Blood Red (13 page)

“Tough day, hmm?” Without waiting for a reply, she heads back to the bar, leaving him alone with his thoughts.

Tough day, indeed.

Tough night, too.

He thought he was prepared to come face to face with Rowan Mundy again after all these years, but . . .

He closes his eyes, seeing her face again. Not the face that had haunted him all these years, though. She'd changed. That shouldn't have caught him off guard, because he knew she'd aged—­everyone ages—­but for some reason, he felt betrayed, seeing her in person.

Her face was still pretty, but her girlish freckles had faded and so had the light that used to gleam in her green eyes when she looked at him. This Rowan was more mature, laugh lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes confirming that years had passed and they'd been good to her. She'd picked up a few extra pounds on her petite frame, but the curves were flattering. Her hair, though . . .

Her hair. Her crowning glory is gone.

Of all the changes he should have anticipated, that never entered his mind. Why would it? In all of the photos on her Facebook page, that long, wavy dark red hair had been cascading over her shoulders same as always.

When he first glimpsed her this morning, a part of him wondered, perhaps irrationally, whether she'd cut it short and dyed it at the last minute just to spite him.

“I've always had a thing for redheads,” he'd told her once—­after they'd become friends, but long before he dared to take it further. “My first love was a redhead.”

“No way, really?”

He'd told her about Brenda. She'd actually been interested, asking questions and making comments, unlike Vanessa.

Vanessa never wanted to hear about Brenda; never wanted to acknowledge that there had been women in his life before she came along.

Ironic, since she'd actually been married before he came along. He might have benefited from hearing a little more about her ex-­husband. But, being Vanessa, she compartmentalized. She was always good at that.

Unlike Rowan, who wore her heart on her sleeve. He'd fallen a little in love with her the first time they met, even though she was pregnant with her third child at the time.

The moving truck was still in the Walkers' driveway when Rowan came walking over, juggling a plate of homemade brownies and the chubby hands of her little son and daughter. It was summer, hot and humid. She was wearing a spaghetti-­strapped floral print maternity sundress that revealed a good amount of cleavage as well as her swollen legs. Her freckles were out in full force and her hair hung in loose, damp waves and clung in tendrils to her flushed cheeks.

“Welcome to the neighborhood,” she said, offering him the brownies. “I'm Rowan, and this is Braden and Katie. We live next door.”

She was warm and earthy and flushed and real, while he was married to an ice princess. He was enamored on the spot, even as her kids squirmed out of her grasp and made a beeline for the elaborate tree house perched in the branches of an oak tree in his new backyard.

“Guys, get back here! They know better,” she told Rick. “Sorry. They've been looking at that through the fence for years, dying to play on it.”

“The kids who lived here before we moved in were teenagers. I bet their parents wouldn't have minded if they'd come over.”

“You bet wrong,” Rowan said with a laugh. “They were pretty fussy about their yard and my kids can be a handful.”

She cast a glance at the steps, where his four were contentedly reading or coloring with crayons. “Okay, I'm totally impressed. How do you get your kids to behave so well? You've got twice as many as I do.”

“Not for long,” he said, gesturing at her enormous stomach.

“Right. It's another boy.”

“That's good. Boys are easier.”

“Who said?”

“I did. We have three.”

It was months before he even mentioned that the older two of his sons belonged to Vanessa's deadbeat first husband. “He was a lousy dad,” he told Rowan.

“Well, it seems like you're making up for it.”

“God knows I'm trying.”

It was spring by then, and he was pitching a Wiffle ball to his boys and Braden while the girls set up housekeeping in the tree house and Rowan sat on his back steps nursing newborn Mick.

Vanessa had fed their babies formula, despite his protests that breast milk was healthier.

“I bottle-­fed my boys and they turned out just fine,” she said, and made it clear that since she was the one who'd have to nurse, she was the one who'd get to decide.

She'd gone right back to work after her maternity leave was up. She had no choice. She was the breadwinner. When they were living in Westchester, she and Jake Mundy often caught the same weekday train into the city and the same train back to the suburbs at night, while their spouses entertained the kids and each other.

Those days were so pleasant, and so innocent . . . at first, anyway.

Rick eventually acknowledged, if only to himself, that something was starting to brew between them. He picked up on Rowan's loneliness and wistfulness when she spoke of her husband. He felt the same way about Vanessa, whose commuting time had quadrupled with the move, and who was constantly stressed about the hefty mortgage payments they'd taken on and the volatile state of the economy.

Years later, discussing his failing marriage, his old friend Bob asked Rick if he had doubts about whether his wife truly loved him.

“No,” he said, “it's the other way around.”

“She doubts that you love her?”

“Yes. And so do I.”

As that steamy summer traipsed toward fall, Rowan's baby weight melted away and the circles beneath her eyes began to fade. She started laughing more, worrying less about her kids. They shared parenting concerns and confided in each other, sharing things they hadn't even told their spouses. Nothing significant, really. Just little things that came up during the long hours they spent together; things their spouses weren't around to hear or wouldn't have found significant.

Months passed, a year and then two. They relied on each other the way neighbors do, borrowing items and carpooling, recommending pediatricians and babysitters and kid-­friendly barbers. Their time together ebbed and flowed depending on the weather and the season and the kids' schedules. He could count on seeing more of her whenever school was out for breaks and summer. He grew to dread September's abrupt curtailment of carefree summer days spent with Rowan and all the kids in the yard or park or pool.

Then came the sunny Tuesday morning two hijacked planes flew into the World Trade Center. She showed up at his door barefoot with her youngest child in her arms, cell phone in hand.

“I've been trying to call you, but the lines are jammed,” she said breathlessly. “Did you hear?”

He hadn't.

She'd come running because she was worried about Vanessa and didn't want him to be alone. But his wife's office was out of harm's way, and Rowan assured him that her husband had landed safely in Chicago the night before, away on a business trip.

He gave her toddler something to play with and then the two of them stood shoulder-­to-­shoulder in front of his television watching the horror unfold. At some point—­when another plane hit the Pentagon, or when the first tower collapsed, or the second?—­she cried. His arm went around her, pulling her close, comforting her.

Everything changed that day, in many ways. Globally, locally, politically . . .

Emotionally, romantically, physically.

I was already in love with her by then. Not just infatuated. In love.

It didn't matter that she was married, or that he was.

In the days that followed the terrorist attacks, they drifted back into spending time together even without the kids around. They had coffee and watched the endless news reports. As September turned to October and then November, life slowly drifted back to its usual rhythm. There was no longer any compelling reason to spend mornings together, vigilantly keeping an eye on CNN and reminding each other that they were safe.

Yet they kept seeing each other. Her son Mick was always with her, the safeguard against anything inappropriate happening between them while their spouses were absent.

Then came the snow day.

They spent the morning on the hill in the park, with all the kids and their sleds. Then she promised them hot chocolate and home-­baked cookies, so they all trooped back to her house. Mick wanted to watch the Grinch movie with the big kids in the living room, and Rick and Rowan found themselves alone together in the kitchen, and . . .

Even now, he curses the fateful intervention of the smoke alarm. They were close, so close . . .

Afterward, if she'd been willing, Rick would have embarked on a full-­blown affair. Hell, he might have walked away from Vanessa if she'd asked him to; maybe even from the kids.

She wasn't willing. She distanced herself immediately. He hardly saw her again that winter, and the next thing he knew, it was spring and she was moving away.

He tried to convince himself it was for the best. Vanessa was his wife, the mother of his children, a good, steadfast, beautiful woman. She loved him and didn't deserve to be left twice in a lifetime.

Had he ever stopped loving Rowan, though?

Vanessa didn't think he had.

He'd lied to Rowan today, when he'd said he hadn't told anyone what had happened between them on the snow day.

He'd told two ­people. One was his best friend, Bob. The other was Vanessa.

He hadn't confessed to his wife right away. He never intended to do it at all. But after the Mundy family had packed up and moved, Vanessa said she was glad to have them gone.

“Why would you say that? They were the ideal neighbors. Our kids miss them like crazy.”

“They'll survive. But will you?”

He looked sharply at her and he saw in her eyes that she knew. Maybe not exactly what had unfolded between him and Rowan, but she knew how he felt about her.

There was no denying the accusation in Vanessa's eyes, or in her words when she came right out and asked him what had gone on.

He told her the whole truth.

It almost killed her.

In the end, maybe it had.

“Here you go, love.” His Aussie pal is back, setting down a cocktail napkin and topping it with a glass filled with amber-­colored liquid. “What are we drinking to this evening?”

“I can't think of anything worth toasting.”

“Rubbish. There's always something or someone worth toasting, isn't there?”

“You know what? There is.”

“All right, then. Cheers.”

“Cheers.” Rick raises his glass, not to her, but to his own reflection in the rain-­spattered plate-­glass window.

 

From the
Mundy's Landing Tribune
Archives

Local News

January 6, 1975

Longtime Institution to Shutter

Thomas N. Westerly, proprietor of Westerly Dry Goods on Market Street in the village, announced yesterday that the store will close at the end of the month.

Established by his grandfather Nelson Westerly more than eighty years ago, the small department store thrived until early this decade. Mr. Westerly attributes its demise to a confluence of factors that include the decline in population, the economic downturn, and, in the wake of inflation, shoppers abandoning the business district in favor of two recently opened discount chain stores on Colonial Highway as well as the new Dutchess Mall in Fishkill.

“We just can't compete,” Mr. Westerly said from his office on the second floor of the brick building, where his desk resides in the shadow of a framed sepia photo that shows his grandfather sitting in that very spot in 1920. Other than the merchandise itself, little has changed inside the building Nelson Westerly built in 1893. However, a glance out the window reveals nearly deserted sidewalks, countless available parking spots, and empty storefronts that bear Going Out of Business Sale or Space for Rent signs.

Asked what he'll do next, Mr. Westerly shrugged sadly and shared a situation echoed by many local merchants: “This store is the only livelihood our family has known for three generations. I had hoped my son would step in when he graduates from college next year. Now, I guess we'll have to figure out something else.”

 

Chapter 7

E
ven on weekend mornings, Rowan's body clock wakes her early, drop-­kicking the day's to-­do list into her brain before her bare feet even hit the hardwood floor. Most Sundays, she has time to walk the dog, shop for groceries, and put them away long before she leaves for ten o'clock Mass at Holy Angels.

But when she opens her eyes today, she finds that the light falling through the skylight is all wrong. It isn't morning at all. According to the digital clock on the nightstand, it's nearly noon.

Jake's side of the bed is empty; probably has been for hours. She stretches and yawns, thinking about coffee and wondering how she'd managed to sleep so late.

The house is quiet.

She must have been really tired, or . . .

Oh.

Yesterday comes rushing back to her; not just the day but the awful week. Her well-­rested Sunday morning contentment evaporates in an instant.

She closes her eyes, wishing she could beam herself back to last Sunday, when she was up early to make pancakes for Jake and all three of her kids before church as Thanksgiving weekend wound to a close. On that morning, her heaviest burden was the knowledge that Braden and Katie were heading back to college before nightfall. It had been ages since she'd given Rick Walker more than a passing thought.

Flash forward a week, and she's thought of little else.

Rick was, predictably, the last thing on her mind last night before she fell asleep, but at least she hadn't dreamed of him. She yawns and starts to stretch, realizing that she'd been so exhausted she hadn't dreamed of any—­

Hearing the distinct sound of a floorboard creaking overhead, she freezes.

Someone is in the attic.

She bounds out of bed, opens the bedroom door, and sees that the door leading to the third floor is ajar. A shaft of yellow light spills into the dim hallway.

Not pausing to throw a robe over her makeshift nightshirt—­one of Jake's old T-­shirts—­she hurries toward the hall bathroom, where the shower is running. Mick must be in there. Jake would use the one off the master bedroom. Still, she opens the bathroom door a crack and calls, “Jake?”

“Hey!” Mick, cranky, is behind the shower curtain. “Geez, Mom! I'm in here!”

“Sorry.” She closes the door again and calls from the foot of the attic stairs. “Jake?”

“Up here.”

Cursing softly, she climbs the narrow staircase. The rudimentary treads are rough beneath her bare feet; a splinter stabs into her toe. She ignores the twinge of pain and the prickle of goose bumps on her legs as she ascends into the cold, cavernous space beneath the sloping Victorian roofline.

Irregularly shaped, draped in cobwebs, and crisscrossed by rough-­hewn beams, the space stretches in every direction to low knee walls and paired dormers. Its dusty floor, slatted walls, and towering ceiling are made of aged wood that seems even darker at night or on a gloomy winter day, as the only lighting is a bare bulb perched high in the rafters. While she shudders at the thought of the bats that undoubtedly lurk up there and occasionally swoop their way downstairs in warmer months, Rowan has always found that the attic holds a certain appeal.

Its corners have yielded interesting relics of bygone eras: a child's tin toy, coins, buttons, even a stash of empty Prohibition era liquor bottles. There's a partial view of the Hudson River through the west-­facing windows at this time of year, when the leaves are off the trees. She doesn't even mind the smell that wafts in the air: it reminds her of library books and sawdust and the archive room at the historical museum.

Arriving at the top of the stairs, she can hear rain pattering on the roof and a strong wind swaying the ancient trees that surround the house. She hugs herself, shivering, looking for Jake. “Babe? Where are you?”

“Here,” he calls from the shadows in a corner opposite the one where she hid the box. Thank goodness.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking a break. I spent the whole morning getting ready for the meeting.”

“What meeting?”

“The regional sales meeting.”

“When is it?”

“Wednesday,” he says in a tone that tells her she should have known that. “In Saratoga Springs.”

“Oh—­that's right. My field trip is Wednesday, too. There's a lot going on these days.”

“When isn't there a lot going on?”

Oh, Jake. You have no idea.

Unless he does have an idea and he lured her up here to prove a point? The point being . . .

That he's a terrific husband, and she doesn't deserve him?

With a grunt, he drags a carton across the floor as a gust of wind rattles the windows, sending a draft over her bare legs.

“What's in there?” she asks.

“Light strings. I already carried down the other stuff.”

Her heart skips a beat. “What other stuff?”

“You know. Decorations. The ones that go inside—­not for the tree.”

She wonders, fleetingly, if he stumbled across her secret and is covering up.

No. They've kept the holiday decorations in the same spot—­the spot where he is—­ever since they moved into the house years ago. He'd have no reason to go rummaging anywhere else up here. Not today, anyway.

She pushes her doubts away just as she did last night at the restaurant, when she got it into her head that there was hidden meaning in everything Jake said and did.

If he had found any reason to be suspicious of her, he'd bring it up directly. That's how he rolls.

“Do you need a hand?” she asks as he backs out of the corner carrying a large box.

“Nope, got it.” He ducks his head to avoid bumping it on a low beam. He's wearing exactly what he had on yesterday and left in a heap on the bedroom floor when he dressed for dinner: a faded pair of jeans and his old bleach-­stained New York Knicks sweatshirt.

“Hey, guess what I found?” he asks, and her heart stops.

“What?”

He balances the box against his hip with one hand and holds out a sprig of plastic mistletoe with the other. “You brought it when you came to visit me in Manhattan the Christmas after we met. Remember?”

She remembers. She used a thumbtack to hang it in his bedroom doorway while he was at work, and it later fell onto their heads while they were kissing. That night, they shared a bottle of champagne to celebrate the end of her semester. When they went their separate ways the next morning to spend the holidays with their respective families—­he and his mother were flying to Texas to visit his sister that year—­Jake predicted they'd never spend another Christmas apart.

He was right.

And we never will
, she vows fiercely. “Where did you find that old thing?”

“On the floor. It must have fallen out of one of the boxes we kept from back before we had the kids. I really need to clean this place out one of these days. There's stuff just thrown everywhere.”

“That's way down on your honey-­do list. Come on, let's go downstairs and I'll make pancakes.”

“It's way past breakfast, sleeping beauty.”

“Then we'll have them for lunch,” she says, wishing he hadn't called her that.

Right now, she doesn't want to think about the Sleeping Beauty murders: dead schoolgirls eerily turning up tucked into beds all over town—­girls no one had ever seen before, whose identities were never known.

“Hey, why aren't you dressed?” Jake looks her up and down. “Aren't you cold?”

“Freezing. I just got out of bed, and I didn't know where you were.”

“That's what you get when you sleep for almost fifteen hours straight,” he says lightly, setting down the box, unzipping his sweatshirt, and handing it to her.

“You don't have to—­”

“It's okay, I worked up a sweat up here.” He picks up the box again and heads down the steep flight of steps.

She wraps the sweatshirt around herself. It's soft and warm and it smells like fabric softener and like him. She shoves the mistletoe into the pocket, puts up the hood, and bunches the fabric in both hands, pressing it to her nose so that she can breathe the comforting familiar scent as she follows him down, limping along on her splintered toe. When they reach the second floor, she turns off the light, closes the attic door, and locks it.

“Wait—­we still need the rest of the decorations.”

“Mick can grab them later. Go ahead downstairs. I'll be there in a minute.”

Agreeable, and looking forward to pancakes, he whistles as he continues on down to the first floor.

C
himing steeple bells in a nearby church are getting on Casey's nerves.

“Dammit. Dammit! Shut up!”

The bells continue to peal, reverberating the reminder that it's a Sunday.

Casey has always hated Sundays.

No—­that isn't true.

There was a time, back in childhood, when life was good and Sundays were especially idyllic. Sleeping late, eating home-­cooked dinners with everyone at the table, watching sports on television—­unless it was nice enough outside to throw a ball or Frisbee around with the neighborhood kids . . .

Ah, the good old days.

More recent Sundays may not have entailed cozy family time, but there's something to be said for a day of rest, even if it's occasionally a lonely one.

Then came that terrible Sunday last year.

Sunday, bloody Sunday . . .

The U2 song drifts into Casey's head, drowning out the church bells.

“They're my favorite band. I've seen them in concert a few times,” Rowan once said, many years ago. “I'd love to go again . . .”

It sounded like an invitation.

She was such a flirt. Damn her.

Now the lyrics march through Casey's brain, lyrics about wanting to close your eyes and make it go away . . .

But you can't do that. You can't escape.

Casey reaches for the first scrapbook, always kept close at hand.

On the first page is a yellowed newspaper clipping announcing Vanessa De Forrest's birth; on the last is her obituary. Displayed on the pages in between are painstakingly preserved mementos.

This is my time capsule
, Casey thinks.
Just like the one buried in Mundy's Landing.

Just short of a century ago, during the sestercentennial celebration, even as a madman raged through the village leaving young women's corpses in ­people's homes, the residents of Mundy's Landing sealed a chest filled with artifacts and buried it in a vault beneath the marble floor of Village Hall. It's designated to be unearthed on July sixteenth next year.

Reading about it last summer, Casey first grasped the importance of assembling a tangible record that will outlive these precious, fleeting moments—­something that announces, “This is what it was like in my own personal here and now. This is what happened.”

The scrapbook was a labor of love. But when Casey leafs through the pages, pleasant memories aren't all that come rushing back.

Blood . . .

When Casey thinks back to that ghastly day, that's one of the things that stands out more than anything else. There was so much blood. It was everywhere, glistening puddles and delicate smears of crimson: on the floor, on her white nightgown, in her hair . . .

Her blond hair was soaked with so much blood that it appeared red. The irony wasn't lost on Casey.

All that blood, all that red . . .

She was more beautiful, somehow, in death than she ever was in life. Her face had finally released its perpetually constricted expression. It hadn't even been noticeable until it was no longer there. Now, at last, she was at peace.

But I wasn't. My ordeal was just beginning.

Casey closes the first scrapbook abruptly and pushes it aside, frustrated.

It didn't have to happen that way. It's all because of Rowan.

Damn her.

Damn her!

It had been obvious even years ago that Rowan was to blame for everything that had gone wrong. Faced with the undeniable truth on that bloody Sunday, Casey felt something snap inside.

She has to pay.

That was how—­that was when—­the quest for vengeance had begun: unexpectedly and yet not, on that dreadful morning just over a year ago when Vanessa De Forrest died a horrible, lonely death. For Casey, restraint gave way at last, and wrath spewed like a swarm of lethal hornets.

That was the beginning and I'll decide when and where it will end.

Only the
how
has been predetermined: Rowan will die a tortured, bloody death.

What about the kid?

The question of Mick has weighed heavily ever since Casey connected with him at Marrana's Trattoria last Monday night.

If Mick were to die, there would be no frightened feminine whimpers, no long, lovely hair to caress, no sweet-­scented skin to nuzzle or scattering of freckles on feminine curves, or hidden tattoos in provocative places . . .

Casey thinks of the girl last night, Rapunzel—­also known as Julia Sexton, according to her identification.

Casey had cleverly stolen her wallet, just like all the others. Their deaths appear to be the result of a mugging, making it harder for the cops to identify their bodies. It's such fun to create little stumbling blocks like that for the so-­called authorities; such a pleasure to watch the police and media and family members try to make sense of a seemingly random homicide.

Until now, Casey has had to follow those proceedings from afar.

This front row seat promises to be much more satisfying, although there are certain risks involved with a victim found closer to home. For that reason, Julia Sexton must be the last of them.

Except, of course, for Rowan.

Setting the scrapbook aside, Casey paces over to the window. The church steeple rises against a steel gray sky, its bell tower having fallen silent.