The Perfect Stranger (Social Media #2)(107)

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.