Holy smokes. She looked like death warmed over.
Her long hair was a veritable rat’s nest, with strands sticking out every which way. Her mascara was smeared almost to her cheekbones and her skin was pale and splotchy. The cocktail dress hadn’t come out unscathed either. Wrinkled and bunched, it looked like she’d slept in it. Perhaps on a park bench and not on a comfortable bed.
Basically she looked like a vagrant.
Damn that gin.
“I’m never drinking again,” she said solemnly to the horrifying reflection in the bathroom mirror. “I cannot hold my liquor.”
Alcohol had been needed though. After what she had learned about her new friends, Bailey had needed cocktails. Several of them. The universe had hiccupped last night and she’d been on the receiving end of the spit. It was only by staying numb that she’d managed to hold things together. She prided herself on being in control when it mattered most.
Except that welcomed numbness wasn’t doing its job this morning. Not sure if it was the booze or the revelations, Bailey ignored the pain that was beginning to seep into every bone and instead stripped off her party dress and stepped into the shower, determined to wash away the remains of the night.
After scrubbing her body from head to toe, she made a pot of coffee and took the mug outside to sit on her back patio. There was shade and a ceiling fan so it wasn’t unbearably hot. Yet. It was still early in the summer though. By August she’d be sitting inside with the air conditioning all day.
Listening to the birds chirp, she couldn’t stop her mind from going there. There. Back to Frank and their marriage. So much angst and anger. Unbearable coldness. There had been good times too and those were what had kept her there, trying to salvage something that had gone terribly wrong. She’d wanted to love someone for a lifetime but she simply might not be capable of it. It didn’t seem she inspired that sort of devotion as well.
She hadn’t allowed herself to think about him for a long time, although he’d sneak up on her every now and then when something was familiar. That first year she’d kept everything in the house as it was but then her family had visited, performing a quasi-intervention. They’d ignored her protests and packed up all of Frank’s possessions in cardboard boxes and placed them in one of the spare bedrooms.
She’d argued that she wanted everything to stay the same but her mother and sister hadn’t backed down. It was time she lived again and they weren’t taking no for an answer.
“You need to move on, honey,” her mother had said gently. “You can’t do that with all of Frank’s things as if he’s still here. He’s not, but you are. When you’re ready to go through it all, it will be there.”
That’s when it hit her. Was she ready now? Today?
Maybe that was the message the universe had been trying to send her last night. It had used a baseball bat instead of a stick but she was receiving it loud and clear now that her brain was fully caffeinated.
It was time.
Standing, she headed for the spare room feeling a little less hungover. She could do this.
Pressing Frank’s old cardigan to her nose, Bailey inhaled trying to get even a trace of his scent but it had long ago faded. Now it smelled of wool and dust, and she couldn’t hold back the sneeze that tickled her nostrils. She’d always liked the smell of Frank’s cologne but five years stuffed in a box had obliterated it from the fabric. Nothing smelled of him anymore.
Five boxes down and about a million to go. Okay, maybe not that many but it felt like it. They were stacked all around the room and as she’d soldiered through box after box she’d been reminded of what a clothes horse her late husband was. He’d taken up more space in the closet than she had. He’d especially liked finely cut suits and Italian loafers.
She sincerely hoped whomever shopped at the local thrift store would like them as well.
So far, the belongings she’d sifted through were going straight to charity. She’d heard there was a good one that gave suits to men who were looking for a job. It would be nice to know that someone was getting good use of all of this. Her old friend Guilt set in as she realized how long she’d put off this task, walking by the door to the room day after day and not admitting what lay behind it.
She’d been in a sweet state of denial. Fun while it lasted.
“Time to wake up,” she muttered to herself. “Stop being a wimp.”
Wiping her dusty palms on her cotton shorts, she pulled another small box toward where she was perched on the floor, a big pillow under her bottom. This one wasn’t filled with clothes and she had to lift up onto her knees to study the contents. None of it looked in the least familiar.
On top was Frank’s high school diploma from that fancy private institution in New England that had given his voice an upper crust tone. There were a few spiral notebooks with class notes in them – math and history – plus a trophy from his lacrosse team. Bailey wasn’t even sure what lacrosse was. Her Midwestern high school in the middle of the cornfields had a football team but no lacrosse.
“Maybe I should send this to his parents,” she said to herself as she dusted off a yearbook, paging through until she found his smiling face. “All of this is from his school years. They might want this.”
Except that she would have to talk to Betty and Frank Senior. They hadn’t much approved of the marriage and the relationship had always been strained at best.
“Or I could toss all of this but that seems wrong. This must have meant something to him.”
Frank hadn’t been the most sentimental man. He’d seemed confused as to why they needed a photographer at their wedding, so realizing that he had saved all of this memorabilia was something of a surprise.
God, he looks so young.
The black and white picture was from his senior year. He looked relaxed and carefree, even naive. Life had clearly not touched him, or if it had he’d shaken it off easily. This photo showed a man who had everything in front of him.
This box was a peek into a person she hadn’t known and that made her sad. The Frank she had married right out of college wasn’t someone who kept yearbooks. She would have wanted to know this man.
What happened to him? What changed? Life?
Her fingers dug into the box and landed on a stack of newspaper clippings, yellowed and brittle with age. Carefully, she lifted them out expecting to find memories of athletic glories or teenage shenanigans. When she was in high school, some kids had put crepe paper in the trees of their cross-town rival on Homecoming. Did rich kids do stuff like that too? No, they probably had servants to do it for them. Or maybe they fought pistol duels at dawn. The one thing Bailey had learned from being married to Frank was that the rich were different.
The clippings were faded and worn as if they’d been handled often. From a newspaper in Virginia, the headlines proclaimed that a teenage girl had died tragically at a local summer camp. Perpetrator unknown.
Leaning back against the wall, Bailey stretched her legs out comfortably as she read on. All the articles were about the same incident and it had to have been something important for Frank to have held onto it all these years. They might have been childhood friends.
Scanning the text, certain words jumped out such as knife, deserted, no suspects.
“I wonder if the crime was ever solved?” Bailey groaned and rolled her eyes. “Great, now I’m talking to myself. I need to get a dog—at least then I’ll have an excuse.”
Shuffling through the clippings, there were a few more details of the murder such as witnesses who saw the girl about an hour before the time of death but still no guilty party. From what Bailey could see the murderer wasn’t caught. At least not in the days immediately following.
She stood, her muscles protesting the movement after sitting for so long, and headed into her small office at the front of the house. She used this area mostly for the metric-ton of paperwork that went along with owning her own business, but right now she only needed her laptop and a search engine.
She checked the article again for the correct spelling of the girl’s name – Gwendolyn Baxter – before typing it in and pressing enter. A myriad of results came up and Bailey clicked on the first link, which was an op-ed piece in the Virginia Gazette. The writer, Leon Melrose, appeared frustrated with the efficiency of the police if the title was anything to go by – Local Police Bungle Tragic Murder of Teenage Girl.
Near midnight on July 21st, 1996, Gwendolyn Baxter, out walking on a moonless night, was stabbed repeatedly with a large knife and left for dead. Not missed until the morning, a search party was sent out to look for the girl and her body was found near the shore of the river. According to the medical examiner, she’d been dead for hours. Our local police, usually a shining example of detective work, have managed to find not one single suspect despite there being almost a hundred people less than a mile away. No one heard anything. No one saw anything. The killer didn’t leave one clue behind. People are asking questions and wanting answers. The biggest question is who are they protecting?
Reading the opening paragraph a second time, Bailey stiffened as she struggled to breathe, her chest tightening painfully. At this rate, all the wonderful numbness that kept her safe would be gone and she’d have to feel every stab of guilt and sadness. Something she wasn’t prepared to do.
But the universe was fucking with her again and this time she couldn’t ignore it or pretend it hadn’t happened.
Because Gwendolyn Baxter was killed on July twenty-first.
Just like Frank.
Just like Willow’s husband.
And just like Peyton’s.
This wasn’t funny or quirky anymore.
If the universe wanted to make her its bitch it was going to find that she wasn’t a pushover. She was going to mess with it right back.
Chapter Five
“We need to talk,” Bailey announced when Willow opened her front door a few hours later. “It’s important.”
Willow’s brows rose but she nodded and stepped back. “Sure, come on in. I didn’t expect to see you again, to be honest.”
“To be honest, neither did I. But I think this is something you might want to know about.”
Bailey had read every article available on the Internet and even printed them off to show Willow and Peyton. She needed another opinion as to whether she was losing her mind. With any luck, she was in an alcohol-induced haze and had imagined the entire morning.
Willow led her into a large, airy room at the back of the house. The all-glass walls overlooked the elaborate pool and patio, complete with an impressive outdoor kitchen. She waved at a teal loveseat, which Bailey sank down into gratefully. Her legs had been none too steady all day.
Two excited dogs of unknown lineage circled around her legs, tails wagging furiously. Willow sighed and lifted them, one under each arm, and placed them on the dog beds by the windows. Apparently well-trained, they settled in to munch on a few treats she sprinkled around their paws.
“So what did you want to talk about?” Willow sat down in a beige leather chair to Bailey’s left. “You seemed unsure last night about seeing each other again.”
Bailey had been iffy but circumstances had changed.
“The universe is messing with me again. With you too.”
She didn’t know how else to describe it. This was past a coincidence but what was next on the spectrum she had no idea. She only knew she couldn’t deal with it alone.
Willow’s eyes had narrowed and her lips were pressed together so Bailey continued on, hoping to find the right words to convey how freaky the whole thing was yet not show it.
“After what we learned last night, I decided to go through Frank’s things that my sisters had boxed up for me.” She didn’t go into the details but since Willow was also a widow she probably understood. “I found this in a box of memorabilia.”
Bailey handed over the fragile newspaper clippings to Willow, placing them on the end table between them. The other woman frowned but picked them up, her gaze darting left to right and then back again through the articles. When she was finished, she looked up at Bailey and shrugged.
“Am I supposed to know what this means? I don’t understand.”
Bailey pointed to the date in the article. “She was killed on July twenty-first.”
Willow shook her head in denial but her skin had gone pale. “It’s a—”
“Coincidence?” Bailey finished for her. “All these coincidences are getting kind of old, don’t you think? Frank kept that stack of clippings for a reason. This was a man who wasn’t sentimental about anything. He barely remembered his own birthday let alone his wife’s or family’s. But he kept those and there has to be a reason why.”
Willow dropped the clipping onto the table as if she’d been stung. “This girl, God rest her soul, was murdered. Our husbands died in accidents. It’s a fluke. It has to be. One doesn’t have anything to do with the other.”
She sounded more desperate than sure and Bailey recognized the emotion well. She’d been swimming in it since last night but fighting against the rip tide that would most certainly pull her under. Calm and logical was what she needed to be.
The ringing of the doorbell interrupted Bailey’s train of thought and Willow stood, excusing herself to answer it. When she came back, Bailey was shocked to see Peyton with her.
“So you two were going to keep spending time together.” Bailey couldn’t help the twinge of hurt.
“You weren’t sure if you wanted to be with us but we were.” Peyton sounded defensive and Bailey knew she was right but that didn’t make it less painful.
“I never was in the cool crowd at school.” Bailey shrugged as if she didn’t care. She was an adult and things like this shouldn’t bother her. Except that she’d been alone for a long time. “But I’m glad you’re here. We have things to talk about.”
Willow rolled her eyes and sighed. “For heaven’s sake, we were not plotting anything, Bailey. After the cab came and picked you up we got to talking and decided to have tea this afternoon and talk some more. It’s nice to have someone who understands. Besides, maybe that damn universe brought us together for a reason. That’s what I believe, anyway.”
Bailey was beginning to think that was the case although she’d never believed in fate or karma or any of that other mystical crap. Mostly she believed in hard work and effort.
Peyton settled onto the sofa. “Willow is being too nice. The fact is I begged her to see me again today. You may be able to forget about what happened last night but I can’t. I didn’t sleep a wink. All I could think about is Greg, Alex, and Frank. I wonder if they knew each other? That would be even more strange.”
Bailey and Willow exchanged a glance.
“Strange doesn’t even begin to describe this situation,” Bailey said, reaching for the clippings and handing them to a frowning Peyton. “Read and then we’ll talk.”
Peyton shuffled the papers and then lifted her gaze. “These look old. Just what am I reading?”
Willow’s laughed echoed off the vaulted ceilings. “You’re reading the reason we won’t be pretending we never met. I think we’re stuck with each other whether we like it or not.”
Willow had mixed up a pitcher of margaritas, calling it a little hair of the dog, while Peyton read the articles. At first Bailey, still queasy from last night, didn’t want anything to do with more alcohol but Willow had also brought out tray after tray of nibbles including wings and cheese sticks. Bailey’s stomach had growled loudly and she’d given in, finding that junk food was exactly what she needed for her hangover. The margaritas had washed down the fat and carbs quite nicely.
“July twenty-first,” Peyton whispered, her fingers playing with the stem of a glass but she had yet to take an actual drink. “What’s so special about that day?”
“I think that’s something we need to find out,” Willow replied. “We can do a Google search on that date but I’m not sure it’s going to give us what we need.”
<
br /> Peyton placed the clippings on the coffee table. “Have you ever heard of Chaos Theory or the Butterfly Effect?”
“I saw that movie,” Bailey said, trying to remember the details but it had been years. “Supposedly one little thing can change human events forever.”
Nodding, Peyton took a sip of her drink and then grimaced. “It’s more than that. It’s about large complex systems that appear to be orderly but really are not. Small variations can create widely different results. Supposedly, under certain conditions chaos can evolve into a pattern. Maybe that’s what we’re seeing here.”
“Some sort of pattern that makes people die on a certain day?” Willow queried, her brows knitted together. “Wouldn’t people notice after awhile?”
“Not if they don’t see the pattern,” Peyton countered. “Maybe the only reason we can see it is the string of events that led to the discovery last night and today. The Butterfly Effect.”
Blowing out a breath, Willow took a gulp of her margarita. “So are we changing human events? Have we already changed them?”
Bailey had never liked science much and Chaos Theory was something they hadn’t taught in Mr. Finch’s chemistry class her junior year.
“Or it could be something else altogether,” she offered. She’d been thinking about it since she found those stupid clippings and so far she hadn’t been able to talk herself out of it.
Peyton reached for a cheese stick. “I’m open to any other suggestions.”
Bailey took a deep breath, her gaze moving between Peyton and Willow, sizing up their reactions. She’d wanted to keep her mouth shut but it was a losing battle. Apparently she’d read too many mysteries and thrillers plus she had an overactive imagination.
“Frank, Alex, and Greg all died on the same day. Gwendolyn did too but years before. What if they were all killed by the same person? What if there’s a serial killer out there who for some strange reason hates July twenty-first? There might be dozens of other victims.”
Wicked After Midnight (Midnight Blue Beach Book 1) Page 3