Chapter 10
CHAPTER
Jordyn
Present
“I THINK WE’LL AVOID attention if you park just before the end of the cul-de-sac.” From the passenger seat of Jordyn’s car, private investigator Natalie Ramos indicated a spot on the opposite side of the road where no houses were visible.
Based in Glens Falls, a neighboring community just north of Saratoga, Natalie had only been helping Jordyn for the last week, but she’d moved quickly when Jordyn had called her.
She was the very same PI that Tara had hired to locate Jordyn in the first place, so at least the woman had met Tara and knew something about her.
Soft-spoken but steely, Natalie had become a private investigator at forty-five years old.
She’d been incensed that local cops hadn’t collected enough evidence to arrest one of her neighbors for killing his wife despite multiple domestic violence calls.
Because of Natalie’s relentless efforts, the guy was now serving a life sentence.
Just like Jordyn hoped Tara’s killer one day would.
Jordyn had offered to drive them both to the scene of the hit-and-run, hoping to attract as little attention as possible from the locals.
Three book club members lived close by: Gina, Fatima, and Sophie.
However, all of their homes were set back from the street, as the multiacre properties were deliberately built for maximum privacy.
Jordyn had visited the spot once before, when she’d first arrived in town.
She hoped getting that first emotional visit out of the way would give her the detachment required to think like an amateur detective as opposed to a best friend.
Pulling to the side of the road to park, Jordyn switched off the engine and passed Natalie a real estate flyer for a property two streets over. “Here, take one of these. If anyone sees us, we can fake like we’re just checking out the neighborhood because I’m thinking about that house, okay?”
“Nice cover.” Natalie withdrew a paper of her own from an interior jacket pocket of the leather jacket she wore. “Just take a look at this first to get oriented before we step outside.”
Jordyn glanced at the sketch of the street with details from the accident, startled to see a crudely drawn figure with limbs lying at an awkward angle.
Oh God. Had she really thought she could remain detached?
The thought of her vibrant, kindhearted friend here, on this very street, broken and alone, sucked the air from her lungs.
She licked her dry lips. Tried to steady herself as she focused on the need to find the person responsible. “Is this from the police files?”
“No. Sorry. They wouldn’t let me view anything official since they’re still saying the investigation is active.” The PI met her gaze across the console. “Are you sure you’re okay with this?”
“I’m—yeah. I’m okay.”
Natalie continued. “I have contacts on the force, and I convinced one of them to talk me through their crime scene photos enough to recreate quite a few of the details.”
“That’s good.” Jordyn nodded, swallowing the lump in her throat. Tamping down the fury that Tara had no justice for the violence that had taken her life. “So she was facing that direction?”
Refocusing on the place as a crime scene that needed decoding, Jordyn tucked her emotions away in a box.
“Correct. The street runs roughly north–south, and Tara’s body was in line with the road, her head to the south and her feet to the north.
” Natalie pointed out the directions on her drawing, her silver rings and black nail polish aesthetic the kind of thing that Jordyn would have envied as a teen.
“Based on her injuries, we know the vehicle hit her head-on. Also based on the tire marks, police experts have determined the car was headed south, so that means Tara would have been running north.”
“Towards Sophie’s house.” Jordyn lifted her gaze from the drawing to the road, trying to appreciate the scale.
Through the windshield, her attention drifted to a white cross stuck in the ground about a tenth of a mile down the road.
The sight was another gut punch, one she hadn’t worked up the nerve to approach the last time she’d been out here.
“Although someone placed her memorial marker closer to Gina’s place. ”
“Which was Tara’s home at the time,” Natalie reminded her, flipping over the paper to consult a list of names and addresses on the back.
“My notes show that Luke Sideris purchased 51 Daybreak Hill to live in while he and Sophie were building their megamansion at the end of the cul-de-sac. After construction was completed, they moved out of the smaller home and Sideris rented it out to Tara for almost three years. Then, about two months after her death, Gina Vallot moved into the property. She still rents 51 Daybreak from him.”
Mind. Blown.
Jordyn hadn’t realized that at all, and she grounded herself in facts to distract from the white cross near the road.
She knew Tara had lived in the home that Gina later moved into, but she’d had no idea that Luke’s name was actually on the deed.
Whether it meant anything or not, she couldn’t be certain, but she was grateful for the information.
The more she learned about this group of friends, the more she recognized how deeply intertwined their lives had all become. She envisioned a giant spider web, with The Clean Break podcast and its cocreators at the center.
“Did your police contact say whether they have any evidence that suggests Tara intended to return to Sophie’s house that night?
” She’d asked herself hundreds of times what had made Tara venture out for a late run at that hour on Halloween night.
She hadn’t even worn a reflective vest, which seemed particularly negligent on a road with little ambient light.
“That remains unclear. She could have been just running laps on this street, sticking closer to home since it was late and there was no moon that night.”
Another detail that Jordyn hadn’t known.
“So she could have just been running off excess energy,” Jordyn mused. “As if she was upset.”
“Or she could have met up with someone outside her house and gotten into an argument. That would explain the noise complaint that police say happened before the hit-and-run.”
“Unless someone called that in as a decoy.” Jordyn’s thoughts were firing quickly, possible scenarios flashing through her brain.
“Before the hit-and-run even happened?” Natalie frowned, already shaking her head. “As if someone planned ahead of time to hit her?”
“Maybe whoever hit Tara that night initially hoped the police would put in an appearance at Tara’s house, and that would settle things down. But things escalated too quickly—”
“You’re saying you think the hit-and-run was premeditated?”
“It might have been.” Jordyn shrugged. “Since we’re low on facts, we might as well try to look at this from all possible angles, right?”
“Spoken like a good investigator.” Natalie nodded her approval. “But I’d suggest saving any theories until after we walk the scene for ourselves.”
“Fair enough. So we know the vehicle hits Tara and somehow spins her around one hundred and eighty degrees so she winds up facing in the opposite direction.” Pausing, Jordyn ground her teeth together as her attention returned to the drawing Natalie had made.
This was so much tougher than she’d imagined.
“All right, I think I’ve got it. Let’s take a look. ”
A minute later, they were outside the car, walking the perimeter of the accident site. Despite Natalie’s cautioning words, Jordyn’s brain still ran a mile a minute, trying to make the assorted facts fit together.
“Did you learn anything more from your inside source?” she asked, hoping for a nudge in the right direction.
“So far, I only know what was shared in the official press releases to the media, but I do have more sources I can tap so I’ll keep digging.
The cops were looking for a dark-colored SUV, a description that fits a third of the vehicles around here.
” Natalie kept her focus on the bushes, her brown eyes scanning.
“And we know the noise complaint was logged about twenty minutes before the incident.”
“But it was weird that it was an unknown caller, right? I’ve read that in most municipalities you need to identify yourself. You can’t just make an anonymous call to lodge a complaint about someone.”
“You can if you hang up fast enough,” Natalie informed her wryly.
She consulted her notes again. “In this case, the call wasn’t entered into the system as an official complaint because the person didn’t give their name, but a record of the call still exists.
A woman phoned to say there was a lot of shouting coming from Daybreak Hill, making it sound as if she wasn’t a resident of the street, but maybe a street close by. ”
“And the call wasn’t recorded?”
“No. It came into the front desk of the police station, not through the 911 system.”
Jordyn paused to listen to the neighborhood at midday, wondering how far sound might carry at night.
Right now, she could hear the high-pitched whine of a leaf blower from somewhere in the vicinity.
The incessant hammering that characterized a roofing job.
The occasional shrill shouts of children playing in a backyard somewhere nearby.
But none of that activity was visible amid the tall pines that lined Daybreak Hill.
Whoever developed the street full of high-end homes had made sure to maintain the mature landscaping, making the lots feel private from the street and even from one another.