The Perfect Stranger (29 page)

For now . . .

Maybe she shouldn’t tell this total stranger about it. Even if he is a detective. Even if she did Google his name last night, just to see what came up.

Retired cop, just like he said.

Private investigator and personal security, just like he said. He even has a Web site that lists his credentials, along with his specialties: Missing Persons, Infidelity, Surveillance, Background Checks, Criminal Investigation . . .

Okay. He’s certainly qualified. But it’s not like she’s planning to hire him.

Am I?

Maybe I am.

To do what, exactly, though?

Solve the case?

It’s not as if there isn’t an entire homicide squad working it. But their main concern is solving the murder, and her concern is . . .

Well, she does want the murder solved, of course. But it’s safe to assume that her own personal safety—and thus, that of her family—is probably more consequential to her than it is to Detective Burns.

Plus, she’s seen enough police procedural dramas and read enough thrillers—fiction and non—to know that private investigators don’t have to deal with the tremendous amount of red tape and bureaucracy police detectives face.

Bruce might be able to find out more information about Jenna Coeur and Jaycee; whether there’s a connection between them—and between Jenna and Meredith.

Landry’s bag, rolling around behind her, gets caught on a chair leg. It thumps, and Bruce glances up.

He starts to look down again, then double-takes and recognition dawns. “Writer mom,” he says, pointing a finger at her. “Landry, right?”

“That’s right. How was your family weekend? Are you on the next flight, too?”

“I am. You’re early.”

“So are you.”

“That,” he says, “should be your first clue to just how much I enjoyed my family visit.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It was to be expected. Hope your weekend was better.”

“I was at a funeral, so . . .”

“I’m so sorry. I forgot. Your friend.” He shakes his head. “That must have been rough.”

She nods and tells him, briefly, about the funeral, but that there were other complications.

He raises a dark eyebrow. “What kind of complications?”

Here goes
, she thinks, and gestures at the empty seat beside him. “Do you mind if I . . . ?”

“Not at all.” He tucks his newspaper into the bag at his feet. “Sit down.”

“I just want to ask you a couple of questions. Maybe you can help. You said you’re a detective . . . ”

“That’s right.”

“My friend—the one whose funeral this was—she was murdered.”

“I’m sorry. What happened?”

She explains, trying to make the tale as uncomplicated as possible and realizing there’s no way to boil it down to a simple story. But he listens intently, nodding, leaning closer as the seats around them begin to fill up. She keeps her voice down, particularly when she utters the name anyone would recognize.

“Jenna Coeur?” Bruce echoes, frowning. “The actress? The one who—”

“Right.”

“What was she doing there?”

“Nobody seems to know.” She takes a deep breath. “I was hoping you might be able to find out.”

Chin in hand, he simply waits for her to continue.

She tells him the rest—about the possible connection to Jaycee, about Elena having invited her to the reunion next weekend.

“I’m afraid that I might have inadvertently put my family at risk.”

“You can always just cancel this reunion until some other time.”

“But they’ve got plane tickets, and . . . look, I love the two women I met this weekend. There are very few people in this world I can talk to face-to-face about . . . what I’ve been through, with cancer. And now, about Meredith. We’re all facing the same loss. We’re all in the same boat. I really want to see them again. But . . .” She takes a deep breath. “I want to hire you. I’d just feel better if you could check out Elena and Kay and confirm that there are no surprises in their backgrounds. They’re going to be staying under my roof, with my children in the house. And if you could tell me more about Jaycee, and maybe track down Jenna Coeur in the process—that would be even better.”

“Is that it? Find Jenna Coeur? You don’t want me to, I don’t know, maybe find some long lost relatives while I’m at it? Or, I don’t know, find Jimmy Hoffa and Amelia Earhart and maybe Elvis?”

She can’t help but smile. “No, that’ll do. For now.”

He pulls out a notebook and a pen. “I’ll do what I can. Tell me everything you know.”

She nods, feeling relieved. “It might be better if you took out your laptop. I can show you.”

Meredith was supposed to be the first, the last, the only.

Then came that stranger—Roger Lorton, his name turned out to be. The man who popped up in the wrong place at the wrong time, asking for a light.

They wrote about his murder in the newspaper. Said he was mugged, apparently, while out walking his dog.

No one will ever connect that to Meredith’s death . . . or to me.

And this next one . . .

No one is going to connect it, either, because they’re not going to be looking for a murderer at all.

No one will ever suspect it didn’t just happen.

It’s how it should have been, with Meredith.

If only she hadn’t been so afraid of needles.

But I respected that; I had to spare her that final ordeal. I tried to make her death as painless—and as quick—as I possibly could.

Maybe it was the wrong choice. There’s no way of knowing.

You can’t second-guess the past; you can only keep moving ahead.

The same thing will happen with this next target.

It’s a simple process of elimination; a step that might be unpleasant to anticipate and carry out, but is absolutely necessary for the greater good.

The thing that really infuriates Tony Kerwin is that all along he was just trying to do Elena a favor—make that
favors
—and how did she turn around and treat him?

Yeah. Like crap.

As he scrubs himself in the shower after his early morning gym workout, he runs through the mental list of everything he’s done for her.

She owes him, man. Owes him big-time.

Driving her home on Friday night when she was skunk-drunk—favor number one.

Seeing her safely inside—favor number two.

Granted, maybe he shouldn’t have moved in for a kiss, but he just couldn’t help himself. The chick is hot. He’s been thinking about her ever since he took her out last fall, trying to figure out a way to get her interested in him again. Playing hard to get didn’t do the trick, but he was hoping a good hard kiss might.

It did, which led to her bedroom—and favor number three, he thinks with a smirk.

And then favor number four—not commenting after he found the prosthesis in her bra and the angry scar where her breasts should have been. Who knew she was hiding such a deep, dark secret?

“Cancer?” he’d asked when he found it.

Either she pretended not to hear him or she really didn’t. She was pretty wasted.

He dropped the subject—for the moment, anyway—and got back down to business—favor number five.

That was followed, the next morning, by favor number six—driving her to the airport up in Boston, and by offering favor number seven—picking her up from the airport last night.

First she flatly—and rudely—refused him, then she avoided his calls all day Saturday. To top things off, by Sunday she had apparently blocked his number on her phone, because every time he tried to call her, he got a recording: “The number you are trying to reach has calling restrictions that have prevented the completion of this call.”

It took him a few calls to realize what she’d done, and every time he heard the message—which gave way to an immediate dial tone—he was increasingly infuriated. Not just with her, but with himself. He’d gone out of his way, and for what?

Ungrateful bitch.

Although—he does feel a little better now that he at least knows why she made up that story about having a boyfriend last fall, after he took her out on their one and only date—unless you count Friday night’s hookup.

He doesn’t.

He’s an old-fashioned romantic. He can’t help it. He wants to wine and dine her—well, he
wanted
to. Not anymore. Not after the way she treated him.

And here he’d been willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, even after she lied to him back in the beginning.

He’d known all along that she wasn’t really seeing someone else. He’d followed her around long enough to know that she was home alone most nights, or out with her friend Sidney.

He’d actually thought she made up having a boyfriend because she was trying to get him to stop asking her out. Now he knows it was obviously because she’d been ill with breast cancer. She probably thought he’d be turned off by that; by her scars.

I wouldn’t have been. I would have made her feel beautiful. She didn’t give me a chance.

Damn her, anyway.

Now it’s Monday morning. He has to go to work and see her there.

Is he looking forward to that?

Hell, no. Good thing this is the last week of school.

He steps out of the shower, rigorously towel dries himself, throws on a pair of shorts, and heads for the kitchen. He’ll get dressed for work later. Plenty of time for breakfast in front of the TV, where he’ll catch up on the latest Red Sox trade.

Standing at the counter, he peels a couple of bananas and tosses them into the blender for his daily smoothie. Then he adds four raw eggs. Plenty of protein—that’s what you need to start the day.

Too bad Elena chose to keep her breast cancer a secret from him. If he had known, he could have been giving her healthy tips like that. He could have had her on a solid fitness regimen and—

Feeling a rush of movement behind him, he starts to turn around, only to feel a piercing jab, like a bee sting, in his neck.

What the hell?

By the time the gloved hand pulls the syringe out of his body and tucks a tortoiseshell comb into the back pocket of his shorts, Tony Kerwin is lying on the floor dying an agonizing death.

Part III

Saturday, June 15

The Day That Changed My Life Forever

I was thirty years old when I got my diagnosis. I had to go see my doctor for test results while I was on my lunch hour at school—his office was right around the corner. I remember wishing it were a hell of a lot farther than that, because I had about a minute to transition from “You have the big C” to “the letter of the day is C.”

It was. Can you freaking believe it? The letter of the day was a C.

That’s just the way it worked out.

And the whole time I was standing in front of my first-graders that afternoon teaching them that C is for Cat and Car and Cup, I was thinking that C is also for Cancer and also for a whole lot of Curse words that I wanted to scream.

—Excerpt from Elena’s blog,
The Boobless Wonder

Chapter 13

Bright sunshine glints on the tranquil waters of Mobile Bay, beaming hot on Landry’s bare arms as she cuts roses in her garden. Saturday morning sounds fill the air: the pleasant buzz of hedge clippers, lawn mowers, motorboats; the neighbor kids; laughter as they romp in the yard; the occasional barking of dogs being walked along the water.

Filling a second large plastic bucket with fragrant pink blooms, Landry needs enough flowers not just for the usual vases in the living and dining room, but also for the kids’ rooms where her guests will be staying. Addison can sleep in the master bedroom with her, Tucker on the couch downstairs. They weren’t thrilled about the prospect of giving up their rooms, but they’ll live.

Right now they’re at work. Landry will be leaving for the airport—again—in forty-five minutes.

The first outing was at 5:00
A.M.
, when she dropped off Rob and his golf clubs for his early flight to North Carolina.

Even after he got out of the car and was hugging her good-bye, he was talking about canceling the trip, worried about leaving her.

“We’ll be fine,” she kept saying. “I’ll have plenty of company all weekend.”

“I know. I’d just feel better if—”

“If they weren’t ‘strangers’?”

“I didn’t say it.”

“You didn’t have to. Look, you’ve spent every Father’s Day with your dad your entire life. He’s getting up there in years. You never know how much longer you’ll have with him.”

With anyone.

“I know,” Rob said. “I keep thinking of that. I want to go—I need to go, but—”

“You’re going.
Get it-got-it-good.
”

He laughed. “Bossy.”

“So are you. I’ll see you Monday. Go.”

He went.

And her friends are on their way.

Bruce Mangione delved into both Kay and Elena’s backgrounds and is ninety-nine-point-nine percent certain that they are who they claim to be. Not a threat to her family’s safety.

“Ninety-nine-point-nine?” Landry echoed when he reported that verdict a few days ago. “Not a hundred percent certain?”

“Nothing in this world,” he told her, “is a hundred percent certain. Anyone who tells you that it is full of—”

“Okay,” she said. “It’s okay. I never was worried about the two of them anyway. It’s Jaycee who scares me.”

“But she isn’t coming this weekend, right?”

“No. She never even responded to Elena’s invitation.”

She took the folder Bruce handed her, filled with documentation showing that Elena and Kay are just Elena and Kay, and she handed him a check.

If she opts not to tell Rob about it, he’ll never notice it’s missing. She’s the one who handles all the finances. Ironic, because he’s the one who makes all the money.

But she will tell Rob. Just . . . not yet. Not until this is all behind them.

She may never tell her friends, though—Kay and Elena—that she hired a private investigator to check out their backgrounds along with Jaycee’s. Neither of them has children. They don’t know what it’s like to imagine someone under your roof creeping around the house in the wee hours, capable of . . .

God only knows what.

Jenna Coeur’s daughter Olivia was Addison’s age when Jenna presumably stabbed her to death, in her bed, in the middle of the night.

Jenna is still out there somewhere.

Bruce is still looking for her; looking, too, for solid evidence that Jenna Coeur and Jaycee the blogger are the same person.

The fact that Jaycee has completely dropped out of sight since last week would seem to back that theory. She has yet to resurface in the blogosphere—though as Landry told Bruce, that’s not necessarily unusual. She’s never been as vocal, or as regular, a presence as most of the others.

Still, you’d think she’d want to at least respond to Elena’s update about Meredith’s funeral . . .

Unless she was there herself.

Every time she allows her thoughts to go there, Landry is tempted to cancel the weekend after all. But she won’t let herself do that. The three of them need to be together this weekend—in person. Now, more than ever.

For Elena, the week held yet another unexpected loss.

On Tuesday night she called Landry to report that Tony Kerwin, the guy who had been harassing her last weekend, had dropped dead of a massive heart attack.

“A heart attack? How old was he? I thought he was your age.” Landry’s father died the same way, but he was in his late seventies, overweight, and had been battling heart disease for years, thanks to a fondness for anything deep-fried and smothered in southern gravy.

“Tony
was
my age,” Elena told her. “It was one of those fluke things. He never showed up for work on Monday—which I’ll admit made me very happy because I was dreading seeing him, and of course I had no idea anything was wrong. But then today when he didn’t come in and didn’t call in, I guess someone reported it and the police got the landlord to let them into his apartment. They found him dead on the kitchen floor.”

“Oh my God, Elena, I’m so sorry. You must be . . .”

Sad? Guilty? Relieved?

“I don’t know how I feel,” Elena admitted. “Right now I can’t seem to get past the irony that I couldn’t stand the guy, and he got to take the easy way out.”

“Out of the problems you were having with him?” Landry was incredulous.

“That too, but I meant he took the easy way out of life in general.”

“He didn’t exactly
choose
to take it, Elena.”

“No, I know, but still . . . he didn’t have to suffer. One minute he was alive, the next—bam. Never even knew what hit him. Easy way out,” she repeated yet again.

Uttered by anyone else, under any other circumstances, the candid comment might have seemed inappropriate. And maybe it was, in a sense. But Landry understood exactly where Elena was coming from.

In the grand scheme of things—particularly in their cancer-riddled, murder-tainted corner of the world—dropping dead of a massive heart attack, while tragic, might be seen as a blessing. There are worse ways to go. Two years ago the doctors assured Landry and her mother that Daddy never suffered a moment’s pain, most likely death was instantaneous.

“It’s the way he’d have wanted it.” Mom literally wept on Landry’s shoulder, tears of grief and of gratitude. “He never could have endured knowing that he’d have to leave us. He wouldn’t have wanted to know that the last time we saw each other was good-bye forever.”

No. That would have been torturous for him.

“Are you
sure
it was a heart attack?” Landry asked Elena—not doubting it, yet not quite able to grasp that something like that could strike someone so young.

“Well, I’m no coroner, but that’s what I heard—that it was natural causes. Crazy at his age but he was a fitness freak, so who knows? He probably worked out too hard that morning, or maybe he had an undiagnosed heart condition or something.”

Landry suggested that they postpone the weekend get-together in light of Tony’s death, but Elena wouldn’t hear of it.

“No way. No reason to do that. It’s not like he and I were— Look, you know how I felt about him. I couldn’t stand the guy. Do I feel bad about the way I talked about him? Kind of, but it’s not like he didn’t deserve it.”

Again, she had a point. Still, it seemed a little coldhearted . . .

No. Coldhearted—that’s Jenna Coeur.

Not Elena.

Elena was tormented by Tony; she considered him a stalker, and maybe that wasn’t far off the mark. Landry herself had heard his obnoxious telephone message.

It’s tragic whenever someone dies before his—or her—time, but that doesn’t erase earthly transgressions or inspire instant forgiveness in those who were wronged by the dearly departed.

“I need this now more than ever,” Elena went on, chattering a mile a minute as always, “and I know Kay does, too. We’ve already got plane tickets—which are nonrefundable, by the way. There’s no reason to cancel. The wake is on Thursday. I’ll go pay my respects to Tony, teach my last class on Friday, and fly down there on Saturday morning.”

So it was settled.

And right now, Landry thought, she only wants—
needs
—to reconnect with the only people in the world who understand what she’s going through.

As long as Meredith’s murderer doesn’t pop up as a surprise guest, everything will be fine.

Which, she’s convinced herself—mostly—would be all but impossible.

Then again . . .

Anyone could probably find out where I live, if they really wanted to.

Point Clear is a small town populated by friendly southerners. In order to find Landry, an outsider would only have to mention her first name to anyone here, or even up the road in Fairhope. The well-meaning locals would direct her right to the Wells doorstep, where . . .

Well, what would he—or perhaps more likely
she
—do?

Ring the bell? Ask to come in?

Try to break in? The house has a sophisticated alarm system. There’s no way she’d get past it. If she tried, the police would be summoned and be there in a flash.

Or Bruce. She could call him. He has a pistol permit, as he reminded her when she hired him.

“If you need me,” he said, “I can come this weekend.”

Yeah, it would be fun to explain to her houseguests—and her kids—why the strange man with the gun is lurking around the house.

Everything is going to be fine, just like she assured Rob when she left him at the airport.

And now it’s time to turn around and go back to pick up the others. Elena and Kay are connecting from Boston and Indianapolis on the same flight from Atlanta.

Landry puts the clippers into the back pocket of her shorts, picks up the two buckets of roses, and heads inside. She has a little over half an hour to arrange the flowers in vases and finish making the house—and herself—presentable for her guests.

Elena is sitting in a middle seat toward the back of the plane when she sees Kay board at last.

Good. She had expected Kay to miss the connection. The inbound flight from Indianapolis to Atlanta was late, and Kay is cutting it close. The flight attendant closes the door right behind her.

Elena watches her walk down the aisle, looking nervous. Kay keeps glancing over her shoulder, as if someone is going to chase her down and order her off the plane or something.

It’s probably because she’s not used to flying. She’d confessed earlier that she’s only been on planes a couple of times in her life, and not in many years.

Elena tried to prepare her, sending her an e-mail with instructions about how to get through airport security without incident: wear shoes that are easy to take off, have nothing in her pockets, make sure her laptop went through the scanners in its own bin, no liquids in her carry-on but instead placed inside a quart-sized clear plastic bag in containers that are three ounces or less . . .

There are so many rules now,
Kay wrote back anxiously.

Don’t worry. You’ll be fine.

If only they could sit together, Elena thought, but there were only single seats left by the time they booked their tickets.

Too bad Kay didn’t get into Atlanta soon enough to join her at the airport bar. After a couple of Bloody Marys, she’d be feeling no pain.

“Kay!” Elena calls as she walks right past without spotting her. “Kay!”

The man next to her, on the aisle, rattles his open newspaper and makes a grouchy sound. Elena ignores him.

Kay stops, glances back, spots her and looks relieved. “Elena! Hi.”

“I thought you might miss the flight.”

“So did I.” Again, she looks over her shoulder.

“Don’t worry,” Elena tells her. “You made it. They’re not going to kick you off now.”

“No, I know, it’s just . . .”

“Your luggage!” she exclaims, realizing Kay has only a purse over her shoulder. “You didn’t do carry-on like I told you?”

“I thought it would be easier to check it.”

No doubt because she made Kay fret about all the security procedures.

“It’s not a good idea to check bags when you have a connection,” she says. “It’s really tight because you were late—I bet your bag didn’t make it on.”

Kay looks even more distressed.

Elena backpedals: “Don’t worry. I’m sure they’ll get it on the next flight. No big deal. You need to relax. You look like you’re going to keel over again. Your luggage will be—”

“No, it’s not that. I just thought I saw . . . never mind.”

“What?”

The man beside Elena clears his throat and turns a page of his newspaper.

Yeah, yeah. I get it. We’re pissing you off, sir. I don’t really care.

“What did you think you saw?” Elena persists.

“Ma’am, please take your seat so that we can make an on time departure!” the flight attendant calls from up front.

In response, Kay moves toward the only open seat on the plane: a middle seat against the back wall of the passenger’s cabin, across from the bathroom. Elena is well aware that the passengers in her own row—either the grouchy man on the aisle or the morbidly obese woman by the window—will not make a last minute switch and sit in Kay’s seat instead, so that she can sit up here. And chances are, the people sharing Kay’s row would prefer their window and aisle seats to a middle seat a few rows ahead. Particularly with an open newspaper taking up a good portion of Elena’s seat on one side, and the oversized woman’s flesh spilling into it on the other.

Unable to wait until they land for Kay to explain, Elena says to her retreating back, “What did you think you saw?”

Kay turns just briefly, allowing Elena to connect with the disturbed look in her eyes. “You know.
Her.
In the airport. Just now.”

“Her . . . who?”

“J . . . C,” is the chilling reply, before Kay hurries back to take her seat.

Hollywood, Crystal Burns has come to realize, is more efficient at keeping secrets than the FBI and CIA combined.

All week, she and Frank have been trying to track down Jenna Coeur; all week, they’ve been coming up with dead ends.