“We talked a lot, privately, about stuff like that. She said she’d always dreamed of writing a book, and she recently told me she’d been toying with the idea of compiling some of her blogs into a collection and trying to get it published.”
“You talked on the phone?”
“No, usually e-mail.”
“Is that how you all communicate privately?”
“That, or instant-messaging.”
“No phone.”
“Well, I can’t speak for the others—maybe some of them call each other—but we don’t. At least, we didn’t, until this week, after Meredith . . .”
Crystal nods. “And by ‘we,’ you mean . . .”
“The bloggers I’m closest to. There’s a little group of us—Meredith was a part of it.”
“And the other two women who came with you to the funeral?”
“Elena and Kay—yes, them, too.”
“Who else?”
“The others aren’t here. I’ve never met them. And one is—Nellie passed away.”
Crystal raises an eyebrow. Another one? “When? What happened?”
“Oh, it wasn’t . . . she wasn’t . . . killed. It was cancer.”
Right. Of course it was. Crystal even vaguely remembers reading about the death in past entries on several of the blogs, including Meredith’s.
But for a moment there her mind jumped to the possibility of an opportunistic serial killer preying on this vulnerable group of women, perhaps even posing as one of them . . .
Again she thinks of Jenna Coeur.
But she wasn’t a serial killer, she reminds herself. She just killed one other person . . .
Just?
Crystal wants to ask Landry if Meredith ever mentioned her, but she’s getting ahead of herself. First things first.
“So there was . . . Nellie, did you say?”
Landry nods. “She was from England. Whoa Nellie was her screen name.”
“Hang on a second.” Crystal turns to the laptop, searches, and finds herself looking at Whoa Nellie’s blog. The photo shows a thin middle-aged woman sporting a crew cut—no postchemo head scarves for Whoa Nellie—and the top entry was written by her husband, reporting her death and linking to her obituary.
Crystal clicks it, reads it silently, then turns back to Landry.
“Okay. So there’s Nellie, Meredith,” she counts off on her fingers, “and then there’s you, and Elena, and Kay . . . Who are the others in your clique?” The word slips out, and Landry reacts with a wrinkled nose.
“Clique? We’re not a clique. That makes it sound like we’re being exclusive.”
“And you’re not?”
“No. We’re just a group of women who gravitated together, like any other friends, except . . .”
Except they all have cancer, and most of them have never met.
Crystal nods. She gets it. “So are there any others in the group, besides the five of you?”
“Just one more.”
Pen poised, Crystal asks, “Who is it?”
“Jaycee. She writes PC BC. She lives in New York.”
“Is that with a G or a J?” Crystal asks, once again trying to translate the drawl.
“With a J. You spell it J-A-Y-C-E-E.”
Crystal begins to write it down. Midway, her pen goes still.
Jaycee.
PC . . . BC . . .
J C
Jenna Coeur.
It was probably random; an accident.
But for some reason, Sheri Lorton can’t seem to let it go.
The guitar pick.
Why would Roger have had one in his pocket? He doesn’t—didn’t—play.
He’s the last person in the world anyone would ever imagine picking up a guitar.
He’s not—he wasn’t—into music at all. He wouldn’t know Jimi Hendrix from Jimmy Page from Jimmy Buffet. Hell, he wouldn’t know any of them from Jimmy Fallon. He didn’t watch television either.
A dedicated academic, all he really cared about was his work—specifically, higher math—and his family. Not in that order.
At first she had been convinced it had gotten mixed in with his belongings by accident.
But the more she thought about it, the less likely it seemed. The bag was sealed, and inventoried, and the guitar pick was listed on the contents log.
She’s considered—and dismissed—the likelihood that Roger might have found it on the sidewalk and picked it up. He’s a germaphobe; he never left home without his hand sanitizer. He scolded her whenever she stumbled across and reached for a faceup penny in a public place.
“But it’s good luck,” she’d tell him, putting it into her pocket.
“Not if you contract a disgusting disease from it.”
“I’ll take my chances. And since you worry about disgusting diseases, you might want to quit smoking.”
But of course, he wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Not even for her.
“It’s my one vice, Sheri.”
“It can kill you. Don’t you want to stick around and grow old with me?”
“I’ll grow old with you. Don’t worry.”
Wandering around the empty house they’d shared, remembering that conversation—rather, those conversations, because they’d had it more than once—she wipes tears from her eyes.
Mingling with her intense grief is a growing sense of uneasiness about the damned guitar pick.
What if it’s a clue?
What if the killer accidentally dropped it . . .
Into Roger’s pocket?
Not very likely, but not impossible.
“Maybe I should tell the police,” she speculates aloud.
Maggie, ever on her heels, seems to agree with a jangling of dog tags. Sheri reaches down to pet the puppy’s head.
“I wish you could talk, Mags. I wish you could tell me who did this to him.”
Maggie wags her tail, but she, too, seems wistful.
Crying again, Sheri goes into the bathroom for tissues. Then Maggie is at the door, needing to be let out into the yard. Then the phone rings: one of Roger’s colleagues checking in to see how she is.
By the time she hangs up, lets the puppy back into the house, and feeds her, Sheri is utterly spent. Maybe even exhausted enough to finally get some sleep.
It’s not time for bed yet, by any stretch of the imagination. The late afternoon sun still beams through the screened windows, and the chirping birds beyond won’t give way to crickets for at least another four or five hours.
But sleep would bring a sorely needed reprieve from this living hell, and so she climbs the stairs to the bedroom.
Closing the windows to quiet the birdsongs and drawing the blinds to block out the sun, Sheri pushes away nagging thoughts of the guitar pick.
I’ll deal with it later, she tells herself as a mighty yawn escapes her. Or maybe I’ll just forget about it.
What does it matter? Roger is gone. Finding out who killed him won’t bring him back.
She slips into the bed they shared and rolls over onto Roger’s side.
There, on the bedside table, pushed up against the base of the lamp, she sees his silver lighter.
It hadn’t been stolen after all. He must have forgotten it that morning as he tucked the cigarettes and wallet into his pocket.
He must have been frustrated, reaching into his pocket for that first morning cigarette he always enjoyed so thoroughly and realizing he couldn’t even light it.
Landry resists the urge to check her watch, not wanting Detective Burns to get the impression that she’s anxious to leave this conference room—though that is, indeed, the case.
It’s not easy to sit here and reveal personal details to a total stranger . . .
Which is, ironically, precisely why she became involved with the Internet—and, by association, with Meredith and the others—in the first place. Now Detective Burns is pumping her for information not just about herself, but about her fellow bloggers.
Is it because she suspects that one of them killed Meredith?
Do I suspect that, too?
It’s not the first time Landry has speculated about it, but until now she’s been able to talk herself out of it.