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.