Chapter 40
My head throbs, my neck aches. Something struck me.
My fingers claw against the damp soil, reaching the hard rectangle of my phone.
I stand on shaking legs and reorient myself with my surroundings.
Nightfall. The pond. Struggling to steady the light in my hands, I catch a glimpse of Damien on the ground.
He fell forward after Preston hit him, the water soaking the lower half of his body.
“Leave him,” Preston says, his voice calm amid the chaos.
“Preston?”
“Get up.” His voice is a command. “We’re going back to the house.”
Confusion rises as I try to make sense of how I ended up on the ground. Damien. Preston. The Rolex. I remember Damien wasn’t wearing Oliver’s watch.
My eyes further adjust to the darkness and I’m able to recognize Preston’s silhouette.
The sight triggers another memory. The silhouette of the burglar when I first confronted him in my apartment, but I blink the image away, my fresh injury causing me to swap one memory out for another.
Then I see what Preston is holding in his hands. Marmee’s gun, pointed right at me.
“Preston, what’s going on?”
“This entire night has already spiraled out of control.”
My confusion is at an all-time high. Minutes ago, Preston swung the shovel at Damien; he’d been protecting me. Now he’s wielding Marmee’s gun. “What does that mean?”
“Damien isn’t the person who has been blackmailing you,” he says. “I am.”
The shock of his response is enough to send me back on my knees, but I must stay strong. Focused. Try to make sense of what he’s saying.
“I don’t understand.” Until this moment, I didn’t think Preston even knew about the blackmail. “You said Damien attacked you.”
“Not exactly,” he says. “When I came looking for him, I spotted him by the pond. He was drunk and lost. I faked my injury to throw you off the scent. I heard you playing detective with Ava, so I hid Oliver’s phone in Damien’s room for that same reason.
You clearly thought he was the person who pushed Marlowe, the person sending you those notes, and I wanted to give you plenty of reasons to stay focused on him, until I could get you alone. ”
I’m struggling to keep up with what’s true and what’s false. I’ve pinned my suspicions onto Damien, the outsider, all night, been piecing together clues pointing toward him. His fascination with Marmee’s trinkets. The Rolex. Doc. Finding the phone had been what solidified my beliefs.
“I know your secret, Tippi. I saw what you did to Oliver,” he says. “I have to say, I didn’t think you had it in you. But now’s not the time for me to gush. We need to finish this before the police arrive.”
I look behind me, over the body of water that disguises Oliver’s beloved Alpine. I think of the photograph that shows me standing beside Oliver’s body. My body shivers, refusing to accept that Preston knows everything.
“What exactly are we finishing?”
“What Oliver and I started. We were selling Marmee’s jewels and splitting the profits, hoping to bank a lot more after you two got married,” he says.
“It’s what Oliver did, you see. With his first wife.
Lots of women before that. He would stick around long enough to gain their trust and access to their funds, then he’d cut a trail. ”
A bizarre image appears in my mind, a procession of women, Oliver having run through them, leaving them penniless. I recall the email chain.
“Are you Doc?”
He laughs. “Doc is just a middleman. The guy who connects Oliver to different buyers. I’ve never even met him.”
Preston nudges me away from the pond, back in the direction of the house, but the journey seems surreal, the destination unreachable. My legs feel like jelly. Finding out Oliver was manipulating me was heartbreaking; I never imagined Preston was his co-conspirator.
“Why were you helping Oliver steal?”
“Ava and I are over. Have been for a long time. I need a new start, but I’ve spent all the money I made from my baseball days. I’m in more debt than she even knows about, and her party planning business alone isn’t going to save us.
“Oliver and I first met at the Social Club. We became friends. He told me he was into sales, a vague enough answer. One night over drinks, he spilled the truth. The real way he’d come into so much money at a young age.
Problem was, he’d started to run out of funds, too. He was scrambling to find his next job.
“That’s when it hit me. We could work together. He’d pay me a finder’s fee, of sorts. All I had to do was help him find the right woman.”
Betrayal is a bruise at the back of my throat. “You set me up with Oliver?”
“I thought the hardest part was going to be getting you to fall for the guy.” He smirks. “As much as you like to talk about being independent, you let your guard down in a second once you thought you found the right man.”
That seed of shame I first felt when I realized Oliver was playing me returns, pulsating.
I recall all our common interests, our similar outlooks on life.
None of that was organic; it was part of the scam.
Preston compiled everything Oliver needed to know about me from Ava, through his own friendship with me.
Add that to Oliver’s natural charm and good looks—they practically coerced me into falling for him.
“Why me?”
“It’s nothing personal. You’re the richest person I know.
Evelyn has lived a long life, better than most.” He waves his arms around.
“I mean, look at this place. Who actually lives like this? Calls it their childhood home? The only person left to inherit any of it is you. If Oliver married you, that would put him next in line.”
“That was the plan. He wanted to marry me and be entitled to half my estate,” I say. “Then what?”
I think about the prenup, how easily he signed it. Because his intention was never to divorce me—that wouldn’t have worked out for him. I consider Danielle’s condition, and eventual demise. He was going to kill me.
“As long as he had access to your accounts and Marmee’s jewels, he didn’t need a settlement right away,” he says. “Practicality tends to go out the window once someone thinks they’re in love. Just ask Ava.”
He sings the word love, mocking my feelings, taunting anyone who has ever made the mistake of leading with their heart.
“You were smarter than I gave you credit for,” he says. “Clearly you figured out what we were doing. I’m guessing that’s why you killed him.”
Hearing someone else say the words out loud stops me in my tracks. Regardless of my reasons or motivations, I’ve murdered someone. And Preston knows it.
“I killed him because he threatened Marmee,” I say, defending myself. “Why were you even at her house that night? There was no one here when I arrived.”
“I trusted Oliver, but only so much. I had to make sure I wasn’t getting scammed out of the deal, too. And once he started getting reckless, I decided to tail him.”
“Reckless?”
“What happened with his first wife,” he says, his voice grim. “I’m guessing that’s what made you start questioning things, too.”
“He told you he killed Danielle?”
“He said that his ex-wife had reached out to you and threatened to ruin everything. He was afraid he wouldn’t be able to stop her from doing it again. The only way to keep her quiet was to kill her, so he snuck into her apartment and made it look like an accident.”
I feel a strange sense of validation in knowing that my suspicions about what happened to Danielle were right. Oliver killed her to keep her away from me. He killed her so he could follow through with his plan.
“You know what’s funny? The two of you were a better match than I even realized,” he says. “Who knew you’d both kill to get what you want.”
“I did what I did to protect myself and Marmee. And to get justice for Danielle.”
“You had other options,” he says plainly.
“You could have called off the engagement for real. Even gone to the police with your suspicions about Danielle’s death, but you didn’t.
My theory? There’s a part of you that wanted to feel vindicated.
It’s bad enough the guy conned his way into your heart, made the stone-faced Tippi Rathbone agree to get married.
It wasn’t just about protecting yourself. You wanted revenge.”
I flinch at the possibility that what he’s saying is true. Oliver’s advances were forced, but my feelings for him were real. Something inside of me recognized the darkness in him and liked it.
“You’ve known what happened to Oliver for weeks. Why confront me tonight?”
“Once you called off the engagement,” he says, flexing his fingers into air quotes at that last part, “you shut everyone out. I needed to get to you before you left the country, but I was afraid to turn on Oliver’s phone in case someone tracked it.
That’s why I suggested to Ava we have the party here. ”
It feels like I’ve been struck with another head-spinning blow. “It was your idea to host the party at Marmee’s house?”
“I thought it would help you remember what you did if I brought you back to the scene of the murder. And there would be no way for you to leave. No way to call for help. Originally, I planned to have the entire weekend. Drop little notes here and there, threaten you with the photo. After a couple days, you’d be rattled enough to wire money to an anonymous account in exchange for my silence.
You’d never even know I was involved. When the time came to leave Ava, I’d have a nest egg secure and ready.
“Being here over the weekend provided an opportunity to swipe the jewelry Doc wants, too. Ava let it slip Evelyn uses the same password for everything when she gave me the gate code.” He sighs, exhausted arms hanging at his sides, the gun still gripped in one hand.
“Then Marlowe’s death changed everything. ”
The timeframe was shortened. He no longer had the freedom of making demands, one by one. With the police arriving any minute, the fastest way to access what he wants is by forcing my hand.
“What’s your plan now?”
“I just want my money,” he says, smiling. “I think it’s safe to say I have enough dirt on you that you’d be willing to pay me whatever I ask.”
Marmee was right. Greed is the motive. All that’s changed is that Preston is the culprit instead of Damien.
“If I give you enough money, you won’t turn me over to the police?”
“What else are friends for? We’ve both done things we regret.” He smiles. “Speaking of the police, they’ll be here soon. We need to get back inside the house without the others seeing us.”
Marmee’s mansion comes into view. The idea of willingly going back inside with Preston, who has a gun to my back, is risky, but I don’t have a choice.
“We can enter through the conservatory.”
“And from there we can get upstairs to Marmee’s closet?”
The jewelry. That’s what he’s after.
“As long as Ava and Constance aren’t in the foyer,” I say, “we should be able to sneak past them.”
Preston slides the gun into the inner pocket of his jacket, tilts his head toward the house. “Let’s get going.”