Tainted Sand

Prologue

It didn't look like a house of horror. It was just a typical New England small white shingled cape, with two single dormers and an open breezeway which led to a one-car garage. It was only a mile from the center of the town of Lexington, in a neighborhood where everybody knew each other or thought they did...

Neighbors described them as a quiet couple, very polite but aloof, seldom joining in any group projects, always quite happy to be playing tennis or traveling together but it was all an illusion.

He turned on the TV to a tennis match, got out his racquet and planted his left foot behind his right one so he could push off with more power during his back swing. He bent his knees slightly, distributing his weight over the center of his body. Then as Arthur Ashe belted balls across the net, he lobed them back serving ball after ball back to the great Ashe. Sweat poured from his body but he stopped only when his glass was empty, to make yet another Manhattan and to admire his trim, athletic body in the mirror. By 4 o'clock he had worked himself into a pie-eyed frenzy. At this point nothing short of her never returning could have prevented what happened. But she did return.