She didn’t recognize the number.
“Hatcher.”
“Detective Hatcher, it’s Ramona Langston.”
She had to stop giving her cell phone number to witnesses. Beside her in bed, Max rolled toward her, draping one arm across her thighs.
“Hi, Ramona.”
The teenager sounded out of breath. “You’re wrong about Casey.”
Ellie looked at the nightstand. It was just past seven in the morning. Ellie was sick and tired of the Whitmires, but they did lose a daughter. The last thing she wanted to deal with now was the Langston family. Daddy George, the anal-retentive lawyer who had no idea how to handle the chaos that had just been thrown into their lives. Evasive Adrienne, who was obviously in denial about Julia’s connection to those vile comments on her blog. Now Baby Langston had robbed her of her last opportunity to get a few minutes’ sleep before she had to return to the real world.
She took a deep breath and kept her voice strong and steady. “The district attorney’s office will be the one to make the charging decisions—” She neglected to mention that the ADA who’d be making that decision was in bed beside her at the moment.
“You’ve been wrong about everything. You said Julia was the one who was posting that crap on my mom’s blog? Well, pull up the website. Look at the blog right now. Read the comments.”
Ellie wanted to hang up on the girl but instead walked into the living room, finding her laptop on the floor next to the sofa. She typed the website’s URL into the address bar of her Internet browser, then scrolled down to the most recent comments.
Ramona’s words were still spilling out through the phone. “I don’t think my mom’s seen it yet. She went running and left her stupid cell phone at home again. Whoever’s been doing this crap is still at it. That means Julia couldn’t have been the one. And neither could Casey. My mom is still being threatened. And whoever’s doing it knows who she is.”
Ellie stared at her computer screen.
“Blog by ‘Anonymous’? Yeah, right. I know who you are, Adrienne. Stop writing your drivel or die.”
According to the time stamp next to the post, the threat was typed that morning, only twenty minutes earlier.
“Are you there, Detective? You were wrong. And you’re wrong about Casey. I think whoever’s threatening my mom was the one who killed Julia. You have to do something. You have to help my mom.”
“I’ll be right there.”
Max was standing above her, also reading the screen. “Great. Even if we do decide Casey’s our killer, that post gives the defense attorney a convenient red herring. Any way you cut it, we’re going to have to figure out who’s been posting this stuff. It obviously isn’t Casey or Julia.”
She still felt in her gut that Julia Whitmire’s death was a suicide, but even she had to admit there was no easy explanation for the connection between Julia’s laptop and the threats on Adrienne’s website.
And then just like that, Ellie saw it.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Ramona had phoned the detective because it was what you were supposed to do. Police were supposed to help people. Plus, these were the police who had interviewed her about Julia’s death. They knew her. They would be better than the random cops dispatched by 911.
The female detective—Hatcher was her name—had gotten to the apartment quickly enough. She even had documents showing the locations of the computers that had been used to post the threats on her mother’s website. It was almost overkill when she unfolded the Manhattan map on their living room coffee table.
“The threats prior to today came from different locations. The first was made from Julia’s computer, connected to the network at her home. Since then, the posts have come from various public locations in Manhattan—primarily downtown, like the Union Square Equinox, an Apple Store—but also a couple on the Upper West Side . . . here at Seventy-second Street and Broadway.” She circled the locations on the map with a highlighter.
“Okay,” she said. It was a dumb response, but Ramona had no idea how she was supposed to confirm that she understood.
“Now, here’s the interesting thing about this morning’s post,” the detective said. “We were able to get hold of the company that hosts your stepmother’s website. The comment that was made this morning came from a public computer in the lobby of a hotel at Madison and Seventy-second.”
She made yet another mark on the Upper East Side of the map.
“That hotel’s only about eight blocks from here. You said your stepmother’s out on a run?”
“Stop saying ‘stepmother.’ She’s my mother. And you can’t possibly think she has something to do with this.”
“You told us before there was no way Julia would do anything to hurt your step—your mother. But what if she thought she was helping her? You said the two of them were close. If your mother had asked Julia to write that post while your family was out in East Hampton—”
“My mom would not do something like that. I told you before that Julia had been distracted. She was busy all the time. And she wasn’t telling me where she was or who she was with. Maybe it was whatever guy she was hooking up with. He could have used her computer.” Ramona couldn’t tell if the detective was even paying attention anymore, but she couldn’t make the words stop pouring from her mouth. “And he’s still posting those ugly words now. You have to find whoever’s doing this. You have to help my mom. And let Casey go. I’m telling you—these threats have to be the key to Julia’s murder. What if they come after my mom, too?”
Ramona had been so busy yelling that she hadn’t heard the front door of the apartment open. All she knew was that Adrienne—her stepmother, her mother, the woman who had taken on the responsibility of raising Ramona when she was only five years old—was standing in the foyer, still out of breath from her early-morning run in the park. Ramona could tell from her expression she was scared.
“What is going on here? What are you saying to my daughter?” Ramona must have looked afraid too, because she understood now that her mother’s fear was on Ramona’s behalf, not her own.
Ramona rushed to her and wrapped her arms around her waist. “I tried to call you. You always leave without your cell phone. What’s the point of having it if you don’t carry it with you?”
“Are you okay, sweetie?”
Ramona grabbed her tighter. “I’m worried about you, Mom. It’s your website. There’s a new threat today. And this time the guy used your name. Whoever’s doing this to you knows who you are, Mom.”
Ramona saw a different kind of fear in her mother’s face. Then her mother bent down and kissed her on the top of the head before patting her on the back. “Go on to your room. I want to talk to Detective Hatcher alone.”
“What the hell is going on here?” Adrienne demanded. “I walk into my own home and find my kid terrified in her living room with a cop standing over her?”
“If your kid looked scared, it was because she’s terrified about those comments you’re pretending to ignore on your website. A new one was posted this morning. And this time, the person used your name. I apologize if you thought I was the one scaring her, but she is scared. She’s scared for you. And she called me to help.”
The previous two times Ellie had seen Adrienne Langston, she had been unflappably composed. Now she seemed genuinely worried.
Ellie pointed to the map that was open on the coffee table and explained the tracking information they had gathered from Social Circle.