Blue Moon

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  Someone—perhaps a Sleeping Beauty herself?

  Five cents was considerable currency at that time, half the daily admission price or round-trip trolley fare. Losing that much money could very well have left a young woman stranded and vulnerable. Vulnerability could have led to an ill-fated connection with a killer.

  His superior logical analysis skills have thus led him to believe that this very nickel, his nickel, might have been the catalyst that led at least one victim to her doom.

  He was meant to find it.

  Or maybe he found it because he already knew where it was. Maybe he, in another lifetime, actually visited the Pleasure Park. Maybe he encountered S.B.K. Maybe he was S.B.K.

  Preposterous?

  No more preposterous than the great General George S. Patton’s belief that he’d gone to battle with Napoleon in a past life.

  Maybe that’s how Holmes arrived at the truth behind the unsolved murders—not just by carefully weighing all the facts and then piecing them together in a way that makes perfect sense, but courtesy of insider knowledge floating in his brain. Maybe he didn’t just solve the perfect crime—he committed it.

  He carries the nickel wherever he goes, to remind him of that possibility. Tucked into his pocket, it’s wrapped in a fitting shroud: a small piece of white muslin torn from one of the victims’ nightgowns.

  Alas, the fabric scrap isn’t bloodstained. It is, however, authentic, stolen from a police evidence file on the case. Plenty of people around here would love to get their hands on it.

  Ignorant, all of them. They never bothered to dig beyond the surface of the case, as Holmes did. They never even considered the details. The people. The timing.

  Deep in the woods above the river, he makes his way to a small graffiti-covered stone building adjacent to the crumbling foundation of the old dance hall.

  Having made it his business to learn every possible detail about Valley Cove Electric Pleasure Park, he knows that it was last used for storage, undoubtedly filled with chairs and music stands before the dance hall burned down back in the 1920s.

  By then, the Great Depression was looming and the park was past its heyday. It remained closed the summer following the stock market crash—and forever after.

  Like the adjacent field, the woods are dotted with its remains.

  Some are transient. When the waterline is low, you can see the tops of pilings that once propped the large amusement pier beneath the bluff. In winter, when the ground is bare, the old picnic pavilion’s slate slab emerges from the carpet of living foliage and dead leaves.

  Other relics are visible year-round: a wrought-iron stairway that leads nowhere, a rusted, twisted metal heap that was once a Ferris wheel, and this sturdy stone structure nestled in the trees on a bluff above the river.

  Back when Holmes first came upon it, the door stood ajar as if to beckon anyone who happened along. Inside the windowless room, he encountered countless spiders, rodent droppings, and rampant evidence of teenage decadence: spray-painted graffiti, broken beer bottles, cigarette wrappers and butts, used condoms.

  He replaced the exterior door with a steel-enforced look-alike and padlocked it. For a long time, he wondered whether someone would come along and remove it, but no one ever did. The partying kids moved on to more accessible haunts.

  Removing the key from his pocket, Holmes swiftly unlocks the door and slips inside. His flashlight beam falls on a trapdoor in the wide-planked floor. There used to be a large iron pull ring in the middle, but he removed it, in case a random person should come across the building and manage to break in—although why would anyone bother? Still, if it happens, the trapdoor will no longer be easy to spot at a glance.

  Originally built as an icehouse, a deep cellar lies beneath the floor. Frozen blocks were cut from the river and stored, layered in straw, until they were needed in the summer months. Intended to provide added insulation in warm weather, the building’s thick walls, floors, and roof have rendered it virtually soundproof.

  For over a year after Holmes first secured it, the building sat undisturbed, waiting . . .

  Ready.

  No longer empty, the makeshift dungeon has served its purpose for over a month now.

  It won’t be long until the next part of the plan is underway—although every second must seem like an eternity to the trio of Beauties hidden beneath the trapdoor.

  Holmes’s Case Notes

  I had a close call at 46 Bridge Street yesterday morning. I was in the upstairs bedroom—that bedroom—when I heard a car pull into the driveway. I rushed to the window and spotted Annabelle Bingham getting out of the driver’s seat.

  I heard her enter the house just as I reached the first floor. I intended to dart out the front door. But through the glass, I saw a neighbor at the curb with a leashed dog.

  Trapped, I crept instead toward the back of the house, unaware that Annabelle was making her way to the front. Our paths crossed in the front parlor. Had she glanced in my direction, she’d have seen a pair of human legs between the wooden piano legs. Luckily for me—and indeed, for her—she did not.

  She disappeared into the foyer, and I scurried for the back door. I was hiding in the trees, still trying to catch my breath, when she emerged from the house again.

  She did glance my way for a long, heart-stopping moment. Had she called out or approached, I’d have treated her to a hastily concocted cover story.

  If she hadn’t bought it . . .

  Yes, then she would have been an obstacle, and I’d have been forced to deal with her accordingly.

  But she simply stared before reaching for the rest of the groceries. If she’d spotted me, she wasn’t going to let on.

  That intrigues me. I’d dismissed her as a stay-at-home mom no different from the others who populate this town—useless creatures who cry for help at the slightest incident and show little interest in anything that doesn’t revolve around themselves or their precious offspring.

  Does it matter that Annabelle appears to be different?

  Not in the long run.

  Hence, I note my resolve here, lest I find myself tempted to check in on her again in the days ahead. Now is hardly the time to take chances.

  Chapter 3

  The morning that began so precariously before daybreak has yet to right itself.

  Annabelle finally managed to calm Oliver and wrestle him off to school, but the struggle left her in a volatile mood. Trib, too, was cranky before he departed for work. Even the weather is unstable—hot and humid, with sun and black clouds alternately staking a claim in the sky.

  Fittingly, the computer desk in the front parlor wobbles slightly as she sits. This is one of the few recent furniture purchases they’ve made: a faux wood piece Trib bought on clearance at Home Depot. It came in a cardboard box and he assembled it hurriedly with a screwdriver, a few too many curse words, and a few too few plastic connector pieces. They were missing when he bought it.

  “What do you expect for thirty-nine ninety-nine? It might collapse any second,” he warned Annabelle when he placed it in the front parlor, in the piano’s shadow.

  The tumbler of ice water in her hand, slick with beaded moisture, nearly slips from her grasp as she plunks it down without a coaster. She still hasn’t gotten around to unpacking them, and who cares if the glass leaves a ring on a desk that might collapse any second?

  I feel the same way.

  Wilted in the muggy weather and awakened far too early, she’s also deprived of her morning caffeine. She’d been too caught up in Oliver’s drama to brew her usual pot, and by the time he was gone, it was too hot to drink coffee. Without it, she doesn’t have the energy to go swim her laps at the gym as she’d planned to do as soon as Oliver was off to school.

  Reaching for the computer mouse, she thinks again of the real one Trib encountered in the bathroom.

  That thought leads her directly back to the dead schoolgirls.

  How, she wonders, did the Purcell family manage to go on
after their horrific experience? How did Florence tuck her children into their beds every night after someone had crept into the house while they were sleeping? How did any of them ever sleep soundly again?

  If something like that had happened now, here, with Oliver . . .

  Of course it won’t.

  History can’t repeat itself. The Sleeping Beauty Killer isn’t lurking, waiting to strike again.

  Dead people can’t come back.

  No, but if Oliver starts noticing strangers prowling in the yard, he might change his mind about that. It’s going to be a long summer for both of them unless she finds a pleasant diversion to get him out of the house.

  He’s too old for the town day camp he’s attended since kindergarten, and most of his friends are going to sleepaway camp instead. Back in February, when their friends were glibly filling out registrations and sending in deposits for their sons, Trib thought they should do the same for Oliver.

  Annabelle was incredulous. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “It would be good for him. Every kid there is going to be homesick, and then they’ll get past it. That’s what happens at camp.”

  “It isn’t just homesickness. He’s not like every kid,” she pointed out for the millionth time. “We’ve finally got him used to the middle school, and we’re going to be moving by summer. That’s a lot for him to handle.”

  And for Annabelle herself. It isn’t easy to raise a child who can be calm one moment and frantic the next; a child who harbors fears so irrational it might be laughable if it weren’t so tragic; a child who can cling to you in terror at an age when his friends are not only long past such behavior but are prone to ridiculing anyone who betrays infantile conduct or weakness of any kind.

  “You can’t protect him forever, Annabelle,” Trib said. “He’s not a helpless kitten being attacked by a bear. He’s a kid who’s got to grow up and leave us someday whether we—whether he—likes it or not.”

  He doesn’t like it. But separation anxiety is a medical diagnosis, and Dr. Seton agrees with Annabelle that it isn’t a good idea to add more upheaval right now.

  In the end, Trib was fine with that decision. “It’s not like I’m hell-bent on sending him away. I just don’t want him to miss out. I loved camp.”

  Annabelle suppressed the urge to remind him, yet again, that Oliver is different—different from Trib, different from the other kids they know. Same old conversation, and it would have become the same old argument had they let it progress. They’ve had a lot of practice avoiding it, pushing silently past the small hurdles and moving on, saving their energy—and their voices—for the huge ones.

  Years ago, as a competitive swimmer, Annabelle learned to choose and set goals, then focus on doing whatever it takes to reach them. But you can’t control and excel at every aspect of training, let alone a meet. That will only dilute the overall effort.

  “It’s better to zero in on a couple of areas and work on them until you’re exceptional than to be mediocre at everything,” she told her students back when she was working as a swim coach at Hadley College.

  She’s tried to use the same principle in parenting Oliver. He’s never going to be entirely fearless, but he can focus on mastering a few things that scare him: the school bus, gym class, even a sleepover at a friend’s house, which he has yet to attempt.

  Most days, she wishes she were as competent a mother as she was a swimmer and coach. Unfortunately—and ironically—she had to give up her job because Oliver suffered when she was on the road with the team. She’s been rearranging her daily life to accommodate his needs ever since. She has to be there for him when he needs her.

  Which, lately, feels like all the time.

  He would be perfectly content to stay here with her all day every day, but Dr. Seton didn’t think that was a good idea, either. He cautioned her about allowing Oliver too much screen time.

  She and Trib do limit his electronic privileges. They’ve relaxed the rules since the move, though, because they’re busy, and because—healthy or not—Oliver’s anxieties ebb when he loses himself in a game or television program.

  She told Dr. Seton that there will soon be a functioning swimming pool in the new house to help keep Oliver occupied. Water is one of the rare things some kids fear that he does not. Shipwrecks, yes. Swimming, no. He’s always relished that bit of bravado, much as he has the peer respect that comes with moving into a Murder House.

  Then again after this morning, thanks to the mouse, he’s no longer interested in living here at all.

  Wondering where she’ll find the strength to resume the inevitable I want to go home/You are home conversation later, Annabelle turns her attention back to the matter at hand. Dr. Seton advised her that it’s not a good idea for Oliver to spend months of uninterrupted time with her at home, pool or not, and he’s right.

  But she dropped the ball on this, too busy with the impending move to make arrangements when she should have. Now, with summer vacation officially beginning in—she checks her watch—fifteen minutes, she’s desperate. Desperate, yet distracted.

  She inhales deeply as she opens a search window on the computer. The antique woodwork is particularly aromatic in the muggy heat, infused with the sweet old-fashioned perfume of mock orange, honeysuckle, and peonies blooming beyond the screens.

  Is this the same scent Florence Purcell breathed on that awful morning a century ago?

  Fingers poised on the keyboard, she fights off morbid curiosity. Additional information about the Sleeping Beauty murders is the last thing she needs right now. Instead, she types Mundy’s Landing summer programs for 12-year-olds and hits Enter, then scans the results.

  Mundy’s Landing has overshadowed her other search terms, and is, predictably, synonymous with Mundypalooza. Every hit revolves around the upcoming extravaganza, with its well-publicized daily schedule of events, everything from a “Forensics Expert Q&A” to a “Whodunnit Roundtable”—whatever that is.

  She deletes Mundy’s Landing and presses Enter again. This time, she gets a number of promising summer programs for kids—but none located in this geographical region. A third search yields several local options Oliver might enjoy, but all are past the enrollment deadline, filled to capacity, or too expensive.

  Frustrated, she leans back in her chair and sips her ice water.

  What am I going to do with him?

  The rubbery-gravelly sound of a car floats through the screened windows behind her. Rather than driving on past, it slows in front of the house. Turning, she spots an unfamiliar black SUV lingering in the middle of the street. She can’t see the driver, but she can feel him watching her.

  No wonder Augusta Purcell cloaked the windows in layers of heavy fabric.

  I’ll ask Trib to install those vinyl shades down here, too, she decides. I don’t even care what it looks like. I don’t want to be a sitting duck for snoops all summer.

  At last, the shadowy driver moves on down the street.

  But I’m sure he’ll be back, she thinks as she resumes her dogged online search.

  This is what it must feel like to be high on drugs, Holmes decides, as he turns the corner from Bridge onto State Street.

  Unlike his idol Sherlock, who dabbled in cocaine and morphine, he doesn’t use illegal substances. He prefers to derive pleasure from being squarely rooted in every moment. Surely no chemical-induced sensation could rival his exhilaration when he saw Annabelle Bingham sitting in her parlor. It was all he could do to move his foot from the brake to the gas pedal and drive on past 46 Bridge.

  To think he almost hadn’t allowed himself to detour through The Heights this morning. He’d promised himself he’d stay away, but the house pulled him like a magnet, as always.

  There she was, plainly visible through the front parlor window.

  Once again, he could have sworn she’d seen him.

  Once again, she didn’t let on. She didn’t jump to her feet and rush to the window, or disappear from view.

&nb
sp; Until now, he hasn’t wasted much time wondering what makes Annabelle Bingham tick. There are too many others to worry about.

  The Beauties are becoming a problem.

  “Shut up!” he hollered this morning, amid their incessant wailing. “I can’t hear myself think!”

  A pity, because frankly, one of Holmes’s most pleasurable pastimes is hearing himself think. And speak.

  “I love the way your mind works,” he says aloud, a perfect imitation of his mother’s admiring tone. She often said those very words to him. Now that she’s gone, Holmes carries on the tradition.

  “There’s nothing wrong with talking to yourself,” he adds, driving on down State Street. “How else can you be assured of an intelligent speaker and attentive audience?”

  Of course, if you are alone, some errant eavesdropper might misinterpret one-sided conversation for loneliness, or even mental illness. Holmes suffers from neither affliction, though when he was in London a few years back, he was memorably accused of the latter. He quite sanely and methodically set matters straight, though his efforts went unappreciated by the accuser, lying as she was in a puddle of her own blood.

  No raging madman, Holmes.

  He goes sensibly yet stealthily about his business just as his predecessor did a century ago. How else can one expect to hide in plain sight?

  With a satisfied smile, he drives on through The Heights. The infamous dates—three of them, spaced about a week apart—loom as tantalizingly close as the trio of Murder Houses themselves.

  June 30: 65 Prospect Street.

  July 8: 46 Bridge Street.

  July 14: 19 Schuyler Place.

  The agenda is set for S.B.K.’s return visit to Mundy’s Landing, and the clock is ticking.

  Whenever it gets to be too much—the gnawing hunger in her belly, the terror growing like mold in the darkest corner of her soul—Indi makes up stories. She lets her imagination fly her away to a world where she’s a princess, or a rock star, or just back home in Albany, New York.