Chapter 5 #2
And now they were siccing their lawyers on Jordyn again.
Had they followed through on their cease-and-desist order threat about the PI, even though Jordyn had quit using his services two months ago?
Or did Randall Hughes somehow know Jordyn was in town herself?
That she’d even hired a new PI? Finishing her coffee, she was just about to leave when a sudden burst of cool air rushed into the shop, along with bright, girlish laughter.
She glanced up to see two teens just inside the doorway with their heads bent over the same phone, studying something on the screen before they broke out laughing at the same time.
She tried not to stare as the pair—perfect visual foils for each other as the sunny blonde was dressed all in black and the girl with glossy dark waves wore pristine white sweats with white tennis shoes—moved toward the barista standing at the register.
One of the teens was Charlotte Durand, Sophie’s older daughter, whom Jordyn recalled from the party.
She doubted the girl would recognize Jordyn, since she hadn’t been around when Sophie and Jordyn were introduced.
So Jordyn tossed her empty drink cup and got in line behind the girls to order something else and maybe stretch out her time to eavesdrop.
Worst case scenario, she would be bored to tears listening in on teen-girl gossip.
But maybe she’d learn something of interest about Sophie, Tara’s friend and business partner. Or about Luke, Sophie’s husband that Tara had never wanted to discuss.
“So if this works today, you realize we’re going to try it at least once a week for the rest of the semester,” the dark-haired girl said to Charlotte after she’d finished giving her order at the counter.
“Of course it’s going to work,” Charlotte returned, flipping her hair over one shoulder.
Her voice shared the same quiet authority and certainty of herself as her mother’s.
She turned toward the barista then and ordered an unsweetened iced green tea before stepping to one side to wait for her drink beside her friend.
“Mom might have spies at school, but if they see my car in the student parking lot, they’ll assume I’m on campus. ”
“What can I get you?” The older woman behind the counter spoke loudly, making Jordyn realize it probably wasn’t the first time she’d asked.
“Sorry. I’ll have an, um, iced green tea.
” That didn’t have much caffeine at least, and the drink would buy her time to keep listening.
She kept her head down, hoping to stay off the girls’ radar since she would undoubtedly be crossing paths with Sophie’s daughter in the future. Jordyn would rather not be remembered.
After paying for the second drink, she grabbed a chair two tables away from where Charlotte and her friend were seated at a booth, both of them sharing one bench seat so they could look at one another’s phones.
Their backpacks took up the bench opposite them, while Jordyn sat behind them.
It made their conversation a little trickier to hear, but at least the girls wouldn’t be able to clock her interest.
For a couple of minutes, the two of them seemed content to comment on makeup trends, every now and then pausing their screen time to discuss the best places for contouring.
Jordyn’s interest in makeup had died a fast death after an intense Goth phase had her spending any money she scavenged on pale powder foundations and black lipstick.
She shuddered at the memory of her attempts to hide her true herself behind a mask, but then her chaotic upbringing bore no resemblance to the charmed lives these girls led.
Jordyn purchased herself a post office box through an online app, then texted the address to Ezra while the girls rattled on about makeup tutorials. Then the dark-haired girl turned sideways on the bench seat to see her friend better.
“Be honest. You’re not worried about skipping test prep?”
“God, no, I’m not worried,” Charlotte answered. “Mr. Ritter doesn’t even notice who shows, and if he did, my mother wouldn’t speak to that rat-faced toad in a million years.”
Jordyn hid a laugh behind cough. She hadn’t expected the vivid visual image. The brunette turned to glance at her briefly before returning to the conversation.
“I know we won’t get in trouble that way. But you aren’t like, worried your test scores will be worse for skipping the classes?” The girl’s voice sounded sincere. Anxious.
“Sareena, isn’t your mother already pushing you to your personal breaking point on this shit?”
“You know she is.” Something about the way the girl spoke, a tilt of her head or the emphasis of the words reminded Jordyn of Fatima Chamoun, and she wondered if this was one of the woman’s daughters.
“I lost two points on an English essay last week and Mom lost her mind. She had a ninety-minute-meeting with Mrs. Volk about it. Ninety minutes about two points.”
Tara had mentioned Fatima and Sophie were locked in a weird, reflected glory competition through their daughters’ successes.
If her guess was correct that Sareena was Fatima’s daughter, it appeared the competition between the mothers didn’t extend to their offspring. Sareena and Charlotte appeared close.
“Of course she did.” Charlotte tipped her drink in Sareena’s direction, pointing at her. “So you tell me if you think more stress in your life will help you in your pursuit of a perfect SAT score, or if maybe an hour of friend time mixed in your week will serve you better.”
“As long as we’re back for lacrosse practice.” Sareena tilted her wrist and must have checked the time. “Brayden better be here soon.”
“You worry too much,” Charlotte added breezily. “It’s bad for your skin.”
Jordyn tuned out again, telling herself she was wasting her time eavesdropping.
No need to learn the ins and outs of teens skipping classes to defy their parents.
Nothing unusual there. She checked her phone to see if she had any messages from the attorney she’d consulted for help in learning why Tara’s estate hadn’t entered probate nearly a year after her death.
She’d read online about possible hold-ups if an estate anticipated a wrongful death claim, but Tara’s family hadn’t made any such legal assertion as of yet.
For that matter, she had reason to believe that Tara had a will based on a conversation they had when Tara had visited her in Texas.
Yet no will had been filed and a representative at the surrogate court had suggested the estate might be administered under intestacy.
That in itself had made Jordyn suspicious.
Had the police investigated who stood to benefit from Tara’s death?
She’d had generous trust fund payouts ever since she had turned twenty-five, not to mention her partial stake in The Clean Break podcast. But of course, the police didn’t share their notes when an investigation was ongoing, even though the case grew colder by the day.
So Jordyn would turn to other sources for help figuring out what happened.
While she infiltrated the book group to find out which one of them might want Tara dead, she had hired a probate attorney to look into what was happening with Tara’s estate.
And even though the first PI she’d hired hadn’t worked out since he’d been unable to finesse any new independent witness interviews, she had hired a new one to assist her with a case review.
She understood that she couldn’t see the police files, but there were a few clues that had been made public: a paint chip and a call for information for anyone driving a banged-up dark-colored SUV.
Plus there’d been an anonymous noise complaint to the cops from the neighborhood where the accident had happened, and it had been phoned in an hour before the hit-and-run. The police had asked that person to come forward after Tara’s death, but Jordyn didn’t know if anyone had done so.
So Jordyn had her work cut out for her. What she refused to do, though, was cease and desist.
Opening a chat window for the probate law office where she’d already left a voicemail, Jordyn took another sip of the horrible iced green tea, then requested a call back. As she tapped in the message, the nearby conversation snagged her attention again.
“—and Mom has been operating at Defcon 2 ever since Tara died,” Charlotte was telling her friend with more animation than she’d shown earlier. “It’s like she expects some psychotic to mow me and Amelia down every time we step out of the house. It’s insane.”
“While, yes, that sucks,” Sareena acknowledged, her attention still fixed on her phone as she scrolled through an endless page of dresses. “Don’t you think it’s legit creepy the cops never arrested anyone?”
Charlotte made a huffing sound as if to protest, and Sareena quit her scroll to grab her friend’s wrist before continuing.
“Seriously, listen to me. If I was your mom, I wouldn’t want you to get run over by some maniac targeting hot young women on our block.”
“Yeah, no one is targeting hot girls in the neighborhood. Someone just hated my mom’s best friend.” Charlotte shrugged in a gesture that looked forced to Jordyn’s eye. Like she wasn’t as tough as she sounded, and beneath the teenage bravado she worried about what happened to Tara, too.
But Sareena didn’t catch the emotion in Charlotte’s voice because her attention was fixed on a white Land Rover rolling to a stop outside the coffee shop, a rap tune thumping bass so hard it made the store windows vibrate.
“Could Brayden look like more of a tool?” she asked Charlotte as she jumped to her feet and collected her backpack and empty cup. She was all smiles now, clearly a little enamored with Brayden—tool or not. “Come on.”
Sighing, Charlotte followed her friend more slowly, her expression still troubled as she hitched her leather backpack onto one shoulder, her sweater drooping off the other.
Jordyn cursed Brayden’s timing, wishing the girls’ conversation hadn’t been cut short.
Yet one good morsel of news had come out of it.
After all the news articles and interviews she’d read speculating Tara’s death could have been a genuine accident caused by a stranger to her, Jordyn was glad to know that someone else in Tara’s sphere shared her suspicion.
That her foster sister’s death wasn’t an accident at all.
It had been a murder committed by someone who knew her well.