Don't Scream

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  Maybe, Quincy thinks, Ray really did kill Matilda in a fit of jealousy over her secret boyfriend.

  Or maybe he’s a psycho stalker who killed her and then made up the secret boyfriend story.

  Or maybe her secret boyfriend does exist and killed her himself, in a fit of rage.

  Quincy isn’t ruling out any of those scenarios—or anything else, at this stage.

  A hired killer, say, if it was premeditated—and the lack of fingerprints at the scene suggests that it was.

  Then again, Quincy can’t help but acknowledge that a hit man would have stopped at the mortal blow to the victim’s head. You’re in, you’re out. You don’t hang around before or after to stage a scene; you don’t leave anything behind.

  He studies the crowd of mourners intently, zeroing in on every face for some slight but telltale anomaly.

  So…Was it someone else?

  Someone who knew her well enough to be present today?

  Someone who is, at this very moment, expertly feigning grief…and masking guilt?

  Someone who—

  Quincy’s thoughts break off abruptly.

  He squints into the sun, then shades his eyes with his hand to be sure he’s seeing what he thinks he’s seeing.

  Yes. Without a doubt.

  And the Harrington murder case has just taken a drastic turn in an entirely new direction.

  As another gust permeates the warm sunshine falling on her hair and shoulders, Cassie shivers, disproportionately chilled to the bone.

  Standing here at the foot of the church steps, she can’t help but feel as though someone is watching her. Someone who knows about that night ten years ago—and that Cassie’s birthday is tomorrow.

  Every time she thinks of it, she feels physically ill.

  What if…?

  No. Stop. For now, anyway.

  She’s gone over the endless what ifs nonstop for over a week now.

  Alec offered to join her for the memorial service this morning, as did her mother. Her fiancé’s motives were undoubtedly pure, unlike her mother’s, but she turned them both down unequivocally.

  She did it over the phone, because that’s always easier than face-to-face, and because she hasn’t seen a soul in days. Alec is at the end of his rope, demanding to see her, demanding that she get some help. He says it isn’t normal to react this way, even to your friend’s murder.

  But he doesn’t know the whole story.

  Barricaded in her condo for the past week, the new alarm system set and the shades drawn, she has yet to return to her pediatric residency. At this point, she doubts she’ll be welcomed back with open arms.

  She hasn’t returned a series of increasingly curt phone calls from the staff, including Dr. Prevatt, in a few days now.

  But sooner or later, she’ll have to return to the land of the living. She’s been telling herself she just has to get through today, and then she’ll be able to function again.

  Today—and tomorrow.

  After that, she’ll start picking up the pieces, salvaging what she can from her employment and her relationship.

  “Are you okay?” Brynn asks in a low voice, standing beside her, looking surprisingly put-together in a black crepe dress and low heels.

  “Sort of. Are you okay?” Cassie returns.

  “Same as you. This is surreal.”

  For a moment, they watch Fiona chat with a well-dressed businessman she met while they were both sneaking a curbside smoke earlier, before the service.

  Now, as Fee exchanges business cards with him, Cassie murmurs, “Some things just aren’t sacred with her, are they?”

  Brynn flashes a tight-lipped smile. “What, you mean networking at a funeral isn’t acceptable behavior?”

  “It wasn’t a funeral, it was a memorial service,” Fiona declares, rejoining them. “And he owns a chain of paint stores that’s branching out into western Massachusetts. He’s thinking of hiring a publicist, so…” She shrugs.

  Neither Cassie nor Brynn comments.

  What is there to say? Fiona will always be Fiona.

  “I’m going to get going,” Cassie decides, taking her car keys from her purse.

  “Why don’t we all go somewhere and get some lunch?” Brynn suggests. “Because we still need to talk about—”

  “Shh!” Fiona cuts her off, looking around.

  “I really have to get back.” Cassie jangles her keys, nerves fraying.

  Brynn touches her hand. “Listen, you need to be careful, Cassie. I mean it. Tomorrow is—”

  “I know.” She swallows hard and is surprised to hear herself blurt, “I was thinking of going someplace for a few days.”

  You were?

  Yes, she was. She just didn’t really acknowledge it until this very moment.

  “You mean…going somewhere to hide?” Fiona asks, and Cassie nods.

  “You can come home with me,” Brynn offers promptly.

  “No, I mean someplace where nobody would ever think to look for me. Just until this blows over.”

  “Maybe you should,” Fiona tells her thoughtfully. “If…you know. If it’ll make you feel safer.”

  Cassie shrugs, uncertain anything could make her feel safe at this point.

  “Listen, if you do decide to go somewhere to wait it out, Cassie, do us a favor and call to check in. Okay?” Brynn asks.

  “You know what? I’m not going to do it,” she says hurriedly. “I mean, I’m sure it’ll be fine. They’ve got a suspect.”

  Brynn shakes her head. “Yes, but that doesn’t mean—”

  “But it probably does,” Fiona cuts in, her expression hidden behind black sunglasses. “We just have to think that it does because what else can we do? And don’t answer that, Brynn. Going to the police isn’t an option.”

  Sidling up to Deb, Quincy gently elbows her in the ribs and tilts his head toward the nearby group of attractive college-aged women.

  “Take a look at that.”

  “What is it?” Following his gaze, Deb surveys the sorority girls who traveled here from the town where Matilda Harrington attended college.

  It takes only an instant before her eyes widen and she curses softly.

  “I’ve been watching everyone here, including them. How did I miss that?”

  “They didn’t put them on until the wind kicked up a few seconds ago,” Quincy informs her, his eyes fastened on the identical sweaters a few of the girls have donned.

  Sweaters that are precisely the shade of gray and red found in the scrap of fabric the killer left behind with Matilda Harrington’s corpse.

  “Obviously, Fee, we aren’t going to see eye to eye on this,” Brynn says as they watch Cassie walk away.

  “Obviously not.”

  “So which one of us gets her way? What do we do?”

  “Nothing.”

  Then you get your way, Brynn thinks, shaking her head and breaking eye contact with Fiona. Because that’s exactly what you want to do about this. Absolutely nothing.

  She closes her eyes momentarily, rubbing them with her fist. Exhausted, nauseous, emotional, she wishes everything would just go away.

  If only she could be home, right now, in bed, with the covers pulled over her head.

  Well, she has a few more days to endure before that can even happen. Right now, she needs to convince Fiona that it’s wrong to keep hiding what they know after all these years, and then she needs to drive back out to the Cape and hug her children.

  A lump clogs her throat at the mere thought of the boys. When she left this morning, they were happily eating waffles with her dad and Sue, who were full of plans for the day.

  Brynn looks at her watch and realizes that they’ve probably finished at the bowling alley by now, and have moved on to lunch at their favorite pizza place before the matinee movie they’re going to.

  So she doesn’t have to rush to get back out—

  Suddenly, a familiar face catches her eye on the far end of the crowd, where the Zeta Delta Kappa siste
rs are waiting to board their rented minibus back to Cedar Crest.

  That man…she knows him.

  But she can’t place him.

  “Look over by those red bushes, Fee. Who is that?”

  Fiona glances in that direction and recognition registers on her face. “It’s Puffy.”

  “No, I know Puffy,” Brynn says impatiently, “I see her around town. But that guy she’s talking to…who…?”

  Then all at once, recognition dawns…and with it, shock.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “That’s Rachel’s stepbrother. Isaac.”

  “Excuse me!” Quincy touches the arm of the round-faced woman who just finished talking to a handsome younger man, and is now on the verge of climbing the steps onto the waiting bus.

  “Yes?”

  “Detective Quincy Hiles, B.P.D.” He flashes his badge. “Can I talk to you for a minute, ma’am?”

  “Did you say ‘Detective’?”

  He nods. “Can I ask you some questions?”

  Looking startled, the woman bobs her wobbling double chins and allows him to pull her aside. The chattering girls, boarding the bus, fail to notice. Quincy keeps a peripheral eye on them as he asks the woman her name.

  “It’s Sarah Trovato, but nobody calls me that.”

  “What do they call you?”

  “Puffy.”

  “You mean these girls?”

  “I mean everybody. But yes. My girls call me Puffy.”

  “Your girls?”

  “I’m their housemother.”

  “Those sweaters your girls are wearing…Do all of the sorority sisters have them?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Are they always the same, every year? The same colors, the same style…”

  “Always exactly the same. Why?” she asks again, frowning.

  “Can anyone off the street buy one of these sweaters?”

  “Not these. They’re one of a kind.”

  He shifts his line of questioning. “And you knew Matilda Harrington…?”

  Puffy’s dark eyes dim. “Of course. She was one of my girls. I shouldn’t say was, though…Once they move into the Zeta house, they’re mine, even after they move out and move on. I don’t have any biological children, so the girls are my children.”

  “And you’ve been regularly in touch with Matilda all these years, since she graduated? Stonebridge College, wasn’t it?” Quincy asks, trying to remember the biographical specifics gleaned from the victim’s family and friends.

  “Stonebridge. Right. And not regularly in touch, no…But it’s not as though she lives around the corner from the house.”

  “Did she ever come back to visit?”

  “Not so much lately, but she used to. Matilda was the chapter president. She was always loyal to ZDK, and that group of sisters that graduated with her were tighter than ever because of what they went through together that year…”

  “What did they go through?”

  “One of the girls vanished into thin air.”

  Quincy looks up, stunned. “What happened to her?”

  “We still don’t know. She was never found. Poor Rachel. It was her birthday, too—just like it was Matilda’s. It’s such a strange coincidence.”

  A strange coincidence? Quincy thinks. Are you freaking kidding me?

  He opens his mouth, but before he can say anything, Puffy adds, “That was her brother I was talking to just now.”

  Adrenaline surging, he asks sharply, “You mean that young guy who just walked away?”

  “Yes. He has to catch a flight back to New York.”

  Quincy looks around for the man, but he’s already disappeared into the crowd. “Do you know where I can get in touch with him?”

  “Why?”

  “So that I can speak to him.”

  “About Rachel?”

  Quincy shrugs. “He’s here today. Was he a friend of Matilda Harrington’s?”

  “No. But he knew her, and she was a friend of his sister’s, so…”

  Thoughts whirling with new possibilities, Quincy asks the housemother details about the decade-old Missing Persons case. He jots down information about the disappearance as the bus driver waits impatiently, parked, the engine idling.

  “Puffy!” one of the girls finally calls out the window. “A bunch of us have to get back to campus for field hockey.”

  The housemother looks up at him. “I’m sorry. I have to go.”

  “All right, Ms. Trovato…” He looks over her contact information, making sure it’s complete. “I’ll be in touch.”

  She hesitates. “Mind if I ask why?”

  “I’m investigating the murder of one of your girls.” He chooses his words deliberately. “I know you and the other girls will want to do anything you can to help. Especially considering that this isn’t the first time one of the Zeta sisters has had a run-in with tragedy…”

  On her birthday.

  “Wait, what are you doing?” Fiona grabs Brynn by the arm and pulls her back.

  “Isaac walked away. I’m going to catch him.”

  “Why?”

  “So we can talk to him.”

  “About…?” Fiona’s heart is pounding. She can’t let Brynn do this. Everything is hanging in the balance.

  James Bingham is hanging in the balance.

  “We have to tell him what we suspect about Rachel,” Brynn says hurriedly.

  “What you suspect.”

  “So do you.”

  Fiona doesn’t argue. Nor does she budge.

  “Come on, Fee, maybe he knows something.”

  “If he does, do you honestly think he’s going to tell us? After all these years? You think he’s going to welcome questions about his dead stepsister?”

  “Dead stepsister who might be alive.”

  “Stop saying that, Brynn! I swear to God…I don’t want to hear it anymore.”

  “Because you’re afraid it’s true. So am I. And so is Cassie.”

  “The only thing I’m afraid of is being dragged into a scandal or worse, and that’s exactly what will happen if we drag all this out to the police. It’ll wind up all over the papers, on television…”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Are you kidding? Look at that.” Fiona gestures at the horde of reporters and satellite news trucks surrounding the church. “Tildy’s murder is huge news. That’s not going to die down anytime soon. Rachel’s disappearance was big news, too, ten years ago, and if the media can manage to link it to this…”

  “So it’ll be in the papers. We’ll just have to deal with—”

  “Are you ready to go to jail, Brynn?” Fiona cuts in, wanting to grab her and shake her. “Think about it. Are you prepared to leave your two kids and your husband to serve time in prison? Because unless you are, you need to stop talking about going to the police.”

  Brynn is silent for a moment.

  Then she says, “I just want to talk to Isaac, then. Before he leaves. Come on.”

  “You’re on your own,” Fiona snaps, and turns toward her BMW, parked against the curb a block away. “I’m going home.”

  Parked in full sun in the church parking lot, the car is unbearably stuffy when Cassie climbs into it. She rolls down the driver’s side window and inhales fresh air, grateful that this morning’s ordeal is over at last.

  Now on to the next, she thinks grimly, and shifts into REVERSE.

  She spots Brynn striding purposefully toward the parking lot and her heart sinks. Brynn is going to try to stop her, try to talk her into going out to lunch again. Or into coming home with her.

  But Brynn doesn’t even seem to see Cassie; she’s going in the opposite direction, probably toward her own car.

  I guess Fiona didn’t want to hang around for lunch, either.

  At the exit to the street, she tries to remember which way she came in. She has no idea.

  You could always go back and ask someone for directions.

  Or, you could just take your ch
ances.

  Right or left?

  It’s a crapshoot.

  She goes left.

  Isaac is halfway to his rental car in the far reaches of the church parking lot when, incredibly, he hears a voice calling his name.

  A female voice.

  But it isn’t Rachel’s.

  It never is.

  He turns to see Brynn Costello—Brynn Saddler, now—hurrying toward him.

  She was the sweet one, he remembers. At least, that was Rachel’s assessment. His stepsister filled him in on all of her friends whenever he visited her at Stonebridge.

  Brynn, he recalls, is the one who had lost her mom the year before she started college, and craved the female companionship she found in the Zeta Delta Kappa house. Rachel found it ironic that she wasn’t particularly close to Matilda Harrington, who was also motherless.

  “She’s the only one who could possibly get what Brynn is going through,” Rachel commented once. “Too bad Tildy is about as nurturing as a rattlesnake.”

  Isaac saw for himself that Matilda Harrington had an edge, and he now suspects that it hadn’t exactly been softened over the years.

  Yes, the church was packed just now for her memorial service, but the only person who truly seemed distraught was her father. Jason Harrington’s choking sobs echoed heartbreakingly over the crowded pews.

  Isaac hated himself for thinking at least you get closure.

  The Lorents never even had a memorial service for Rachel. How could they? They didn’t have a body. No, they were holding out hope that Rachel was still alive, that she’d come home one day.

  But where is home?

  Isaac likes to think she might come to his apartment off Gramercy Park. He moved in the summer before she disappeared; she loved the high ceilings and the hardwood floors.

  He told her she could move in with him the following summer if she wanted.

  She said she’d think about it.

  So he’s kept it, for ten years, just in case. Just so she’ll know where to find him.

  Where else would she go, if she came back?

  Her mother’s now-vacated former brownstone on West Eighty-Third Street, or her late father’s old co-op on Central Park South; perhaps even to Isaac’s father’s floor-through in the East Village, or her sorority house in Cedar Crest…