Never Tell (21 page)

Chapter Forty-Five

R
amona held her mother’s hand as they entered the 19th Precinct station house. She felt like a little girl, but having her mother’s hand in hers also felt comforting. She was supporting her mother, her mother was allowing it, and that in itself was comforting.

So was the fact that they were filing a police report.

The two of them had shoveled the maggots back into the shoe box together. Ramona had held the box. Her mother had wrapped her hands with plastic shopping bags and swept them inside, the two of them turning their heads away as if that would stop the urge to gag.

They had secured the box with packing tape, then wrapped it in a garbage bag. Then they put it outside on the terrace. This morning Ramona’s mother decided to file the police report.

It took forever to explain all this to the police officer, along with everything else that had happened. The blog. The threats. Now this crummy old Adidas shoe box filled with maggots feeding on a rotten piece of chicken.

The police officer took one look inside the box and slammed it shut. He was playing it cool, but she could tell he was pretty grossed out. “Any idea who might be doing this, ma’am?”

“No. We already talked to our doorman. He found the package just outside the building entrance yesterday afternoon. The security cameras don’t reach that area. That’s what he told me, at least. Can you run fingerprints or something?”

“We’ll file a report and forward it to detectives. Someone will contact you.”

Ramona could tell he wasn’t taking them seriously.

“You need to take
our
fingerprints, don’t you?”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, if they’re going to search the box for prints, you’ll need to eliminate us from consideration.” She held up her hands. “We both touched the box.”

As they walked out of the station onto Sixty-seventh Street, wiping their blackened fingertips with paper napkins, she felt that they should be doing more.

“Maybe we should call those detectives on Julia’s case. They at least know the background.”

“The last time they were at our apartment, Ramona, they basically accused me of doing this to myself to attract publicity.”

Part of Ramona wanted to call them, just to remind them once more that they’d obviously been wrong about Julia harassing her mom. But her mother was right. They couldn’t trust them. Those detectives had screwed up everything. Casey’d spent five days in jail because they wouldn’t listen to anyone.

Maybe it was better to start fresh with the cops at the local precinct.

“I’m worried about you, Mom.”

“I know. And as much as I haven’t wanted to scare either you or myself, I’m not exactly comfortable with this, either. It’s going to be okay, though. Thanks for coming with me. I’ll miss you this weekend.”

“Are you
sure
you won’t stay home?” Her mother had planned to spend the weekend at the beach house to work on her book, though Ramona thought this latest escalation of the threats required a change in plans.

“I’ll be fine, sweetie. Going away for a few days is going to help clear my head. Why don’t you come, too?”

After Ramona had overheard those detectives grilling her mother about her book contract, they had finally had an honest conversation about the blog. Her mother told her all the horrible things that had happened to her when she was young. How her mother hadn’t believed her. How she tried to forgive her mom after she died, but never did get past it. How she started keeping a journal two years ago. How she started the blog on a lark, then received an online comment from a book editor asking Adrienne to contact her.

And after telling her daughter the entire story, Adrienne still remained worried only about Ramona. She assured her that the book was being published under a pseudonym. That no one would need to know her mother had written it. But Ramona didn’t care about any of that. She had hugged her mother and said, “If it were up to me, I’d want the whole world to know. I’m so proud of you.” And since then, they were back to the way they were. No more secrets. They promised.

“You know I have debate team.” She tried one more time to persuade her mother to stay in the city. “Can’t you write at home?”

“I’ll get more done out east. And, honestly, the further away I can get from the scene of the maggot crime, the better. We may need to replace those floorboards.” She feigned a shudder. “Trust me. I’ll be fine.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

They both knew that unlike their promise not to keep any more secrets, this was a promise they had no control over. But, just like the feeling of her mother’s hand in hers, the words were a comfort.

Chapter
Forty-Six

T
he lobby
of the Park Manhattan was typical for a midtown office tower. Lots of marble.
Lots of glass. Expensive but nondescript art. Post-9/11 security guards manning
the front desk, insisting on identification and issuing electronically monitored
guest passes before granting entry.

On this particular day in this particular office
tower, one of the security guards had already made the phone call they’d
requested. The call was to a Margene Waters, former secretary to George
Langston, former partner at the law firm of Mascal & Blank. Could she please
come downstairs? She had a floral arrangement requiring a personal
signature.

“How do you know she’ll talk to us?” Ellie
asked.

“I don’t,” Rogan said. “Worst thing that happens is
she tells Langston we’re asking about him and his farce of a lawsuit against his
buddy, Bolt. Pretty sure the Moffits will have already let that cat out of the
bag. The way I see it, secretaries feel one of two ways about any given boss:
fiercely loyal to the ones who are good to them, and eager for karma to catch up
to the rest. You met George Langford. He seem like the kind of guy to remember
Secretary’s Day?”

The security guard nodded in their direction when
the woman they were looking for stepped out of the elevator. Margene was about
forty years old, dressed professionally in a navy sheath dress. Her five-inch,
bright-white heels were the only giveaway that she wasn’t one of the lawyers at
the blue-chip firm.

When they explained they had some questions about
George Langston, she glanced back toward the closing elevator doors, already
planning her retreat from the conversation.

“We can talk somewhere else if that would be
better,” Rogan said. He flashed the smile Ellie had seen work magic so many
times before. “Bet you know a coffee shop around here that brews a way better
cup than whatever insta-java stuff they have upstairs. On us. We just need some
background info.”

“You’re real police, right?” She had a heavy Long
Island accent. “Not some fringy private investigators or something?”

“Why would a private eye be asking questions about
George Langston?” Ellie asked.

“Half the partners who got pushed out last year
have either sued the firm or are getting sued for poaching clients. It’s like
Lord of the Flies
since the downsizing. All the
staff knows we’ll get fired in a New York minute for helping any of the old
guard.”

Now Ellie had a smile to match Rogan’s. Ladies and
gentlemen, they had found themselves a talker. They assured her they weren’t
interested in the internal workings of the law firm, and then made their way to
a Starbucks on Sixth Avenue.

Margene didn’t even wait for them to ask a question
before launching in. “So the suspense is killing me. What in the world could two
police detectives want to know about
George
?” She
emphasized his name as if it alone captured the very essence of his
uninterestingness.

Rogan followed their game plan of easing into the
subject gently. “Something bad happened to one of his daughter’s friends. It
would help us put some of the information in context if we had a better sense of
the family dynamics.”

“Ramona’s okay, though, right? You don’t think she
did anything wrong.”

“Oh no, nothing like that,” Rogan assured her.

“Oh, thank God. That girl is such a little
sweetheart. Hard to believe she grew up with George. I mean, not that he’s a bad
guy, but—well, have you met him?” They nodded. “Okay, so then you know. I mean,
some of the girls upstairs thought he was adorable in this old-fashioned way,
but I never quite got it. He’s just . . . he’s so . . .
pent-up. Maybe the fact that Ramona’s so laid-back is proof of the whole
nature-over-nurture thing. Or maybe it’s because of Adrienne. Now, boy, did
George get lucky there.”

Ellie was beginning to wonder whether this woman
was even breathing between sentences. “So it sounds like you know Ramona was
adopted, and that Adrienne came into the picture later?”

“Oh, of course. Everyone knew. I mean, I wasn’t
there when it all went down, but people talk. No one—not even the girls who were
kind of into him—could believe George was marrying someone like Adrienne. I
mean, she’s gorgeous. And such a doll. So, on the one hand, it’s like, how the
hell did he land her? But on the other hand, you could kind of tell that George
would be watching all the other partners when Adrienne was around, like she
might embarrass him or something. Don’t get me wrong. He absolutely loves her.
But George is so class-conscious, you know?”

They didn’t, but they were about to.

“Seersucker suits in the summertime. Bow ties. He
wants to be taken so seriously. But”—she lowered her voice to a whisper—“you
know his father was a building superintendent? That’s right. He didn’t come from
money. You’d think he’d be proud of it, but—whatever. At least he married a
great woman and raised a great daughter. That’s gotta say something.”

“How about friends?” Rogan asked.

“Same kind of thing. Always chasing the social
ladder. Honestly? I think it’s why he got pushed out. The partners here didn’t
respect him enough. And he was having a hard time bringing in clients, too.
People issues, you know? People can tell when you’re not comfortable in your own
skin.”

“Isn’t he friends with some muckety-muck doctor?”
Ellie said it like she wasn’t sure of the details.

“Oh, that’s David. David Bolt. Yeah, those two go
all the way back to middle school. David told me once—I’m sure George didn’t
like it—that George’s dad was the super in David’s family’s apartment building.
That’s how they got to be friends. More like brothers—you know how guys can be?
Better friends to each other than us girls, I hate to say. David was actually
the one to get Ramona into that fancy school. I was the one who drafted the
letter to the headmistress. In fact, George might’ve been pushed out earlier if
it weren’t for David throwing him business here and there.”

“What kind of work?” Rogan asked.

“You know, a drug company matter, usually
litigation. Sometimes it was work for the patent department. One matter was a
construction project for NYU Medical Center. But it was always one little thing
or another, not enough to make George a rainmaker or anything. Not even enough
to save him from the ax, as it turned out.”

Margene had nearly drained her frothy whipped-cream
coffee drink and was starting to look at her watch. They thanked her for the
information and got her home number in case they needed to contact her
again.

“I didn’t mean to make him sound like a bad guy,”
she said. “Once I get on a roll, I’m hard to stop. And it’s always so much
easier for some reason to go straight to the imperfections. George is a very
nice man at heart.”

Her post-gossip pangs of guilt must have still been
kicking, because as they walked out onto Sixth Avenue, she pulled her cell phone
from her purse. “The week he asked me to draft Ramona’s recommendation letter
from Dr. Bolt, I wound up having to work eighty hours because of a deal that
exploded. To thank me, he gave me a weekend in the country. Got me a car service
both ways and everything. They had these cute little llama things. Look, isn’t
that sweet?”

Ellie took a look at the picture on the screen to
be polite. A Long Island gal like Margene thought she had spent the weekend with
llamas.

The two animals in the pictures were not llamas,
but alpacas. And in the background behind them stood a distinctive red barn with
a sloped green metal roof.

She could tell from Rogan’s expression that he’d
made the connection as well. When he’d seen the animals on Julia Whitmire’s
Facebook page in front of that same barn, he had thought they were goats.

“Oh, those
are
cute,”
Ellie said. “That was very nice of him to thank you so generously. Is that the
Langstons’ place?” If Ramona’s family owned alpacas at a country property, that
would certainly explain how Julia could have spent time there as well.

Margene nodded. “Up in Pound Ridge. Nothing
fancy—seemed almost like a cabin or something—but tons of land, and definitely
relaxing.”

Ellie’s phone buzzed. She let Rogan handle the
goodbyes and stepped to the curb to answer the call.

“Hatcher.”

“This is Detective Sean Doherty from the 19th
Precinct. I was just handed a potential stalking report from a walk-in up here.
I was about to write it off as a lost cause, but I found the victim’s name in an
incident report you filed in a homicide case you caught last Monday. Your vic,
Julia Whitmire, posted some kind of harassment on a blog belonging to Adrienne
Langston?”

“That’s correct. Are you telling me Adrienne
Langston finally filed a police report about those comments on her blog?”

“It’s more than comments. We’ve got a box full of
maggots courtesy of Mrs. Langston’s own personal evidence collection.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You have
what
?”

“Her doorman handed her a surprise delivery: an
Adidas shoe box nearly full of those nasty little fuckers. The fella in the
property room had stomach enough to forage through the pile. Guess there was
half a rancid chicken at the bottom. So is this for real or what?”

“If the maggots were real, then, yes, I’d say it’s
for real.”

“No need to get feisty. I’m asking whether this
should go to you as part of your homicide.”

Ellie hated that word. When Ellie heard
feisty
, she thought of tiny, yippy dogs who nipped at
ankles. She didn’t nip at ankles. She bit. And when she bit, she went for the
jugular.

But she
had
been a
little bitchy. “Yeah, refer the report to us. We’ll handle it out of our squad.
But can you send the box full of nastiness straight to the lab for
analysis?”

“Already done.”

“That was quick.”

“I’d tell you it’s because we’re here to protect
and serve, but we were just glad to get those suckers out of here.”

As she ended the call, Rogan clicked the Crown
Vic’s doors unlocked. “Do I even want to know why you were talking about
maggots?”

“I need to schmooze the crime lab. And we need to
talk to Adrienne Langston again.”