Red Julie
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Synopsis
Soon after her graduation, Olivia is on the highway, late at night, heading home to Ogunquit when she comes upon an accident. A man is on his back, in the middle of the road, his legs caught in the wreckage of his overturned Mercedes. He grabs at Olivia's jacket and frantically mumbles to her something that sounds like, ‘red Julie'. The man dies at the scene, but not before he slips something into Olivia's jacket pocket. Will Olivia figure out what ‘red Julie' means and how her aunt really died that night before it is too late?
Release date: April 25, 2014
Publisher: J A Whiting / Jeri White
Print pages: 374
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Red Julie
J.A. Whiting
Chapter 1
Martin Andersen drove his black Mercedes 550 past the driveway of his beach house. His eyes scanned the darkness for people, cars, or anything that looked suspicious. The moon was high in the sky. The road was empty. He drove to the end of the quiet, side street and turned around, deciding that things looked safe.
His headlights illuminated the rising garage door and when it was fully elevated, the Mercedes eased into the middle bay of the three-car garage. Andersen immediately hit the button and waited for the door to close, and only then unlocked the car door and emerged into the blackness of his garage. Andersen stood in the hot dark, holding his breath.
Cold sweat caused his shirt to stick to his back. He could not detect anything out of the ordinary, so he entered the foyer of his four thousand square foot contemporary home but did not turn on any lights. He used a pen light to shine on the staircase that took him to the main living area on the second floor of the house.
Andersen could hear the ocean pounding against the rocks outside. He loved this house perched on a bluff of the rocky coast at Perkins Cove, Maine. The spectacular view, the layout, the grounds. He had worked hard and this house was one of the rewards of his financial good fortune.
But not tonight. Tonight he wished he was anywhere but here. He stood fixed at the top of the stairs, listening. His heart was hammering as his vision grew accustomed to the darkness in the room.
His eyes flicked about searching the shadows, making sure that he was alone. Sensing no one lurking, he hurried to the master bedroom to access the wall safe. A month ago he had fled without the contents of the safe. Andersen knew he was taking a chance returning tonight. His hands shook as he punched in the code, turned the knob, and swung open the small, heavy metal door.
Something to his right caught his attention and he turned to see the light on the security panel of his bedroom wall blinking red in the darkness, indicating that the door from the deck into the kitchen was open. He froze. A bead of sweat rolled down his forehead, traveled along his eyebrow to his temple and continued down the side of his face. Tension caused the membranes lining his throat to constrict so that he could barely take in any air.
He stuffed the cash and credit cards into his pants and rammed the gun into his jacket pocket. As his feet moved slowly across the plush carpeting, he was thankful that he had given in to Rodney’s insistence to carpet over the wood floors in this room for maximum quiet.
He listened at the door. He had to get to his car. Hearing nothing he sucked in a deep breath and took a step into the hallway. Andersen stood stock still trying to sense any movement in the dark space of his own home. Nothing. Did the security system malfunction? His auditory system still on high alert, he moved his feet inch by slow inch, holding his breath now, and crept down the hall. Andersen edged into the living room.
White, bright light flooded the space and stabbed Andersen’s optic nerve, the sudden transition from dark to light blinding him for half a second. Oh no. He squinted. Two men were standing near the far wall of his living room. Both were wearing suits giving the impression that they were businessmen, but Andersen knew better. Bile rose in his throat. His body coursed with adrenaline.
“Mr. Andersen,” the shorter man said in greeting. “We noticed that you had come home.”
The taller man had the hint of a smile on his mouth, but his eyes were cold and dead.
“How did you get in here?” Andersen said with forced indignation. His heart was beating like a jack hammer.
“You have something we want,” the shorter man said.
Andersen’s mind was racing. He knew what these men were capable of. He had to get to his car. He put his hand in his pocket and took a step towards the staircase that would lead back to the lower level garage.
“I would stay where you are, Mr. Andersen.” The shorter man lifted a gun and pointed it at Andersen’s chest.
From inside his pocket, Andersen adjusted his trembling hand and his index finger found and contracted against the small piece of metal. His gun fired through the fabric of his jacket into the man’s stomach. Not what Andersen was aiming for, but it would do. The man jolted, dropped his gun, and slipped to the floor.
Andersen whirled for the door to the garage and, pulling his gun from his pocket, shot wildly at the taller man. His panic and inexperience caused the bullet to travel low, missing the man’s core, but grazing him in the calf of his left leg which was enough to slow him down.
Andersen’s foot missed the top step of the staircase and his feet scrambled in the empty air attempting to find something solid. His back cracked into the stair treads and he careened down fourteen marble steps to the foyer floor. Gasping, he half crawled, half ran into the garage and to the Mercedes. He flung the driver side door open, but before he could get in, a hand caught his shoulder. The darkness of the garage shrouded the facial features of the man who gripped him, but Andersen knew who it was.
He twisted to the right and used the elbow of his right arm to smack the attacker in the throat. The attacker grunted and paused, but his hands were like iron and they clamped around Andersen’s neck as the man’s knee came up and caught Andersen in the groin. Andersen groaned and tried to contort himself away. He gripped his attacker’s throat with his left hand while raising his right hand which still held his gun. A blast filled the air, but it was not from Andersen’s weapon.
Andersen doubled over from the bullet that entered his gut just as he pulled the trigger of his own weapon. That bullet hit the attacker in the shoulder and sent him reeling back onto the floor of the garage. Andersen had a grip on the man’s necklace, the chain twisted between his fingers, and it ripped off in his hand as the man hurtled backwards.
Andersen staggered to his car, punched the button to raise the garage door, and stomped the gas pedal, sending the car flying back, scraping the roof of the Mercedes against the rising door.
The moonlight danced over Andersen’s car as it shot up Shore Road and veered onto Route 1 towards the highway. In minutes, the headlights of a speeding car showed in Andersen’s rearview mirror and, wheezing and gripping the steering wheel, he pressed harder on the gas pedal. The loss of blood combined with the pain of the bullet lodged in his core caused his vision to blur and he fought to keep the car on the road.
A blast sent a bullet into the back window of the Mercedes, shattering the glass with a roar. Andersen flinched and his car swerved into the opposite lane.
He took the turn for the highway too widely going close to ninety miles an hour. A man in an oncoming vehicle had only a second to react to the black missile flying toward him. He jammed on his brake and pulled the wheel to the right, but this action only presented the driver’s side to the Mercedes, which exploded into it, crushing the car and killing its occupant instantly.
The Mercedes flipped over twice and filled the air with a sickening screech of crushing metal as the car skidded on its roof to a stop.
The car in pursuit of Andersen jolted to a halt just in front of the smashed car. Two men jumped from the vehicle, one limping, the other clutching at his bloody shoulder. The limping man was the one with dead eyes who had earlier been standing in Andersen’s living room. Blood soaked one leg of his pants. He stood next to the car while the other man strode to the overturned Mercedes.
Andersen was lying in the street on his back, his blood pooling under him, his legs caught in the mangled wreckage. He opened his eyes as the man with the bloody shoulder approached. The man held a knife. The light from the streetlight glinted off the blade. He knelt.
Andersen’s screams would have frozen the blood of anyone who heard them.
Chapter 2
Olivia forced herself to sit straighter in the driver’s seat as she turned the radio up and opened her window a crack to let the cool, late-night breeze flow against her face. She shook her head a bit to throw off the drowsiness that had come over her. The movement loosened some of the light brown, shoulder length hair from her ponytail.
She was glad that she had waited until midnight to leave Medford to make the trip north because she had the highway mostly to herself, but now her eyelids were feeling heavy as she traveled the final few miles to the off ramp that would lead her to Route 1. She always felt happy anticipation on the trip to Maine and she was looking forward to being in her aunt’s house on the coast again. Only it wasn’t her aunt’s house anymore. It was Olivia’s house now, and this would be the first time she stayed there as the owner.
She breathed a heavy sigh. Olivia still couldn’t believe that Aggie was dead, gone for a month now, and that she wouldn’t be there to greet Olivia as she pulled into the driveway. Aggie had raised Olivia from the time she was a year old, and while Olivia was growing up they divided their time between Cambridge, Massachusetts and Ogunquit.
Just over a year ago, Aggie had given up her apartment in Cambridge when she decided to retire from her teaching position at Boston College law school. She made the Ogunquit beach house her permanent residence. Olivia rented an apartment with one of her friends near the Tufts University campus while she was a student there, but the beach house was where she called home. Olivia loved the house and the town of Ogunquit as much as Aggie had.
When Olivia saw the highway sign indicating the exit for Ogunquit and the Yorks, she put her blinker on and moved the car to the right lane to take the ramp. The headlights cut through the darkness, and Olivia’s eyes widened as she slammed on her brakes, causing her Jeep to skid onto the right shoulder of the exit.
A car was overturned near the end of the ramp, resting on its roof. Another car with its side and front end crushed was facing the wrong way in the street. Olivia thought she could make out someone in the shadows running away from the overturned car. There were no other people in sight.
Olivia flung her door open, leaped from the driver’s seat and ran to the overturned vehicle. A man was on his back in the road, half in and half out of the car, his legs tangled in the metal. His eyes were closed. Blood covered his chest, stomach, neck, and face. Olivia knelt beside him. She gingerly touched his shoulder. The man’s eyes popped open. Olivia jumped.
“It’s okay. You’ll be okay,” she said. The man grabbed at Olivia’s arms.
“Hold on. I’ll be right back,” she told him. The man made grunting noises deep in his throat and shook his head. His eyes were wide and wild. Olivia pulled away as he was trying to grab her jacket.
“I need to get my phone. I’m going to call the ambulance.” Olivia ran to her car and grabbed the phone out of her bag. She punched in ‘911’ and reported the accident as she rushed back to the man.
“They’re coming. Help’s on the way.” Olivia knelt. She glanced at the other crumpled car. No one emerged from it. No one else was on the road.
The man on the ground grasped Olivia’s jacket lapels. His eyes bulged. He gibbered at her. Mouthfuls of blood spilled from between his open lips. Olivia’s stomach lurched but she fought to keep her face neutral.
“You’ll be okay,” she told him with a shaky voice. The man tried to raise his head while still gibbering at her, his hand clutching the side of her jacket.
“Reh,” he mumbled. “Reh…oo…ee.” The man pulled at Olivia to draw her closer. She leaned down and put her ear near to his mouth.
“Reh…oo…ee,” he managed between ragged breaths. “Oo…ee.”
Olivia strained to understand him. “Julie? Are you asking for Julie?” She peered into the vehicle. She hadn’t even thought to look inside the car for anyone else.
“It’s empty. I don’t see anyone,” Olivia told him.
The man shook his head and repeated, “reh…oo…ee.” He turned his face to the side as he coughed up blood.
Olivia heard sirens. “I hear them. They’re coming. Help’s coming.” She gave the man a thin smile.
The man looked over Olivia’s shoulder and horrible noises let loose from his throat. His eyes were frantic and he grabbed at her wildly, his shoulders rocking from side to side. Olivia turned her head to her right. She startled. A man in a dark suit stood just behind her. He stared down at the man on the road.
“I didn’t hear you come up. The ambulance is coming,” she told the person in the suit. He did not look at her, only down at the man in the road. His eyes were like cold steel. His right hand was in the pocket of his suit jacket. The man on the ground contorted trying to free himself from the wreckage. Roaring noises ripped from his throat.
Olivia looked from the man on the ground to the standing man. A chill ran down her back. Her heart thudded against her chest.
“Step back,” Olivia told the man standing over them. He didn’t look at her. He didn’t move.
Olivia raised her voice and glared at him. “I said step back.” The man in the suit took a step closer and Olivia noticed that his pant leg was wet. There was a tiny puddle that looked sticky and wet on the street where he had stood a moment before.
The man shifted his steely gaze to Olivia. Her heart stopped. As the man’s right hand twitched in his pocket, a car heading down the ramp skidded to a stop and a young man and woman jumped out and raced towards them.
The man in the suit turned his head to look at the couple. His face was calm, expressionless, but the muscles of his jaw twitched. A police car, siren screaming, shot up the street to the ramp from the direction of Route 1 with two ambulances chasing behind.
Olivia turned back to the man on the ground. His eyes were wide but now they were transfixed. His hands had dropped by his sides. He was still.
A paramedic ran to them carrying his medical bag and crouched down. His gloved hand reached for the man’s neck to check for a pulse. Olivia stepped back, her arms wrapped tightly around her body. Tears gathered in her eyes. She was trembling. A police officer was at her side.
“Were you in the car, Miss?”
Olivia blinked at him and shook her head. “No, no. I was driving down the ramp.” She pointed back to her car. “It was like this already.” She gestured to the over-turned car.
The paramedics were covering the man from head to toe with a sheet. Olivia’s throat constricted. She blinked to keep her tears from spilling. Three or four people had gathered and stood off to the side of the exit ramp watching. Someone handed Olivia some alcohol moistened towels to wipe the blood from her hands.
“I’d like to take your statement, Miss,” the officer told her and nodded to his car parked at the end of the ramp. Olivia walked with him to his cruiser. Her body seemed filled with ice and her hands felt numb. As she walked to the police cruiser, she scanned the people who had gathered to watch. The man in the suit was not among them.
Olivia gave her statement to the police officer. Other officers arrived and flares were placed on the ramp. The few cars exiting the highway were instructed to travel onto the grass just off the road shoulder in order to get around the accident scene.
Back in her car, Olivia inched down the street, weaving around the safety personnel and the gawkers who had assembled. She glanced at the ambulance as she passed. Her hands twitched on the steering wheel.
Olivia was only seven miles from reaching her house but she was still shaking and the road seemed to swim before her. She removed one hand from the steering wheel and shook it, then did the same with her other hand.
Approaching a roadside café that was open twenty-four hours, she pulled into the parking lot and parked near the front entrance. Images of the accident scene flashed in her mind and she swallowed hard.
She rummaged in her bag for tissues. He died. I couldn’t help him. She sat for a few minutes trying to calm herself. What did he say? Where’s Julie? Red Julie?
Olivia could see some teenagers in one of the booths near the window, laughing and talking. She sighed, got out of the car, and walked into the café, where she ordered a takeout coffee from the girl behind the counter.
The girl stared at Olivia’s jacket.
Olivia looked down and saw that blood was smeared over the front of the tan blazer. Handprints were outlined in blood on the fabric of the arms.
“I just came from an accident,” she hurriedly explained.
The lights seemed too bright and hurt her eyes, and the cooking smells of the greasy late night breakfasts turned her stomach. The waitress returned, snapped the plastic lid over the coffee cup, placed it in front of Olivia, and turned to the cash register to ring in the sale.
Reaching into her jacket pocket for the twenty dollar bill she had put there before she left her Medford apartment earlier that night, her fingers bumped something small and hard.
Olivia pulled her hand from her pocket and her eyes went wide. She was holding a thick gold cross attached to a heavy gold chain.
The cross was elaborately carved and had a sunburst design in the center of it. In the middle of the sunburst was a small silver skull with a large diamond embedded in each of the eye sockets. The sunburst’s rays radiated in gold and silver from the center skull and were decorated with diamonds of varying sizes. The initial “S” was engraved on the back. The clasp was broken off. There were tiny splotches of blood on the cross and chain.
Olivia gaped at the necklace in her hand like she had never encountered a piece of jewelry. What the heck? Reacting to instinct, she clenched her fingers over the cross to hide it from anyone who might be looking her way and shoved it back into her pocket. The man from the accident must have put it in my pocket.
Her eyes darted around the room to see if anyone had noticed what she was holding. No one was looking at her. She paid for the coffee and hurried back to her car, wiping the specks of blood from her fingers against her jeans.
* * *
It was two in the morning when Olivia turned onto Obed’s Lane and drove slowly down to Whitney Way. The land in this area of Ogunquit had been owned by Aggie’s husband’s family for over one hundred years. In the early 1900s, parcels had gradually been sold off to other people.
Olivia’s house was a three bedroom brick ranch. Its lot was small, but it sat overlooking the ocean, affording a magnificent view from almost every window. The Marginal Way edged along the front of the property. The Way was a mile and a quarter paved public foot path which wound along the cliffs and rocky shoreline of the Atlantic Ocean meandering between shrubs of rosa rugosa and bayberry. The path extended from Shore Road to Perkin’s Cove.
Olivia turned into her driveway and parked in front of the one car garage. She walked around to the back lawn. There was a small stone patio with pots of red geraniums and pink and white impatiens scattered around. The moon lit up the night and made a path of silver across the ocean. Olivia took a deep breath of the sea air and stood for a long time, still, quiet, and alone, looking out over the Atlantic.
She shifted her gaze to her neighbor’s backyard and smiled at the manicured lawn and the borders of flowers edging his property. Joe was a master gardener whose yard was always bursting with blooms in spring, summer, and fall. Tourists walking by on the Way often stopped to admire Joe’s gardens, and if he happened to be out trimming or deadheading, people would engage him in discussions about what he had planted and how he cared for them. Joe was always eager to help and he patiently and good-naturedly answered the same questions over and over.
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