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.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Thank you, Nelson. Send him up.”
Ramona propped the apartment door open, the way she always did after telling the doorman to send someone upstairs. But then she thought better of it and walked out to the hallway. She wanted to see Casey as soon as possible.
When he’d finally been released from jail the previous evening, he had called her immediately. But she had to be with her mother. That awful box. Cleaning up the mess. Helping Mom pack for the trip to Long Island. By the time she finished, the curfew at Promises had passed, and Casey couldn’t leave.
The least she could do was wait in the hallway.
She was surprised by her own reaction when he stepped from the elevator. This had been the worst week of her life, worse than anything she ever could have imagined. Julia was gone. Her mother was being stalked. The police had falsely accused Casey of doing something he could never do.
But the minute she saw Casey in person, she felt herself smile for the first time since she’d heard about Julia’s death. It was a big smile, the kind that moved through your entire body. And before she knew it, she was hugging Casey. They had never hugged before. Sure, they’d done the hand-on-shoulder, peck on the cheek style of greeting, but now they were really holding on to each other. To her surprise, she found herself burrowing her face into the crook of his neck before quickly pulling away. She hoped he didn’t sense the guilt in her movement.
“I’m so glad they finally realized they were wrong about you,” she said, shepherding him into the apartment. “Are you doing okay back at Promises?”
“You know you’ve had a bad week when you’re ecstatic to be sleeping at a homeless shelter.”
“Maybe you can stay here for a while. I can talk to my dad tonight-”
He waved a hand. “I wasn’t dropping hints for a place to stay. Ms. Ri is trying to get me to see the bright side in all this. My lawyer thinks I might have a lawsuit against Julia’s dad and those security guards, but I don’t really know whether I want to do that or not. Julia’s mom feels so horrible she actually offered to let me stay at their house with her until I get my act together. Plus, the group that got me my lawyer is going to help me find a job. They even asked me about starting college classes. I feel like I might be able to turn this into something positive.”
“That’s great, Casey.”
“Not like Columbia or anything like that. Community college, but whatever. We’ll see what happens. I don’t want to get my hopes up.”
“Maybe you deserve to get your hopes up, after what you went through.”
She saw a hunger in his eyes, and then looked away. More guilt.
They were interrupted by the telephone. It was Nelson from downstairs. Detectives Hatcher and Rogan from the NYPD were here to see her mother.
“Send them up,” she said. “Speaking of last week, I think a couple of detectives owe you a serious apology.”
E llie was used to dealing with attitude. That was pretty much a typical day in the life of a cop-dealing with attitude. But sixteen-year-old girls had a certain brand of attitude that she found especially trying.
“My mother is out at the beach. She’s working on her book. And hiding from some nutjob who’s stalking her. But at least Casey’s here-now that he’s finally out of jail.”
Apparently Rogan wasn’t in the mood to sit through the tirade. “You done venting, Ramona?”
“No, not really. I told you that Julia would never threaten my mom. I told you that Casey was innocent. And I told you that I was scared for my mother. I practically begged you to listen. I trusted you.”
Ellie wanted to write the girl off as a spoiled brat, but that last remark-that the girl had trusted them, and they had failed her-hit too close to home to ignore. “Is that why your mother filed the police report with the 19th Precinct instead of with us?”
Ramona looked at her feet. “We didn’t think you’d listen. We thought someone else might take it more seriously.”
“We’re taking it seriously. I already cashed in some chips with the lab to get them to rush the analysis of the shoe box. But you’re right. We got waylaid there for a few days. We made some mistakes.”
Ramona started to argue, but Casey interrupted. “No, it’s okay. They did what they thought was right under the circumstances.”
“But that’s because-”
