Things We Do in the Dark

Returning to Seattle from a yoga convention in Vancouver, yoga instructor Paris Perala is stunned to find her husband, retired comedian and Emmy-winning sitcom star Jimmy Peralta, dead in the bathtub, his femoral artery slashed viciously. The police, alerted by Jimmy’s assistant, Zoe Moffatt, arrive. With Paris standing over the bathtub with a bloody straight razor in her hand, they arrest her. As she sits in the police car, Paris thinks: “There’s no such thing as happily ever after when you run away from one life to start a whole new one” (7).

Paris is booked into the county jail. As she relinquishes her $250,000 wedding ring and is directed to a holding cell, she realizes how this will play out in the media. She was Jimmy’s fifth wife and half his age, and she was standing there holding the murder weapon. She reaches out to Elsie Dixon, an old friend of Jimmy’s and a prominent lawyer.

Elsie arrives. The two maintain an uneasy friendship. Elsie warned Jimmy that Paris might be a “gold digger” and drew up a non-negotiable, airtight prenup that would leave Paris only $1 million—a pittance compared to Jimmy’s estimated worth of more than $80 million.