Imagining what that stupid cat would say is almost as amusing as thinking about what Matilda Harrington would have said if shed had the chance.

If there was ever any doubt that this plan could actually come to fruitionand, all right, therewas doubt, serious doubt.i.ts been all but erased.

That the Boston police already have a suspect is yet another fortuitous turn of events.

The G.o.ds certainly are smiling on this ambitious venture of mine.

Of course, the investigation is ongoing. Matilda Harringtons hapless coworker will eventually be cleared Eventually?

Sooner than anyone can know.

This weekend, actually.

If theyve got Ray Wilmington under surveillance when another Zeta Delta Kappa sister is murdered, h.e.l.l have to be cleared.

Then again, the way things are going in my favor Wouldnt it be ironic if the police continue to suspect Ray in Tildys case, and merely attribute Ca.s.sandra Ashfords imminent death to a copycat killer?

Ironic, and highly unlikely.

Still, one can hope, right up until the end.

And the end will come soon enough.

For now, might as well just enjoy this little game, which has been a long time in coming.

Ten years, to be exact.

Tell me youre not getting sick of my face, Quincy says as he leans forward on his elbows and eyes Ray Wilmington across the interrogation room table. I know Im getting sick of yours.

Wilmington shrugs.

But theres something different about him today.

Hes wearing down, Quincy realizes. Endless hours in the claustrophobic interrogation room with the dauntless, in-your-face Quincy Hiles have a way of doing that to a person.

Maybe today, Wilmington will talk.

Confess, even.

Then again Quincy is starting to have his doubts about that.

Ray Wilmington is hiding something, but Quincy isnt sure that guilt as a murderer is it.

No, but theressomething .

Deb and Mike, seated on either side of him, arent even so sure of that anymore.

Maybe hes totally innocent, Deb had said last night as they were making yet another pit stop at the ubiquitous Dunkin Donuts: black coffee for Deb, chamomile tea for Quincy.

Yeah, maybe hes totally innocent, Quincy had shot back, and maybe Im thinking of calling off my retirement and working another ten years. Without pay.

I dont know Do you think hed have confessed by now if he were guilty?

Do you think hed have made up that mythical bouquet of roses if he were innocent?

Deb shrugged and sighed. Shes been doing a lot of that these past few days.

So has Quincy. And it isnt his style.

His IBS has been acting up lately, though hes been eating all the right things and taking his medication. Its stress. c.u.mulative, probably. Retirement is so close he can taste it, and this case will drag on without him, but it would be pretty d.a.m.ned satisfying to nail Matilda Harringtons killer as his swan song.

Nowhis stomach clenching painfully as he faces Ray WilmingtonQuincy says, Were running more DNA tests from the crime scene. If you were in there, youre toast. You know that, dont you?

I wasnt in there.

You said you were, Mike points out.

Outside, not in.

Quincy shakes his head. We have evidence to the contrary.

They dont. Yet. Its a cla.s.sic interrogation ploy.

They arent necessarily banking on DNA to connect him to the scene, but Wilmington doesnt have to know that.

There was no evidence of s.e.m.e.n or s.e.xual a.s.sault; no blood droplets that were likely to have belonged to anyone other than the victim. The lettering on the cake was done in blood, but it was determined to have come from a cat. The crime lab is testing a stray gray hair found near the body; Quincy figures it will turn out to be the housekeepers. There were no foreign skin cells under the victims fingernails the way there would be if she had clawed at her killer to fight off the brutal attack.

The forensics evidence so far has backed up Quincys initial hypothesis that Matilda Harrington was killed almost instantly by a single blow to the head, and her face was disfigured afterward in a violent rage.

The weapon that ravaged her beautiful features has yet to turn up, but Quincy was right about the cast iron doorstop. Lab tests revealed minuscule particles of blood, skin, hair, bone, and brain but no fingerprints.

There were none at the scene.

Meaning the killer had the presence of mind to wear gloves, and clean up after himselfor herself.

Heor shedid leave behind a single, strange calling card, but it raised more questions than it answered.

Quincy still doesnt know what to make of that small piece of knitted gray wool ragged and raveling at the edges where it had been cut from a larger piece. Microscopic crimson fibers were found on it, suggesting that the original garment might also have contained red yarn. It apparently had spent some time in the great outdoors as well. The lab is running further tests to see if they can pinpoint a geographic region for the soil and pine needles.

For now, its the only real link to the killer.

Whats your mother going to do, Ray, if you spend the rest of your life in prison? Deb is asking sadly. Youre her only child. Your fathers dead. Shes on Social Security. She needs you, Ray. Youre all shes got.

And we know she was about to lose the house, Quincy puts in. Again. Theyve used this information repeatedly. Futilely. We know she had the place mortgaged up to the hilt and all her credit cards were maxed out. Yours, too.

Mike takes it up. You must have been upset that the bank was going to foreclose on the house where you grew up, where your mother and father were so happy together for all those years. We know she couldnt keep up the mortgage payments, even with you helping her. You both must have been feeling pretty out of sorts lately.

Angry, even, Quincy agrees. Furious. Keeping it all bottled up, though. Right?

Theyve also gone this route before, repeatedly, to no avail.

But this time, Quincy senses a subtle change in Rays stoic demeanor.

How will your mother survive without the house, and without you if you go to prison, Ray? Where will she even live?

She wont have to worry about surviving without me because I didnt kill Matilda and Im not going to prison for the rest of my life, Ray says heavily, shoulders slumped.

Yes, hes wearing down.

Then whatdid you do, Ray? The question comes from Mike, almost gently. Look, we know you were up to something outside Tildys house that night. What was it?

Maybe you were thinking you could get a handout from your rich girlfriend only you realized then that she didnt want to be your girlfriend.

Ray glares at Quincy. She wasnt my girlfriend.

You seemed to think she was. Waltzing Matilda, you called her. That information came courtesy of Tildys coworker Katie.

And we know, Mike adds, that last Thursday wasnt the first night you were hanging around on Commonwealth Avenue.

A few of the neighbors had noticed him there before on occasion. Just sitting in his parked car at night, keeping an eye on Matilda Harringtons house.

Was he plotting her murder? Waiting for the right opportunity?

Did you see something, Ray, that night? Something that made you angry with Matilda?

No, not that night.

Quincy freezes.

It was a cla.s.sic slip Only, judging by the look on Ray Wilmingtons drawn, pockmarked face, it wasnt a slip at all.

Hes ready to talk at last.

Having borne two childrenforgetthat, having lived in a sorority house filled with s.e.xually active college girlsBrynn is familiar enough with pregnancy tests to be aware that you can get a false negative but not a false positive.

Sequestered in the bathroom while Caleb is at school and Jeremy is napping, she wraps the plastic stick, with its unmistakable plus sign in the little window, in a tissue.

Several tissues.

Then she encases it in toilet paper, winding it around and around until its securely mummified. She deposits it in the wicker wastebasket, which she carries with her to the kitchen, to add to the already-full black trash bag there.

As she ties the handles securely and spirits it out to add it to the garbage can on the deck, shes ludicrously grateful that the weekly trash pickup is tomorrow morning. Theyll cart away the evidence and no one will be the wiser.

No one as in Garth.

So youre not going to tell him?

No, she decides, closing the back door again and turning the k.n.o.b lock and the dead bolt, and sliding the chain. She isnt going to tell him yet.

Not until she has to.

Standing in the kitchen, she presses her palms against the slight swell of her stomach, beneath her belly b.u.t.ton. She isnt showing yet; her once-taut abs long ago gave way to a permanent little rise after she carried Caleb.

But she will be showing, soon. She did almost immediately with Jeremy.

How in the world did this happen?

Because it was meant to be.

An utter twist of fate.

An accident.

But Garth might not believe her. He might think she did this deliberately.

Did you?

No! Of course not.

Shes taken her birth control pills religiously every morning, even though its been against her will for these last few months.

At least, she thinks she has.

What if she subconsciously missed a few ?

No, she would have noticed. The packet is numbered by the days. On the rare occasions that shes forgotten a pill, shes figured it out promptly, the next day, and taken two.

That hasnt happened in ages, though.

Anyway, it doesnt matter.

Regardless of how or why it happened, shes pregnant.

She and Garth are going to have a third child, whether he wants it or not.

Of course h.e.l.l want it.

He might balk at first Might?she thinks ruefully.

Okay, hewill balk at the news. Definitely. h.e.l.l probably be angry, accusatory toward her, even.

But once he gets used to the idea, h.e.l.l embrace it Just as Brynn already has.

Really. He will.

Hehas to.

Dr. Saddler?