“No way. My mom says I’d hate it. There’s nothing to do, and the house is barely even a house. More like a cave for my dad and his friends to play poker twice a year and pretend they’re still twenty years old. She’s only been there, like, twice. I’ve never even bothered.”
“Never?”
She shook her head.
“I hear you.” The picture of Julia in the country was taking on new meaning. Maybe a few of the secretaries at his former law firm weren’t the only girls who saw an appealing side to George. “The Hamptons sound much nicer. Hopefully, your dad at least got to take some time off work to go with you and your mom last weekend?”
“Yeah. Well, the first part, at least. He went back on Saturday night.”
Rogan gave Ellie a small nod. It was J. J. Rogan code for nicely done. They were just about done here.
“Do you mind if I use the bathroom before we head out?”
As the elevator doors closed, Ellie studied Casey and Ramona, standing side by side at the apartment entrance. Casey had that same adoring look he’d had on his face whenever he had talked about Ramona. And, contrary to what they had been told by Brandon and Vonda, Ramona no longer seemed oblivious to Casey’s attention. She leaned slightly in toward him. She seemed comfortable with his hand on her back.
Ellie found herself wishing—for their sakes—that the world was less complicated.
“You took long enough in the bathroom,” Rogan said. “I was running my mouth so long I wound up telling that Casey kid to sue the hell out of Bill Whitmire. Meanwhile, you were off violating the Fourth Amendment, weren’t you?”
“It’s not like I tore their bedroom apart or anything.” Like most police, they both knew the difference between a little shortcut and the kind of screw-up that led to evidence getting thrown out of court. “I got a list of all the incoming phone numbers on their caller ID. Way faster than the phone company.” She waved her notebook proudly.
“Damn. I hope you can read your own handwriting, because that looks like chicken scratch to me.”
“Sorry, wrong number.” She dialed while Rogan drove. “That was Duane Reade.”
“Sorry, wrong number.” She ended yet another call. “Hair salon.”
“Sorry, wrong number. Some place called Marea?” It sounded familiar.
“Restaurant,” he said. “Central Park South.”
“Ah, right.” One meal probably cost more than her entire month’s take-out budget. “Yes, hello. I’m sorry. What business did I call? . . . Attorney at law? . . . Yes, can you tell me why someone from this number may have called George Langston last Thursday?”
Rogan shook his head. They both knew there was no way a receptionist would answer that question.
“All right. Well, I assume Mr. Wiles does some kind of drug or medical malpractice type of litigation?” It wouldn’t be unusual for a lawyer to call Langston at home.
“Exclusively? Okay. Thank you very much.”
Not the pharmacist or the hair salon or a fancy-pants restaurant. Not even an adversary on a pending case.
“That was the law office of Mr. Michael Wiles, Esquire, Attorney at Law.” She mimicked the receptionist’s professionally pleasant voice.
“Esquire, Attorney at Law? Isn’t that redundant?”
“Yes, but here’s the excellent part. This particular Esquire, Attorney at Law, practices nothing but family law. We suspected Julia might have an older man in her life. Now we find out George Langston has a private little alpaca ranch—and now maybe a divorce lawyer?”
“Everyone seems to agree Julia was sexually adventurous. What did that teacher say about wanting men who were off limits? Can’t get much more forbidden than your best friend’s sort-of-handsome but rigid and inaccessible dad. It would certainly explain why Julia didn’t tell Ramona who she was dating.”
“It could also explain the threats on Adrienne’s website.”
“Well, only the first one, right? Maybe George found out about Adrienne’s blog and told Julia. In a fit of jealousy, she posts a late-night comment, just to fuck with her. But then who’s messing with Adrienne now?”
“Maybe status-conscious George doesn’t want her writing about her background—her trashy family, her abuse, the fact that she was a babysitter before she was Mrs. George Langston. He could have been the one to post the first threat, too, using Julia’s computer. He wasn’t in East Hampton that weekend, after all.”
Rogan pointed a finger at her. “Aha! You’re starting to think we’re actually on to something.”
“Maybe,” she said grudgingly. Her cell phone buzzed in her hand. “Hatcher.”
“Hey, Ellie Belly. It’s M and M.”
Michael Ma was by far the nicest analyst in the entire NYPD. He also liked nicknames. And cookies. Three Christmas Eves earlier, Ellie had passed off a dozen Bouchon Bakery nutter-butters as her own home-baked recipe to persuade Mike to stay late to compare a latent pulled from a stolen handgun to Ellie’s favorite suspect. One of these days he’d figure out that he, too, could score a handmade nutter-butter for two-twenty-five a pop at the Time Warner Center. Until then, Mike was Ellie Belly’s go-to guy for a lab rush.
“I got seven latents off that shoe box. Five of them belonged to your vic and her daughter. And two come back to the same guy: James Grisco, DOB March 13, 1972.”
“Any chance he’s the doorman who handed them the package?”
“Park Avenue address? I don’t think they hire murderers as doormen.”
“Grisco has a murder conviction?”
“Served fifteen years. Got out two months ago.”
“Cool. Anything else?”
“I’m just the print guy. You guys figure out what it all means. And bring the cookies.”
“Will do, Double-M. This Friday at the latest. I promise.” She ended the call before he could argue about the timing. “If George Langston is Adrienne’s ‘secret admirer,’ we may have found the guy who can help us prove it.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Their lieutenant had her head tilted back in her chair, a bottle of Visine trembling over one fluttering eye. “Fucking LASIK. You’re the one who convinced me to do this, Rogan. What about you, Hatcher? Contacts?”
“Some days, but I can go without.”
“Another reason to hate the both of you. Now, how many times are you going to change your minds about this one case?”
“You can’t hold the Casey Heinz bump in the road against us,” Hatcher said. “That was all Bill Whitmire. We said from the beginning that his guy Earl Gundley was bad news.”
Ellie’s remark wasn’t quite a told-you-so, but the groan that came out of Tucker’s throat was a sign she recalled vouching for the former cop.
“Pretty damn big bump in the road. So tell me again what you’ve got on George Langston.”
Ellie gave Tucker a quick update on Langston’s investment property up in Pound Ridge and the photograph of Julia. “We thought all along Julia was probably seeing someone she didn’t want her friends to know about, even Ramona. We also knew she had a thing for men who were inaccessible. And men who were older. If the man was George Langston, that would certainly explain why Julia never told Ramona. And it would also explain why Julia might have posted threatening comments on Adrienne’s blog.”
“And what do you know about George Langston?”
“A family law attorney phoned the Langston house two days ago, which means George might be looking into a divorce. And he had multiple motives to kill Julia—she may have been close to telling Adrienne or Ramona about the affair, or she could have discovered that something wasn’t so kosher about George and his representation of Jason Moffit’s parents. It looks like he sidled into the Moffits’ good graces to convince them to sell out quick in their lawsuit against his friend David Bolt. He shuts them up, and Bolt continues business as usual.”