Page 6 of The Note

She showed May photographs of the three-bedroom high-rise condo that her father had insisted on helping her with after she had been looking at a fixer-upper in a neighborhood he didn’t approve of. May also got to hear all about the lavish wedding plans Kelsey was making with her fiancé, who was in the process of opening his own restaurant. Kelsey assumed William Ellis would be paying for all of that too.

When the server asked if they were interested in dessert or coffee, May passed, saying she had an early start the next day, even though the depos weren’t resuming until ten in the morning. Kelsey pleaded with her to stay longer, but May had already concluded that she and Kelsey had become different people since they’d last seen each other. As much fun as they used to have together, May should have known that Kelsey would eventually inhabit a different universe, given all of the advantages she enjoyed. Life was too short to spend it with strangers.

The next morning, May woke up to an email from Kelsey, something likeHad the best time tonight. Two years, and it felt like we were neveraway from each other. Hope this case keeps you coming back to Boston!

May’s response was equally effusive but ended with an abruptRunning into depos now!

Go get ’em!

May returned five additional times to Boston before she finally left the firm, and never once told Kelsey.

The wedding invitation—one of hundreds, May presumed—arrived the same day she interviewed at the DA’s Office. The card stock was heavy.Mr. and Mrs. William Ellis request the pleasure of your company at the marriage of his daughter Kelsey Weston to Lucas Benjamin Freedman.

Interesting,May had thought. Another Mrs. William Ellis—making her the third. The first was Kelsey’s mother, who had died of ovarian cancer when Kelsey was only seven years old. The second was Kelsey’s stepmother, Jeanie, a widow whom Kelsey’s father had married when Kelsey was nine. By the time May met the family, Kelsey referred to the couple as “Mom and Dad” and to Jeanie’s son, Nate, as her “brother.” And yet during Kelsey’s freshman year in college, her father, armed with an ironclad prenup, filed for divorce. And once the divorce was final, he stopped speaking to both Jeanie and Nate altogether, destroying Kelsey’s sense of family for a second time.

At the time, Kelsey and Nate were shocked, buttheir parents insisted it was simply time to “move on.” When Jeanie was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s nearly a decade later, Kelsey wondered if her father might have picked up on some early signs of her illness. But if May had to guess, the split had something to do with money, because that’s how William Ellis rolled.My dad says money is power.She first heard Kelsey say that when she was only fourteen years old.It may not buy you happiness but it can buy almost everything else.

Rubbing the thick invitation stock between her fingertips, May pulled up Kelsey’s Facebook page, curious to see pictures of her fiancé. Luke Freedman. He had dark spiky hair and a perfect layer of face stubble. In one of the shots, he stood in a commercial kitchen, spooning a pea green sauce gingerly onto a perfect piece of fish. The caption read “Chef Hottie.”

The next post contained pictures from a Halloween party. Kelsey wore prison stripes, a pair of handcuffs dangling from one wrist. May recognized Kelsey’s brother as the stern-faced police officer posing beside her, despite the fake mustache and dark aviator sunglasses. The caption read, “One of these outfits is more convincing than the other.”

Attending the wedding would inevitably mean seeing Nathan Thorne, aka Nate—who, in addition to being Kelsey’s stepbrother, had also beenMay’s boyfriend for two years. She checked theregretsbox on the RSVP card, scribbling a note that she would be starting a new job and wouldn’t be able to make the trip. As the wedding date approached, she started to feel guilty and got the registry information from Lauren, but the only items within her budget felt lame. She only realized when she got a thank-you note from Kelsey that Lauren had added May’s name to the martini glasses she’d purchased.

The pace of their interactions on social media or by text slowly dwindled until there was practical silence. Then, five years ago, she was in the middle of running the felony arraignment docket when Lauren texted her.Tragic news today. I thought you’d want to know.The embedded link led to an article inThe Boston Globe.Lucas Benjamin Freedman, chef and owner of Bistro LB, had been fatally shot while making a bank deposit run. Police were investigating.

What do you do when someone you’re not close to anymore loses her husband to violence? A text or an email felt at once both too impersonal and too invasive.

She asked Lauren for Kelsey’s mailing address, but she couldn’t send Kelsey one of those tacky two-dollar cards from the drugstore. She’d go to thegoodcard store once she had a chance. In the meantime, she checked the news online every day for updates on the murder investigation.Still no eyewitnesses, but police were reviewing surveillance footage from the neighborhood. They were looking into the facts surrounding a restaurant employee’s recent termination. A business loan that was overdue. And the victim’s pending divorce from his estranged wife, Kelsey.

Interesting.

By the end of the week, Luke Freedman’s murder made its way to the top threads of the leading true-crime message boards, with plenty of posters agreeing that the wife with the notorious real-estate-mogul father was a huge red flag. More than a few comments mentioned the rumors that William Ellis had inherited his father’s financial ties to Whitey Bulger. The soon-to-be-ex-wife and her daddy must have hired a hit man, they insisted.

Why must it have been a murder for hire? Because at the time Luke was gunned down on his way to the bank after closing his restaurant, Kelsey had an ironclad alibi. Her father was receiving something called the Golden Plate Award at the International Achievement Summit, and when the event photographer gathered all the recipients for a group photo at the end of the evening, his dutiful daughter was at her father’s side. To the crime-obsessed groupies who gathered online to crack cases from their living rooms, the evidence that should have exculpated Kelsey was a little “too convenient.” In the online forums where new information was twisted and moldedto conform to the preexisting narrative, Kelsey and her father had “obviously” timed the assassination to coincide with their joint appearance at a crowded event.

May had gone down all the rabbit holes, poring over every available detail and forcing herself to examine it with a lawyer’s eye rather than from the perspective of a former best friend. The undeniable fact was that Kelsey had no motive to kill Luke. Kelsey and Luke were getting divorced, but he had been the one to insist on signing a prenup to prove to Kelsey that he had no interest in her father’s money.

According to Luke’s friends and family, it was actually his desirenotto take money from his wife’s family that ultimately drove the two apart. He found his father-in-law’s involvement in Kelsey’s life overbearing. William Ellis was even trying to interfere in Luke’s restaurant, insisting it would be more “elevated” if it were located in one of his prestige properties, and offering to pay off his loans if he’d only follow his father-in-law’s advice. Luke told his friends he felt as if he had married into an entire family—“Empire Ellis,” as he derisively called it.

Luke wanted to be with a woman willing to define him and their eventual children as her primary family, instead of feeling like he was simply a plus-one. Nevertheless, a bunch of strangers on the internet felt free to claim without any factualsupport that Luke’s selfish, greedy wife must have killed him to keep him from taking her money. These anonymous strangers psychoanalyzed Kelsey as if they had insider knowledge of what made her tick. It felt like an epic work of crowdsourced fan fiction about a narcissistic, spoiled rich girl driven to murder by her husband’s rejection. But May, unlike these strangers, really did know Kelsey at her core. She knew that her eyes still watered every time she heard James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain,” because her mother used to call it “the song that makes Mommy cry.” That she decided when she was in the ninth grade that she wanted to have children early so she could know them as long as possible. That she spent the entire year gathering the perfect holiday presents for everyone she loved. That she gave the best hugs.

Kelsey could be a little tone-deaf about how entitled she was, but she wasn’t a killer. May read everything she could about Luke’s murder, wondering if she might even spot a clue that could crack the case. May’s personal theory was that it was a robbery gone wrong, but she had no way to prove it.

When she finally made it to the good card store, she selected the most elegant sympathy card on the rack, knowing it didn’t capture the message she wanted to convey:Sorry-your-soon-to-be-ex-was-murdered-and-no-I-don’t-think-you-killed-him-but-other-people-definitely-do.

While waiting in line to pay, she checked Kelsey’s Facebook page to see if she had posted any updates, but her account was deleted. So was her Instagram. Something about those words on May’s screen—this account does not exist—felt incriminating and confessional. The law referred to it as consciousness of guilt. What if May was missing something? She wasn’t privy to everything the police knew. Kelsey’s father had always seemed a little shady, keeping a private investigator on retainer, for example, to gather compromising information about his business rivals. And the last time she’d seen her old friend, she was happily following in his footsteps at Ellis, Inc.

And then there was also the very real possibility that inviting Kelsey back into her life would mean being around Nate at some point, too. As close as May had once been to Kelsey, being part of her life could be a major commitment. Kelsey checked in constantly on the people she loved. It came naturally to her to follow up on every event a friend may have mentioned to her in passing. Waking up to a Kelseygood luck with xyz todaymessage was a reminder that she was in your corner 24/7, despite the physical distance. But May remembered the way she had felt obliged to do the same, even when it felt like work. Suddenly, the simplest act of sending condolences felt like the opening of floodgates she hadn’t even been aware of. Plus, she was an assistant district attorney now. How wouldit look if she was caught on a wiretap talking to a murder suspect?

May was handing the card to the cashier when she lied and said she’d forgotten her wallet. She decided to take a wait-and-see approach before reaching out. Once the police made an arrest—that would be better.

But days passed and then weeks with no arrest. And meanwhile, the internet kept piling on.

It has to be the wife.

It always is.

Just look at her. Is it just me or does she have crazy eyes?

---