Chapter Twelve #2
“It occurred to me,” Olivia admitted.
“Maybe Zoe did want to leave him.”
“It is possible that their marriage was rocky, but she wouldn’t need to vanish to leave Dylan.
Zoe kept her own bank accounts and credit cards.
She could have knocked on my door at any hour, day or night, if she needed a place to stay.
For that matter, the apartment is in her name.
His credit was too shaky to add to the lease. She could have kicked him out.”
“Unless she was afraid of him.”
“That doesn’t feel like Zoe, but I guess you never know. I wouldn’t have expected Dylan to react to his wife disappearing by drowning himself in whiskey and throwing a glass tumbler either. I expected him to refuse to rest until she was found.”
“Like Sharp did when you were kidnapped.”
“Exactly.”
“You two aren’t married, and you hadn’t even been together that long when it happened.”
All reasons Dylan’s reaction was even more disappointing.
Olivia finished her croissant and wiped her fingers on a napkin. “Now what did you find?”
Nicki took a long pull from her straw. “I couldn’t sleep last night, so I signed onto Zoe’s socials and spent some time looking for stalker-type followers or anyone who set off my creeper alert.
The more success her podcast achieves, the more known she becomes, and the more people follow her.
Let’s face it: People can be weird.” She paused to take an enormous bite of her sandwich.
Cheese oozed out, and she licked it off her fingertips.
Impatient, Olivia prompted, “Did you find any?”
Nicki unlocked her phone. “Yeah. I mean, it’s a podcast about murder.
The content can be morbid. There’s always a few delulu commenters.
” She scrolled. “But there was this dude who sent her a direct message two weeks ago. She blocked him, but he re-sent it the following week under a slightly different name, but not different enough that she wouldn’t know it was him. ”
“What was the message?”
“‘Remember me? I know what you did. Payback is coming,’” Nicki read from her screen.
“The first message came from an account with the name Cryuncle25. The next one—which was identical—came from the handle Sparrow25. I doubted the repetition of the number or the exact duplication of phrasing was a coincidence, so I did a little recon. It’s definitely the same sender. ”
“Did the messages go to the podcast page or Zoe’s personal one?”
“The podcast. She doesn’t post on her personal account at all.
It’s set to private,” Nicki said. “I don’t think Zoe even saw the second message.
Since she handed over the social media postings for the podcast to me, she doesn’t bother checking her accounts very often.
She limits her involvement to skimming through the comments now and then, mostly when I ask her to engage.
Sometimes I can handle responding, but it’s important that exchanges with followers be authentic. ”
“She doesn’t like social media. She once told me that if it weren’t for the podcast, she wouldn’t even have any accounts,” Olivia said. “Can you get any more information about either of the accounts that messaged her?”
“Both Cryuncle25 and Sparrow25 are private profiles. You can only see the general information on their account: name, number of followers, number of accounts they follow, and number of posts. The account pictures are so dark, you can’t see facial features, just a silhouette of his profile.
” Nicki reached for her laptop and opened it. “Look here.”
Olivia moved her chair next to her niece and squinted at the thumbnail-size photo of Cryuncle25. She tapped the tiny image. “That looks like a beard, so let’s assume Cryuncle25 is a man for now. Could that be the man who tried to steal my purse? He had some facial hair.”
Nicki gave the screen a lopsided frown. “I can’t tell. Beards are pretty common.” She switched to Sparrow25’s profile.
“The pages look exactly the same, except for the username.”
Nicki continued. “Both of the accounts are new, created shortly before the messages were sent. Neither of them follow any accounts or have any followers.”
“Does that mean they’re bots?”
“Not necessarily, but they’re accounts that aren’t used. Bots are computer generated and typically follow a handful of other bots to lend an appearance of legitimacy. I suspect these profiles were created by a real person just to message Zoe.”
Olivia read the messages again. “It sounds like the sender knows her—or knew her in the past.”
“Yes.”
“Would the police be able to get any personal details on the profile creator?”
“I doubt it. The police might be able to get a warrant for the social media company, but the information they get will probably be either entirely fake or what they call an impostor or sock-puppet account, which is one created with some poor rando’s data without their knowledge or consent.”
“Like social media identify theft.”
“Kinda,” Nicki said.
“Zoe rented her storage facility over eight years ago. Now this person referenced knowing that she did something bad.”
“We need to dig into her past,” Nicki said.
“We? Don’t you have to work?”
Nicki waved away Olivia’s concern. “I can take a few days. I just finished a big campaign.”
“I don’t like you getting involved.” It was the opposite of what Olivia’s brother had asked of her. “I already dragged you into an attempted mugging.”
“And I’m not about to just accept some dude coming after me and me doing nothing about it.”
Olivia shook her head. “It’s not a good idea.”
Nicki sat back and crossed her arms. “I’m going to help find Zoe with or without you.”
Her face was locked in a stubborn expression Olivia suspected matched her own—far too well. The best Olivia could do was set parameters. “You have to do what I say.”
Nicki’s chin jutted. “Not if you give me some bullshit order.”
Olivia gritted her teeth. “Fine. Just be careful, OK? Try to be reasonable.”
“I will if you will,” Nicki said.
Olivia rubbed her forehead, where a headache threatened. “Let’s move on.”
Nicki finished her drink with a gurgling-straw noise. “Let’s.”
“You worked with Zoe and Wendy. What can you tell me about their relationship?”
Nicki pushed her cup away. “It felt like they were still feeling each other out. Zoe was clearly in charge. Sometimes it seemed like Wendy was resentful that Zoe wanted to review all of her work.”
“They argued?”
Nicki made a face. “Yes, but the conflicts were minor. For example, the three of us were working on sound bites to use on social media. Wendy had written a few that she thought would generate interest and expand our follower base on the various platforms. Do you know about keywords that prompt some social media platforms to censor a post?”
Olivia nodded. “Like saying kill or murder isn’t allowed.”
“Correct,” Nicki continued. “The way to get around these filters is to use different or made-up words or even emojis as an unofficial code. Like saying unalive instead of murder or using the eggplant emoji instead of sex. Everyone knows about the censorship and understands the code. Anyway, Wendy wrote copy to use in a trailer for the episodes devoted to your interview. Zoe didn’t like her promo text suggestions. ”
“That seems like a minor disagreement.” And yet it didn’t in a way that Olivia couldn’t pinpoint.
“It’s minor in the grand scheme of things, but Wendy wasn’t happy.
Their disagreement was about the basic trajectory of the podcast. Zoe wanted to stick to the facts and take the show in a more serious direction.
Wendy wanted to hype the posts like a reality TV show.
She’d added words and phrases that suggested there was a sexual element to your abduction.
Zoe said absolutely not. She refused to mislead her listeners. Wendy said sex sells.”
“That’s . . . I don’t have a word for it.” Olivia felt a little sick.
“Sensationalistic was the word Zoe used,” Nicki supplied. “She said she wouldn’t reduce her show to the podcast equivalent of a tabloid and that she refused to feed into anyone’s sick fantasies. If they were coming to her podcast for that, they’d be sorely disappointed.”
Olivia nodded. “Zoe promised me the interview would be authentic.”
“What happened to you was horrific. You almost died. There was no need to add extra horror.”
Olivia took a sip of her tea to settle her stomach. Zoe’s professionalism was the reason she’d agreed to the interview. Wendy’s attitude was the reason she’d been hesitant.
Nicki added, “I don’t have the text anymore because Zoe deleted it all—which pissed off Wendy even more.
But the gist of it is, an argument over some sound bites and trailers should have been minor, but it seemed as if Zoe and Wendy were disagreeing on the very foundation of the show.
Would it be hard-hitting journalism, or would the stories be heavily edited to create more marketable drama? ”
“At the end of the day, it’s Zoe’s show.”
Nicki nodded. “And she had no problem being in charge. But Wendy wasn’t happy. I don’t know the details of her contract, but she hinted that she couldn’t make her subscriber and sponsorship goals if Zoe wouldn’t let her market the show the way she wanted to.”
“She told me that Zoe wouldn’t let her see the financials, which implies a lack of trust on Zoe’s part,” Olivia said. “Of course, Zoe kept a lot of secrets, so she wasn’t willing to trust anyone completely—including her husband and friends.”
She told Nicki about the text message Wendy had received while Olivia was in her office. “I’m going to find out where she’s going today at four o’clock,” Olivia said. “Whoever she’s meeting, she didn’t want me to know about it.”
“So we need to know,” Nicki finished.
Olivia’s phone played a rumba, the ringtone assigned to her mother. She answered the call. “Hola, Mami.”
“Olivia, I’m sorry. I need your help again.”
“What is it?”