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?