The next day Pip was doing one final read-through of her information request to the Connecticut State Police. Her room was sweltering even with the window open, the sun trapped and sulking in there with her.
She heard distant knocking downstairs as she pressed send on the email. The click that began a wait of at least twenty working days. She hated waiting.
“Pips” came her dad’s shout from downstairs. “Someone’s here for you.”
Pip rushed down the stairs, taking the turn as a sock-skid across the oak. She stopped in her tracks when she saw Ravi Singh outside the front door. He was being talked at enthusiastically by her dad. Heat rushed to her face.
“Um, hi,” Pip said, walking toward them. Barney barged past with a tapping of claws and got there first, launching his muzzle into Ravi’s groin.
“No, Barney, down!” Pip shouted, rushing forward. “Sorry, he’s a bit friendly.”
“That’s no way to talk about your father,” her dad said.
Pip raised her eyebrows at him.
“Got it, got it,” he said, walking away and into the kitchen.
Ravi bent down to pet Barney, whose tail whipped up a breeze around Pip’s ankles.
“How do you know where I live?” Pip asked.
“I asked at the real estate office your mom works at,” he said, straightening. Pip noticed him looking down at her, and though his lips twitched trying to contain it, he broke into a smile. That’s when she remembered what she was wearing: denim overalls and a white T-shirt with the words TALK NERDY TO ME emblazoned across the chest.
“So, um, what brings you here?” she said. Her stomach lurched, and only then did she realize she was nervous.
“I…I’m here because…I wanted to say sorry.” He looked at her with his big downturned eyes, his brows bunching over them. “I got angry and said some things I shouldn’t have. I don’t really think you’re just some kid. Sorry.”
“It’s OK,” Pip said. “I’m sorry too. I didn’t mean to step in and fight your battles for you. I just wanted to help, wanted her to know what she did wasn’t OK. But sometimes my mouth starts saying words without checking with my brain first.”
“I kind of liked feisty Pip.”
“Oh, really? Well, you should see me at a pop quiz. So…are we OK?”
“We’re OK.” He smiled and looked down at the dog again. “Me and your human are OK.”
“We were actually just about to head out on a walk; do you want to come with?”
“Yeah, sure,” he said, ruffling Barney’s ears. “How could I say no to that handsome face?”
Pip almost said, Oh please, you’ll make me blush, but she bit it back.
“OK, I’ll just grab my shoes. Barney, stay.”
Pip scooted into the kitchen. The back door was open, and she could see her parents pottering around the flowers, and Josh, of course, playing with his soccer ball.
“I’m taking Barns, see you in a bit,” she called outside, and her mom waved a gardening-gloved hand in acknowledgment.
Pip slipped on her not-allowed-to-be-left-in-the-kitchen sneakers, which she’d left in the kitchen, and grabbed the leash.
“Right, let’s go,” she said, clipping the leash to Barney’s collar and shutting the front door behind them.
At the end of the driveway, they crossed the road and headed into the stippled shade of the woods opposite. Pip let Barney off, and he was gone in a golden flash.
“I always wanted a dog.” Ravi grinned as Barney circled back to hurry them on. He paused, his jaw moving as he chewed on some silent thought. “Sal was allergic, though, that’s why we never…”
“Oh.” Pip wasn’t quite sure what else to say.
“There’s this dog at the café I work at, the owner’s dog. A slobbery Great Dane called Peanut. I sometimes accidentally drop leftovers for her. Don’t tell.”
“I encourage accidental droppage,” she said. “What café do you work at?”
“The Whaler, over in Stamford. It’s not what I want to do forever. Especially since I have to take the train. Just saving up so I can get myself as far away from Fairview as I can.”
Pip felt an unutterable sadness for him rising up her throat.
“What do you want to do forever?”
He shrugged. “I used to want to be a lawyer.”
“That’s what my dad does. I think you could be great at that,” she said, nudging him.
“Hmm, not when the only grades I got spell ‘DUUUDDEE.’ ”
He’d said it like a joke, but she knew it wasn’t. They both knew how awful school had been for Ravi after Andie and Sal died. Pip had heard about the worst of the bullying. His locker painted in red dripping letters: “Like Brother, Like Brother.” And that snowy morning when eight older boys had pinned him down and upturned four full trash cans over his head.
That was when, with the clarity of cold slush pooling in her stomach, Pip realized where they were.
“Oh my god,” she gasped, covering her face with her hands. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t even think. I completely forgot these are the woods where they found Sal—”
“That’s OK.” He cut her off. “Really. You can’t help that these happen to be the woods outside your house. Plus, there’s nowhere in Fairview that doesn’t remind me of him.”
Barney dropped a stick at Ravi’s feet, and Ravi raised his arm in mock-throws, sending the dog backward and forward and back, until he finally let go.
They didn’t speak for a while. But the silence wasn’t uncomfortable; it was charged with the thoughts they were working on alone. And, as it turned out, both their minds had wandered to the same place.
“You really don’t think Sal did it, do you?” Ravi asked.
“I just can’t believe it.” She stepped over an old fallen tree. “My brain hasn’t been able to leave it alone. So when this project thing came up for school, I jumped at the excuse to reexamine the case.”
“It is the perfect excuse to hide behind,” he said, nodding. “I didn’t have anything like that.”
“What do you mean?” She turned to him, fiddling with the leash that she’d draped around her neck.
“I tried to do what you’re doing, three years ago. My parents told me to leave it alone, that I was only going to make things harder for myself, but I just couldn’t accept it.”
“You tried to investigate?”
“Yes, Sergeant, but I didn’t get anywhere,” he said, watching his feet. “I couldn’t. I called Naomi Ward at college, but she just cried and said she couldn’t talk about it with me. Max Hastings and Jake Lawrence never replied to my messages. I tried contacting Andie’s best friends, but they hung up as soon as I said who I was. ‘Murderer’s brother’ isn’t the best intro. And of course, Andie’s family was out of the question. I was too close to the case, I knew. Looked too much like my brother. And I didn’t have the excuse of a school project to fall back on.”
“I’m sorry,” Pip said, embarrassed by the unfairness of it.
“Don’t be.” He nudged her. “It’s good to not be alone in this, for once. Go on, I want to hear your theories.” He picked up Barney’s stick, now foamy with dribble, and threw it into the trees.
Pip hesitated.
“Go on.” He smiled up into his eyes, one eyebrow cocked. Was he testing her?
“OK, I have four working theories,” she said, the first time she’d actually given voice to them. “Obviously, the path of least resistance is the accepted story of what happened: Sal killed her, and his guilt or fear of being caught led him to take his own life. But my first theory,” she said, holding up one finger, “is that a third party killed Andie, but Sal was somehow involved, like an accessory after the fact, helped bury the body. His guilt leads him to suicide, and the evidence found on him implicates him as the perpetrator, even though he isn’t the one who killed her. The actual killer is still at large.”
“Yeah, I thought of that too. I still don’t like it. Next?”
“Theory number two,” she said, “a third party killed Andie, and Sal had no involvement or awareness at all. His suicide days later wasn’t motivated by a murderer’s guilt, but maybe by a multitude of factors, including the stress of his girlfriend’s disappearance. The evidence found on him—the blood and the phone—have an entirely innocent explanation and are unrelated to her murder.”
Ravi nodded thoughtfully. “I still don’t think Sal would do that. Theory three?”
“Theory three.” Pip swallowed, her throat dry. “Andie is murdered by a third party on the Friday. The killer knows that Sal, as Andie’s boyfriend, would make the perfect suspect. Especially as Sal seems to have no alibi for over two hours that night. The killer murders Sal and makes it look like a suicide. They plant the blood and the phone on his body to make him look guilty. It works just as they planned it.”
Ravi stopped walking for a moment. “You think it’s possible that Sal was actually murdered?”
She knew, looking into his sharpened eyes, that this was the answer he’d been looking for.
“I think it’s a theoretical possibility.” Pip nodded. “Theory four is the most far-fetched of the lot.” She took a deep breath and did it in one. “No one killed Andie Bell, because she isn’t dead. She faked her disappearance and then lured Sal out into the woods, murdered him, and dressed it up as a suicide. She planted her own phone and blood on him so that everyone believed she was dead. Maybe she needed to disappear for some reason. Maybe she feared for her life and needed to make it look like she was already dead. Maybe she had an accomplice.”
They were quiet again, while Pip caught her breath and Ravi considered her answers, his upper lip puffed out in concentration.
They had come to the end of their circuit round the woods; the sunny road was visible through the trees ahead. Pip called Barney over and put him on the leash. They crossed the road and walked to her front door.
There was an awkward moment of silence, and Pip didn’t know whether or not to invite him inside. He seemed to be waiting for something.
“So,” Ravi said, scratching his head with one hand, the dog’s with the other, “the reason I came over is…I want to make a deal with you.”
“A deal?”
“Yeah, I want in on this,” he said, a slight tremor in his voice. “I never had a chance, but you actually might. You’re an outsider to the case, you have this school project excuse to open doors. People might actually talk to you. You might be my chance to find out what really happened. I’ve waited so long for a chance.”
Her face felt hot again; the shaking edge in his voice made something tug inside her chest.
“I can agree to that.” She smiled, holding out her hand.
“Deal,” he said, taking it, though he forgot to shake it. “Which means, I’ve got something for you.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out an old iPhone cradled in his palm.
“Um, I’ve actually already got one, thanks,” Pip said.
“It’s Sal’s phone.”