I Scream, You Scream

by Watson, Wendy Lyn

He sighed heavily and let go of my hand. But rather than simply let me leave, he climbed out himself. In the faint ambient light, I could see his pale form rise out of the water, then hold open my towel for me.

  “Come on. I don’t want you catching chill.”

  Reluctantly, I pulled myself up and stepped close enough to let him wrap the towel around me. I couldn’t hold back a shivery-sounding sigh of relief when he tucked the towel closed and moved away.

  He flicked a wall switch to turn on the track lighting over the deck. I blinked at the sudden brightness, but not before I saw Finn drop the towel from his waist and step back into his shorts. I shivered, nothing but a scrap of terrycloth between me and the whole great big scary world.

  When I grew used to the light, I found Finn facing me. “I’m sorry. Look, I’m not angry about you dumping me anymore. Hell, you did me a favor. God, Tally, I loved you like crazy, but if we’d stayed together . . . can you imagine what a disaster that would have been?”

  His words nearly brought me to my knees.

  I had told myself the same thing for years—that following Finn would have been nothing but a misery in the end—but to hear him say it, to know he was happier having lived without me, felt like a punch to the kidneys. Right at that moment, with my future prospects fading fast, losing the promise of the past, the bittersweet might-have-been possibilities, was more than I could bear.

  “So I’m sorry I snapped at you, but don’t you think you’re overreacting?” He spoke in quiet, measured tones, as though he were still trying to keep his temper in check. “I’ll admit sleeping with Brittanie was not my finest moment. But we were consenting adults—single consenting adults—who had a fling. It’s not like I did anything illegal.”

  “Really?” I whispered.

  “Of course, really. What do you—? Oh.” He raised his hand in a placating gesture and took a step in my direction. I took a step back, to keep my distance, but I didn’t have much room to maneuver without going back in the pool.

  “You were at the luau that night,” I said.

  “Tally, you can’t honestly believe I had anything to do with Brittanie’s death.”

  “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

  Finn narrowed his eyes and held my gaze, the force of his will a solid thing between us.

  “Believe me.”

  An elemental desire to throw myself into his arms, lose myself in him, nearly overwhelmed me. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe.

  “Tally,” he murmured. “You can’t be afraid of me.”

  But I was. Desperately afraid.

  Even as I raised a trembling hand to ward him off, reason told me Finn Harper didn’t kill Brittanie Brinkman. Yet he terrified me.

  Because in the few weeks Finn Harper had been back in Dalliance, I’d started thinking that I could strip away the years of suburban hausfrau just like old varnish and get back to the fresh and vibrant girl I’d been. The girl full of promise and passion. The girl Finn Harper loved.

  But in the instant he admitted to sleeping with Brittanie, I saw with dizzying clarity the great long time that had passed since Finn and I had last gone skinny-dipping in his mama’s pool. Nearly half my life. Nearly half Finn’s life. We’d both made and lost friends, loved other people, become other people.

  We were strangers.

  And Tally Jones could never be Tally Decker again.

  A wave of adrenaline surged through my body. It felt just like the panic attack I’d had at the Zeta alumni house, but I couldn’t get it together to hum my way through it.

  Fight or flight.

  Flight won.

  Rapid, shallow breaths left me light-headed. My one rational thought, that my clothes were inside Finn’s house, dissolved beneath the compulsion to put distance between us.

  I spun on my heel, and I ran. Finn called my name, but that only made me move faster.

  I didn’t feel anything—the cold night air raising gooseflesh all over my body, the slice of the gravel walkway on the soles of my feet, or even a lick of shame—as I fled into the night, wearing nothing but a towel.

  chapter 26

  I slipped down the pitch-black tunnel between Mrs. Harper’s house and her cedar privacy fence, stepping on a garden hose as I ran, yelping when the soft rubber gave way beneath my foot like a live thing, then stumbling through the small cluster of trash and recycling containers standing sentinel at the corner of the house, and lunging into the front yard like a sprinter falling on the finish line.

  I staggered in one direction, then another, like a mime walking into an imaginary gale. The animal instinct to move grappled with my utter lack of a destination. Behind me, I could hear Finn, still calling for me in a tense stage whisper. He cursed softly, and something clattered against the side of Mrs. Harper’s house.

  Finn was following me.

  Had I been the slightest bit rational, I would have stopped where I stood and waited for Finn to emerge into the ambient glow of the streetlights. I would have let him take me by the hand and lead me back inside his mother’s house. I would have fetched my clothes from the family room and gotten dressed in the powder blue half bath, while Finn made me a cup of strong black tea in his cherry red teapot. I might have made some sheepish apology, which he would wave away, and he would have covered over the awkwardness with a goofy joke and a clumsy hug before driving me to the police station to deal with Cal.

  But that night I was about as rational as a rabid raccoon.

  I ducked around a thick stand of ornamental bamboo, then surveyed the street around me and took off in the direction of the only other familiar house in the neighborhood. Darting from hedgerow to hedgerow, cowering in the shadows of cherry laurels and nandinas, I made my furtive way to the home of Dub and Honey Jillson.

  Their house was lit up like Christmas, every window blazing. I felt utterly exposed as I slunk up to the front door and rang the bell.

  “Please, please, please,” I muttered under my breath. Please be home. Please let Honey answer the door instead of Dub. Please don’t be having a dinner party.

  “Oh, thank you,” I gasped, as the oak door opened a crack and Honey Jillson, in a pink velour tracksuit, peered out.

  “Tallulah Jones?”

  “Hey, Miz Jillson. I hate to impose, but could I trouble you for . . .” I looked down at my own sorry self. “Well, for a robe and a phone?”

  She opened the door wider. “Of course, dear. Do come in out of the cold.”

  Bless her heart, she didn’t say a word about her neighbors seeing a naked lady on her porch or even the fact that it was nigh on midnight and not really an appropriate time to come calling. Just opened her door and invited me in like the gracious Southern hostess she was.

  “Why don’t we just go sit in the den? Dub lit a fire in the fireplace for me before he went out with his lodge brothers, so it’s nice and toasty.”

  “That sounds like heaven,” I said.

  She ushered me into a spacious room with split beams running across the ceiling and wide-plank pine floors. Chocolate leather furniture dominated a space made softer by Southwestern-style textiles: throws, rugs, and wall hangings. A fire roared in the massive fireplace, and above the oak beam mantel hung the obligatory bronze Texas star.

  “Let me just run upstairs and fetch you a robe,” Honey said. “There’s a phone right there on the end table.”

  I trotted over to the phone and quickly dialed home.

  “Hello?”

  “Bree! It’s Tally. I’m at Honey Jillson’s house, and I don’t have any clothes, and I really, really need you to come pick me up.”

  “No, Grandma Peachy,” Bree answered. “I’m not sure when Tallulah will be getting in tonight.”

  “Bree?”

  “Yes,” she continued, “I’d be happy to pick up your prescription, but Alice has my car. Right. I know that show you like about the police is on tonight, but right now, I’m stuck.”

  “Bree, are the police there?”
<
br />   “Uh-huh.”

  “Oh, crap,” I said.

  I heard a tussle on the other end of the line, then Cal’s voice. “Tally Jones, where the heck are you? You’re in a pile of trouble, little girl. I’ve got a warrant for your arrest.”

  “Cal, I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  He sighed. “I’m inclined to believe you. But the DA is in an all-fired hurry to close this case, and he got the indictment. It was out of my hands. The best thing for you to do right now is turn yourself in.”

  “No.”

  “Tally, you look guilty as sin by running. And where are you gonna go?”

  I didn’t have even the faintest idea how to answer him, so I hung up.

  I pulled the towel closer around me and, in a daze, wandered around the room.

  I was drawn immediately to a cluster of framed family photos on a wrought-iron console table. They seemed so solid, so homely, an anchor of normalcy in a sea of crazy.

  There was Honey with Dub on their wedding day, Dub standing ramrod straight in his narrowlapelled suit and Honey radiant in a smartly tailored gown and fingertip veil. Another picture of Dub with two men who must be his brothers, all posed on sleek dark horses. Honey standing in a half circle of women in neat floral dresses and wide-brimmed hats, one crouching low with a sign that read DALLIANCE, TX, MASTER GARDENERS.

  A picture of Honey in a plaid dress, her hair cut to her shoulders and flipped up at the ends, holding a towheaded baby. Miranda.

  And, finally, a picture of a teenager, taken on a beach—Galveston, perhaps. Her tawny hair blew in a wild tangle around her suntanned face, and eyes the color of the twilight sky flashed with laughter.

  For an instant, I saw nothing but those eyes, that halo of caramel hair, and I thought it was a copy of the picture of Brittanie that Wayne kept on his desk. But this girl’s hair was darker, the nose longer, the mouth fuller. And the girl’s outfit—a pink-and-green-striped rugby shirt over a golf shirt with the collar flipped up—dated the photo to the early to mid- 1980s. Miranda.

  “Here you go,” Honey said.

  I spun around and found her holding out a long terry robe. I took it with a smile.

  “There’s a powder room right there,” she added, and pointed me toward a door just to the left of the table of pictures.

  I shut myself in the bathroom and slipped on the robe. I turned on the water and waited for it to get warm, all the while doing a little rudimentary math in my head. I washed the scent of chlorine from my hands and face with the freesia bathroom soap and felt quite a bit better about life.

  When I emerged from the bathroom, I found Honey sitting on the big leather sofa, sipping tea from a delicate china cup. She patted the seat next to me, and when I dutifully sat she handed me my own steaming cup of chamomile tea with honey and lemon.

  “Did you make your phone call, dear?”

  I took a sip of the tea, but it scalded the tip of my tongue. “Yes, ma’am. I was hoping my cousin Bree could come pick me up, but she can’t. If you don’t mind me borrowing your robe, I’ll just drive myself home.” Of course, my car keys were in Finn’s family room. And I didn’t have any money for a cab. I figured I’d either have to hoof it home or hunker down in Honey’s nandina bushes until morning.

  “Don’t worry about that,” Honey soothed. “You just sit here and have a nice cup of tea with me. Keep me company.”

  “I, uh, was admiring your family photos,” I said. “Miranda was a really beautiful girl.”

  Honey smiled. “Yes, she was. She was all the best of me and Dub.”

  “You know, I met a man the other day named Eddie Collins. I think he went to the junior prom with Miranda.”

  She stiffened, and her eyes narrowed just a touch. “You must be mistaken. Miranda didn’t go to her junior prom. She had mono that year. She missed nearly her entire spring semester.”

  Bingo.

  I’d lived in a small Southern town my whole life. I knew that “having mono” was code for “being pregnant.” And the timing was just right. Miranda Jillson, with the golden hair and striking violet eyes, had “mono” just a few months before Brittanie Brinkman, with the golden hair and striking violet eyes, was born. There was a reason Brittanie looked nothing like Fred and Linda Brinkman: they weren’t her biological parents.

  No wonder Brittanie seemed to lead such a charmed life. She had a real-live fairy godmother—Honey Jillson—who sat on the board that awarded the Regents’ Scholarship and made sure Brittanie got the plum internships with Sinclair’s and in the mayor’s own office.

  I blew gently across the surface of my tea, thinking about the fact that stoner Eddie Collins was probably Brittanie’s father. I wondered if he knew.

  “So, Tallulah, I understand you’re in a bit of a bind.”

  “Yes, ma’am?” I was in several binds at the moment, and I wasn’t sure which one Honey was talking about.

  “Dub mentioned when he got home that city hall was abuzz with the news that you’d been indicted for murder.”

  She said it calmly, as though she were commenting on a particularly mild winter or the rising price of fresh produce.

  “Miz Jillson—”

  “Honey.”

  “Honey, I promise you I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Oh, I know that, dear. Anyone can tell you’re not a criminal. But, on the other hand, I certainly can see how the authorities would be suspicious of you. After all, not only did Wayne run around on you like a randy hound dog, but the ink was barely dry on your divorce papers when he proposed to another woman.”

  “Wayne actually hadn’t proposed yet. Just bought the ring,” I said softly.

  Honey looked mildly baffled for an instant. “Oh. Of course. JoAnne Simms mentioned that Wayne bought an engagement ring. I guess I just assumed he’d gone ahead and proposed.”

  “Honey,” I said, “this tea is wonderful. Very soothing. But under the circumstances, could I bother you for a little tipple of something stronger? Just to settle my nerves.”

  “I’m afraid we don’t keep alcohol in the house,” she said. She lifted one shoulder. “Personally, I never partake. Makes people reckless. Foolish. Like at that picnic your ex-husband threw, everyone behaving in such an undignified manner.”

  That statement jarred something loose in my mind: Crystal Tompkins mentioning that Honey Jillson was carrying a flask the night of the luau. But if the flask didn’t contain alcohol, what was in it?

  Honey Jillson and I sat quietly together, sipping our tea, while I figured out how she had accidentally murdered her own grandchild.

  Honey knew about Eddie’s sham organic gardening products because he’d practically invited the master gardeners to test his wares. And she had access to the typewriter on which she wrote the blackmail note. Since Brittanie was doing Weed and Seed work at the Zeta alumni house, Honey would have had the opportunity to steal some letterhead from Brittanie’s papers and slip the blackmail evidence in the stack of files Brittanie typed up for Wayne.

  Although Honey had accused Wayne of being drunk at the chamber of commerce dinner, Wayne had insisted he had explained his behavior to Honey by telling her about his pineapple allergy, and she knew—thanks to her long business relationship with Deena Silver—how to identify which cups were the allergen-free cups for Wayne.

  She just didn’t count on Brittanie stealing Wayne’s dessert and bingeing on it, or on the fragility of Brittanie’s body chemistry.

  “Honey?”

  “Yes, Tallulah?”

  “Why would you want to kill Wayne?”

  She sighed heavily but didn’t seem at all surprised that I’d figured out what happened. “You of all people must understand that. I let my Miranda throw away her life on that good-for-nothing Eddie Collins. He wouldn’t even stay in Dalliance to marry her after he got her pregnant.” She clicked her tongue against her teeth in disgust. “Wayne Jones is no better. Ill-mannered and boorish, can’t keep his fly buttoned to save his life. He woul
d have ruined Brittanie’s life just as surely as he ruined yours.”

  A faint smile brushed her lips. “It would have been particularly sweet if the authorities had blamed Eddie. Finally, a little justice for my precious baby girl.”

  Her teacup rattled against the saucer, and tea splashed out onto the pants of her tracksuit. She set the cup and saucer on the side table, picked up a cloth cocktail napkin, and began dabbing at the spot.

  That was when I noticed the prescription bottle on the side table.

  Honey reached for her teacup, but her hand drifted right past the cup and her sleeve knocked it to the floor.

  “Miz Jillson? Honey? What did you do?”

  She settled against the back of the sofa and let her eyes drift closed. “I made my baby girl give up her child to maintain appearances. And I let my grandchild grow up a stranger to me for the same reason. I—” Her breath hitched, and she made a smacking sound with her lips, as if her mouth were too dry to speak. “I gave up everything for my good name, and I’m not about to lose it now.”

  “Oh, Honey, don’t do this,” I pleaded, letting my own cup fall to the floor as I leaned over her, prying her eyes open. They were glassy and unfocused, but her pupils contracted with the light.

  “You’re about her age,” she slurred softly. “My Miranda would have been just about your age.”

  I grabbed the bottle off the side table. The prescription was for Ida Harper, amitriptyline tablets for pain. It had been filled just two days before, on Wednesday, the day Honey spent the evening at Ida’s bedside.

  The bottle was empty.

  I grabbed the phone and dialed 911.

  “I need an ambulance, right away.”

  “Address?”

  “What? Crap. Honey, what’s your address?” She didn’t respond. “I don’t know. It’s the mayor’s house. Mayor Jillson.”

  “And what’s the nature of the emergency?”

  “She took a lot of pills. A lot of pills. Please hurry. Please.”

  “Please hold with me—”

  I threw down the receiver and ran for the front door, the terry robe flapping around my knees and sagging open around my chest.