The Skeleton Haunts a House (20 page)

S
id wasn't kidding about holding his calls. He didn't come down for dinner or to watch TV, and when I yelled good night on my way to bed, he was still typing as he yelled back. I'd intended to check on him in the morning, but I found a text on my phone that said,
I may have something. Do NOT interrupt.

I followed his instructions, and didn't text once all day. But when I got home after work and he was still at it, I had to resort to folding laundry to keep myself distracted. By the time dinner was over, I was thinking I'd need a sleeping pill or a strawberry margarita to keep from bugging him. Then, as I was grading papers, I heard loud music and bony pounding from the attic.

“What is that?” Mom said.

“I believe that's ‘Shut Up and Dance'! Sid's having a dance party!”

“That's nice,” she said doubtfully.

“It's more than nice. It means he found something!”
Leaving my papers where they were, I zoomed up the stairs and into the attic, where I joined in on general principles. As impatient as I was to find out what he'd learned, I kept on dancing through the end of that song, “Bang Your Drum,” and “What the Hell?” before reaching over to turn off the music blaring from his computer.

“Please tell me this means you found something.”

“Georgia, I will never doubt Lance again. Kendall Fitzroy was not what she appeared to be.” He paused dramatically, waiting for a breathless prompt from me.

Considering how long and hard he'd been working, I was willing to oblige. “Really?”

“Big time, but it wasn't easy to find.”

I took this to mean that he was going to go through the whole investigative process before spilling the goods, so I sat down and got comfortable.

He said, “I started with Twitter, thinking that people can be looser in their tweets, but that didn't help. Kendall was more a re-tweeter than a tweeter.”

“Ms. Rad said she wasn't much for original thinking.”

“So then to Facebook, where I went through hundreds of posts. Maybe thousands.” He held up his fingers. “Are my finger bones shorter? They feel shorter.”

“They look fine.”

He looked at them as if doubting my veracity, then continued. “Mostly it was the stuff everybody puts on Facebook. What she ate, the movies she saw, the clothes she wore, the work she had to do, how bored she was. Which was nothing to how bored I was.”

“I can only imagine.”

“But I persevered, and a couple of patterns began to emerge.” Again he paused to look at me significantly.

“You're only allowed one dramatic pause per conversation.”

“Fair enough. The first pattern was while she was still at PHS, when she and a lot of her friends made references to online bullying. A couple of kids mentioned trolls spamming them with things—making fun of their weight, their clothes, their grades. All the usual attacks. There was a lot of it going on, apparently.”

“Who was doing it?”

“Nobody seemed to know, and there was considerable discussion of who it could be. Lots of names were bandied about, including Linda's.”

“Linda was a cyberbully?”

“Bear with me a while longer.”

“Do I have a choice?”

“No. So the bullying was the first pattern. I know trolling is common, so I wasn't sure it meant anything until I saw the second pattern.”

“Which was?”

“Several times, Kendall was discussing something and would then make reference to taking it offline or having private time.”

“So there was nothing online?”

“That was what I thought at first, but then I had an idea. Maybe Kendall was part of a secret Facebook group.”

“You can do that?”

“Groups can be public, private, or secret,” he said loftily. “But while Kendall's settings allow me to see her public and private groups, I couldn't see her secret groups. I had to hack her account.”

“Since when do you know how to hack Facebook accounts?”

“Since about three in the morning,” he said with a totally fake yawn. “It turns out that there are quite a few ways to hack an account, but the easiest is to guess the user's password.”

“How?”

“Kendall created that account when she was a young
teenager, and most young teenagers aren't overly sophisticated when they choose their passwords. A lot go with ‘12345' or ‘password' or ‘qwerty,' because they think those are clever. Which they were the first time somebody came up with them, back in the dawn of time. If not one of those, they pick an obvious piece of personal information, like a pet's name or their middle name or their favorite band. Since I'd gone through years of Facebook posts, I knew all that stuff about Kendall. I was prepared to keep trying as long as I had to, but as it turned out, it was her cat's name. Which was Fluffy.”

“Of course it was.”

“Once I was in her account, it was easy to find the secret group. It was called the Devil's Divas, and had exactly four members.”

“Four? Would the other three be Kendall's BFFs?”

He tapped his nasal cavity. “On the nose. Alexis, Nadine, and Vanessa.”

“So what was the group for?”

“Nothing good. While I hate to speak ill of the dead—” He stopped. “Hey, you speak ill of me all the time! Why don't I get a pass?”

“You can either stay in a grave and get a pass, or hang with me and take your chances.”

“Okay, I can live with that. Well, not technically live—”

“Focus, Sid.”

“Focusing. Now I know why Lance didn't like Kendall.”

“Why?”

“Because she was a bully. An internet troll. The Devil's Divas existed solely to torment people. And they weren't content to just mock people behind their backs. No, they'd plan and carry out elaborate harassment campaigns. Once they picked a target, they were merciless. They made fun of other girls' weight and clothes and looks. They told a gay guy he ought to kill himself because he was an abomination.
They spread rumors that a girl's boyfriend had screwed around on her, and that somebody else was sleeping with a teacher to get good grades. They posted screenshots and links. They doxxed people. Alexis seemed to be the real strategist, but they all participated eagerly and often.”

“Are you serious?”

“Dead serious, if you'll pardon the expression. And they didn't limit themselves to PHS students. Neighbors, kids they met at softball tournaments, fellow parishioners from their churches. Even random people. If they could find you on Facebook, you were a potential target.”

“How did they get away with that?”

“By hiding their identities. Vanessa is good with computers, and guided them through creating multiple Facebook and Twitter accounts purely for the sake of bullying.”

“Those ossifying pieces of sacrum!”

“And they didn't even believe in half of their own insults. Telling that gay guy he was an abomination? Nadine is bi, and the others don't care. Anti-Semitic screeds? Vanessa is Jewish. They just like torturing people. If it was somebody they saw every day, like another PHS student, they'd watch to see if they were getting a good reaction. No reaction, and they'd move on to somebody else, but if a victim started to look sad or cried in class for no reason, they'd double down. One of their victims ended up in the hospital, either from the stress or just a coincidence, and they all posted ‘LOL LOL LOL.' Laughing out loud! It's a game to them, Georgia. Literally. They keep score! Who hurts the most people, who hurts them the worst.” He shuddered noisily.

I didn't blame him. I felt sick to my stomach. “This is vile. At least when you bully somebody in person, people recognize you as a bully. But when you make up an online identity and bully without even telling people who you are, it's that much worse. I bet doing it in secret added to their kicks.”

“You know that happens all the time online,” Sid pointed out.

“That doesn't make it any better.”

“So what do you think? Did I find a juicy murder motive or what?”

“I hate to say this, but maybe not.”

“Georgia, she was a part of a commando team of Internet bullies! The only mystery is why nobody went after her before.”

“Did any of their victims realize who was behind the fake e-mail addresses? Were any of them at McHades Hall the night of the murder?”

“Well . . .”

“Sid?”

“Okay, I started the dance party too soon. I read enough of the posts to see what the Divas were up to, and got excited. I haven't started finding the victims yet. Back to work!”

“Why don't you take a break, Sid? You've been amazing to find all this stuff out. Come down and watch some TV or read.”

“No, thanks,” he said. “The premature dancing was enough of a break for me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Hey, I'm a researching machine. You go back to doing what you were doing.”

“Okay, but yell if you need me.”

I didn't really expect to see Sid for the rest of the evening, but about an hour later, I got a text:

Can you come to the attic? I need to talk to you.

This time I cleared up my papers before heading up. “Is it time for another dance?” I sat down on the couch, expecting him to launch into his latest discovery. Instead he sat down next to me and fiddled, popping his fingers off and reattaching them. “What's wrong?”

“I've gone through about six months of posts from the Divas—and if we get a chance tomorrow, I want a skull bath. Reading that stuff makes me feel dirty.”

Sid didn't bathe regularly, for obvious reasons, but he did like a good wipe with hydrogen peroxide every once in a while to keep himself white and clean. I got the job of swabbing out the inside of his skull.

“We can do that. So what did you pull out of the muck?”

“I found a bullying victim who was at McHades that night.”

“Great! Who was it?”

“It's Madison, Georgia. The Divas went after Madison.”

“S
id, tell me you don't think Madison killed Kendall Fitzroy!”

“Of course not! I'm just worried that other people might think she did. And by other people, I mean the cops.”

“Who's going to tell the cops?”

“You might have to if the bullying turns out to have something to do with the murder.”

“We'll cross that bridge when we come to it,” I said. “What did those pieces of sacrum say about her anyway?”

“I'm not entirely sure. It was Kendall who was going after her, and she mostly talked about her attempts failing. Some of the others offered to join in, but Kendall said it wasn't worth it. She really didn't post much these past few months. As far as I can tell, Madison was one of her last victims.”

“That's odd. I wonder why.” Before we could discuss it further, we heard Madison and Byron coming upstairs, heading for bed. “I'm kind of concerned Madison didn't tell me about this. I think we need a mother-daughter talk.”

“I'm sorry, Georgia,” Sid said, his bones loosening. “It never occurred to me that Madison would be brought into this.”

“I asked you to dig into Kendall, and Madison was already involved because she was at McHades during the murder. This is just another complication, that's all. I'll go talk to her and let you know what I find out.”

“Give her a hug from me.”

*   *   *

M
adison was already wearing the oversized T-shirt she slept in when I tapped at her door.

“I was going to come kiss you good night,” she said.

“I wanted to talk to you about something first, if you're not too tired.”

“Sure.” She climbed onto her bed, pushed Byron to one side, and patted the other side for me to sit next to her.

“Madison, you know I've stopped monitoring your online stuff—e-mail and Facebook and all. I trust you to tell me if anything bad is going on.”

“Geez, has there been another incident of a girl running off to meet a hot guy from online, only to find out it's some gross perv instead? Mom, I know better than that.”

“No, not perverts. I mean, of course I'm glad you're wary of things like that, but I was talking about bullying.”

“What about it?”

“I know there's a lot of online bullying going on, and it can be really upsetting.”

“Well, yeah. Some of my friends have gone through it.”

“Not you?”

“Why are you asking?”

“Okay, first let me say that I have not been snooping, but Sid—”

“Sid's been snooping?”

“No. Well, yes, but not snooping into your stuff. At least not on purpose.” I took a deep breath. “Have you had problems with online bullying?”

“Me? No.”

“No? You're sure?”

“No—wait, there was one time. Back around December or January, I got some Facebook messages that said the only reason I'd gotten that solo in the Christmas concert was because I'd given Coach Q a . . . Because I'd orally pleasured him.”

“Madison! Why didn't you tell me?”

“It wasn't that big a deal, Mom. I blocked the account, and reported the abuse to Facebook, and that was it. I did ask Samantha if she'd heard any rumors like that around school, but she hadn't, so I forgot all about it. How did Sid find out?”

“He's been seeing what he can find out about Kendall, and it looks like she was your Internet bully. In fact, she and those three girls from the haunt had special accounts that they used to harass people anonymously.”

“Seriously? What a—! Can I swear?”

“You have special dispensation.” Not that I believed Madison never used profanity, but we had an agreement that she wouldn't do so in front of me, Deborah, or my parents. Her fluency with the vernacular both impressed me and confirmed that she did a fair amount of cursing when I wasn't within earshot. “Feel better?”

“Much better, thank you.”

“Good. Now I don't want to sound as if I'm blaming the victim, but do you have any idea why Kendall targeted you?”

“Not a clue. I only met her the one time after the choral ensemble's holiday show. She said she thought I did a terrific job on the solo, I thanked her, and that was it.”

“What about her sister?”

“Bianca and I have never had any problems. Except . . .”

“Except what?”

“Bianca tried out for that solo, too, and Samantha heard her telling somebody that she was sure she was going to get it.”

“Do you think Bianca blamed you?”

“Why would she? Coach Q made the call. And she never said anything to me about being mad about it.”

“Kendall could have been mad, even if her sister wasn't. Like that time you invited Julie Hu to your birthday party, but when she had a much bigger party two weeks later, she didn't invite you. You didn't care, but I was outraged.”

“Mom, tell me you're not still mad about that. I was six. Let it go.”

“I'm over it now. Mostly. But the point is that sometimes people get angry on a loved one's behalf, whether or not the loved one does.”

“But you didn't do anything to Julie. Did you?”

“No, of course not. But Kendall was already an experienced Internet bully, so maybe she was glad to have a fresh target. Good for you for not letting her get to you.”

“I just wish I'd known it was her so I could have told people about her. At least I can spread the word about those other three losers. Samantha said the year before last, she got a lot of online garbage making fun of her being in a wheelchair and saying her mother should have aborted her instead of giving birth to a cripple. A cripple! Who even uses that word anymore? Anyway, I'm going to tell everybody I know.”

“You can't, Madison, not yet anyway.”

“Why not? I know it's not cool to dump on dead people, but those other three need to be taken down.”

“I know, but Kendall being a bully may have something to do with her murder.”

“You think one of the people she harassed retaliated?”

“It's a theory, anyway. But while it looks as if she trolled on a lot of people, the only one we've found who was in
McHades Hall the night of her murder is you.” I held up a hand. “Not that we suspected you for a millisecond, of course.”

“If I'd known for sure that she was the one to go after Samantha, I might have. Whoever did kill her was probably justified.”

I didn't say anything, and after a second, Madison looked chastened.

“Wow, what am I saying? Of course she didn't deserve to be murdered. Smacked around, maybe, but not murdered. Can you forget I said that?”

“Said what?”

She grinned. “Seriously, I can't believe I even thought that, let alone said it out loud.”

“That's what happens when bullies attack people. They turn everybody mean.” I stopped. “That sounded amazingly pompous.”

“You're a mother. You're allowed to be pompous now and then.”

“Thanks so much. I will now pompously remind you to get some sleep.”

“Don't overdo it.”

I started for the door, but Madison said, “Hey, I had a thought. I could talk to some of the other people at McHades Hall, see if any of them had problems with Internet bullies.”

“No way. The killer isn't likely to admit it, is he or she? And if he hears you asking questions about Internet bullying . . . No, you are not going to do that.”

“I'll be careful.”

“That's right. And nothing could be more careful than not bringing up the subject. At all. Ever.”

“Then how are you going to find the killer?”

“We'll think of something. Sid's on the job, and I am too pompous to fail!”