Chapter 35
CHAPTER
Jordyn
Present
SHE WAS IN over her head.
Jordyn cursed herself for her attempts at playing Poirot as she ran around the house in the dark, stubbing her toes, banging her hips on unseen furniture, and toppling over one piece that had resulted in glass breaking.
Noisy. Dangerously so. Still, she searched the house in vain for the exit that had been opened somewhere.
Her efforts to draw a confession from someone in the kitchen had been laughable. No one was admitting to killing Tara. Worse, two of her suspects had vanished without her ever noticing. Where the hell had Brad and Gina gone?
And why hadn’t Sophie ever returned?
Jordyn had been so dismissive of law enforcement’s struggles to solve this case, but she hadn’t done much better. She didn’t care about endangering her own life per se, but she definitely didn’t want to give up the ghost before she pointed a finger at Tara’s killer.
Amid the din of the storm, Jordyn hadn’t heard any doors opening or cars departing. Not finding evidence of a defection downstairs, she moved to check out the second floor.
“Brad? Gina? Are you up here?” She climbed the steps when no one answered, careful not to trip in the dark.
She wouldn’t be doing Tara’s memory any favors if Jordyn was found at the base of the staircase with a broken neck. The book club would close ranks, shrug their collective well-toned shoulders, and move on as if nothing had ever interrupted their charmed lives.
A rustling noise emanated at the far end of the upstairs corridor. The ceilings weren’t as high on the second level, making sounds easier to pinpoint than on the echoing first floor.
Jordyn rushed forward, determined not to let anyone leave the house. But as she passed one of the closed doors along the hallway, a rush of cold air blew in from the threshold.
Could this be the source of the gust that had blown through the kitchen? Maybe someone had opened a window, not a door.
“Hello?” She knocked on the panel of polished white oak. “Anyone in here?”
When no one responded, she turned the heavy handle and pushed her way into a freezing, darkened bedroom.
Cold air lifted her hair from her neck, and she moved toward an open set of French doors where a tall, slender woman stood silhouetted against the rainy night.
The exterior landscape lighting was extinguished when the electricity cut out.
But there must be a few solar lights dotted among the others outside because a dull glow made the storm and the woman just barely visible.
“Sophie?” Squinting into the shadowed dimness, Jordyn stepped deeper into the room. “What are you doing?”
“The girls are both fine,” Sophie informed her, her voice sounding a bit uneven. Remote, actually. Detached. “Charlotte is back home now. The party she was going to was cancelled when the power went out.”
A rustling noise sounded from the other end of the room. Was it just the wind?
“Glad they’re safe.” Jordyn glanced around, trying to determine if this was one of the daughters’ rooms, but the shadowed suite seemed as minimalist and bland as every other vanilla nightmare in the house.
Either this was a space for guests or else one of Sophie’s offspring had inherited her mother’s spare style.
“Why are you up here alone? Letting all the rain in?”
“We’re alone?” Sophie glanced back, her eyes scanning the room as if searching for someone else.
Then, not seeing anyone else in the shadowed corners, she turned away from Jordyn to step through the open French doors out onto the balcony.
“The deck is covered, so it’s a good place to watch the rain. ”
How weird was that?
Something was off about her words. Even her walk seemed wobbly. Maybe she’d started drinking before her guests had even arrived.
“You want to enjoy the rainstorm during book club with a house full of guests while we’re all downstairs trying to solve a murder?” Jordyn’s eyes narrowed as she followed Sophie outside.
There were a couple of low loveseats and some tall plants that probably made the space feel more private, but Jordyn could see the outline of the pool area below. A waist-high railing wrapped around the deck, save for the space where a wide stairwell led down to the pool.
“I think you came here tonight believing you already knew who the killer was, didn’t you?”
It was the first thing Sophie had said that made some sense. Even if she was way off base.
“No. I have a lot of suspicions, but I’m still not sure.” Jordyn studied her in the gloom that was only a tiny bit brighter outdoors thanks to the occasional streak of lightning and a few solar lights in the garden between the pool house and the main structure. “Do you know who killed Tara?”
Sophie walked toward the stairs as if she planned to leave the shelter of the balcony for the pool deck. In the rain.
The storm had slowed from a sheeting downpour to a steady, cold shower. That didn’t mean a sane person would want to stroll through it without a coat.
“Do you know what she threatened to do on her last night here?” Sophie asked instead, turning unsteadily to face her.
Jordyn wished she would come back inside. Or at least away from the wide outdoor steps that were sure to be slippery. But she wasn’t about to lose the thread of this conversation. A discussion of Tara’s killer was what had brought her here after all.
“Tara? Threatening?” Jordyn shook her head. “What happened to her having a generous heart and absolutely no agenda?”
She hadn’t forgotten Sophie’s description of her friend at the Witch Walk.
“She changed,” Sophie said simply. She stuck her hand out beyond the roofline so that the rain fell freely on her skin. Her moves seemed to be in slow motion. “That last evening, she was like a totally different person.”
Jordyn remembered the phone conversation they’d had that night. Tara had been dressed as Maleficent, telling Jordyn that everyone she wanted to hex would be at the book club meeting.
Sophie wasn’t wrong. Tara had seemed different. Still, she needed to keep the woman talking. Find out what had happened.
“How did she change? Why would you say that?” Jordyn felt the old defensiveness flare. Her need to protect her friend.
Only now, she protected the memory of her. The legacy of kindness Tara had left behind.
“She tried to blackmail me into—” Sophie swung around to look at Jordyn and seemed to change whatever she’d been about to say. “She threatened to tell the police that Luke was some kind of … that he was harassing her.”
Sophie’s words were sluggish. Maybe a guilty conscience driven her to drink too much.
Perhaps the anniversary of killing her friend weighed on her?
“Was he?” Jordyn swiped rain from her face as she recalled the way Tara had avoided talking about Luke. “Harassing her?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. If anything, she would have been the one to harass him. I saw her hanging all over him at The Clean Break anniversary party months before her death. She made a spectacle of herself. It was an embarrassment.”
There was a venom in her tone that Jordyn hadn’t heard before from perpetually composed Sophie. A flash of anger and, perhaps, jealousy toward Tara.
“And no one is allowed to embarrass you, are they Sophie?” Jordyn strode closer, ready to ratchet up the verbal pressure if it meant rattling this woman. Squeezing a confession from her. “Not your husband. Not your daughters, who you make sure never quite earn your approval.”
“I’d be careful if I were you,” Sophie said, pointing a finger at her. “That’s my family you’re talking about.”
“And Tara is my family,” Jordyn reminded her, not caring for the finger in her face. She knocked it away. “So you be careful too.”
Sophie sucked in a hiss. Her eyes went wider at the physical contact, the whites of her eyes momentarily visible.
“Your family was a spineless orphan who could only find success in life when attached to other people,” Sophie spat out, leaning forward to make her point.
“She either fluttered her eyelashes to get what she wanted, or she insinuated herself into your world so thoroughly you couldn’t scrape her off. ”
Jordyn’s heart slammed against her ribs. She saw red. A roar sounded in her ears like a rogue wave. Or like the storm had picked up.
Only, she was pretty sure she was the storm.
“Did you kill her for that?” Jordyn asked, remembering that Natalie had told her one of Luke Sideris’s vehicles had paint that matched the hit-and-run vehicle. “Did you run down your friend because of some petty business bullshit? Or jealousy?”
She had shouted her way closer to Sophie so that they were practically nose to nose. Both angry. Breathing hard.
“I didn’t run her down! And I saw her flirt with my husband with my own eyes at a work party.
” Sophie put a hand to her neck, wincing.
She patted the area, as if searching for the source of the pain.
As if something had stung her? Her brows furrowed as she seemed to struggle to think.
She spoke slowly. Deliberately. “Yet Tara had the audacity to then threaten me with going to the police to claim Luke had sexually harassed her.”
“She confided in you, and you didn’t believe her.” Jordyn heard a rustling noise behind her again, but she barely paid any heed, her brain overrun with images of Sophie gunning the engine to hit Tara.
“It wasn’t true!” Sophie insisted, backing up another step, wavering on her feet as she gesticulated. “She tried to use it as a bargaining chip so I’d sign some partnership agreement. I drove over to her house later that night to talk to her. And I didn’t even see her in the dark until—”
Jordyn’s gut dropped to her toes.
“You hit her,” Jordyn finished, the pieces coming together in a final picture. “You were angry with her, and you hit her.”
“I was on my way to talk sense into her!” Sophie insisted, her voice wracked with emotion.
It sounded like guilt.
But Jordyn didn’t care about Sophie’s feelings. She only cared about the admission. Because Sophie had absolutely done the crime even if she couldn’t bring herself to say the words.
“You never confessed though. All this time you’ve left Tara’s real friends to worry and wonder. Worst, you just left her there, on the cold pavement in the dark to die alone.” Anger vibrated through her. “You cold-hearted, conscienceless bitch.”
She wanted to throttle the woman, but she settled for shoving her with both hands, the fury in her body needing an outlet. Also needing to get a killer out of her face. Just a small shove.
Except Sophie reeled backward, still unsteady.
The moment played out in horrible slow motion. Sophie standing at the top of a stairwell slippery from rain. Scrambling back made her lose her footing. Her arms pinwheeling as she tried to find her balance.
The scream she made as she fell would be something Jordyn would never, ever forget.