Blue Moon: Mundy's Landing Book Two

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  Miss Abrams uses a brick as a doorstop to prop open the door to the room. She likes to point it out to visitors, mentioning that it once lined the sidewalk in front of the house at 65 Prospect Street.

  As expected, the brick lay on the floor just inside the door frame. Upon entering the room, I made sure that the nightgown and ribbons were there, preserved beneath the backlit glass, just as I remembered. Next, I opened the window overlooking the annex roof, ready to make my getaway.

  Then it was time. I took great pleasure in heaving that brick through the glass display case. Careful not to cut myself as I reached in, I grabbed the coveted items and fled.

  As I escaped into the night, I wondered whether the commotion had awakened Miss Abrams or if she’d slept right through. The answer quickly became evident, much to my delight.

  Pity I seem to have cast a pall over tonight’s gala.

  Chapter 15

  Beyond the mist-wisped steeple of Holy Angels Church, a low orange smear tints the opaque heavens, casting first morning light over the little cemetery. Tombstones rise from dewy grass in clusters, their age evident at a glance. Modern markers, with glossy inscriptions and a flecked granite palate, are well-tended by the bereaved, bearing flags, wreaths, and blooming annuals. The oldest graves, weathered rectangles and crosses in monochromatic whites and grays, are unadorned and long-forgotten . . . with three exceptions.

  Sully and Barnes stand shoulder-to-shoulder—rather, shoulder to hip—gazing down at the trio of flat concrete slabs etched with crosses and the year 1916. The spot might have been difficult to find if not for countless cellophane-wrapped bouquets heaped there over the past several days.

  The same thing happens in the city on sidewalks, subway platforms, and yes, building stoops where people die sudden, violent deaths. Those makeshift memorials spring up amid fresh grief or—for those not personally acquainted with the victims—amid fresh media hype.

  Here in Mundy’s Landing, hype aside, Sully finds it poignant that a host of strangers have paid their respects to three girls murdered a century ago.

  During the short stroll over here from the cottage next door, she’d briefed Barnes about the case, as if they’re working it together. To her surprise, he didn’t tease her or ask why she cares. He just listened attentively.

  “So what’s your theory?” he asks now, staring down at the Sleeping Beauties’ final resting place.

  “If we can figure out who they were, then we might be able to figure out what happened to them and why.”

  Barnes nods. This is familiar territory for them. “So you’re using some modern profiling techniques.”

  “Exactly. Victimology 101: which three traits do serial killers look for when they’re hunting?”

  “Availability, desirability, and vulnerability.”

  “Exactly. Ideally all three, but at least one of those traits has to be present. So think about them.” She gestures at their gravestones. “Back then, it was such a big deal that no one ever came forward to identify them. It’s almost as if people thought they’d materialized in this town in some enigmatic fashion, like they’d been . . . I don’t know—”

  “Raised by wolves, dropped from the sky by aliens?”

  “Exactly. The truth is that their families may not have known or cared that they were missing.”

  Again, he nods. They deal with that on the job. Apathy is just as disturbing, in its own way, as dealing with distraught relatives frantic over a missing loved one.

  She’d studied the museum’s trove of period newspaper articles. Many included not just their physical descriptions but macabre post-mortem photographs published in an effort to identify them.

  “Or maybe the three girls’ families just never saw the headlines, Barnes. Maybe they lived an ocean away.”

  “You’re right. The girls could very well have been recent immigrants. There were more than nine million here at that time.”

  She looks at him. “You know that fact off the top of your head because . . .”

  “Because I’m a genius and you know it.”

  “So you made it up.”

  “Nope, true. I chaperoned my nephew’s school trip to Ellis Island last month.”

  “Okay, so nine million is a lot of immigrants, and I’m guessing they were still fairly concentrated in the Northeast at that point.”

  “They were.”

  “How lucky am I to have an immigration expert involved in my case?”

  “It’s not exactly your case, Gingersnap.”

  He’s right. Somehow, she keeps forgetting that. But her mind won’t stop working it.

  She can think of any number of reasons a missing person’s family could have missed the newspaper coverage back then, and she resumes the topic with Barnes, who—for that matter—is playing along.

  “If the girls were immigrants, wouldn’t someone here have seen and missed them?” he asks.

  “You would think. Maybe they were farm girls, and their families lived in a rural area without access to newspapers.”

  “Could be. Or they were too poor to buy them.”

  “Or they were illiterate.”

  “We’re most likely talking about three different families,” he points out.

  “Yes, but it’s not really a stretch, when you consider the odds that the girls themselves were probably living a lifestyle that made them vulnerable to predators.”

  “Just like today.”

  “Right. So what kind of woman is most available, desirable, and vulnerable?”

  He answers without hesitation: “A prostitute.”

  “Exactly. When I was going through the archives, I noticed that there was no speculation in any of the newspaper coverage that the victims might have been prostitutes.”

  “Sign of the times?”

  “And probably because they were found sedately posed in virginal white nightgowns, looking like innocent young ‘schoolgirls’—that’s what the press called them, and it stuck, just like ‘Sleeping Beauties.’”

  Based on statistics in similar cases she and Barnes have worked over the years, Sully is guessing that the victims might not have been schoolgirls, virginal, or particularly young. Nor were they innocent, in terms of chastity, purity, and all the qualities young ladies of a certain era and good breeding were presumed to possess.

  “So you’re thinking one or all of those ‘schoolgirls’ might have been working girls?” Barnes asks her.

  “It would explain why no one recognized them even if they’d seen them before. The offender was essentially disguising them after he killed them. Prostitutes don’t walk the streets in chaste white nightgowns, looking all fresh-faced with braids and ribbons.”

  He raises an eyebrow.

  “Get over your sick self, Barnes. The vast majority of them don’t. And I’m sure they didn’t back then.”

  “But would there really have been prostitutes in this small, all-American town back then?”

  “Good point. Most small towns have a seamy underbelly. And prostitution was actually legal in some places until the First World War.”

  “Not in New York State. Not that it matters. But I doubt Mundy’s Landing had a red light district—and if it did, it was tiny. Local working girls would have been recognized by someone, if not everyone, even with schoolgirl disguises.”

  “Okay, so they might have been just promiscuous, reckless young women passing through town, looking for a less than wholesome good time. And once you consider that factor, the case loses some of its inscrutability.”

  “Not all, though.”

  “Not by a long shot. It’s still pretty freaking bizarre, right?” She turns away from the graves.

  The sun is up now, lighting the sky and spilling across the ancient trees and historic rooftops of The Heights. Among them are three houses that may very well have contained evidence overlooked by investigators a hundred years ago.

  Barnes yawns loudly. “Ready to head back? I need to go get more coffee.”


  She nods and they begin walking, weaving in and out among the graves, heading toward the small clapboard church that lies between the cemetery and Church Street.

  Sully thinks about the killer, whose anonymity is far more fascinating to her than that of the victims.

  Turning her profiling technique on him, aware that that an offender’s behavior during a homicide is going to be present somewhere in his lifestyle, she ponders aloud. “Think about it, Barnes. He dressed the girls in nightgowns. He tucked them into bed. Who does that?”

  “A parent,” he says promptly. “Or a caregiver, anyway.”

  “And the note beneath the pillows—‘Sleep safe till tomorrow.’”

  “His version of ‘Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs—’”

  “Not exactly. It’s a line from a William Carlos Williams poem.”

  “He wrote ‘The Red Wheelbarrow.’”

  “Wow, I see someone paid attention in high school lit,” she says, impressed. “What about ‘Peace on Earth’?”

  “It would be great, but don’t hold your breath.”

  “That’s the name of the poem, Barnes. It was new at the time, published only three years earlier in Poetry Magazine.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Right, even though you paid attention in lit class and Williams is a Pulitzer Prize–winning poet. Which means that back then, the poem was completely obscure.”

  “So we can assume that the killer was fairly well-read and had access to Poetry Magazine at a time when media was limited. This is a small enough town that you should be able to narrow down the suspects just knowing that.”

  “If he lived here, why were there only three? Why start suddenly, execute three evenly spaced murders, and then stop cold?”

  “Maybe he was transient, and he moved on to a different town,” he says.

  “But if he had, the bizarre signature would have followed,” she points out. “And if it had, someone, somewhere, would have made the connection. Killing young women and staging their bodies is one thing. But transporting the corpses to the bedrooms of private homes while the residents were sleeping isn’t just eerie, it’s brazen and risky.”

  “True. Why take that chance?”

  “I think he was closer to this community than anyone guessed at the time,” Sully theorizes. “And those dead girls might have been props.”

  “Meaning . . . ?”

  “Meaning his underlying motive wasn’t just killing for the thrill of it.”

  “What was it?”

  They’ve reached the edge of the cemetery. The low black iron gate creaks as Barnes opens it for her, and swings shut with a bang.

  “It could have been blackmail,” Sully speculates. “Or terrorism.”

  “Interesting concept.” He follows her along the cobbled path bordered by the church, with its peeling white clapboards and stained glass windows, and the tall hedgerow separating it from the yard of Sully’s rented cottage.

  “So you don’t think he randomly selected those three houses based on opportunity or access? You think he chose them deliberately, because he wanted to send a message to the people who lived in them?”

  “It makes sense, doesn’t it?”

  “About as much sense as everything else.”

  By all accounts, the shell-shocked folks who discovered the bodies were truly shaken and mystified by the crimes, as were their families. They had no idea who could have done such a terrible thing, and they had never seen the dead girls before.

  Or so they said.

  Sully and Barnes have reached the sidewalk. Down the street, a teenage paperboy pedals past, hurtling bagged copies of the Tribune onto porch steps. An SUV rounds the corner onto Church Street. It slows and the driver gives a wave as he pulls into the driveway directly across from them.

  “Morning, Sully,” he calls through the open window.

  “How’s it going, Ron?”

  “You’re on a first-name basis with the neighbors?” Barnes asks as they cross the long front lawn toward the cottage. “What’s next? Are you joining the block party committee?”

  “Shut up, Barnes.”

  “See that? You’re not even on a first-name basis with me.”

  “That was Ron Calhoun. The police chief. Remember him?”

  “Eh . . . I meet a lot of people,” he says with a shrug, but she knows he’s only kidding. Then he asks, “How’s Lieutenant Colonomos? Been seeing a lot of him since you got here?”

  “No. He’s busy. They’re all busy,” she says, and regrets it, knowing Barnes is bound to bring up the meatball bribe again.

  Naturally, he does.

  “You know,” she says as they walk back into the cottage, “there’s something to be said for being a cop in a town where that’s the worst that can happen.”

  “If that was true, Gingersnap, then you and I never would have heard of Mundy’s Landing.”

  Only serious swimmers drag themselves out of bed to get to the gym when the pool opens at daybreak.

  Some mornings, it’s so crowded that Annabelle has to share a lap lane with several other swimmers. She doesn’t mind, as long as everyone is up to speed and not there to float or chat, which is usually the case at this hour.

  But sharing a lane robs her of the delicious solitude that allows her mind to wander, making the swim as therapeutic for her mind as for her body.

  Today, as she anticipated, all six lanes are empty. Many of the regulars have left town, and others have backyard pools of their own. With the entire pool to herself, and the lone teenage lifeguard surreptitiously checking her cell phone, Annabelle ponders the unsolved mystery as she rhythmically pulls herself through the water.

  Z.D.P. . . .

  She’d been certain until now that the P stands for Purcell, and the Z might be Zelda. But the swim has pried her mind from the path of least resistance, and she considers other options.

  Maybe the letters aren’t someone’s initials after all. Maybe they stand for something else: a personal abbreviation, an acronym, a symbol for . . . what? Where do you find a cluster of three letters?

  Had Augusta Purcell gone to college? Could she have belonged to a sorority?

  Annabelle had, and is familiar enough with the alphabet to know that Z.D.P. would be Zeta Delta Rho.

  But if you were going to the trouble to memorialize a Greek organization on a statue, wouldn’t you use the triangular symbol for Delta, instead of a “D”?

  Yes, you would.

  Think about Augusta, about what her world was like. She lived for over a century, she was reclusive, and independently wealthy . . .

  Could Z.D.P. be a stock market abbreviation?

  Annabelle is tempted to stop swimming and look it up on her cell phone, tucked into her gym bag in the locker room. She should have thought of it before, but she was stuck on the assumption that the letters are initials. And, for that matter, that the numbers are dates.

  A birth date and death date for a twelve-year-old.

  Because nothing else makes enough sense. Not in that house, made notorious on 7/7/16 . . .

  The body was discovered the next day, though.

  If the statue is a reference to the crime, shouldn’t the date be 7/8/16?

  The girl wasn’t killed in the house.

  She died somewhere else, likely before midnight—on 7/7/16. She’s buried in Holy Angels Cemetery.

  Angels . . .

  The statue depicts an angel. Is it supposed to be her?

  Was she born on March 31, 1904? Were her initials Z.D.P.?

  Is the angel supposed to represent all of them? Are Z, D, and P the first or last letters of each of their names?

  But how would Augusta know?

  And what do the dates mean?

  Annabelle pushes through the last few laps, her thoughts dizzying as her kick turns at the end of each length. She hurries to the locker room and quickly towels off, then grabs her phone.

  She intends to open a search window to
check for sororities and stocks, but a pop-up window alerts her that she has a new e-mail.

  She clicks her in-box instead.

  Dear Ms. Bingham,

  If you’d like to discuss the statue, I have some time this afternoon.

  Sincerely,

  Lester Purcell

  After promising he’ll remain on the line with her until the police arrive, the 911 operator instructs Ora to stay in her room and asks whether the door is locked.

  She’s uncertain. Living alone, she rarely bothers with interior locks—one less thing for her arthritic old hands to fumble around with.

  “Can you lock yourself in, ma’am?”

  “Yes.”

  Ora hoists herself out of bed and grabs the walking stick propped against the bedside table. She moves as stealthily as possible—until her bare foot comes down squarely on a squishy pile of fur.

  Ora nearly loses her balance. Briar Rose emits an unearthly howl and disappears under the bed skirt.

  “Ma’am?” the operator says in her ear. “Ma’am!”

  “Yes. I’m okay,” she whispers, her heart pounding wildly.

  “We have an officer arriving momentarily. Just stay where you are. Did you lock the door?”

  “I’m about to.” She makes her way over and turns the lock, listening for movement below.

  She hears nothing. A chill prickles her skin as she realizes that whoever broke in might be right on the other side of the door, listening for her as well.

  Not only that, but he broke something in the room directly beneath. That’s where she keeps a couple of china pieces once owned by the Browne family—the Limoges pitcher and chamber pot from the room where the first Sleeping Beauty was found. They’re displayed on an antique dry sink. The prowler must have knocked into them.

  Unless he broke a window? If someone needed to make a fast getaway from that room, he could jump out onto the low roof of the annex building.

  What if he came after the time capsule? Imagine if it’s been stolen on the very day it’s to be opened. She would never forgive herself. The people of Mundy’s Landing would never forgive her.