“That doesn’t mean Julia wrote it,” Adrienne protested. “Anyone could have used her laptop.”
“True, the author wasn’t necessarily Julia, but not just anyone would have access to her computer. It stands to reason that Julia had something to do with that original post, and someone else has continued making similar threats since she died. Maybe a friend of hers?”
“I know where you’re going with this. Absolutely not. Ramona would never. We’re very close. You just said she was the one to call you, for goodness’ sake.”
Once they obtained the IP addresses linked to the other posts, they’d know for certain whether Ramona could have been involved, but Ellie shared Adrienne’s assumption that the girl wouldn’t have called them if she’d been the one responsible.
“You said yourself that Julia and Ramona were extremely close. We’ve seen cases where teenagers lash out at their friends’ parents, without the victims’ own kids even knowing about it. You’re Ramona’s stepmother, if I’m not mistaken?” Ellie was on a roll now, so Rogan was letting her lead the questioning uninterrupted.
Adrienne’s eyes drifted upward and she shook her head in frustration. “Unbelievable. I’ve raised that girl since she was seven years old. She calls me Mom.”
“So you’ve legally adopted her?”
“No. It was never—it wasn’t necessary. It isn’t necessary. She’s my daughter. We have a good relationship. She wouldn’t do something like that. We are very open with each other.”
“And yet you had a secret in your past. And you had a blog. And she even learned about that blog and that secret. But neither of you spoke to the other about what you knew.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“And yet you don’t want to believe that Julia would have posted those comments, either, but we’re telling you—she did.”
She took a deep breath before answering. “Julia was a wonderful and generous girl, but she was also reckless. She had a darkness within her.”
“Dark enough to post such horrible threats on your website?”
“I don’t know what to think. In a way, it would be nice to know that whoever is writing those comments isn’t actually dangerous. But I have a really hard time believing Julia would do this.”
“You don’t seem all that troubled by either prospect. We’ve seen the comments posted on your site.” He should have choked you harder. That was from Monday morning. Then Monday afternoon: You were a good lay. Wonder what you’re like now. Is that ass still tight? I might have to find out. Monday evening: I will show you damage. This morning: I’m still here. I touch myself when I read your words. I’m thinking about you. Ellie had worked her share of stalker cases but couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for a rape survivor to find those words waiting for her when she turned on her computer.
“I’ve spent a long time getting past the things that happened to me when I was younger. Writing about it has been the best form of healing, after all of these years. I put it all out on the table—maybe not with Ramona, because, however misguided this may seem, I want to preserve her innocence. But on a page, in words, I’m laying it all out there. And I’ve resolved not to let some idiot with a keyboard and the shelter of the Internet get to me. All I can tell you is that I would bet my life that my daughter had nothing to do with those vile comments. And I’m nearly as sure that empty threats on my silly website have absolutely no relation to whatever happened to Julia Whitmire. You can’t seriously think I did something to her? I was at a fundraising dinner for breast cancer research out in Sag Harbor that night, if you need to check on my whereabouts.”
“I wasn’t accusing you of anything, Mrs. Langston. And I’m sorry if it sounded like I was questioning your relationship with Ramona. But for now, we’re treating Julia’s death as a homicide. And when we find out that a homicide victim was holding on to a secret, that secret often sends us down the road to a killer.”
“It makes me very sad to say this, Detective, but my guess is that you’ll find that Julia Whitmire was carrying around more than one secret.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Nelson the doorman had just finished putting an elderly woman and her pocketbook-size dachshund into a cab.
“You were right, Nelson. The Langstons seem like a very nice family.”
He smiled politely. “Have a nice day, ma’am.”
“Ramona seems to get along with Mrs. Langston?” Unless Julia Whitmire had a reason of her own to threaten Adrienne, the most obvious explanation was that she was doing it on Ramona’s behalf, and that someone else was now continuing the pattern. “I’m sure at that age it must be typical for a teenaged girl to fight with her parents.”
“I just watch the door.”
Outside on Park Avenue, Rogan shook his head. “Seriously? You thought he was suddenly going to tell you all he knows? Like, some magic doorman interrogation code, where all you have to do is ask three times?”
She was too busy reading a text on her phone to bother with a comeback. “It’s from Max. He’s working on the subpoena for Social Circle.”
“Good. Maybe the IP addresses will tell us something.”
“In the meantime, was it just me, or is that woman in serious denial about those threats? She’s trying to convince herself they’re only words, but I could tell that part of her was terrified. She’s working so hard not to be scared that she refused to focus on whether Julia might have had some motive for posting a comment like that on her blog.”
“You’re not thinking of her for the perp, are you?”
“No, I don’t get that vibe. Plus, she said she was at a party in the Hamptons Sunday night. Easy enough to check that out. Add it to the to-do list.”
“Maybe she honestly doesn’t know,” Rogan said. “If she and Julia had some kind of beef, presumably she’d just tell us, especially if she’s got a rock-solid alibi.”
“Unless the beef somehow involved Ramona. She seems pretty protective over that girl. If Julia was lashing out at Adrienne on behalf of her friend, Adrienne might not want to admit there’s a rift in her perfect stepmother-stepdaughter relationship.”
“So let’s go talk to Little Miss Truant again.”
Ramona was waiting, as she had promised, on a park bench next to the playground by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She was fiddling with her iPod but stood up and pulled out her earbuds when she spotted them walking toward her.
The words started tumbling from her mouth before they had a chance to speak. “Did you talk to her? Does she know who’s threatening her? Are you going to be able to find out who’s doing this?”
Ellie pointed to the bench, and Ramona returned to her seat. “Slow down for a second, okay? So, we talked last night about the importance of your being extremely honest with us about Julia.”
“Of course.”
“We need to know: Did Julia have a grudge against your stepmother?”
The girl’s mouth moved but nothing came out. She looked like a beautiful goth puppet. “My mom?”
“Yes.”
“Why would you even ask that?”
Ellie was starting to wonder herself. First-year cops learned the maxim of Occam’s razor: the simplest explanation was also the most likely. When you’re in Kentucky and hear hooves, think horses, not zebras. Here they had a dead high school girl in the bathtub and an Upper East Side housewife receiving online threats. Because Julia had posted the first threat, they’d automatically concluded the two events were related. Made sense. But maybe the threats were just one more indication that Julia Whitmire was, as Ramona had put it, the fucked-up head case who killed herself, while some mean-girl friend of hers was continuing to wreak havoc against Adrienne now that Julia was gone.