A few moments of muffled shrieking as the train pulled off again and started to gain speed. It jerked Pip’s pen, making her scribble a line down the page through her essay introduction. She sighed, ripped the piece of paper from the pad, and screwed it into a ball. It was no good, anyway.

She was on the train to Westport. Ravi was coming straight from work to meet her at the station. Pip looked away from the blank expectant page and out the window instead; they had to be nearly there. She’d taken the train to fit in some application time but had nothing to show for it.

“Next stop, Westport,” the conductor announced, like Pip had summoned him with her thoughts. She packed her notepad into her backpack and stood while the train slackened and came to a stop with a mechanical sigh. She skipped onto the platform and down the stairs.

Ravi was waiting for her outside the station.

“Sarge,” he said, flicking his dark hair out of his eyes. “I was just coming up with our crime-fighting theme tune. So far, I’ve got chilled strings and a pan flute when it’s me, and then you come on with some heavy, Darth Vader–ish trumpets.”

“Why am I the trumpets?” she said.

“Because you’re the scary one and you stomp when you walk; sorry to be the one to tell you.”

For some reason Pip didn’t mind when it was him teasing her. Maybe she even liked it. She pulled a face at him, then reached for her phone, typing in the Ivy House Inn for directions. The line appeared onscreen, and they followed the five-minute-long walking directions, Pip’s blue circle avatar sliding along the route in her hands.

They reached their destination and looked up. There was a small wooden sign just before the drive that read “Ivy House Inn” in faded letters. The driveway was sloped and pebbled, leading to a redbrick house almost wholly covered in creeping ivy. It was so thick with the green leaves that the house itself seemed to shiver in the wind.

Pip and Ravi crunched up the drive to the front door, and Pip jabbed the metal doorbell, letting it ring out for one long note.

They heard a small voice inside, and shuffling steps, then the door swung inward, sending a tremor through the ivy around the frame. An old woman with fluffy gray hair, thick glasses, and a very premature Christmas sweater stood before them and smiled.

“Hello, dears,” she said. “I didn’t realize we were expecting anyone. What name did you make the reservation under?” She ushered Pip and Ravi inside and closed the door.

They stepped into a dimly lit lobby, with a sofa and coffee table on the left and a white staircase running along the far wall.

“Oh, sorry,” Pip said, turning back to face the woman. “We don’t actually have a reservation.”

“I see, well, lucky for you two we aren’t booked up, so—”

“Sorry,” Pip cut in, looking awkwardly at Ravi. “I mean, we’re not looking to stay here. We’re looking for…We have some questions for the owners of the inn. Are you…?”

“Yes, I’m the owner.” The woman smiled, looking unnervingly at a point just left of Pip’s face. “Ran it for twenty years with my David; he was in charge of most things, though. It’s been hard since my David passed a couple years ago. But my grandsons are always here, helping me get by, driving me around. My grandson Henry is just upstairs, cleaning the rooms.”

“So five years ago, you and your husband were running this place?” Ravi asked.

The woman nodded, and her eyes swayed over to him. “Very handsome,” she said quietly, and then to Pip, “Lucky girl.”

“No, we’re not…,” Pip said, glancing at Ravi. She wished she hadn’t. Out of the old lady’s eyeline, he shimmied his shoulders and pointed to his face, mouthing “very handsome.” Pip rolled her eyes and hoped he couldn’t read anything else on her face.

“Would you like to sit down?” The woman gestured to a green-velvet sofa beneath a window. “I know I would.” She shuffled over to a leather armchair facing the couch.

Pip walked over, intentionally treading on Ravi’s foot as she passed. She sat down, knees pointed toward the woman, and Ravi squeezed in beside her, still with that smug grin on his face.

“Where’s my…,” the woman said, patting her sweater and her pants pockets, a blank look falling over her face.

“Um, so,” Pip said, drawing the woman’s attention back to her. “Do you keep records of people that have stayed here?”

“It’s all done on the, um…the computer now, isn’t it?” the woman said. “Sometimes by the telephone. David always handled the bookings; now, Henry does it for me.”

“So how did you keep track of the reservations you had?” Pip said.

“My David did it. Had a spreadsheet printed out for the week.” The woman shrugged, staring out the window.

“Would you still have your reservation spreadsheets from five years ago?” asked Ravi.

“No, no. The whole place would be flooded in paper.”

“But do you have the documents saved on a computer?” Pip pressed.

“Oh, no. We threw David’s computer out after he passed. It was a very slow little thing,” she said. “My Henry does all the bookings for me now.”

“Can I ask you something?” Pip said, unzipping her backpack and pulling out a folded printout. She straightened out the page and handed it to the woman. “Do you recognize this girl? Has she ever stayed here?”

The woman stared down at the photo of Andie, the one that had been used in most newspaper reports. She lifted the paper to her face, then held it at arm’s length, then brought it close again.

“Yes.” She nodded, looking from Pip to Ravi to Andie. “I know her. She’s been here.”

Pip’s skin prickled with nervous excitement.

“You remember this girl staying with you five years ago?” she said. “Do you remember the man she was with? What he looked like?”

The woman’s face muddied, and she stared at Pip, her eyes darting right and left, a blink with each change in direction.

“No,” she said. “No, it wasn’t five years ago. I saw this girl. She’s been here.”

“In 2014?” Pip said.

“No, no.” The woman’s eyes settled past Pip’s ear. “It was just a few weeks ago. She was here, I remember.”

Pip’s heart sank a few hundred feet.

“That’s not possible,” she said. “This girl has been dead for five years.”

“But I—” The woman shook her head, the wrinkled skin around her eyes folding together. “But I remember. She was here. She’s been here.”

“Five years ago?” Ravi prompted.

“No,” the woman said, anger creeping into her voice. “I remember, don’t I? I don’t—”

“Grandma?” A man’s voice called from upstairs.

A set of heavy boots thundered down the stairs, and an auburn-haired man came into view.

“Hello?” he said, looking at Pip and Ravi. He walked over and held out his hand. “I’m Henry Hill,” he said.

Ravi stood and shook his hand. “I’m Ravi; this is Pip.”

“Can we help you with something?” he asked, shooting a concerned look over at his grandmother.

“We were just asking your grandma a couple questions about someone who stayed here five years ago,” said Ravi.

Pip looked back to the old woman and noticed that she was crying. Tears snaked down her tissue-paper skin, dropping onto the printout of Andie.

The grandson must have noticed as well. He walked over and squeezed his grandma’s shoulder, taking the piece of paper out of her shaking grip.

“Grandma,” he said, “why don’t you put the kettle on and make us some tea? I’ll help out these people here, don’t worry.”

He eased her up off the chair and steered her toward a door to the left of the hall, handing the photo of Andie to Pip as they passed. Ravi and Pip looked at each other, questions in their eyes, until Henry returned a few seconds later, closing the kitchen door to muffle the sound of the boiling kettle.

“Sorry,” he said with a sad smile. “She gets upset when she gets confused. The Alzheimer’s…It’s starting to get bad. I’m actually just cleaning up to put the place on the market. She keeps forgetting that.”

“I’m sorry,” Pip said. “We should have realized. We didn’t mean to upset her.”

“No, I know, of course you didn’t,” he said. “Can I help with whatever it is?”

“We were asking about this girl.” Pip held up the paper. “Whether she stayed here five years ago.”

“And what did my grandma say?”

“She thought she’d seen her recently, just weeks ago.” She swallowed. “But this girl died in 2014.”

“She does that quite often now,” he said, looking between the two of them. “Gets confused about times and when things happened. Sometimes still thinks my grandad is alive. She’s probably just recognizing your girl from five years ago, if that’s when you think she was here.”

“Yeah,” Pip said, “I guess.”

“Sorry I can’t be of more help. I can’t tell you who stayed here five years ago; we haven’t kept the old records. But if she recognized her, I guess that gives you your answer?”

Pip nodded. “It does. Sorry for upsetting her.”

“Will she be OK?” said Ravi.

“She’ll be fine,” Henry said gently. “Tea will do the trick.”

---

They stepped out of Fairview station, the town dimming as it turned six o’clock and the sun slumped off to the west. She’d gotten a text from Zach on the train: Where are you? Did you forget about debate team? She had; she’d forgotten all about it. She tried to ignore the guilt; she’d make it up to him somehow.

Pip’s mind whirled, spinning over the many shifting pieces of Andie’s life, separating them and putting them back together in different combinations.

“So,” she said, “I think we can confirm that Andie stayed at the Ivy House Inn.” The bathroom tiles and the woman’s time-confused recognition were proof enough of that.

They turned right, into the parking lot, heading for Pip’s car down the far end.

“And if Andie was going to that inn,” Ravi said, “must be because that’s where she met Secret Older Guy, and they were both trying to avoid getting caught.”

Pip nodded in agreement. “So that means that whoever Secret Older Guy was, he couldn’t have Andie over at his house. And the most likely reason for that would be that he lived with his family or a wife.”

This changed things.

Pip carried on. “Daniel da Silva lived with his new wife in 2014, and Max Hastings was living with his parents, who knew Sal well. Both of them would have needed to be away from home to carry on a secret relationship with Andie. And, let’s not forget, Max has a naked photo of Andie taken inside the Ivy House Inn, a photo he supposedly ‘found,’ ” she said, using air quotes around the word.

“Yeah,” Ravi said, “but Howie Bowers lived alone. If it was him Andie was secretly seeing, they wouldn’t have needed to stay in a hotel.”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Pip said. “Which means I think we can rule out Howie as a candidate for Secret Older Guy. Although that doesn’t necessarily mean he isn’t the killer.”

“True,” Ravi agreed, “but at least it clears the picture a little. It wasn’t Howie that Andie was seeing behind Sal’s back in March, and it wasn’t him she spoke of ruining.”

They had deduced all the way over to her car. Pip fiddled in her pocket and blipped the keys. She opened the driver’s-side door and shoved her backpack inside, Ravi taking it on his lap in the passenger seat. As she started to climb in, she looked up and noticed a man leaning against the far fence, about sixty feet away, in a green parka coat with bright orange lining. Howie Bowers, furred hood up, nodding at the man beside him.

A man gesticulating wildly as he mouthed silent and angry-looking words. A man in a smart wool coat with floppy blond hair.

Max Hastings.

Pip’s face drained. She dropped into her seat.

“What’s wrong, Sarge?”

She pointed out his window.

Max Hastings, who had lied to her yet again, saying he never bought drugs in Fairview after Andie disappeared, that he had no clue who her dealer was. And here he was, shouting at that very drug dealer, the words lost to the distance between them.

“Oh,” Ravi said.

Pip started the engine and pulled out, driving away before either Max or Howie could spot them, before her hands started to shake too much.

Max and Howie knew each other.

Yet another tectonic shift in the world of Andie Bell.