The Last Party

Redd delivers a chocolate milkshake to Leewood, along with a letter from Grant. The letter thanks Leewood for coming clean and apologizes for Grant’s identity deception. He references a Latin saying: “[M]ortui vivos docent […] the dead teach the living” (228). Lucy’s death has taught him that not everything happens for a reason. Reading over the letter, Leewood regrets not asking Grant for an unspecified favor while he had the chance.

This chapter opens with a quote from Douglas Foster, a Dynamic Tech IT employee. Douglas recounts his surprise when the police showed up at the company wanting to search through Grant’s email. In his deleted email folder, they found “bad ones.”

Pretending that her phone isn’t working, Perla asks Grant if she can text Paige from his phone. She asks Paige to pick up mini cupcakes with rainbow sprinkles, a detail taken from the Folcrum Party crime scene photos. She signs her text “xoxo” and is pleased when Paige loves the message. Perla checks Grant’s text messages and call logs before returning his phone to him.

Perla takes photos of Sophie with Mandolin and Bridget. She is disappointed that Sophie is not the “alpha” of her friend group and wonders if it’s a result of her dominant parenting. In the past, Perla has tried to modify her behavior but was “driven absolutely crazy by the stupid decisions Grant and Sophie made when they were unsupervised and undirected” (234). Perla hopes that the photos will become “iconic” after the party.

Perla has already tested out several dosages of Ambien on Sophie, settling on two pills as the correct amount. She needs the girls to be out cold but “pliable” so that she can pose them correctly. She has a plastic poncho and a pair of boots that she plans to wear during the act. Afterward, she will dispose of the clothing and climb back into bed, pretending to discover the bodies in the morning.

Leewood is surprised when Grant visits him again but doesn’t question it because he needs something from him. Leewood asks Grant to find Jenny, whom he is not allowed to contact, and ask her to visit him once before he dies. He has a backlog of letters that he has written to her each year on her birthday.

He asks Grant to take down a message: “Tell her that if she doesn’t contact me or come here, the bunny will start talking about carrots” (239). He is shocked when Grant connects the phrase to the story of Piketo.

Grant tells Leewood that he is married to Jenny and that they have a daughter. Leewood asks how Jenny is with Sophie because she “doesn’t do well with female competition” and even saw her own mother as competition for his love (241). Leewood’s internal monologue reveals that he invented the Piketo story to keep Jenny from telling anyone that he was sexually abusing her friends during sleepovers. Leewood also reveals that Jenny was the one who killed Piketo at seven years old; she stated that she did it to guarantee the bunny’s silence.

To prove his claim, Grant shows Leewood a photo from one of Sophie’s soccer games. Leewood recognizes Jenny’s gaze: “Always watching. Always studying. Always demanding” (243). He warns Grant that Jenny is a sociopath—she felt nothing at the death of Piketo, nor the deaths of her friends and her mother. Leewood swears that he never sexually abused his daughter and expresses remorse for the abuse of the other girls. Before Grant leaves, Leewood confesses to trying and failing to kill Jenny.

Grant leaves, reeling from his conversation with Leewood. His desire to believe in his wife’s innocence is at odds with the ring of truth he recognizes in Leewood’s words. He is confused by Leewood’s implication that Perla was conscious and unaffected while the other girls died. He wonders if Perla participated in the murders but then chides himself for the thought.

Arriving at home, Grant pulls out his Folcrum Party folder and reviews the notes he’s taken from his visits with Leewood. He suspects that Leewood is keeping a secret for Perla and believes that he knows what it is.

This chapter opens with a quote from Claire Vasset, a friend of Paige’s. Claire recounts how Sophie slowly turned against Paige. She recalls an incident in which Sophie left thumbtacks all over the kitchen floor, causing Paige to cut her foot. Paige went to Perla, who promised to discipline Sophie, but Sophie never apologized to Paige, instead acting “like she never did it” (249).

Two days remain until Sophie’s birthday party. Perla contemplates what she will do with her fame after the party. She considers writing a book.

Perla bakes Sophie’s birthday cake. She uses the same recipe she has used since she was eight—the same cake that was served at the Folcrum Party.

Grant returns to Lancaster Prison daily. At first, Leewood spurns his visits, but he eventually relents. Grant has gone through his notes on their conversations and knows that Leewood has been honest with him up until his falsified confession. He states point-blank that he doesn’t believe that Leewood killed the girls.

Leewood admits that Jenny killed her friends and likely her own mother. When he found their bodies, Jenny was unharmed and covered in their blood. She pouted as Leewood tried to give Lucy and Kitty CPR, complaining, “[Y]ou ruin everything […] Just like before” (253). In that moment, Leewood “knew she was evil” (253). He picked up the knife she had used as a murder weapon and cut her throat, but he didn’t act decisively enough. He didn’t realize that she was still alive until the police arrived and took her away.

Leewood tells Grant that he knows Grant won’t go to the police. No one will believe a declaration of innocence from a man on death row. He watches Grant process the realization that he will never get justice for Lucy.

In her journal, Sophie reveals that one of her friends sent her a link to the Murder Unplugged episode about the Folcrum Party. She is sad for her father and disappointed that Lucy isn’t a famous actress, but she takes comfort in the fact that she still has some proximity to a famous person.

Over dinner, Grant tries not to stare at Perla. He thinks of the annual memorial trip they take to Lucy’s grave. Each of them spends some time alone with the gravestone, talking to Lucy. Now, Grant wonders what Perla said during those hours. He recalls how she complained relentlessly about their former mail carrier because he left packages at the gate rather than bringing them to the door. Once she successfully got the man fired, Perla printed out the e-mail from his manager, found his address, and handed it to him personally. Grant is sure that Perla has been mocking Lucy for all these years.

Overwhelmed by nausea, he leaves the table and runs to the bathroom. He knows that he needs to get Sophie out of the house but isn’t sure how. He wonders if he can just “disappear” with her before the party but knows that Perla will track them down.

On August 16, tfk sends another email to Murder Unplugged with the subject line “[I]t’s a good day for murder” (259).

On the morning of the party, Perla walks through the house, going through a mental checklist. She believes that tonight will be her last set of murders. She won’t need to kill again because she will finally have “a distraction-free relationship with [her] father and the recognition and fame [she] deserves” (260). She considers changing her name back to Jenny Folcrum and plans to hire a publicist to help her re-construct her public identity.

Paige is decorating Sophie’s room according to Perla’s instructions, which match the scene of the first Folcrum Party. Perla goes to her bedroom. From behind a hidden panel in her closet, she retrieves a bag of items intended to replicate the Folcrum Party, including a kitchen knife.

As Grant watches Sophie’s friends playing in the pool, he grows increasingly terrified of Perla, who is acting unusually clingy. She is waiting inside for him with a hot drink, and he dreads going back in. All day, he has been noticing how she manipulates Sophie, the girls, and even him. He thinks of his earlier assertion to Leewood that he could never kill another person; his growing fear of Perla is making him doubt that conviction.

Perla texts Grant, asking him to come inside. He flashes back to the morning when he looked through the bathroom and found a stockpile of 22 Ambien, bleach, rat poison, knives, and other weapons.

Grant enters the house, where Perla offers him an Irish coffee. Grant stalls, stating that he needs to take his antacid. He runs to the bathroom, where he empties her Ambien container and checks the amount. There are now only 13 pills remaining. Grant takes a sip of the Irish coffee. Noticing that it tastes off, he runs to the bathroom and induces vomiting.

Grant resolves to flee as soon as possible. He plans to take Sophie and leave the following morning.

As Perla and Grant get ready for bed, Perla is buzzing with excitement. She is surprised that Grant’s Ambien has not kicked in yet. She encourages him to text Paige, but he refuses. He tells her that it’s odd that she never seems to speak or think about the Folcrum Party. Perla brushes him off. She sets an alarm for one o’clock in the morning, crawls into bed, and falls asleep.

Grant lies awake for hours, contemplating escape plans. When Perla’s alarm goes off, he pretends to be asleep. He watches her retrieve the bag of supplies from the closet. When Perla leaves the room, Grant follows her. As he takes in the decorations she has set up, he notices their uncanny similarity to the crime-scene images of the Folcrum Party. Perla goes downstairs, leaving her bag in the hallway. Grant opens the bag to find “most of the contents present at [Lucy’s] crime scene” (271). From downstairs, he hears Perla exit through the front door.

Perla skips down the driveway, pleased with how everything is going. She has turned off the house’s security system via Grant’s phone. Perla sends Paige a series of texts asking her to come to the house as soon as possible. Then, she enters Paige’s gate code to place her at the scene. Finally, Perla sends an email from Grant to tfk@hotmail.com reading, “Everything is in place” (274).

Grant runs to Sophie’s room and rouses the girls, who have been drugged with Ambien. He tells them to go out onto the balcony and then walk along the roof, climb down, and hide behind Sophie’s treehouse. Grant arranges pillows under the covers to look like the girls’ bodies. From downstairs, he hears Perla re-enter the house.

Grant hides in Sophie’s closet and watches Perla enter the room. She puts on the plastic poncho and boots and lays a white blanket on the floor. The sight of it instantly triggers a memory of Lucy’s body lying on an identical blanket. Finally, Perla pulls out a knife. Grant jumps out of the closet and tackles Perla from behind, grabbing the arm holding the knife. Perla knees him in the groin and attempts to stab him, but Grant intercepts her.

Grant tells Perla that he knows the truth about the Folcrum Party and reveals his contact with Leewood. He brings her hand, still holding the knife, up to her throat. He thinks of a line that Leewood once spoke during their interviews: “You can be good and still kill someone” (280).

Perla is sure that Grant will not kill her, believing that he doesn’t have the strength that her father did on the night he attempted to slit her throat. Grant asks Perla why she killed Lucy. Perla thinks, “Because he wanted her. Her and Kitty and everyone except for me. He had special […] relationships with them—and I got the leftovers” (282). She keeps silent as Grant begs her to confess.

Perla begins to struggle, and Grant cuts her throat, re-opening the scar on her neck. As Perla loses consciousness, she remembers how she and her father used to watch Clint Eastwood movies together on Friday nights. Those nights were “the happiest moments [of] her life” (282). Grant severs Perla’s carotid artery, and she dies.

Grant stands frozen, staring at Perla’s body. As her blood begins to pool, he once again thinks of Lucy. The grief he feels at her memory makes him realize that he doesn’t feel remorse about killing Perla. He thinks that Perla looks like “a beautiful dead doll” (285), a thought that sparks an idea.

Grant finds the girls behind the treehouse and brings them to the house of their closest neighbors, Julie and Bill Scott. On the way, Grant contemplates what to tell the police.

This chapter is a 911 call from Grant to the Los Angeles Police Department. Grant requests an ambulance to the Wultz house, stating that his wife has died by suicide.

Grant and the Scotts agree that the girls will stay at the Scott house until the following morning. Bill Scott drives Grant back to the Wultz house and refers him to an attorney named Paul Reachen.

At the house, Grant speaks with police officers. He relates a version of the night’s events in which, after getting the girls to safety, he walked back into Sophie’s bedroom in time to see Perla arranging items on the blanket and muttering about “finishing what had been started” (299). When he told her that the girls were safe, she said, “I can still finish the job” before slitting her own throat (299).

Paige’s car pulls into the driveway. Paige calls out for Grant, telling the officers that he told her to come to the house.