Don't Scream

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  The lone officer—probably a rookie—is blond, handsome and clean-shaven—if he’s old enough to shave, Brynn thinks, as wryly as she can under the circumstances.

  She finds him standing in the kitchen with Garth, surveying the heap of red feathers and darkened, congealed blood. Jeremy is back in his booster seat, an array of dry Cheerios scattered before him and on the floor.

  “This is my wife, Brynn,” Garth informs the young cop as she comes into the room. “Brynn, this is Officer Demuth.”

  They shake hands. Hers, she knows, is ice cold, and not just because of the raw, damp autumn chill outdoors.

  With Caleb and Ashley gone, she’s free at last to express the anxiety she’s kept bottled up all morning, threatening to explode at any given moment.

  First the sleepless night, then the explosive argument with Garth, then the dead cardinal…

  A cardinal. It can’t be a coincidence…can it?

  No.

  Especially not today.

  Her eyes go to the homemade construction-paper calendar on the wall. Today is Tildy’s thirtieth birthday. Brynn realized it first thing this morning and planned, in the back of her mind, to give her a call.

  Now she definitely will…and not just to say Happy Birthday.

  “I was telling your husband that birds do find their way into homes, Mrs. Saddler,” Officer Demuth says, “but—”

  “I just want you to know this was no accident,” she cuts in, turning away from the calendar. Her stomach lurches as her gaze falls on the sickening site on the counter, and she swallows hard. “Somebody broke into the house sometime in the night and left that here.”

  “Brynn, that’s obvious,” Garth speaks up before Demuth can respond. “That’s what he was about to say. Why don’t you just let him do the talking?”

  All right, so she stated the obvious. Still, Garth doesn’t have to make her look like a blabbering fool. Embarrassed, she flashes a scowl at her husband.

  Demuth says, “Again, birds do get into homes, but it looks like this one has a broken neck…not an injury that would bleed. Anyway, I think we’re all aware that the amount of blood makes it obvious that someone planted this here, correct? And that the blood didn’t come from the bird?”

  Brynn nods.

  “Mrs. Saddler, you were home here all night, correct?”

  She nods again, wondering if Garth has already mentioned that he wasn’t.

  “Did you see or hear anything unusual?”

  She thinks back to her restless hours on the couch. She thought she heard something a few times, but she figured that was just Garth coming home.

  Now, she shivers at the thought that someone could have been prowling around the next room as she lay on the couch.

  Oh, God. She folds her arms and tucks her fists into her armpits, and sinks into a chair, shoulders hunched with tension.

  “Mrs. Saddler?”

  “I don’t know,” she murmurs to Demuth. “I mean, I didn’t hear anything unusual, really. But I could have heard someone…I just don’t know.”

  “Do either of you have any idea who might have played a prank like this? Do you think it could have been one of your students, Dr. Saddler?”

  “It could have been,” he says doubtfully.

  “Is there anyone you can think of who’s shown any kind of animosity lately? Maybe over a bad grade?”

  Garth shakes his head.

  “Have either of you had run-ins with any neighbors? Teenagers, especially?”

  “Only with Mr. Chase next door,” Garth says. “But he’s always cranky and he’s no teenager.”

  “What was the problem?”

  “He said somebody plucked the blooms off of his mums, and he thought it was one of our boys.”

  “He was upset about it?”

  “He gets upset about everything, and he accuses everyone on the block,” Brynn puts in. “Nothing unusual.”

  “So, other than that, neither of you can think of anything that might have triggered someone to do something like this?”

  Brynn can.

  Her head is spinning.

  Of course she never told Garth about the birthday card.

  Does she dare mention it now?

  No. No, you can’t!

  Doing so would open the door to questions about Rachel Lorent, whose unsolved, decade-old missing persons case was handled by the Cedar Crest police.

  If she doesn’t bring that up, though, the cops will have no way of knowing that this is no harmless neighborhood prank.

  There isn’t a doubt in Brynn’s mind: that bird wasn’t chosen randomly.

  No, there is sinister symbolism in the cardinal—the Zeta Delta Kappa mascot—and the blood.

  And the date: Tildy’s thirtieth birthday.

  It’s meant to warn her—perhaps all of them—that someone is out there, watching.

  Someone who knows.

  Fiona is sitting at her desk—where there is no longer any trace of the rose or the blood—fighting the overwhelming urge to chain smoke, when Emily informs her that Patrick is on the phone.

  She didn’t even realize it had rung.

  At the mention of her ex’s name, however, she springs to life.

  “Thanks, Emily,” she snaps. “And can you please close the door? Thanks.”

  The receptionist’s obedient response is immediate. Good, maybe she’s learning.

  When she showed up at 8:43, Fiona let her know, in no uncertain terms, that she’s on thin ice.

  “If you’re ever late again, you’ll be fired on the spot,” Fiona informed her.

  Never mind that if Emily hadn’t been late this morning, she would have been here to witness the gory sight in Fiona’s office.

  And nobody needs to know about that.

  The evidence—the rose, and a wad of bleach-soaked, bloody paper towels—is sealed into a black garbage bag she tossed into a Dumpster out back moments before Emily walked through the door.

  She had the gall to blame her delay on the weather, as if she had to drive a hundred miles over rain-slicked and fog-shrouded roads to get here.

  Disgusted, Fiona laid into her, then retreated to her office to brood.

  Now, she looks at the phone, where a lit button indicates Pat holding on Line 1.

  Scowling, she jabs it as she picks up the receiver with a brusque, “Fiona Fitzgerald.”

  “I’m just letting you know that I’m getting Ashley today after school,” her ex informs her without a greeting, same as always.

  He calls her every other Friday morning to confirm his prescheduled weekends with their daughter.

  “After what you did?” she retorts with a brittle laugh. “I don’t think so.”

  There’s a pause on the line.

  Then Pat asks, “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You know,” she says, and holds her breath.

  Does he know?

  Please let the rose have been from him.

  Yes, some kind of sick, twisted joke meant to signify that he somehow figured out she was on a date last night.

  Because if he didn’t leave it here…

  “I have no idea what you think I did,” he replies so cluelessly that her heart sinks, “but if it’s spending the last forty-eight hours building a partition in my apartment and redecorating so that Ash will have her own room when she visits from now on, you’re right. Lucky guess.”

  Dammit. Who could have left the rose?

  The same person who sent the card.

  It makes sense that the two are related.

  The sorority flower was a red rose. That this one was lying in a sticky, congealed pool of blood might have something to do with Rachel…

  “Fiona?” Pat prods in her ear.

  Jarred back to the conversation at hand, she says only, “You built a room for Ashley?”

  “She’s getting older. She needs privacy when she’s here.”

  “So that’s what was so important you couldn’t watch her for me last
night, and I had to pawn her off on Brynn?”

  “You didn’t have to do anything,” he shoots back. “And if our daughter is putting such a cramp in your style, maybe we should talk about my getting full-time custody.”

  And the generous child support that would go along with it, no doubt.

  “No.” The word is curt. “She isn’t cramping my style at all. But, to answer your question, you can pick her up after school and take her for the weekend.”

  That will give me a chance to figure out what in God’s name is going on here, she thinks uneasily.

  Stepping through the French door onto a brick patio, Quincy sees Detective Mike Connelly. Deceptively young-looking—though a father of three college-aged kids—jovial, red-headed Mike has a nurturing air that tends to soothe even the most shaken witness.

  He’s standing over a woman seated at a wrought iron table. Her gray head is buried in her hands.

  Catching Mike’s eye, Quincy raises his eyebrows questioningly. Mike shrugs and throws up his hands, indicating he hasn’t gotten anything out of her.

  Quincy glances at the notes in his hand before approaching.

  “Miss Schicke?” These old-world types aren’t big on “Ms.”

  She looks up. Her plain face is etched in tear-dampened crow’s-feet.

  “I’m Detective Hiles, and this is Detective Jackson.” He flashes his badge, as does Deb. “We need to ask you some questions.”

  She nods wearily and sits up straighter in the chair. He notes that she’s wearing a uniform that consists of light blue pants and a light blue top with white cuffs.

  Mike and Deb hover nearby as Quincy sits across from the witness.

  “Can you describe what happened this morning? Take your time.”

  She takes a deep breath to steady herself. “I walked in and found—”

  “Wait, back up. What time was this? And how did you get in?”

  “With my key. The alarm wasn’t set. I knew right away something was wrong.”

  “And when was this?” Mike prods.

  “About five to eight, I think. That’s when I come every day.” She falls into an emotional silence.

  Quincy prompts, “So you let yourself in and…”

  “And I found poor Matilda.” Her voice breaks and she sobs.

  Her grief seems authentic. Perhaps even, Quincy notes, a bit deeper than one would expect in an employee-employer relationship.

  “How long have you been working for Miss Harrington?” Deb asks.

  “All her life.” The woman wipes her streaming eyes with a tissue. “I was her nanny from the time she was born. Then she lost her mother, and all these years, I’ve taken care of her. She was like a daughter to me. I can’t believe somebody could do this to her. Poor Matilda. Oh, her poor father is going to be devastated.”

  She’s sobbing again.

  Quincy waits patiently for the tears to subside.

  When she pulls herself together he asks, “What did you see when you walked into the house, Miss Schicke? Step-by-step.”

  “There was a stain in the hall, on the floor, and some on the baseboard. But I didn’t realize what it was at first. I thought it might be paint. But it wasn’t.” She shudders. “Then I looked in the dining room, and I saw—”

  “Excuse me…Hiles? Can I speak to you for a second?”

  Quincy looks up to see Hal Tambert, a uniformed deputy, beckoning from the back doorway.

  He strides over. “What is it?”

  “We’ve got a neighbor who says she saw someone sitting in a car parked out front late last night, for a few hours. She said it looked like he was waiting for someone…or maybe keeping an eye on the place.”

  “Do we have a description?”

  “Yeah, and it’s a pretty distinct one.” Tambert glances at the pad in his hand. “The neighbor said he was a white male, very thin, and that”—Tambert snorts—“he bore a close resemblance to Abraham Lincoln.”

  As Cassandra turns down Commonwealth Avenue, she spots a commotion in the block ahead…

  Tildy’s block, she realizes. Of all the luck.

  Is it a fire?

  No, no fire trucks or rescue vehicles.

  Just police cars.

  And lots of them.

  Someone must have been mugged, or something.

  Then again, Cassie thinks, that’s an awful lot of chaos for a mugging. Well, there can’t be much crime in this neighborhood, so maybe the authorities go overboard with the response whenever something happens.

  When she reaches the intersection, she sees that the next block is barricaded from traffic. A uniformed officer waves her on around the corner.

  As Cassie follows his direction, she notices a couple of satellite news vans parked near the police cars, and a lot of people milling around on the sidewalk. Maybe it’s a protest of some kind. The college isn’t far from here, right?

  Tildy can’t be too thrilled with all the turmoil right on her doorstep. If she’s home.

  She isn’t at work. Cassie had already called her office a few times and kept getting her voice mail. Finally she called the nonprofit’s direct line and the receptionist said she wasn’t in today.

  That doesn’t mean she’s home, though.

  Heading down Gloucester Street, Cassie spots a MASS

  PIKE sign and wonders if she should just get on it. Just forget about trying to talk to Tildy and leave Boston, and everything that happened here, behind…

  For what? To go home to something even more complicated?

  No, she’s come this far. She might as well see if Tildy’s around. She has to tell her what she heard on her voice mail.

  Just thinking about it raises the hair on her arms.

  Who would call her, leave that creepy recording of the sorority song, and hang up?

  Her phone’s electronic incoming call log revealed nothing. That call was listed as Private Name, Private Number.

  Each year, every ZDK sister in the house receives a copy of the annually videotaped pledge ceremony, which concludes with the girls singing the sorority song.

  That means, theoretically, suspects would be limited to Cassie’s fellow ZDK sisters. In which case…

  It has to be a stupid prank, she tells herself. Just like the birthday card.

  But what if it wasn’t? What if someone knows about Rachel and somehow got their hands on a copy? Are they setting up an elaborate blackmail plot now?

  Or…What if it is Rachel?

  But it doesn’t make sense. Even if she survived the fall somehow, and lived, why would she just disappear? And why would she come back now?

  She was upset about something that night. So upset she drank herself into oblivion. What was bothering her? And could it possibly have been devastating enough to make her willingly vanish for ten years, putting her family and friends, and, yes, her sorority sisters—including the four of us—through hell?

  Maybe.

  Cassie is starting to believe that anything is possible. And if that’s the case…

  Making an aimless right turn onto Newbury Street, she shudders, wondering if Rachel realized that the four of them abandoned her in the woods.

  Does she want…revenge of some sort? Is that why she’s trying to scare them?

  If it’s even her. And that’s pretty damned far-fetched, Cassie concludes, spotting a parking garage with a VACANCY sign just ahead.

  She decides to put the Rachel incident, and the voice mail message, out of her head. She’s got enough going on right now.

  Maybe Tildy will let me stay for awhile, till I get my act together.

  Oh, who is she kidding? She doesn’t have the luxury of camping out at her friend’s house indefinitely…or even for one night.

  She has to get home to her fiancé, her family, her job.

  And tell them…?

  Well, she still has no idea what she’s going to tell them.

  She’ll figure that out later. Maybe Tildy will have a suggestion.

  Back in t
heir sorority days, Cassie fell into the habit of consulting Tildy whenever she came to a crossroads. She still does. Her old friend always seems to offer a decisive reply when Cassie needs it most, even if it’s not necessarily the advice she wants to hear.

  It was Tildy who urged her to marry Alec when she was feeling wishy-washy about their engagement.

  Maybe you should have listened to yourself for a change, she can’t help but realize belatedly.

  Then again, she never said—even to herself—that she’s going to back out of her wedding. She didn’t leave Alec at the altar; she just chose not to attend her shower. That’s all.

  So far.

  She locks the car and walks briskly away from the parking garage, headed toward Tildy’s house.

  All you have to do is get there, she tells herself irrationally, and everything will be okay.

  Then she rounds the corner onto Commonwealth Avenue, with a straight-shot view of the brick town house, its perimeter wrapped in yellow crime scene tape.

  Quincy, Connelly, and Deb have to shoulder their way through the crowd gathered on the sidewalk—not just curious onlookers, but the media.

  This, after all, is big news. The Harringtons are one of Boston’s premier families. Dashing Jason Harrington famously doted on his only child, especially after tragically losing his wife and son in a plane crash years ago. The tragedy, combined with movie-star good looks and vast wealth, enhanced the family’s Kennedyesque mystique.

  The beautiful, elegant Matilda Harrington has been a fixture on her father’s arm since her debutante days, frequently pictured in the society pages.

  Now she’ll be undoubtedly on the front page:

  BACK BAY SOCIALITE SLAIN

  Of course, the most sensational details won’t emerge in the papers. No one outside the immediate homicide investigation knows about the creepy, staged birthday party. That’s a detail the detectives are keeping from the press and the public.

  Quincy, Connelly, and Deb ignore the reporters’ frenzied questions as they make their way to their waiting car, but their expert eyes skim the faces in the crowd.

  It wouldn’t be the first time Quincy spotted a suspicious onlooker who later turned out to be the culprit. Some sickos get off on showing up at the crime scene or funeral to witness the fallout from their diabolical handiwork.