Chapter 12
CHAPTER
Jordyn
Present
ARE WE DOING the Witch Walk this year?
Seated at the small island inside her carriage house rental, Jordyn had to reread Kaitlin’s text a second time before she realized it wasn’t just to her; it was part of the book club group text thread.
She’d invited Natalie to the carriage house today to go over the information they’d each gathered so far about the hit-and-run.
She didn’t feel comfortable meeting the PI publicly in case someone recognized Natalie.
No sense having anyone think Jordyn was in town for any reason other than exploring a cool new place to live.
They’d only just taken their seats at the kitchen island when Jordyn’s phone vibrated with the text.
“Do you know anything about a local Witch Walk?” she asked Natalie as she put the phone down, assuming she didn’t need to reply yet.
“Oh, it’s pretty fun. It’s a fundraiser for shelter pets, and everyone dresses in costume to parade around town. There are special dances, themed foods and drinks, plus the businesses all get involved.”
“Cool. Guess I’m in the market for a pointy hat.” She wouldn’t miss an opportunity to hang out with the book club friends before the Halloween meeting. “So I’m dying to know what you’ve unearthed since we spoke last.”
Because everywhere she turned lately she felt like she was pounding her head against the wall.
The probate attorney still hadn’t gotten back to her about the status of Tara’s estate.
Neither Randall nor Lauren Hughes would return her calls.
Plus she’d listened to podcast after podcast about people’s heartbreaks and betrayals.
Although she had a whole list of individuals around the country who could potentially have a reason to hate Sophie and Tara, the content of the shows made Jordyn feel incredibly depressed.
Why were people so heartless toward one another? Particularly people they used to love? Every break-up the show covered was painful.
Natalie flipped open the top of the stainless-steel water bottle she’d brought along.
She was dressed in another leather coat today, this one a dark brown bomber jacket with jeans.
“I found out some juicy stuff. But first, let me tell you that I did most of my online digging while staking out Daybreak Hill.”
“Really?” Jordyn frowned, silencing her phone that was starting to vibrate, probably with group text replies about the Witch Walk. “Why?”
“Checking how many vehicles use that road that don’t belong to people who live on the cul-de-sac. I took the day shift, and I hired someone to take night shifts for the hour when Tara would have been struck.”
“I wonder if the cops thought to do that as part of their investigation.” Jordyn wished she’d thought of that months ago. It would have been a good assignment for the investigator she’d originally hired to look into the hit-and-run.
“My contact on the force didn’t mention it.
I made a list of the vehicles, plate numbers, and how long they spent on the street.
” She tapped her phone screen and pulled up the electronic version of the document to show Jordyn.
“Granted, this was only over the course of three days, but in that time every single person had a connection to one of the houses on the street. Nannies, tutors, other parents dropping off kids from sports practices, a couple of contractors, lawn care, and deliveries. But after nine PM, there was zero traffic except for residents.”
“That fits with what I’ve thought all along.
I always figured it had to be someone from the book club who hadn’t gone home yet.
All the members told police—at least according to the information released to the press—that they were at Sophie’s place until things broke up around ten forty-five.
Shortly afterward, someone calls in a noise complaint. Then twenty minutes later Tara’s dead.”
“Meaning we’re on the right track looking into the group.
” Natalie nodded as she withdrew a sleek silver pen from an interior pocket of the jacket she still wore.
“I’ve spent most of my time digging into everyone’s financial situations and trying to figure out who would benefit from Tara’s death.
But I also dug deeper into everyone’s backgrounds.
I can just go through each member and tell you what I learned. ”
“Perfect. Who’s first?” Jordyn had some notes of her own, but she wasn’t sure there was anything that she hadn’t already shared with the PI in their initial call.
“I say we start at the top, since it’s Sophie’s book club.” Natalie flipped open an old-fashioned notepad with a purple cloth cover that looked like something a junior high kid would make. Inside, the note paper was covered from top to bottom in notes in—
“Is that shorthand?” Jordyn asked, surprised to see the squiggles she vaguely recalled reading about in a book.
Natalie nodded as she scanned the page. “You’d be surprised how helpful it is in my job.
Anyway, Sophie divorced Amelia and Charlotte’s father seven years ago, and eighteen months later she married Luke Sideris.
David Durand had money, but Luke had more.
” Shrugging, she paused to meet Jordyn’s eyes.
“I’m not making judgments, I’m just going to blast through facts. ”
“Blast away.” Jordyn pulled out a sheet of paper and a ballpoint so she could keep track of what she learned.
“Sophie still works remotely for her father’s South Carolina law firm.
Her family has money, but again, not to the degree that Luke does.
I can’t find any kind of partnership agreement regarding Clean Break between Sophie and Tara, so there’s no way to know if Sophie technically took over the business before Tara’s death or after. ”
“Wait.” Jordyn put her pen down. “You’re sure that Sophie has full ownership of The Clean Break now? Even though I haven’t heard anything from the probate court about the status of Tara’s estate?”
Natalie shook her head. “Sophie filed the paperwork early this year to restructure the business as an S Corp, and she’s the sole owner.”
“Guess who just shot to the top of my list,” Jordyn muttered, wishing she’d paid closer attention to Tara’s discussion of her work.
Had Sophie killed her partner to gain control of the business?
“Maybe hold off on that until you hear the rest because I’m just warming up.” Natalie flipped the page of her notebook with a flourish.
“Kaitlin Teal’s financial situation is sound. She inherited that lake house from a great aunt, and she’s never been married. But the scuttlebutt on her is that she was cut out of the podcast even though she was instrumental in coming up with the premise.”
“And you found that out how?”
“Social media griping in groups she thought were private.” Natalie made a face. “Never put anything on the internet that you wouldn’t shout out your front window for the whole neighborhood to hear. Because that’s what you’re doing.”
“Right.” Jordyn was impressed. She’d hunted through the social media accounts of all the book club members and hadn’t found those posts. “Can you screenshot some of that?”
“I’ve already created a secure shared file with all of this information in there. I’ll give you the sign-in after we finish.”
In short order, Natalie had also learned that Destiny owed both Tara and Sophie money since they’d kicked in the funds necessary to open The Ascent. Sophie had filed a promissory note but Tara had just handed over the cash as far as Natalie could learn.
So that gave both Kaitlin and Destiny motives.
Brad nursed a grudge about losing primary custody, which gave him one.
Fatima Chamoun didn’t seem to have anything against Tara, at least not that they’d uncovered so far.
Although Fatima and Sophie had been locked in a competitive war to see whose daughters achieved more, she couldn’t see how that could be related to Tara.
And after summarizing both Brad’s and Fatima’s financial situations—neither seemed like they would benefit from Tara’s death—Natalie flipped another notebook page.
“Now, here’s when the motives might turn less financial and more emotional. Because I learned there is some evidence that Tara was having an affair—”
“With Luke?” Jordyn guessed.
Natalie swung her head to face her. “Well, wow. That’s not where I was going. Have you heard that?”
“No. But I sensed a weird vibe between them.” Jordyn wasn’t totally sure why Luke had been her first guess. Maybe because she rented the house from Luke? “But I wondered if there was something between them based on a conversation I had with Tara. What have you heard?”
“A waitress at the Adelphi Hotel told me she saw Tara with Mei Kita’s husband, Nikolai Moskal. And apparently I’m not the only one who went to the restaurant asking about it. Mei briefly hired a colleague of mine to follow Nikolai, so she must have been suspicious of him too.”
“Do you know if that person uncovered any proof?”
“My contact wouldn’t say more than that.
I just know he tailed Nikolai for a couple of weeks last year because Mei hired him to.
” She clicked the push button of her pen back and forth a handful of times while she seemed lost in thought.
“So that’s a potential motive for Mei if she heard the same rumor as me, that Nikolai had been with Tara. ”
“Maybe you could find out more from that colleague? Do you think if I offered to pay this other PI for the information he would let us know definitively one way or another what he shared with Mei?”
“It’s worth asking.” Natalie made a note in her phone then set it aside again. She paused to take another swig from her water bottle, which was covered in stickers from visits to national parks. “But I saved the best for last.”
“We’ve covered almost everyone in the book club.” Jordyn frowned. “You know that Gina Vallot had only just arrived in Saratoga a few weeks before Tara’s death, right?”