THE PERFECT HOUSE

by Blake Pierce

  “No. I’ll do the best I can to help,” she promised as she led them into her kitchen and motioned for them to take a seat at the breakfast table.

  “Okay, great,” Detective Hernandez said. “Can you walk us through your movements on the morning of the incident?”

  Eliza tried not to react to him calling the death of her best friend “the incident.” She knew he was just trying to be diplomatic. But it still felt wrong.

  “Sure,” she began. “I guess our morning was typical. Well, not completely typical. I had kicked my husband out of the house the night before for sleeping with my best friend. But as far as the daily routine goes, it was typical. The kids didn’t know anything was different. I got them up—Millie is four and Henry is two—around six a.m., helped them get dressed, and made breakfast. We left around six forty-five for their preschool. It’s about a ten-minute drive. I dropped them off and got back here soon after seven.”

  “What did you do after you got back?” the profiler named Jessie Hunt asked. Eliza noticed an edge in her voice that neither detective had.

  “I prepped an art project for Millie’s class,” she said, pointing at a pile of papers on the family room table in the adjoining room. “I’m the volunteer art docent. We do a project every month and I was supposed to go in later that day. I was rushing to get the last-minute details ready.”

  “Then what?” Hunt asked, still curt.

  “When I was done, I walked over to Penny’s. I had texted her earlier that morning to let her know I was going to stop by before our yoga lesson, but she hadn’t replied. I wanted to talk, just the two of us, so it wouldn’t be so awkward with Beth around.”

  “Yes,” Hunt noted sharply. “You mentioned at the hospital that you were going to tell her you didn’t want to throw away years of friendship over her affair with your husband. That is amazingly gracious of you.”

  Eliza could see the other woman sizing her up and finding her lacking. She tried to remain calm, not wanting to show upset to a bunch of law enforcement officers. She felt like Hunt was baiting her, to see if she would lose it and somehow reveal that she was capable of unexpected bursts of rage. In addition to be being mean-spirited, Eliza thought it was also insulting.

  “Look,” she said, refusing to be worked, “I think I told you in the hospital, we were friends forever. I couldn’t just throw all of that away. I mean, the night before I could have. But when I woke up the next morning I was less angry than sad. I felt like a huge chunk of who I was had been removed. And I wasn’t ready to just toss it away forever. Can you understand that?”

  “I’m trying to,” Hunt said, less than convincingly.

  Finally Eliza decided to push back.

  “Look, Ms. Hunt. I get that you have to pursue every angle. But do you have to do it with such obvious disdain for me? I’m happy to answer all your questions. I’ll provide you with whatever verification I can to confirm what I’m telling you. But maybe you could look at things from my perspective for half a second?”

  “Mrs. Longworth…” Hunt started to say.

  “No, wait,” Eliza interrupted. “In the last few days, I found out that my oldest, dearest friend had been having an affair with the man I committed to spend my life with. Then, when I try to find a way to move past that and salvage the friendship, I discover that the girl I’ve loved like a sister since we were eight has been brutally murdered. I found her, Ms. Hunt. I fell in her blood. I tried to revive her. I held her body in my arms. And now you come in, all gangbusters, with your snide remarks and your turned-up nose. I get that you have to question me. I get that it’s your job to be skeptical. But do you have to enjoy it so much?”

  She stopped and took a deep breath, wondering if she had maybe gone too far. To her relief, Hunt looked at least mildly chastened.

  “Look,” Eliza continued more calmly now, “if you want, I’ll take a lie detector test. I’ll hand over my phone and e-mails, whatever will help. But can you understand how frustrating it is to try to defend myself against your insinuations while at the same time trying to keep my life from completely falling apart? My husband, who I kicked out of our home, spent a night in jail recently because he is being investigated for the same thing you’re asking me about. Do you get how unsettling that is? My husband is a suspect in the murder of my best friend, who he was cheating with. That is not a sentence I thought I’d ever have to say, Ms. Hunt.

  “Oh, and by the way, I still have two children to raise. They don’t have a clue about any of this. They think Daddy is away on business. Millie, my older one, is best friends with Penny’s daughter, Ana. She keeps asking me when they can have another play date. How am I supposed to answer that one? And meanwhile, life goes on. That art project I was supposed to teach on Tuesday was rescheduled for today. I’m supposed to go in and act like everything is normal for a bunch of four-year-olds. And that’s happening in…oh god, I’m supposed to be there in less than an hour.”

  “Okay, Mrs. Longworth, just calm down,” Detective Bowen said, not intending to sound condescending but failing. “We don’t want to upset you and we don’t you to be late for your daughter’s art lesson. But we do have a few more questions, if you could accommodate us a bit longer.”

  Eliza went over to the cupboard, grabbed a glass, and poured herself some water. After chugging the whole thing, she felt composed enough to respond.

  “Go ahead,” she said.

  “Thank you,” he replied. “Is there anyone else who might have wanted to hurt Penny? Anyone unconnected to your… personal situation?”

  Eliza had been in such a defensive crouch that she hadn’t expected the question. A thought flashed through her head, one that hadn’t occurred to her before. She was reticent to mention it but could tell from Jessie Hunt’s expression that she’d picked up on the hesitation. So she shared something she thought she never would.

  “Maybe,” she said. “I didn’t want to say this because it didn’t seem relevant. And if I’m being honest, because, despite everything, I didn’t want to sully her memory. But Penny had other affairs.”

  Both men looked at her with stunned faces. Hunt seemed less surprised.

  “How would that sully her memory any more than it already had been?” Hunt asked, clearly making an effort to keep her tone neutral. “Hadn’t it already been irreparably damaged by sleeping with your husband?”

  “Yes, to me it had,” Eliza admitted, “but from the outside, maybe not. When all the details of this come out, the public might view what she did to me as forgivable. Imagine the headline: Woman falls for her best friend’s husband, gives in to temptation in a moment of weakness. But if she is revealed as a serial philanderer, then the world will just see her as a slut.”

  “Isn’t there some truth to that?” Hunt asked carefully.

  “Probably,” Eliza conceded reluctantly. “But don’t you see, that’s not the point. Listen, I admit that after I learned about this, I hated them both. Maybe I shouldn’t say that. I know it makes me look guilty. But it’s true. I felt betrayed. I still do. It’s like I’m writhing around in quicksand and even though it puts me at risk, I feel like lashing out.

  “But when I get a few seconds to think clearly, I realize—that’s not how I want Penny to be remembered, even after what she did to me. We had so many great years together. I want to hold on to those. I have to believe that more than two decades of friendship define who she really was, not the last month of her life. Besides, her kids don’t need to live with that. They don’t need their mommy branded with a scarlet letter. They’re going to have a hard enough time trying to live without her, especially with Colton Wooten as their primary caregiver.”

  No one spoke for several seconds. Finally Detective Hernandez raised the question Eliza knew they’d get to eventually.

  “Do you think Colton knew about her affairs?” he asked.

  Eliza debated how forthright to be but then decided that at this point she might as well lay it all out on the table.


  “Penny always said no. But I think that deep down he might have suspected it and just not wanted to know. He’s an ambitious guy, political aspirations and all. If he knew the truth, he’d have to deal with it. If he only suspected, he could pretend not to know and treat everything as normal.”

  “And you think one of these affairs might have ended badly?” Hunt asked her.

  “I don’t know. We didn’t really talk about it. I didn’t want to give her the impression I approved of what she was doing, even if Colton is an asshole. But you asked if there might be other people to consider who might want to hurt her. I had to mention it, just in case.”

  “Is there any record of these affairs?” Detective Bowen asked. “How many she had? With whom?”

  “I know she communicated with them through direct messages, using an anonymous Twitter handle. I’d see her on her phone sometimes. I don’t remember the handle she used though.”

  “That’s a problem,” Detective Bowen said. “We can’t get into her phone and her husband doesn’t know her password.”

  “Oh, that’s easy,” Eliza said. “Her password is 265262. It’s the numerical equivalent of “ColAna” for the kids, Colt Jr. and Anastasia.”

  “Thank you,” Detective Bowen said. “We’ll look into that.”

  “One more question for you, Mrs. Longworth,” Detective Hernandez said, “and then we’ll head out so you can get to your art lesson.”

  “Yes?” she asked, feeling her stomach tighten.

  Isn’t this when they ask the “gotcha” question that puts the wrongfully accused man on death row?

  “Your husband says he was trail running at the time of the murder; that he parked near here. Did you see him?”

  “No,” Eliza answered, relieved that they finally seemed to have taken her at her word but conflicted about them apparently using her against her husband. “But that doesn’t mean much. It would depend on where he parked and when. I could have easily missed him.”

  “He says he accidentally left his phone in the car and took the Los Liones trail route. Do you find those claims to be credible?”

  Eliza thought about it.

  “I could see him leaving his phone. He normally went on runs straight from the house. If he was leaving from the car, his routine might have been upset and he could have just forgotten it. Besides, reception is pretty awful in the canyons back there. He wouldn’t have been able to use it for emergency calls. So unless he was planning to use his running app, he wouldn’t have cause to take it.”

  “And what about his claim that he ran the Los Liones route?” Hernandez prodded, noticing that she hadn’t answered that part of the question.

  “Isn’t there some rule against making a wife say something incriminating against her husband?” she asked. “Even if he is a bastard cheater?”

  “Do you have something incriminating to say?” Hernandez asked, his eyebrows raised.

  “I guess it’s possible he took that route,” she said.

  “You sound skeptical,” Hunt noted.

  “It’s just that he doesn’t like the Los Liones trail because it’s steep and he has bad knees. The East Topanga route is flatter so he prefers it. It doesn’t mean he didn’t take Los Liones. But knowing Gray, he wouldn’t take it unless he could complain about it to me after. That’s his big thing—complaining. I mean, this is a guy who complained when I asked him to do the laundry, saying he didn’t know how. And considering that I’d just kicked him out of the house, he didn’t have that incentive to run the more difficult route. So draw your own conclusions.”

  All three of her interrogators shared a look she couldn’t interpret. She didn’t know how much damage she’d done to Gray’s alibi. But at the moment, she’d didn’t really care. She had twenty four-year-olds waiting to do chalk drawings and she had no intention of keeping them waiting.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Jessie, Ryan, and Brady were in digital hell.

  After Brady called Gray Longworth with a message letting him know they’d like him to come back in for additional questioning, they returned to the station, where the tech team had already accessed Penelope Wooten’s phone. The three of them, seated at a large circular table, started going through her alternate Twitter feed. It was long, involved, and confusing.

  “I’m happy to go out and bring Longworth in myself,” Brady said after about thirty minutes of poring over the slang-heavy messages.

  “No way,” Ryan said. “You’re not getting out of this task that easy. Besides, Longworth knows we want to talk to him. Let’s let the anxiety build in him a bit before we go at him again.”

  Jessie looked up from her screen.

  “Aren’t you concerned that he might try to run?” she asked. “He has to know we can’t verify his alibi. If he’s the one who tossed the knife, he’s probably worried we found it. And he was already on tenterhooks after his family life exploded. Do you really trust him to show up?”

  “We still have an officer on him,” Ryan assured her. “If he tries anything hinky, they can scoop him up. We’ll get more out of him if he comes in voluntarily.”

  “I don’t know,” Brady said. “Jessie might be right. I really think I should go help that officer out.”

  “You are not getting out of looking through Penelope Wooten’s messages,” Ryan said emphatically. “I know modern technology scares your old-man sensibilities, but you’re going to have to fight through it. Besides, this is your case. We’re just helping you out.”

  “But these guys she’s communicating with are so skeevy,” Brady protested.

  “Wow,” Ryan countered. “If you’re saying a dude is skeevy, then he must really be bad. After all, you’re kind of skeeve personified.”

  “Don’t be cruel,” Jessie piped up. “Brady’s not that skeevy. If he shaved his mustache, he’d look much less like a pedophile.”

  “Thanks for the support, Jessie,” Brady said sarcastically.

  One of the tech guys, tall and lanky, with pale skin and jet black hair that swooped down over his eyes, walked over and plopped down a sheaf of paper. He was wearing jeans and an old, black System of a Down concert T-shirt. Apparently he wasn’t burdened by any kind of dress code.

  “More work, Gregor?” Brady whined.

  “Actually less,” Gregor replied. “We used an algorithm to collate Penelope Wooten’s direct messages. We eliminated anyone she communicated with fewer than three times. We figured anything less than that was just ‘feeling out’ stuff.”

  “That’s pretty clever,” Jessie noted.

  “Thanks, we try,” Gregor said drily. “But our unit actually likes to go above and beyond so we went a step further. Of the remaining messages, we pulled ones that included a specific date, time, or address. That dramatically reduced the relevant communications.”

  “By how much?”

  “Down to this stack,” Gregor said, pointing at the papers he’d dropped on the desk. “It looks like she had ‘encounters’ with approximately nine people since she joined Twitter in 2015. But of those nine, we’ve gleaned that six were only one-night stands.”

  “You are kind of terrifying me a little bit right now, Gregor,” Brady said.

  “You have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide, Detective Bowen,” Gregor shot back.

  “So that leaves us with three longer-term affairs,” Jessie said, getting them back on task.

  “That’s right,” Gregor agreed. “I leave it to you highly trained professionals to draw conclusions about our remaining candidates. Here’s their correspondence.”

  Gregor patted the stack and walked off, apparently neither needing nor expecting a thank-you.

  “Shall we?” Ryan asked, grabbing the papers and doling them out evenly.

  They each took two one-night stands and one long-term affair. Jessie began going through hers and pretty quickly dismissed both men that Penelope had only been with once. One of them had died of cancer in 2017 and the other moved to Indianapolis la
st year.

  The one longer-term relationship on her list, a realtor from Sherman Oaks named Matt Stokely, also looked to be a bust. From what Jessie could glean, they had been involved from April to July of 2018 and met from six to eight occasions.

  But based on his social media accounts, it appeared that Stokely had been at a Realtors convention in Santa Barbara from last Thursday through Sunday and had extended it into a vacation that was still going on. There were multiple time-stamped photos of him at a restaurant in town on Monday night and on Goleta Beach on Tuesday at around 11 a.m. The time window didn’t completely eliminate him. But at least on initial inspection, Jessie doubted he was her man.

  From his intermittent grunts, it sounded like Brady was having just as little luck. But after about fifteen minutes, Ryan looked up with a gleam in his eye that suggested pay dirt.

  “I think we may have a live one. His name is Jeff Percival. And he does not seem like a quality dude.”

  “What do you mean?” Brady asked.

  “First things first,” Ryan said. “It looks like Penelope was seeing him from just after Thanksgiving until around the end of January of this year.”

  “That’s still pretty fresh,” Jessie noted.

  “It would seem that Jeff agrees with you,” Ryan said. “Because while there is no communication from Penny to him after January twenty-ninth, he continued to DM her repeatedly well into this month. And that’s just on Twitter. This doesn’t include e-mails or phone calls.”

  “Sounds like he handled her rejection in a gentlemanly manner,” Jessie said.

  “Yeah—not so much. Let’s just say that Jeff does not like to be left hanging. That’s borne out by the fact that he has one active restraining order against him from another woman. He was also convicted of a stalking violation with another woman four years ago.”

  “Where is Mr. Percival now?” Brady asked.

  “He currently lives in a one-bedroom apartment off Wilshire in Santa Monica. Care to join me for a visit?”