Blood Red

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  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.

  Chiming 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.

  Even if Casey can’t fight off the growing urge until it’s time to deal with Rowan Mundy, nothing can happen so close to home again. Breaking the self-­imposed rule once was daring enough. Twice wouldn’t be daring, it would be stupid; maybe even disastrous.

  Having studied the methodology of the Sleeping Beauty Killer and other famously elusive and equally brilliant murderers, Casey is well aware that they managed to evade capture because they remained focused and methodical.

  Ted Bundy started out that way, but then he sloppily escalated his crimes and failed to resist the allure of an entire sorority house filled with women. That disorganized spree proved to be his undoing.

  It won’t happen to me. I’m much stronger than he was, much smarter.

  They’ll never catch me. Never.

  Five minutes late for noon Mass, Noreen steps out of her car and hurries through the wet snow toward Saint Ignatius by the Bay.

  At least she made it this week. It’s been a while—­was it October, maybe?—­since she’s attended Mass.

  Things have been too hectic at home.

  Not that that’s an acceptable excuse. Even when the kids were babies, or later when all four were playing sports, they almost always managed to get to church together as a family. Sometimes it took so much effort to get six ­people out the door on Sunday mornings—­five of them complaining—­that she’d wonder why she bothered to insist. But then they’d slip into their pew and that familiar sense of peace would settle over her, and she’d know it had been worthwhile.

  These days, Noreen attends Mass alone, if at all. And when she does, she’s not so sure that it’s even worthwhile. Ever the respectable Catholic, she doesn’t like to be reminded that she’s committed mortal sins, or where those sins—­past and upcoming—­place her in the eyes of the church. But you can hardly forget that something is amiss when you’re hurrying alone up the wide steps where you posed as a bride twenty-­three years ago—­and later, cradling four different babies in white christening gowns.

  She remembers her father’s initial distress when she told him that she wouldn’t be getting married at Holy Angels in Mundy’s Landing. He was more upset about that, at the time, than he was a year later when Rowan married a Protestant.

  He eventually came around when Noreen explained that she didn’t want to walk down the very aisle where her mother’s casket had made its final journey.

  “Last time I set foot in that church was the saddest day of my life, Dad. I don’t want to get married there.”

  How could he argue with that?

  Of course, she didn’t tell him that she also happened to prefer the aesthetic of this elegant brick structure overlooking the Long Island Sound to her hometown parish. Unlike the stone and stucco Protestant churches that preside over the Village Common, Holy Angels is a small clapboard structure perched like an afterthought on a side street in The Heights.

  According to Rowan, who’s still a member there, not much has changed at the old church over the years. Anyone who doesn’t arrive half an hour early Christmas and Easter to get a spot in the pews still winds up sitting along the wall in folding chairs, or standing conspicuously in the aisles. The Carmichael family invariably stood, much to Noreen’s humiliation. Rowan told her that the Mundy family now does the same, but it doesn’t seem to bother her or her kids.

  Nor does she seem to mind that the Holy Angels congregation is perpetually in fund-­raiser mode, always trying to replace or repair something: choir robes, hymnals, the notoriously leaky roof. When Rowan and Jake were married in the church on a rainy day—­which was supposedly good luck—­the flower arrangements had to be strategically placed on the altar to catch the drips from the ceiling, and the Communion host became as soggy as the bride’s veil. That would never have happened here at the cathedral-­like Saint Ignatius, even if the weather hadn’t been picture-­perfect on Noreen’s wedding day.

  Was that sunshine bad luck? she wonders now, as she slips alone through the massive wooden doors into the church.

  The congregation is standing, still singing the opening hymn. She hurries down the aisle toward the pew she and Kevin and the kids shared for years. But when she reaches it, she finds that it’s already occupied.

  This isn’t the first Goldilocks moment she’s had lately, and it’s certainly the most benign.

  Still, it stings to see that new family has taken over the pew: three adorable children and another baby on the way, a pretty mommy in a maternity dress, and a handsome daddy who efficiently slides his daughters over to make room for Noreen to sit on the end.

  She forces a grateful smile, trying not to betray her resentment.

  It’s not their fault. They didn’t do anything wrong.

  Then again, neither did Noreen. She did nothing wrong, made superhuman efforts, in fact, to do everything right—­everything, dammit!—­and look how things have turned ou
t for her.

  Ire begins to simmer like lava, threatening to erupt in a bloodcurdling scream. Fighting it back, she reaches for a missal and opens it, blindly looking for today’s readings.

  “What page is it?” the younger of the little girls beside her asks loudly, talking to her older sister as they flip through their own missals.

  “Shh!”

  “But what page?”

  “Here,” the big sister whispers, “give it to me.”

  “No! I can do it myself!” the little one protests, turning the pages so determinedly that she tears one, only to be quietly reprimanded by her sister and her parents.

  That’s me and Rowan forty-­odd years ago.

  Except these two girls, one blond and one brunette, look nothing alike, while Noreen and Rowan could have passed for twins. Identical on the outside, but oil and water within.

  She thinks about her sister’s phone call yesterday. In her message, she said something about liking the Christmas card. Was she being genuine? Or was it a veiled jibe?

  No, she can’t possibly know the truth just by looking at a card. Anyway, everything really was fine back when the photo was snapped. That was last summer, before Sean left for his semester in Europe, before things fell apart.

  It was Noreen’s deliberate decision to mail out the cards as though nothing had happened, and one she has yet to regret, even now.

  Remorse simply isn’t her style.

  Then again, neither is avoidance. Isn’t that what she’s done where her sister is concerned?

  I have to call her back.

  What if she wants to spend Christmas together?

  Chances are, she doesn’t. Their approach to the holiday doesn’t mesh much better than anything else about their lives. Rowan’s family is so laid back and disorganized that the last time they shared a holiday, Noreen wound up serving Christmas brunch after sundown.