Page 91 of Missing White Woman

And yet it suddenly did.

I’d seen what Janelle looked like—in photos as Billie talked over her and even in videos as stoic news anchors turned her life into the lead story. But I’d never heard her voice. And until then I hadn’t realized I needed to. Was it cutesy like Jennifer Tilly’s? Deep like Scarlett Johansson’s? Something in between? I needed to know. Now.

I pressed the number.

It went straight to voicemail. When I heard the outgoing message, my breath caught so quick I was surprised I didn’t unravel.

“Hi. You’ve reached Lori Stevenson. Sorry I missed your call, but leave me a message—with your number—and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks.”

I hung up.

Maybe he’d been working after all. Ty never told me his clients’ names—confidentiality—but still it sounded familiar. I tried to imagine it coming off Billie’s lips and got nothing. Same with the police and the news anchors.

So I did what I needed to do. The Google app was open and her name in the search bar before you could pronounce all five syllables in it. Lori Stevenson pulled up too many hits. I took it a step further, adding Jersey City to the mix.

A people search was the third result. Something I’d normally find intrusive—the idea of the internet giving your contact info to anyone with a keyboard. But that all changed as soon as I saw Lori Stevenson’s address: 108 Little Street.

She was a neighbor.

TWENTY-SEVEN

The night felt longer than a one-minute plank. Same with me. I was rigid, shaking, but still determined to not give up. Sitting there frozen in place, eyes focused on my phone, as I desperately tried to find anything I could on Lori Stevenson.

But for once, Google had let me down. Other than the few people-search hits, Lori was an internet ghost. No Instagram or Facebook. No Twitter or TikTok. Not even a LinkedIn. It made me doubt she’d ever even had a MySpace account.

It was weird and suspicious. Why had Ty been calling her? It had to have been for work, but what if it wasn’t? Had he been cheating on me with this Lori instead of Janelle? Or just in addition to her? I spent the 3 a.m. hour searching my brain for mentions of the name as either a client or a friend. Digging in crevices I’d forgotten I had in there. And finding nothing.

The closest my brain came up with was a Lauren. The only other Black person in his office. Ty had claimed she would come bitch to him when their mutual boss was showing his ass. But her last name wasn’t Stevenson and there was no way she’d own a whole row house in Jersey City.

No, this Lori was new and unrelated. And yet he’d called her on my phone when we were supposed to be taking a romantic carriage ride in New York City.

The four o’clock hour drove me back to Janelle’s Instagram account, desperately searching for any photos with some untagged woman, even lurking in the background. But there were none to be found.

A ghost.

Around five is when I remembered the connection to the husband. Ray. Roy. Rod. Something like that.

The neighbor who’d been tasked with keeping an eye on the place for whatever unnamed corporation actually owned the Airbnb. The one who came over whenever there was an issue. The one the police had dismissed as unimportant because the key code was supposedly always changed.

It took until the six o’clock hour for me to realize there was a connection to Lori Stevenson—and it turned out it was me. I’d seen her. Briefly interacted. The glam blonde in the bedazzled face mask, my first night. The one who’d been so rude. I’d assumed it was because she didn’t know me. But now I wondered if it was because she did.

And I’d seen her going up the stairs at 108. Disappearing inside.

She’d been home. But hadn’t Ms. Morgane said she and her husband were at some convention?

I needed to find out more about Lori Stevenson other than the fact that she liked sparkly face masks and even sparklier luggage. And if Google wasn’t going to help, I’d have to go old school: phone a friend.

I didn’t know if Ms. Morgane was an early riser, but I was tempted to roll the dice and call her anyway. Instead, I texted. It came up green. No iPhone meant no telltale signs of it being read or telltale dots indicating it was being responded to. Instead, I was forced to wait it out. Much like a pot, a watched text never gets responded to.

I told myself I’d wait until 8:00 a.m. and I somehow managed. It wasn’t easy. I did a half marathon in that suite, walking around the bed and out to the living room—then back again, glancing at the otherwise unnecessary alarm clock every few loops. I made it to 7:59 a.m.

She picked up at 8:00 a.m., her dog barking up a storm in the background. “Bree?”

“Hi, Ms. Morgane.”

“Been thinking about you. I heard you did some interview.”

“Guess you could call it that.” It felt like a lifetime ago when it’d only been a few hours. “It was on TikTok.”

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