Blood Red (23 page)

“Because it's more affordable than Westchester, for one thing.”

“A lot of places are more affordable. You don't have to—­”

“It's not a terrorist target, either.” The September 11 attacks were recent enough for most ­people to consider that a valid argument. But not Noreen.

“Come on, Rowan, you know the chances of—­”

“Jake flies constantly on business. He won't have to do that if he gets one of the sales jobs he's interviewed for up there.”

Noreen said nothing.

“For me, Mundy's Landing still feels like home,” Rowan said simply. “Don't try to talk me out of it, okay?”

“I just feel that you, of all ­people, should move on and never look back.”

“Why me ‘of all ­people'?”

“Because you had a lot of problems when you were in Mundy's Landing.”

“I was a kid. Every kid has problems.”

“Not like that. I didn't. My kids won't.”

“You can't know that.”

“I can be pretty sure of it. And at least they're not living in a tiny, run-­down village in the middle of nowhere.” Talking over Rowan's immediate protest, she added, “I'm sorry. But you must know that I have your best interests in mind.”

“Really? Because I—­”

“Come on, you have to admit that there are better places to choose to live.”

“I can't think of any.”

“Whatever. Go ahead, move back there if you want to.”

“We do want to, and we will, and gee, thanks for giving us permission.”

They were snippy little girls again: one bossy, the other defiant.

It wasn't until a year later that Rowan confessed—­in a misguided attempt to clear the air—­the real reason she'd pushed for the move.

She regretted telling her sister the moment it was out there and she saw the condemnation in her sister's eyes. She should have known better, but . . .

­People can change. I changed. She didn't.

At school, she stops in the main office to pick up her mail and spends a few minutes chatting with the secretary, who found a large pink poinsettia on her desk this morning, courtesy of her Secret Santa.

“Your Santa must be the custodian or a cafeteria worker if he managed to get into the building before you,” Rowan says, flipping through her mail.

“No, there was a choral concert here last night, remember? The music and band teachers were here. One of them must have left it before they went home.”

Those words echo in Rowan's head when she arrives at her own classroom to find another gift bag hanging on the doorknob.

This time, she doesn't hesitate to look inside.

Today's Secret Santa gift is jewelry: a strikingly unusual brooch, shaped like a snowflake and intricately woven in delicate strands of red silken thread.

W
hat a difference a day makes, Bob Belinke thinks, once again at JFK airport.

Unlike yesterday morning at this time, the sun is shining beyond the windows of the plane, and air traffic is moving briskly.

As briskly as it can at one of the world's busiest airports, anyway. The boarding process for his flight to Tampa was delayed by only ten minutes. They pushed back nearly forty-­five minutes ago and haven't taken off yet, but the plane is creeping along the runway lineup and should be airborne soon. A ­couple of hours from now, he'll have traded cold sunshine for warm.

In his window seat, he holds his cell phone. Ordinarily, he turns it off and stows it when he boards a JetBlue flight, happy to let the seatback television entertain him for the duration. But today, having texted Rick when he was waiting at the gate, he's keeping an eye out for a reply.

At least he knows it wasn't Rick who jumped in front of a subway train last night. Not long after the horrific possibility entered Bob's mind, he was relieved when Rick texted an apology for missing their dinner and attributed it to “subway problems.”

Bob was still in Union Square Park when it came through, and texted back that it wasn't too late—­he could meet him anyway.

That's okay
, Rick wrote.
It's been a long day. Headed home. See you next trip.

That should have been the end of it, but the situation just isn't sitting right with Bob. He slept restlessly and woke to find that his old friend was still on his mind. Their last verbal conversation and Rick's avoidance of another has left him concerned. No, not concerned enough to put off his flight home—­but when he gets there, he's going to invite Rick to come to Florida over the holidays. God knows a change of scenery would be good for him.

If Rick had just responded to that last text, Bob would feel a hell of a lot better about leaving New York.

Maybe I should call instead.

About to dial, he's interrupted by the captain's announcement. “Ladies and gentlemen, we've been cleared for takeoff.”

Too late for phone calls.

Bob turns off the phone, puts it into his pocket, and leans back in his seat, staring out the window as New York City falls away below.

O
peration Secret Santa isn't going very well.

Last night at the restaurant, Mick had anticipated that he'd be able to tell whether Brianna had received the gift he'd left at her house. He didn't expect her to come in wearing the single Trinkettes bead on a chain around her neck or anything, but he thought she might at least give off some kind of . . . vibe. Like maybe she'd be wearing a mysterious smile and daydreaming, something like that.

Instead, she was her regular old self, polite and attentive to the customers, polite but inattentive to Mick.

Zach wasn't his regular old self at all. He cold-­shouldered Mick, who instantly regretted the way he'd treated him. He'd tried to apologize, blaming his moodiness on being tired, and Zach said it was okay, but he didn't act like it was.

Meanwhile, Mick really was tired, having lost sleep over Brianna. Just before he drifted off last night he came up with a new twist on Operation Secret Santa. It's complicated, but more efficient than following her around all day, and definitely preferable to cutting out of basketball practice to lurk around her house.

So this morning, he waited until his mother was in the shower to tell his father he had to be at school early. Unlike Mom, Dad doesn't ask questions or check to make sure he really does have a ride.

Nor does he remind Mick to take his morning medicine—­which he remembered to do—­and to eat breakfast with it. Which he did not.

Mick feels increasingly queasy as he walks down last stretch of Battlefield Road to school, but at least the sun is shining today. He arrives even before the morning driver's ed kids, when the school is nearly deserted. The boiler system hasn't yet kicked into overdrive in the main building, a three-­story brick structure that everyone refers to as the sweatbox.

He scours the entire school for locales where he can plant clues for his Secret Santa treasure hunt—­not just the main building, which houses the administrative offices, the auditorium, and gym, but also the classrooms and science and computer labs in the one-­story, flat-­roofed modern wings that were built in the sixties when the village was still booming.

Then, sitting at a table in the library alongside a bunch of kids he barely knows—­the types who get to school early to study—­he writes the notes in block letters.

The first one, which he pushes through the vents on Brianna's locker door, reads
Look behind the Toys for Tots flyer on the lobby bulletin board.

Behind the Toys for Tots flyer, he hides a second note instructing her to go to Mrs. Miller's room and open
The Great Gatsby
to a certain page.

Mrs. Miller is the English teacher Brianna has for second period English. Mick never bothered to read
Gatsby
when it was assigned last year, but he quickly flips through Mrs. Miller's copy this morning and finds a romantic scene about a kiss. He imagines kissing Brianna the way the guy in the book kisses some girl named Daisy: “At his lips' touch she blossomed like a flower and the incarnation was complete.”

And so it goes, until he's perfectly set the stage for Brianna's discovery of his day two gift, another bead charm for the Trinkettes bracelet she's going to get on Friday. He conceals it in the most secure spot he can find in the school on such short notice: behind the snack-­sized bags of prunes in the cafeteria. He does so quickly, his empty upset stomach assaulted by the smell of something saucy simmering in the adjacent kitchen, and grabs a banana on the way out.

Steals a banana, actually. But there's no one manning the register at this hour and he's going to barf if he doesn't eat something, and it's not going to be prunes. Part of the new Wholesome & Hearty school lunch plan, they aren't exactly a big hit with the student body. Nor are they the least bit romantic. But at least there's zero chance that anyone is going to buy a bag with lunch today and stumble across the little gift box.

It seems like a great plan, and he could probably pull it off, but there's one major hitch.

Brianna is absent from school today.

T
he young woman who turned up dead—­and bald—­on Sunday morning was a twenty-­eight-year-­old aspiring songwriter named Julia Sexton.

Sully had been sure of that even before her distraught parents, fresh off a plane from Saint Louis, identified her an hour ago at the morgue. According to her former roommate, who reported her missing last night, she'd had long red hair and a ladybug tattoo just beneath her right collarbone.

Overnight, Sully and Stockton questioned the roommate, a ­couple of other friends, and an ex-­boyfriend. According to them, Julia didn't have an enemy in the world, with the possible exception of her landlord, who wasn't thrilled about her unpaid December rent. But he lives in California and has a pretty airtight alibi.

“I was at the Lakers game Saturday night,” he told them. “If you don't believe me, look at the game tape. You can see me right behind Leonardo DiCaprio in the courtside seats.”

They looked. They saw. They were privately impressed.

“I'd sell my soul to sit courtside at a Knicks game,” Barnes told Sully. “Think he has any connections at the Garden?”

“Oh, I'm sure he's plenty connected,” she said, and she was right. It didn't take much detective work to link the landlord to organized crime, but they'd quickly dismissed any suspicion that Julia's death had anything to do with that.

They're focusing their attention on identifying other possible suspects, starting with her inner circle. Her ex-boyfriend and her friends all seemed genuinely distraught and none had any motive that Sully and Stockton could uncover.

“Who would hurt my baby?” her mother sobbed this morning.

Sully shook her head sorrowfully, not yet willing to disclose that her daughter may have fallen victim to a predator who might very well have been a total stranger.

“We're going to find out who did this,” she promised the Sextons after guiding them through the morgue nightmare. “We'll do everything we can to bring this person to justice. I promise.”

She knew it was little comfort to grieving parents about to bury their only child, but it was all she had to offer.

D
riving home after work on Tuesday afternoon, Rowan is focused on the prospect of tomorrow's field trip.

All the permission slips are in, thank goodness, and her students aren't the only ones looking forward to getting away from the daily classroom routine. Weary of teaching antsy kids about decimals and photosynthesis, she's hoping a break will help them get back down to business on Thursday in preparation for Friday's math and science unit tests.

On an even brighter note, visiting the historical society at this time of year always gets Rowan into the Christmas spirit. This year, she's been especially lacking in that department.

The director and curator, Ora Abrams, plays classical holiday music on a Victrola during her guided tours through rooms decked out to depict Christmas in bygone eras. And she serves cutout cookies and hot chocolate afterward.

Rowan remembers speculating as a child that it must be made from some secret recipe that's been handed down for generations, because it tasted so much better than ordinary cocoa. Naturally, Noreen burst her bubble, reporting that it came from a mix. It wasn't until years later that Rowan realized she was right. But when you're a child, anything—­even powdered cocoa—­tastes extra-­special on a weekday morning when you're supposed to be in school.

As she pulls up in front of the mailbox, she remembers belatedly that she meant to stop in town and pick up a few boxes of Christmas cards . . .

Oh, and that she forgot to sneak tomorrow's Secret Santa gift into the library aide's mail slot in the office before she left school today. She won't have much time in the morning before wrangling the kids and chaperones onto the buses to the historical society.

She glances down at her own Secret Santa gift from this morning. She pinned the red snowflake to her gray winter coat, and two teachers stopped her to compliment her on it before she left the building.

One of them was Louise Flax, the music teacher, one of three ­people whom she suspected might have been the giver. “That's so unique! Where did you get it?”

“My Secret Santa.”

“Well, your Santa has great taste,” Louise said, either cleverly covering her own tracks or ruling herself out.

As she opens the mailbox, Rowan makes a mental note to leave extra-­early tomorrow morning in order to deliver Marlena's gift before the field trip.

The thought is curtailed the moment she spots a package inside the box, sitting on top of the stack of letters.

Just like last week.

Again, she tells herself that it must be something she ordered and forgot about.