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Almost from the moment Delta pulled away from the pre-K, her cell phone started ringing. Eyes on the road, she pulled it from her purse, then dropped it onto the console. McCrae.
She moaned aloud.
She could still hear her panicked explanations about the knife from the night before. The memory was a spike to the heart. He hadn’t believed her. He’d wanted to, she could tell. But he hadn’t believed her. From that moment on, the entire rest of the evening had been awful. She’d put Owen to bed and returned downstairs. That’s when she’d tried to explain, and even to her own ears it sounded lame. The thrill she’d felt on inviting him over had died a quick but painful death.
“How could you be so stupid?” she railed at herself again.
The phone was still ringing, waiting for her to pick up. She seriously thought about letting it go to voice mail, but that would only put off the inevitable. A teensy part of herself wanted to know why he was calling. A bigger part worried it had something to do with another trip to the station.
But . . . what the hell. She answered and clicked on the speaker. “Hello . . . Chris.”
“Delta, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s been an accident.”
She slammed on the brakes at a stop sign she almost blew through. Her brain was not functioning well. “No . . . I just dropped off Owen at pre-K. What accident?”
“It’s Zora and Brian Timmons.”
“What?”
And then he told her. She drove blindly for a few blocks and then pulled over. McCrae described the accident—at Grimm’s Pond, no less. While she listened, she stared through the windshield at the traffic passing her by, but what she was seeing was Zora, her one-time roommate, flighty, sometimes silly, maybe a bit too seduced by the finer things, but a friend, a longtime friend, one of the Five Firsts . . .
McCrae was still talking. She couldn’t think. Couldn’t hear.
“Was it murder?” she cut in.
That stopped him, and he took a moment before saying, “It looks like an accident.” But there was a dubious tone to his voice.
“Is it connected?” she asked, almost in a whisper.
“To . . . ?”
“The other deaths. Our classmates?”
“Well . . . as soon as we get some forensic evidence, we’ll know more. Maybe later today.”
“I just spent the day with Zora,” she said, a lump forming in her throat. “She was coming over to take care of Owen today.”
“You were with her . . . yesterday?”
“Yes, we went to the movies.” She could feel a headache building. She wanted to cry but couldn’t seem to find the tears. “I didn’t kill Tanner, but somebody did . . . and now this. Maybe there’s a conspiracy. Maybe whoever killed Tanner killed Zora and Brian, too.”
“Where are you?” he asked.
“Parked on the side of the road. I don’t believe in coincidences. It hasn’t been a week since Tanner was attacked. Somebody. . . not me . . . killed him and maybe Zora and Brian and Bailey and Carmen . . . and Penske.” Her voice was starting to quaver.
“Tell me where you are, and I’ll come get you.”
“I’m fine, McCrae.” She got control of her voice. “I’m fine. Just fine. Thank you for telling me.”
“Don’t hang up.”
“It’s not right. Something is going on. Don’t you feel it? And who’s going to be next? Me? You?”
“I’m going to find out what this is all about,” he promised.
“Good.”
