Don't Scream

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  Nothing here, though, at a glance.

  Just a throng of curious bystanders, most of them well-heeled locals, sprinkled with press and law enforcement.

  Then, out of the corner of his eye, he spots a face that draws his attention for some reason.

  The young, attractive African-American woman on the fringes of the crowd is staring up at Matilda Harrington’s home.

  And she’s wearing an expression that seems far more vested than those around her.

  Turning his head to get a better look, Quincy observes that she’s unmistakably grief-stricken—and something more.

  She’s deathly afraid, he notes, watching her from across the sea of heads.

  Yes, and there’s something furtive about the way she’s starting to slip back from the crowd.

  Quincy abruptly begins to move toward her, but there are too many people in his way. By the time he reaches the spot where she was standing, it’s empty. He looks around just in time to see her disappear around the corner at the end of the block.

  He heads immediately in that direction, but she’s gone.

  He won’t forget her face, though—or the way she fled the scene as if she feared for her own life.

  Hearing Brynn cry out, Garth, shirtless and shaving, turns off the tap. With his razor poised in his hand and one cheek covered in a white layer of Gillette, he opens the bathroom door and peers down the hall.

  Silence.

  Maybe he imagined the scream. He can hear water running in the kitchen. She’s probably still disinfecting the counter where the dead bird lay until Officer Demuth took it away as evidence.

  He said he’d see if they could run some tests on it. Garth could tell he was mostly humoring them, though. He was inclined to chalk it up to a prank, most likely pulled by one of Garth’s students.

  “It’s a college town,” the officer said as he left. “Things like this happen all the time.”

  “He’s right,” Garth told Brynn after Officer Demuth had driven away. “It was probably just kids. Nothing to worry about.”

  But she was—is—worried. He can tell.

  But now all is quiet down the hall, aside from the running water and the faint sound of Jeremy’s happy chatter.

  Garth is about to close the bathroom door, his mind on the shave he has to finish quickly if he’s going to make it to campus in time for his next class, when he hears it again.

  This time, it’s more of a sob.

  “Brynn?” He sets aside his razor and hurries down the hall.

  In the kitchen, Jeremy is kneeling on the floor in front of an open cabinet, cheerfully stacking plastic Tupperware containers.

  Brynn is by the sink where the tap is running for no apparent reason. Her back is to him and she’s clutching the cordless phone to her ear, crying.

  She must be telling someone about the dead bird, he decides. And she’s definitely overreacting.

  Then she turns around and he sees her stricken face.

  “My God, what happened?” Garth sidesteps the Tupper-ware, going immediately to her side. He turns off the faucet before taking her trembling arm. “Who are you talking to?”

  “It’s Cassie…”

  “Who?”

  “My friend Cassandra,” she clarifies impatiently, tearfully. “Garth, Tildy is dead.”

  “What!”

  “Somebody killed her…Tildy. My sorority sister,” she adds.

  As if he doesn’t know.

  Garth, who knows Matilda Harrington far better than his wife would ever imagine, pulls Brynn close and buries his head in her hair, not daring, in this moment, to let her glimpse his face.

  CHAPTER 12

  Brynn can’t seem to wrap her mind around the fact that Matilda Harrington is actually dead.

  Not just dead…

  Murdered.

  Cassie didn’t provide Brynn with any other details; she was too shaken. She just kept crying and repeating, “I can’t believe it,” and “Oh, God, poor Tildy.”

  With Garth at her side, Brynn couldn’t even bring up the possibility of Tildy’s death having anything to do with the three of them…and their secret…

  And the dead cardinal she found on her countertop this morning.

  But Cassie is on her way here. She said she’d leave right away, and drive straight to Cedar Crest. Brynn didn’t question her, or argue.

  She knows Cassie is thinking the same thing she is. And Fiona will, as well.

  “Here.” Garth tries to hand her a glass of cold water as she stands with the phone still clutched in her fist. “Drink this.”

  She waves it away, dialing with a trembling finger. “I have to call Fee.”

  “Do you want me to do it for you?”

  “No!”

  She wants him to go away, that’s what she wants.

  She can’t think straight with him here, and Jeremy rhythmically tapping a plastic Tupperware lid on the linoleum, babbling incessantly.

  “Fiona Fitzgerald’s office, Emily speaking.”

  “Emily, this is her friend Brynn,” she says in a rush, turning her back on Garth and the glass of water he’s still holding out to her. “I need to speak to her right away, please.”

  “Ms. Fitzgerald is unavailable.”

  “Is she there?”

  Emily hesitates, then repeats, “She’s unavailable.”

  “Tell her I need to speak to her, please, right away. It’s an emergency.”

  “She’s unavail—”

  “Look, someone died, okay?” she bites out, fed up with Fiona and her professional blockade. Who does she think she is, the president? “Get her on the damned phone!”

  She realizes Jeremy has stopped tapping the lid and is watching her with interest. She flashes him a tight smile.

  “Damned!” he says cheerfully. “Damned, damned, damned phone!”

  “Terrific. Come here, kiddo.” Garth scoops him into his arms and looks at Brynn. “Are you okay?”

  “No, I’m not okay.” She exhales shakily. “I feel sick.”

  “Sit down.” Garth pulls out a chair.

  But before she can move there’s a click in her ear, and Fiona’s voice says crisply, “Brynn? I swear, for your sake and Emily’s someone had better be dead because I gave her explicit instructions not to—”

  “It’s Tildy, Fee. Tildy’s dead.” Her voice breaks and she’s crying all over again.

  Dead silence.

  Then, “What?”

  “Tildy’s dead. Someone killed her.”

  Brynn sinks into the chair, conscious of her husband’s hands on her shoulder, coaxing her down.

  He hovers beside her with Jeremy in his arms as, still feeling dazed, she gives Fiona what little information she has.

  “How did Cassie find out about this?”

  “I don’t know, Tildy’s father must have called her or something. She didn’t say. She was a mess.”

  And so am I.

  She wants to tell Fee about the dead cardinal, but she can’t. Not with her husband right here, listening, wanting to help.

  Well, you can’t get rid of him fast enough, Brynn tells herself. You have to speak to Fee and Cassie alone.

  “She’s coming right over,” she tells Garth when she hangs up the phone.

  “Was she upset?”

  “Fiona? Of course.”

  She has to be upset. She just lost a friend.

  Yet she wasn’t openly distraught or emotional, like Brynn. No, when she initially realized Brynn was serious about Tildy’s death, Fiona reacted with an expletive. She repeated it over and over, under her breath.

  And she didn’t cry.

  But then, tears never were her style. Happy tears, or sad tears. She didn’t cry on her wedding day, and she didn’t cry over her divorce.

  Unlike Brynn, who, according to Fiona, sheds tears at the slightest provocation.

  But this isn’t slight, and it’s all she can do to pull herself together now, under Garth’s watchful gaze.

 
“Here, Jeremy, come on, let’s get you dressed.” Brynn reaches for her son.

  He happily stretches his arms toward her, but Garth doesn’t hand him over.

  “It’s okay,” he says. “You try to calm down a little. I’ll take care of him.”

  “I’m calm. You have to go to campus.”

  And I have to talk to Fiona and Cassie in private.

  “I can’t go now.”

  “Garth, come on. You already missed your first class. What time is the next?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’ll stay here with you. You need me.”

  No, I don’t.

  In fact, it’s the opposite, so please just go.

  Brynn takes deep breaths, steels her nerves. She can’t let him see how upset she is.

  “I want Mommy!” Jeremy announces, and squirms toward her.

  “Come here.” She takes him from Garth and cuddles him close. “Want some milk?”

  “Yes!”

  She fills a sippy cup, balancing Jeremy on her hip. He’s getting heavy. It isn’t easy, especially not when she’s an emotional, quivering mess on the inside.

  But, outwardly, she’s determined to prove to Garth that she’s okay.

  After a few minutes, she succeeds. He agrees to go to work.

  “But only after your friends get here.”

  “It’s fine, they’re on their way. Don’t be late for your class.”

  Brynn dresses Jeremy in his room as her husband finishes getting ready in the bathroom. Conscious that the walls are thin, she keeps up her usual singsong chatter to her son.

  “Do you want to wear a red shirt today, Jeremy, or blue?”

  Oh, my God. Tildy.

  “Blue!”

  Just hold it together, Brynn. Don’t fall apart now.

  “Should we wear sneakers today, or just Padders?” She waves the rubber-soled corduroy booties at him.

  “Just toes! Sing, Mommy.” He thrusts his bare foot onto her lap as she sits beside him on his bed. “Sing the toe song!”

  Someone got into this house somehow and left that gruesome calling card.

  “This little piggy went to market…”

  Was it the same someone who killed Tildy, in Boston?

  She breaks off, swallows over a fierce lump, continues, “This little piggy stayed home…”

  Oh, God. Oh, Tildy.

  “Mommy! You’re sad again!” Jeremy reaches out to touch her tear-dampened cheek.

  She wipes at it blindly.

  “I’m ready.” Garth sticks his head into the open doorway. “Are you sure you’re okay with me leaving?”

  “I’m fine.” Her back to him, she dries her eyes on the hem of her sleeve, then turns around and forces a smile.

  “Really? Because you don’t look fine.”

  “It’s just upsetting to find out that someone you know has been killed.”

  Even more so when you’re thinking you could be next.

  Her breath catches in her throat as she pushes on, “But it’s not like I was that close to her these days. You know…It’s just that we had a history…”

  One hell of a history.

  And it might very well have had something to do with Tildy’s death.

  Might have?

  You know it does, Brynn. You know it in your gut.

  “I hate to leave you here alone.”

  Please don’t go, Garth. I’m scared out of my mind. Someone was here last night. Someone left that cardinal, and the blood…

  “If Fiona and Cassie weren’t coming, you know I wouldn’t leave,” Garth says, keys in hand.

  “I know. But they’re coming. So go ahead.”

  He does.

  She’s free, now, to privately discuss the situation with Fee and Cassie.

  Free? Ha.

  When Fiona arrives ten minutes later, Brynn is barricaded in the house. The front and back doors are double-locked with chairs wedged beneath the knobs, the shades drawn.

  “I’m scared,” she tells Fee simply.

  Fee says nothing, just hugs her, hard.

  And she doesn’t comment when Brynn relocks the door with the dead bolt and slides the chair back into place.

  A steady rain and bleak weekend forecast haven’t put a dent in the population of foliage-seekers headed across the Massachusetts Turnpike toward the Berkshires this Friday morning.

  Cassie stays in the right lane, able to focus on only the most rudimentary driving skills. It’s a wonder, really, that she’s managing to keep pace with the traffic at all. She has little memory of actually getting into the car, out of the parking garage, onto the highway.

  All she has been able to focus on, from the moment she arrived in front of Tildy’s house and asked a teenaged bystander what was going on, is that Tildy’s gone.

  The kid relayed the news so casually, even shrugged. “The girl who lives there was killed last night.”

  “Girl? You mean a child?” she asked in confusion.

  “No, and I guess you’re not a girl anymore when you hit thirty, so—my bad. Sorry.”

  Was he talking about Tildy?

  He couldn’t be.

  Then another nearby stranger, a college-aged kid eavesdropping on their conversation commented, “Yeah, and I heard it was her birthday, too. Turning thirty sucks bad enough, dude, without getting murdered.”

  That was when the full implications began to strike Cassie like shrapnel.

  Tildy’s birthday.

  Rachel’s birthday.

  The Happy Birthday to Me card.

  The surprise-party invitation devoid of any contact information.

  The sorority song mysteriously left on Cassie’s voice mail sometime in the night…

  It was all too much. Somehow, in her daze of shock and grief, it registered on Cassie that she had to get out of there.

  And that she had to call Brynn and Fiona.

  She literally ran the few blocks back to her car.

  When she turned on her cell phone, it immediately beeped, indicating new messages.

  She didn’t listen to them.

  She dialed Fee first, simply because she’s more take-charge, and less emotional, than Brynn. Her assistant said she wasn’t available, and Cassie hung up without leaving a message.

  Brynn was at home, though.

  Cassie didn’t tell her she herself was in Boston—well, escaping Boston at that precise moment. Something made her instinctively keep her location to herself.

  Now—her cell phone turned off again, new messages still ignored—she’s headed for Cedar Crest.

  In part, because she has no place else to go. She can’t face the mess back home, especially now, with all that’s happened since she left.

  Maybe I won’t ever go back, she thinks as she methodically follows the red taillights in front of her.

  The wipers are beating a relentless rhythm against the windshield in time with the relentless refrain in Cassie’s brain: Tildy’s…dead…Tildy’s…dead…Tildy’s…dead…

  The truth is sinking in gradually, and with it, another echo takes up the cadence in Cassie’s head: You’re…next…you’re…next…you’re…next…

  The man seated across the table in the windowless interrogation room does bear a strong resemblance to Abraham Lincoln—Quincy will admit that.

  But he suspects Ray Wilmington has little else in common with good old Honest Abe.

  Specifically, honesty—or a lack thereof. Ray Wilmington’s body language—constant fidgeting, lack of eye contact—is a clear signal that he’s lying about something.

  Not about everything, however.

  He did admit that he was lurking in his parked car on Commonwealth Avenue last night, waiting for Matilda Harrington to come home from her party.

  A party to which he hadn’t been invited.

  “Were you upset that you weren’t invited, Ray?” Mike asks sympathetically.

  “No.”

  Of course he’s lying.

  It’s classic. This poor unattr
active sap, still living at home in Dedham with his widowed mother, is nursing an infatuation for a woman who’s way out of his league and wouldn’t give him the time of day.

  “So then why were you waiting for her last night?” Quincy demands.

  “Because I wanted to give her a gift for her birthday.”

  Right. And what do you give the gal who has everything?

  A smashed skull and butchered face.

  This, Quincy is certain, is a simple case of unrequited passion flaring out of control. With any luck, they’ll have a confession out of Ray Wilmington by suppertime and Quincy will be home in time to catch most of the Red Sox playoff game on television.

  “What was your gift for Matilda?” Deb is asking.

  She’s seated at Quincy’s side, ready to become Good Cop, with Mike, to Quincy’s Bad Cop when, if, necessary.

  “It was just a bouquet of flowers,” he mumbles.

  “What kind of flowers?”

  “Just red roses.”

  Red roses. A dime a dozen in Matilda Harrington’s world. There was a bouquet of them on a table in her living room, Quincy recalls. Along with an unsigned card that reads, “See You Tonight.”

  Quincy already has someone trying to track the sender through the local florist shop.

  “So, did she like your gift, then, Ray?” Mike manages to sound like he’s a pal, as though they’re standing around the water cooler discussing their weekends.

  “I didn’t give it to her.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because when I saw her come home, I realized right away that she was completely drunk. Her driver had to help her up the steps and in the door.”

  “So what did you do then?” Quincy asks, with a graphically clear picture in his head.

  “I left.”

  “With the roses?”

  “No, I threw them away.”

  “Where did you throw them?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’d better figure it out pretty quickly,” Quincy advises with a lethal look.

  “I guess I tossed them in a garbage can by my car.”

  “On the street?” Wilmington nods. “Why did you throw them away?”

  “Red roses are expensive,” Deb puts in. “That seems like such a waste. Why not just give them to her the next day?”