Coming soon…
HOW THE PROPERTY LIES
A Mystery by Judith Anne Barton
PROLOGUE
1959
SOLEBURY TOWNSHIP
BUCKS COUNTY PENNSYLVANIA
Withered stalks of dried corn
bristled against him, their sharp-edged leaves razing his skin, so that beads
of his own blood mingled with that of the dead man on his back. His eyes now accustomed to the dark, he trudged
on, through the cloying stalks toward the woods beyond. Like a dumb animal with
blinders, he had no thought process, only an objective: get to the woods; dig a
grave.
Yet fragments of a recurring nightmare penetrated his frozen mind like
splinters of rusted metal. In the dream, he has murdered someone, quite unintentionally, and has to cover it up.
There are distorted tentacles of dread and disbelief as he realizes that guilt
and fear of discovery will plague him for the rest of his life.
He always wakes from that dream with a start, sweatsoaked, with shame, heavy and inescapable, crouching on
his heaving chest. Until he blinks his fogged brain clear and realizes: I didn’t do it. Oh, the relief! It was
like when he was a kid and almost wet the bed. That first grateful intake of
breath expanding his ribcage with joy, cleansing him of all sin. His sudden
innocence descending like the blessing of a priest’s hand on his head.
But this was horrifyingly real.
He heard his own breath coming in gasps, and he bent his head down
towards the dirt furrow beneath him, trying to expand his lungs as he staggered
under the weight and stink of the body sprawled like a crucifix across his
back.
A slight mist hovered over the cloying embrace of narrow winding
roads, glistening river, undulating hills,
and fertile fields of bucolic Bucks County. This vast stretch of familiar woods
and meadows that he traipsed belonged to his employer, the internationally
renowned actress Renata Rose, whose alliterative stage name was designed to fit
neatly on theatre marquees. Her property, called Willowbrook, encompassed fifty
acres, including a gracious fieldstone manor house, barn, cottage, pool,
and tennis court. Less than a two hour drive
from New York, it was a weekend refuge from the pressures of Broadway
and Hollywood. It was also notorious for
fabulously decadent house parties, attended by theater artists, intellectuals,
and sycophants.
Now, in the pitch of night, he reached the border of the cornfield, and
turned east onto the dirt path leading to the woods. Drooping brown sunflower
faces, their golden petals folding in like fringed yellow bonnets, hung their
heads in shame as he trudged past. A
distant owl hooted three times, reminding the man of the Father, the Son and
the Holy Ghost. This wasn’t the first commandment he’d broken.
Not quite
four months had elapsed since his adultery. He’d been trying to block out the
memory ever since. Now it all came hurtling back, a thumping boomerang inside
his head.
Renata had summoned him some time after midnight. An emergency, she’d
sobbed. He’d hung up the phone, and pulled on his jeans. Though he’d been drinking, it took him less
than three minutes to cross the gravel lane leading from the cottage to the
main house. She was waiting out back, on
the terrace, a half-full bottle of J &B in one hand and a monogrammed
crystal tumbler in the other. She fell into his arms, her tears smelling like
scotch and cigarettes.
“Stay with
me, Hutch, drink with me, I can’t be alone tonight.”
He’d kept
his arms at his sides, stunned by the suddenness of the physical contact; the
awkwardness of it. He was the handyman
for Christ’s sake; she was his boss.
Despite
himself, he was aroused. Not just because she was Renata Rose, the star.
There’d been an undercurrent of attraction between them from that day four
years ago when Renata took possession of
this property, his family’s farm, and hired he and Dory stay on.
The night
of the adultery, Dory was away in Scranton, visiting her sister and the new
baby. When she’d called him to say she’d arrived safely, he could hear the
catch in her voice, trying so hard not to reveal what it cost to see her sister
welcoming a third child, while she and Hutch had none. He hung up feeling
shamed that he hadn’t made Dory pregnant after eight years of marriage. The
doctor said it was her insides that were messed up, but Hutch wondered, feeling
less than the man he wanted to be. For
Dory, for himself.
He’d made
his way through a six-pack by the time Renata called.
“Hutch, I
need you!” Her silver voice was clotted,
husky.
He rushed
from the cottage to the main house, stumbling a little, his chest expanding
with the matching thud of footfalls and heartbeat.
Through
the screen door he called to her.
No
answer.
He walked
through the house to the terrace.
“Hutch.” There was relief in her
voice. She held out the bottle to him.
“A lady should never drink alone,” she said. Tears mingled with mascara sagged down her
cheeks like collapsoing ladders.
A white
silk robe, carelessly knotted, revealed a curve of breast, a swatch of
something black and shiny underneath the sash.
She
stretched her hand out to him then, saying, “Be my friend.” It wasn’t so much
what she said, it was how she said it.
She poured
him a drink and he took it. Then she leaned into him, crying. Her lover had called it off again. How many
times had he promised to tell his wife, to get the divorce! How many times
could a heart be broken? Oh, Hutch, hold me, hold me, I need a man tonight.
He came
hard, almost blacking out.
In the
teary aftermath, she’d told him he was the only man she could really count on.
She’d made him promise that he’d never let her down. Of course not, he’d
assured her, wanting to be out of there, away from her and what they’d
done. She’d sighed and passed out, her
mouth slack, her breath stinking of cigarettes and booze. And sex.
Hutch
slipped out of her as carefully as if he were easing away from a swaying cobra.
This event could never be repeated, never acknowledged. He vowed never to meet
her eyes again. He felt less manly now, more fragile than before.
As he
carried her into the house, he thought about Dory. She would be home tomorrow
afternoon. Their lives as housekeeper and handyman at Willowbrook would
continue.
Back in
the cottage, he showered until the hot water ran out, then rubbed himself dry
and put on clean pajamas, carefully focusing on fastening the buttons one by
one, as if freshly laundered fabric, painstakingly done up, could bleach out
sin.
And now, a
few months later, here he was, trudging through a sunflower field toward the
woods, his body bent beneath the dead weight he’d hoisted onto his back. Head down, breath heaving, he put one foot in
front of the other. Wan, watery light
from a sickle moon cast a finely netted shroud over the thick woods in the
distance.
Hutch felt
his shirt sticking to his chest. He breathed through his mouth, trying to avoid
the salty iron smell of sweat and fresh blood commingling. He forged ahead, the
woods coming closer now. The creeping horror of his task bore down on him like
an additional weight on his shoulders.
What am I doing?
He
staggered toward the silhouette of the treeline. Elongated branches
criss-crossed each other like prison bars in abstract. A ripple of breeze
stirred the late summer leaves like a stage whisper: No
going back now.
Past Projects...
Nonfiction (as Judi Barton)
The Best Letter Book Ever (Available on Amazon)
Plays
Opening Night
Prozac in the 50's
Mother's Milk
Father, Son, and Holy Script
Screenplays
Lines
Wedding in Tuscany
A Good Home
0 comments:
Post a Comment