Blood Red (11 page)

Casey walks away, vowing to forget about her even though another bleak Sunday looms just ahead.

 

From the
Mundy's Landing Tribune
Archives

Lifestyles

June 10, 1966

For Modern Mundys,

History a Source of Pride, Not Shame

Their ties to this village stretch back over three centuries and are well documented at the Mundy's Landing Historical Society in the basement of the Elsworth Ransom Library. According to director Miss Ora Abrams, “The Mundy family tree includes a Revolutionary War general, a wealthy industrialist, and a hero who went down with the
Titanic
after saving the lives of several steerage children.”

She added that the society's former curator, her great-­aunt Etta Abrams, graduated from Mundy's Landing High School in 1900 with Maxwell Mundy Ransom—­who until his hospitalization last winter resided at his ancestral home here on Battlefield Road. He served in the House of Representatives during the Great Depression and was instrumental in New Deal legislation.

Miss Abrams said, “It's a rich legacy of which any family would be proud.”

Make no mistake: they are.

“Am I honored to be descended from the original Mundys of Mundy's Landing? Absolutely,” John Elsworth Ransom told the
Tribune
last week. “When I was young, my uncle Max would sit me on his knee and tell me about his boyhood adventures with his pal Frank—­who grew up to become President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I wanted to grow up to become just like him.”

Fresh from his final semester at Harvard Law School, alma mater of both his uncle and FDR, with political aspirations and the New York State bar exam looming, he's well on his way.

Asked, however, about more distant family members—­namely, James and Elizabeth Mundy—Mr. Ransom was noticeably less effusive. His maternal bloodline descends from their daughter Priscilla Mundy, who was born in England in 1658 and crossed the Atlantic in the spring of 1665 with her parents and older siblings, Jeremiah and Charity. The family narrowly escaped the Great Plague, which killed 100,000 ­people, fifteen percent of London's population.

They arrived on what is now the island of Manhattan. Having been surrendered by the Dutch Republic a year earlier, its name had changed from the Province of New Netherland to the Province of New York, after James, Duke of York. The ship sailed a hundred miles north up the Hudson River, landing in an idyllic spot at the mouth of a creek on the eastern bank. Today, the location is designated by a stone marker at what is now Schaapskill Nature Preserve.

During the ferocious winter of 1665–66, the frozen river stranded a long-­awaited ship loaded with sorely needed supplies. When it finally arrived in the spring, only five of the original thirty-­odd settlers had survived: James and Elizabeth Mundy and their three children.

There's no arguing the fact that husband and wife resorted to cannibalism to keep their family alive as their fellow settlers were dying of starvation. They weren't the first early American colonists to do so, and the longtime consensus among historians, local and beyond, is that they didn't murder anyone. But in June of 1666, newly arrived colonists convicted them of murder and hanged them with their children watching.

While most modern scholars theorize that the Mundys were guilty only of consuming the flesh of those who were already dead, a stumbling block emerged in 1947. An archaeology team from nearby Hadley College unearthed a partially shattered, severed skull found among discarded human bones behind the Mundy homesite. A medical examiner concluded that it belonged to a young woman and contained fractures consistent with a sharp blow to the head. That can be attributed to an accident, yet some historians consider it evidence that the Mundys themselves killed their victims before eating them.

Today, the skull reportedly rests among the seventeenth-­century artifacts in Mundy's Landing Historical Society's private collection. John Ransom hasn't viewed it, nor is he interested in doing so.

His distant cousin Asa Jacob Mundy, a direct descendent of Jeremiah Mundy, the doomed ­couple's only son, concurs. “All I care to know is that this village was named for Jeremiah's great-­grandson, Enoch Mundy. He was a brave general in the Revolutionary War and a hero to many. My father taught me to be proud of my heritage, and I've taught my son and daughter the same thing.”

Mr. Mundy's namesake son, who goes by Jake, may be only seven years old, but the boy is well aware of the hefty legacy that goes along with being born and raised in a town that bears one's own name. “My great-­great-­great-­great-­great-­great . . .” He paused and looked up at his father to ask, “How many greats, again?”

The senior Mundy laughed and patted his son's dark crew cut. “Too many to count.”

The child declared that he would settle on ten, and counted off the generations before breathlessly punctuating them with the remainder of the sentence: “. . . Grandfather was named Jeremiah Mundy and he was very brave. He sailed all the way across the ocean when he was just a boy like me.”

Questioned privately by this reporter, his father admitted that young Jake wasn't aware of the tragic postscript to his ancestor's arrival in the New World. “Sooner or later, I'm sure he'll find out,” he said with a shrug. “We all do.”

 

Chapter 6

S
itting across the table from Jake, Rowan watches him study the menu as though he hasn't eaten at Marrana's dozens of times before. Hundreds of times, probably.

She admires the familiar furrow between his dark brows and his full mouth and the masculine angle of his stubbly jaw, even though she's always preferred him clean-­shaven.

“What are you having?” he asks without looking up.

“I'm not sure. I forgot my reading glasses at home and I can't see the specials.”

“So you're my blind date then, is that it?”

“Good one,” she says, deadpan: her usual response to his corny jokes.

“You can borrow my readers in a second,” he tells her, focused on the menu again. “Maybe I should order something different this time.”

He always says that, then—­after much deliberation—­orders his usual Cavatelli a la Mama. And salad with blue cheese dressing, hold the cucumbers, and a glass of Chianti, just one, because he's driving. But he'll urge her to have two and she will, and she'll tease him that he's hoping to take advantage of her when they get home, and he'll tell her she's absolutely right. He'll have a cup of coffee and dessert—­spumoni in summer, cannoli in winter—­while she finishes her wine, and then they'll drive home at around nine and he'll walk the dog while she falls into bed. She'll try to stay awake but most of the time she won't, and he'll give her a good-­natured good night peck on her cheek and go back downstairs to watch
Sports Center.

There was a time—­all right, there have been many, many times—­when the predictable rhythm of date night made Rowan long for the passion they shared back in the early days of their relationship. Tonight, however, maintaining her vow to focus on Jake, she finds herself cherishing every mundane marital moment.

“Yeah,” he says abruptly. “I know.”

She blinks. “What?”

“I know I should have shaved. That's what you're thinking, right? I can tell by the way you're looking at me.”

Ordinarily, that would be exactly what she's thinking.

“It's okay, Jake. I know you hate to shave on weekends.”

“Yeah, but I really did mean to do it this morning. It's getting gray.”

“The beard?”

“See?” He strokes his whiskery chin. “You're married to an old man, Ro.”

“You're not old. You're middle-­aged, and you're married to a middle-­aged lady.”

“Nah, you're a hot blonde now. If I'm not careful someone's going to steal you away.”

She tries not to flinch, smile pasted firmly on her face. “I doubt that.”

“Maybe I should dye my beard.”

“Blond?”

He grins. “That might look kind of cool.”

“I like the gray. It's distinguished.”

“You think?”

“Sure.” She can't hold back an enormous yawn.

“Past your bedtime?”

“Pretty much. If you're finished with your reading glasses there, Gramps, your blind date needs them before she falls asleep at the table.”

Precious normalcy. It can all disappear in an instant.

Before Rowan can look at the menu, Annabelle Bingham stops by their table on her way back from the ladies' room. They've shared a friendship since their own school days at Mundy's Landing Elementary. The bond, like most, was stronger during some eras than others. Unlike Rowan, Annabelle walked the straight and narrow in high school, as swim team captain and honors student.

“Date night?” she guesses, greeting Rowan and Jake with hugs.

“Yes, how about you?”

“Nope, three's a crowd, as usual.” She points across the room to where her husband, Trib, and their son, Oliver, are sitting.

Trib's real name is Charles, but his nickname was bestowed in elementary school because his family owns the
Mundy's Landing Tribune
. His father passed away not long ago, making him editor-­in-­chief.

“Did you and Trib really make an offer on 46 Bridge Street?” Rowan asks Annabelle, having heard through the local grapevine that the house-­hunting ­couple has set their sights on one of the most notorious homes in town.

Located in The Heights, 46 Bridge is one of the three houses where the Sleeping Beauty corpses turned up, and the only one still owned by the same family that had been in residence back in 1916. In fact, until she died just shy of her 105th birthday, Augusta Purcell was the last known living witness to the crime.

Her nephew and sole heir, Lester, is determined to keep the house from being exploited and reportedly refused an immediate offer from Ora Abrams on behalf of the historical society. Nor, according to the rumor mill, will Lester allow Realtors to show it to anyone he doesn't pre-­approve, in an effort to weed out Mundypalooza groupies. He's determined to sell only to a longtime local family as a private residence. That's going to be tricky considering that local families aren't just familiar with the home's bloody past, they're also fully aware that curiosity seekers think nothing of trespassing, peering in the windows, or even snatching souvenirs from the storied Murder Houses. A few summers ago during Mundypalooza, someone stole the mailbox from 19 Schuyler Place with the residents' mail still inside.

“News travels fast around here,” Annabelle says mildly, and changes the subject. “Where's Mick tonight?”

“Hockey game,” Rowan says.

Jake adds, “It's not like he'd want to be with us if he were free, though.”

“Oliver never wants to be without us.” Annabelle's smile is wistful.

Rowan taught Annabelle's son in her fourth-­grade class two years ago. Diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, he's being treated with medication and therapy.

She asks Annabelle how he's coping with middle school this year.

“Let's just say it's been a rough transition,” she says, and Rowan notices the worry lines around her eyes and dark circles beneath them.

“I'm sure it'll get better.”

“I hope so.”

Rowan curbs the impulse to mention that living in one of the notorious Murder Houses, as the locals call them, might not be the healthiest thing for an overly anxious kid. It's none of her business, and she knows that the Binghams aren't very well-­off and may have little choice. They fit Lester's criteria, and the mansion at 46 Bridge Street is an absolute steal in this inflated real estate market.

“Anything look good?” Jake asks as Annabelle heads back to her table and Rowan puts on the glasses to glance at the specials.

“Everything looks good. I'm starved. I haven't eaten since . . .”

The conversation with Annabelle had distracted her. For a moment, she'd forgotten about her day, and the diner, and Rick. Now it comes rushing back and her appetite completely disappears. Again.

“Didn't you stop at the food court for lunch?”

“It was too crowded. Long lines.” She pretends to study the menu, struggling to hold it steady in her hands. “I can't decide between the lobster ravioli and the eggplant rollatini.”

“Get both.”

“Both? No way.”

“How about if I get the ravioli and promise to share?”

You can share my bagel . . .

Rick, barging into her head again, dammit.

“No, thanks,” she tells Jake abruptly. “You have to get the Cavatelli a la Mama.”

“Why?”

“Because it's what you do. It's what
we
do. We don't share.”

He starts to laugh, then takes a closer look at her face. “Wait—­are you serious?”

“Yes! No. I mean . . . I don't know.”

“Ro? What's going on?”

“I'm sorry. I'm just . . .” She's just exhausted and emotional and terrified that everything is going to change; that she's going to lose Jake.

“Hey.” He reaches across the table, finds her hand, grasps it. “Are you okay?”

“I'm fine, I'm just . . .” She forces herself to look up at him. His face, viewed through the reading glasses, is a blur. “I'm just so tired, and . . . it's hormones, I guess. I told you. You're married to a middle-­aged lady. This is what you get. Isn't it fun?”

She manages a laugh, and he squeezes her hand.

“I love my middle-­aged lady,” he says, “and someday I'll love my little old lady, too.”

She swallows hard, unable to find her voice. She's grateful when the waitress, the owners' daughter, Gina, comes over to take their order: the usual for Jake, eggplant rollatini for Rowan. She notices that Jake doesn't call Gina by her first name, even though he's known her all his life and it's printed right there on her name tag in case he can't remember what it is.

Back when she was regularly eating lunch in diners with Rick and the kids, she got it into her head that Jake was a little standoffish. Now she decides that Jake is appropriately unobtrusive and Rick a little too presumptuous.

Left alone with Jake again, she finds him watching her intently.

“What? I should have shaved this morning?” she quips, rubbing her chin, and he laughs.

She asks him about his dinner last night, and whether Mick had done any schoolwork this afternoon, and if he heard from Braden or Katie today. He volleys back questions of his own—­perhaps too many questions?

He's just asking about your day. There's nothing unusual about that.

She resists the impulse to change the subject, telling him about her hours spent shopping, stores she visited, gifts she bought. Maybe it's just her imagination, but he seems to be watching her more closely than usual as he sips his wine and nibbles a roll from the bread basket, almost as if he's . . . suspicious?

Or is it something else?

A new and frightening possibility flutters at the edges of her consciousness, but she pushes it away, unwilling to let it in.

A
t the high school hockey game with a ­couple of his friends from the basketball team, Mick is surprised—­and relieved—­when Brianna Armbruster climbs into the stands just as the team skates onto the ice. She's with a group of female friends, all fellow seniors, all really pretty. But not nearly as pretty as Brianna.

If she really were seeing a college guy, as Zach had claimed, then shouldn't she be with him on a Saturday night?

Mick decides that she should and would, choosing to ignore the little voice inside his head pointing out that unless the college guy lives on a nearby campus, he's probably away again until Christmas break like Mick's older siblings are.

It's much more appealing to assume that Brianna has since broken up with the guy, or that Zach got it wrong in the first place, tormenting Mick with some stupid rumor that isn't even true.

He's at the game, too, sitting a few rows ahead with two girls from the drama club. They're both seniors and halfway decent-­looking, but nowhere near as pretty as Brianna's friends and nowhere near as beautiful as Brianna herself.

Mick finds himself growing annoyed, watching Zach and the two girls keep up a steady stream of chatter, barely paying attention to the action on the rink. It's one thing for a drama girl to do that, he decided, but Zach is a guy and should know better, even if he's never played a sport in his life. Not that that's why he's getting on Mick's nerves tonight. And it's not because he's here with senior girls, or because Zach is the one who told him about Brianna dating a college guy, which he never should have done, regardless of whether it's true or they've broken up.

They probably haven't, Mick speculates glumly. He can't help but notice that she spends most of the first period typing on her phone. A few times, she nudges her friends and shows it to them. Watching them all lean in to exclaim over whatever was so fascinating on the screen in her hand, Mick is pretty sure it's not Brianna's latest moves in Words with Friends. There's just something specific about the way girls talk and giggle when they're discussing a guy, as opposed to some other random thing.

When Brianna finally looks up from her phone and turns around to talk to someone behind her, she spots Mick. His heart soars when she waves and gives him a big smile. At least he's pretty sure she's looking at him.

All right, there's a small chance that she might be smiling and waving at someone behind him. But he doubts it. Especially since he would look like a real idiot, smiling and waving back so enthusiastically.

Right before the end of the first period, Brianna and her friends head for the door, probably headed for the ladies' room along with a million other girls. Either that, or they're going out to sneak cigarettes in the gazebo, which Mick doubts. She's not that kind of girl.

Zach is also on the move, but Mick avoids making eye contact with him as the crowd heads en masse toward the student council concessions table.

“Hey, can I borrow five bucks?” asks his friend Van—­short for Chris­tian Wilhelm Vandergraaf III.

“For what? An apple and a box of raisins?” Mick asks moodily. The school is no longer allowed to sell candy thanks to some health fanatic mom who pushed them into enforcing a new district wellness policy.

“For whatever. I'm broke and I'm starved.”

“Well, so am I.” Mick spent his last dollar on admission to the game, after blowing the rest of his money on Brianna's gifts.

She's nowhere to be seen in the crowd milling around the lobby, but here comes Zach with his senior female friends.

“Hey, Lou, how's it goin'?” he asks in his
Goodfellas
dialect.

“It's going,” Mick responds in his regular voice.

“Good game, right?”

“How would you know?”

Zach frowns. “What's wrong with you?”

“Nothing. What's wrong with you?”

Taking the hint, Zach shrugs and drifts away.