The Perfect Stranger (Social Media #2)(82)

Jaycee . . .

J.C. . . .

Jenna Coeur . . .

An elusive thought flits at the edge of her consciousness. There’s something she should remember . . .

“Can I take a quick look at her blog page?” she asks the detective, gesturing at the laptop. “I just want to see . . . maybe there’s something there that will give her away if it’s her.”

“Be my guest. I don’t think there is, though.”

Landry clicks over to Jaycee’s blog, noting that there have been no new entries all week. That’s not unusual—none of them have been posting. She’d assumed everyone is, like her, too shell-shocked by Meredith’s death—not wanting to put the loss into words yet, but not able to write about anything else, either.

“She usually writes about general topics related to breast cancer—usually political stuff, criticizing spending, encouraging lobbying . . . that sort of thing.”

“Jenna Coeur was one of Hollywood’s most vocal political activists.”

“That’s right. I remember.” Truly, she knows her movie stars. Reads about them, follows them online, watches those gossipy infotainment shows on television . . .

And there’s something . . .

Something else . . .

“It’s not a stretch to think that if she wanted to pose as a blogger,” Detective Burns is saying, “she’d cover topics that might actually mean something to her.”

“No, that does make sense.”

Landry scrolls down the page, tap, tap, tapping the down arrow key, knowing there’s something she should be remembering.

Frustrated, she flips over to her own blog and clicks to the archived entry about brushes with celebrity, wondering whether Jaycee contributed to the barrage of comments. As she scans them, finding nothing, the detective continues to question her.

“When you spoke to her on the phone this week, did she—”

“Oh my God! That’s it! That’s the thing I was trying to—when she called me, it was from a California area code. She said she was at a hotel in L.A.”

“Do you still have the number? Was it on your home phone, or—”

“No, it was on my cell . . .” Landry is already pulling it out of her pocket. “And at the time, I thought there was something familiar about her voice . . . I kept thinking she reminded me of someone. No wonder.”

She quickly scrolls through the call log, hoping the number is still there.

It is.

She reads it off to Detective Burns, who jots it down, then grabs the laptop and enters it in a search engine. “She wasn’t lying about where she was. The number belongs to a hotel off the Sunset Strip. Do you have a phone number for her in New York, or her cell?”

“No—yes!” Landry remembers. “She gave me her cell, then hung up before I could get the home number.”

“Do you have it in your phone contacts?”

“No, I wrote it down somewhere at home.”

“Do you think you can get it?”

“I can try.”

Detective Crystal nods and gestures at the phone in Landry’s hand.

“Oh—you mean right now?”

“If you don’t mind.”

“No, it’s fine. I’ll just call home and . . .” She dials the house, trying to remember where the number might be. For all she knows she scribbled it on a napkin and then mistakenly threw it away.

Rob answers. “What’s up? Everything okay? How’d it go with the detective?”

“I’m still . . . listen, can you do me a quick favor? I need you to find a phone number I wrote down a few days ago. I might have put it on the bulletin board like I did the insurance cards.”

“I’ll check.”

He does, and reports that it’s not there. Hearing voices in the background, Landry asks, “Is that the kids? Can you put Addison on the phone?”

“Sure. Tucker’s here, too. You can talk to them both. But don’t you want that phone number first?”

“I do want it—that’s why I need Addison. She’s a lot better at finding things than y’all are.”

“Ouch,” he says mildly, and hands the phone over to their daughter.

“Mom?”

A new wave of homesickness washes over her with the sound of her daughter’s voice. “Hi, sweetie. I need your help. I wrote down a phone number the other day, probably on scrap paper, and it’s around there somewhere. Can you look for it? I was in my bedroom, I think, when I talked to her, so you might want to start there.”

“Sure. Hang on a second.”

Landry nods at Detective Burns. “My daughter’s looking.”

“Gotcha. For what it’s worth, my husband can never find anything either. Men, right?”

Caught up in the unexpected moment of female bonding, and forgetting all about why they’re here, Landry shakes her head with a smile. “Right. My son is the same way. Do you have kids?”

“I had a son.”

Had means she lost him—and Landry can see it in the sorrow in her dark brown eyes.

Before she can figure out what to say—what else is there, besides I’m so sorry?—Addison is back on the line. “I think I found it. Is it written in blue Sharpie on the back of a supermarket receipt?”