Steady . . .
Open the blade.
Slow . . .
Think about where it has to go.
Steady . . .
Think about cause and effect.
Slow . . .
But it’s time. Now. It’s time.
Steady . . .
Raise the knife . . .
Do it.
Do it!
At last . . . it’s done.
“You really believe that Elena killed Tony?” Bruce asks as Landry clutches the phone to her ear. She’s sitting inside her car in the garage, suffocatingly hot with the doors closed and the windows rolled up. But it’s the only place she could think to continue this conversation without possibly being overheard.
She did briefly consider opening the garage door so she can turn on the engine and the air-conditioning without asphyxiating herself—but her guests would hear the door go up and come to investigate.
She even considered driving away but couldn’t bring herself to leave Kay alone here with a murderer.
Elena.
Elena?
One moment the idea seems preposterous to Landry; the next it makes perfect, chilling sense.
“You said yourself that it’s possible Tony was murdered with poison that made his death look like a heart attack,” she reminds Bruce. “Who else could possibly have had such a strong motive? She wanted him out of her life.”
“There could be other people who felt the same way.”
“Other people who just came from the funeral of a friend whose murder is unsolved?”
“It could be a coincidence.”
“It could be, but . . .”
Landry keeps playing and replaying her last conversation with Elena at the airport on Sunday. She said she couldn’t stand the thought of going back home to face him, and the next day he was dead.
Coincidence?
Really?
“I checked her out,” Bruce tells her, “and there’s nothing in her past to suggest that she’s capable of cold-blooded murder.”
Cold-blooded.
Coldhearted.
Jenna Coeur in the airport . . .
What does that even matter if Elena was the one who killed Meredith?
Anyway, Bruce said Jenna didn’t get off the plane. She isn’t here.
Is she really trying to get here?
Was Kay mistaken about seeing her in Atlanta?
Can first grade teacher and party girl Elena really be hiding a sinister self?
Nothing makes sense.
Bruce . . .
How do I even know he’s for real? He was just a stranger on a plane, handing me a business card . . .
He might not be an investigator at all. That could have been a dummy Web site.
Her thoughts are spinning, spinning, spinning . . .
“Does Kay know?” Bruce is asking.
“No.”
“You might want to go tell her what you’re thinking. If you’re right about this, then the two of you need to get out of there before . . .”
Bruce doesn’t finish his sentence.
He doesn’t have to.
Landry disconnects the call, opens the car door and steps out into the garage.
It’s quiet. Deserted . . . or so it seems.
But there are shadowy corners where someone could be concealed, watching her.
Someone . . . even Bruce.
He told her he’s at the airport waiting for Jaycee to get off a plane, but what if he’s making her think he’s her protector when really . . .
The call is coming from inside the house.
The line from an old slasher movie barges into her brain.
Her legs wobble as she starts moving across the floor, expecting someone to jump out at her with every step she takes.
Bruce . . . Elena . . . Jaycee . . . or Jenna . . . whoever the hell killed Meredith.
Heart racing, Elena slips through the back door, crosses the porch where they all ate lunch just a short time ago, and begins running through the yard.
It’s pouring out. Jagged yellow lightning slices the gray-black sky.
Get away, get away . . .
She slips on the wet grass as she runs. She throws her arms in front of her to break the fall and her hands land in the mud at the edge of the garden.
Heart racing, she gets to her feet and starts running again, looking back over her shoulder to make sure no one is coming after her.
Get away, get away . . .
She turns right when she reaches the waterside path, heading north.
There’s no one out here now.
No one behind her. No one to see her stop, at last, to rest for a moment and let the rain wash the mud—and the blood, not her own—from her hands.
Addison’s bedroom door is ajar.
Landry hesitates, wondering if she should push it open and walk right in. Tucker’s closed door is just down the hall; behind it, Elena might be able to hear her if she called out to Kay or knocked.
Then again, the rain is falling hard on the roof, and the thunder might be loud enough to drown out noises from the hall. She waits until the next clap and knocks, calling softly, “Kay? Kay?”
No reply.
She’s probably sleeping. She looked exhausted, poor thing. Exhausted, and sick.
I’ve got to get her out of here.
Under ordinary circumstances Landry wouldn’t dream of walking uninvited into a room occupied by a houseguest. But in this case it’s for Kay’s own good.
She pushes the door open, crosses the threshold . . . and screams.
Kay is lying on the floor in a pool of blood, a knife protruding from her abdomen.
The Los Angeles press conference is airing live on the cable entertainment network.
Sitting in front of the television, waiting for it to start, Crystal is focused on her computer. In the past hour the search engine has exploded with fresh hits in response to the name Jenna Coeur.
In about ten minutes she’s going to be stepping in front of the cameras with Wesley Baumann, the avant-garde movie director.
“This is bound to be the comeback of the decade,” a blond reporter is excitedly telling the television audience. “Maybe even the comeback of the century!”
According to online rumors, Baumann will be announcing that he’s just cast Jenna Coeur in the lead role of his next film.
“The whole world is waiting to get a look at Jenna. She hasn’t been seen in public since she left the courtroom after being acquitted for the murder of the illegitimate teenage daughter she’d given up for adoption when she was just a teen herself.”
The scene cuts from the milling crowd of press and lineup of microphones to a montage of flashback photos and film clips: scenes from Jenna Coeur’s films, the stunning actress on the red carpet and smiling on the arms of A-list actors, then an ambulance pulling away from her Hollywood Hills mansion, the mansion cordoned off by yellow crime scene tape, Jenna Coeur being escorted into and out of the courthouse amid a hail of flashbulbs, driving away in a black limousine, never to be seen again until . . .
Well, not yet. But according to the press, she landed at LAX about an hour ago and is at this moment behind the scenes with Wesley Baumann, getting ready to step into the spotlight again at long last.
Obviously, Kay Collier was wrong about having spotted her in Atlanta.
Maybe she was wrong, too, about having seen her at Meredith’s funeral.
Maybe that was someone else.
Someone who bolted the moment she saw me looking at her?
And what about Jaycee the blogger?
Frustrated, Crystal gets up to pace again, keeping an eye on the television screen.
Maybe Jaycee’s someone else
, too. Some ordinary blogger trying to protect her anonymity on the Internet.
Someone who had absolutely nothing to do with Meredith Heywood’s fate at the hands of someone who either loved her—or hated her—enough to kill her.
Which—and who—was it?
“Nine-one-one, what is your—”
“My friend! She’s been stabbed! Please—”
“All right, ma’am, calm down. You say your friend has been stabbed?”
“Yes! Oh, Kay . . . No . . .”
“Is your friend breathing?”
“I think so . . .” Landry reaches out and touches Kay’s neck, feeling for a pulse below her ear. It’s there, but faint.
“Ma’am—”
“She’s breathing,” she tells the operator. “Hurry. Please hurry.”
“They’ve already been dispatched, ma’am. Who stabbed your friend?”
“I don’t know,” she says helplessly, staring down at the tortoiseshell knife handle protruding from Kay’s abdomen. “I honestly don’t.”
As the flamboyant movie director Wesley Baumann, clad in what appears to be a brocade smoking jacket and an ascot, steps up to the televised podium, Crystal shakes her head. Crazy Hollywood people. Can’t the guy just wear a regular old suit and tie like a normal businessman?
“Thank you very much for being here, and good afternoon,” Baumann says to the array of microphones and cameras in an affected accent that’s far closer to Britain than the Bronx, where he was born. “It gives me great pleasure to announce my newest project, which has been many years in the making. Part of the reason for this is that I could envision only one actress in the lead role—but first, I had to track her down, and then, I had to convince her. Neither proved to be an easy task.”
Dramatic pause.
Rolling her eyes, Crystal half expects him to thrust a lit pipe between his lips.
He refrains, going on to talk a bit about the film, and it turns out to be a biopic about the life of Ingrid Bergman.
Okay, now it makes more sense. Jenna Coeur is a dead ringer for the late Hollywood legend. Casting someone so notorious in such a high profile project is bound to be controversial: added appeal for an unconventional, media-courting director like Baumann.
“The script calls for a versatile actress with the range to depict Bergman from her early years in Stockholm through Hollywood’s golden era to middle age and her valiant seven-year battle with breast cancer.”
Those two words hit Crystal like a punch in the gut.
Coincidence? Or . . .
“And now,” Baumann continues, with a sweeping gesture as he looks stage left, “I’d like to introduce the extraordinarily versatile, extraordinarily lovely . . . Miss Jenna Coeur.”
As she steps up to the podium, her head is bowed. Her shoulders rise with one deep breath, as if to steel her nerves, and then she looks up, directly into the cameras.
It’s her.
Not just Jenna Coeur, but her—the woman she saw at Meredith’s funeral.
“Hang on, Kay . . . just hang on . . . help is coming . . .”
Kay can’t see Landry and she can’t answer her but she hears her voice loud and clear.
The hearing is the last sense to go, she recalls the hospice nurse saying years ago, when Mother lay dying. Go ahead and talk to her. She’ll hear you.
Perhaps. But Mother was listening to someone else.
You came back for me, Paul! I knew you would. . . . yes, I’m ready. I’m ready. Let’s go.
That was when Kay realized that death would not be the dark, lonely moment she’d feared ever since that long-ago day her doctor’s receptionist, Janine, had called to tell her the test results were back.
Life—it was life that had been dark and lonely.
Not death.
When you die, there’s light—bright, beautiful light. Mother talked about that. And there are people there, waiting; people you love, and they’ll never leave you. You’ll never have to say good-bye again.
Kay’s parents found each other again on the other side, this time forever, and Meredith . . .
She knows Meredith’s beloved mother had to be waiting for her when she crossed over.
And now it’s my turn, and Meredith is already there.
She’ll be waiting for me.
She’ll be coming to find me, any second now . . .
“And you’re sure your husband wouldn’t have picked this up somewhere else—” The homicide detective studies the plastic-wrapped guitar pick. “—maybe not from the sidewalk that morning, but the day before? Maybe he bought it, or someone gave it to him, or—”
“No.” Sheri shakes her head firmly. “That’s impossible.”
“Impossible is a strong word, Mrs.—”
“But it is impossible. Trust me.” She’d already told him about Roger’s germaphobia; how he would never in a million years pick up a filthy guitar pick from the sidewalk.
Now she explains, “He would have taken those jeans, clean, out of his drawer that morning. He never wore something two days in a row. That’s just how he was. Everything went into the hamper at night when he took it off.”
Sitting back in his chair, the detective—in his quintessential rumpled shirt—nods thoughtfully.
“I do all the laundry,” she goes on, “and I always check the pockets, so it wasn’t there when I washed the jeans. It got there that morning. Someone else put it there. Not Richard.”
“Okay.” The detective leans forward, looking again at the guitar pick. “I don’t know what this means, but for starters, we’re going to look for prints, and I’m going to see if I can use it to link any other recent murders here in Indianapolis.”
Stumbling along the waterfront path as it winds past the outbuildings of the Grand Hotel property, Elena spots a long wooden fishing pier ahead. Two men are there despite the thunderstorm, standing side by side along the railing holding bamboo rods above the water.
Elena stops running, clutching her side, panting hard.
“Help!” she calls. “Please, please . . . someone is trying to kill me . . .”
They don’t turn their heads toward her, can’t hear her voice above the hard summer rain.
She looks over her shoulder, still expecting to see . . .
Landry, Jenna . . . whoever slaughtered Kay in the picture-perfect teenage girl’s bedroom decorated in seaside colors.
She tries to catch her breath, shouts again, “Help! My friend . . .”
My friend is dead.
I went to tell her that I thought we should get out of that house before something terrible happened, and . . .
And it already had.
I found her, and . . .
And I panicked, and . . .
And I didn’t stop to help; I didn’t even stop to grab my cell phone to call for help.
I just ran. Ran away, ran for my life.
Again she looks over her shoulder.
No one is chasing her.
But I know what I saw. I had her blood on my hands. Dear God . . .
Kay. Poor Kay.
Blinded by the glare of flashbulbs, Jenna is transported back to that day at the courthouse, the day the verdict was read.
“We, the jury, find the defendant not guilty . . .”
Not guilty.
Stunned, she turned to her legal team, certain she must have heard wrong. She hadn’t. Her attorneys had never let on to her that they anticipated any other outcome, but relief was evident in their faces and posture. As for her . . .
Not guilty?
She clearly remembers what happened that night at her mansion in the Hollywood Hills.
Olivia, the daughter she’d given up for adoption, had found her way back into her life—
; Just as Steven once had, about seven, maybe eight years after she left Minnesota and transformed herself into Hollywood royalty. Of course, she saw him for what he really was, and had been all along: a dirt bag nobody. The irony: he didn’t even want her back. He wanted money. He’d gotten himself into trouble. Loan sharks, drug dealers . . . something like that.
She didn’t give it to him.
Later, Jenna heard, he’d disappeared.
She didn’t care.
Olivia did.
Olivia had maneuvered her way into her life as a personal assistant, never letting on who she really was.
It wasn’t until later—when Olivia was dead and she was sitting in a jail cell—that Jenna uncovered the whole sad story about what had happened to her daughter back in Minnesota. Olivia had been adopted as an infant by parents who abused her, then bounced from foster home to foster home, fantasizing about her birth parents coming to the rescue. They never did.
She eventually found Steven, not long after Jenna refused to bail him out of trouble. He blamed her for that. And when her newfound father figure vanished, Olivia, too—neglected, mentally ill, delusional Olivia—blamed her. Fantasy festered.
One night, she snapped.
Crept into Jenna’s bedroom with a butcher knife.
It was my life, or hers. I did what I had to do . . . Or did I?
Was there a part of her that knew all along who Olivia really was, and what was coming, and did nothing to deter it? A part of her—a spurned, furious part of her—that wanted to punish Olivia for the sins of her father?
No one will ever know the whole truth.
No one but me. And I’ll never tell.
It doesn’t matter now anyway.
Wesley Baumann touches Jenna’s hand, resting on the podium.
She looks up at him.
He gives a little nod.
She can hear Cory’s voice in her head. You can do this.
Okay.
Thanks to him—thanks to Wesley—the nightmare is over. Jenna Coeur is coming back at last.
“Thank you.” Her voice seems to echo in hundreds, thousands, of microphones. Flashbulbs are still exploding before her eyes. The room is silent, waiting. Someone coughs.
You can do this.
“Seven years ago last week marked the beginning of a nightmare I never thought would end. What happened that night is a very long and complicated story. Maybe someday I’ll decide to tell it. But right now the only story I’m interested in telling is Ingrid Bergman’s. I’ve been preparing for this role for eighteen months, learning everything I could about this fascinating woman . . . this courageous woman. About the way she lived . . . the way she died.”
The Perfect Stranger Page 33