catherine says nothing to that. Annabelle can feel her glowering back there.

  “Catherine, listen,” she says after a few minutes of silence, hoping to defuse the situation, “I’m going to pay you for hanging out with Oliver, okay?”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “No, she doesn’t, and she won’t,” Kim says firmly.

  “It wasn’t my idea, Mom. She offered.”

  “I did offer, and I insist.”

  “That’s not necessary, Annabelle. I don’t want to hear another word about it.”

  Fine. Weary of conflict, and grateful for the reprieve from f
ull-time duty on the Oliver Entertainment Committee, Annabelle decides she’ll just slip Catherine some cash later, before she heads home.

  Beyond the steeples, treetops, and rooftops, the sky has gone from stormy gray to piercing blue to twilight navy. The birds, silenced by the day’s storms, are singing themselves to sleep.

  Walking briskly down Prospect Street, Holmes dwells on the Yamazaki family. How could they? How could they just leave town?

  Upon hearing the news earlier, he’d clutched the phone hard against his ear, thoughts racing. “Where did they go?”

  “Just down to New York City. They have family there.”

  “When are they coming back?”

  “Who knows? Probably when this is all over.”

  Mid-July?

  This means their house will be empty tomorrow morning.

  There will be no screams from the upstairs bedroom, no frantic phone call to the police, no tsunami of terror sweeping the quiet streets of The Heights. The village won’t hold its collective breath over the next eight days, wondering if . . .

  No, certain that another Sleeping Beauty is going to turn up. And then another.

  He’s gone to all this trouble for nothing.

  “No, that’s not true,” he mutters to himself. “It’s just going to take some time, that’s all.”

  And there is an upside, to be sure. Now Holmes won’t risk a wee-hour run-in with the family when he’s placing the body.

  Ah, but wasn’t the challenge a critical element in the plan? Perhaps as important as the dread the discovery of that first corpse would instill. Now it’s just . . .

  “Anticlimactic. That’s what it is.”

  A woman walking her terrier along the curb turns to look at him. She’s older, with thin, saggy legs and arms revealed by a T-shirt tucked into baggy shorts with a cinched waist. Realizing he must have spoken aloud again, he smiles pleasantly, as if he knows her. Perhaps he does.

  “So glad the weather cleared up, aren’t you?” he asks, like they were in the midst of a conversation already.

  She smiles back, a bit warily, and nods. Her little dog barks at him as he passes.