Chapter 37
CHAPTER
Jordyn
Present
OBVIOUSLY, SHE WOULD have to come clean. Even though it had been an accident. A terrible, terrible accident.
Jordyn kept hearing that final scream over and over in her brain as she mindlessly wiped up some spilled wine from Sophie’s normally pristine countertops.
She couldn’t believe what had happened. How had a shouting match turned deadly so fast?
Sophie had gone down like a ton of bricks, never even putting out a hand to stop herself.
And Jordyn would tell everyone what happened soon.
Of course she would. She’d been a scrappy kid who turned into a scrappy adult.
While she may have been a hard luck case no one had wanted as a kid, she had built a sense of self around the character principles she found important.
Standing up for what she believed in. Not backing down.
And, yeah, facing up to the consequences of her actions.
Yet as the bedraggled group filed into the kitchen, tracking damp footprints all over Sophie’s floor, Jordyn couldn’t bring herself to confess the events from the balcony just yet.
No matter how horrible she felt about the argument upstairs with Sophie—the push that had turned deadly.
She’d come here tonight with a singular mission. To catch Tara’s killer.
And even though Sophie had been the one to run Tara down, there were still too many unanswered questions.
Too many weird things coming to light. Luke taking out the insurance policy on his wife.
Someone drugging Brad and tying him up. There were missing pieces to this puzzle, making the picture fractured and out of focus.
Sophie had admitted that Tara threatened to out Luke for sexual harassment.
Could he have had a hand in covering up Sophie’s crime?
If Luke had played any role in Tara’s death, Jordyn could hardly just quietly turn herself into the police for what happened to Sophie, leaving Luke free as a bird.
Jordyn’s fingers went to the St. Rita medallion. She tugged it from under the white T-shirt she wore beneath the costume lab coat and brushed over the familiar worn ridges of the saint’s outline.
Rita? Tara? If anyone was listening, she sure hoped they’d guide her toward more concrete answers about Tara’s death before she had to fess up to what happened on the balcony. She felt so jittery inside she was surprised everyone didn’t spot her guilt scrawled over her face.
But she needed more answers first.
“The longer we wait to call 911 the worse it looks for all of us,” Fatima reminded the group, still brandishing her cell. “Charlotte, we need to report this.”
“My mother is gone.” Charlotte opened a long drawer and scooped out half of the identical white dish towels.
She flung them unceremoniously on the island while keeping one to wrap around the ends of her damp hair.
“And once the police arrive, I will forever lose my chance to ask questions about what the hell happened here tonight.”
The older Durand daughter glared at them, her unnatural calm reminding Jordyn eerily of her mother. Other than that initial cry of surprise, Charlotte hadn’t shown much reaction to Sophie’s death. Maybe she was just in shock.
“I give up.” Fatima slid her device onto the island. “We’ll just wait for the killer to take out more of us while we square up our stories.”
“Innocent people don’t need to worry about getting their stories straight,” Kaitlin huffed as she wiped tears and makeup from her cheek. “But Charlotte, think of Amelia. If she was the one arguing with your mother, the police might have questions about that.”
“Thanks for that resounding endorsement of my character.” Amelia still wore the woodland fairy costume from earlier in the evening, though the stocking mask and bug eyes were long gone.
Unlike her sibling’s cool facade, Amelia’s expression moved readily from sneer to scowl.
“Is anyone surprised I argued with my mother on a regular basis? I’m virtually surrounded by people who hated her, whether any of you admit it or not, so let’s not rush to judgment that I found her overbearing and occasionally called her out on it. ”
The accusation seemed to quiet the book club members, but Charlotte didn’t appear surprised by the outburst. She squeezed the dishtowel around her hair before returning it to the counter, then turned to where Brad was seated at a small table off to one side of the kitchen.
“Mr. Brad, did you hear what they were arguing about?”
Amelia shook her head, muttering, “Jesus, Charlotte.”
Brad hedged, looking uncomfortable. “Things are still a little foggy.”
“Because Luke drugged you,” Gina shouted, slapping her hand on the counter, her whole body seeming to vibrate. “He keeps illegal shit in this house.” She swung to face Luke. “I looked up G and K, by the way. Date rape drugs can make you forget things.”
Luke sagged against one of the closed glass doors. “You’re out of your mind, Gina. Get a grip.”
“You’ve seen that stuff?” Destiny asked, sounding skeptical. She’d pulled off her feather fan tail so that she walked around in a rhinestone bodysuit. “With your own eyes?”
“Yes I did,” Gina snapped, leaning into a Cajun accent that Jordyn had never heard her use before.
“And it’s Evangeline, from now on. I only came here to wreck Sophie’s life the way she wrecked mine with her stupid podcast. I never planned to kill her.
But in my haste for revenge, I ended up sleeping with a murderer. ”
Someone made a soft whistling sound of surprise while eyebrows raised around the room. Jordyn, of course, wasn’t surprised by the admission. But hearing Gina’s vehement denial of coming to town with murderous intent made Jordyn less inclined to think she’d had any role in Tara’s death.
“You’re the woman who’s suing Sophie?” Luke scrubbed a hand over his face as he stared at his lover. Then, he turned to stepdaughter. “Charlotte, we need to call the police.”
Somehow Sophie’s older daughter had taken command of the room. But she also seemed to have stepped into her mother’s role with ease. All of the book club members looked to her, waiting. Maybe they were all in shock by now.
Charlotte didn’t answer. She moved toward the kitchen table where Brad Reynolds still sat. Lowered herself into a chair across from him.
“I’m sorry about the duct tape,” she told him softly. “But if there are fingerprints on it, we need to preserve them until the police arrive.”
Jordyn blinked at Charlotte’s matter-of-fact thinking in the aftermath of her mother’s traumatic death. It seemed strange. Almost frightening. Could she be in denial?
“That’s fine.” Brad nodded. “If my drink is around, someone should test it.”
From the back of the room, Mei said, “I’m on it.”
Kaitlin almost knocked over her counter stool to stand in a hurry. “We should work in pairs. You know, keep an eye on one another until we know who killed Sophie and drugged Brad.”
They weren’t seriously suggesting that this murder mystery evening play out for real?
Jordyn couldn’t smother a surprised laugh. “I spent my childhood surrounded by drug dealers and addicts, and my teen years in and out of foster homes with more than a few criminals in the making. Yet my Saratoga book club knows more about crime than any of them.”
“We’ve read a few police procedurals,” Fatima admitted.
Amelia stepped forward, her eyes on her lit phone screen. She laid the device on the table near her sister to share it. “K is ketamine, an anesthetic that can cause dissociative episodes.”
Charlotte didn’t look at the device, keeping her attention on Brad. “I know what it is. Mr. Brad, what were my mother and sister arguing about?”
“Amelia said she wished her mother was dead.”
A chorus of startled gasps from the book club seemed hypocritical considering the way this group all trash-talked one another. Maybe they didn’t realize how much the younger generation mirrored the older one.
Jordyn saw the way the group looked at Amelia now, and knew she needed to speak up soon. She wouldn’t let an innocent teen go down for a crime Jordyn had committed, no matter that it had been an accident. Unlike Tara’s killer, she wouldn’t hide her actions behind a false facade.
For now, she said, “Ninety percent of teenagers have said that to their parents at one time or another. It proves nothing.”
Jordyn was more interested in what happened to Brad. Did the person who accosted him have any role in Tara’s death?
“I agree,” Brad said tiredly. “And I wouldn’t have thought anything of it until …” He swung to look at Luke. “Luke tackled me and tossed me in the basement.”
“I knew it!” Gina screeched, picking up her phone. “He drugged Brad and then killed Sophie.”
As she tapped the screen to life, Fatima put her hand over the device. “Or Luke drugged Brad to protect Amelia. The real killer.”
Heads swung in Amelia’s direction. The girl looked ready to sink through the floor.
Making Jordyn recall exactly how it felt to lose everything—her parents and her freedom—the day she’d been carted off to foster care.
She felt Amelia’s hurt keenly, and she hated that she’d been the cause for her grief.
She sure as hell wouldn’t be the cause of Amelia being subjected to false allegations too.
“Amelia didn’t kill her mother.” Jordyn stepped forward, hoping Charlotte and Amelia would forgive her one day. The time had come to pay the price for something she’d never meant to do. “I did.”