Cover

Dedication

To Jennie and Katie

Epigraph

“There are a lot of places I like, but I like New Orleans better.”

— Bob Dylan

Prologue

Crime Scene, Walkthrough #1

The detective walks through a tunnel of weepy oak trees, follows the picturesque path to the glowing French doors. She tries to imagine herself in the killer’s shoes.

Did the killer sneak up on them? Or were they already inside when the party started?

She stares up at the strange, eclectic house. It inspires awe and horror in tandem.

The pediments and classic columns give the place an undeniable Greek feel. But like so many other domiciles in New Orleans, it’s a haunting patchwork of influence—the Spanish and Caribbean flashes of color and design; the Creole parapets and cast-iron balconies; the Victorian motifs twisted like lace. And the siding looks Italian…

A true work of architectural genius… Too bad its reputation will be tainted after today, the detective thinks.

Someone has either decorated the front of the house for the bachelorette party, or it’s left over from Mardi Gras; there are gaudy swoops of pearls and flowers, and massive bride and groom statues, which look to be made of papier-mâché, keep watch at the carriageway.

The detective stares at their faces; stoic, they reveal nothing about what transpired here. What secrets are you hiding? she wonders.

Through the carriageway, she stops at the French doors. Her assistant helps her into boot covers and gloves. He tucks her long dark hair into a rubbery hairnet.

The assistant is young and male, barely twenty. His eyes are frightened. His skin has turned a muted gray. But the detective pretends not to notice.

“Take me to her, please,” she says.

Down a marbled hallway lined with a dark mix of Parisian and contemporary paintings, the assistant stops at the entry of a grand dining room and points toward the dining hall. It’s large enough to fit a ballroom inside it.

On a long wooden table are the remnants of half-eaten food. The pungent aroma of rotting oysters fills the air. There are open wine bottles scattered from the head of the table on down.

The banquet assumes a substantial portion of the room, but the centerpiece of the space… is the woman.

The detective moves in, tiptoeing like a ghoulish ballet dancer around the ghastly main attraction.

The noose is tight around the victim’s neck. She dangles from the rafters, still as a statue carved by Marcus Aurelius himself, as though she’s part of the mishmash design that comes with the house, with this entire city…

The victim’s eyes are open, staring.

The detective turns, follows her gaze toward the putrid food spread, trying to see through her victim’s eyes. What was the last thing you saw before you died? Or should I say: who did you see?

There are others in the room—technicians, scouring for clues, but the detective might as well be alone with the dead woman. What happened to you? The detective’s eyes comb the woman’s body for answers. Hanging there, still and blank-faced she looks weightless…

Why did someone do this to you? And most importantly—who hated you enough to kill?

The detective walks a full circle around the victim, eyes never leaving the body. She nearly steps in a small puddle of blood before the assistant stops her.

Kneeling, she examines the coin-shaped blot on the marble floor, glancing back up at the victim.

The victim wears a long white dress, nearly see-through. No shoes. Her toenails are painted hot-pink.

The detective cannot say for certain until the medical examiner arrives, but she doesn’t think the victim died by hanging.

“What are you thinking?” the assistant asks, mustering some fortitude despite his sickly pallor.

“Well, I can’t say for sure. But I don’t see much injury around the ligature. No scratch marks … and she doesn’t appear to have clawed at the noose. If someone strung you up like that, you’d fight like hell, wouldn’t you?”

The assistant’s face turns ashier.

“Maybe the victim put herself up there,” he squeaks.

The detective shakes her head, slowly considering.

“Not a chance,” she says, finally.

“Well, how do you know?”

The detective lifts an arm, points a latex finger at the back of the victim’s head. “Can’t see it too clearly from here, but she suffered from a head injury there on the back of her skull. The blood on the floor probably came from her, but this isn’t where she was hit. A wound like that … it would have caused a whole lot of mess, and I don’t think the victim hit herself in the back of the head before hanging, do you? And how did she get herself up there? There’s no stool or chair nearby…” The detective is talking at him, but she’s mostly talking it through with herself.

She motions for one of the technicians and points at the blood on the floor.

Later, as the body is cut down and removed, the detective roams the halls of the mansion, room by room, taking it all in. She has had no luck finding a weapon.

A blow like that would have come from something hard… and from someone with a fast swing, she thinks inquisitively.

The detective imagines the perpetrator, lifting something heavy over the victim’s head. She sees the weight of the blow, the whale-like moan someone might make after sustaining a sudden brain injury of that nature.

The detective’s lieutenant has passed along some details already, but she wants to walk it through herself a few more times, the literal space and the scenario in her mind. She needs to get a feel of this place… She needs to know what happened, and how a joyous night could turn out so devastating. So tragic… so grisly.

Six women were present at the party and now one of them is dead.

The remaining five are in custody, secured and separated at the scene, and now awaiting questions down at the station. Hopefully being managed with care until we have more information, the detective thinks to herself.

The detective stops in the doorway of a massive library. Floor-to-ceiling shelves are crammed with heavy volumes and tomes. She prides herself on her eye for order. Whoever the caretaker of this place might be, they certainly have an eye for order too, she realizes.

The books are organized by height and width, the thickest and tallest volumes on the left, cascading from left to right, growing thinner and shorter, all the way to the smallest and narrowest volumes. It flows seamlessly… perfectly.

The detective’s eyes roam the spines, left to right then down a row, right to left… It takes her less than a minute to find it—the chaos mingling with the order.

The offender is a thick red tome inched between two narrow tomes of the same height.

As she removes it, slowly and with care, she realizes the book isn’t red at all. Rather, it is meant to be brown, but something has stained the corner of the heavy paperboard binding and leaked down the sides of it.

The detective turns it over and back, stares at the thick clump of hair and scalp attached to the sharpest edge. Her body jolts with surprise and revulsion.

“I need help in here,” she whisper-shouts, hands shaky from the weight of the book, and the horror of what has happened here.

The detective’s voice booms around the cavernous space, echoing back in her face. This place feels less like a historical monument and more like an ill-fated tomb, she thinks, hairs rising on the back of her neck for the first time all night.

Earlier, the detective saw pictures of the women: a fun-filled weekend, a celebration of what should have been one of the best moments in life, an event catalogued in real time with the help of social media and social influence…

But all the filters in the world can’t hide this sort of darkness.

They could cover up their flaws and grievances with Gingham or Valencia filters, but no amount of lighting or special effects could change what one of them has done…

A monster in a pretty dress is still a monster.

Part One

“A little party never killed nobody.”

— Fergie

Chapter One

ROSALEE

The bride-to-be

The backyard of our new home spread out before me, stretching over a gentle slope then unfolding into a pasture. Beyond that, the land melted into a quiet hush of sugar maple trees and smudgy, rolling hills in every direction.

Two mares stood in the pasture, silent and watchful, unbothered by the eerie hush of falling snow. I stood at the edge of our veranda, weightless snowflakes brushing my cheeks and hands. I wondered if the horses were sleeping… Do horses stand when they sleep or lie down?

The smell of manure was strong, despite the cold, but the odor didn’t bother me. The realtor had warned us when we walked the place, but the pasture smelled just fine to me—like farmland and fresh air. Like a fresh start for my tiny two-person family…

Asher and I had lived here for nearly a month now, but still, I hadn’t adjusted. Half our belongings were stowed away in boxes, pushed aside in the deep dark corners of our three-bedroom farmhouse.

It’s perfect, Asher told the real estate agent, before turning to me. Isn’t it perfect, Rosalee?

What else could I say but ‘yes’, in that moment? I loved the farmhouse; this was true. And the way Asher’s eyes lit up when he was excited about something, whether it was a big case he was working on at the law firm, or a story he’d read online; his eyes, warm and brown like pecans, would grow smiley and wide, like a kid bubbled over with Christmas morning delight.

Later, as the real estate agent typed up the deal, Asher repeated those words: It’s perfect. Adding this: For now.

Us and a couple of kids. The perfect place to raise a family. Until we want to have even more kids, and we eventually outgrow the place, he had said.

I shivered at the memory. Yes, the house was perfect, and I loved my fiancé, but the thought of having so many kids we would soon outgrow it? That wasn’t in the plans for me.

I loved the solitude of Moon County. The earthiness of dirt and manure. You could drive from one side of town to the other in thirty minutes, counting the crows and telephone wires, pointing out the silos and family farms that had obviously been around for generations. One generation gave way to the next, a bunch of knock-offs walking around, replacing the youth that came before them. We were all different here, yet all the same.

I loved it here, but also—I didn’t feel settled. Not yet.

“You’re freezing.” Asher wrapped his thick arms around me from behind, squeezing me close to his chest. He smelled like aftershave and his favorite coffee, an over-priced bourbon barrel aged brew. He was wearing his thick, black, terrycloth robe. But still, I could feel his erection as he held me close. I shivered and pressed up against him.

“It seems wrong to go,” I whispered, icy words forming foggy little puffs around my head. “We’re just getting settled… and this is our first snow since moving…” Asher squeezed tighter, too tight, and I tried to relax, giving into the curve of his body, a shudder of pleasure running through me.

I didn’t want to leave Asher—we hadn’t spent a night apart from one another in ages.

Years ago, I developed a crush on him in middle school, but then I had to move away. It wasn’t until I came back to Moon County that we had our first ‘real’ connection. But for me, my feelings for Asher had been going on for as long as I had hormones to act on. Even now, at twenty-eight, it felt surreal to think we were together. We were getting married soon—who would have thought?

Perhaps that could account for the unsettled lump in my chest, and that vile voice of self-doubt in my brain: We weren’t married yet. He could still back out.

Asher laughed, a thick rumble in his chest that vibrated through me and turned my body warm all over. He had the best laugh. He might not have been perfect, but that laugh had always been one of his best features.

“Who are you kidding, Rosalee? You hate the snow.”

True. Although he didn’t exactly know why. Talk of my parents’ fatal accident was something I avoided whenever possible, even with my future husband.

For me, the beauty of snow would always be intertwined with those ugly, dark days of death. That haunting silence snow brought, as though the entire world was vacuum-sealed and there was no one around to save you…

“And” Asher continued, “there’s not that much left to unpack.” Lie. The thought of all those boxes and all the sorting that needed doing, it overwhelmed all of my senses, the pressure thick in my chest to just get it done, get it done…

“What will you do without me though? You’ll be lonely,” I teased, my mood changing. I turned around, wrapping my arms around his waist, then lifting on my toes to kiss him. Even first thing in the morning, the milky sweetness of his skin and lips were enticing.

He rocked back on his heels playfully, then squeezed my face in his hands.

“Ah. Don’t you worry about me. I have work to do on the Werner file and in my free time, I’ll probably get drunk on cheap beer and start hanging some of your art on the walls,” he grinned.

I groaned but smiled, unable to contain my pleasure. I wanted a place to hang my art pieces too, but if Asher had it his way, they’d be displayed front and center—in the living room or foyer, for all of our guests to see. I liked that he was proud of my work, but it also embarrassed me.

“Don’t you dare. Wait until I come back at least,” I said, taking one last longing glance toward the pasture. The horses were gone now, as though they’d never been there to begin with. My eyes drifted over to the gazebo next to the farmhouse; bright blue with tiny white pockets of flowers on its beams, it was one of my favorite features of the property.

I had suggested, casually, that perhaps we should hold the wedding here, in the gazebo. A simple ceremony on our lovely new patch of land…

Of course, Asher’s mother nearly choked on her biscuit when I said that. “She’s teasing Mom. Relax,” Asher had said, rubbing smooth circles over his mother Elizabeth’s back until her throat cleared.

“Well, I sure hope so. I’ve paid a fortune for Merribelle Gardens and already paid countless deposits on the flowers and caterers,” she had huffed, refusing to meet my eye as she dabbed her lips with a fancy white linen napkin. That day, we had met for lunch at her favorite restaurant—a snobby, upscale place that charged a hundred dollars for a dab of meat with a smear of potatoes and a lettuce leaf on it.

I’d been horrified by it, even if she was the one paying the tab.

Ah yes—the grand Merribelle Gardens, the destination for our wedding this October.

Merribelle Gardens, and all the money my future mother-in-law had so generously put forth for our wedding. The whole grand plan had been her idea—a tradition, since she and Asher’s late father had been married there in 1972.

I’d seen the glamorous pictures of their wedding day countless times. Elizabeth in her big ballgown with its floaty A-line and mother-of-pearl buttons… She had looked like a movie star. And Asher’s father—tall and demure in his fancy black waistcoat with its classic pocket square.

There was no way Asher and I could live up to his mother’s ideal wedding tradition.

It wasn’t that I was opposed to getting married there. I just couldn’t shake off the feeling that it was being held over my head, a constant reminder that I should feel grateful, indebted to the Beake family for simply letting me be a part of it.

My own parents weren’t around to help pay for the wedding, and even if they had been, they were never as well off as Asher’s family.

Whenever Elizabeth discussed the upcoming wedding, I often felt guilty, as though no matter how much I thanked her for planning and paying for it, and no matter how much enthusiasm I tried to muster, none of it was good enough. I suspected that she didn’t like me. Dare I say, maybe even hated me.

And all my suggestions and ideas for the wedding were pushed aside… How dare the peasant bride have an opinion, right?!

I wasn’t joking that day at the restaurant when I suggested the gazebo. I did love our new farmhouse, and the thought of having a small ceremony in my own mother’s plain white dress with feet bare was appealing.

But I didn’t want to disappoint Asher, and I certainly didn’t want to disappoint his overly critical mother.

“Hey. Don’t worry. Go! Have fun. You deserve this weekend. It’s yours to celebrate,” Asher said, shaking me out of my worried thoughts.

“Okay. If you insist,” I sighed. Although, he and I both knew, there was no way of getting out of New Orleans either. My best friend Mara had planned the bachelorette party; like Elizabeth, Mara wasn’t opposed to using guilt and pressure to get her way.

Truthfully, I was excited to hang out with Mara. And the others… mostly. I’d never been to New Orleans and the thought of celebrating for a few days with friends in an authentic Greek Revival in the Garden District was too exotic to resist. It would be nice to get away for a few days, from the mess and stress of packing, from the wedding jitters and constant questions and answers from the wedding planners…

I needed a break from it all. The engagement, the home-buying process, the move—it was all too much for my historically fragile mental health.

Asher led me in through the back door, nudging me toward our bedroom to pack for the trip. “I’ll make coffee and eggs. Maybe some pork sausage…” Even though the man worked ungodly hours at the law firm, he was a phenom in the kitchen when he offered to cook.

“Sounds wonderful.” I kissed his cheek and drifted off to our room. My suitcase was under the bed, old and mostly unused. It had been years since I’d travelled anywhere.

Humming softly, I filled the soft fabric lining of the case with pockets of panties and bras, and my best T-shirts and jeans that had been unpacked. Despite the chilly weather here, the forecast in Louisiana looked perfect—a balmy seventy-nine degrees. I tossed in pajamas and a couple of old bathing suits in case there was a pool. I was tempted to try them on to see if they still fit, but I knew I’d get depressed about my weight gain. Over the last couple years, I’d put on nearly twenty pounds. Being in love and going out to eat all the time with your fiancé will do that, I guess. But it didn’t make me feel very good when I tried to squeeze into undergarments or swimwear.

I’ll just deal with trying on bathing suits when I get there, I decided, hastily.

After my clothes were all packed, I went in search of my tickets. They were in a folder, tucked away with all the airline details printed out by Mara and my cousin, Tinsley.

Where’s that folder now, then? I wondered.

As I wandered down the hall to Asher’s office, I could hear the sizzle of sausages and smell the warm scent of toast and coffee. My stomach grumbled.

Asher’s office was still a work in progress, like the rest of the house. Housed in one of the spare bedrooms, he had a single desk and chair. The desktop was littered with files and folders. I spotted the neon yellow folder with my flight itinerary in it, balanced on a crooked stack of papers on the corner of the desk. He had obviously moved the folder into his office, thinking it was one of his.

I scooped up the folder and opened it, double checking my flight time and that everything I needed was there. Glancing at the other stack of papers on his desk, I was reminded of all the paperwork and drama that had been involved in buying our new, and first, home together.

Copies of our bank statements, tax forms, and every single asset we had ever owned. The only thing the mortgage lender didn’t ask for was a picture of the inside of my underwear drawer…

I needed to go through these papers when I got back, file away the important ones and shred the duplicates.

I picked up the stack in my hands and straightened it, then set it back down neatly on the desk. I was about to turn away with my folder in hand, when my eyes drifted to a line item I hadn’t noticed before on the top sheet of one of our bank statements.

Truthfully, I’d barely paid any of it any mind, just printing and printing and printing whatever the mortgage lender asked for.

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