The May Day Murders (5 page)

Amy, on the other hand, had mixed
feelings at the time. She knew that what her father had done was
wrong but at the same time didn’t want to see her parents split up.
It had been especially hard for her the day that Sam had packed his
bags and moved in with Roger. Their house had suddenly become a
broken home.

Ann had to admit that she’d actually
felt sorry for Sam by the time the divorce had been finalized. He
was really hurt and it showed, yet he had still managed to be a
gentleman throughout the whole thing. He’d tried his hardest to
make it as painless as he could, just for Amy’s sake. When the
papers were being signed, Ann had almost gotten cold feet and
backed out at the last second. But she hadn’t.

Once it was all over, Ann knew that she
had to get out of Smithtown. She had suddenly felt like she was
living in a fish bowl and that everyone hated her for what she’d
done. She wanted to leave town as soon as possible, to get away
from the narrow minds and to get on with her life. To start anew
with a clean slate. Columbus seemed to be the most obvious
destination. It wasn’t far away, but far enough …

Ann heard Amy coming up the stairs and
attempted to compose herself. Moments later she went across the
hall to her daughter’s bedroom. Amy was rifling through her drawers
when Ann entered.

“
Do you know where my navy
blue sweater is, Mom?” she asked.

“
I think it’s hanging in
your closet, honey,” Ann replied. “It’s a wonder you can find
anything in this room!” she added, staring aghast at the piles of
clothes thrown all over the floor and on the bed.

Amy ignored her comment and went over
to the closet.

“
What movie are you going to
see?” Ann asked curiously.

“
Not sure yet. Probably the
new Christian Slater one. I can’t remember the name of
it.”

“
Isn’t that rated R?” Ann
asked. She knew that it was. She’d seen a preview for it on
television the other day.

Amy found the sweater and glanced over
at her mother, a smirk on her face. “Yeah, but we’ll get
in.”

Ann wanted to protest but didn’t. She
stood and watched Amy as she flung the sweater on the bed and took
off her robe; in awe of how quickly her little daughter was growing
up. The freckles on her fair skin were barely noticeable now. The
baby fat was gone and her breasts were nearly as large and full as
her own. Amy’s proportions had become more defined as well. Longish
legs, tiny waist, slender hips. And the cherubic face had suddenly
taken on a young woman’s countenance—high cheekbones, full lips,
aquiline nose and haunting green eyes, all framed by a thick,
luxurious mane of auburn hair.

Amy sat down on the edge of the bed and
pulled on a pair of faded blue jeans that fit so tight they looked
as though they were painted on. She stood up again, put on a
cream-colored knit blouse then the sweater.

“
Have you met any
interesting boys at school yet?” Ann asked as Amy slipped into a
pair of loafers.

“
A few,” she mumbled,
feigning disinterest.

“
Don’t you have a school
dance coming up soon?”

“
Homecoming.”

“
Are you going?” Ann
inquired.

“
Don’t know, yet. Doubt it,
though,” she replied.

“
How come?”

“
No one goes to school
dances at Woodcrest, I’ve heard. Just nerds and
cheerleaders.”

“
That’s odd,” Ann said.
“Everyone went to school dances when I was your age. In fact, the
‘nerds’ were usually the ones who didn’t go,” she added.

Amy stepped over to the vanity and
started putting on her makeup. “That was eons ago, Mom.”

“
Thanks a lot!”

“
Just kidding!” Amy chided.
“Anyway, this isn’t Smithtown. Kids are a lot cooler up
here.”

Ann wondered what constituted
coolness
… drugs and sex? She shuddered at the thought.
“So what do you think of the high school now that you’ve had a
chance to settle in?”

Amy carefully applied her eyeliner.
“It’s awfully big, that’s for sure. I think I’ll like it better
when I’m no longer a
freshman
.” She spoke the last word as
if it left a bad taste in her mouth.

Ann asked, “Are the upper classmates
giving you a hard time?”

“
Some of them. There’s a lot
of snobs at Woodcrest, I’ve noticed.”

“
There are snobs everywhere,
honey,” Ann declared.

Amy reached for the blow dryer and
said, “Maybe. But there are a lot of
rich
snobs at
Woodcrest. There’s a difference, you know.”

With that, Amy switched on the hair
dryer and Ann realized that their little chat was over. She
returned to her own bedroom, slipped out of the uncomfortable black
dress she was wearing, put on her robe and slipped into her house
slippers before going downstairs to the bathroom. Ann turned on the
water for her bath and was sampling the temperature when she heard
a horn honking out front. She ran out to the living room window and
parted the curtains to find Amanda’s mother’s car pulled up in the
driveway. After making a gesture with her hand, Ann ran upstairs to
alert Amy that her friend had arrived.

“
Shit!” Amy hissed as she
turned off the hairdryer. “She’s early!”

Ann ignored the profanity—she’d almost
gotten used to it by now. “Do you want me to ask them to come
inside to wait until you’re ready?”

“
No, I’m as ready as I’m
going to be. I hate my fucking hair!”

Ann cringed at the sound of the “f”
word coming from her daughter’s lips. This time she wasn’t going to
excuse it. “You’d better start watching your mouth, young lady! Do
you realize how vulgar that sounds?”

Amy glared at Ann defiantly. “Come on,
Mother! You say it all the time!”

“
That doesn’t give you the
right to, though. Not in my house!”

Amy held her mother’s stare and
spurted, “Oh, Mom—get a life!” She stormed out of the
room.

Ann wanted to chase after her and give
her a good piece of her mind but stopped herself. She knew they’d
only get in a fight, and Ann wasn’t in the mood for it. When she
heard the front door creak open, she hurried down the stairs just
as Amy was halfway out the door.

“
Come home right after the
movie, Amy!” she yelled after her.

The door slammed shut.

Sometimes, I’d like to crown that
little brat,
Ann thought. With a long sigh, she went back to
the bathroom and closed the door.

After her bath, Ann threw on an old
faded Ohio State sweatshirt and a pair of sweat pants before
retreating to the family room. After turning on the television, she
went over to the bar and took out an opened bottle of white wine
from the refrigerator. After pouring herself a glass, she plopped
down on the sofa.

She sipped her wine and glanced over at
the television—yet another new sit-com was premiering on the
channel she was watching. She set the wine glass down on the coffee
table and reached for the paperback she had started reading a
couple of days ago. It was a true story about a young girl in
Omaha, Nebraska who had been abducted then murdered by a deranged
serial killer and previously convicted child molester. Deciding
that the subject matter was hardly what she felt like delving into
at the moment, Ann picked up the other three books lying on the
table and scanned the titles. She finally opted for a romance novel
that Amy had no doubt bought but never finished reading then
settled back in the sofa and turned to the first
chapter.

Ann was halfway through the third
chapter when she thought she heard a scraping sound outside. She
shot a glance toward one of the two windows that faced the backyard
and listened for a moment but heard nothing more. Feeling her pulse
quickening, she pressed the television mute button on the remote
control and listened again. Nothing. She was just about to switch
the sound back on when she heard the noise again, this time coming
from the direction of the other window. In an instant, she sprung
up and ran over to the window to look out. The reflection of the
room lights in the glass made it difficult to see beyond it so she
cupped her hands against the windowpane to blot out the ambient
light and squinted her eyes.

At first she couldn’t see anything
except light coming from the bathroom window, realizing now that
she had forgotten to turn it off. Both the bathroom and family room
faced the backyard and were adjacent to one another, the family
room jutting out further into the yard where it had been added on
to the rest of the house. She felt her heart thumping rapidly in
her chest as she stared out into the darkness and waited for her
eyes to adjust. From this vantage point she could see the entire
backyard, including the white picket fence that surrounded it and
formed the boundary with her neighbors’ houses on either side. She
stood there for a couple of minutes, surveying the yard in the dim
light coming from the bathroom window. After she eyed the gate
located at the far end of the house near the backdoor and saw that
it was closed and presumably locked, she finally stepped back from
the window and breathed a sigh of relief.

This is crazy! she thought. For the
second time that night she thought she’d heard something out back,
and both times had been false alarms. Why was she being so
paranoid? she wondered. Stress? Or was she letting herself get all
worked up over Marsha’s murder? A murder that happened a week ago
and over a hundred miles away—

I need a
cigarette!

She fled the family room and went into
the kitchen to find her purse, which was lying on the counter. She
opened it up and was searching frantically inside for her
cigarettes when it suddenly dawned on her that she’d made a point
of throwing every pack she owned into the trash when she had
decided to quit smoking a couple of weeks ago. Cursing herself, she
debated whether or not to throw on a coat and drive to the
convenient mart to buy a pack. Then she recalled the pack she’d
found hidden under Amy’s dresser. She had stashed Amy’s cigarettes
in her own dresser as “evidence,” but hadn’t yet confronted
her.

Totally disregarding the fact that she
was about to break her vow never to smoke again, Ann ran up the
stairs to her bedroom and over to the dresser. She opened the top
drawer and found them neatly tucked away under her stockings.
Snatching up the opened pack of Marlboro Lights like an addict
about to give herself a fix, she slammed the drawer shut and ran
back downstairs to the family room.

With quivering hands, Ann lit up a
cigarette and inhaled deeply, the smoke feeling much harsher in her
lungs than her regular brand. Her nerves were frayed to a frazzle,
she realized, from the effects of the tumultuous, emotional week,
compounded by her sudden grim outlook for the future. A couple of
weeks ago she had actually started feeling like she was at last
adjusting to her new life as a transplanted divorcee, but Marsha’s
untimely death had thrown everything back into turmoil and brought
all her doubts to the surface once again.

And now, to top off everything else,
she was alone in this house and starting to hear things.

Ann took another drag, retrieved her
wine and sipped. She needed to calm her nerves; to try and relax,
get a hold of herself. Nothing has really changed, had it? she
thought. Her best friend has just been brutally raped and murdered
by an unknown assailant, and she was shocked and devastated by
this, but as Sam had told her: life goes on. She had to come to
grips with her loss, accept it, and let the healing process begin.
Marsha’s death had absolutely nothing to do with the present—her
insecurity of being alone and on her own, her concern over Amy’s
incorrigible and frightening behavior, her doubts about whether
she’d done the right thing in divorcing Sam. So why was she so
fucking edgy tonight?

Was she in fear for her own life? If
so, then why should she be? She was probably safer than anyone in
Smithtown was—Woodcrest was a hundred miles away and most likely
the last place on earth the murderer would be right now…

Hysteria,
Ann decided. That’s
it. She, along with every other woman who knew about Marsha’s
murder, was naturally going to feel a little temporary hysteria
right now, if not at least a little threatened. It was a perfectly
normal response, given the circumstances. There was a demented
madman on the loose who had just raped and strangled a poor
defenseless woman in her own home. No clues, no motives, and the
only material witness is a five-year-old who is so traumatized that
he can barely utter a single word. What woman wouldn’t be scared
out of her wits?

Ann took another drink of wine and
managed a weak smile. Amy would be home in a little while and she
would feel like her normal self again. She stubbed out her
cigarette, picked up the book and settled back in the sofa. Finding
the place where she’d left off, Ann resumed reading and was soon
totally absorbed in the developing plot. The heroine of the novel,
who ironically had just been recently divorced herself and had a
teenage child, no less, had just met a tall, dark stranger at the
public library. As Ann read on, she started relating the heroine’s
thoughts and actions to her own situation and before long decided
that maybe Karen Walker was right after all. Maybe she needed to
start seeing somebody and get her mind off her troubles…