The Perfect Stranger (24 page)

She should have considered that before she stopped. Or if she had to stop, she should have jumped back on the highway and gotten out of here with her coffee.

When she saw them coming, it was too late. She knew she was trapped. Leaving now would mean walking right past them. She sat hoping they’d take their coffee to go, but of course they didn’t. And as fate would have it, for the second time today the only vacant spot in the place is right next to her.

It’s almost as though somebody up there is trying to tell her something.

Meredith?

If so, she’d better cut it out, because her nerves were edgy enough before all this.

Then again . . . now that the three of them are settled into the next table, she finds herself almost glad for the encounter. After spending so much time wondering what it would be like if things were different and she actually could have met them in person, it’s almost as if she’s a part of things after all. She’s heard every word they’ve said since they sat down, and almost choked on her own saliva when Landry mentioned her blogger name.

But right now they’re discussing Meredith. More specifically, her murder.

“I still can’t believe anyone who read her blog could have been evil enough to come after someone like her.”

That’s Landry talking. Jaycee finds it easy to distinguish her drawl from Elena’s rapid-fire Boston accent and Kay’s flat midwestern one.

“What do you think the detective is going to ask us when we talk to her?” Kay asks, and Jaycee realizes she wasn’t the only one at the funeral who captured the attention of law enforcement in their midst.

“She probably thinks we might know something. Which we don’t.” Elena pauses, then amends, “At least,
I
don’t.”

“Maybe there’s something we didn’t realize at the time,” Landry tells her.

“I can’t think of a thing.”

“I can’t either. I’m just glad for the opportunity to feel like I’m doing something constructive after feeling helpless about it.”

“Me too,” Elena replies. “And I hope they’re going to do whatever it takes to make sure this guy doesn’t get away with it, whoever he is. Did you see how that detective was looking at everyone leaving the service? Like she thought maybe the killer was right there with us?”

“But it’s been a week since . . .” Kay again, hesitating. “I mean, don’t you think he’s long gone by now? Why would he show up at the funeral today?”

“Maybe it’s not someone online. Maybe it was some local thug, and for all we know, they already have a suspect.” Landry again.

Elena gives a short laugh. “I didn’t see anyone there who looked like a thug, did you?”

“Sometimes thugs don’t look particularly thuggish.”

“True. But even if it was an unthuggish thug—and someone local who knew her—he still could have been reading her blog.”

“I know. I bet that detective has been combing through every word Meredith ever wrote, and everything anyone ever wrote to her.”

“I’ve been doing the same thing,” Kay tells Landry. “I keep looking back over her old posts, trying to see if there’s any clue that she might have run into some kind of trouble, or . . . you know, if she made someone angry.”

“Meredith was pretty outspoken. She made plenty of people angry,” Elena points out. “But angry enough to track her down and hurt her? I don’t think so. I really think it had to be some random person who was just plain crazy.”

“All I know,” Landry says, “is that the world already feels emptier without her in it.”

Jaycee listens to them chatter on, moving back to the topic of what Elena should do about Tony.

“I don’t even want to turn my phone on again,” she says. “I’m afraid I’ll have more hang-up calls from him.”

“Just keep it turned off, then,” Kay advises, but Landry has the opposite advice.

“I think you should deal with it now, or you’ll be dwelling on it all weekend—and so will he. If he’s truly obsessed, he might . . . I don’t know . . .”

“Snap and kill me?” Elena asks, then groans. “I’m so sorry. I forgot, for a second, about Meredith. I was kidding.”

“We know you were,” Landry tells her. “It’s okay.”

“Let me see if he’s called again.”

Jaycee hears a rustling behind her. After a few moments Elena says, “Two more hang-ups just since we’ve been sitting here, and a third call with a message.”

“Listen to it.”

“Okay. You know, I hate myself for wasting all this time and energy on him. And I hate him for making me . . .” Another long pause. “Oh, God. You have to hear this message. I’ll put it on speaker, here, listen.”

Despite the coffeehouse background buzz, the call is clearly audible to Jaycee.

“Babe, it’s Tony. Where the hell are you? Why aren’t you calling me back? I told you I just want to talk to you. Are you ignoring me, or did something happen to you? Call me as soon as you get this. I mean it.”

Everything about the call—the harsh words, the menacing tone—sends chills down Jaycee’s back.

Where the hell are you . . . ?

How many times has she heard it before? Sickened, it’s all she can do to stay seated, back turned to the three of them, pretending to sip from a cup that’s long since been empty.

“Why is he calling you ‘Babe,’ as if he’s your boyfriend or something?” Landry asks.

“Because he’s creepy and crazy and he probably thinks he is. He’s delusional.”

“Delusional?” That’s Kay, worried.

“Definitely. That’s what my friend Sidney is always saying, and I’m starting to think she’s right.”

“Well, I definitely think he sounds like a jerk,” Landry says. “If I were you, I’d call him back and tell him off. Maybe that’s what he needs to hear.”

“Maybe. But I don’t feel like dealing with him. Maybe I’ll just call the cops instead.”

“Seriously?”

“No. I guess I can always block his number from getting through to my phone. There’s a way to do that. I really don’t need this kind of stress in my life. It’s dangerous, like Meredith was always saying, remember?”

“What?”
Landry sounds shocked. “Meredith talked about being stalked by someone crazy and delusional?”

“No! God, no! I meant
stress
!” Elena says. “She blogged a few times about those studies showing that breast cancer patients who have daily stress have much shorter survival times.”

“Oh—I misunderstood.”

“Geez, Landry, a few minutes ago we were talking about Meredith’s murder. Do you really think I wouldn’t have brought it up then if I knew she had a crazy stalker?”

Elena’s tone is sharp, Jaycee notices. She seems to have a quick temper. Or maybe she’s just aggravated by the situation, and who—having overheard that phone message from crazy Tony—can blame her?

Landry—good for her—changes the subject, announcing that it’s getting late. They decide they should get back to the hotel. From the sounds of it, the detective is meeting them there.

Behind Jaycee, chairs scrape. She takes another pretend-sip, distracting herself from panic with the amusing notion that if the cup weren’t empty, she’d have downed a gallon of coffee by now. She focuses on her phone, thumb-scrolling through her in-box as if she’s absolutely absorbed by her e-mail.

Then it happens.

She hears a clatter on the floor, and something skitters under her chair. Glancing down, she sees a cell phone coming to a stop between the pointy toes of her two black pumps.

Elena’s cell phone, judging by which of the three voices utters a curse.

“Sorry about that,” Elena says—to her? Is she talking to her?

Not daring to turn around, she holds her breath.

“Ma’am?”

She’s talking to me! Oh, no!

Jaycee’s mind runs wildly through her options.

She can continue to sit frozen, completely ignoring Elena and forcing her to crawl under the table to retrieve her own phone—which will certainly attract attention not only from the three women behind her, but from everyone around her, increasing the likelihood that they’ll scrutinize her and perhaps recognize her.

Or, she can remind herself—again—that there’s no way Elena or the others would possibly realize she’s Jaycee the blogger, and she can do what any normal person would do in this situation, which is pick up the phone and hand it back to its owner with a polite smile.

That is precisely what she does, facing Elena head-on with a pleasant, “Here you go.”

“Thanks. Sorry about that,” she repeats.

“No problem.”

They nod politely at each other, and then Elena walks away with Landry and Kay.

Heart beating as if she really did drink a gallon of coffee, Jaycee watches them go, feeling as though she’s just had a close call, when really it wasn’t.

To them, she was just a stranger.

Then she sees Landry turn back over her shoulder. She levels a long, searching look at her, frowning, almost as if . . .

She knows!

No, wait—how can she know?

It’s impossible. She can’t recognize her as Jaycee.

She can, however, recognize Jenna Coeur, just as the lady detective did.

And Landry, like the detective, has Meredith’s murder on her mind. What if she starts to wonder how Jenna Coeur could possibly have known Meredith Heywood?

I shouldn’t have come. This was stupid.

Stupid, stupid, stupid . . .

Sweet Dreams

When I first found my way here, I was exhausted. Not just from the physical and emotional burden of illness, but from sheer lack of sleep. I had always been a person who could climb into bed, close my eyes, fall asleep, and not wake up until morning.

Now I spent night after night lying awake, tossing and turning.

Oh, how I wanted to escape. But there was no escape, not really. Sleep—whenever I finally managed to find it—might have brought a few blessed hours’ respite, but then I’d jerk my eyes open, panicked by the vague sense that something terrible had happened, and the realization—Bam!—that it had. It was the exact opposite of waking from a terrible nightmare to the broad daylight relief that it was just a dream. The nightmare greeted me with the dawn and haunted my every waking moment. In the end, that was worse than not sleeping at all.

It was on one of those sleepless nights that I stumbled across a cancer blog for the first time. And on another, I worked up the nerve to make a comment. Not long after that, I remember, I began to chat privately with some of you, and those sleepless nights became a little less lonely, and less scary.

I remember one online exchange I had with Meredith when she wrote, Some morning—not soon, but someday—you’re going to wake up and not have that awful feeling that something is terribly wrong.

Wake up?
I wrote back.
You’re implying I’m actually going to sleep again.

You will,
Meredith told me.
I promise.

She was right.

Eventually, I started sleeping again. Eventually, I started waking up the old way—slowly stirring to consciousness. Eventually, things were back to the way they used to be. Back to normal.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s getting late. I’m going to climb into bed, close my eyes, fall asleep, and not wake up until morning.

—Excerpt from Landry’s blog,
The Breast Cancer Diaries

Chapter 11

Back at the hotel, Landry returns to her room under the pretext of freshening up before Detective Burns arrives.

But the moment she closes the door behind her, she dials Rob’s cell phone. He picks up on the first ring: “How was it?”

“The funeral? It was . . . you know. Hard. Sad. Awful.”

“I’m sorry.”

She changes the subject. “Did you find the insurance cards?”

“Yeah, you were right. They were on the bulletin board. I don’t know how I missed them when I looked.”

She closes her eyes for a second, smiling. Then it’s back to the business at hand: “Listen—I just wanted to run something by you quickly.” She tells him about the conversation with the detective at the funeral home, and that the detective asked to meet them there at the hotel to discuss the case further.

“The first thing to remember,” Rob says, “is that this is routine. An interview, not an interrogation. They’re looking for information.”

“I know. It’s not like I’m a suspect.”

“No. I don’t know about your friends, though.”

“They’re not suspects, either.”

“Did the detective tell you that?”

“No, but—”

“Just remember that they’re
strangers
, Landry. For all we know—”

“Please don’t say it, Rob.”

“I won’t. Just be careful up there, okay? They obviously haven’t made an arrest yet.”

“Right. I’ll be careful.”

“And twenty-four hours from now you’ll be on your way home.”

Home. Where nothing bad can happen to her?

Doesn’t she know better than anyone that staying safely at home doesn’t guarantee that the bad things won’t touch you?

“I should go.”

“Okay. I love you,” Rob tells her. “I know they’re your friends and you want to trust them, but I can’t get past wanting to protect you. You’re the most precious thing in my world.”

She swallows hard, and can’t seem to find her voice.

He’s right to be worried. She’s worried, too. Didn’t she just admit to Elena and Kay that she believes Meredith was killed by someone who read her blog and knew she’d be alone in the house that night?

A lurker, most likely, but . . .

It could have been one of us. That’s what the police are thinking. That’s what Rob is thinking. It could have been someone posing as a blogger, someone we trusted, someone with a screen name . . .

Just because Elena and Kay turned out to be the real deal—and Meredith, too, of course—doesn’t mean the others are. Landry thinks back to all those comments she exchanged with other bloggers; all the private chats and e-mails that let them into her life, into her family’s lives . . .

Not to the extent that Meredith did, and yet . . .

Maybe Elena is right. Maybe it’s time to take a step back from blogging.

“I really wish I could be there with you when you talk to the detective,” Rob tells her.

“Because I need a lawyer present?”

“Just . . . be careful what you say and how you say it.”

“I don’t have anything to hide. You know that. And I want to do whatever I can to help them find Meredith’s killer. We all do.”

“You and the other bloggers? Who are they? Elena and Kay?”

“Right. They’re the only ones who came to Cincinnati.”

“That you know of.”

“Well, I’d know if there were others.”

“How?”

“Because I’m sure they would have mentioned it.”

“Don’t be so sure of anything right now, Landry. Okay? Don’t trust anyone.”

“What about you?” she asks, mostly just teasing. Mostly.

“You can always trust me. I love you.”

“I love you, too, and . . .” She looks at her watch. “I have to go. It’s time to meet the detective.”

It hadn’t occurred to Beck that people—everyone, it seems, with the exception of her own husband—would drift back to the house after the funeral.

Keith is on his way back to Lexington. To be fair, he’d asked her, as they left McGraw’s, if she’d really meant it when she told him he was free to leave.

“Yes, I meant it,” she said, and was surprised to realize that she really did. The marriage might not be over officially—legally, or financially—but emotionally she’s finished. It’s only a matter of time; she knows now that she’ll extract herself as soon as this trauma is behind her.

Mom would have been so upset had she lived to see her daughter’s marriage end in divorce . . .

Or would she? Maybe she’d have been happy to see her find her way out of a bad situation. Maybe she’d have invited her to come live at home while she gets back on her feet . . .

Maybe I can still do that
, Beck found herself thinking for a split second before she remembered that home isn’t home anymore. Not without her mother.

The house that was once filled with love and laughter now represents only sorrow. Beck can’t imagine ever laughing again—here, or anywhere else. Can’t imagine ever loving again, ever being married again or having children . . .

“I’m so sorry,” Keith whispered in her ear before he drove off in the wrong direction as Beck climbed into the black limo with her family.

Sorry. So sorry . . .

Sorry for what?

For leaving? For her loss? For his extramarital indiscretions?

She still doesn’t know what he was apologizing about. She supposes she will, soon enough . . . if she even cares to.

Back at the house, she’d had every intention of going straight to her room to have a good cry, alone at last. Instead she’s been on kitchen duty ever since she walked in the door, trailed by half the neighborhood. People are bringing platters of food, and the doorbell keeps ringing with deliveries: flowers and fruit baskets, trays of pastries, hot meals ordered from local restaurants by well-meaning faraway friends and colleagues . . .

“You just go ahead and let us take care of serving and cleaning up,” one of the neighbor ladies told her when they first arrived.

But every few minutes, it seems, someone wants to know how to find the coffee filters, or whether there are more plastic cups, or where the garbage goes.

Or, if she manages to escape the kitchen and start making her way toward the stairs, someone inevitably waylays her to ask about a framed family photo on the wall, or show her some memento of her mother, or to tell her how sorry they all are . . .

Sorry. So sorry . . .

Everyone is sorry—but no one is sorrier than she is. Exhausted, all she can do is move from one task to another, from one well-meaning visitor to another, longing to be left alone.

“You look worn out,” her former first-grade teacher—an old friend of her mother’s—comments, after informing Beck that the powder room under the stairs is running low on toilet paper.

“It’s been a long day.”

“One of the longest days of the year, unfortunately,” the woman mentions before drifting back to the crowded dining room as Beck heads up the steps to grab a spare roll of toilet paper from the hall bathroom.

Glancing out the window on the landing, she sees that the sun is, indeed, still riding high in the sky. It won’t be setting for at least a few more hours. By then, she can’t imagine having the stamina to climb these stairs again and get ready for bed.

Maybe she should just lie down now for a quick nap. No one will miss her if she’s gone for half an hour.

She slips past the bathroom and the closed door to the master bedroom, unable to imagine ever opening it again.

She just can’t stop picturing her mother here alone at night; an intruder in the house; a violent attack . . .

We need to get rid of this house—the sooner, the better.

In her own room, she takes a moment to swap her high-heeled black pumps for a pair of loafers, not caring what they look like with her dress. Her feet ache. Her
heart
aches.

Oh, Mom . . .

She sinks onto the bedspread she and Mom picked out so long ago in Macy’s—they both fell in love with the splashy pattern.

“The colors remind me of the bright blue sky and yellow sunshine,” Mom said. “It’ll always be a beautiful summer day in here!”

Today doesn’t feel like a beautiful summer day inside or out. Beck massages her forehead with her fingertips and finds herself staring at her laptop on the desk across the room.

Does it hold the key to her mother’s murder? If she could just figure out the password and get into the e-mail account . . .

But what are the odds that she’ll find a clue to the killer’s identity somewhere in the files? Does she actually believe Mom was exchanging e-mails with him in advance? That it was someone Mom knew?

If it was—if it was someone I know, too, like . . . like . . .

She can’t even bring herself to entertain the thought.

Maybe she’s better off never uncovering the truth.

What does it even matter now? Mom is gone. Nothing is going to bring her back. The worst has happened; it’s in the past.

“Beck? Beck! Are you in there?” Teddy’s wife, Sue, is knocking on her bedroom door.

She hurriedly wipes tears from her eyes. “Yes, I’m in here.”

Sue opens the door. Roundly pregnant, with Beck’s sleepy-looking nephew Jordan on her hip, she asks, “Are you okay?”

Then, catching a look at Beck’s face, Sue shakes her head and answers her own question. “Of course you’re not okay. Sorry.”

“No, I’m okay. I am. Well . . .”

“You are but you’re not. No one is. I’m sorry to bother you. The minister’s wife is stuck in the powder room without toilet paper, and I can’t find any under the sink in the hall bathroom, so—”

“Are you serious?”

“No, there were just some cleaning supplies, and—”

“No, I mean about Mrs. Alpert stuck without toilet paper?” Beck finds herself grinning through her tears.

“Totally serious. She was calling through the door for help and Jordan heard her. She said there are no tissues in there or anything, so . . .”

“She can’t wipe her keister,” Jordan reports solemnly.

That does it. Beck bursts out laughing. Sue joins in, and so, after a moment, does Jordan.

Beck laughs until her sides ache—a good kind of ache—then heads back downstairs with Sue and Jordan, the e-mail account forgotten for the time being.

Lying on the bed in her hotel room, head propped against the pillows and laptop open on her lap, Kay tries to focus on the screen. She’d been hoping to catch up on some blogs, but her energy is zapped from the drive, the funeral, the anxiety over meeting Landry and Elena . . .

And now a meeting with the detective investigating Meredith’s murder?

It’s all too much. I can’t handle this. I can’t
.

She’d give anything if she could throw her belongings back into the seldom-used, slightly musty-smelling suitcase she pulled last night from her mother’s attic; if she could just walk out of this hotel and go home and hide, make it all go away.

But she can’t leave Landry and Elena. They’re her friends—her
family
—and they need her, just as Meredith needed her. As long as the three of them stick together, everything will be okay.

A tone from her laptop’s speaker indicates that a new e-mail has arrived in her in-box.

She opens it and finds that it’s from Elena—a note to Jaycee, with both Kay and Landry on the cc list.

I’m here in Cincinnati with Landry and Kay. Meredith’s funeral was moving and very much a tearjerker, as I’m sure you would guess. The rest of us need each other now more than ever. We’ve already made plans to get together again for a girls’ weekend at Landry’s house in Alabama next weekend. Is there any way you can join us? Details to follow. I just wanted you to know that we’re thinking of you and wish you were here with us.

Kay nods with approval, glad Elena thought to include Jaycee and extend the invitation despite wrestling with some pretty serious problems of her own. Remembering what she shared about her stalker—Tony—Kay feels worried all over again, and she knows Landry does as well.

I really don’t need this kind of stress in my life. It’s dangerous . . . breast cancer patients who have daily stress have much shorter survival times . . .

What if something happens to Elena now?

What if, one by one . . .

No.

Nothing is going to happen to anyone else. It can’t.

They’re my friends. My family.

At last, after all these years, she finally knows where—and to whom—she belongs. She only prays that cruel fate won’t rip them from her life as it did Meredith.

“They’re late.” Sitting beside Crystal in the hotel lobby, Frank lifts his wrist and taps his Timex.

“One minute late.”

“Late is late.”

Crystal shrugs, considering the possibilities.

That the bloggers might have lied about where they’re staying doesn’t rank very high on the list. Nor does the prospect that they skipped town.

Either of those scenarios would mean that there’s some kind of conspiracy involved here, and Crystal doesn’t buy that for a second.

Far more likely: they lost track of time, or they dozed off, or they’re reluctant to sit down and discuss their friend’s murder . . .

Perhaps all of the above.

“They’ll be here soon, I’m sure,” she tells him.

He shrugs and continues tapping his foot. Patience is not Frank’s strong suit.

Glad the lobby is almost deserted, Crystal keeps an eye on the grouchy-looking, pockmarked teenage boy parked at the computer kiosk, who is oblivious to their presence, and on the desk clerk, who is not. She’s been casting curious glances their way ever since they arrived and arranged with the on-duty manager to conduct their questioning in a conference room down the hall.

They didn’t mention that it involves a homicide. But maybe the desk clerk has put two and two together. It’s a small town, after all; the guests might have asked her for directions to the funeral home earlier.

Or maybe the desk clerk is just being vigilant, as she should in her position.

Hell, if everyone were a little more vigilant—or nosy, as it were—her own job would be much easier.