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.

  TheHappy 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 unattractive 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?”

  “Because they wouldn’t last. They were already wilting.”

  “So you sat in the car waiting for her for a pretty long time, then?” Deb’s tone is almost compassionate. “Hours?”

  “Probably.”

  “You do realize,” Quincy leans across the table and catches Ray’s shifty gaze, “that I’m about to make a couple of phone calls that will tell us whether or not there’s a bouquet of red roses in a garbage can across the street from Matilda Harrington’s house.”

  Wilmington shrugs.

  Quincy leans closer. “We’re not going to find any bouquet of roses in the garbage can, are we, Ray?”

  No reply. But there’s a telltale staccato rapping sound from beneath the table, courtesy of Ray’s increasingly jittery legs.

  “Why don’t you spare us the trouble, Ray, and just admit you weren’t at Matilda Harrington’s to give her a bouquet of flowers?”

  “All right, this is getting ridiculous. Where the hell is Cassie?” Seated at the Saddlers’ cluttered kitchen table before a still-brimming, now-cold cup of coffee, and the dwindling pack of cigarettes she keeps going outside to smoke, Fiona checks her watch for the tenth time in as many minutes.

  “She can’t just beam herself here from Danbury, you know,” Brynn points out as she shakily dumps boxed pasta into the boiling water on the stove.

  “I know, but it shouldn’t take two hours to drive here.”

  “It can. Especially in bad weather.”

  “It’s not as if it’s snowing or icy.”

  “No, but wet mountain roads and fog are no fun.”

  And sitting here waiting with the silent, brooding Fiona is even less fun. Silent, that is, when she’s not grumbling about having to move a chair and unfasten three locks every time she goes outside for a smoke.

  Brynn steps on the foot pedal of the garbage can to throw away the empty box, conscious of Fiona’s eyes on her.

  She’s probably just noticing that the macaroni and cheese isn’t even Kraft, but a store brand,Brynn thinks inconsequentially. It’s almost a relief to focus, if only for a moment, on her friend’s habitual assessment of her downscale lifestyle.

  Anything is better than thinking about Tildy.

  Dead on her birthday…

  Just like Rachel.

  Every time Brynn allows herself to piece together the big picture, she’s terrified.

  All four of them—she, Fiona, Cassie, Tildy—got those birthday cards last month.

  What if whoever sent the cards, and most likely also left the dead bird, is responsible for Tildy’s death?

  And what if it isn’t going to stop there?

  It won’t be long now before Matilda Harrington’s death hits the media. It’s going to be big news—and not just in Boston.

  But the story hasn’t exploded yet.

  And you have to stop checking every five minutes to see if it has, or someone is going to get suspicious. Just go about your daily business and stay away from the Internet, the television, the radio.

  No, just try to go about your daily business, same as always.

  But, of course, that’s not easy. Pure euphoria is difficult to keep under wraps.

  It’s especially hard to keep from smiling at the satisfying memory of all that blood spilling from the deep gashes in Matilda Harrington’s face and neck, soaking her fancy white party dress.

  The best part was that, despite her inebriated state, she realized who had finally taken her flimsy excuse for a life into capable hands, putting an end to it at last.

  Yes, it was a pleasure to see Matilda twitching and struggling, looking up warily, just as that frightened, flapping cardinal did in the final second before its neck was broken with a quick, vicious twist of these same capable hands.

  Hands that are, at the moment, handing over a couple of ones and accepting a cup of hot coffee from an unwitting, smiling cashier.

  “There you go. Have a nice day.”

  “Oh, I absolutely will.”

  Still no Cassie.

  Brynn checks the stove clock as she turns off the flame under the boiling kettle.

  Jeremy has been parked in front of the television all morning. Now he needs lunch, and a nap.

  Draining the macaroni into the sink, she realizes she should probably eat something, too. Her stomach has been queasy all morning.

  “Do you want some of this?” she asks Fiona, who makes a face and shakes her head. No surprise there.

  “How about more coffee?” Brynn offers.

  Fiona shakes her head again, taps her cigarette pack against the table in a rapid staccato, and mutters, “God, whereis she?”

  “She’s on her way.”

  “Maybe she’s not coming after all.”

  “She would have called to tell us.”

  Fiona just shrugs.

  Removing milk and butter from the fridge, Brynn wonders, again, if she should tell Fee about the dead cardinal. She hasn’t yet, because it makes more sense to wait for Cassie.

  But she can’t go much longer without blurting it out.

  “Oh, God,” she murmurs, stirring a rapidly melting wedge of butter into the steaming pasta.

  She doesn’t realize she spoke out loud until Fiona asks, “What did you say?”

  “Nothing.”

  They fall restlessly silent again.

  The phone rings as Brynn dumps the powdered orange cheese sauce into the pot.

  “Get it,” Fee commands, as if Brynn had no intention of answering it. “Maybe it’s Cassie.”

  It isn’t.

  It’s Garth, wanting to know if she’s okay.

  “I’m trying to be,” she says, walking into the hall with the phone.

  “I’ll come home,” Garth offers promptly.

  “No, don’t. I’m fine, I’m not alone, Fiona is here.”

  “Still? I’ve never seen her stay put for this long anywhere other than her office.”

  “Come on, Garth, someonedied .”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  Brynn peeks around the doorway into the living room. There’s Jeremy, glued to yet another episode ofDora .

  Pushing aside her maternal guilt, she tells Garth, “Cassie is on her way and I’m sure the two of them will stick around for awhile. If they leave and I need you, I’ll call you. Okay?”

  He hesitates. “Okay. Just…Be careful, Brynn. I don’t like this. First that dead bird, and now Tildy.”

  Her heart races. “Who says one has anything to do with the other?”

  “Maybe they don’t. It didn’t even occur to me, actually, until I was in the car driving over here. I wanted to turn around and come back home, but I told myself I was being ridiculous. Now I’m not so sure.”

  I am sure…And they definitely have something to do with each other.

  She bites her lip, fighting the urge to spill the whole story to her husband.

  She can’t do that. Not with Fiona in earshot, anyway.

  Ten years ago, she swore to keep their secret.

  But now her own life might be in danger if she doesn’t tell someone.

  Garth, and the police.

  They need to know. I have to tell.

  But she shouldn’t just blurt it out without discussing it with Fiona and Cassie first. Surely they’ll agree that telling is absolutely necessary now, and damn the consequences. They have to tell for Tildy’s sake.

  No. For Rachel’s.

  How would I feel if I thought they abandoned my body alone in the woods?

  You wouldn’t feel anything,a reasonable voice points out,because you’d be dead.

  But what if I wasn’t? What if they only thought I was? Or claimed I was?

  Was Rachel really still alive as she lay there? Did Tildy knowingly abandon her at the bottom of that ravine? Did she lie to the others about Rachel being dead?

  And if the answer to all of those questions isyes …

  Did Rachel return to kill Tildy for what she did?

  “Listen, I’ll be home as soon as I can,” Garth says, still on the phone.

  She forgot him; he’s been silent and so has she.

  “Promise me you’ll call me if you need me, okay?”

  I do. I need you.

  Aloud she manages only, “Okay.”

  “I love you.”

  “You, too.”

  She disconnects the call and returns to the kitchen.

  “I can’t sit here all day,” Fiona announces. “I’ve got appointments.”