Savannah was privy to his end of the conversation with Braden, which went something like, “Hey, what are you doing? . . . Good, then can you come over and jump my car? . . . Yeah, I know . . . No, I can’t, she’ll kill me . . . Come on, please? It’s not like you have anything better to do.”
After some cajoling, he hung up and beamed a satisfied smile at Savannah. “He’s coming.”
She invited him inside to wait, and found a vacant office where he sat texting on his phone while she went back to work. An hour later, hearing a car and voices outside the window, she looked out and saw that a tan Jeep had pulled up beside the Honda. The driver got out with jumper cables—Braden.
He watched, with impressive patience, as Mick tried to figure out how to open the hood of his car. Then the patience evaporated and Savannah heard him snap, “Okay, get out of the way. I’ll do it.”
Hood open, he attempted to teach Mick how to connect the cables. They argued. Typical siblings—not that she has any.
She gave them time to get the car started, then combed her hair, put on some lip gloss, and went out to the parking lot.
Her efforts weren’t wasted.
Now here she is, clinking her glass against Braden’s.
“To your brother’s crappy car,” she says, and allows the cold, pricey French wine to ooze easygoing goodness all the way to her toes.
After leaving Dunkin’ Donuts, Sully drives down the road to Wal-Mart. She’ll run in, find some clothes for Barnes, and be on her way home while his coffee is still scalding hot. He probably won’t even be out of the tub by the time she gets back. He warned her he was going to soak for a while.
“Good,” she said. “Soak as long as you like. Just don’t put those smelly clothes back on.”
“What am I supposed to wear?”
“I’ll buy you something.”
“Where?”
“Didn’t I tell you? There’s an all-night Armani boutique on the Commons. Who says we don’t have it all here in Mundy’s Landing.”
He didn’t even crack a smile.
She sighed. “Where do you think I’m going at this hour, Barnes? I’ll be gone fifteen minutes, tops. If you get out before then, borrow my robe. It’s hanging on the back of the door.”
“This tiny pink thing?”
It’s purple, and one size fits all, and by the time she finishes shopping, she might just get to see him wearing it, or wearing nothing at all. Or maybe he’s still in the tub, slowly wrinkling into a prune by now.
Picking out clothing for Barnes isn’t the zoom-in-zoom-out task she’d envisioned. What does one buy a man who’s so meticulous about his clothing, and needs big and tall sizes? She settles on a pair of powder blue shorts—shiny athletic fabric and elastic waist. Definitely not his style, but at least they’ll fit. Searching a rack of athletic T-shirts, she briefly considers buying him a Red Sox one as a joke.
Very briefly. Under the best of circumstances, Barnes wouldn’t find that funny. These are not the best of circumstances.
With some digging, she finds a navy T-shirt that bears the right team insignia: a white crisscrossed Yankees NY.
She finds it oddly intimate to buy him underwear, and belabors the boxers or briefs question far longer than she should. Then she heads to the personal care section to pick up a toothbrush, razor, deodorant . . .
What about bedding?
She has a pullout couch, but no sheets. She buys some, and pillows, and an extra long blanket so that his feet won’t get cold. She wants him to be comfortable while he’s staying with her . . .
Why is he staying with her?
Heading home, she drives up Prospect Street. At the historical society, she sees lights on in Ora Abrams’s private quarters on the third floor.
They’ve been friends ever since Sully took the elderly woman to lunch last summer after the awards ceremony.
“Nice. She gives you twenty-five grand, you buy her a tuna sandwich,” Barnes commented when she mentioned it.
“She loves tuna. And it was twelve thousand and five hundred bucks,” Sully reminded him. Her half went to pay off her credit cards. He blew a good portion of his on an autumn cruise along the Danube with a woman he’d just met.
“That’s some first date,” Sully commented when he mentioned it.
“Jealous, Gingersnap?”
“I hate boats.”
“This wasn’t—”
“Yachts, ships . . . all boats. Anyway, I thought you were going to Cuba.”
“In the spring. This is hurricane season.”
While Barnes was living the good life in Europe, landlubber Sully was on the job in Mundy’s Landing, no longer dodging bullets. Her first day, she and another armed officer responded to an emergency call from Ora Abrams, who said there was a jewel thief on the premises. They found her fretting over an empty velvet jewelry case she said had contained a valuable antique pearl and diamond necklace.
“I took it out of my safe and left the room for five minutes,” she said, “and when I returned, it was gone!”
As it turned out, the necklace was fastened around her neck, hidden by the high ruffles of the flannel nightgown she was wearing . . . on a humid ninety-eight-degree day.
“Now how did that get there?” she wondered.
“Do you think she did it on purpose, to get attention?” Sully later asked Lieutenant Colonomos.
“I think she’s lost her mind.”
“There really was an intruder before, though, during Mundypalooza. Not just an intruder—a killer. The poor thing.”
“If she calls again—and something tells me she will—you can have the privilege of handling it.”
Ora did call—and Sully did go.
On her most recent visit, Ora claimed that a thief had attempted to break down her bedroom door with a battering ram.
The culprit was her cat, whom Ora had mistakenly locked out of the bedroom. She was stunned to see the fat orange feline in Sully’s arms, sans battering ram. “But she was just right here in bed with me. She sleeps in the same spot every night, and I . . .”
Ora trailed off, seeing that the “cat” she’d been cuddling on the bed was actually a large fur muff. Her bewilderment gave way to scolding.
“Unhand my muff, Detective!” she bellowed, and Sully instantly missed Barnes, who’d have appreciated—and forever quoted—that admonishment.
Sully stepped back, arms raised like a perp who’d been caught reaching for a weapon.
“That’s a priceless heirloom, a gift from Betsy Ross to Enoch Mundy. It belongs downstairs in a glass case,” Ora added with an accusatory glare.
“Do you want me to bring it—”
“No, no, no! One doesn’t go grabbing and transporting a delicate muff around the house as if it were a . . . a . . .”
Cat? Sully wanted to say, but refrained.
Ora donned white gloves to deliver the delicate object back downstairs to its display case, which was ajar, keys protruding from the lock.
“The thief must have snatched my purse to get my keys!” she deduced, and was gratified when Sully added that to the “report.” Then she shifted gears and asked Sully if she’d like to see some of the other colonial artifacts on exhibit.
“Sure,” Sully agreed, aware the poor thing didn’t want to be left alone just yet. Happens a lot on the job—you run into forgotten and forgetful senior citizens who only need your time and attention. She never had it to give until she got to Mundy’s Landing.
Somehow, the befuddled little lady had transformed into an entertaining and brilliant hostess. Ora showed her, among other things, a cast-iron cauldron that first settlers James and Elizabeth Mundy had used to cook a stew made from the flesh of their dead fellow settlers to stave off starvation.
“They would butcher the corpses, throw in the bones, and boil it all up for dinner,” she said matter-of-factly. “You’re a police officer, so I know this kind of thing doesn’t bother you.”
When Sully pretended t
o agree, Ora told her she had something really interesting to show her and led the way back upstairs.
Wary, Sully watched her dig through a trove of presumably gruesome relics. Ora seemed harmlessly eccentric, but you never know.
She produced a disembodied human skull, and passed it to Sully like a bowl of chips. It was concealed in a protective case, but still.
“Where did you get this, Ora?”
“From Great-Aunt Etta. She was the curator here until she passed away back in ’56. That’s when I took over.”
“But where did she get the skull?”
Ora looked around as if to ensure there were no eavesdroppers. Then she leaned in and confided that the remains had turned up decades ago, during an archaeological dig on the site of the original Mundy’s Landing settlement.
“Was your aunt involved in the dig, then?”
“I’m not sure. I was very young at the time.” After a pause, she added, “She was cannibalized, you know.”
“Your aunt?”
“No!” Ora laughed delightedly. “Of course not. I was referring to Jane.”
“Jane?”
“Jane Doe. It’s what I call her.” Ora pointed at a series of nicks along the cranium. “That’s where they tried to get at her brain. It’s one of the most nutritious parts of the human body, you know.”
Sully did not know. “Guess you learn something new every day.”
“And now I’m hoping you can tell me something I don’t know.”
Uh-oh.
“Can you tell if Jane was murdered, or died in an accident?”
“At a glance? No.”
“What if you were to spend more time looking into it? Forensics have come such a long way, and you have so much crime scene experience. If this were one of your investigations . . .”
“Then the victim wouldn’t have died . . . how long ago was it?”
“About three hundred and fifty years.”
“See, that’s the thing, Ms. Abrams. You don’t need a police detective. You need a historian, or a forensic anthropologist. This isn’t a crime.”
“Two people were executed for it, protesting their innocence all the way to the gallows.”
“So you want to know if James and Eliza Mundy were murderers after all? I’m sure you can find a professional who might be able to tell you more.”
“Oh, I don’t want to open that can of worms.”
Cringing at her phrasing, Sully dutifully reiterated her promise not to reveal what she’d seen. But she’s been reading up on local history ever since.
Reminded that she left her book behind at the Dapplebrook Inn, she sees that the porch is dark now, the restaurant closed for the night. There are no lights on in the guestroom windows above.
She thinks of Emerson Mundy.
First thing tomorrow morning, Sully decides, she’ll come back to the inn to retrieve her book, and tell Emerson about the guy at Dunkin’ Donuts.
In her dream, Emerson steps into the Dapplebrook Inn.
Lamplight has given way to flickering candlelight. Nancy Vandergraaf’s voice is replaced by a masculine one. “You must be Emerson Mundy . . .”
It belongs to Horace J. Mundy himself. He’s wearing a black coat with tails and a top hat, and Emerson is in a sweeping ball gown. He keeps a protective arm around her shoulders as he shows her around and introduces her to his wife and cherubic sons, who embrace her lovingly.
“You’ve been upgraded,” Horace tells her.
“To the Jekyll Suite?”
“To live here with us.”
“For how long?”
“Forever!” his little boy Robert tells her, and throws his arms around her waist. “Forever and ever and ever . . .”
Horace beams at her. “You’re one of us. This is your home now.”
“Home? I’m home?”
He nods, but then a shadow crosses his face, and she sees that he’s looking at something—someone—behind her.
She turns to see a man, gaunt and bedraggled, lips a ghastly purple, ragged clothing soaked and dripping. He has no arm, and no prosthesis—just a stump of ragged, bloody flesh and bone poking from his torn shirtsleeve.
“Go away, Oswald,” Horace commands. “You’re not welcome here.”
“You let me die,” Oswald tells Robert, who has changed in a flash to a dapper young man. “You didn’t save me. My name is Mundy, like yours. I’m your flesh and blood.”
Horace intervenes. “You’re nothing! Get out.”
Oswald clenches Emerson’s bare arm in a bony death grip. “If she stays, I stay.”
“You’ll go!” Horace bellows. “Both of you! Out!”
Emerson screams as Oswald pulls her roughly toward the massive front door. When he shoves her across the threshold, she falls, sprawling across the broad slate porch, skinning her knees.
“Get up!” a new voice instructs. “Stand and face your punishment.”
She fumbles for the railing to pull herself to her feet, but the porch has disappeared. She’s on a wooden platform of some sort, in the shade of a tremendous oak with low-hanging branches. A stage, she realizes. There’s an audience below, their anticipation palpable as the shimmering heat.
Do they expect her to sing, or dance?
The sun glares like a spotlight, and the crowd glares, murmuring, waiting . . .
For what?
Someone is behind her—not Oswald, she knows instinctively. Oswald is gone. Horace, his wife and children, their home, the welcoming warmth . . .
All evaporated into a strange, still summer day, the air so thick with hushed expectancy that she expects to hear a rumble of thunder.
Rough hands yank her to her feet and nudge her closer to the edge of the stage. Her wrists are tied behind her, so tightly she can feel the fiber scraping into her flesh so that blood trickles down her hands. Another length of rope twines once, twice, three times around the hem of her long skirt, and a sturdy knot binds her ankles within the folds.
Rope . . .
More rope.
This time it drops from an overhead branch to dangle before her, knotted, looped . . .
A noose.
Panic zaps her like lightning.
This isn’t a stage.
It’s a gallows.
Those people aren’t waiting for her to perform.
They’re here to watch her die.
“No! Please! I’m innocent.”
Her eyes are blindfolded. She feels the noose yanked over her head, and a hand shoves her forward.
The platform creaks, sways, gives way.
She’s falling, falling . . .
Somehow, Oswald’s voice is close in her ear. Or is it her father’s? Roy’s?
“You shouldn’t have come here,” he croons as she plunges to her death. “Now you’ll pay.”
The crowd at the Windmill has eased up a bit, as have Savannah’s first-date jitters. With breathing room, there’s no need for their chairs to be so close together now, but Savannah and Braden don’t move them apart. Their elbows and knees brush as the conversation flows from music to politics to books.
As they talk, she can’t help but notice the woman seated beside her, an attractive blonde, late thirties or early forties. She’s alone, awkwardly so, and appears to want company. She seems to know quite a few people in the bar, greeting them by name in an eager way. Her name, Savannah discerns, is Kim. She has at least one child, and it sounds like she’s recently divorced. Most of the men, including the few her age, are friendly, but obviously more interested in other, far younger, women.
That will be me in fifteen or twenty years if I don’t let anyone into my life, Savannah thinks. I’ll either be alone in a bar drowning my sorrows in wine, or I’ll be in a lab somewhere with a skeleton for company.
She orders her second glass of rosé from a male bartender. He’s handsome, though his face has seen too much sun and not enough shaving cream. His light brown hair is long, pulled back in a ponytail, with straggly wisps f
alling over his eyes. He’s about Savannah’s age and there’s something vaguely familiar about him.
Maybe he’s a student at Hadley, like the guy sitting next to Braden on the other side. Savannah has seen him around campus. Braden introduces him as Trevor. He’s a waiter at the nearby Dapplebrook Inn, and just got off work for the night.
“Next time this guy takes you out,” he tells her, keeping one eye on the baseball game being shown on the television above the bar, “make him take you someplace nicer. Cozy table for two at the Dapplebrook—I’ll hook you up.”
“They don’t need you to hook them up,” the bartender says, overhearing. “They’ve got me.” He slides a wineglass to Savannah, filled with pink liquid. “I upgraded you from the house rosé this time. That stuff is vinegar compared to this, and I’m sure Braden doesn’t mind paying for it.”
“Meet Sean, the French wine expert,” Braden says dryly. “He lived in Paris for a semester and came back a full-blown sommelier.”
“Really? Me too!”
“You’re a sommelier?” Sean asks, and she laughs.
“No, I was in Paris for a semester. When were you there?”
“Fall of 2015.”
“I was there at the same time. No wonder—”
“Hey, Sean, I’m still waiting for my beer over here,” Trevor cuts in.
She’d been about to say no wonder Sean looks so familiar. Did they cross paths in Paris? She’d probably remember that, or he would.
“Geez, haven’t you ever heard of ladies first, dude? The beer is coming.”
“With an upgrade? Or is that just for ladies, too?”
As Sean and Trevor tease each other, Savannah wonders if Sean just seems familiar because he looks a little like Braden—if Braden had a dark side.
It’s not just that Sean isn’t clean-cut. He has an edge, almost savagely gnawing on a plastic stirrer as he pours a round of shots for a group celebrating a bachelorette party. The bride, chunky and wearing a headband with a white pouf of veil, keeps falling off her high heels, bumping into Trevor. Several of the other girls flirt with him, and one asks him to take a group photo. Then she interrupts Braden and Savannah to ask him if he’ll take a photo of Trevor with the group.
He shakes his head, but they cajole him.
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