he keep an eye on what she was doing without her feeling that he was intruding on her privacy?
Kelly had allowed Jill to keep a computer in her bedroom. Tom knew that wasn’t a wise decision. It made it harder to keep her safe from online predators. He hadn’t planned on battling Jill to establish new and far stricter limits. She had enough on her plate to deal with. But after seeing those images, Tom’s concerns intensified.
How could he know what his daughter was doing behind closed doors?
Tom blew his whistle to signal practice was over. The girls, as usual, dashed for their gym bags stacked on the sidelines. They didn’t go for water bottles or snacks; they went for the first thing they always went for when practice ended.
They took out their cell phones.
Tom was gathering his belongings when he heard a loud shriek. He looked and saw some of the girls huddled together, talking anxiously. He saw more girls being drawn toward the huddle. They were all looking at Lauren Grass’s cell phone.
He saw them pass her phone around. The chatter become more fevered. The girls made a sudden break, collected their bags, and took off for the locker room. Jill came over to Tom, panic on her face.
“Dad, what is going on?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Do you know what that was all about?”
“No,” Tom said. “But I assume you’re going to tell me.”
Jill tilted her head back and looked up at the sky. Tom could tell she was trying to keep from crying. “Lauren said she friended somebody she didn’t know last night,” Jill said, her voice shaky.
“Friended, as in school?”
“No, friended as in Facebook.”
“Oh.”
Jill continued, “The friend request said, ‘Do you want to know a secret?’ She was curious. Normally, she doesn’t accept friend requests from people she doesn’t know.”
“And what was this secret?”
“They posted it on her wall during practice.”
“Wall?”
“Her Facebook wall,” Jill said with exasperation.
“Oh? And what did they post?”
Now the tears came. “That they know for a fact you’re sleeping with somebody on the team,” Jill sobbed. “And they know who it is, too.”
Chapter 24
“Do you want to know a secret?”
That was the message delivered in a mysterious friend request from somebody who called themselves Fidelius Charm.
Rebecca was good friends with Ellen Grass, Lauren’s mother. Lauren’s sister, Julie, and their father, David, were at home when Tom and Jill came over to get a look at the Facebook posts that had ignited a firestorm of controversy. Judging by the way David Grass glared at Tom upon opening the door to his house, he thought it doubtful the Grasses would have been so accommodating without Rebecca having smoothed the way. In contrast to David, Ellen Grass, dark haired, slim, and pretty, gave Tom a strained smile and a compassionate look more befitting a wake. The Grass family represented a microcosm of the opinions about Tom spreading around town.
“What kind of name is Fidelius Charm?” Tom asked Rebecca.
Rebecca did a quick Google search.
“Fidelius Charm,” Rebecca said, reading from Wikipedia, “is a spell from the Harry Potter books. It’s a charm used to keep secret information hidden. This information stays hidden until the Secret-Keeper chooses to reveal it.”
“Great,” Tom said with an exasperated sigh. “So we’re looking for someone who’s a Harry Potter fan. That should narrow down our list of suspects.”
“How many people do you think have seen the posts?” Rebecca asked Lauren.
Lauren took the mouse from Rebecca and, leaning over her shoulder, opened up her Facebook page.
“Fidelius Charm sent a friend request to every girl on the varsity soccer team with a Facebook account,” Lauren said. “Ten of my friends are also friends with Fidelius.”
“So how many saw the wall post?” asked Tom.
“The privacy setting on the content was set to ‘Friends of Friends,’ ” Lauren explained. “So any of my friends who aren’t friends with Fidelius Charm can see it.”
“How many friends do you have?” Rebecca asked.
“Eight hundred and fifty-five,” Lauren said.
“That’s pretty normal,” Jill said.
“Who has eight hundred and fifty-five friends?” Tom asked Jill.
Jill and Lauren looked at each other and shrugged.
“Tom, some of these kids are Facebook friends with their teachers.”
“As if the blog post wasn’t bad enough,” Tom said.
“There’s no easy way for us to know how many people saw the wall post,” Rebecca said.
In a small town like Shilo, a few could mean a lot.
Looking over Rebecca’s shoulder, Tom reread the wall post on Lauren’s Facebook page, doing his best to temper his anger and frustration.
“Can I see Fidelius Charm’s Facebook page?” Tom asked.
Lauren pulled it up. The page contained only the default Facebook settings, no pictures, nothing personalized, no way to know who had created the profile.
“Kids make bogus online profiles all the time,” Lauren said. “They bully other kids with them all the time. They’ve gotten pretty good at not getting caught, but don’t ask me how they do it.”
Jill looked at Tom with wide, panic-filled eyes. “Dad, what are you going to do?”
Tom thought. “I’m going to call Angie Didomenico right now,” he said. “And then I’m going to call the police.”
Angie scheduled an emergency meeting at her office for the next morning. Attending that meeting were Angie, Tom, Craig Powers, Principal Lester Osborne, and Officer Richard Fox. Tom was glad the Shilo police captain had granted his request to have any officer other than Sergeant Murphy assigned to investigate. Tom had expressed concern that Murphy would be biased, given his ongoing involvement with Kelly’s homicide investigation.
Tom started the meeting with a confession. He told the gathering about the text messages he had received the night before.
“And do you have pictures of this mystery girl?” Fox asked after hearing Tom’s account.
“No. I deleted them,” Tom said. “I would have saved them if I’d known about this next wave of attacks.”
“Mind if we check out your phone?”
“Of course not,” Tom said. “Mind if I get my work computer back?”
“It’s still with the state computer forensic guys.”
“Great. What about my home computer?”
“It’s with them as well.”
“No reason you shouldn’t have my phone, too,” Tom said, making no effort to conceal his displeasure.
“Thanks,” Fox said.
“I haven’t made any solicitation attempts,” Tom said. “It’s not like I’ve been chatting online with a teenage
