It must be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, going to Tripp Ingraham’s house. And that’s really saying something for me.
He’s been charged with murder. I am willingly going to an accused murderer’s house.
I say that to myself over and over again as I jog down the street, trying to look like it’s just a regular day, just regular Jane out for her morning run, certainly not about to do something so shit-stupid she might die.
His texts kept me up all night last night, and I can’t explain it, but I need to hear what he says.
Because something in me tells me he’s telling the truth.
Tripp is so many ugly things—a drunk, a lech, a Republican—but murderer still doesn’t fit on him. I’ve known violent men. I’ve been around too many of them, and I learned how to sniff them out early. I had to.
Tripp just … doesn’t smell right.
I hurry up his driveway, praying to god that no one catches a glimpse of me. His bushes are overgrown, dead leaves and flower petals strewn along the walk at the front of the house, and if I’d thought his place seemed dark and sad before, it’s nothing compared to how it feels now.
After ringing the doorbell, I wait for so long that I think he’s not going to answer, and I’m uncomfortably aware that anyone could come by and see me standing there. This neighborhood seemed to have eyes everywhere, and Tripp is not supposed to have visitors, not without it being cleared through the police first.
Like I was going to do that.
Just as I’m about to turn away, the door opens.
Tripp stares at me, wearing a plaid bathrobe tied loosely at the waist and a pair of matching pajama pants. His skin has gone grayish, his eyes nearly swallowed up by the hollows around them. Tripp looked rough before, but now, he looks half-dead, and I almost feel sorry for him.
“You came,” he says, his voice low and flat. “I honestly didn’t think you would. Don’t just stand there. Come in.”
He ushers me inside, and I’m hit with the smell immediately. Old food, garbage that hasn’t been taken out, and booze.
So much booze.
“Sorry I didn’t clean up,” he says, gesturing for me to head into the living room, but I shake my head, folding my arms over my chest.
“Whatever you have to say to me, go ahead and say it here. Say it fast.”
He lowers his gaze back to mine, the corner of his mouth lifting slightly, and there it is again—a shadow version of that Tripp, sure, washed out and barely there, but still.
“Don’t want to spend too much time in the murderer’s lair. I get it.”
I’d tell him not to be a dick, but that’s like telling him not to breathe, so instead, I just glare at him, waiting, and eventually he sighs.
“You must’ve felt like you won the goddamn lottery when you met Eddie Rochester,” he muses. “Rich, good-looking, charming as hell. But let me tell you something, Jane.”
He leans in close, and I catch the ripe odor of him, the stink of unwashed skin and unbrushed teeth. “He’s poison. His wife was poison, too, so at least they were well-matched in that.”
Another smirk. “If I were you, I’d leave here, get whatever shit you can out of the house, and hit the road. Leave Eddie, Birmingham, all of it.” He waves one hand, sagging back against the door. “Sure as fuck wish I’d listened when Blanche said we should move.”
“Blanche wanted to move?” I ask incredulously, and he nods.
“Yeah. Two weeks before she died. Started talking about how she needed to be somewhere else, that she felt like Bea was suffocating her. Wasn’t enough that Bea took her whole goddamn life, you know? She had to be right up under us all the time, too. And Eddie. Fucker was always over at the house, seemed like.”
“But you said you didn’t really think anything was happening there.”
“Still didn’t mean I liked it. Bea didn’t like it, either. It’s why she invited Blanche to the lake that weekend. To ‘hash it out.’ I asked Blanche what that meant, and she said they were at … I don’t know. Like a crossroads or something. That she wasn’t sure they could still be friends. And I thought maybe it was about…”
His throat moves, but he doesn’t say anything, and when he reaches up to rub his unshaven jaw, I see his hands are shaking slightly.
“Things had been fucked up for a while,” he finally says. “Between Blanche and Bea, between Bea and Eddie, me and Blanche. It was all just toxic by that point. Which is why I was confused as fuck when Bea called me and asked me to come up.”
My blood turns cold. “What?”
Sighing, Tripp scrubs a hand over his face. “That weekend,” he says, sounding tired. “Bea called me that Friday night, said she thought Blanche needed me. So I got in the car, drove up to the lake, and yes, we all had a lot to drink, but I passed out in the house. I was never on that goddamn boat. I woke up the next morning in the guest bedroom, feeling like someone had jammed a railroad spike through my skull, and neither Bea nor Blanche were there. I assumed they’d taken the boat out early, and I left. Drove back home.”
His voice cracks and he takes a second to clear his throat, rubbing his face again. “I didn’t know. I went home that morning, and I watched fucking golf on TV, and all that time, they were both … they were already dead. They were … rotting in that water…”
There are tears in his eyes now. “It wasn’t until Monday, when she didn’t come home and I couldn’t get her on the phone that I even realized something was wrong.”
His bleary eyes focus on my face, and now there are no smirks, no gross lines. “I swear to you, I had nothing to do with any of it. Yes, I was there, and yes, I should’ve told the cops that immediately, but I was afraid of…” He makes a strained sound that’s too sad to be a laugh. “This. Fuck, I was afraid of this.”
His hands clutch my shoulders, hard enough that I think I’ll have bruises there. “I’m telling you, leave. I didn’t get on that boat, but my fingerprints are on it. I didn’t buy fucking rope and a hammer, but someone using my credit card did.”
There’s so much information coming at me at once that I barely know how to process it all, and I blink, trying to step out of Tripp’s hold, trying to wrap my head around what he’s implying.
“You’re saying someone framed you?”
“I’m saying you still have the chance to walk away from these fuckers.”
He lets me go, stepping back. “I wish to Christ I had.”
I tear the house apart.
I don’t know what I’m looking for, only that there has to be something, some proof that Eddie did this.
That’s what Tripp was trying to tell me, I know it, and so here I am, opening up closets, yanking out drawers.
Adele rushes around my feet, barking frantically, and there are tears in my eyes as I survey my destruction.
Books off shelves, heedlessly tumbled to the floor. Cushions pulled off the sofa.
I pick up anything heavy, all those tchotchkes from Southern Manors, looking for drops of blood. I go through the pockets of Eddie’s clothes. I push the mattress off our bed.
Something, something, there has to be something, you can’t kill two people and not leave some sign of it, you can’t. There are receipts, he’s hidden a murder weapon, there will be clothes with blood, I will find something.
An hour later—no, two, almost two and a half—I’m sitting on the floor of the coat closet at the front of the house, my head in my hands. Adele has lost interest in me now, and sits in the hall facing me, her snout resting on her paws.
I’ve lost my fucking mind.
The house is a wreck, and I’m too exhausted to even think about putting it back together again.
Tripp is right. I should leave. Get out while I can because even if it wasn’t Eddie, there’s something going on here, something so fucked up that no amount of money can make it worth it.
I’m just getting up from the floor when I see a jacket in the corner of the closet. It must’ve fallen off a hanger while I was in here acting like a madwoman, but I don’t remember seeing it.
I also don’t remember the last time I saw Eddie wear it.
When I pick it up, I notice immediately that it feels a little heavier on one side than the other, and my breath catches in my throat as my fingers close around something in the pocket.
But when I pull it out, it’s just a paperback book.
I imagine him, taking it to read somewhere, maybe at the office, maybe on his lunch break, and shoving it back in a pocket, forgetting about it.
I’ve seen Eddie reading plenty over the past few months, but always some boring military thriller. This is a romance novel, an older one with a pretty lurid cover, which doesn’t strike me as Eddie’s thing.
Maybe it was Bea’s. A favorite read, something he kept close to him.
I open the cover.
It takes me a minute to realize what I’m seeing, the spill of words written over the typed pages confusing and messy to my eyes.
And then I see Blanche scrawled on a page, and feel like my heart stops beating.
Murdered my best friend.
Locked me away.
My shaking hands turn the pages so fast, I can hear paper tear.
And then there’s my name.
Jane.
Bile floods my mouth, and I whimper, muscles seizing up.
Killed Blanche, locked me away, fucked him, Jane.
The words are blurring, and I’m so sure I’m going to be sick, but I can’t be, I can’t because Bea Rochester is not in that lake, rotting away like Tripp said, she’s here, she’s right over my head, and oh my god.
I rush out of the closet, my feet skidding on the marble floor in the hallway.
Adele looks up and barks once, sharp, as I run for the stairs, the book still in my hand.
A code, the same one as the lock at the lake house.
Another closet, this one smaller, one I’ve never even paid attention to because I hardly ever come upstairs, and oh god, oh god, the thumps, those noises, transitional seasons, that asshole, it was her, it was Bea—
My hands shake so badly I can barely open the panel at the back of the closet, but I manage it, punching in the numbers even as a part of me says she won’t be in there. That this can’t be fucking real.
A whirring sound, a click, and I push the door open.
At first, I’m just surprised to see what a big room is behind the door. Like a hotel room, almost, decorated, cozy despite the lack of natural light. A big bed in the center.
And next to that bed, a woman.
Now I really think I will be sick.
Bea Rochester didn’t drown in the same accident that killed Blanche.
Bea Rochester never died at all.
Bea Rochester is standing right in front of me.
“Is he here?” she asks.