“Did you get all dressed up to come and see me, Sarge?” Ravi said, leaning against his front doorframe in a green plaid flannel shirt and jeans.

Well, Pip had put on her nice jacket today; not that she was going to tell him that. “Nope, I came straight from school.”

But he was still smiling, eyes glinting like he knew something she didn’t. “If anything, I dressed down,” Pip added.

“Ah I see,” he said, “a plainclothes officer today.”

“Exactly,” she said. “Speaking of, you’re coming with me. Put some shoes on.” She clapped her hands.

“Are we going on a mission?” Ravi asked, falling back to slip on some old sneakers discarded in the hallway. “Do I need to bring my night-vision goggles and utility belt?”

“Not this time.” She smiled, starting down the garden path as Ravi closed the front door, then followed her.

“Where are we going?”

“To a house where two potential Andie killer suspects grew up,” Pip said. “One of them just out of prison for aggravated assault. You’re my backup, since we’re going to speak to a potentially violent person of interest.”

“Backup?” he said, catching up to walk alongside her.

“You know,” Pip said casually, “so there’s someone there to hear my screams for help.”

“Wait, Pip.” He closed his fingers around her arm and pulled them both to a stop. “I don’t want you doing something that’s actually dangerous. Sal wouldn’t have wanted that either.”

“Oh, come on.” She shrugged him off. “Nothing gets between me and my homework, not even a little danger.” He looked unconvinced. “I’m kidding. I’m just going to, very calmly, ask her a few questions.”

“Oh, it’s a her?” Ravi said. “OK, then.”

Pip swung her backpack and whacked him on the elbow.

“Hey,” she said, “women can be just as dangerous as men.”

“Ouch, tell me about it,” he said, rubbing his arm. “What have you got in there, bricks?”

---

“It sounds like Andie was a piece of work,” Ravi said in the car when Pip was done catching him up on everything she’d learned since they last spoke. Everything except the dark figure in the forest and the note in her sleeping bag. This investigation meant everything to him, but she knew he would tell her to stop if he thought she was putting herself in danger. She couldn’t let that happen.

“And yet,” he carried on, “it was so easy for everyone to believe Sal was the monster. Whoa, I’m so deep.” He turned to her. “You can quote me on that in your project.”

“Of course, footnote and everything,” she said.

“ ‘Ravi Singh,’ ” he said, drawing his words with his fingers, “ ‘deep unfiltered thoughts, Pip’s bug-faced car, 2019.’ ”

“Yes.” She glanced quickly at him. “Except you didn’t use proper referencing style.”

“Oh, the shame.” He pretended to wince.

The mechanical voice on her phone’s GPS interrupted, announcing they’d reached their destination.

“Must be this one,” Pip said. “Naomi told me it was the one with the blue door.” She pulled over to the curb. “I called Natalie twice yesterday. The first time, she hung up after I said the words ‘school project.’ The second time, she wouldn’t pick up at all. Let’s hope she’ll actually open the door. You coming?”

“I’m not sure,” he said, pointing at his own face. “There’s that whole murderer’s brother thing. You might get more answers if I’m not there.”

“Oh.”

“How about I stand on the path there?” He gestured to the slabs of concrete that ran through the yard toward the house, to the point where they turned sharply left to lead to the front door. “She won’t see me, but I’ll be right there, ready for action.”

They stepped out of the car, and Ravi handed over her backpack with an exaggerated grunt.

She nodded at him when he was in position and then strolled up to the front door. She prodded the bell twice, fiddling nervously with the hem of her jacket as a shadowy figure emerged behind the frosted glass.

The door opened slowly and a face appeared in the crack, a young woman with white-blond hair cropped closely to her head and eyeliner ringed thickly around her eyes. Beneath the makeup, she looked eerily like Andie: similar big blue eyes and plump pale lips.

“Hi,” Pip said, “are you Nat da Silva?”

“Yes,” she said hesitantly.

“My name’s Pip.” She swallowed. “I was the one who called you yesterday. I’m friends with Naomi Ward; you knew her at school, right?”

“Yeah, Naomi was a friend. Why? Is she OK?” Nat looked concerned.

“Oh, she’s fine.” Pip smiled. “She’s back home at the moment.”

“I didn’t know she was back.” Nat opened the door a little wider. “Yeah, I should catch up with her sometime. So…”

“Sorry for showing up like this,” Pip said. She looked down at full-length Natalie, noticing the electronic tag buckled around her ankle. “So, as I said when I called, I’m doing a school project, and I was wondering if I could ask you some questions?” She looked quickly back up at Nat’s face.

“What about?” Nat shifted the tagged foot behind the door.

“Um, it’s about Andie Bell.”

“No thanks.” Nat stepped back to shut the door, but Pip blocked it with her foot.

“Please. I know the awful things she did to you,” she said. “I can understand why you wouldn’t want to, but—”

“That bitch ruined my life,” Nat spat. “I’m not wasting one more breath on her. Move!”

That’s when they both heard the sound of rubber skidding across concrete and a whispered, “Oh crap.”

Nat glanced up and her eyes widened. “You,” she said quietly. “You’re Sal’s brother.”

It wasn’t a question.

Pip turned now, her eyes falling on Ravi behind her, standing sheepishly next to the uneven slab he must have tripped over.

“Hi,” he said, ducking his head and raising his hand. “I’m Ravi.”

He came to stand beside Pip, and Nat’s grip on the door loosened. She let it swing open.

“Sal was always nice to me,” she said, “even when he didn’t have to be. The last time I spoke to him, he was offering to give up his lunch breaks to tutor me in gov because I was struggling. I’m sorry you don’t have your brother anymore.”

“Thank you,” Ravi said.

“It must be hard for you too,” Nat carried on, her eyes still lost in another world, “how much this town worships Andie Bell. Fairview’s saint and sweetheart. That bench dedication in the park: ‘Taken Too Soon.’ Not soon enough, it should say.”

“She wasn’t a saint,” Pip said gently, trying to coax Nat out from behind the door. But Nat wasn’t looking at her, only at Ravi.

He stepped up. “She bullied you?”

“Sure did,” Nat laughed bitterly, “and she’s still ruining my life, even from the grave. You’ve checked out my hardware.” She pointed to her ankle monitor. “Got this because I punched one of my suitemates in college. We were deciding on bedrooms, and this girl started pulling a stunt, exactly like Andie would’ve, and I just lost it.”

“We know about the video she put up of you,” Pip said. “She should have faced charges over it; you were still a minor at the time.”

Nat shrugged. “At least she was punished in some way that week. Some divine providence. Thanks to Sal.”

“Did you want her dead, after what she’d done to you?” Ravi asked.

“Of course I did,” Nat said darkly. “Of course I wanted her gone. I skipped two days of school because I was so upset. And when I went back on the Wednesday, everyone was looking at me, laughing at me. I was crying in the corridor, and Andie walked by and called me a slut. I was so angry that I left her a nice little note in her locker. I was too scared to ever say anything to her face, though.”

Pip glanced sideways at Ravi, at his tensed jaw and furrowed brows, and she knew he’d picked up on it too.

“A note?” he said. “Was it a…Was it a threatening note?”

“No shit,” Nat laughed. “ ‘You stupid bitch, I’m going to kill you,’ something like that. Sal got there first, though.”

“Maybe he didn’t,” Pip said.

Nat turned and looked Pip in the face. Then she burst into loud and forced laughter, a mist of spit landing on Pip’s cheek.

“Oh, this is too good,” she hooted. “Are you asking me whether I killed Andie Bell? I had the motive, right, that’s what you’re thinking? You want my fucking alibi?” She laughed cruelly.

Pip didn’t say anything. Her mouth was filling uncomfortably with saliva, but she didn’t swallow. She didn’t want to move at all. She felt Ravi brushing against her shoulder, his hand skimming just past hers, disturbing the air around it.

Nat leaned toward them. “I didn’t have any friends left because of Andie Bell. I had no place to be on that Friday night. I was home playing Scrabble with my parents and sister-in-law, tucked in by eleven. Sorry to disappoint you.”

“And where was your brother?” Pip said. “If his wife was home with you?”

“He’s a suspect, too, is he?” Her voice darkened. “Naomi must have been talking, then. He was out drinking with his cop friends that night.”

“He’s a police officer?” Ravi said.

“Just finished his training that year. So yeah, no murderers in this house, I’m afraid. Now fuck off, and tell Naomi to fuck off too.”

Nat stepped back and kicked the door shut in their faces.

Pip watched the door vibrating in its frame, her eyes so transfixed that it looked for a moment like the very particles of air were rippling. She shook her head and turned to Ravi.

“Let’s go,” he said softly.

Back in the car Pip allowed herself to just breathe for a few seconds, to arrange the haze of her thoughts into actual words.

Ravi found his first: “Am I in trouble for, well, literally tripping into the interrogation? I heard raised voices, and—”

“No.” Pip looked at him and couldn’t help but smile. “We’re lucky you did. She only talked because you were there.”

He sat up a little straighter in his seat, and his hair brushed against the roof of the car. “So the death threat that journalist told you about…”

“Came from Nat,” Pip finished, turning the key in the ignition.

She pulled out and drove about twenty feet up the road, out of sight of the da Silva house, before stopping again and reaching for her phone.

“What are you doing?”

“Nat said her brother is a police officer.” She thumbed on to the browser app. “Let’s look him up.”

It came up on the first page of results: Daniel da Silva’s LinkedIn profile. It said he was an officer at the Fairview Police Department, had been so since the end of 2013.

“Hey, I know him,” Ravi said, leaning over her shoulder.

“You do?”

“Yeah. Back when I started asking questions about Sal, he was the officer that told me to give it up, that my brother was guilty beyond doubt. He does not like me.” Ravi’s hand crept up to the back of his head, losing his fingers in his dark hair. “Last summer I was sitting at a table outside the café by the library. This guy”—he gestured to the photo—“made me move along, said I was ‘loitering.’ Funny he didn’t think anyone else was loitering, just the brown kid with a murderer for a brother.”

“What an asshole,” she said. “And he shut down all your questions about Sal?”

Ravi nodded.

“He’s been a police officer in Fairview since just before Andie disappeared.” Pip stared down at her phone into Daniel’s smiling face. “Ravi, if someone did frame Sal and make his death look like suicide, wouldn’t it be easier for someone with knowledge of police procedure?”

“That it would, Sarge,” he said. “And there’s the rumor Andie slept with him when she was fifteen, which she used to blackmail Nat out of the play.”

“Yes, and what if they started up again later, after Daniel was married and Andie was a senior? He could be the secret older guy.”

“What about Nat?” he said. “I sort of want to believe her when she says she was home with her parents that night because she’d lost all her friends. But…she’s also proven to be violent.” He weighed up his hands in a conceptual seesaw. “And there’s obviously motive. Maybe a brother-and-sister killer tag team?”

“Or a Nat-and-Naomi killer tag team,” Pip groaned.

“She did seem pretty angry that Naomi had talked to you,” Ravi agreed. “What’s the word count on this project, Pip?”

“Not enough, Ravi. Not nearly enough.”

“Should we just go and get ice cream and give our brains a rest?” He turned to her with that smile of his. Pip was supposed to go over to Lauren’s house later, but she could be a little late. Just a little bit.

“Yes, we probably should.”

“As long as you’re a cookie dough kinda gal. Quote, Ravi Singh,” he said dramatically into an invisible microphone, “ ‘A thesis on the best ice cream flavor, Pip’s car, Septem—’ ”

“Shut up.”

“OK.”