The Perfect Stranger (22 page)

Elena settles back in the seat, resigned to a low-key coffee break—for now—and wishing she’d insisted on driving, or at least that she’d taken her own car. The parking lot has become crowded with moving people and cars, and Landry is taking her sweet old time maneuvering toward the exit.

To be fair, it’s not as though she can just barrel out of here. Still, she’s as slow and deliberate about driving as she is about everything else.

When they first met back at the hotel, Elena had to fight the urge to hustle her friend along—even conversationally. Everything about the self-proclaimed Alabama belle strikes her as languid. Not a bad thing, necessarily. Just . . . different.

Kay is different as well. Different from Landry, and from her, too. Practical and perfunctory, she reminds Elena of someone’s maiden aunt.

Not of her own aunt—maiden, or otherwise. Thanks to her father, she’d lost touch with her extended family after her mother died. But her dim memories of her parents’ sisters and sisters-in-law are of vibrant women very much like her mother.

Had she initially met these two women, Kay and Landry, in person, rather than online, Elena is pretty sure they wouldn’t have clicked at all.

There’s a lesson in there somewhere, she decides. But what is it?

She’s always telling her students to look beyond the obvious.

“Dig deeper,” she urges her first graders. “Don’t accept anything at face value.”

Good advice.

Okay. So look at Tony. If she’d first gotten to know him online, might she possibly have clicked with him in a way that she doesn’t in person?

Just the thought of him sets her nerves on edge now. He’d called her cell phone and left her a message while she was on the plane, asking her to give him a call back when she landed.

She didn’t—and not just because her battery was drained. He called again while she and the others were leaving the hotel, and that time she ignored it. He didn’t leave a message, and she turned off the phone immediately afterward.

Now, reluctantly turning it back on, she sees that she missed a couple of calls.

The first one is from Tony.

Really?
Really?

Scrolling through the missed calls log, she sees that his number is attached to all of them—and there are half a dozen. He left her a message the first time he tried her, then just kept dialing and hanging up on her voice mail.

Reluctantly, Elena puts the phone to her ear. She might as well hear what he had to say. Maybe he wanted to apologize for being . . .

Well, for being Tony.

“Elena, I need you to give me a call right away . . .”

Even in a recording, he annoys her. He urgently needs her to do something now? When she’s halfway across the country, at a funeral?

“ . . . I’ve been thinking about it and I don’t think you should be alone right now, and . . . you know what? Just give me a call the minute you get this. Okay. ’Bye.”

Jaw clenched, Elena presses Delete. Then she turns off her phone, in case he decides to call back yet again.

I’m not alone, Tony. I’m with my friends. Although . . .

In the front seat, Kay is pointing. “There’s a McDonald’s.”

Elena doesn’t acknowledge her.
McDonalds? I’d rather be anyplace else right now—including alone.

Yes, preferably alone at a bar somewhere, drowning her sorrows. That’s what you do after a funeral. It’s what her father did after her mother’s . . .

For thirty years.

“I don’t think McDonald’s is exactly what we’re looking for,” Landry tells Kay.

Relieved, Elena looks toward the opposite side of the road. “There’s a Chili’s. And an Applebee’s.”

Landry makes her face. “I’m not crazy about— Oh, wait, I see Starbucks!”

She flicks on the turn signal and pulls into the left turning lane toward Starbucks as if it’s all decided.

Elena opens her mouth to put in her vote for going back to the hotel, or to someplace that has a bar, then thinks better of it.

If she goes back and sits in her room, she’s only going to stress about Tony and . . . everything.

And if she goes to a bar . . .

Look what happened to her after all that wine last night.

Look what happens every time she drinks too much.

With the detective meeting them soon, it’s probably best to stick with her friends and drown her sorrows in a cup of coffee. At least that’ll keep her out of trouble—for now.

Several cars in front of them make the left turn into the parking lot, and Landry creeps forward with each one. When it’s her turn, the light turns yellow. There’s only one oncoming car and it’s far enough away . . .

“You can make it,” Elena advises.

But Landry is braking. Stopping. So is the oncoming car.

Elena can’t help herself: “You could have made it.”

“Like I always tell my kids when they’re at the wheel, yellow means slow down, not speed up.”

“Not where I’m from.”

Landry shrugs. “Where I’m from, slow and steady wins the race.”

Finally, the light is green, the coast is clear, and they’re pulling into the busy parking lot. Starbucks is hopping at this hour on a sunny Saturday afternoon.

Reaching for the back door handle, Elena flashes back to what Tony said to her as she got out of his car at the airport this morning.

“Your secret is safe with me . . .”

What was he talking about?

What did I tell him?

She rubs her temples with her fingertips as they step from the parking lot glare into the dimly lit interior—then stops short, spotting Tony at the far end of the counter, waiting for a beverage.

Landry promptly crashes into her from behind. “Oops, I’m sorry!”

“It’s okay,” Elena murmurs.

It’s not him. As he turns, she’s almost positive the man is a total stranger who has on the kind of sleeveless muscle T-shirt Tony sometimes wears.

Or is it?

It has to be a stranger. This is Ohio. Tony’s back in Massachusetts.

Still, Elena keeps a wary eye on him as he walks out without a backward glance, half expecting him to come back.

He doesn’t.

Of course not, because he isn’t Tony.

Waiting anxiously for her turn to order coffee, she stares blankly at the menu board she’s seen a thousand times at Starbucks back home, frustrated with herself.

After connecting with the others back at the hotel, she’d finally managed to banish unpleasant thoughts of Tony and last night. But now that she’s heard his message and seen evidence of all those missed calls, toxic tendrils are once again unfurling in her mind, choking out all other thoughts.

Tony knows “her secret.”

Tony wants to talk to her.

He wants to see her, be here with her . . .

Back at home, she had a printout of the hotel reservation right next to the flight information, under a magnet on the refrigerator. Did he wander around her apartment while she was sleeping?

What if he really did follow her here?

What if he pops out any second now?
Surprise!

The thought is enough to make her queasy.

“Elena?”

She blinks, and realizes Landry is talking to her, gesturing at the waiting cashier. “Your turn to order.”

“Oh, sorry, I’m just feeling a little . . . out of it,” she murmurs, and asks for a venti black coffee.

“Are you okay?” Landry asks.

She’d never understand. Aside from Meredith’s death and the cancer diagnosis they all share, Landry Wells has her life together. Elena came here thinking she was finding kindred spirits: women who know what it’s like to walk in her shoes.

But they don’t. When this weekend is over, Landry is going to go back to her handsome lawyer husband and her two beautiful kids and her big house on the water. And Kay is going to go back to . . .

Well, who knows what Kay’s life is really like?

For better or worse, cancer or not, it’s a world away from hers, which means . . .

Which means I have never been more alone in my life.

“So did you see her?” Crystal demands of Frank, the moment they’re safely back in the car.

He’s driving this time, headed back to the station house. She has some information to look up on the Internet—the sooner, the better.

“Did I see who?”

“Jenna Coeur.”

His eyes widen. “Did I see her where?”

“At the memorial service,” Crystal says impatiently, pulling her iPad out of her bag.

“
Jenna Coeur
was there? Are you sure?”

“Positive. I recognized her but I don’t know if anyone else did, and I could tell she was trying to keep a low profile. She was disguised as a blonde—or maybe she is a blonde now—and she came in late and then snuck out right before the end of the service.”

“Why was she there?”

“Good question.” Crystal rapidly types the name Jenna Coeur into the search engine. “There’s obviously some connection between her and Meredith Heywood. We need to figure out what it is.”

“Maybe they’re old friends or something, from when they were kids.”

“I doubt it. Meredith lived in Ohio all her life and I’m pretty sure Jenna Coeur was from someplace in the northern Midwest—Minnesota, North Dakota . . . something like that. Her real name was Johanna Hart.”

“Coeur means heart in French.”

“You speak French?”

“I took it in high school. That’s one of the only words I remember. That’s because on Valentine’s Day junior year there was this Parisian exchange student who—”

“Frank.”

“Yeah.”

“As much as I love to hear about your teenage Casanova years, we’re talking about Jenna Coeur right now.”

“Right. I’ll tell you the other thing later,” Frank says as he pulls out onto the highway. “Her name was Mimi. It’s a good story.”

“Aren’t they always?”

“Named Mimi? French girls?”

“No, I meant aren’t they always good stories. Anyway—” Crystal breaks off as the search results appear. She scans the links, then clicks the top one and quickly reads the news item that pops up.

“Looks like our friend is back in the headlines today, Frank.”

“Yeah? What did she do?”

“Today? She went to a funeral and left early. But ask me what she did seven years ago today.”

“What did she—” Frank breaks off. “Oh. That was seven years ago already?”

Crystal nods, scanning the retrospective news item about Jenna Coeur—also known as the notorious Cold-Hearted Killer.

“She was acquitted, you know,” Frank comments.

“Yeah. I know.”

“Just like O. J. Simpson at his criminal trial.” He shakes his head. “If you ask me, they both got away with—”

“But O. J. Simpson wasn’t at Meredith’s funeral. Jenna Coeur was. Why?” Crystal types in Jenna Coeur’s name along with Meredith’s, looking in vain for a connection.

The two women’s lives must have intersected at some point in the past, even though they’re nowhere near the same age, haven’t ever lived in the same state, and God knows they’ve probably never traveled in the same social circles . . .

It doesn’t make sense. Jenna Coeur has been a recluse for the past few years. Why would she show up in Ohio today?

“I’m having a hard time coming up with any scenario where these two might cross paths,” she muses aloud. “Not in the real world, anyway . . .”

But what about online?

That’s a strong possibility—and one she fully intends to bring up when she interviews Meredith’s blogger friends later.

As Landry pours sugar into her steaming latte, still thinking about her conversation with Detective Burns, she finds herself wondering about Bruce Mangione, the man who’d brought her coffee back in the Atlanta airport.

Chances are, he’ll be on her flight home tomorrow. He’d said something about just being in Cincinnati for twenty- four hours, and there are only a couple of Sunday options for connecting flights back to Alabama.

If he is there, she’ll have to thank him again. They’d parted ways so quickly at the rental car counter . . .

And maybe she can ask him what he thinks about Meredith’s murder.

Landry assumes the detectives haven’t made much progress on the case, and she wonders what, exactly, Detective Burns is going to ask when they meet at the hotel later.

I wish I felt like I might have answers for her, but I probably have more questions than she does.

What if the case is never solved?

What if whoever killed Meredith gets away with it?

No. That can’t happen. They need some kind of closure.
They
, as in her family;
they
, as in the blogging community;
they
, as in . . .

Me.

I need closure.

I need to know that Meredith was the victim of a random crime, not stalked and killed because she shared too much online.

I need to know that what happened to her can’t possibly happen to me.

“Are we staying, or going?” Elena asks, interrupting her thoughts.

“It’s up to you guys,” Landry says with a shrug.

About to press her lips to the white plastic lid of her cup, Kay glances up and shrugs. “I don’t care. I’ll stay or go. It’s up to you, Landry. You’re driving.”

Landry isn’t used to being the driver or the decision maker. At home she often defers to Rob’s judgment, or to the kids’.

But today she’s discovered that she kind of enjoys being in charge. “Let’s stay.”

No sooner do the words escape her mouth than she sees the skittish expression on Elena’s face. “Or we can go,” she adds quickly. “I really don’t care.”

“I wouldn’t mind sitting down.” Kay is holding a cup of tea and a blueberry muffin.

“Good. We’ll sit.”

Landry allows Kay to lead the way to the only empty round table, over by the plate-glass window facing the road. They settle into three chairs, sandwiched between a high school girl reading a magazine and listening to music that’s audible from her earbuds and a woman who has her back to the room and is busily thumb-typing on her cell phone.

Watching Kay sip her tea as Elena gulps her coffee like it’s water, Landry can’t help but note their differences again—from each other, and from her. Elena is a little younger and brasher than the women she’s used to, Kay a bit older and more reserved.