They Did It with Love - Softcover

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Kate Morgenroth is the author of the bestseller They Did It With Love, two thrillers, Kill Me First and Saved, and three young adult novels, Jude, Framed, and Echo. She lives in New York City.

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Praise for Kate Morgenroth’s novels

“Mesmerizing. I am as delighted by Kate Morgenroth’s nerve as much as by her skill.”

—Toni Morrison

“I read Kill Me First in one sitting. Kate Morgenroth has created an exciting and formidable character in Sarah Shepherd.”

—Lisa See, author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

“Compulsively readable…”

—Entertainment Weekly

“Nearly impossible to put down.”

—Time Out New York

“Riveting…Morgenroth writes with quick, razor strokes.”

—New York Post

“Intensely absorbing…”

—Publishers Weekly

“One knockout story…Morgenroth succeeds not only in creating something different but in doing it well.”

—St. Petersburg Times

“An appealing heroine supported by savvy plotting. Morgenroth’s second outing: [Kill Me First, 1999] proves again that she knows how to weave a spell.”

—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“A must read for those who like their women tough but vulnerable.”

—USA Today

KATE MORGENROTH is the author of Kill Me First and Saved and the YA novels Echo and the Edgar-nominated Jude. Visit her website at www.katemorgenroth.com.

THEY DID IT with Love

A Novel

Kate Morgenroth

A PLUME BOOK

“To have trusted someone! To have believed…and it was lies—all lies.”

—Agatha Christie, They Do It with Mirrors

Cast of Characters

NEW YORK

Prologue

PART I GREENWICH

1. Priscilla & Gordon

2. Susan & Harry

3. Ashley & Stewart

4. Julia & Alex

5. The Mystery Readers

6. Sofie & Dean

February

7. Priscilla & Susan

8. Julia & Alex

March

9. Sofie

10. Sofie & Susan

11 The Mystery Readers

May

12. Sofie & Dean

FOUR MONTHS LATER:October

13. Priscilla & Susan

14. Priscilla

15. Priscilla

16. Sofie

17. Sofie & Dean

PART II

18. Sofie & Priscilla

19. Detective Peters

20. Detective Ackerman

21. Alex

22. Priscilla & Gordon

23. Ashley & Stewart

24. Sofie & Dean

25. Susan & Harry

26. Priscilla & the Detectives

27. Susan & the Detectives

28. Ashley & the Detectives

29. Sofie & the Detectives

30. Priscilla

31. The Detectives

32. Priscilla & Susan

33. Alex

34. Alex

35. Sofie & Priscilla

36. Alex at Priscilla’s House

37. Alex at Susan’s House

38. Alex at Ashley’s House

39. Alex at Sofie’s House

40. Sofie & Dean

41. Susan & Harry

42. Priscilla & Sofie

43. Dean & the Detectives

44. Stewart & the Detectives

45. Gordon & the Detectives

46. Sofie & the Detectives

47. Alex

48 Alex & Sofie

49 Dean & Priscilla

50. Susan & Detective Ackerman

51. The Mystery Readers

52. Sofie & Alex

53. Alex

54. Sofie & Alex

55. Priscilla & Dean

56. Sofie & Alex

57. The Detectives

58. Sofie & Dean

59. Sofie & the Detectives

60. Sofie & Alex

61. Sofie & Alex

62. Priscilla & Gordon

63. Sofie

64Sofie & Dean

65. Sofie & Dean

66. Sofie

67 Sofie & Dean

68. Sofie & Dean

69. Sofie & Alex

70. Alex

71 Detective Ackerman

72. Sofie & Detective Ackerman

73. Priscilla

74. Priscilla & Dean

75. Priscilla & Gordon

76. Priscilla & Susan

PART III NEW YORK

77. Sofie

78. Susan & Detective Ackerman

79. Sofie & Alex

80. Sofie & Alex

81. Sofie & Alex

Cast of Characters

The Couples

Sofie and Dean

Priscilla and Gordon

Susan and Harry

Ashley and Stewart

Julia and Alex

The Detectives

Detective Peters: Detective from the Greenwich
Police Department

Detective Ackerman: Detective from the DA’s office

THEY DID IT with Love

It was autumn. Early morning. The air was sharp, and the sky was a deep October blue. The cars on the narrow suburban street whizzed by, churning up little whirlpools of leaves—but none of the people in the cars noticed the body hanging among the trees.

The feet were suspended in midair not far from the ground, and they looked like they had maroon stockings on—the deep purple color due to the blood pooling in the lowest parts of the body. The long, blond hair hung in a curtain around the lolled head. A light wind ruffled the hem of the nightgown and shivered the leaves in the trees, but the body hung motionless.

A dozen cars drove by without noticing anything. It might have been hours before the body was discovered—if it weren’t for Sofie.

Afterward Sofie’s life would never be the same, but a year earlier she hadn’t even known the woman. For her it had all started with another death.

NEW YORK

December

Prologue

The phone call came early Friday December 14 at seven fifteen a.m., ensuring that Sofie would remember that particular morning forever. That’s what happened with death. It took otherwise small, unmemorable moments and fossilized them. This would be the second time she had experienced the phenomenon. It had happened once before when she was three years old and had wandered into her mother’s bedroom because, though she’d waited forever, her mother hadn’t come to get her up. Even twenty-five years later Sofie still remembered those moments as clearly as if someone had taken a photograph. The open windows. The rumpled sheets. The slowly revolving ceiling fan. Then the sharp smell of urine. And the feeling…as if all the joy had been sucked out of her heart like water rushing down the drain when her mother pulled the plug in the bath.

Now it would be these moments—before the phone call—that would be preserved in her memory. She was sitting in the window seat, her mug of tea balanced precariously on the sill. The heat from the tea had made a small hazy patch of fog on the window pane just above the lip of the cup. The newspaper—opened to the second to last page of the Arts and Leisure section and folded to frame the crossword puzzle—lay on the cushion beside her, and her cat, Agatha, was curled in her lap, a small spot of warmth.

Outside the window a few snowflakes drifted through the air. Across Fifth Avenue the trees of Central Park were a tangle of dark gray branches against a pale gray sky. In a few minutes the sun would rise, and the first rays would hit the facades of the buildings across the park, turning all the windows into mirrors of...