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“Fuck!” she snarled.
Her phone beeped. She looked down, hoping against hope it was Roman, apologizing for his stupid attitude and asking her to come back.
She blew out a disappointed breath to discover it wasn’t him.
Ryan Anderson: Hey, you ok? Where’d you go?
Then she got into her car, hating the peeling paint and rundown interior, and sped toward home. Once there, she found another message from Ryan waiting on her phone.
Ryan Anderson: Hope you’re ok. Give me a holler sometime.
Penny threw her phone across the room and watched as it bounced once on the couch, then landed on the floor. When her mother called at their scheduled time several hours later, she curled tighter under her blanket and watched as it went to voicemail. Her mother called a second time an hour later, and Penny shut her eyes as the phone beeped, signaling a message.
Penny dragged herself off the couch around midnight. It was only once she’d showered, brushed her teeth, and made a cup of chamomile tea that she finally picked up her phone. On it, aside from the missed messages from Ryan and the mystified voicemails from her mother, was an email notification.
Penny blinked, then blinked again when she read the name in the address bar. Surely, it couldn’t be. It made no sense. Unless…
No. That was impossible.
As her stomach cramped with dread, Penny touched the Delete button on the screen of her phone. Two minutes later, she pulled up the Trash folder and retrieved the message.
Finally, she couldn’t take the suspense a second longer. The message would haunt her every waking moment until she bit the bullet, faced the music, paid the piper. It was time.
Address: [email protected]
Subject: Urgent Request
TRANSCRIPT
Prosecution: Mrs. Tate, you say you have no idea how your fingerprints got on the knife?
Eliza Tate: No. I mean yes, I have no idea.
Prosecution: Are you implying that you were somehow framed for murder?
Eliza Tate: I’m not implying anything. I’m saying I have no clue how my fingerprints ended up on the weapon.
Prosecution: The knife was from your kitchen. Who else had access to it?
Eliza Tate: Any number of people. I’ve hosted plenty of parties, and I couldn’t tell you when it went missing.
Prosecution: Did Anne Wilkes have access to your home?
Eliza Tate: Anne is a good friend of mine. She’s been in my home many times. Are you suggesting that Anne and I worked together to get rid of my husband?
Prosecution: Isn’t it possible? You both had a reason to want the victim dead.
Eliza Tate: Well, I suppose anything’s possible. But if you can’t prove it, does it matter?
TWENTY-FOUR
Four Months Before
October 2018
Eliza ran a duster over the living room bookshelf one last time. The house was already spotless. This is what happens when a woman’s life is falling apart, she thought dryly. She had nowhere to release her tension except on the poor dust bunnies cowering beneath her overpriced couch. She was really beginning to hate that couch.
Roman had picked it out, along with most of the overpriced furniture in the place. Years ago, Eliza had said he’d had an eye for interior design, but now she found herself wondering if he’d just had an eye for the interior designer—a leggy blond who, in retrospect, had spent a lot more time than was necessary sizing up their house for furniture.
