Do Not Disturb

by Freida McFadden

In the weeks after the incident, we finally got all the details, although it was mostly from reading them in the paper. The woman who showed up earlier in the night, Quinn Alexander, had just murdered her husband. She stabbed him in the belly, although there was significant evidence that she did it in self-defense. Nick told the police he saw bruises on her neck, and he assumed somebody had attacked her. Nick later ended up testifying in Quinn’s trial. But it turned out that the husband was sleeping with Quinn’s sister, Claudia Delaney. And when the sister—apparently already a bit mentally unstable—discovered the dead body, she had a complete breakdown. Claudia set about finding Quinn, then exacting revenge on her. She stabbed Quinn, then put her in the trunk of her car, intending to get rid of the dead body. And she went after me because she thought I saw her stabbing her sister. She was getting rid of the witnesses. She did the same to Greta. After the old woman told her what she wanted to know, Claudia took care of her—stabbed her in the abdomen just like Quinn. But amazingly, the knife missed any major organs and Greta survived—she was home from the hospital within a week. She must have nine lives. “Hey,” Nick says to me now. “I know you’re busy, but do you want to let me take over for half an hour so you can say goodbye to Greta?”