The Burnt Orange Sunrise (33 page)

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.”

“So you pushed his hot button, is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes.”

“And he murdered Ada for you.”

“Faced with the prospect of losing me, Jase will do anything I ask him to do,” Jory stated matter-of-factly.

“You have an awesome amount of power over him, don’t you?”

Jory didn’t respond. Just sat there examining the crumbs on the cutting board.

“What’s really behind that, Jory?” Des asked, studying her closely. “Is it chemical?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Sure you do. Those tranks you give him—is he addicted to them? Is that it?”

“Not really,” Jory replied, swallowing.

“Then what is it? How do you explain this power you have over him?”

“I just
told
you.” Jory’s voice rose defensively. “He can’t get along without me. The poor thing is just so fragile and innocent. He may seem like an adult to you, but in many ways he’s still a child.”

“Was he hip to the fact that you and Les
had
killed Norma?”

Jory shook her head. “I hadn’t dared tell him.”

“You just told him to kill Ada.”

“I did,” she acknowledged, turning woeful. “I shouldn’t have. I know that. Jase’s loyalty to me is something I’ve never, ever abused. But I did abuse it this morning. He … took the staff stairs. I told him to make it quick and quiet. And make sure no one saw him.”

“Did he wear gloves?”

“He did. Why?”

“He didn’t have any scratches on his hands, that’s why. Jory, let’s talk some more about Les, okay? There’s something I’m a bit confused about. You found out this morning that he’d lied to you about inheriting the castle, correct?”

“Correct,” Jory replied. “I heard him talking to Aaron about it in the taproom before breakfast. That’s when I realized that I’d been totally had.”

“And yet you didn’t let on to Les about it. Instead, you conspired with him to eliminate Ada. If you were already aware that Les had double-crossed you, how do you explain this?”

“One task at a time,” Jory answered simply.

“You just said what to me?”

“You can’t tackle every job at once. If you do that, you’ll get overwhelmed. That’s one of the secrets to running a successful inn. Norma taught it to me, actually. My immediate priority was Ada.
Our
immediate priority was Ada. So I let Les think I was still the stupid little slut he thought I was, and we took care of her.”

“Jase
took care of her.”

Jory swallowed, her eyes filling with tears. “Yes.”