Blue Moon

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  She does, indeed, know how that goes. She may have been a straight-A athlete in high school, but as she tells Kim now, she went to her share of unsupervised parties.

  “We all did,” Kim agrees, watching Annabelle take produce from the fridge and line it up beside the salad bowl on the counter. “But things are different now. There was no way I was going to let her go.”

  “I get that. But you don’t have to make her stay here. I can send food home with her if she wants to—”

  “No, we had a big fight about that right before we got here. I don’t want her there alone.”

  “Oh, Kim, I don’t want her to feel trapped here. She’ll hate me.”

  “Don’t think that she doesn’t.”

  “What?”

  “It’s nothing personal. She hates everyone.” Kim picks up a paring knife and a tomato. “Especially me.”

  “Hate is a strong word. I don’t think she hates you.”

  “That’s what she said. I hate you.” Kim pokes the knife tip around the tomato stem. “It killed me. Has Oliver ever said that to you?”

  “No.”

  “Connor hasn’t, either.”

  “I’m relieved Connor doesn’t hate me,” Annabelle says wryly, and Kim laughs.

  “Just be glad you don’t have a thirteen-year-old daughter. They’re impossible.”

  So are twelve-year-old boys with anxiety issues. But Kim wouldn’t grasp the extent of what Annabelle goes through with Oliver. Unaware that he’s been medicated for a few years and under a child psychiatrist’s care, she only knows he sometimes worries excessively.

  Annabelle isn’t willing to entrust the truth even to her closest friends, who wanted to know why Oliver isn’t going away to camp.

  She blamed the fact that he’s staying home this summer to the chaos of the move and their limited finances. Not because she doesn’t trust the moms to protect Oliver’s secret, but because she doesn’t trust their children, should the secret go farther than she intended.

  It isn’t that the other boys are mean-spirited. But kids are kids. If they ever knew that Oliver spends so much of his time sobbing and cowering in sheer terror . . .

  But they won’t know. Nobody can know. The Binghams stoically shoulder their burden in isolation.

  “So that’s why you made Catherine come over here?” she asks Kim. “Because you were afraid she’d sneak out to the party after you left?”

  “No, she knows better than to try something like that. We’d ground her until college.”

  “Then why didn’t you want her home alone?” Annabelle pours some olive oil into a jar for the dressing. “I thought she’s been babysitting for Connor for a few years now.”

  “Yes, but . . . you know. Brianna Armbruster.”

  Kim is referring to the pretty redheaded teenager who disappeared from a neighboring block in December. Her remains have yet to be found, but bloodstains matching her DNA were found in the serial killer’s van.

  A chill seems to permeate the steamy kitchen as Annabelle thinks again of yesterday’s backyard interloper. She’d assumed that incident was connected to the Mundypalooza gawkers, but what if . . .

  No, that’s ridiculous.

  “There’s no psycho lunatic on the loose in Mundy’s Landing,” she says firmly, as much for Kim’s benefit as for her own.

  “There was one six months ago—”

  “Who is no longer a threat.”

  “—and there was one a hundred years ago, too.”

  “Right. But not now.” Her hand trembles a little as she adds some balsamic vinegar to the jar.

  “No, now there are just hordes of sketchy strangers hanging around, and more on the way. Hundreds more. Maybe thousands—that’s what I heard the other day.” She rolls her eyes. “Ora Abrams must be thrilled.”

  “Well, it is a fund-raiser. The more people who show up, the more money the historical society gets. Anyway,” she says, changing the subject, “you and Ross are still going to the gala with us next Thursday night, right?”

  “I’ve been looking forward to it for months. I bought my gown in February. What are you wearing?”

  “A dress, I guess. I didn’t even wear a gown at my wedding.”

  “What did you wear?”

  “You know—a dress.”

  “Like—a cocktail dress?”

  “No, it was long, but . . . I wouldn’t call it a gown. It was simple. What?” she asks, seeing the look on Kim’s face. “I like simple.”

  “But this is a black tie affair at Hudson Chase, Annabelle,” she points out, referring to the country club out on Battlefield Road. “Trib is wearing a tux, right?”

  “Yes. He rented one. Too bad I didn’t tell him to rent me a gown while he was at it.”

  “Catherine and I can go shopping with you. It would be fun.”

  Annabelle, who’s never been much of a shopper, just shakes her head. “Don’t worry. I’ll figure it out.”

  She has nothing against the gala, which kicks off the ML350 celebration, marking three hundred and fifty years since the village was officially settled—officially being the operative word, according to a recent newspaper interview with Ora Abrams.

  On Thursday night, Miss Abrams will present the mayor with a time capsule sealed and buried in a vault beneath the village common during the celebration in July 1916. For years, there was a stone marker on the spot.

  1916—2016

  Mundy’s Landing Sestercentennial Vault

  To Be Opened 2016

  Fifteen or maybe twenty years ago, a group of Hadley College students tried to steal the time capsule. The police caught the drunken vandals before they got very far in their dig. The old chest, still sealed, was unearthed the next day and carted off to the police station for safekeeping. There it remained until just a few weeks ago, when it was placed on display in the historical society.

  Many people in town believe that it should be opened in mid-July, exactly a hundred years to the date after it was sealed. But Ora convinced the new mayor that it would be much nicer to open it during the June 30 gala.

  Trib is one of the featured presenters that evening. Annabelle has no choice but to attend with him. That would be fine with her if it didn’t mean leaving Oliver home with a sitter.

  That’s something they rarely do—and haven’t done at all since Katie Mundy, their babysitter, graduated high school and left for college last August. Luckily, she’s home for the summer and Annabelle reserved her for next Thursday night.

  “Anyway,” Kim says, “Getting back to Mundypalooza . . .”

  “Must we?”

  “I think it’s time to move on.”

  “Then why are we still talking about it?”

  “No, I mean enough is enough. The historical society needs to stop creating such pandemonium every summer.” Kim gestures dramatically with the paring knife in her hand, and Annabelle can’t help but think of the poor lost girls whose throats were slit.

  As Kim goes back to cutting the tomato, she asks, “Does it make you nervous, living here?”

  “You mean because of all the people driving by looking at the house?”

  “I mean because of what happened upstairs.”

  Annabelle hesitates only briefly before saying, “Not really.”

  “You’re a lot braver than I am.”

  “It happened a hundred years ago. I don’t believe in ghosts, and it’s not like we’re in danger.”

  “No, I know, but I mean, it’s a Murder House. I just . . . can’t . . . even.”

  She sounds like Catherine, who punctuates many a sentence with “I can’t even.”

  “She can’t even . . . what?” Annabelle once quietly asked Kim, who shrugged and explained simply, “They all say it. It’s a thing.”

  Annabelle adds salt and pepper to the jar, screws on the top, shakes it vigorously, and sets it aside. Done. For now.

  “Come on,” she says. “I’ll show you around my Murder House.”

  From the
Sleeping Beauty Killer’s Diary

  August 16, 1893

  When I heard the learn’d astronomer,

  When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,

  When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,

  When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,

  How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,

  Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,

  In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

  Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

  It was with a discerning eye this morning that I found myself rereading these lines from Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, as the locomotive hurtled me into the glaring sunrise above an eastern mountain range. Can this be the same volume that so captivated me as the train steamed west into the prairie sunset? Intellect assures me that it is indeed the same book, yet in the course of one remarkable fortnight, my perspective of this passage has transformed just as drastically as my direction.

  Can one not possess the soul of a poet and the brain of a scientist? Are not the two disciplines opposite sides of the same coin, born of the intrinsic yearning for unrestricted exploration beyond the confines of our realm?

  Indeed, Mr. Ferris’s Great Wheel embodies both artistic masterpiece and scientific genius. This very train does the same, both in its form and in my perception of that form. Just two weeks ago, I fixated upon its gleaming modern design, its power and speed. I find it less impressive in retrospect, as I was able to ride the far more innovative elevated electric rail at the fair.

  On this return trip, I focus not on the scientific prowess of this locomotive. Rather, I see it as a black dragon puffing smoke through its snout as it carries me—unwilling prey snatched from a happy land—back to the dreaded abyss.

  And so I shall, for now, set aside Leaves of Grass. Before I left the hotel, an erudite gentleman from Massachusetts—with whom I had shared many a silent evening in the hotel’s reading room—brilliantly suggested that we exchange books we’d finished reading. Though I kept Leaves of Grass, I willingly parted with two other volumes, and came away with a pair. One is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which I have been longing to read ever since it was published last year.

  I’ve never heard of the other book, entitled The Fall River Tragedy, though I have read in the papers about the unsolved double axe murders that took place a year ago this month. Miss Lizzie Borden was acquitted in December, but there are some who believe she committed the most heinous crime imaginable: the cold-blooded murder of her own flesh and blood.

  Chapter 6

  As the daughter of the venerated Hadley College history professor Dr. Theodore Abrams and the grandniece of the Mundy’s Landing Historical Society’s previous longtime curator, Miss Etta Abrams, Ora Abrams has a favorite catchphrase: “History is the family business.”

  Not just history. Local history.

  Her given name is Aurora, after the princess in Charles Perrault’s original Sleeping Beauty fairy tale. It was a not-so-subtle nod to the crimes that captivated her father, his aunt, and fellow hometown historians. Her mother—not quite as captivated, but overruled by her strong-willed husband—insisted upon shortening it to Ora.

  Great-Aunt Etta helped Papa care for Ora after Mama died. In her mid-thirties when the crimes were committed, Etta shared her perspective, her theories—and her private stash of mementos. She lived into the 1950s, at which point Ora inherited that secret trove along with curatorship of the official public collection. At that time, the museum consisted of dusty relics unceremoniously crammed into the basement of the Elsworth Ransom Library, suitably named after a nineteenth-century descendant of Priscilla Mundy Ransom, one of the village’s original settlers.

  If Great-Aunt Etta had been passionate about the cause, then Ora was obsessive. Under her stewardship, the non-profit has gained world renown, sealed Mundy’s Landing’s place on the map, and moved into the elegant Conroy-Fitch mansion, a space befitting its extensive collection.

  Winded from the long day’s final climb up the grand stairway, Ora sinks onto a maroon velvet-upholstered bench in the second-floor hallway. There’s another flight to go before she reaches her private quarters, but she’s too worn out to continue just yet.

  “I’m getting old, Rosie,” she tells the cat who trailed her up the stairs and now sits perched at her feet.

  The cat’s full name is Briar Rose. Waiting patiently to continue the journey, she offers a slow blink of understanding. Ora reaches down to pat her furry head and is rewarded with loud purring.

  Among the historical society’s best-kept secrets, Briar Rose has lived here in the mansion for the past few years. Ora keeps her tucked away in a storage room during museum hours, with plenty of food and water, toys, and a cozy bed.

  If word were to get out that she’s here, plenty of people would instantly know where she came from. Female orange tabbies are relatively rare, but Augusta Purcell’s collection of wandering cats has included gingery gals for many generations.

  Ora is nearly certain that Briar Rose is directly descended from Marmalade, Augusta’s childhood pet. The two felines have strikingly similar markings. Marmalade was pictured in one of the numerous newspaper articles about the Sleeping Beauty murders. Her presence in the house at 46 Bridge Street on the night of July 7, 1916, is noted in court documents.

  For that reason, Ora simply had to have her. The ancestral connection makes Briar Rose a treasured addition to Ora’s private collection.

  It wasn’t very difficult to obtain her. Augusta’s cats roamed The Heights long before her death, and Ora often left food for them on the doorstep of the annex behind the mansion. When she heard Augusta had passed away, she simply brought this sweet orange girl inside for the night, and has kept her here ever since.

  Some might consider that a kitty-napping. As far as Ora is concerned, it’s both a humane act and a community service. Neighbors complained about Augusta’s wandering felines. They raided garbage cans, howled mating cries into the night, and delivered litters under porches. After his aunt died, Lester Purcell reportedly rounded up as many of her pets as he could and delivered them to the pound.

  “But not you, Rosie,” Ora says, petting her soft coat. “You’re a V.I.C.”—Very Important Cat—“and you belong here with me. I’m just sorry you were cooped up so long tonight.”

  Ordinarily, she locks the massive front door promptly at five o’clock. But today’s visitors included latecomers who’d traveled a great distance to settle in before the festivities officially get under way next week.

  Ora’s personal policy, established back when she was sprightly enough to sustain a longer day without missing a beat, is to allow guests to browse to their hearts’ content once they’re here.

  But oh my. If she’s this exhausted now, whatever will she do next week, during the convention?

  Late day sun still shines brightly through the window on the stairway landing. Yet all she wants is the strength to complete the journey and climb into bed.

  How the mighty have fallen.

  She’d been younger by a good sixteen years when she’d decided to locate her office and private quarters in the expansive attic. She darted up and down two flights of steps day in and out, often lugging boxes, without a second thought.

  Now that she’s well into her eighties, she leans heavily on her favorite walking stick, a bone-handled rosewood piece she’d confiscated from the museum collection. Whenever she experiences the slightest touch of guilt for that indiscretion, she reminds herself—as with the kitty-napping—that the deed was justified.

  It isn’t as though she’s made off with a priceless antique. The cane isn’t going anywhere and neither is Ora, unless it’s the great beyond—in which case, all her worldly goods will be left to the historical society anyway.

  As for the society itself, who knows what will
become of it after she passes away? She doesn’t like to think about that.

  She considers of herself as keeper of the flame—and yes, keeper of the many secrets that cloak her hometown’s history. She always thought she’d carry them to her grave, but now that her grave isn’t as distant a destination as she’d like, well . . .

  “I’ll decide,” she informs the empty second-floor corridor. “I’ll decide whether to tell.”

  Unless, of course, someone finally rises to the challenge she issued twenty-five years ago.

  Can You Solve the Sleeping Beauty Murders?

  The visitors who descend every summer assume that the key must lie somewhere in the extensive exhibit devoted to the crimes. Behind the wall against which Ora now leans her aching spine, mounted yellowed newspapers and police reports are displayed. They include hundreds of original photographs of the crime scenes, the investigation process, the people involved at all stages.

  The large adjoining room holds glass cases containing other crime-related artifacts: household items from the three homes where the bodies were found, bits of evidence collected by the detectives, notes purportedly written by the killer, and an antique barber’s blade similar to the suspected murder weapon, which was never found.

  Farther down this side of the hall lies a bedroom graced with an almost identical layout to the guest quarters at 19 Schuyler Place where the third dead girl appeared. Ora recreated that room in this one, using authentic furnishings donated by a grandson of Julius and Lydia Palmer, who lived in the house at the time.

  The final room in the Sleeping Beauty exhibit is located at the far end of the hall. She opens it only during Mundypalooza. Within are photographs and other items Ora long ago deemed too grisly for a family museum; too fragile and sacred for a permanent exhibit. That’s where guests linger longest, transfixed by a blood-tainted nightgown and hair ribbons found on the Sleeping Beauties’ corpses. Those items, along with a yellowed note found beneath the pillow of one of the victims, have long been on loan from the local police department.