Free Find Me I'm Yours by Hillary Carlip

found videos of people on stair walks, books (the bible being
Secret Stairs: A Walking Guide to the Historic Staircases of Los Angeles
), even an iPhone app from the book’s author. But no pictures. With addresses. Which was what we needed. And couldn’t find.
    â€œWait a min! Wait a sec! Hold on! I think I found something!” Coco shouted. “Stairwalksla.com. Anything sound familiar?”
    â€œThe la.com?” I guessed. “Like dogparksla.com, right?”
    Coco perked up. “Maybe that’s a clue, like his initials or something. Get out the pic you took at the Villa Seaside Apartments.”
    I grabbed my phone and looked at the list of tenants. “There’s an L.A.! L. Astin! We so rock, we could freakin’ solve freakin’ murders if we freakin’ wanted to!” We tried to high-five and missed. It took four times before we connected solidly.
    â€œI’ll start researching L. Astins,” Coco said, “you check out the site.”
    www.StairwalksLA.com
    I looked at it on my phone. “Well, it’s a way better design than Sandi Stern’s,” I reported. It suddenly made me a little sad to think my new friend Sandi, of dogparksla.com, may not be a real person. Which of course meant that Mr. WTF might not be as well. What if the troubled, homely old housewife with the severely handicapped twin stepsons
was
behind this? What if Coco was right? I had to focus. “The girl who does the blog has some funny icons describing the stair walks on it—like PEE ALERT, NOSY NEIGHBORS, and CARRY MACE. And there are PICS! With addresses! Halle-fuckin’-lujah!”
    â€œLet’s check ’em out.” Coco joined me, having found nothing on L. Astin except that
Lastin
is elastic used for sewing cloth diapers. Good to know. There were four photos on StairwalksLA.com that we decided could possibly be of the stairs in the video. We would start there.
    â€œReady to go?” Coco asked.
    â€œWhat do you think?”
    We gathered our stuff and my dogs and piled into Coco’s car. As we drove to the first set of stairs, my phone rang.
    â€œHello?”
    â€œHey, honey.”
    It was Liza. That’s one thing I’ve found a lot of gay women have in common—they call each other “honey” even well after they’ve broken up. And of course they mostly continue on being friends with their exes, so if they’re all at a party and someone calls out HONEY, every head turns.
    â€œHi, sweet pea.” I like to mix it up, keep it fresh.
    â€œYou OK?”
    â€œYeah. No. Whatever. First, how are you? And how’s Kelly?”
    Liza caught me up and when she asked once more how I was, I broke down. In between sobs, snorts, then laughing at my sobs and snorts, I filled her in on everything that had gone down. Coco had me put Liza on speaker, and she joined in, adding, embellishing, and commenting to her East Coast counterpart (minus us ever having sex!).
    Usually when people think of New York, it’s dark and edgy. And L.A. is bright and sparkly. If that were true, Liza and Coco pulled a
Freaky Friday
. For as cynical and unbelieving as Coco is, Liza is a sunshiny optimist. In fact, she works for a motivational company that has the big, phat, cool spiritual/self-help website:
    www.eVolveTransmedia.com
    She runs a site for them called TEXT YOUR WISH where people… uh… obvs, text their wishes! And then wishes are picked and fulfilled.
    www.TextYourWish.com

    Note to self—maybe it’s time to give it a shot and wish for $500.00 to help out my brother?!
    So when Coco said, “You’ve seen
Catfish
? Don’t you think it’s crazy to be doing this hunt?” of course Liza effused just the opposite.
    â€œIt’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever heard! What are the chances of you getting a camera to begin with, and that one in particular? It’s TOTALLY meant to be!”
    Coco withdrew a