The burnt orange sunrise bam-4

by David Handler

  Mitch obliged him, making no sudden moves. He did not want to stampede him into firing that gun.

  “Now take me to Jory,” Jase ordered him. “Jory needs me.”

  “I can definitely do that, Jase,” Mitch said. “But are you absolutely sure this is what you want to do? Because once we walk out of this room together, there’s no going back.”

  “Hell, yeah, I’m sure.” Jase gave him a hard shove toward the taproom doorway, jabbing him in the back with the nose of the thirty-eight. “I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life. Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER 16

  “Wwhat Digoxin?” Jory gazed across the kitchen table at Des, mystified. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that a colleague of mine just hooked up by cell phone with Tom Maynard, our friendly home-town pharmacist.”

  “Sure, I know Tom,” Jory said easily. “I went through school with his oldest girl, Tabitha. She got married last summer to Casey Earle. Casey’s major dull, but his dad owns Tri-County Paving so who cares, right?” She paused, shaking her head at Des. “What about Tom?”

  “He confirmed that Norma recently needed an extra refill of her digoxin prescription. It seems Norma somehow misplaced a nearly full bottle. She searched the castle from top to bottom but couldn’t find it anywhere, she told him. Since Norma’s health insurer would only cover one refill per month, the extra one had to come out of her own pocket. So she was real mad at herself. That’s why Tom remembered it-because Norma was so mad at herself.”

  Jory let out a soft laugh. “I’ll bet she was. Norma hated wasting so much as a nickel. Why are you telling me this, Des?”

  “Because I’m almost positive that’s how Norma was killed-by an overdose of digoxin dissolved in her late-night cocoa. And because, according to Tom, Norma requested this extra refill a full two weeks ago, Jory. That lets out all of the folks who came here for Ada’s tribute. Whoever drugged Norma is someone who is here all of the time. Either you or Les, in other words. It had to be one of you, since I don’t peg Jase as any master schemer.”

  Jory said nothing to this. Just sat there, her pink hands folded before her on the table. At her right elbow was the cutting board with the hunks of ham and cheese on it.

  “It took me a good long while to arrive at you, if that’s any consolation.” Des studied her from across the table. Jory Hearn did not look at all like a bad girl. She was pretty in a wholesome sort of way, hardworking, capable, agreeable. The truth seemed almost impossible to believe. But Des did believe it. “Mostly, I couldn’t figure your motive,” she went on. “I kept thinking Aaron and Hannah must have cooked up the whole thing. He’s the one with the huge financial upside. She’s the one whose mom is a nurse. That girl knows her first aid-I figured her for the digoxin idea. It all played. Until Les got himself murdered, that is. Then my attention shifted to him and Teddy. Teddy’s strapped for money, as was Les, and Norma had provided for both of them in her will. Being her executor, Les knew all about that. I started thinking that maybe he and Teddy murdered her together, then had themselves a falling-out over Ada. Teddy did appear to have the best opportunity for killing Les. He was downstairs playing the piano when Les and Mitch were out in the woodshed. The rest of you were locked up tight, or so I thought. And Teddy did mention to me that he’d once given Norma a tape of himself playing “More Than You Know.” What if he’d slipped that tape of his into the battery-powered sound system in the dining hall and cranked it up good and loud? I’d be sitting there in the upstairs hallway thinking he was in the Sunset Lounge, playing, when he was actually outside murdering Les. It was plausible. Of course, once I found out about the trapdoors, I realized it could have been any of you. And now that we’ve spoken to Tom Maynard, everyone else is off the hook. Like I said, they weren’t here two weeks ago when you stole Norma’s pills. And that’s where you blew it, girl.”

  Jory remained stubbornly silent. She wasn’t giving an inch.

  So Des kept going. “I’m figuring you pretty much had to play it the way you did. You couldn’t sneak a few capsules out of the bottle, here and there, because Norma would come up short at the end of the month and notice it. You had to make it look as if she’d misplaced an entire bottle. Also, in fairness to you, you had no way of knowing at the time that you’d need to cover your tracks by killing Ada. The old lady wrecked your whole scheme, didn’t she? You would have gotten away with it if it hadn’t been for her. I certainly bought that Norma died of natural causes. Her doctor would have verified that she had a serious heart condition. The medical examiner would have likely forgone the autopsy. It was all working for you, Jory. Until you went and killed Ada. That meant we had to take a fresh hard look at Norma. That also meant Les had to die because…” Des paused, shoving her heavy horn-rimmed glasses up her nose. “Actually, this part I still don’t get. Was Les going to pin it all on you, is that it?”

  Jory lowered her eyes, gazing down at her hands folded there on the table. Slowly, her gaze inched over toward the cutting board at her elbow. And to the carving knife that lay there. It was very long and very sharp.

  Des watched Jory’s eyes carefully. Also her hands. Her own hands were stuffed in the pockets of her coat. “The time for kidding ourselves is long past, Jory. Les is dead, you’re alive. That puts it all on you. So start talking. I repeat: Whose idea was it to put the digoxin in the cocoa-was it Les or was it you?”

  “Des, I don’t know what you mean,” she responded finally, her hands edging fractionally closer to that knife. “Really, I don’t.”

  “Sure you do.” Des shifted her SIG out of her pocket and into her lap. “But you’ve got to get off this story about Spence Sibley being the great love of your life. It’s sweet, but it’s also complete crap. You did rock his world last night. That part’s real. But the rest of it is straight out of a Harlequin Romance. You don’t feel any love for Spence, and we both know it. So show me some respect, Jory. I don’t think you’re a bad person. But something bad has happened here, and you were involved. You can’t get away with it. That’s not going to happen. So get out in front while you have the chance. Work with me. Trust me. If you do, I can help you. If you don’t, I can’t. And, by the way, you should know that my weapon is pointed right at you underneath this table. Move any closer to that carving knife and you’re dead.”

  Jory’s froze, her eyes widening. “You’d shoot me?”

  “Like a rabid raccoon.” Des reached over and snatched the knife away from Jory, then sat back, her SIG still trained on her under the table. “I actually felt sorry for you this morning, know that? I sat here at this very table listening to you sob about how Norma was like a mother to you, and I felt bad for you.”

  “Hey, I feel bad for me, too,” Jory said softly, her eyes puddling with tears. “You can’t imagine just how much I… wish I had… never…” She let out a huge, ragged sob, the tears spilling down her pink cheeks.

  Des waited her out in patient silence. The tears often flowed at this point. They signified nothing. Nothing to do with sorrow or regret, that is. They were strictly about fear.

  “God, I want to wake up from this nightmare,” Jory sniffled, swiping at her eyes with the back of her hand.

  “So wake up and start talking.”

  “It was all Les’s idea,” she began, her voice sounding flat and defeated. “He manipulated me, set me up, whatever you want to call it. And I fell for it all the way. I’m a bird-brained fool. I am so stupid.”

  “Exactly how did Les set you up?”

  “The bastard promised to marry me, that’s how.”

  “You and he were lovers?”

  “I wouldn’t call it love,” she said bitterly. “But I did lie to you just now about how he was always harassing me. He didn’t have to. I gave myself to him willingly. It was easy, really. All I had to do was close my eyes tight, grit my teeth and think about something, anything else. I let that man have me again and again and again. I… I helped him get rid of Norma, too. All because I
believed his promises. I should have known better. I did know better. But I wanted to believe him. It’s all passing me by, Des. I’m closing in on thirty and I’m so miserable. I’m trapped in this place. I’m lonely. I’m poor. And I want more. I want a life for myself. The sad thing is, Les knew all of this. That’s what made me his perfect sucker. Can you understand that?”

  “Keep talking. I’m listening.”

  “He told me that when Norma died, this place would be all his. That he would inherit Astrid’s Castle. And he would marry me and we’d live happily ever after together. God, talk about a fairy tale. But I went for it. After living my whole life in that grubby caretaker’s cottage, stripping the soiled sheets off other people’s beds, swabbing out their toilets, smiling at them and smiling at them… Think of it, I would be running the castle. It would be my castle. And I wanted that, Des. Not only for me but for Jase.”

  “Did he know that you and Les were involved?”

  “No, never,” she replied. “Jase could tell that Les was into me. That much was pretty obvious. He even warned me to watch out for Les. But I shielded him from the ugly truth, which was that I’d been sleeping with the man for months. We’d slip away once or twice a week together. I’d tell Jase I was running errands, or getting my hair cut. You see, I’ve always tried to shield him from the truth about people and the awful kinds of behavior we’re capable of. Jase is really so innocent that way. He can’t understand how people will just flat-out lie. That’s what Les did to me. He lied. Made the whole story up. I overheard the terrible truth this morning-that the castle didn’t pass to him, it passed to Aaron. The bastard knew this all along. He’d signed a pre-nuptual agreement. But he dangled it in front of me anyway, like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. And I bought it. And so I slept with him and I killed Norma for him,” she confessed, biting the words off angrily. “He made me kill Norma for him.”

  “Exactly how did he do that, Jory?”

  “He said that if I didn’t kill her he’d tell her all about our affair. That I’d seduced him. That I was a conniving little slut who slept with lots of guests, often for money. Norma would have fired me instantly. Jase, too. We’d have ended up renting some moldy shack up by Uncas Lake. I’d be working as a cashier at Dunkin’ Donuts. And God knows what sort of work Jase could get. Les was a cunning old snake, Des. He was probably leading Martha Burgess on, too. Telling that scrawny dishrag he’d marry her. Or maybe he really was planning to marry her. Who knows? I sure don’t. I thought he loved me and would marry me. And it was never true, Des. I was never anything more to him than a stupid bimbo who he could screw every which way possible.” Sunlight broke through the retreating storm clouds now and streamed through the kitchen window, a shaft of it slanting across Jory’s face. “I fooled myself, Des. God, how I fooled myself. But I didn’t know that until this morning. And by then the whole damned thing had exploded in our faces.”

  “Walk me through it, Jory. Step by step.”

  “Sure, I can do that,” she said woodenly. “Les decided that last night was the perfect night for us to make our move. A whole lot of stress was piling up on Norma this weekend. Throw in an ice storm, a power outage-it just seemed to him like the ideal night for her heart to give out. He told me this down in the wine cellar, when he came down to fetch me. ‘This is our chance,’ he said. ‘Tonight’s the night.’ Assuming she got up, of course. But she got up pretty much every night. Made her cocoa and read her John O’Whoever-he-was. I kept an eye out for her in the cottage. When I saw the flicker of her lantern in here, I joined her. Told her I couldn’t sleep either. Told her to let me make the cocoa for her. Les was the one who stole her heart medicine. I’d broken a dozen capsules open and poured the powder into a tiny plastic bag. While we were busy girl-talking away in here, I dumped it into her mug. My back was to her. She never saw me.” Jory’s mouth tightened. “Unfortunately…”

  “Ada did,” Des said.

  “The way that old lady glided around this place, I swear it wasn’t human,” Jory protested angrily. “I didn’t see her. I didn’t hear her. All I know is she was suddenly standing right in that doorway with her beady eyes trained right on me. She’d heard Norma come downstairs, I guess. Thought she’d join her. I put on water for her herbal tea and kept sneaking looks at her. Des, those eyes of hers just kept boring right back at me. She didn’t so much as blink.”

  “She knew what you’d done?”

  “Not at the time, I don’t think. Because if she’d suspected anything, she would have told Norma to pour out the cocoa, right? She didn’t. She let Norma drink it. What I do think is that Ada was afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  “That Norma’s heart condition was much more serious than Norma had been admitting to her. That Norma required heavy doses of medication and it was my job to make sure she got it. I figured she was concerned about her daughter’s health. Not that Ada said one word about it. It was like she didn’t want to invade Norma’s privacy or something. She just drank her tea and went back up to bed. After Norma finished her cocoa, she went back to bed, too.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I rinsed out the mug and saucepan, dried them and put them away. Then I sneaked into Spence’s room and jumped his bones.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  Jory hesitated, shifting uneasily in her chair. “Look, I’m not very proud of this…”

  “Girl, you’re saying that to me like you’re proud of any of it.”

  “Good point,” Jory conceded, coloring. “I needed to be with someone at that moment. I didn’t want to be alone, knowing what I’d just done. Knowing that Norma was going to die there in her bed in the next few minutes. Knowing that Les was going to be right next to her in that bed, watching her die, letting her die. Can you even get your mind around the horror of that?”

  “Les didn’t sleep through it. Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “Of course he didn’t. And just the thought of it made me shudder. I… I needed to obliterate it from my mind. Spence was there, so I figured why not. It wasn’t as if he’d kick me out on a cold winter night. Also, I was concerned about what Ada might or might not know. Spence could vouch for me, if necessary.”

  “Vouch for you how?”

  “Well, think about it, Des. I acted like I was really concerned about waking up Norma. I tiptoed up the third floor, sneaked in and out through his trapdoor. If I’d known she was dead, I wouldn’t have bothered to do that, would I?”

  “I guess you have a point there,” said Des, who suddenly felt very sick inside. It was the careful, calculated evil of it all. A murder of passion she could understand. A woman walking in on her man in bed with another woman, blowing his brains out-that was human. This here, this wasn’t human.

  “You were right about Spence and me,” Jory went on. “There was never anything more than sex between us. I could never love a man like Spence. He’s way too involved in himself. It sure made a nice fairy tale, though, didn’t it?”

  “If you believe in fairy tales.”

  “I never have, actually,” Jory said, smiling faintly. “Not even when I was a little girl. I knew there was no Santa Claus. And for sure that there was no Prince Charming. I’ve always known that.”

  “And yet you claim you fell for Les’s promises.”

  “I did. I wanted to believe them. I wanted to believe him. That was my one big mistake.”

  “Girl, you made a whole lot more than one,” Des told her. “Let’s move ahead a few hours. It’s dawn now. Les has just pretended to wake up and find Norma dead in bed beside him. I’m there in the bedroom with him when Ada comes in to say good-bye to Norma. Before she leaves, Ada tells me she has to speak to me about something. That’s when she wrote her own death sentence, didn’t she? Because Les had to figure that the urgency in Ada’s voice meant trouble-she was on to what you two had done to Norma’s cocoa.”

  “He came and found me right away,” Jory said, nodding. “He
was really upset. Said we had to shut Ada up, and fast. I was against the whole idea, honestly. My view? Hey, she’s ninety-something years old, grief-stricken, distraught. Somebody like you would just figure she was raving. But Les wasn’t buying it. He was absolutely insistent that we could not let her sit down with you. He didn’t let her out of his sight after that, just to make sure she didn’t. And when she went upstairs to dress for breakfast, he grabbed me in the kitchen and said, ‘This is it-we have to make our move.’ And so, well, we did.”

  “It was not a brilliant move,” Des informed her. “In fact, I’d go so far as to say it was lame-assed. From that moment on, Norma’s death was bound to look suspicious. Didn’t you folks realize that?”

  “We couldn’t afford the luxury of worrying about it. We simply had to make the best of a bad situation. That’s what Les kept saying. He panicked. We both did, I guess.”

  “Who strangled that fine old woman?”

  Jory started snuffling again. “I don’t w-want to sit here talking about this anymore.”

  “Hey, I don’t want to be sitting here talking about it either,” Des said to her roughly. “I’d much rather be sitting at home in a nice hot bubble bath, sipping fine cognac. But I’m not. I’m getting frostbite at Astrid’s Castle instead. So keep talking, before I lose my sweet disposition. I repeat: Who strangled her?”

  “I sure couldn’t do it,” Jory said weakly. “And Les was way too chicken.”

  “So you made Jase do it, didn’t you?” Des demanded, scowling at her.

  “I did,” Jory admitted. “He was in the mudroom, tidying himself up when I went in there and laid it on the line. I told him, ‘Look, Ada somehow thinks I’ve killed Norma, and if we don’t head her off right away, she’s going to send me off to to jail.’ You see-” She broke off, her chest rising and falling. “There’s this one thing that Jase totally can’t cope with, and that’s being separated from me. As long as we’re together, he’s fine. But he needs me in his life. Otherwise, he’s lost.”