A "redheaded, pot smoking" one, ideed. Why would the writer of the note (whom we now know to be EB, by her own admission) feel the need to be so specific? Does the boss have more than 1 son? Again, we see far too much additional, irrelevent information being doled out, and whenever I see that, I want to know why. EB wants the reader to know exactly who she is talking about, and to insert the idea that this person has a connection to drugs. What isn't clear to me is WHY she wants the reader to know this info.
Since we now have the benefit of knowing that Zahra may well have been 'missing' for
much longer than her family wanted the world to know, it would seem likely that
the 'ransom note' was something that both parents(I use the term loosely)
took quite some time to think up and to discuss as it was being composed and written.
My guess is that they wanted all clues in the note to point investigators in any
direction
other than looking at Zahra's family.
'Pot smoking' would lead to looking at any possible drug connections to the landlords family.
'Red headed' might indeed lead one to think of the phrase 'red headed step child'
which might be an attempt to imply the landlord's child was not legitimate and thus
lead investigators to look into the landlord's love life etc.
Any wrong information in the note would be intended to make investigators
think that the writer was not someone local and thus not someone close to Zahra's family.
A ransom note itself might be intended to keep investigators thinking about finding
a child that was alive when she left the vicinity of Zahra's family and thus avoid the intense
searching for evidence of a murder in & around the home that is in fact going on
now (according to news reports I watched last night.)
In short, I think the note was an attempt to control & shift the focus of the investigation.