Page 81 of Desperate Justice
And I’m falling apart. Get a grip, Allison.
“What do we do?” She twisted her hands together. “I don’t know what to do, what to think.”
“We start at the beginning, with Diana’s life.” Rafe set down the pen. “Let’s check her social media. Do you know anything about it?”
She told him about all of Di’s social media accounts. Now she wished she’d paid closer attention to her sister’s postings.
Allison scrolled through her phone, searching for Diana’s accounts. But when she tried to pull up each one, she received a message saying the account didn’t exist. Even her Jump ONit video account, so popular with twentysomethings who followed Di, had been deleted.
This was as troubling as the bloody veil. Diana thrived on social media attention and considered herself somewhat of an influencer. Social media helped her with exposure for her modeling career, and to get jobs.
She showed Rafe her phone and the message and told him about her sister thriving on attention. He frowned. “Does she have other accounts that you might not know of, a secret social media account?”
Allison felt a flare of hope. “Her finstagram! Fake Instagram she shares with family and close friends.”
Allison checked the account and her heart sank. Only three photos remained on the account. One was a photo of a forest with Diana wearing jeans, a hoodie and a backpack, an older photo of Diana in a pink dress and another of their childhood home. She scrutinized the photos, looking for clues.
“It’s still there, but she’s deleted a lot of content. Including the vid of us at the first stop on the Teddy Bear Run, and the vid of her trying on the veil.”
As Rafe took her phone and scrolled through the photos, she buried her head into her hands. “I don’t understand. Why would she do this? Did someone threaten her?”
He kept looking at the photos. “How many photos did she have on this particular account and what kind?”
“Not sure.” Allison searched her memory. Too often she’d dismissed her sister’s fake Instagram account with the excuse she’d been busy with work. In truth, she thought the social media account frivolous and vain.
“I only checked it maybe a couple of times a month. Maybe she had about fifty photos? Most of them had to do with her moods.”
“Like a journal?”
“Yeah.” Allison rubbed her temple. “It was always about Di, and how happy she’d be if she got a good modeling job, or her complaining about her boyfriends, general stuff like that. Her relationships, or if she gained a pound or two. Honestly, I found it a little self-serving and whining, so I rarely went on there.”
Rafe tapped the phone. “Any reason you can think why she’d delete all the photos except these three?”
More confused, she shook her head. “I mean, these aren’t anything special. That’s the house where we grew up in upstate New York before we moved to South Florida, the dress, that’s an ordinary pink dress she always liked before she outgrew it, and the forest...”
“Anything special about the forest?”
“Not really, I mean, it was a modeling job for backpacks, one of her first magazine shoots. She wasn’t even happy about it because Di wasn’t into the outdoors. Is there a reason why she left these photos there? Maybe she was in a hurry to delete everything?”
He set down the phone. “Allison, people usually don’t delete an extensive social media footprint unless they’re trying to hide from the public. It’s clear Diana is doing the same. Is there another reason why Diana didn’t want to elope with Paul? A reason why she was adamant about having the wedding at his uncle’s house, other than a huge society affair?”
“What are you getting at?”
His gaze remained calm and steady, but her heart began hammering hard. She knew what he thought, even before he told her.
“Diana could have been involved in smuggling drugs.”
“She’s innocent! Diana would never do that! She may be naive at times, but she’s not a criminal.”
“I told you before, she’s under investigation because it’s suspicious all the places she frequents were raided and fentanyl was found.”
Her temper flared. “What are you thinking, Rafe? You never liked my sister from the moment you met her. You only wanted to use her in the same way you used me! You slapped a label on her she doesn’t deserve.”
“In investigations, these kind of questions are typical. You look for the victim’s past and present, to see if they are involved in any kind of criminal activity.”
To his credit, Rafe didn’t rise to the bait and argue back. He remained calm and steady, a sharp contrast to the feelings raging inside her.
She glared at him. How could he be so calm when her entire world was shattering?
