“So glad the weather cleared up, aren’t you?” he asks, like they were in the midst of a conversation already.
She smiles back, a bit warily, and nods. Her little dog barks at him as he passes.
Up ahead, he sees a couple of people on the sidewalk in front of the Yamazaki house. The group is considerably smaller than it was earlier.
There’s a candle flickering on the sidewalk. As he walks closer, he sees that it’s some kind of makeshift memorial.
A group of young women are gathered around it, arm in arm, staring morosely at the flame. They’re earnest-looking, wearing Birkenstocks and no makeup. College students, he’s guessing. And hardly Beauties.
Several cellophane-wrapped bouquets of supermarket flowers are heaped beside the lit votive, along with a sign that reads SB1—RIP—6/30/16.
The message is printed in black marker on a white rectangle of dry cleaner’s cardboard, Holmes notices with disdain. If you’re going to go to the trouble of creating this ridiculous tribute, why not do it right?
Because ordinary people don’t bother with details. They don’t have the patience or the intelligence.
As he approaches them, the girls glance in his direction.
“What’s going on here?” he asks authoritatively.
“We’re just paying our respects,” one of them says. She’s stockily built, with wire-rimmed glasses and short, frizzy hair.
“To whom?”
“You know . . . to the first Sleeping Beauty victim.” She indicates the sign.
“Was she a friend of yours?”
She raises an eyebrow and looks at the other girls.
“She, like, died a hundred years ago,” a skinny brunette informs him. Her hair, he notices, hangs in a single braid down her bony back.
He thinks of Juanita.
“It was exactly a hundred years ago tonight,” someone else puts in. “That’s what this whole thing is a—”
“I know, ladies. I get it. I was kidding around.”
“Oh. Right.” The first girl spouts a nervous little laugh.
He tries to force a smile onto his face, but it feels like a silent snarl.
They turn back to their candlelight vigil.
“Ladies? I hate to rain on your little parade here, but you can’t have an open flame out here on the street.”
“It’s just a candle.”
“I told you, Lindy,” one of the girls says. “It’s a fire hazard.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll blow it out.” The girl with the frizzy hair leans over the candle with puffed cheeks. It takes her a few tries to extinguish it.
He nods as if he’s satisfied and walks on. But his hands are clenched again.
The Common is crowded with people. Most are gathered by the white-painted bandstand, where musicians are tuning up amid deafening feedback from the amplifier. The chamber of commerce sponsors a concert here every Wednesday night in July and August. They always feature some local ensemble—a polka band, a jazz trio, a couple of high school kids with guitars. Most are attended only by the musicians’ families and friends and a smattering of senior citizens who walk to the park carrying lawn chairs.
Tonight’s band, the Jitterbugs, are a quartet of older men wearing white T-shirts and leather jackets, with what’s left of their hair greased back fifties style. You’d think they were the second coming of Elvis, judging by the throngs jostling for a good spot in front of the stage.
Yes, tonight is special. After the concert, there will be a trivia contest with prizes, and free coffee provided by the Valley Roasters Café on the square. But Holmes sees that there’s a line out the café door right now, with plenty of people willing to pay for their coffee rather than wait for the freebies. Down the block at the Commons Creamery, the line for ice cream is even longer, disappearing around the corner.
Everyone is looking for something to do now that the museum is closed and they’ve had their fill of staring at the Murder Houses for the day.
Stuck in slow-moving mass of people clogging the sidewalk, he listens to snatches of conversation unfolding around him.
“. . . and then afterward if it’s not too late we can get a drink. I heard the Windmill is a good place to . . .”
“. . . told him to meet us here, but he’s not answering his cell and . . .”
“. . . no, Amanda, I told you before, it’s tacky and you can’t wear it unless you want to look like a little tramp . . .”
Amanda. The name, the voice, the preachy tone—all familiar. It’s the Girl Scout, he remembers. The one who was selling chocolate. And her annoying mother. Holmes turns his head slightly, scanning the faces behind him, not sure he’ll recognize them if he sees them.
But he does.
They’re wearing matching pouts, with identical red leather handbags slung diagonally across their shoulders to their hips. They have similar small, pinched features, and similar sleeveless blouses and walking shorts.
“And pull your shoulders back,” the woman is saying. “Don’t walk all hunched over. It doesn’t look good.”
“I’m not hunched over.”
“You are. Straighten up.”
The girl does. Seeing her long hair flip over her shoulders, Holmes imagines braiding it.
Then the crowd swallows them, and he walks on. Amanda has her Sunrise Project tomorrow morning, and Holmes has his Sunset Project tonight.
Beyond the nineteenth-century storefronts of Market Street, the orange rim slides toward the river like a curtain descending after the promising first act of an uplifting drama.
It will rise again on a horror show, he promises himself. The people of Mundy’s Landing won’t realize that right away, but when they do, it will be worth the wait.
“Where have you been?” Sully asks Barnes as he steps back into the cottage.
“Getting my luggage out of the car.” He deposits it on the floor, where the rugged canvas bag looks as out of place between a doily-topped table and a Victorian-style sofa as a giant in a dollhouse. Which is what he told her he felt like before he stepped out the door.
“You were gone an awfully long time.”
“Ten minutes.”
“Were you smoking?”
“I quit smoking two years ago.”
“That was a yes-no question, Barnes.”
“I don’t believe in those.”
She sniffs the air for traces of tobacco, shakes her head and looks at his duffel. “Do you by any chance have a tuxedo in there?”
“Don’t tell me—surprise wedding? Am I getting married? They say the groom is always the last to know.”
“No, you’re going to a gala tomorrow night, and it’s black tie.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Are you going to this gala, too?”
“No, you’re going alone.” She shakes her head, laughing. “Of course I’m going.”
“So I’ll be your date.”
“In a manner of speaking, yes. But don’t go getting any ideas, there, Barnes. I know I’m looking ravishing and all.”
“You took the words right out of my mouth, Gingersnap.”
Still sporting the hastily-towel-dried, drowned-rat look courtesy of having been caught in the downpour hours ago, she hands him a cold beer and clinks it with her own bottle. “Cheers.”
“What are we drinking to?”
“To the typhoon. Although I’m guessing we’re the only ones.”
“You’re the only one. I was looking forward to that vacation.”
“You should have checked the forecast, Barnes.”
He eyes her hair. “Look who’s talking.”
“Yeah, well, I was walking into town, not flying across the globe. And I have no connectivity here. No wi-fi, no computer, no cable.”
“That’s not a good excuse.”
“It’s not an excuse. I’m getting away from it all, remember?”
“Yeah, well, you can’t get away from me.”
“Looks that way.”
In truth, sh
e’s grateful to the typhoon that had struck the South Seas island where Barnes was headed, grounding him on the mainland for two days. Otherwise, she’d be alone tonight. And going to the gala alone tomorrow night.
Well, alone with Rowan and her husband, Jake; a third wheel.
Instead, Barnes turned up in Mundy’s Landing to salvage what’s left of his vacation, thinking she’d be expecting him. Over the course of his long, segmented journey back, he’d reportedly left her a voice mail, texted, and e-mailed to say he was on his way.
“Did it not occur to you, when I didn’t respond, that I might not have gotten the messages?” she’d asked this afternoon, ushering him into the cottage.
“I guess it might have if I hadn’t been deliriously tired. Do you know how exhausting it is to travel around the world and back again in four days?”
“What do you think?”
“I think that between the Jersey Shore and this place . . . wouldn’t it be nice to broaden your horizons and see how the other half lives?”
“If you don’t like this place, then why are you even—”
“Sorry, I’m just tired and grumpy, Gingersnap. Give me a break, will you?”
She gave him a break.
That was a few hours ago—before he used up all the hot water taking an endless shower in the tiny bathroom where she’d planned to soak in a sudsy bath with a book and wine. Before he went out to get takeout for their dinner and came back an hour later, empty-handed, reporting that every place in town was mobbed. Before he fell asleep with his head down on the table while she was stretching her meager ingredients into a semi-palatable dinner for two.
He insisted on doing the dishes, for which she was grateful. But then he eyed the couch where he’ll be sleeping tonight and commented that it was much too short to accommodate his long legs.
“You’re out of your mind if you think I’m going to—”
“Relax, I’m not trying to jump into your bed with you.”
“I was going to say if you think I’m going to sleep on the couch,” she informed him, feeling her face grow hot. That was when she offered him the beer, thinking she could use one—or two—herself.
Now, she invites him to come sit on the porch with her.
“Why?”
“Because it’s what I do at night.”
He peers through the screen. “It looks buggy out there.”
“Those are fireflies.”
“Fireflies aren’t bugs?”
“Get your butt onto my porch swing, Barnes. If you’re going to crash my vacation, we’ll do things my way.”
“Whatever you say, Gingersnap,” he says amiably, and trails her outside.
“Why are you crashing my vacation, anyway?” she asks, settling on the swing, stretching her legs, and resting her bare feet on the railing. “Why didn’t you fly to some fabulous vacation?”
“I tried. But the airline would only fly me back to New York, and it wasn’t exactly direct. After forty-eight hours cramped into coach seats, I didn’t feel like getting back on a plane.”
“You mean Jessica didn’t fly you first-class?”
“On the way out, yes. But it turned out she’d used points to buy my ticket, and—long story. Anyway, I figured I’d take a road trip.”
“Yes, but . . . why here?”
“Because I had to choose whether to go north, south, east, or west, and this made the most sense. The Hamptons are booked, no one wants to go south in the summer heat, Jersey traffic is a nightmare, so . . .”
“So that leaves north.”
“Right. I figure after a day or two here, we can head up to the Adirondacks. There’s a nice resort in—”
“Oh, c’mon, Barnes. Don’t you want to see how the other half lives?”
As she speaks, she hears police car wailing up a nearby street.
“Uh-oh,” Barnes says. “Guess the meatball bribe didn’t work.”
She wishes she hadn’t mentioned that over dinner, because she’ll never hear the end of it. “Good to know that’s probably all it is, don’t you think?”
He’s silent for a minute. When he speaks, the teasing tone is gone. “I think those sound like famous last words.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you seem to think this town is some kind of safe haven, but there’s no such thing.”
She has nothing to say to that.
The words linger in the air, mingling with the squeaking of the porch swing and the sound of sirens in the night.
Stepping into the backyard with two glasses of pinot grigio, Annabelle sees that Kim is no longer sitting in one of the cheap aluminum lawn chairs over by the carriage house.
“Kim? Where’d you go?”
“Over here,” her friend calls back from around the side yard, over keening sirens.
Heading in that direction, Annabelle hopes that Oliver won’t hear them and start worrying about Trib, who’s still at work. He’s up in his room with Catherine, and with any luck, they’re wearing headsets to play the video game.
Walking around the corner of the house, she sees Kim on the driveway, talking to a uniformed police officer. Her heart beats faster as she hurries toward them.
What if something really did happen to Trib?
As she gets closer, she recognizes Nick Colonomos.
Around her age, he moved to Mundy’s Landing right around the time she started dating Trib. He was from someplace in New England, and wore a Boston Red Sox hat in the beginning, until some of the locals gave him a hard time. She remembers being out at the Windmill—a local bar that has long since dropped the word Tavern from its name and traded cheap drafts and a pool table for craft brews, exposed brick, and flickering white votives.
She thought Nick was incredibly handsome, with dark, close-cropped hair, a strong jaw, and long-lashed dark eyes. Everyone thought he was handsome; he still is handsome. He’s a nice enough guy, but there’s something slightly standoffish about him.
“You just think that because your friends want to date him, and he isn’t interested,” Trib said at the time.
That was partly true.
The other part might be that Nick possesses a strong streak of Yankee reserve. One of her college swim teammates had grown up in New Hampshire, and as she put it, “Where I come from, we believe in minding our own business.”
There’s nothing wrong with that.
Why is he here, at her house?
Maybe he was driving by and spotted Kim, with her blond hair flowing, wearing a snug tank top and frayed denim shorts, a hemp bracelet tied around one ankle.
Spotted her . . . and what? Stopped to see if she needed directions to the nearest California beach?
“What’s going on?” she asks Nick, scurrying so quickly that the wine sloshes over the rims of the glasses in her hands. “Is everything okay?”
Of course everything isn’t okay, she scolds herself. You don’t find a cop in your driveway if everything is okay.
“That’s what I’m trying to find out, Mrs. Bingham,” he tells her. “You haven’t had any trouble here, have you?”
“What kind of trouble?”
Even as she speaks, her gaze goes to the sidewalk in front of the house. People were milling around beyond the iron fence when Kim picked up her and Oliver to go to the mall. They were still there upon their return, though fewer in number. Funny, though, how you can become accustomed to the intrusion. For a little while there, they’d become part of the landscape. An annoying part, like a neighbor’s yappy dog or incessant weed whacking. But not exactly . . . trouble.
“I just came from 65 Prospect Street,” Lieutenant Colonomos says.
“The Murder House,” Kim adds helpfully—for his benefit? For Annabelle’s? It’s not as though anyone doesn’t know the address.
“Why were you over there?” Annabelle asks. “Did something happen?”
“Just a bunch of nosy nellies hanging around, same as here. But the alarm just went off again, so I’m
guessing someone went past the fence and the gate and got too close to a door or window. Again.”
“You mean someone tried to get into the house?”
“Probably just kids fooling around on the property. But I figured I’d better check in here and with Bill Hardy. He lives at 19 Schuyler,” he adds, since apparently it’s his turn to share information everyone in town knows.
That’s the thing about Mundy’s Landing: everyone seems to know everything about—well, everything. Especially when it comes to the Murder Houses.
A widower whose children have all moved away, Bill Hardy was a history teacher at Mundy’s Landing High back when Annabelle was there. She never had him as a teacher, but Trib did.
“He seemed old back then,” he said recently, when Annabelle suggested they go talk to him about moving into a Murder House.
“He was probably younger then than we are now.”
“I know, but we don’t seem old. Do we?” he asked, and she assured him that they don’t.
But Mr. Hardy . . . he must be in his eighties by now, living all by himself in a big old house.
“I hope he’s okay,” she tells Nick Colonomos.
“He is, although he’s not thrilled by all these false alarms.”
“You mean his alarm is going off, too?”
“Yes. He told me he’s sick of going up and down the stairs every time it rings, though, and he’s going to just turn it off.”
“Do you think that’s a good idea?”
Nick shrugs. “Probably just kids, like I said. Or maybe the press snooping around. About fifteen, maybe twenty years ago, old lady Purcell opened a window and tossed a bucket of water on a camera crew.”
“They were actually on the property?” Kim asks, and Nick nods.
“I heard that story,” Annabelle says, “but I wasn’t sure I believed it, since she had to be pushing ninety at the time.”
“Believe it,” Nick tells her. “I was on duty that night.”
“She called the police?”
“No. She never trusted anyone, including us. One of the neighbors heard the commotion and called. The water ruined some of the camera crew’s equipment.”
“Good!”
“Um, Annabelle—you’re married to a reporter,” Kim points out.
“Yes, but Trib doesn’t go around trespassing on private property. I did see someone in the backyard a few days ago, but whoever it was didn’t get close to the house. I guess he might have tried if I hadn’t been around. And I’d have been happy to toss a bucket of water on him if he was under my window,” she adds, thinking of Oliver and how anxious he’d be if he spotted a trespasser by the house—or, for that matter, a camera crew.
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