“I made some calls this morning. We’ll be sitting right next to him. What do the Whitmire ladies think of that? It’ll be all three of us together.” He pushed Katherine’s hair aside and planted a soft kiss on the side of her neck.
“Do I get a five-thousand-dollar dress, too?”
“Whatever you want, my love.”
Katherine had stopped telling those stories to her friends a long time ago, because she knew how they sounded. But at the time, days like that with Bill made her so incredibly happy, that all of the wrongs he was trying to make up for somehow fell away.
Even now, she found herself smiling as she held that dress out in front of her. She was surprised Julia had hung on to it. The dress had worn out its fashionability long ago, and Katherine was pretty sure it wouldn’t have even fit Julia after that summer, when her chest had suddenly sprouted another cup size.
Julia must have remembered that day at Barneys, too. She must have kept this ridiculous dress because of that memory. Now it was just another item of clothing to go in the charity stack. Onto the pile it went.
Money. It had taken Katherine years to adjust to having this much money. But eventually she’d come around to Bill’s view that money might not buy you happiness, but it sure could solve your problems. Busy? Hire an assistant. Too much traffic to the Hamptons? Get the helicopter. Sick of the city? Build your own recording studio. Stand up your daughter? Buy her a dress.
It wasn’t surprising, then, that the idea of hiring a private investigator had come to Bill last night. And given that her husband gnawed at an idea like a dog with a bone, it wasn’t surprising that he had already made the necessary calls about the big reward before she’d managed to drag herself from bed that morning.
As she understood it, they had a designated number for the tip line. Bill’s PI firm would handle the incoming calls. The head guy—Earl Gundley—was a retired cop, with contacts in the NYPD, but who worked solely for them. Bill had his publicity people put out the press release.
She pulled another dress from the closet. This one was a bone-colored, cotton-lace sheath by Stella McCartney. This would be a nice choice. Simple. Timeless.
She hung the dress on a hook inside the closet door. She’d ask Billy to take it to the funeral home in the morning. He was looking for ways to be helpful, and Katherine had seen more than enough of that place when she’d chosen the casket this morning.
She barely heard the sound of the doorbell above the music blaring from Bill’s office. She heard the stereo volume drop, followed by muted voices three floors below. Then she heard Bill’s voice in the intercom he never used. “Katherine, I think you need to come down.”
“What is it, Bill? I’m busy up here.”
“I know, but I think you’ll want to hear this too. The press release worked. There are two people here who say they know what happened to J.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
But my neighbor is taking me to Small Claims Court. He claims that Peanut scratched up his front door, but Peanut is innocent. Who is going to represent me? Who is going to represent Peanut?”
“I’m sorry, sir, but the district attorney’s office does not defend either individuals or dogs in private, civil matters. Wait. What’s that in your bag? Is that Peanut? You can’t be having a dog in here, sir.”
The receptionist on the fifteenth floor of the courthouse clearly had her hands full. She waved Ellie and Rogan back to Max’s office.
“Hey, you.” He stood to give her a kiss, but she turned her cheek. Even if only in front of Rogan, it seemed inappropriate to share PDA with an assistant district attorney in his office.
Rogan apparently noticed the exchange. “Damn, Hatcher. You’re cold.”
Max offered Rogan a handshake. “About time someone took my side. Turns out it’s your lucky day, guys. Social Circle was pretty cooperative, as far as these Web companies go. We weren’t gonna get the IP addresses for every comment posted without a fight, but we settled on the ones that were obviously threatening.”
All Rogan had to hear was the word fight, followed by settled, to protest. “That’s some bullshit—”
So much for the male bonding. “Rogan, do you currently know anything about the origin of the other threats on the website? And do you actually need information about the other comments? Because, you know, if tracking down the identity of the Illinois housewife who posted ‘You go, girl’ three weeks ago is essential to the investigation, then by all means, I’ll drag Social Circle into court.”
Rogan brushed a nonexistent piece of lint from his suit lapel and looked directly at Ellie. “I do believe someone has picked up on your tone.”
Ellie flashed a proud smile. “I think that means we’ll take what we can get for now.”
“That’s what I figured. Here’s the deaclass="underline" the blog’s been up for about seven months. Pretty typical traffic initially for an amateur blog—meaning, zilch. But she kept at it, and apparently people started to find her and to comment. Other bloggers started to cross-link to her site. That all leads more people to the blog. Anyway, she was up to more than ten thousand hits after five months. Twenty thousand as of last week.”
Ellie couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to read someone else’s self-analysis. “Seriously? Reading all that therapy-lite garbage made my head hurt.”
“But get this: since that first threat was posted Saturday night, traffic has skyrocketed. Yesterday, she had seventy thousand hits. The commenters talk more about the threats than her actual posts.”
“Adrienne gave us some mumbo jumbo about wanting her readers to see how people try to silence survivors. She never mentioned it had also been good for business.”
“Very good, in fact. But now let’s get down to brass tacks. Where did these posts come from? We already suspected that the post on Saturday night came from Julia’s laptop. Sure enough, the IP info for that comment comes back to her computer, just as we expected.”
“And the rest?” Ellie asked.
“That’s where things get pretty interesting. The other comments all originated from Manhattan, but not from Julia’s computer. We’ve got a couple that came from Equinox gym by Union Square. Another gym on the Upper West Side. Apple Store in the Meatpacking District. Whoever’s doing this hides their tracks pretty well.”
Rogan sighed. “We can take the times of the posts at each place and see if we get lucky with video.”
“But to what end?” Ellie asked. “We still don’t even know that Julia Whitmire was murdered, and we certainly don’t know there’s any connection between her death and these comments. After getting a feel for the kinds of kids who go to Casden, I wouldn’t be surprised if one of those brats somehow found out about Adrienne’s website and decided to screw with their friend’s mom. Julia might not have even known that someone used her computer.”
Rogan’s phone buzzed at his waist. He held up a finger and excused himself to the hallway.
Ellie plopped down in Max’s chair and stretched her legs out. “Seriously, Max, you should’ve seen this Casden School.” Like her, Max was strictly a public school kid. “Creepy headmaster more concerned with secrecy than education. Spoiled sociopaths drugged up by parents too busy to notice their kids are little monsters.”
“Tell me how you really feel.”
“Trust me, it’s worse than I can even make it sound. After a day on the Upper East Side, even Bill Whitmire doesn’t look so bad. Thank God I’ll never have to deal with any of that stuff.”