'Excuse me?' Ali asked.
'Your blog,' Victor said. 'My assistant just called. She's been reading your blog on the Webreading all about it, as they say. You have to understand it's not just what you say to the cops that can be held against you, Ali. It's what you say anywhere to anyone. Fang? You really called Paul Grayson Fang?'
'He's been Fang in my blog for a long time,' Ali protested. 'Since long before somebody killed him.'
'Believe me, Detectives Sims and Taylor are going to love that. For right now, you're to say nothing more in your blog about this case, understood? For as long as this is an active investigation, commentary from you is off the table.'
'Yes,' Ali said. She felt stupid and chagrined. 'And about Sims and Taylor amp;'
'What about them?' Victor asked sharply.
'They've evidently been in touch with April,' Ali said. 'She told me about it earlier, when we were out on the terrace.'
'What did she say?'
'That they think Paul's killer escaped by leaving the car on the railroad tracks and then walking down the ties far enough so he was able to exit the tracks without being detected. They're speculating that he met up with an accomplice somewhere in the vicinity and they took off from there,' Ali said.
Victor expelled a long sigh. 'Which explains why they didn't find any footprints at the scene.'
Ali nodded. 'Yes,' she said.
'That would also mean that the killer or killers were still in the general area at the time Paul died. Which, according to the receipts from the gas station and the restaurant in Blythe, would have placed you in the area as well.'
Ali nodded again. She liked the way Victor immediately connected the dots even if she didn't like the dots he was connecting. 'Yes,' she said.
'My guess is they're already going after your phone records then,' Victor mused. 'Trying to see who all you've contacted recently, to see if they can get a handle on who you might have enlisted as an accomplice.'
'My phone records?' Ali demanded. 'Isn't that illegal?'
'It's illegal to listen in on your phone calls without a warrant, but it's perfectly legal to look at your billing information to see who you called and who called you, as well as where you were and what cell phone towers were in use when those calls occurred.'
'They can look at my phone records until they're blue in the face,' Ali said. 'They're not going to find anything. They're going to have to look elsewhere.'
'If they look elsewhere,' Victor responded.
'What do you mean, if?'
'Sims and Taylor have a high-profile case on their hands, one their bosses are going to want cleared in a hell of a hurry. They also have a likely suspectyou. I think there's a good chance that they'll work like crazy to make whatever evidence they have fit what they think happened, rather than looking very hard for what else might have happened or who else might have been involved.'
'What other suspects are there?' Ali asked.
'You tell me,' Victor returned. 'April would have to be dumb as a stump to knock Paul Grayson off without knowing in advance that she was going to inherit.'
'What about April's mother?' Ali asked.
'Ms. Ragsdale may bear looking into,' Victor conceded.
'I think so, too,' Helga agreed. 'That woman is a piece of work. The very idea of our agreeing to a postmortem divorce is ridiculous.'
A few minutes later, Victor dropped Ali off at her hotel. A glance at her watch told her that, depending on traffic, her mother would probably be arriving within the next hour or so. She went upstairs to await Edie's arrival. While Ali waited, she logged on and found her in-box once again brimming with messages. Before she read any of them, however, she wrote a post of her own.
CUTLOOSEBLOG.COM
Ali's first instinct was to begin her post with the words 'On the advice of my attorney amp;' but then she remembered what Victor had said: 'Anything you say can and will be held against you.' So she went for something much less descriptive and also, to her way of thinking, much less real.
For the time being commentary from Babe will be suspended due to my involvement in a complex personal matter. As time allows, I will continue to post appropriate or interesting comments from readers. In the meantime, thank you for your loyalty and your interest.
When she began reading through the e-mails, most of them had to do with the posting from Phyllis in Knoxville. Some correspondents seemed to agree that Phyllis had the right idea.
ANNA
LESLIE IN IOWA
Surprised by the number of people offering their condolences, Ali replied to all of them without necessarily posting them. Not all of the notes were kind, however.
That one wasn't signed and didn't merit a response.
VELMA T IN LAGUNA
Ali wanted to tell Velma that she had all the legal assistance she could handle about then. She had no doubt that Velma's nephew was probably far more affordable than the hulking Victor Angeleri. But she was paying the man too much to disregard his advice. She replied to Velma with a carefully noncommittal thank-you.
BABE
The next e-mail stunned her.
SHEILA ROSENBURG
