Dearly Beloved Read online

  Dearly Beloved

  Wendy Corsi Staub

  Dear Reader:

  Back in the mid-1990s, I was an established author of young adult suspense and paranormal fiction when seemingly overnight the market for those books all but vanished. My editor suggested that I try my hand at an adult thriller, but I had mixed feelings about shifting gears. He soon went from suggesting to insisting, and, of course, I acquiesced. Little did I know that a brand-new career was about to be born!

  Around that time, my husband and I visited New England’s Block Island in the off-season. Spooked—and inspired—by the desolate atmosphere, I sat down and wrote Dearly Beloved. I set the novel on a fictionalized Atlantic coastal island and created a madman who lures three unsuspecting women there in the dead of winter to play out his own vengeful fantasy. To my surprise, my editor loved the book, and when it was published in 1996, so did readers.

  Flash forward sixteen years and eighteen adult thrillers (many of them bestsellers), and I find it hard to believe that I was ever ambivalent about the shift to adult fiction! I found my creative voice and hit my stride spinning twist-filled grown-up tales about characters to whom I could relate: ordinary people living ordinary lives. Ordinary people who were about to discover that danger can strike when—and where—they least expected it . . .

  Until now, my first six thrillers have been available only in print format. But I’m excited to reveal that HarperCollins has acquired the rights and is publishing them all as e-books! First up, fittingly, is Dearly Beloved. If you missed it the first time around and are in the mood for a good old-fashioned thriller that will keep you turning e-pages into the wee hours, look for it July 24, wherever e-books are sold.

  Thanks for reading!

  Wendy Corsi Staub

  Contents

  Dear Reader

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue

  An Excerpt from Nightwatcher

  Chapter 1

  An Excerpt from Sleepwalker

  Chapter 1

  An Excerpt from Shadowkiller

  Chapter 1

  About the Author

  Also by Wendy Corsi Staub

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  Sandy Cavelli glances at her watch as she hurries up the icy steps of the red-brick post office. Four-fifty-nine. She has exactly one minute to retrieve today’s mail before the place closes for the day.

  She hurries over to the wall that is a grid of rectangular metal doors and eagerly turns her round key in the lock of post office box 129. Jammed, as it always is on Mondays. Connecticut Singles magazine comes out on Friday mornings, and Sandy is beginning to believe that every guy in the greater Hartford area who doesn’t have a weekend date spends Friday and Saturday flipping through the classifieds in the back of the magazine, answering ads.

  She removes the bundle of letters from the box and does a quick mental count. Nine—no, ten. Ten eligible single men have responded to her ad this week. So far. If everything goes according to the pattern that has established itself over the past month, only two or three more letters will trickle in over the next few days. Then, if she chooses to run the ad again—she has to decide by six o’clock Wednesday—there will be a new stack of letters waiting in the box next Monday.

  Renting a post office box was definitely a good idea, Sandy reminds herself, even if it has set her back over thirty dollars. This way, she doesn’t have to deal with the questions her parents would undoubtedly have if she’d suddenly started getting a blizzard of mail at home every week. They would never go for the idea of their daughter’s placing an ad to meet a man through the classifieds. Christ, they still wait up if she stays out past midnight!

  Sandy walks slowly toward the double front doors, flipping through the envelopes as she goes. As usual, a few of them don’t have return addresses; the ones that do are mostly from Hartford or the immediate area. . . .

  But look at this one, from a post office box on Tide Island!

  Intrigued, Sandy shoves the other letters into her oversized black shoulder bag, then slides a manicured nail under the flap of the envelope.

  “Miss? We’re closing,” a uniformed postman says. He’s jangling a ring of keys and waiting expectantly by the front door.

  Sandy looks up. “Oh, sorry.”

  “No problem.” He smiles. His teeth are white and straight, and his eyes crinkle pleasantly. “Pretty cold out there, huh?”

  “Yup. It’s supposed to snow again overnight.”

  She doesn’t recognize him. He must be new. Almost every face in Greenbury is familiar; she has lived here all her life.

  She isn’t usually drawn to redheads. Still, he has a nice, strong jawline. And his hair is a burnished-auburn shade, and she likes the way it is cut—short on the sides, up over his ears, and slightly stubbly on top.

  “More snow? Where was all this white stuff a few weeks ago, for Christmas?” he asks good-naturedly, reaching out to open the door for her.

  “You got me.” Sandy shrugs and glances automatically at the fourth finger of his left hand.

  Married.

  Oh, well.

  “Thanks. Have a good night,” she says, walking quickly through the door.

  She pauses on the slippery top cement step to finish opening the letter she is still clutching.

  A brisk wind whips along High Street, sending a chill through Sandy as she slits the envelope open the rest of the way. Her teeth are starting to chatter. It’s too cold to read this letter out here, no matter how intrigued she is. She tucks it and the others into her purse and fumbles in her pockets for her gloves. Swiftly she puts them on and clings to the ice-coated metal railing as she picks her way down the four steps to the sidewalk.

  Then she gingerly goes, slipping and sliding every few steps in her black-suede flats, along the nearly empty street to her car in the Greenbury municipal lot around the corner. Her footsteps sound lonely and hollow on the brittle frozen pavement.

  Just a month ago, in the height of the holiday season, downtown Greenbury was strung with twinkling white lights and festive red bows bedecked the old-fashioned lampposts. Carols were piped into the frosty air from speakers at the red-brick town hall, and High Street bustled well past five o’clock on week nights.

  The picturesque, historic village is only fifteen miles outside of Hartford. Even the lifelong residents are aware of the postcard beauty in its white-steepled churches, window-paned storefronts, and broad common dotted with statues and fountains. And as one of the few small towns in central Connecticut that still has a thriving downtown commerce area, Greenbury performs a feat that’s becoming nearly impossible in America. It actually draws shoppers away from the malls and superstores that dot the suburban Hartford area.

  But now that Christmas is over, the businesses along High close early and downtown is almost deserted in the frigid January twilight.

  Sandy’s car is one of few left in the parking lot, which is really just a rutted, grassy area behind the town hall. She hurries toward the Chevy, stepping around patches of snow and absently noting the dirty chunks of ice that cling to the underside of the car just behind each wheel.

  She doesn’t bother kicking it off. The car is ugly enough anyway, with rust spots all over the body and a sheet of th
ick plastic covering the triangular opening in the back where a window is missing. She’s come to loathe the old clunker; it belonged to her father, and she’s long past being grateful to him for handing it down to her without making her buy it.

  She’s been saving for a new car—a new used car, of course—ever since she started working at the Greenbury Gal Boutique last spring. She blew a good chunk of her savings on community college tuition in August, and the spring semester bill will be due next week when she registers for classes. But that will still leave nearly four thousand dollars in her account. She socked away over five hundred dollars in December alone, when her commission checks were considerably higher than usual. Of course, that won’t keep up. The store was dead all day today, and her hours have already been cut way back.

  Sandy settles into the front seat, her breath puffing out in little white clouds. She whispers “brrr” and turns the key in the ignition. After a few tries, the engine turns over, and she adjusts the heat control to high. A blast of cold wind hits her in the face and she closes the black plastic vents. She’ll probably be home before the hissing air actually becomes warm, but she leaves it on high anyway.

  Eagerly, she reaches into her purse and retrieves the letter with the Tide Island return address. She takes out the single sheet of paper inside and notices that it’s real stationery, creamy and heavy.

  That’s a first, she thinks, pulling off her right glove with her teeth and leaving it clamped in her mouth.

  Most of the men who have responded to her ad so far have written on either yellow legal paper or their company letterhead.

  The interior light of her car burned out long ago. Sandy tilts the paper so she can see better in the filtered glow from the streetlamp a few feet away.

  Dear Sandra:

  I saw your ad in Connecticut Singles and was struck by how similar our interests are. You sound like the kind of woman I’ve been waiting for my whole life. Like you, I never thought I’d resort to personal ads to meet someone; but since I’m a medical doctor with a thriving practice, my hectic lifestyle makes it hard to meet anyone the traditional way. I’ve enclosed a photograph of myself . . .

  Photograph? Sandy frowns and checks the envelope. Yes, she missed it. There’s a picture tucked inside. She grabs it and holds it up in the light.

  He’s gorgeous! is her immediate reaction.

  He has rugged, outdoorsy good looks—and what a bod! He’s shirtless in the photograph, which was taken on a sailboat as he hauled the sheet in, or whatever people do on sailboats. Even in the shadows, Sandy can make out his bronzed, hairless chest and bulging arm muscles. He’s grinning into the camera, revealing a face that she instantly decides is honest, intelligent, and friendly.

  She anxiously turns back to the letter.

  . . . so that you’ll recognize me when we meet—which, I’m hoping, will be soon. However, I’m on call at the hospital every weekend until mid-February. I’ve taken the liberty of assuming you’ll agree to spend a romantic weekend with me on Tide Island, where I have a weekend house. Since I realize you may be hesitant about staying with a stranger, I’ve arranged accommodations for you at the Bramble Rose Inn. Your expenses will, of course, be paid entirely by me. I’m a romantic at heart, and hope you’ll agree that prolonging our meeting until Valentine’s Day weekend will add to the enchantment of what may become a lasting relationship. The innkeeper of the Bramble Rose, Jasper Hammel, has agreed to act as our liaison. You can call him at (508) 555-1493, to accept this invitation. I’ll look forward to our meeting, Sandra.

  Fondly,

  Ethan Thoreau

  Ethan Thoreau?

  Sandy shakes her head and tosses the letter onto the passenger’s seat beside her.

  This has to be a fake . . . some nut who gets his jollies by answering ads and propositioning strange women.

  Grimly, she puts on her seat belt and shifts the car into Drive. As she pulls out onto the street and turns toward home, she mentally runs through his letter again.

  He sounds too good to be true, a gorgeous MD with a name like Ethan Thoreau. Like a character in one of those category romance novels Sandy likes to read.

  A romantic Valentine’s Day weekend on an island.

  Yeah, right.

  Bramble Rose Inn—the place probably doesn’t even exist.

  Call the innkeeper.

  Sure. And find out that this whole thing is a stupid trick.

  Well, she should have known that sooner or later, some nut case was going to answer her ad. Her friend Theresa, a veteran of the singles classifieds, warned her that would happen.

  Still, what if there’s a chance that this guy is for real? After all, he did send a picture. . . .

  A doctor.

  A gorgeous, muscular doctor.

  A gorgeous, muscular doctor with a thriving practice and a weekend house on Tide Island.

  Sandy chews her lower lip thoughtfully as she rounds the corner from High onto Webster Street.

  Well, what if he is for real?

  Things like this happen, don’t they? Sure they do. She recalls reading, a few years back, about some lonely bachelor who had rented a billboard, advertised for a wife, and proposed to one of the women who responded before they ever met in person.

  This guy—this Ethan Thoreau—didn’t propose. All he’d done was invite Sandy to meet him. He doesn’t even expect her to stay with him.

  The Bramble Rose Inn. Jasper Hammel.

  Hmm.

  Sandy slows the car as she approaches the two-story raised cape where she lives with her parents. The house is pale green, the color of iceberg lettuce, and it desperately needs a paint job.

  A grime-covered, white panel truck bearing the name Cavelli & Sons, Plumbing and Heating Contractors sits in the short driveway. Sandy parks the Chevy behind it, inwardly groaning. Now that she’s on break from college, she likes to beat her father home at night so that she doesn’t have to get up early to move her car out of the way when he leaves in the mornings.

  She grabs her purse from the seat beside her. Then she thoughtfully picks up Ethan Thoreau’s letter and photograph.

  “So what’s the deal?” she asks, and sighs, her breath coming out in a milky puff of frost. “Are you real, or not?”

  Sighing, she puts the letter into her purse with the rest of them. Then she steps out onto the slippery driveway and makes her way along the frozen walk to the house.

  In the kitchen, Angie Cavelli is stirring a pot of sauce on the stove. The front of her yellow sweatshirt is splashed with greasy tomato-colored dots.

  “Hi, Ma,” Sandy says, closing the door behind her and stamping her feet on the faded welcome mat by the door.

  “You’re late,” her mother observes, then takes a taste from the spoon. “I thought you got off at four-thirty.”

  “I did. I had to run an errand afterward.” Sandy shrugs out of her coat and walks across the worn linoleum.

  “Your father’s already at the table. He wants to eat.”

  Sandy fights back the urge to say, then let him eat.

  After twenty-five years of living in this house, she should know better than to consider questioning her father’s rule. If you’re living in his house, when it’s five o’clock, you sit down at the dining room table and you eat. Everyone. Together.

  Sandy walks toward the hallway off the kitchen, carrying her purse.

  “Ah-ah-ah—where are you going?” her mother calls.

  “I just want to change my clothes. I’ll be right back down for supper, Ma. Two minutes.”

  “Two minutes,” her mother echoes in a warning voice. She’s already at the sink, dumping a steaming kettle of cooked pasta into the battered stainless steel strainer.

  In her room, Sandy kicks off her shoes and takes the letter out of her purse again.

  She stares at it.

  If she doesn’t call this Bramble Rose Inn place, she’ll probably always wonder whether she passed up the chance to meet a handsome, wealthy doctor.r />
  If she calls, she might find out that he actually has made paid reservations for her. That he really does exist.

  Sandy pauses for another minute, thinking it over.

  Then she takes the letter across the hall to her parents’ room. Unlike the rest of the house—including her own room—which holds an accumulation of several decades of clutter, Angie and Tony’s bedroom is spare. The walls are empty except for the crucifix hanging over the bed, and the only other furniture is a dresser and the wobbly bedside table. On that sits the upstairs telephone extension.

  Sandy perches carefully on the edge of the old white chenille spread, lifts the receiver, and starts dialing.

  Liza Danning hates Monday nights.

  Especially rainy, slushy Monday nights in early January, when you can’t get a cab and the only way of getting from the office on West Fortieth Street to your apartment on the Upper East Side is the subway. That, or a bus . . . and the glass shelters at the stops are so jammed that waiting for a bus that isn’t overcrowded to finally roll by would mean standing in the rain. Which wouldn’t be so bad if she had an umbrella.

  And she doesn’t.

  She’d left for work this morning from Alex’s place, where she’d spent the night. And since the sun had been shining brightly when they rolled out of bed, borrowing an umbrella from him, just in case, hadn’t occurred to her. Besides, she’d been too busy dodging his efforts to pin her down for next weekend.

  “I don’t know, Alex,” she’d said, avoiding his searching gaze as she slipped into her navy Burberry trench—a gift from Lawrence, an old lover—and tied the belt snugly around her waist. She’d checked her reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirror in his foyer and tucked a few stray strands of silky blond hair back into the chignon at the back of her neck. “I think I have plans.”

  “What plans?”

  She’d shrugged. “I’m not sure.”

  “You think you have plans, but you’re not sure what they are,” he’d said flatly.

  So she’d told him. She’d had no choice. “Look—” She bent to pick up her burgundy Coach briefcase. “I like you. Last night was great. So was Saturday. And Friday. But I’m not ready for an every-weekend thing, okay?”